To this day, my cellphone wallpaper is Gatchaman Crowds‘ Hajime Ichinose. She’s pulling a confused look as fellow gatchaman team member Sugune Tachibana admits that he only uses his phone for calls.
Calls are the feature of my phone that I use the least, for the record.
“Friends are important above all else, right? We, in this classroom right now, are all friends. Don’t you think that those who deny our feelings are the scum of the earth? Those who stray from us are irredeemable. People who don’t stain themselves our color are nothing but trouble, right? We have a word for people who can’t read the mood: evil. Izumino Sumika was killed by a bear because of that. But that was entirely her fault, for she was evil. We must proceed to select the next evil to exclude. Let’s . . . search . . . evil!”
-Eriko Oniyama, Yuri Kuma Arashi, Episode 3
Those evil people aren’t going to exclude themselves, you know?
“When you see someone in trouble in front of you, you act before you think. That’s how you’ve always been since you were a child, and I’ve always been proud of you because of that. But right now, you need to think hard. What is it that you can do?”
-Yuru-jii to his great-granddaughter Tsubasa, Gatchaman Crowds insight, Episode 10
In the first season of Gatchaman Crowds, Hajime Ichinose had her collages.
Not only were they a cute hobby that tied Hajime to some influential Tachikawa locals, but they acted as a metaphor – albeit a heavy-handed one – for the way Hajime herself acts. Repeatedly in the first season, she would express how wonderful it was when everyone “came together,” combining their respective talents into something different, exciting, or meaningful, much like a collage. Hajime was always slow and dawdling, sometimes to a fault, but her personality also brought other large personalities together, creating something entirely new.
It’s only fitting that Gatchaman Crowds insight‘s finale allowed its new heroine, Tsubasa Misudachi, to show off her own creative talents in the form of a fireworks show. Fireworks are an easy shortcut to Tsubasa’s personality – emotionally-charged, quick to anger, and fiercely passionate – as she’s naturally intense but also acts before she thinks. Unlike a collage, fireworks immediately impress and often inspire an emotional response; however, they’re also fleeting. For Tsubasa, fireworks are also the tradition of her family that she carries with pride.
Trade offs occur frequently in everyday life – more often than not when money or resources are concerned. In a business sense, trading off usually weighs a more immediate solution against a long-term one, leaving the company or individual to calculated the benefits and risks involved before making a decision.
Regardless of the end result, trading off requires a choice. Something must be given, and with every decision something is lost.
atelier emily 