(There are some spoilers here up through episode 12 and it's going to be
relatively opaque if you don't know Valvrave.)
Evirus (sort of via Author):
[...] And [the school] elected a flibbertigibbet as their leader?
Seriously? And the deepest desire of the refugees is to engage in
traditional school functions after reaching safety? [...]
Yes, yes they did elect a flibbertigibbet. It was probably a terrible
mistake. But here's the thing: Valvrave totally sold me on the
emotional logic of the situation. Let me set the scene to show you why.
The two candidates for student council chair and thus leader of the
whole place were a stuffed shirt technocrat and the aforementioned
flibbertigibbet politician's daughter. Both gave speeches to the
assembled student body. The technocrat went first and his speech was
full of how he'd organize increased production of this and better living
conditions through that and so on. It had about as much emotional
connection with his audience as a project presentation.
Then the politician's daughter stepped up. She gave an emotional
'whoop up the audience' speech and in the course of it she promised
to organize a school festival. Or, to put it another way, she offered
everyone the chance to pretend for a while that they were all normal
students doing normal student things, to set aside that their country
was occupied, their parents distant prisoners, every aspect of the life
they had known before was gone, and that they themselves were working
ceaselessly to try to keep an increasingly ruined environment limping
along while some of their friends had actually been killed. Oh, and they
were being hunted by people who would cheerfully murder the rest of
them.
So, yeah. They elected the flibbertigibbet.
(And I could see it coming like a freight train from the moment that
Shouko started her speech.)
The other thing I've seen questions about is Saki's tears when Haruto
offers to marry her in the aftermath the infamous rape and she rejects
him. My theory is that the tears are because, to put it one way, Saki
didn't want Haruto to propose to her out of duty (which is what he makes
it clear that he's doing), she wanted him to propose out of love. She's
crying because the offer shows that the shadow of the rape and Haruto's
feelings about it have killed any chance for genuine, unforced love from
Haruto (at least for now). She has no choice but to reject Haruto's
offer and basically renounce him because the alternative is an empty
relationship built on top of Haruto's feelings of guilt and duty.
Or in short, Saki's tears are about the death of a relationship that
could have been but is now not going to happen. She's giving up on
something she wanted, not because she doesn't want it any more but
because having it is impossible now.
(I don't know how serious Saki really was about Haruto before the
rape but she did seem to be interested to some degree.)
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