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mistbow · 1 year

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Love Umbrella

It’s still technically Spring, but it’s almost Summer soon (about one month until early Summer, at the time of writing this post). And when Summer comes, it’s gonna be tsuyu (梅雨) or rainy season where samidare (五月雨) falls. So it’s too early to talk about this, because the “5th month” referred to in the word is not May (yet I see a lot of people mistranslated it as “May shower” despite of that, and this spurred this post anyway lol), but the fifth month in Wareki (和暦), which means sometime in June this year, but hey. You don’t need any particular reason to talk about something, after all.

But anyway. You see, the [Japanese] official hub for Tales is Tales Channel+, and they have this fun little corner for members where they can do various activities, such as trivia quizzes, matching cards minigame, and public opinion poll, and we’re gonna talk about the last one specifically here. Basically, every month they hold two polls (each for first half and second half of the month) where you can participate, in which the subject/question and options are decided by the official side (so you can’t enter your own answer).

For the first half of June 2022 (yes, it was barely a year ago), the question was: “梅雨の時期、相会傘が似合いそうな2人は？” which I would translate as “During the rainy season, which pair would look good under a shared umbrella (相会傘, ai ai gasa)?” (and I know this might seem oddly random to some, but I will explain the cultural context right after this).

The results were:

Cress & Mint: 31.9% of the votes

Sorey & Mikleo: 26.4% of the votes

Lloyd & Colette: 12.4% of the votes

Before I begin to explain the cultural context, I would like to say that among all the options they gave, Sorey and Mikleo are the only one that is not M/F, yet they finished at 2nd place.

“Shared umbrella” is a really crude translation of “ai ai gasa” (“相合傘”) because it absolutely doesn’t retain the romantic implications of the phrase. Anyone remotely familiar with the Japanese language knows that “love” in Japanese is “ai” (“愛”), so 相合傘 can also sound like 愛・愛・傘. It’s seen as a romantic gesture for two people to share an umbrella. Aside from this, “相合” is also more than just “sharing”—it’s when two people do things together, being equals.

(Source)

Now I hope it’s obvious enough why “shared umbrella” has become an image for two people being in love in Japan.

It’s still crazy to me that the official side even considered Sorey and Mikleo as an option here, the only same-sex option, and they managed to be 2nd place, just below the OG Tales hero/heroine pair (Cress and Mint, good for them!), and winning against another pair of childhood sweethearts (Lloyd and Colette, also good for them!). Congratulations for all three, lol.

I admit, I don’t like it when Sorey and Mikleo are reduced to just romance only and I don’t even mean this in a “romantic love is shallow (at best) or icky (at worst)” (I even believe that romantic love can become one of the most beautiful, purest things ever to exist in this world) but more that since they’re meant to be a symbol of humans-seraphim coexistence, I believe they can’t be limited to just one label. They’re family, they’re best friends, they’re rivals, they’re Shepherd and Sub Lord, they’re partners, they’re the right and the left, they’re the physical and the spiritual, they’re two halves of one whole... their bond encompasses every one of those and even more. They are there to show the limitless possibilities of what a human and a seraph can be when together, so trying to say what they are exactly is kind of pointless to me. But still. I don’t deny things like this lol, I’m a チョロい person after all.

#mino talks zesty #srmkほんとうに公式が最大手すぎで頭がおかしくなる #i'm insane but sometimes koushiki is more insane #this is the kind of stuff i don't usually care about but i'll take the bait here #mino rambles #btw there were many other options #these were just the top 3 of the poll

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