![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[A3!] Omi braindump
Not really organized, just wanted a single place to collect all these very random thoughts as I'm reading/watching.
Spoilers: Haven't gone through what's been translated of Act 3 yet, but I've read Fallen Blood and Welcome to Akebono-so and BOY WILL I BE TYPING FURIOUSLY ABOUT THEM!
✦ Going all the way back to his intro in Act 1, he has this exchange with Izumi when he first shows up to help take new photos of Summer Troupe...
Omi: Haha, it's true I'm not a pro. I'm in the photography club at Tsuzuru's college.
Izumi: Ah, so you're a friend of Tsuzuru's!
Omi: Let's start with some group shots, okay?
And I've always thought I was waaay overthinking this one bit because it's written in such a way where you could read it as a natural shift in conversation and not specifically as Omi deflecting without confirming anything. Then in Akebono-so, Tsuzuru explains how he modeled Omi's charater after Tsuzuru's initial read of him in college, perfectly pleasant but always keeping himself at a distance. There's no way he would have considered himself Tsuzuru's friend at that time, and he isn't the type to just say "Yeah, we're friends" if it isn't true, which means (shining eyes) wow, he was always just like this from the moment he shows up in the game.
✦ Even as other characters describe him as motherly, there's this contrast between how he takes care of those around him in the physical sense versus actually connecting with them emotionally.
It's literally the reason he blames himself later for not doing anything to stop Taichi. There's something really good about the fact that he was concerned his roommate was clearly going through something, but made the call to not actually take action until it was too late :) Like, he could cook and look after the others on a day to day basis, but on some level, he didn't care enough to actually connect with them, he was just here trying to fulfill a dead guy's dream so he'd hate himself less :))) And I just think this is an interesting way to approach a character who, on the surface, is simply there to fulfill the dorm mom type!
✦ On that note, the direct line from Omi blaming himself for his indifference re: Taichi's obvious distress, to Omi being the one to comfort Taichi and shoulder some of his responsibility when it mattered the most to Taichi, to Taichi then being the one who reaches out and actually talks to Omi about his emotional hangups by being direct with him in Stranger ... is such a good way to show their significance to each other in more ways than one.
✦ Izumi telling Sakyo he's the only one who can fuss over Omi bc he's the only one older than Omi in Autumn was sooo cute, and I wish Sakyo had fussed over him more in the event? But I get that the point of the arc was that Sakyo wanted to wait for Omi to be the one to reach out ... BUT ALSO I WANT SAKYO TO FUSS OVER OMI BECAUSE THE IMAGE IS EXTREMELY CUTE. I love seeing the difference between someone needing to be direct with Omi to get him to snap out of it (Taichi) vs when someone decides Omi has to be the one to take the first step and admit he needs help (Sakyo).
✦ The way Akebono-so went out of its way for Sakyo to call out Omi's fixation on cooking, damn. "Why are you so obsessed with it these days? It seems to me like you're relying on it as a crutch for a bigger problem."
Also, "I took over cooking for my family when my mother died because my father couldn't handle anything" --> "Cooking helps me relax and I fixate on it as a way to work out my feelings" Omi, maybe get at least one more coping mechanism for all those times Sakyo takes away the only one you currently have.
✦ Sakyo eventually talking about how much he's come to value Omi's cooking and how he used to only think of eating as a necessity before joining Mankai was so sweet. "Your cooking is one of the biggest joys in my life", like considering that entire convo culminates in Omi realizing cooking is his love language, for him to hear Sakyo of all people say that to him... ALSO - Sakyo's entire backstory with his single working mother, the reason he had such a non-relationship with food being that he threw himself into his work to support her, Omi's own backstory reasons for cooking and generally being the way he is and ultimately being the one to change Sakyo's view on food ... character writing can be good actually.
✦ Based on Fallen Blood and Akebono-so, I love that the first leg of Omi's chara dev has been his whole "learning to live in the moment" thing, and now it's shifting more into the acceptance of nostalgia, into being able to look back at the good memories, with an emphasis on documenting the experiences he has now - with him in them this time! - to treasure later.
Finding his family's videocamera and watching those old family recordings including his mother with Izumi, the two of them talking about making new recordings so that in the future they can look back fondly at this moment now, and then ofc the entirety of Akebono-so was his hangup about how maybe his memory of Nachi had become twisted, or maybe it was never right in the first place (which was a really good angle imo! your mind playing itself about memories the farther you move away from them) ... there's this focus not just on living in the now, but allowing himself to look to the past and use the comfort he derives from that to move forward, and it feels like a very natural progression for him.
(Sidebar, "Now It's a Dear Shadow" is such a perfect name for his Fallen Blood SSR _(:3 )
✦ That also makes it even cuter how this year, a lot of other charas' birthday mesages to him are about taking photos of him, esp of him smiling. YES I am looking at Taichi's line about how he's still the one who takes the best photo of Omi (yes, I am remembering Taichi taking the candid shot of him before the play begins in Akebono-so and saying "Man, you're really good at smiling!"!!!!!)
✦ I just like the general trend of Omi being encouraged basically to loosen up more and more lmao, like Omi, it's okay to show genuine emotion once in a while, it's actually extremely okay to just go off. (Comparing Lone Wolves to his first character song, wow look at my shining eyes!!) It feels like he'd repressed a lot of other things alongside his ~regrets for his past actions~, and for reasons extremely obvious to anyone who knows my tastes, I would love an arc where he dials them back up a little and maybe catches the dorm a little off guard.
✦ It's also SO interesting coming back to the above concept having finally heard the voiced version of Stranger, where you get to see past!Omi converse a little with Nachi. I wouldn't say Omi is necessarily soft-spoken, but his voice is extremely even from the minute he shows up in the game and very rarely breaks away from that, and it was interesting to hear that he has always sounded like this, even when he was part of the biker gang - it's just that back then, there were small things with his inflection and tone that indicated he was obviously playing a different role. That's why him yelling about how much he loves Autumn Troupe had so much impact, because it's literally the first time he's ever truly raised his voice up to that point, and also why TO ME PERSONALLY the tiny scene where he loudly beats the living crap out of Azami's kidnappers is just good fanservice.
✦ I think all his birthday cards are very sweet and do a lot to show his regular dynamic with Autumn outside of plot-driven stuff. Like the SR backstage when he asked if he could take Autumn to see Nachi's grave, because Omi is like one of the most private charas in the game. If he feels like you don't have to know something personal, he really just will not tell you lmao, so for him to take them there is such a huge deal, and obviously everyone else in Autumn understood that. In general, I think it's super sweet cuz Omi takes care of Autumn all the time, and his all birthday cards are about them trying to take care of him for a change (sometimes via Sakyo making Taichi handcuff him to his bed so they can make him a cake in time, thanks A3). Every time he apologizes for making a ""selfish"" request and Autumn just immediately agrees to do whatever he wants bc they're all like "it's so rare for Omi to request anything ofc we have to" it's lowkey so cute ((feels affectionate about autumn dynamic))
✦ Also re: Omi being private, iirc Izumi knows about the sticker system now, but it was Taichi who told her (and it was like ... way down the line, not immediately after Stranger or anything). Somehow one of the wildest parts of Stranger aside from all of it was how neatly Omi just sidesteps explaining those stickers to Izumi when she asks at the end. I guess because she's the stand-in player character, I expected Omi to just tell her everything, but no, it really doesn't have anything to do with her and it's something Taichi came up with so it's not his place to explain, so instead he's just like "Don't worry about it ^_^" and moves on. WILD.
✦ I am still really curious about all the details of how he acted in college vs. in Wolves ... the flashbacks and Nachi's comments make him sound super serious when Nachi met him in high school compared to how much more outwardly pleasant and relaxed he appears now. Also LMAO at the fact that he hid that he could cook from his gang because he thought they would look down on him, not even Fushimi Omi is immune to toxic masculinity (this is a joke). But yeah, I wanna know all about the change in how he presented himself after he recuperated and went to college, especially since that was when he was at Peak Depression.
✦ I don't think this is something I've seen depicted in anime (at least at an all-ages level like A3 is) very often, but it's interesting how they write Omi handling his deceased parent vs his deceased best friend. I guess it's like ... the way his direct emotional problems stem from his relationship with Nachi / Nachi's death, whereas his mother is something he brings up without as much (obvious) baggage because he's had so much more distance from, and time to, process her passing. The game makes the smart call of not having him reveal the entirety of his life story to essentially a bunch of strangers in one go, so the anime ass Nachi backstory comes first in year 1, and then they waited another year in game time before he speaks to Azami about the his mother. When you're gradually able to look at it as a whole, you see that of course his family issues as a kid were where so much of this started, but the dialogue does a great job of showing rather than just telling you this.
✦ There's a great scene with Zen in Akebono-so where they talk about how cooking is hard work. Considering how often A3 loves to handwave the passage of time and level of effort so characters are writing scripts or hand sewing five costumes in a week left and right (and Omi is making full party spreads on the regular on top of his school/work hours), and how rarely Omi really talks about his relationship to food like this, it was a pleasant surprise to see it acknowledged this way, however briefly.
Ofc that's just in his present day, because we do get that great moment in his flashback where kid!Omi thinks about how much time and effort he's "wasting" taking care of his family when they could just as easily buy pre-made meals, get their clothes dry cleaned, and generally survive without him killing himself over them. When it comes to Omi, I think A3 is extremely good at understanding how to use an unexpected line or premise to his character advantage. They're very good at mining his character gap, basically. Bitterness about how much of a slog his situation really is, especially because he's young enough to be really honest about this - you really get to see his serious emotional low at that moment.
✦ Can't believe I yakked this much and didn't even point out the reason for so many of his chara arcs is because he gets way too into his own head and then doesn't think to ask anyone else for helping while he's overthinking the hell out of something, which is just such an unexpected swerve for this kind of character. Just in general, I'm still amazed they took the mom guy AND the buff guy tropes and really fleshed them out so much. I rly expected him to be more like Paralive Zen (who I also enjoy in context but u Know) and was completely disinterested in him as a Nice Meathead at first lmao so imagine my constant surprise at all the routes A3 took him down.
Just Some Guy who used to be a mega delinquent in a biker gang; deeply introspective as a character, extremely good at deflecting away from himself, and always sets himself back or apart from others; the way they do so much to unpack his constant generosity, kindness and willingness to help others and tie it back to his serious emotional baggage instead of just keeping it surface level; his pretty explicit ongoing survivor's guilt, which one of his home lines calls back to even after the main story... "Sometimes I think you'd all be better off without me"...
Girl, what! Thanks!
I'm glad that not every chara in A3 has some serious traumatic past or life issue, some of their problems are literally "I have a big ego and am hard to get along with", but then you get Omi's whole deal and it's just nice to see it handled this way... maybe I'm just super biased but both his events had very satisfying narrative arcs which isn't definitely always the case for an event with only 11 chps to cover everything.
And in case you read all that and still thought "Hey but you didn't really touch on the way the game fully explored his dorm mom persona" I extremely yelled all about it in my OTHER unnecessarily long blog post about A3.
other random thoughts
✦ that one inste live mob comment that's like "he's always cool, so [him being flustered] feels fresh" yeah 100% this is gap moe to me (moe through helplessness at having to perform embarrassing fanservice for a stream)
✦ there is something very cute about how Azami is always like "well it's Omi's suggestion so it must be cool" in Omi's backstage cards considering the tension that marked the beginning of their relationship.
✦ HOW could I forget the incredible detail that when he gets drunk, he reverts back to Wolves era Omi, to the point where all his photography club friends ran away from him the day after? WHO wrote this detail on a throwaway R card that they have thankfully NEVER forgotten about since then? A3 we need to see this on screen next time for science and personal satisfation.
✦ ummm omi and taichi going back to the beach after they re-perform stranger hahaha he brought beach chairs and miso soup for them ahahaha taichi was like "let's take photos and play in the water together and declare our love for our troupe together" this is a date right? rIGHT??? taichi just say u love him specifically already
✦ If Omi and Taichi had just been about size gap, or age gap, or even just their base personalities, idk if I would have shipped it quite so hard, but actually the appeal for me is that the game shows that they're both serial overthinkers, but about different things, and they pair well with each other in that respect. Omi by being grounded and more more experienced and, most importantly, completely nonjudgmental with Taichi, and Taichi by being sunny and direct and forcefully yanking Omi out of whatever mental spiral he's gone down with surprising emotional insightfulness. They are cute! Congrats to Taichi for his cool older boyfriend! Once in a while, I do like a completely vanilla ship!
✦ Sorry but now I must talk about 2.5D shit. First of all, his actor's great in the role, and really knows how to play up Omi smiling in the background for comedy to full effect (example: Taichi freaking out over Sakyo as a whole ass yakuza guy and Juza and Banri about to break out into a fistfight while Omi just looked on in amusement because boy has he seen all of this in another life before). He really nails Omi's even-keeled outward demeanor, so when he plays up Omi full on flustered or freaking out (like when Autumn learned that Sakyo was "leaving" in Ginji), it is extremely funny.
Second, I am not immune to 2.5D fanservice when it's of my ships, so here's an unashamed thanks to the director, actors, whoever, for always pairing Taichi and Omi off. Even when they're in the background, they're always interacting with each other in some small way, and it is very obvious they knew exactly what they were doing because in every play outside of Stranger, Omi's and Taichi's characters always have much much to do with each other than in the game. Dewey kidnapping Benjamin FROM HIS BED and then using him as a hostage is a new thing altogether for the stage, and this is the kind of fanservice (chara A menancing chara B) that I always wanna see!
Finally, the stages really know when to dial up the drama that the game can't always portray as easily through body language and expressions. A couple of standout moments to me for Omi in Stranger - the first is when he think he's alone, and he slams the door to the dorm garage shut, bangs his fist on it and curses out loud over the fact that he still can't quite make himself get back on that bike. Real, physical frustration! This had the added benefit of watching him slip back into his regular Omi persona once he realized Taichi was there. The second is the general way they really play up Wolf as a wild sort of guy, he feels slightly more unhinged than the portrayal you saw in the game, especially when he's fighting (and that last dance sequence, which, well, lol). The last is the long moment after Ryo passes him the letter from Nachi's parents and leaves, and Omi lets his outward face fall away and slowly breaks down sobbing, literally collapsing on the ground holding this letter with so many implications about his past. Is it something that would have necessarily fit in with A3 the game? Like could I really see game Omi fall to the ground crying - all while he's in front of his own troupe? Not necessarily, but it still felt exactly right for the stage portrayal and I'm so glad they chose to do put it in there, especially because it lets his troupe see him completely emotionally exposed.
I said finally, but I lied, I have one more thing to say about stage Stranger, namely oh my god could they have been more obvious that Zero and Wolf had an extremely horny romantic thing going on. Game Stranger kept the interpretation of their relationship preeetty broad, but stage Stranger said no, they are absolutely going to fuck soon if they haven't already. You want to see Zero hold Wolf's cloak to her cheeks while she smiles and whispers his name before following after him? You want to see the specific way they sit next to each other? (All my friends and me watching it: this is clearly their "we just had sex" pose together) You want them to block a scene where Zero is clearly giving Wolf a tearful goodbye kiss?? Or where she's sitting on the ground and he drops his cloak on her head and they stare at each other and are CLEARLY flirting at the end? Or that one absolutely WILD move from their final dance sequence together??? I guess I did! Thanks A3ste!
Spoilers: Haven't gone through what's been translated of Act 3 yet, but I've read Fallen Blood and Welcome to Akebono-so and BOY WILL I BE TYPING FURIOUSLY ABOUT THEM!
✦ Going all the way back to his intro in Act 1, he has this exchange with Izumi when he first shows up to help take new photos of Summer Troupe...
Omi: Haha, it's true I'm not a pro. I'm in the photography club at Tsuzuru's college.
Izumi: Ah, so you're a friend of Tsuzuru's!
Omi: Let's start with some group shots, okay?
And I've always thought I was waaay overthinking this one bit because it's written in such a way where you could read it as a natural shift in conversation and not specifically as Omi deflecting without confirming anything. Then in Akebono-so, Tsuzuru explains how he modeled Omi's charater after Tsuzuru's initial read of him in college, perfectly pleasant but always keeping himself at a distance. There's no way he would have considered himself Tsuzuru's friend at that time, and he isn't the type to just say "Yeah, we're friends" if it isn't true, which means (shining eyes) wow, he was always just like this from the moment he shows up in the game.
✦ Even as other characters describe him as motherly, there's this contrast between how he takes care of those around him in the physical sense versus actually connecting with them emotionally.
It's literally the reason he blames himself later for not doing anything to stop Taichi. There's something really good about the fact that he was concerned his roommate was clearly going through something, but made the call to not actually take action until it was too late :) Like, he could cook and look after the others on a day to day basis, but on some level, he didn't care enough to actually connect with them, he was just here trying to fulfill a dead guy's dream so he'd hate himself less :))) And I just think this is an interesting way to approach a character who, on the surface, is simply there to fulfill the dorm mom type!
✦ On that note, the direct line from Omi blaming himself for his indifference re: Taichi's obvious distress, to Omi being the one to comfort Taichi and shoulder some of his responsibility when it mattered the most to Taichi, to Taichi then being the one who reaches out and actually talks to Omi about his emotional hangups by being direct with him in Stranger ... is such a good way to show their significance to each other in more ways than one.
✦ Izumi telling Sakyo he's the only one who can fuss over Omi bc he's the only one older than Omi in Autumn was sooo cute, and I wish Sakyo had fussed over him more in the event? But I get that the point of the arc was that Sakyo wanted to wait for Omi to be the one to reach out ... BUT ALSO I WANT SAKYO TO FUSS OVER OMI BECAUSE THE IMAGE IS EXTREMELY CUTE. I love seeing the difference between someone needing to be direct with Omi to get him to snap out of it (Taichi) vs when someone decides Omi has to be the one to take the first step and admit he needs help (Sakyo).
✦ The way Akebono-so went out of its way for Sakyo to call out Omi's fixation on cooking, damn. "Why are you so obsessed with it these days? It seems to me like you're relying on it as a crutch for a bigger problem."
Also, "I took over cooking for my family when my mother died because my father couldn't handle anything" --> "Cooking helps me relax and I fixate on it as a way to work out my feelings" Omi, maybe get at least one more coping mechanism for all those times Sakyo takes away the only one you currently have.
✦ Sakyo eventually talking about how much he's come to value Omi's cooking and how he used to only think of eating as a necessity before joining Mankai was so sweet. "Your cooking is one of the biggest joys in my life", like considering that entire convo culminates in Omi realizing cooking is his love language, for him to hear Sakyo of all people say that to him... ALSO - Sakyo's entire backstory with his single working mother, the reason he had such a non-relationship with food being that he threw himself into his work to support her, Omi's own backstory reasons for cooking and generally being the way he is and ultimately being the one to change Sakyo's view on food ... character writing can be good actually.
✦ Based on Fallen Blood and Akebono-so, I love that the first leg of Omi's chara dev has been his whole "learning to live in the moment" thing, and now it's shifting more into the acceptance of nostalgia, into being able to look back at the good memories, with an emphasis on documenting the experiences he has now - with him in them this time! - to treasure later.
Finding his family's videocamera and watching those old family recordings including his mother with Izumi, the two of them talking about making new recordings so that in the future they can look back fondly at this moment now, and then ofc the entirety of Akebono-so was his hangup about how maybe his memory of Nachi had become twisted, or maybe it was never right in the first place (which was a really good angle imo! your mind playing itself about memories the farther you move away from them) ... there's this focus not just on living in the now, but allowing himself to look to the past and use the comfort he derives from that to move forward, and it feels like a very natural progression for him.
(Sidebar, "Now It's a Dear Shadow" is such a perfect name for his Fallen Blood SSR _(:3 )
✦ That also makes it even cuter how this year, a lot of other charas' birthday mesages to him are about taking photos of him, esp of him smiling. YES I am looking at Taichi's line about how he's still the one who takes the best photo of Omi (yes, I am remembering Taichi taking the candid shot of him before the play begins in Akebono-so and saying "Man, you're really good at smiling!"!!!!!)
✦ I just like the general trend of Omi being encouraged basically to loosen up more and more lmao, like Omi, it's okay to show genuine emotion once in a while, it's actually extremely okay to just go off. (Comparing Lone Wolves to his first character song, wow look at my shining eyes!!) It feels like he'd repressed a lot of other things alongside his ~regrets for his past actions~, and for reasons extremely obvious to anyone who knows my tastes, I would love an arc where he dials them back up a little and maybe catches the dorm a little off guard.
✦ It's also SO interesting coming back to the above concept having finally heard the voiced version of Stranger, where you get to see past!Omi converse a little with Nachi. I wouldn't say Omi is necessarily soft-spoken, but his voice is extremely even from the minute he shows up in the game and very rarely breaks away from that, and it was interesting to hear that he has always sounded like this, even when he was part of the biker gang - it's just that back then, there were small things with his inflection and tone that indicated he was obviously playing a different role. That's why him yelling about how much he loves Autumn Troupe had so much impact, because it's literally the first time he's ever truly raised his voice up to that point, and also why TO ME PERSONALLY the tiny scene where he loudly beats the living crap out of Azami's kidnappers is just good fanservice.
✦ I think all his birthday cards are very sweet and do a lot to show his regular dynamic with Autumn outside of plot-driven stuff. Like the SR backstage when he asked if he could take Autumn to see Nachi's grave, because Omi is like one of the most private charas in the game. If he feels like you don't have to know something personal, he really just will not tell you lmao, so for him to take them there is such a huge deal, and obviously everyone else in Autumn understood that. In general, I think it's super sweet cuz Omi takes care of Autumn all the time, and his all birthday cards are about them trying to take care of him for a change (sometimes via Sakyo making Taichi handcuff him to his bed so they can make him a cake in time, thanks A3). Every time he apologizes for making a ""selfish"" request and Autumn just immediately agrees to do whatever he wants bc they're all like "it's so rare for Omi to request anything ofc we have to" it's lowkey so cute ((feels affectionate about autumn dynamic))
✦ Also re: Omi being private, iirc Izumi knows about the sticker system now, but it was Taichi who told her (and it was like ... way down the line, not immediately after Stranger or anything). Somehow one of the wildest parts of Stranger aside from all of it was how neatly Omi just sidesteps explaining those stickers to Izumi when she asks at the end. I guess because she's the stand-in player character, I expected Omi to just tell her everything, but no, it really doesn't have anything to do with her and it's something Taichi came up with so it's not his place to explain, so instead he's just like "Don't worry about it ^_^" and moves on. WILD.
✦ I am still really curious about all the details of how he acted in college vs. in Wolves ... the flashbacks and Nachi's comments make him sound super serious when Nachi met him in high school compared to how much more outwardly pleasant and relaxed he appears now. Also LMAO at the fact that he hid that he could cook from his gang because he thought they would look down on him, not even Fushimi Omi is immune to toxic masculinity (this is a joke). But yeah, I wanna know all about the change in how he presented himself after he recuperated and went to college, especially since that was when he was at Peak Depression.
✦ I don't think this is something I've seen depicted in anime (at least at an all-ages level like A3 is) very often, but it's interesting how they write Omi handling his deceased parent vs his deceased best friend. I guess it's like ... the way his direct emotional problems stem from his relationship with Nachi / Nachi's death, whereas his mother is something he brings up without as much (obvious) baggage because he's had so much more distance from, and time to, process her passing. The game makes the smart call of not having him reveal the entirety of his life story to essentially a bunch of strangers in one go, so the anime ass Nachi backstory comes first in year 1, and then they waited another year in game time before he speaks to Azami about the his mother. When you're gradually able to look at it as a whole, you see that of course his family issues as a kid were where so much of this started, but the dialogue does a great job of showing rather than just telling you this.
✦ There's a great scene with Zen in Akebono-so where they talk about how cooking is hard work. Considering how often A3 loves to handwave the passage of time and level of effort so characters are writing scripts or hand sewing five costumes in a week left and right (and Omi is making full party spreads on the regular on top of his school/work hours), and how rarely Omi really talks about his relationship to food like this, it was a pleasant surprise to see it acknowledged this way, however briefly.
Ofc that's just in his present day, because we do get that great moment in his flashback where kid!Omi thinks about how much time and effort he's "wasting" taking care of his family when they could just as easily buy pre-made meals, get their clothes dry cleaned, and generally survive without him killing himself over them. When it comes to Omi, I think A3 is extremely good at understanding how to use an unexpected line or premise to his character advantage. They're very good at mining his character gap, basically. Bitterness about how much of a slog his situation really is, especially because he's young enough to be really honest about this - you really get to see his serious emotional low at that moment.
✦ Can't believe I yakked this much and didn't even point out the reason for so many of his chara arcs is because he gets way too into his own head and then doesn't think to ask anyone else for helping while he's overthinking the hell out of something, which is just such an unexpected swerve for this kind of character. Just in general, I'm still amazed they took the mom guy AND the buff guy tropes and really fleshed them out so much. I rly expected him to be more like Paralive Zen (who I also enjoy in context but u Know) and was completely disinterested in him as a Nice Meathead at first lmao so imagine my constant surprise at all the routes A3 took him down.
Just Some Guy who used to be a mega delinquent in a biker gang; deeply introspective as a character, extremely good at deflecting away from himself, and always sets himself back or apart from others; the way they do so much to unpack his constant generosity, kindness and willingness to help others and tie it back to his serious emotional baggage instead of just keeping it surface level; his pretty explicit ongoing survivor's guilt, which one of his home lines calls back to even after the main story... "Sometimes I think you'd all be better off without me"...
Girl, what! Thanks!
I'm glad that not every chara in A3 has some serious traumatic past or life issue, some of their problems are literally "I have a big ego and am hard to get along with", but then you get Omi's whole deal and it's just nice to see it handled this way... maybe I'm just super biased but both his events had very satisfying narrative arcs which isn't definitely always the case for an event with only 11 chps to cover everything.
And in case you read all that and still thought "Hey but you didn't really touch on the way the game fully explored his dorm mom persona" I extremely yelled all about it in my OTHER unnecessarily long blog post about A3.
other random thoughts
✦ that one inste live mob comment that's like "he's always cool, so [him being flustered] feels fresh" yeah 100% this is gap moe to me (moe through helplessness at having to perform embarrassing fanservice for a stream)
✦ there is something very cute about how Azami is always like "well it's Omi's suggestion so it must be cool" in Omi's backstage cards considering the tension that marked the beginning of their relationship.
✦ HOW could I forget the incredible detail that when he gets drunk, he reverts back to Wolves era Omi, to the point where all his photography club friends ran away from him the day after? WHO wrote this detail on a throwaway R card that they have thankfully NEVER forgotten about since then? A3 we need to see this on screen next time for science and personal satisfation.
✦ ummm omi and taichi going back to the beach after they re-perform stranger hahaha he brought beach chairs and miso soup for them ahahaha taichi was like "let's take photos and play in the water together and declare our love for our troupe together" this is a date right? rIGHT??? taichi just say u love him specifically already
✦ If Omi and Taichi had just been about size gap, or age gap, or even just their base personalities, idk if I would have shipped it quite so hard, but actually the appeal for me is that the game shows that they're both serial overthinkers, but about different things, and they pair well with each other in that respect. Omi by being grounded and more more experienced and, most importantly, completely nonjudgmental with Taichi, and Taichi by being sunny and direct and forcefully yanking Omi out of whatever mental spiral he's gone down with surprising emotional insightfulness. They are cute! Congrats to Taichi for his cool older boyfriend! Once in a while, I do like a completely vanilla ship!
✦ Sorry but now I must talk about 2.5D shit. First of all, his actor's great in the role, and really knows how to play up Omi smiling in the background for comedy to full effect (example: Taichi freaking out over Sakyo as a whole ass yakuza guy and Juza and Banri about to break out into a fistfight while Omi just looked on in amusement because boy has he seen all of this in another life before). He really nails Omi's even-keeled outward demeanor, so when he plays up Omi full on flustered or freaking out (like when Autumn learned that Sakyo was "leaving" in Ginji), it is extremely funny.
Second, I am not immune to 2.5D fanservice when it's of my ships, so here's an unashamed thanks to the director, actors, whoever, for always pairing Taichi and Omi off. Even when they're in the background, they're always interacting with each other in some small way, and it is very obvious they knew exactly what they were doing because in every play outside of Stranger, Omi's and Taichi's characters always have much much to do with each other than in the game. Dewey kidnapping Benjamin FROM HIS BED and then using him as a hostage is a new thing altogether for the stage, and this is the kind of fanservice (chara A menancing chara B) that I always wanna see!
Finally, the stages really know when to dial up the drama that the game can't always portray as easily through body language and expressions. A couple of standout moments to me for Omi in Stranger - the first is when he think he's alone, and he slams the door to the dorm garage shut, bangs his fist on it and curses out loud over the fact that he still can't quite make himself get back on that bike. Real, physical frustration! This had the added benefit of watching him slip back into his regular Omi persona once he realized Taichi was there. The second is the general way they really play up Wolf as a wild sort of guy, he feels slightly more unhinged than the portrayal you saw in the game, especially when he's fighting (and that last dance sequence, which, well, lol). The last is the long moment after Ryo passes him the letter from Nachi's parents and leaves, and Omi lets his outward face fall away and slowly breaks down sobbing, literally collapsing on the ground holding this letter with so many implications about his past. Is it something that would have necessarily fit in with A3 the game? Like could I really see game Omi fall to the ground crying - all while he's in front of his own troupe? Not necessarily, but it still felt exactly right for the stage portrayal and I'm so glad they chose to do put it in there, especially because it lets his troupe see him completely emotionally exposed.
I said finally, but I lied, I have one more thing to say about stage Stranger, namely oh my god could they have been more obvious that Zero and Wolf had an extremely horny romantic thing going on. Game Stranger kept the interpretation of their relationship preeetty broad, but stage Stranger said no, they are absolutely going to fuck soon if they haven't already. You want to see Zero hold Wolf's cloak to her cheeks while she smiles and whispers his name before following after him? You want to see the specific way they sit next to each other? (All my friends and me watching it: this is clearly their "we just had sex" pose together) You want them to block a scene where Zero is clearly giving Wolf a tearful goodbye kiss?? Or where she's sitting on the ground and he drops his cloak on her head and they stare at each other and are CLEARLY flirting at the end? Or that one absolutely WILD move from their final dance sequence together??? I guess I did! Thanks A3ste!