Toph Beifong

The Blind Bandit

Ever since I was a kid, Toph's been by far my favorite A:TLA character and Katara by far my least favorite A:TLA character.

I've put her at the top of this page because I think the juxtaposition between her and Katara, and my preference for Toph, reveals a lot about me personally, even stuff I'm not fully aware of.

Where Katara is very introspective doesn't seem to know what she wants most of the time, Toph directs her energy outward. She's driven, hot-blooded, and stubborn because she knows who she is, she knows what she wants, and she knows how to get it.

Now, there's nothing wrong with introspecting - I'd be the biggest hypocrite in the world if I spoke against that. But it's precisely because of how much introspecting I've had to do over my life, that such high levels of certainty and self-confidence are so inspirational for me.

Toph embodies that kind of internal clarity to its fullest extent. She was born blind and weak, and because of her noble birth, was always pampered and infantilized by her understandably overprotective parents. She quickly came to resent this, and rebelled by practicing earthbending in secret, entering tournaments under false names, and hiding her true skill from her teachers. She wanted freedom, and in time, she took it, by joining the Gaang. Even though she knew her parents would be hurt by her disappearance, and felt terrible about it, she never came to regret her decision because she knew that it's what she had to do if she wanted to find fulfillment.

She then goes on to invent METALBENDING - over the scene where she discovers the power, Guru Patik's voice speaks about the Ajna chakra, the Third Eye, which embodies insight, and is blocked by illusion. In other words, in order to learn this power, the user has to know themselves inside and out. If Toph doubted herself and struggled to understand or express how she was feeling, the chakra wouldn't be able to stay open. This is why she becomes such a superb teacher for Aang, despite some initial hiccups.

Now compare her against her foil, Katara. Katara lost her own mother at a young age, and not long after all the men of her village went away to war, which forced her to step up and play Mom to her tribe's children a lot more quickly than she would have otherwise, and brought out traits in her that endure throughout the whole series.

Where Toph craved freedom, she craved order. Where Toph pursued her own destiny, Katara sacrificed her wants to take care of the people important to her. And thus, where Toph has great internal clarity, Katara is rife with internal confusion. It's no wonder she obsessed over getting her fortunes read at the village near the volcano.

Because of this disparity, they become rivals of a sort, and often bicker and fight with each other. Katara's attempts at playing Mom to Toph and Toph's subsequent resistance makes both for amazing drama AND amazing comedy, and it's one of my favorite character relationships in all of fiction.

Princess Daisy

The Suzerain of Sarasaland

What really sets Daisy apart for me is how willing she is to embrace traditionally girly things. She shows up in all the sports games and revels in go-kart racing, but she isn't put off at all by her super-feminine princess gown or the 'princess' aesthetic in general. She doesn't see these traits as opposing or clashing, and doesn't try to categorize specific activities or interests as "manly" or "girly" - they just are what they are. She likes dresses, so dresses are girly. She likes sports, so sports are girly too!

This allows her to have a vain side regarding her appearance, which adds a surprising amount of depth to her character, as she isn't above using dirty tactics like flirting to get what she wants. It’s a nice contrast to her status as royalty. (She can't become queen, of course - queens are OLD and EVIL. No queen could ever possibly be cute! But all princesses are naturally cute and pure-hearted because... it comes with the title.)

While she doesn't have much in the way of spoken dialogue, I think her animations in the sports titles do a fantastic job of showing off her personality non-verbally. Fiery and belligerent, she gets so wrapped up in the excitement of the game that it's intoxicating. She stands with her hands on her hips, she sasses her opponents, she shoves her victories in people's faces.

I also think her rivalry with Peach is really fun. The crude, rambunctious princess vs. the elegant, refined princess is a great dynamic, albeit a bit cliche. But hey, 'The Parent Trap' is a movie that's endured for good reason!

Sasha Waybright

The Blonde Berserker

Sasha is a mean girl that makes other mean girls stop and question what they're even doing. She's less of a bully and more of a mastermind.

Sasha is completely above lame schoolyard plots like spreading rumors or sabotagaging homework. Her victims dance in the palm of her hand, and sing her praises even as she ruins their lives. In the very first episode, she kicks off Amphibia's entire story by daring Anne to steal a music box from an antique store, not because she wanted it, but because she loves the rush of manipulating someone to do something against their will. And unlike a more stereotypical mean girl, she knows exactly why she loves it and doesn't consider herself invincible. It's this level of insight that allows her to enact schemes far beyond anything you'd see in an average chick flick.

She's overwhelmingly charismatic and charming, and her social intelligence runs deep. Even after being imprisoned by alien toads from another dimension, she was able to get in the soldiers' good graces and charm them so effectively that not only did they release her, the captain made her his right-hand woman. She even improves the entire structure of the military by acting as Grime's advisor.

The scene where she suggests to Grime that a kinder attitude towards his soldiers is more beneficial than the gruff authoritarianism he'd enforced beforehand is one I find particularly noteworthy - It was a suggestion born not out of any belief that being kinder is "the right thing to do", but because she's seen how far people are willing to go for someone they really like, and has used it to her advantage countless times in the past.

This amazing level of social and mental prowess is combined with impressive physical strength. If you've never held a sword before, you might be surprised at how heavy they are. But Sasha swings it around like it's nothing, and in a very short period of time comes to display significant skill with her weapon. If she ever felt like taking fencing classes back on Earth, she'd be winning national tournaments.

It isn't just raw strength or skill either: She shows a level of bloodlust and ferocity in combat that's genuinely terrifying.

And needless to say, she owned the student body at St. James. A machiavellian figure who had the adoration of the entire school, while also possessing the ability to make them cower in fear of her just by changing her tone. That kind of power is always something really impressive to see.

Nonetheless, she's not psychopathic like Azula. She cares deeply for her friends and even comes to regret the way she's treated Anne and Marcy, which is what makes her determination to rescue them, even when they don't want to be rescued, so compelling. It's as much about her own redemption as it is a wish to see them safe.

I also really like her armor - a stylized version of the leather clothes worn by old Germanic tribesmen, its such a cool design and all the fanart I've seen just improves the aesthetic even further. It actually makes me kinda upset that we don't see much of Anne in Thai traditional clothing or Marcy in Cantonese traditional clothing.

Sasha is beautiful, sharp, and deadly: A girl I'd willingly follow anywhere, even to Hell. One of my favorite femme fatales ever.

Bea

The Kentish Karateka

A lot of people have compared Bea to Toph. They're both incredibly skilled in martial arts, they're both buff as heck, they both walk barefoot everywhere, and they both had extremely strict, authoritarian parents.

But I can't say I agree with the comparison, because where Toph rebelled against her upbringing, Bea accepted it, and that makes all the difference. Her worldview and life goals couldn't be further from Toph's.

Where Toph wants freedom, discipline is Bea's foremost virtue. She's stubborn in all the best ways and can't stand the thought of giving up.

In her Twilight Wings short, it implies that her defeat against Leon has unsettled and frustrated her, and her response isn't just to review her mistakes, or train more at the gym, but to go as far away from society as possible and test herself against the elements and wild pokemon.

When a Gyrados outspeeds her sprint, she gets angry and runs even faster. When her Corviknight taxi is shaken by a sandstorm, she jumps out and walks the rest of the way. Even after she hurts her arm, she's still going, pushing herself, trying to transcend her limits. She tones down her intensity only after realizing her partner pokemon, who she cares about deeply, is starting to get worried for her safety.

I think this shows a lot how such a slight difference in parenting methods can have such huge repercussions. Toph's parents told her that she was small and weak, and she had to adhere to this strict lifestyle to keep her safe. But Bea's parents (presumably) told her that she was strong and capable, and that the purpose of their harsh training regimen was to bring out her full potential. So, trusting that such latent potential exists within her, she wants to do everything she can to realize it.

Bea could very easily have come to resent her lot in life, but she gladly took on the role of continuing the family business, which speaks to her mother and father's skill at parenting and how strong her relationship with them is.

In order for her to maintain her intense lifestyle, she has to have discipline, and since she's all grown up now, that discipline has to come from within. That's why she puts on such a tough, stoic exterior, not just in public, but in private too.

After her fans discover the existence of her sweet tooth, she starts to find it more difficult to enjoy her favorites, because she doesn't want to show 'weakness'. Considering her masterful physique, she probably eats way fewer sweets than most people, but the fact that she enjoys sweets at all considering how unhealthy they are might sometimes feel to her like a fault in discipline.

Her sweeter side isn't something she feels she has to repress, but something she wants to repress - not because she's ashamed of it, but because if she isn't tough, she can't live the way she wants to live. Thus, she reserves it for people she respects and trusts, and even then only in specific situations.

Bea is one of those girls who rarely smiles, but when she does, she lights up the whole room. It's really heartwarming to see.

If only Sword & Shield didn't suck so bad...

Izumi Konata

The Anime Adept

One of my favorite things about Konata is her smile. Just smug enough to be absolutely adorable, without crossing the line into obnoxious.

Konata has a lot of fans, in part because she's a bona fide 'gamer girl'. She doesn't play them for attention or clout, and her taste is excellent. She's clearly very experienced and well-rounded - instead of limiting herself to mainstream 'girl' games (e.g. pokemon, animal crossing), she's out there playing obscure VNs and MMOs, and is even a well-known and respected figure on various otaku forums. The only thing better than her taste in games is her taste in manga - There's even a rumor on the forums she frequents that when she posts about a new story she's found, it's a sign that it's about to become popular.

Truth be told, though, I'm not a huge gamer myself. I like games, and I still play them from time to time, but it's rare I go out of my way to look for new games to play these days. Usually it's only when some title I'm nostalgic for, like Pikmin, gets a new entry that I'm interested. And, if you couldn't tell just by my website's theme, I generally like reading webcomics over published manga or anime (Although I do have a Polish friend with GODLY taste in manga - so maybe I'll add a manga section here one day).

Rather, I like Konata because of how smart she is. She's also a big tease and loves to prank people, and these two qualities mix together beautifully, giving her a delightfully sarcastic wit few others could hope to match.

In the episode "The Yonder Here", she skillfully manipulates her father into implicating himself as a lolicon, leaving him extremely flustered and not sure how to react. Of course her father is not a lolicon and Konata knows that very well, but merely through 'reading' him she was successfully able to prank him by turning all of his own arguments against him. That takes cleverness. She loves teasing her best friend and fellow tomboy Kagami, too, because of her fun and equally flustered reactions.

Konata is also a surprisingly athletic girl, and refrains from joining clubs only because she doesn't want them to wreck her schedule by causing her to miss afternoon TV anime. This means that, while she is quite lazy, she's not slothful, and loves swimming and exercise for no reason other than the sheer exhilaration of it.

Konata is smart, funny, and ridiculously cute. An inspiration to otakus everywhere, and a lesson that just because you're a big nerd doesn't mean you can't also be the life of the party.

May

TOTSUGEKI

May is the sweetest, cutest girly girl ever on the surface, but muscle-bound and tough as nails underneath. Her strength lies in her simplicity: Her one goal in life is to protect her family, the Jellyfish Pirates.

A war orphan, May lost her birth family to the Crusades, and had to learn how to survive on her own. Alone and terrified, many people would have given up and died in her position. But Johnny the pirate captain ended that. He offered her a new family, a new home, a new reason to live - and she accepted without hesitation.

May is completely selfless. In Xrd, she even quits the crew and runs away after fearing her presence might endanger them. That's why I like her so much, because contrary to what twitter says, holding fast to your morals isn't easy to do. It requires diligence, fortitude, and self-sacrifice, and these are traits a lot of people just don't have.

Now, I don't think everyone needs to adopt some moral law or another. You can't force anyone to believe anything - for all the dogma in all of history, there have never been any two people who thought exactly the same way about anything at all.

This is part of the reason why so many people hate idealogues, church, and politics in general. Would-be preachers (not to mention actual preachers) love telling people how they should live, think, and act, but overwhelmingly they turn out in the end to be complete hypocrites. The harsher the law, the more difficult it becomes to obey it.

To be on the side of the angels, one must become an angel themselves - and that's exactly what May did. She has one concrete virtue and embodies it with her whole being. She doesn't try to force it on anyone else, or take it to be an intrinsic truth of the universe - she's much too busy upholding it to entertain such delusions. Zarathustra would be proud.

Shantae

The Half-Genie Heroine

Shantae isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Kinda dumb, actually. She often has difficulty seeing the obvious, and is typically pretty blunt in her approach to problem-solving.

Also, even though she fancies herself a heroine, she's not all that good at sticking to her morals. Short-tempered and libidinous, she seems to like the aesthetic of being a heroine more than heroism itself, which makes her somewhat reluctant to rely on her friends. This has lead to disaster for her on multiple occasions, including the temporary loss of her magic.

What ties it all together for me, however, is her earnesty. Shantae is clumsy, impulsive, vain, and kind of a hypocrite, but she's also trying her hardest.

Despite her naiveity, she has a good degree of self-awareness, and often chides herself for her own shortcomings, whether they be aspects of her personality, or perceived weaknesses such as her mixed bloodline. She even calls herself a "bad role model" due to her feistyness and love of harem pants.

This low self-esteem brings out a lot of insecurity and shyness in her, and she often feels estranged from the very townspeople she's trying to protect. She also has no one she can turn to for help in this regard - her parents are implied to be either dead or absent, her friends are as clueless as she is, and her adoptive uncle is a bit on the kooky side - it's like trying to ask for moral advice from Doc Brown.

Shantae's only lessons on being a heroine have come from the world itself. She's had to learn through mistakes and personal failures with serious repercussions. So even though she's kinda dense, she's smart where it counts.

Learning to trust her friends has been one of her most defining moments of personal growth. Her bond with them throughout the series is truly heartwarming.

She's also very playful, and this prevents her serious side from becoming a drain. She loves to tease, and the moments where she flusters Sky and Bolo are a hilarious mix of cute and sexy.

Shantae might be an awkward, horny mess of a girl, but it's her endurance and willingness to do the best she can in a bad situation that makes her so endearing.

Kino

The Wayward Wanderer

Kino is a girl I really respect. If I had my pick of all the teachers in the world, I'd choose her.

Very early in life, everything she knew was turned upside-down. She discovered that her upcoming operation, a big coming-of-age ritual among her people, was in fact designed to lobotomize her so that she'd be incapable of speaking against the government. Her own parents attempted to kill her for asking too many questions about it, and people she'd known and respected all her life showed their true colors as insane zealots.

She was able to escape the mob after her head only because a traveller named Kino gave his life for her. After this, she abandoned her former identity, and took on the name of the man who saved her - she was no longer a girl from that nameless prison of a country, she was a traveller, and henceforth ever would be.

It's this straightforward drive to live out her passion that earns her my adoration. Tons of people "want" to do what they love, but they never pursue it and so never realize it. Thence cometh meaningless justifications:

"It's too hard"

"I don't wanna start from the bottom again"

"It's not a stable career"

"It's not realistically achievable"

Kino rejects all of these wishy-washy excuses and follows her heart to the bitter end no matter where it may lead her. It's a difficult, dangerous life, but it's not one she takes on lightly.

She loves exploring, and so, she explores, and tackles her problems head-on as they become relevant. If she lacks knowledge of how to survive on the open road, she finds people who can teach her. If she lacks for food, she learns how she can get it. While reluctant to violence, she doesn't hesitate to kill people who get in her way.

Kino proves that you don't need fancy rituals or chants to reach nirvana - you just have to know yourself, and act in accordance with your unconscious desires. I wish I'd had a mentor like her growing up.

Izutsumi

The Cavalier Catgirl

Izutsumi is the cutest tsundere edgelord ever, complete with tragic backstory and plenty of BROODING. Making that tired trope into a catgirl is amazing subversion.

Izutsumi is prideful. She has immense confidence in her own skills and ability to take care of herself, and that confidence is, for the most part, justified. Unlike Sasuke, Shadow, or Vegeta, however, Izutsumi isn’t cold. Although very self-centered, she doesn't have a problem considering the needs of others.

She’s a ferocious, devastatingly agile fighter, and her street smarts are excellent. She often chides Laios's group after the various disasters they get themselves into, because she’s the only one who had enough sense to see how easily the problem could be addressed.

But what really sets her apart from a stereotypical hard-headed tsundere is her willingness to introspect. Since her life goals are so straightforward, her introspective side actually adds a surprising amount of maturity to her character.

After her hopes of becoming fully human are dashed she realizes that she feels lost about what she should do now. Rather than moping or adopting some kind of coping mechanism, she simply seeks clarity by asking her teammates what they would do in her position, getting a variety of opinions and considering each one.

She’s dishonest about her true feelings because she doesn’t fully understand them, but she’s also capable of heeding her inner critic. Just being willing to admit her shortcomings and ask for help takes a lot more more maturity than it may at first appear.

I also think Dungeon Meshi’s art really brings out the best in her. She has so many cute kitty expressions, and Ryoko Kui does a great job portraying her in action sequences, too. She looks swift when she needs to look swift, bloodthirsty when she needs to look bloodthirsty, and strong when she needs to look strong.

Izutsumi is someone who's very hard to get close to, but a relationship with her is one that won't soon be forgotten. She's a treasure exceeding all the gold in the world.

Tetra

The Pernicious Pirate Queen

Tetra is an iron-handed criminal with a big heart. Strong-willed and tough as nails, she was able to claw her way up to the position of captain and earned the respect of her crew despite being much younger than almost all of them.

There’s also some funny dialogue from the pirates that implies she’s slept with every single one of them at least once. Whether or not that’s true is left up to the imagination, I guess.

What elevates Tetra from just a cute pirate girl to a truly fascinating character, however, is her role in Zelda’s wider lore. Now, Zelda lore is infamously obtuse, and I could make a whole other website just dedicated to explaining it all, but I’ll try my best to talk about only the basics here.

(Be warned: extreme nerdiness)

Tetra is a reincarnation of a goddess named Hylia. The overarching plot of the whole series is Hylia’s eternal war against a god named Demise, aided by the various reincarnations of a mortal hero she fell in love with.

Although she initially defeats Demise, his hatred of her is passed down to his reincarnations (e.g. Ganondorf, Malladus, and Vaati). In turn, Hylia’s hatred of Demise is passed down to her own reincarnations: The daughters of Hyrulean royalty.

It’s a classic Buddhist tragedy: Two or more people who hate each other being reincarnated over and over, destined to kill each other forever, so long as their mutual hatred continues.

In Wind Waker, Ganondorf realizes that even if he kills Link and Tetra, they're just gonna be reborn again as someone else. So he tries to break the cycle by repressing his hatred towards them and sparing their lives. But he fails, because merely repressing hatred doesn't make it go away.

Furthermore, where Ganondorf has lived for centuries at this point, Tetra and Link are still very young, and all they consciously know is that he kidnapped Link’s sister and tried to hurt both of them on multiple occasions. They have no reason to trust him or forgive him for anything he's done.

Just like Ganondorf, Tetra is trapped by a curse she wants nothing to do with but can’t escape. She doesn't understand why she hates Ganondorf so much or why she feels so strongly towards Link, and likely never will. The scale of this heavenly conflict transcends time and space, and she must follow her destiny whether she likes it or not.

When she first meets Link, she’s annoyed by his impulsiveness and doesn’t much care for him, but ends up unconsciously falling for him anyway. She goes so far out of her way to help him that even her crew becomes confused. They question if her love of treasure has dulled, but she's unable to explain her actions even to herself.

At the end of Wind Waker she throws away her princess outfit and returns to being a pirate, but nonetheless sets out to discover a new land that might be used to re-establish Hyrule, even though this goal has little to do with piracy and everything to do with royalty.

In Phantom Hourglass she gets annoyed at being called “Zelda”, considering it an uncomfortable reminder of a bloodline she cares nothing about, but her firstborn daughters and granddaughters all end up being named Zelda anyway.

Tetra is a tragic character. She had no choice in the object of her heart, and forces beyond her comprehension play with her fate. Yet despite this, she still tries to live a wild, free life, seeking to retain her spirit and individuality anywhere she can. I wish I had half her courage!

Cirno

The Feckless Fairy

Cirno is brash, pigheaded, and belligerent. She loves getting into fights and is determined to prove her strength to the whole world. Obstinate, it’s exceptionally rare to see her back down from a challenge no matter how outmatched she might be. Unfortunately for her, as a fairy, she is almost always outmatched.

Fairies are exceptionally weak. Not only are they far inferior in power to youkai, they’re weaker even than the average human. Few fairies could hope to match Cirno in a fight, yet despite this she cannot hold a candle to the absurd powers held by witches like Marisa or Sakuya, to say nothing of Lunarians like Eirin.

Lack of magical prowess is bad enough in a world teeming with spirits, but fairies also have a childlike, naive disposition, and are considered very simple and stupid by Gensokyo’s other residents.

Cirno is actually quite intelligent for a fairy. Unlike her peers, she can read, and even count. However, what is a rare and impressive skill among fairies is considered the bare minimum of education for humans and spirits. Thus she is mocked and derided for her comparatively poor math skills and low intelligence in general.

This is the great tragedy of Cirno’s life: among her own kind, she’s exceptionally strong and clever, but compared to almost anyone else, she’s weak and stupid.

This discrepency has given her a superiority complex. She seeks out other fairies and youkai to fight and even attacks immensely powerful beings like Reimu Hakurei just for flying by the lake she calls home. However, she almost always loses these fights, with her few victories resulting from extenuating circumstances such as her opponents being drunk or caught off-guard.

The same goes for her smarts - she constantly attempts to prank Gensokyo’s residents, but aside from other fairies, her attempts rarely succeed. She usually ends up caught and punished instead, or else her pranks are turned against her.

Though not particularly relateable, I can really sympathize with Cirno’s frustration of being a big fish in a small pond and getting murdered the instant she tries to leave it. The subtle disdain for her kind by youkai and humans alike is a pain that’s very easy to understand.

I think all Cirno really needs is a mentor - someone to lift her up and bring out her hidden potential. I'd love to see what she could be capable of given the right discipline and training.

Erza Scarlet

The Knockout Knight

Erza tends to blame herself for the shortcomings of others. She fears the loss of the people she cares about and wants to protect them more than anything. As such, she developed a very strict and dominant personality, and takes a hardline stance on discipline. Ironically, however, it’s this very determination that tends to drive away the people close to her, as her social awkwardness and short temper causes them to fear accidently angering her.

It makes her a kind of mother to Fairy Tail, playing wrangler and trying to manage all the trouble its members get themselves into. But getting into trouble together is also an important aspect of social bonding, and divorced from that, Erza finds herself somewhat distanced from them.

This attitude is shown metaphorically in her armor sets: She has tons of fancy, revealing outfits, and is known to love sexy apparel, but her default armor is very conservative and plain-looking, with solid, unremarkable colors and lacking intricate designs. Erza is just as wild and crazy as the rest of the guild, but out of necessity she puts on a tough exterior and adopts a 'no-fun-allowed' attitude.

The scene where all her armor sets are destroyed and she has to find the courage to fight wearing nothing but regular cloth was really touching, and it becomes a hundred times better once you realize that it symbolizes the trust she has to put in herself: That her wackier side doesn't make her weak, and she's still capable of being a leader even when her shields are down.

Jahy

The Demonic Dominatrix

Jahy is foul-mouthed, brutish, and narcissistic. Blunt as an atom bomb, she has no problem telling people to their faces what she really thinks about them. She considers demons (and humans) below her rank to be unworthy even of speaking to, and that merely to be adressed by someone as great and powerful as her should be the pinnacle of their existence.

The theme of “haughty rich girl who gets dragged down to the level of the commoners” is nothing new as far as storytelling goes. But what makes her seemingly hopeless quest to reclaim Hell so compelling is that it wasn’t just status, wealth, and magical prowess that she lost - it was her confidence.

Unlike her servant Druj, Jahy struggles to adjust to life on Earth. Weak and broken, she no longer possesses the strength and social status to back up her belligerant personality. Even if she had credentials or connections in the human world, her sense of entitlement and complete lack of any filter would make climbing the ladder a doomed prospect. Even her tiny apartment and meagre waitressing job she only maintains because a restaurant owner took pity on her. If her landlady wasn’t the restaurant owner’s sister, Jahy would be evicted the first instant she resisted paying rent - or more likely, would never have gotten shelter at all beyond a cardboard box in some forgotten back alley.

Yet she seems reluctant to mask her personality and adopt the common tactic of subtle flattery, perhaps considering it beneath her. There's an implicit fear that comes with it - If she relinquishes belief in her own inherent superiority, it would be like admitting that she was actually the inferior being all along.

Druj’s apparently effortless success in adapting to human society rattles Jahy’s newfound insecurities like nothing else. She clearly feels demoralized, not just because the struggle before her feels so overwhelming, but because it doesn’t seem overwhelming for people she long considered lesser. There are no excuses she can use to cope for her failures, because she remembers very well how harshly she punished such failures in her own servants back when she was still a respected and powerful figure.

Jahy's struggles are really relateable for me - not because of her situation, but because of her constant fight against disillusionment. To keep going when something feels impossible, while also being dogged by a secret shame that it shouldn’t feel impossible, that struggling at all with something everyone else can do effortlessly is a sign of your own inherent inferiority, is something that hits very close to home for me. It’s an empty, bitter feeling, and watching her find the confidence to remind herself of her own self-worth time and time again, no matter how at odds with her current situation it may seem, is really inspiring.

Katyusha

The Red-blooded Russiaboo

Girls und Panzer is Tomboy Heaven. I could have honestly chosen almost anyone from this series, but again and again my thoughts keep returning to Pravda’s star pupil.

Katyusha’s ferocious demeanor is masked by her childish temperament. She’s the sort of person who hates to lose, and it’s not hard to see where that comes from. Although no one is ever shown bullying or disciminating against her for her height (likely caused by some form of growth hormone disorder), it’s easy to relate to her situation. Heightism is something deeply rooted in the human subconscious - Despite being exceptionally tough, clever, and pretty, it’s hard for people to take her seriously.

Her ‘real’ personality is very bubbly, but she’s already so easily mistaken for a little girl that she feels insecure about allowing herself to act that way. Especially around her best friend Nonna, there's a ton of moments where her natural childlike enthusiasm starts to show itself, but she catches herself and represses it. That why she tries so hard to be the kind of leader who strikes fear into both her opponents and her own team, and her amazing strategegic skill backs up her threats.

Insecurity over an aspect of your appearance you can’t control, and going out of your way to compensate for it, is something I think most people can easily relate to. We’ve all been there at some point.

Also I find it funny that despite being the leader of a Russian-themed Sensha-Do club, she has no blood or cultural ties to Russia, cannot speak Russian, and gets annoyed when her other team members that actually are Russian speak Russian in front of her. I guess the same principles hold no matter what culture you Stan for, lol.

What's-Her-Face

The Tepid Tsukkomi

What’s-Her-Face is a sober girl trapped in a realm of nonsense, the 'straight man' to her friend group’s zaniness.

Sensible, cool-headed, and least likely to care, she seems to be at least somewhat aware that the world she lives in doesn’t make any sense, but, unable to do anything about it and not really knowing anything outside of it, she’s adopted a rather blause attitude to life, accepting things as they come.

Her notes in the intro to each episode hint even further at this, implying that she doesn’t have a swimsuit and just wears her normal clothes to the beach, that she wears a tuxedo to the prom instead of a dress, and that she doesn’t even own a cell phone. (even in the mid-2000’s, that was kinda weird - I know ‘cause my parents didn’t allow me to have a cell phone even though nearly all the other kids in my grade had one, and that was in elementary school. It would have been even weirder for a high schooler not to have one.)

This has lead to her becoming a bit estranged from the group, not just because of how detached she is from their surreal insanity, but also because of how detached she is from normal teen girl friend group insanity. Where Cheerleader and So-and-So went crazy at the thought of a boy/girl party, What’s-Her-Face seemed indifferent. Similarly, she didn’t even look fazed when she learned that her friends were spending spring break at the beach without her.

In any given activity, she’s the odd one out. When the other girls plan a trip to the mall to shop for new clothes, they exclude her, and, insulting her fashion sense, tell her to go to a thrift store instead. When they all form a band together, she gets stuck playing bass, much to her chagrin, because the other girls have essentially coded her as someone who plays bass. In the second episode, it even implies that they consider her a ‘pity friend’.

She even appears somewhat estranged from her own family - it’s repeatedly implied throughout the series that her home life is very dysfunctional, and that she lives in the absolute dregs of lower-middle-class society. Her mom has remarried at least once and she clearly doesn’t get along with her current stepdad. She’s also awed that Thompkins’s house has 2 pantries, which says a lot about how cramped her own home is and how tight her family’s finances must be. It’s hardly any wonder she’s taken such a passive approach to life, and it goes a long way towards explaining her bland yet odd tastes in music, clothes, and boys.

The feeling of not fitting in, not really wanting to fit in, but at the same time not wanting to be an outcaste, is what makes her situation so relateable for me. I'm not alone on this, either - In every forum thread and comment section I've seen discussing Teen Girl Squad, What's-Her-Face seems to be the fan favorite, and I think that sentiment is only gonna increase over time as the modern world deteriorates further and further socially.

What’s-Her-Face isn’t a hikikomori loner, though - her chill personality makes her easy to get along with, and it’s really just because of the situation she finds herself in that she’s not very popular. She’ll come into her own in college, I know it!