Hello and welcome back to Favourite Character Praise Friday!
This is one of my absolute favourite posts to write and I hope you enjoy my
picking apart of my favourite characters enough to stick around while I examine
my next victim, I mean, character. Don’t worry, I do not rank these characters
in a particular order, it just so happens that some characters are better worth
sharing praise for at a different point in time to others! Remember, every
fifth instalment is Least Favourite Character Praise Friday, so keep an eye out
for me probing at characters I can’t stand and raving about how well they were
written in order to evoke such a reaction.
So, who is the subject of my next Favourite Character Praise
Friday?
Nozomi Tojo from the Love Live! Franchise
Warning: The following will contain spoilers!
Nozomi was a character that I had seen through social media
prior to my joining the Love Live! Fandom. Although I am not as active in the fan-base
at the moment, I do still have a big love for Nozomi. She is one of the only
fictional characters that I have cosplayed at several different events
throughout the years.
For those who are unfamiliar with Love Live! It is both a
game and an anime. The game, released by KLab Games is a rhythm tap game, where
you collect different cards, which depict various characters in various outfits
and poses. Each card would have a different set of skills and abilities, and
you would level up the cards to achieve better scores when playing the songs. I
have had two accounts, my original was focused around my favourite characters
from both of the idol groups that were covered by Love Live at the time,
although a third one later came out. These favourite characters were in their
third years of studying at either Otonokizaka Girls’ Academy, and part of the school-idol
group Muse, like Nozomi, or their third year of study at Uranohoshi Girls’
School, and part of the school-idol group Aquors.
The anime follows the main story of the game: Otonokizaka
Girls’ Academy is going to be closed down in three years’ time: after the
newly-enrolled first year students graduate. It follows Honoka Kosaka, a second
year student, whose mother and grandmother both attended that school, and whose
little sister had been hoping to attend too, but now, would no longer be able
to. Her family had a deep-rooted connection with the school and the fact it
would be closing deeply upset her, so she decided that she would somehow save
her beloved school from closure.
After seeing a video, mounted on a screen in the city,
promoting the successful UTX Academy, and their school idol group A-Rise,
Honoka decides that’s the best way to preserve her school and their legacy. In
the end, she manages to recruit several classmates from the respective academic
years to create a nine student strong school idol group known as Muse. The
series would follow Muse as they attempted to gain enough traction to keep the
school from closing down.
Nozomi Tojo is the eighth member to join Muse, quickly
followed by her best friend Eli Ayase, who was the last member. They were part
of the group until their graduation in the following spring.
However, that isn’t why I love her or why I decided to praise
her this time!
The first thing that always drew me to Nozomi as a viewer
was how easy it was to relate to her story. Most of the girls in Muse had their
backstories integrated into the story through flashbacks and exposition.
However, the one that hit closest to home was when her best friend, Eli
revealed Nozomi’s past to Maki. Hers was the last of the backstories to be
revealed that season, and explained how she had never had a group of friends
before: constantly moving when she was a child lead to an immense feeling of
loneliness, which was only amplified by her living alone in High School in order
to stay in the same area and attend school. It explored how even though she was
comfortable in her own company, she hated feeling alone, and that was why she valued
her school, and was so desperate to save it as part of the student council, and
as a member of Muse. It was at Otonokizaka that she managed to meet people she
could class as her friends and rely upon. Her love of her friends was later
exemplified toward the end of the second season when graduation was looming in
front of the third years’ and the group decided to go out during the holidays
and enjoy a day together where they supposedly weren’t thinking about school or
graduation, or even Love Live, the school idol competition they had entered
that made them famous. At the end, after visiting a beach, the girls cried
together at the train station, not wanting to let each other, and their time
together end.
Another reason I adored Nozomi was her awareness of her
friends. Both she and Eli, had watched their schoolmates longingly but were too
prideful to admit that they also wanted to join in. Both were senior members of
the student council, with Eli being the president and Nozomi her vice. They had
initially refused the creation of Muse and since then had seen the girls
quickly improve as they gained more members. She decided to join after arguing
with Eli, telling her that it was okay to change her mind and approach Honoka
and ask to join Muse. In the end, it was Nozomi who managed to prompt Honoka
into approaching Eli one last time so the girls could all show her that nobody was
going to resent her for her hesitation and instead would embrace the ballerina
into their group. After Nozomi and Eli joined Muse, their performance as a
group was elevated due to Eli’s knowledge of choreography, they were no longer
sloppy and unpolished, and instead sharper and enthusiastic. I felt like by
having Nozomi be the one to join Muse with Eli showed the viewers that the two
girls were very much inseparable and really did know each other better than
they knew themselves, despite their generally reserved disposition throughout
the show up until that point. I felt that the subtle nature of this depiction
worked well for the characters and was implemented really well.
The last reason she is one of my absolute favourite
characters is due to her passion for her hobbies, and the influence of them
upon the story. Nozomi reads tarot cards as a hobby, constantly using the cards
to predict the future. That was how, she claimed, she was able to suggest the
name Muse to Honoka through the selection box in the school corridor, because
she knew that there would be nine members, like there were nine Grecian muses.
She is one of the only members of Muse to have an outside hobby that is not
beneficial to the functionality of the group. Kotori’s hobby of designing
clothes was utilised as she ended up making the costumes for the group, Nico’s
and Hanayo’s respective obsessions with the idol industry were utilised when
the girls were struggling to produce content or gain traction. The pair had a
vast combined knowledge and thus could provide more insight. Eli’s experience
as a ballerina in Russia was a great asset to Muse as she was able to aid Umi
in making dynamic choreography for the group. The only member other than Nozomi
that has a hobby outside of Muse that doesn’t necessarily help her friends
succeed is Umi, who is rather skilled at archery, having previously been a
member of the archery club prior to joining Muse. Nozomi, however, uses these tarot
cards throughout the franchise, declaring her influence over them as a
spiritual power, which she hopes her friends will respect as she would be able
to predict the outcome of events with them. Without Nozomi and her cards, a
vast amount of symbolism would have been lost. For example, the most prevalent
example is when, in the student council meeting room, Eli and Nozomi have
lingered, talking amongst themselves. It is, during this conversation, that
Muse is mentioned and Nozomi begins to shuffle her cards at the windowsill,
pulling cards from the deck, where a gust of wind scatters them throughout the
space. This, clearly meant that Muse was about to change the path of course
that the two girls had been on until that point. Without Nozomi and her cards,
portraying that idea would have been exceedingly complicated.
Please, if you have opinions on Nozomi Tojo, feel free to
share them with me! Don’t forget you can check out my previous Character Praise
by looking through the hashtags below.
And remember!
Per Aruda Ad Astra
