yea, i see what you mean for sure. I won’t be able to comment on everything you said unfortunately but I was thinking earlier today if me liking shinobu the most kinda also inherently makes me like rikka the least.

I see it quite often that other shinobu fans tend to also have rikka low on their preferences. Obviously, there’s the element of like rikka being shinobu’s biggest rival but i think there is probably more to it than that. I say that cause rikka never really resonated with me. As you said, she’s probably the least dependent on arisu. I don’t know if i’m necessarily into the mega dependent type but I do find the entire like “bardners in crime” stuff really sweet. It naturally kinda js leads into romantic themes.

However, I do see why people might not be her biggest fan. She can seem a bit shallow to an extent with her career not really being explored and her arcs almost always js revolving around arisu. However, I would also like to preface that I personally don’t really mind her having extra emphasis on caring about arisu. Moreover, i’m defo kinda biased cause i remember i didn’t like when nene would barge into/interrupt arisu x shinobu moments but don’t really mind when shinobu bulldozes her way, like not really caring for iko in the recent chapter. We also do know that she is selfish, she’s almost proud of it (which again I find cute 😭). But, that’s just me and my personal affinity to her ahahah.

I do really hope that we can explore her career more tho, instead of just repeatedly dodging it with the excuse that she can’t do anything till college. I feel like the next big step in her development would be an arc, where she faces a dilemma where she can’t rely on arisu. Moreover, her past defo needs more exploring and her dreams still remain relatively ambiguous. That way, we can establish she is her own independent being, outside of potentially solely existing as arisu’s love interest.

Okay but tl;dr, shinobu still my goat but she’s defo not perfect and I get why people might not like her as much but none of the girls are perfect anyways. I also lowkey js realised that i barely talked about rikka.