If there’s one message I’m taking away from Hidarikiki no Eren at this point, it might be “talent is overrated”. I’m not at all sure it’s one the mangaka Kappy intended, but it’s what I’m getting. In a series full of characters who range from pathetic to existentially awful, it’s the ones who’re painted as “geniuses” who come off the worst. By far. They use the word “normal” as an epithet but the ones they demean with it are the only characters in the story I don’t want to throw off a ten-story building onto a pile of broken glass.

I know Kappy is writing about the hellish world of 2000’s advertising from first-hand knowledge. I have no idea whether his depictions of Eren or Akari are the same. What I do know is that they don’t work nearly as well, at least for me. They don’t feel as darkly authentic by a long shot – they play more as histrionic drama for its own sake. Most obviously these are the most annoying and insufferable characters in a cast full of them – pretentious twats with no idea how lucky they are. There are people in the real world like them, obviously. But they don’t seem real in the same way Kouichi and his immediate circle do.

As bad as Eren is, I think Akari is worse. I really, really hate her and that’s a word I don’t use with a lot of fictional characters. This whole burn out at 27 business, seriously – give me a fucking break. You’re a shallow, self-absorbed ingrate who happened to be born good-looking to an insider mom. If she wants to “burn out” at her so-called peak that’s up to her, not like she’d be leaving behind anyone who really cares. The problem is she destroys other people along the way, Kouichi most obviously.

Scoff at him as normal, deride him as Icarus – that’s fine. Life shouldn’t be wasted on those that don’t appreciate it, I suppose. Kouichi is messed up, weak, a glory-chaser without any genius in him. But at least he seems to have some sense of priorities, which is why his descent into Yanagi Jr. is one of the few threads in Eren that’s actually sad. If there’s a difference between Akari and Eren I guess it’s that Eren does at least acknowledge Kouichi even as she condescends him. She recognizes that he actually does possess something she doesn’t, even if she doesn’t place much value on it.

What I want more than anything (in the small corner of my consciousness this show inhabits) is for whatever Akari’s role in the story is to end as soon as possible. Watching her delivers most of the pain of watching the other arcs without any of the gratification. It’s unpleasant in a bad way, and who needs that from entertainment? I can’t think of any way this is a better story because Akari exists in it, and countless ones why it’s worse. Eren is essential to the whole premise – love it or hate it, there’s no getting away from her. Akari? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.