I’m so soft for KasuAri after BS3 . . . A lot of the time their dynamic is just Kasumi pushing and Arisa being a tsun about it which isn’t like, my favourite thing in the world but it obviously goes deeper and I love when that’s shown. Arisa says in her special ep that she understood how Kasumi felt when Owner wouldn’t accept her idea bc she knew there were things you couldn’t make happen no matter how hard you tried. And of course she knows. This is Arisa who gave up going to school, who tried to give up PoPiPa bc someone like her would only mess up and ruin things. Arisa who’s always believed she’s better off not trying than taking that risk and failing over and over again

And Kasumi . . . Kasumi falls apart exactly the same way she does when she screws up. When she dropped the Random Star. When Owner told her how badly she played compared to everyone else. In fact she looks like she crashes even harder bc she doesn’t put up barriers or brace for impact. It sends her into this spiral of despair and self-blame and everything stops and she can’t get up

It’s incredible to Arisa that someone can be hit that hard and still keep going. If things going wrong just didn’t affect Kasumi the same way, if it somehow hurt her less, then maybe Arisa’s just too emotionally fragile and it can’t be helped. She’s hopeless so what’s the point of trying! Some people are built to achieve certain things and others aren’t, right?

But that’s not how it is. Kasumi dropped the guitar and Arisa saw how she reacted and realised they were the same. Arisa sees her as such a bright beacon bc she falls and it hurts and it hurts and yet she still smiles so much and keeps her heart open and throws herself at walls until they give

And ugh the way Arisa hates seeing Kasumi crumble precisely bc of that. She knows exactly how it feels and it’s awful and all she wants is to make it stop. In S1 she takes the guitar straight to Edogawa even though it’s heckin pouring rain and in BS3 she gives an entire speech about how amazing Kasumi is—THE WAY SHE TRIES TO STEP INTO KASUMI’S ROLE WHEN KASUMI CAN’T GO ON LIKE. Kasumi showed her that all this struggling was worth something and now it’s time to believe in her, in this moment of weakness when she stops believing in herself. ARISA ICHIGAYA SHOUTING THAT SHE DOESN’T WANT TO GIVE UP do you know what hearing that does to me

hghh