mizuki-foreshadowing

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

On Mushrooms, Carrots, and Parenting

Before anything else, I ask that this post be taken with a grain of salt; I may or may not still be high off realizing there were multiple levels of nuance to a main character in two different timelines having a different favorite food, in a different fandom.

This post takes a closer look at the dinner with Mafuyu at the Shinonomes in Hope Will Someday Go Beyond the Morning, and how it relates to Mizuki's side story for that same event, I'll Go Ask L'il Bro Too! part 2.

Mizuki is really good at keeping a conversation going, and Akito is giving her a run for her money with how little he wants to talk to her.

She revives the conversation with teasing Akito about him and Ena fighting over not eating their carrots at dinner, and Mizuki (not only simply takes Akito's side in something so silly just to keep him talking, but) turns the conversation toward being served least-favorite foods.

Akito stands up for his mom's parenting despite himself, admitting that he's still going to be picky even if his mom is doing her best.

Mizuki loses control of the conversation once more, and a teacher finds her before she can come up with a new topic.

This glimpse at Shinonomom's parenting complements what we already know about her from the dinner, which the rest of the post talks about. But I do want to draw a little attention to Mizuki's least favorite food and her own mom.

Mizuki running from herself even extends to how her own story is told to us the readers. We know nothing about her part-time job, her pastimes while cooped up in her room, of anime and following idols, nor anything about her parents. Even in And Now I Wear This Ribbon, we only learn two things about Mizuki's parents, that they are severely worried about their child's mental health and as a result let her do whatever she wants in all parts of her life.

Mizuki doesn't like mushrooms so of course her mom's never going to give them to her. That's the easy part. Now, mushrooms as a food are a common thing for kids to be picky about; they look strange, have a texture that's both firm and slick, and a distinctive smell. So, they may very easily have picked a very uncontroversial least favorite food for a throwaway line in a side story.

However, what else are mushrooms? They uniquely are the only thing we eat from the Fungi taxonomical kingdom. Everything else we eat is either Animalia or Plantae. What else do we know that's commonly thought of in a strict binary dismissing well-known yet rare exceptions? What else do we know about Mizuki, who does everything she can to hide who she is from people, even and especially the ones who matter most to her. In What Lies Behind / What Lies Ahead, we learn Mizuki knows in her heart and feels fully confident that her friends won't reject her if they knew she was trans, and in And Now I Wear This Ribbon, we learn Mizuki is unable to suppress or ignore the part of her that loves cute things and subjects her to so much suffering from others' judgments of her. What Mizuki resents, the reason she's so intent on hiding herself from N25, is that she feels broken, which of course N25 would welcome her for, but it fundamentally alters her dynamic with them. But Mizuki isn't broken any more than mushrooms have nothing to do with animals or plants.

Now this next bit is very openly a reach. People treat and consider mushrooms culinarily as being a vegetable. Who is Mizuki's fellow outcast who very iconically hates vegetables and anything to do with them? Unlike Mizuki, Rui has given up on being anyone palatable or normal to the public, and his friends are the people who seek him out for what makes him unique. Rui feels alienated from people's expectations for him, and under the lens that Mizuki's least favorite food is mushrooms for mushrooms being so uniquely weird, Rui's least favorite food is all of vegetables, half of all food. While Mizuki's is a food that people write off as a vegetable but really was never a vegetable, Rui's is an overwhelmingly common kind of food, every vegetable. Rui feels alienated from masculinity.

The final part of this post is looking at Shinonomom's parenting and the implications it readily held for Mafumom's parenting but also the ones it does for Mizuki's mom, who has so little screentime she doesn't even have a nickname. (Akiyamom is right there but she just isn't able to be talked about so that'll have to wait for some future event story)

We know from Mizuki's side story, that Akito understands that his mom is being a good parent by still feeding her kids things they're picky about but doing her best to cook them in ways they'll enjoy eating.

But she matches Ena and Akito's energy bickering at the table. That's likely just how the Shinonomes interact with people. While I wanted to say that Akito to Toya parallels Ena to Mizuki, I think it actually parallels Ena to Kanade, who she's always tender with. If Ena to Mizuki has a parallel in VBS, I don't know their story well enough to guess, but I feels like there absolutely is one. Presumably though, the person Shinonomom is always kind to is her husband (the whole crowd was booing) whose only remotely redeeming event story didn't even feature him apologizing to Ena despite him finally coming around to accepting her not being able to compromise her art.

Ena knows Mafuyu is too depressed to care what she eats and tries to give her carrots to her.

But this matches neatly with the lens that least favorite foods are parents being firm in their parenting, something Mizuki never deals with, Mafuyu deals with with a smile, and Ena does only with her mom making sacrifices on Ena's behalf; Shinonomom doesn't try to control her children's lives, but she isn't lax in her parenting either. Mafuyu is moved by how kind and loving she is to her children. Narratively, she's being presented as the ideal parent, and we get to see how she interacts with Mafuyu's idea of what it means to be the ideal daughter.

Mafuyu tries to stand up for her mom, but Mafuyu is reaching the part of her story where the web of justifications and reasonings Mafumom confines her daughter using are starting to feel hollow to her. Shinonomom finishes Mafumom's sentence, echoed from her daughter's mouth, and asks whether Mafuyu's mom is really the kind of person to object to Mafuyu also wanting to enjoy her life.

Shinonomom doesn't know how to handle Ena; art is the source of all of her pain, but it's paradoxically also the last thing that can bring her real joy. Ena's dad is a successful professional artist and doesn't believe in Ena having a future in art, so Shinonomom encouraging Ena's art is closer to her encouraging a hobby for her daughter's mental health. Shinonomom's doubts aren't about Ena's future at all, they're about whether art, which Ena chooses and says that she loves, is actually harming her daughter emotionally. That's the missing piece in Mafuyu's own life; music to Mafuyu is not like art to Ena, it's very unambiguously positive and soothing to her. She needs it, and the only hesitation a better parent has about encouraging her daughter's passion wouldn't apply to Mafuyu.

In line with Shinonomom being presented as an ideal parent, we get to see that she is still concerned about her children's futures, in addition to wanting them to pursue their passions and to enjoy life. This takes the form of wanting them to do better in school.

Likewise, by this metric, Mafuyu is best-prepared for her future; Mafumom obsesses over Mafuyu's future at the total expense of Mafuyu's present, and Mafuyu is much better at school than Ena or Akito. We get to see Shinonomom wishing she could borrow some of that.

Interestingly, for all her truancy, it is always emphasized that Mizuki gets good grades. Under the lens of grades being future prospects, this would reflect that Mizuki has a better chance of a future in fashion (which she is already getting into the real world of in her offscreen part-time job) than Ena does of one in art (which she is still terrified of jumping into the real world of even as she's sure that she wants to).

Kanade doesn't have parents but likewise doesn't have academics (Do any of us really believe she takes online classes?) nor does she have food served to her at the dinner table, so these comparisons don't apply to her either literally or metaphorically. (Honami sort of cooks for her, but Kanade is so out of touch with having her own life that we don't have any idea if she likes the food or if Honami is just that good of a cook. We also, importantly, don't know how Honami's cooking compares to Kanade's parents' cooking. This is actually really significant because multiple characters make comments of Honami being motherly.)

With Mizuki, though, we reaffirm that her parents are afraid to be firm with her because not a lot keeps her here, and that while Mizuki does have a future, it's because it's something that she wants, rather than anything her parents are in control of.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I opened my notes app to write tonight to the funniest possible reminder.

It's very important because Mafumom getting nosy and obsessive in a Shizumafu fic means appearing in the MMJ comments and sabotaging her daughter's relationship. But why did past-me have to word it like this?

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I never really knew what to make of it, Minori's thing that she's unlucky. I thought it was like all of her luck going into her being able to perform as an idol with Kiritani Haruka. But, I think even Haruka going to Minori's same high school was also part of Minori's bad luck. Minori finally meets Haruka for real but it's specifically a broken Haruka with neither the physical or emotional ability to be an idol anymore, who breaks Minori's heart with all the things she says. Her idol was the only thing that kept Minori going, and meeting her like this, in a way that takes even that from Minori, is the most unfortunate thing that could ever happen to her.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Area Conversation, Shopping Mall

There is so much going on here. On the surface, it looks like Kanade's still high off winning a random drawing for tickets to Shibuya Instrument Day, but I think something else is happening.

The way the game is written, a lot of happenstance and chance meetings or opportunities find their ways to the characters. It's something she does a few times, where Kanade asks people not to dismiss what happened as luck or just doing what's natural in strange circumstances, but for them to take credit for the good they happened to be a part of. Notably, Kanade insists that Mizuki take credit for Kanade's revelation in Carnation Recollection and that Mafuyu take credit for sparking Kanade's bond with Ichika in The Warmth of Intersecting Melodies. She also insists to Minori in SpoJoy Park that she was in fact responsible for Kanade being able to win at Strike Zone, that Minori really was able to inspire her, although Kanade didn't tell Minori what she was actually thanking her for, being able to remember how it felt with her dad at a similar facility so long ago, and for the sentiment that Kanade's friends just want to make her smile too, that Kanade should apply the love Carnation Recollection reminded her of to herself.

I feel like it's also happened on a walk home at the end of a story when meeting a small child, but an hour of searching hasn't found whatever it is I'm thinking of. But the few times it does happen, it feels distinctive enough to be a deliberate part of her character, at least I think so. If nothing else, it calls back to how Kanade talks to Ena, insisting that her art is perfect for N25 and that because of Ena's art, Kanade is able to see her own music in new ways. While Kanade applies that logic to each of her groupmates' contributions, it's only Ena who's ever moved by it; for Ena it's what saved her life, in Insatiable Pale Color.

Luck is also a thing certain characters have; Honami and Minori are specifically unlucky, and Shizuku and Emu are specifically lucky. So what's going on here isn't to do with luck for Kanade.

Rather, I think Kanade feels blessed. Those tickets to Shibuya Instrument Day led to Kanade remembering not only how it felt to admire her dad's playing and that it inspired her to play like that but also how it did feel to play like that because he had been her ideal sound she plays to recreate. It had been sheer luck to get the tickets, but this was a distinct step forward in the story Kanade sees herself on, the journey to becoming good enough at music to save people. It could be projecting, but Kanade looks like she's looking for purpose, and viewing her life in narratives, as leading up to something, gives her that.

That narrative is paved with happenstance. It was almost happenstance when Honami found her that first time, entering her home while Kanade was delirious and starving. Mafuyu meets her by messaging Kanade out of the blue, and Kanade realized Mafuyu not only makes her goal more tangible in that Mafuyu is someone specific that her music helps, but that Mafuyu is a missing piece or new perspective that Kanade needs to be able to write better music. That wouldn't be anything by itself for this, but Kanade deliberately tries to create that herself, when she does the same and messages Mizuki and Ena out of the blue, recognizing people like herself and Mafuyu using creativity to run from despair. Mizuki's Mystery Tour of haunted places she planned out of fear of how it might feel to see beautiful places with her friends, inspired Kanade to think of songs that may have saved the people who became the ghosts haunting those places. Not to mention another of her writer's block being broken by Mizuki inviting everyone to PXL which kicked off What Lies Beyond Guiding a Lost Child, which ends (in her 2-star side story) with finding Mafuyu feeling more open and vulnerable and being able to reaffirm her promise. ("If you're okay with that person being me, I'll find you as many times as you need.") Mizuki never expected to actually find the carnation garden, she just wanted to distract Kanade for as long as possible after seeing her like that, but it birthed the Song That Made Mafuyu Smile.

I think something Kanade is picking up on in reverse about herself, is that left to herself, she is locked into the routine of a self-destructive spiral that she desperately wants to escape, and it's only when things happen to break that routine that she can grow and feel and make progress. That's why I think she's upset about not winning a different drawing.

As for how Mizuki fits into all this, it's probably because Mizuki's thing of living in the present to the detriment of the future, added to her wanting to be cute with her friends, means random opportunities and inconveniences seem to affect her more. This would definitely be why Mafuyu thinks of her.

But, if Kanade is thinking about luck's ability in her own life to help her out her various ruts and have the freedom to take steps forward, that's also Mizuki's whole relationship with Kanade.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Okay, I don't really go here, but this was so cool, actually.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Mafuyu's mom and Ena's dad are so wild for having such off-the-charts single parent energy while being happily married. Mafuyu's mom obsessing this much over controlling her daughter's life, Ena's dad becoming so emotionally unavailable and unyielding in the cold things he says, it's like, yeah they're still coping with the divorce. Incorrect, they're just like that. Other things are wrong with them...

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I'm watching Tied by Painful Hope where Mai makes a return, and it's fun because they made her so much more expressive and gave her new happy sprites too, but in all of her poses she always has one hand resting on her chest. It comes off as something she did as an idol that because subcobscious

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I'd have to actually pull up a list of all cards to make like, a real comparison like this, but, lately I've been into trying to All Perfect songs on Hard and also clear songs on Expert, and I have different Challenge characters for those. (Mizuki's my normal one and I use her for songs I haven't S-cleared)

But, Shizuku was perfect for Accuracy Up cards, and I mainly picked her out because I'm slowly accumulating enough green vouchers for her card for Raise Your Bow and it's also Accuracy Up. So, I was looking for a character I have a disproportionate number of Life Recovery cards for, and it's Shiho by a mile. And I was like, Shiho is possibly the least healing presence ever, but then I realized.

Shizuku will be rated Full Combo and All Perfect on songs she didn't actually perform perfectly, and Shiho will clear songs that'd be way outside anyone else's ability to clear.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

One of these days I'll figure out what kind of bond Mizuki and Akito have. Her Part 2 side story for Beyond the Morning is about them. One interesting thing is, she really goes all in with putting on a cutesy, bratty voice for it. That's definitely a clue of some sort

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Mizuki: I'll Go Ask Li'l Bro Too!; Part 1

This is a side story for Hope Will Someday Go Beyond the Morning. N25 are chatting the night after the one Mafuyu spent at Ena's house, and we get a new angle into Mizuki's familiar mix of loving her friends and being afraid to get closer to them.

Mizuki is able to be happy for Mafuyu, that she 'gets to' go to bed earlier. On the one hand, Mafuyu is having to go to bed early because her mom is getting increasingly closer to sleuthing out what it is her daughter does behind her back, but on the other hand, Mafuyu is sleeping more. The line implies Mizuki is worried for Mafuyu but feels helpless to make her feel better or help her; sleep may be good for her. She is the only one getting up for school when it actually starts, after all.

Ena's perspective on Mafuyu's sleep habits comes at it from the opposite angle. Ena sees someone capable and fully functional who gets no sleep, while Mizuki sees someone distraught and disfunctional who gets no sleep. This tracks back to Ena being just a little envious of Mafuyu's talent when it comes to music, something Ena wishes she had, herself, for art.

Mizuki affirms Ena commenting about just how much Mafuyu's still capable of without sleep, by saying sleep is still important; Mafuyu can do better with healthier sleep, and she asks Kanade, unprompted, to do the same. This isn't Kanade, that it's sleep-deprived Kanade.

Ena and Mizuki, of course, have bad habits of sleeping in til noon, but bad circadian rhythm is a whole tier above where Kanade and Mafuyu are, so it doesn't come up.

We get to see Mizuki's mediator side, making sure N25 meetings are fun, with her keeping the conversation going instead of there being an awkward ten minutes before getting to business.

Kanade may be the only person alive who identifies a member of MORE MORE JUMP! as somebody who performs alongside Minori. Conversely, Mizuki brings it back into focus this individual Ena has a familiar and casual relationship with, who performs alongside Minori, is actually incredibly famous.

Mizuki teases Ena, but Ena doesn't react how she normally does. She admits to it first. I don't think this is her trying not to snap at Mizuki, I feel like it may just be her admiring Airi.

Mizuki jokes about staying over at Ena's place should the need arise. However, it's only just a joke to Mizuki. To Ena and Kanade, it's a real possibility; N25 is close enough now this sort of thing isn't out of the question. To Mizuki, of course, it absolutely still is. We see her go into evasive action, first with a silly excuse and then with changing the subject using something that, itself, reveals how much she cares about her friends that she checked in with Mafuyu on her own, earlier that same day.

Mizuki closes out the interaction with joking that she imagines she'd get pampered at the Shinonome's so she wouldn't mind being at their house, that it might be interesting.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I love this girl so much

Ecstatic, writing the fic, that Shizuku being ass at technology is plot relevant; of course she doesn't have a laptop. Can you imagine?

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Ecstatic, writing the fic, that Shizuku being ass at technology is plot relevant; of course she doesn't have a laptop. Can you imagine?

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

Hope Will Someday Go Beyond the Morning; Episode 7

Ena takes a huge risk on impulse taking Mafuyu to her home for the night, and Mizuki is severely jealous despite herself. Mizuki yearns for intimacy with her friends but her fear of change would always keep her from doing anything like this, but, now that it's happened, it's visible how much she wishes she were a part of this.

Mizuki's reaction is both disbelief and also praising Ena for doing something amazing; she's braver than Mizuki is able to be.

When Ena had brought Mafuyu home, her mom joked she was surprised Ena has friends other than Airi, who Ena remarks to herself hasn't slept over in a long time. Meanwhile Ena's constantly spending time with Mizuki. Whether Ena hides it from her mom and thereby her dad that she's friends with Mizuki or if her mom simply doesn't know much about Mizuki, she's definitely never been to Ena's house.

But in her incessant questions about Ena's home and family life, Mizuki reveals not only that she deserately wants to be closer to Ena but that she's already fantasized about what her home life may be like.

Mizuki wants to be a part of her friends' lives so bad. She talks about Ena's home life as though she's already familiar with it, when this is her first contact with it. We've seen the entire N25 storyline that Mizuki just does this; her internal monologue is so much more intimate with her friends' emotions than anything she says out loud. Mafuyu has no idea Mizuki has had this deep empathy for and understanding of her this whole time, despite Mizuki constantly reflecting on it, just because she keeps it to herself.

N25 starts work on the current song and Mafuyu is feeling inspired. We see a little more of Mizuki's envy here; if Mafuyu's inspired, that means she had a moment of growth from what Ena did for her, and Mizuki feels left out.

Ena can't tell that Mafuyu is enjoying herself, but everyone else can. Importantly, Mizuki phrases it almost wistfully as Mafuyu and Ena getting to have a sleepover. She wants to do these kind of things with her friends but, like her analogue Meiko, holds herself back in indecision, even as she's pained to watch her friends gain more from getting themselves directly involved.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

It'll probably hit me in the face later but, it's doing something to me, seeing Airi realize all this time she's been chasing the goal of becoming the perfect Airi, and that this goal was her compromising for just being the perfect Airi. That she'd have to work too much harder to have Haruka or Shizuku's kind of appeal so she never made the attempt; she doesn't want to just be the perfect Airi anymore.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

You versus the group Haruka's producer tells you not to worry about which was made in a lab to poach your fans:

Also I love that Hiiragi has no idea how to actually replicate the part of MORE MORE JUMP!'s appeal that they feel very homemade and unpolished, it's just something he tells Akari to say whenever she's not saying anything else.

Also girl you were THIS close to figuring it out!

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

I love that he gets a classic villain foreshadowing line too. I am so here for this

I do really love that MORE MORE JUMP! aren't simply successful, that they aren't just accepted as a legitimate idol group by the wider industry. They're doing their best to give their fans the idol experience, but every time they're treated like an idol group by people trying to commission them, it's either because the commissioner just doesn't have the funds for a group signed to an agency, or it's the idol industry deliberately sabotaging them, because they're managing to be popular while avoiding all the exploitation

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

You know what, Shiho's so funny actually for spending her entire junior high watching her older sister get repeatedly emotionally decimated by the entertainment industry, only to do everything in her power to jump into that world herself. Is she stupid She really is like, that really sucks Shizuku but sorry I'm different