Why I love Hina Hikawa. An Essay.

No, I’ll actually try to keep this short and sweet. I could wax poetic about my best girls forever but honestly that takes forever and I just wanna show some love already. So~ my best girl! My list tends to shuffle around for a variety of reasons but my first and long-standing best girl is the lovely mint chocolate chip colored sweetie: Hina Hikawa!

Hina Hina Hina, my lovely autistic child.

And no. I don’t mean that as an insult. Bare with me! When I was little, I was…strange, to say the least. I didn’t really speak or react too much. I just wanted to be alone with a book that probably should have been for kids triple my age. I couldn’t handle a lot of stimuli, couldn’t read people properly. It was a mess. Autism was (and mostly still is) uncharted territory, so when I was smacked with the label, no one around knew what to do. Life for awhile was constant classes in social etiquette, devouring so many new things, trying this whole “fitting in” thing, failing and getting back up in time to pretend to do it all again the “right” way with the kids my age.

Hina to me is that side of me that I tried to leave behind all those years ago. The me that I tried to forget about for awhile, but still is a big part of me: a person who doesn’t quite understands social cues even after “training” but finds people fascinating, the person who picks up new hobbies, accidentally turns into a savant and then becoming bored by a lot of them. I could go on but I think you get the point. When I first started reading Hina’s interactions I immediately saw myself, and I really wanted to hate her like the other players I knew about…but I immediately fell in love. It gave me a little bubble of happiness to see someone like I was (although I doubt it’ll be explicitly said), one of the many MANY forms of Autism.

Especially her interactions with Aya (who is up there as the best girl too) in the main Pastel Palettes story! It took me back to some- looking back on it- cringey conversations with “normal” or “neurotypical” people. Especially when I finally got the hang of just talking to people, but not the hang of understanding what not to say to do things like: cheer people up. Usually, characters that seem to be autistic coded (think like Sheldon from Big Bang theory, Newt Scamander from the Fantastic beast, etc.) can come across as more abrasive than they really mean to, more oddballs who just refuse to conform as opposed to people who are just hardwired differently. But Hina hits this sweet spot of having “quirks” but still being shown to have a good heart. She loves her band, and doesn’t want to see it fall apart! Hina admires Aya for her combat-ness (is that a word? I can’t think of another word for her), Chisato for her attitude, Maya for her intelligence and Eve…well I still don’t get Eve but Hina and I love her too!

I love that we share a serious sweet tooth, and hate flavorless foods! And tofu! Like I said, I know it’s not Canon, but I like that that part of autism is shown: the texture/flavor thing. Usually, people with autism are extremely sensitive to such things and I just don’t see that used in character that much. I might be reading way too much into these things but autistic girls are usually left to the wayside, and seeing even little traits like having texture issues or even the Boppity thing and such just makes my little heart sing! I know it’s a weirdly translated onomatopoeia, but I know so many autistic friends that do things like that~ I remember when I was younger I would talk just like Hina! I might do it now, but if I do, I have no flipping idea. Hehe~ I don’t even know if this is coherent anymore~ but long story short: I love this babe so much! My first 4-star, speaker of some of my favorite lines, wearer of some of my fav outfits…I think Hina will always hold a special space in my heart, even if I become a traitor and switch around my list.

EDIT: Also freaking~look at her cute face and tell me to MY face that this little blueberry isn't cute af? I want more cards of her!

-Also: She supports her sister no matter what?!?? Like, she watches all of Roselia's proformances~ in disguise! Which we all know is Hina in sunglasses and a sick hat.