#It's march so my yearly rewatch (that I haven't done since like 2020 shhh) is calling to me

[bigboobshaunt]

The way Ruki's character arc accidentally feels like a commentary on the "hypercompetent badass female character with no personality" stereotype that formed largely years after her is very interesting to me, and that perception meant that her journey as a character seems to be accepted a lot better now than it ever was a few years after the show ended and all the way to the 2010's (at least that I saw, and I saw a lot of people saying it was a "downgrade" back then.)

It's not just because the way she was at the start already displayed a lot more interiority than a lot of characters with her archetype ever did (especially when talking about female characters around her time and even more so in a franchise that vied primarily an audience of young boys... you got why she was the way she was and the walls she erected around herself) but also because the way she develops is both natural and in some ways surprisingly subtle, which I guess fits Tamers quite well - her empathy for Impmon and how she sees him after his fuckups is pretty clearly meant to parallel how she was at the start of the show and displays how far she's come that she's able to demonstrate acts of kindness towards others at no personal gain.

This all coincides with her shift to being someone who deeply cares about her friends, and not coincidentally her Mega form when fused with her partner Digimon is focused on supporting her allies instead of the offense-based build she favored at the start... this is all to say that yes, even though the shirt with the whole heart is significantly less iconic than her broken heart shirt, the scene in which she gets it to match the one her mom bought always made me tear up... my baby is all grown up and ready to be vulnerable (but she's still snarky as is her right and we love her for it.)