>>4103858>Clippers love it, fan artists love it and normies love it.Yeah I get why it is a shrewd "business" decision, even just cynically (I mean how often have we heard "forced ship!" because the lovers' part is so clearly fake, and not even acted well).
I think it woulda coulda worked better if they just gave it more time to develop "naturally". I mean, not natural because they're clearly never going to be actual lovers, but instead just letting the act build up slowly in one step at a time and only ever going so far as what they're really comfortable with (meaning, whatever they're able to act out confidently, at the time, because whatever it is we're getting right now clearly isn't it).
From my recollection (and I might be misremembering, because I blacked out so much of the stodgy stuff from the beginning dark days of EN), Kiara basically came right out of the gate with "I love Calli, she's mai wife!" in the first one or two weeks.
Which is basically the worst and laziest way you could've done this. No set up, no real growing arc for the audience to follow along, just BAM here we are, this is now a thing, hope you better like it, because that's what we decided on and we're sticking to it.
Sure, that might be enough for the braindead normie masses who require no more prompting to latch onto it, but even I who's not totally averse to /u/ lament the lack of "sophistication", for better words. Like, even if it's all just a planned ship, couldn't you at least have just planned it...better? But whatever, clearly I'm just not the target audience for whom this already "works".
I would've preferred if they at least had the subtlety to turn the heat up only slowly, as in getting to know each other (on stream - so, along with the audience!) first, seeing them develop actual REASONS why they care about each other (and therefore, we as the audience should care about their ship). This is one of the reasons why Gurame works so much better, because it's not a pre-planned forced ship that's basically only there to have a differentiating gimmick (hurr I'm the one brazen lesbian in EN!), so they don't have to unnaturally pander to the /u/schizo audience they've boxed themselves into and can just naturally have CONVINCING fun with each other and let the imagination of those who WANT to ship them do the rest instead of forcing it down everyone's throats.
Kiara couldn't also come up with many good reasons as for why she's supposed to love Mori in the first place (and we're supposed to believe her), other than "she's soooo hot" and [cringe lore RP about death and phoenix]. That's why the "friendship first" (and let everything else develop after that) approach would've been so much better, because it's actually much more believable that they DO have a real friendship in the background going on. They have clearly bonded over their similar situations (being both young gaijin women who had their difficulties and hardships in Japan for chasing their dreams), and I could even buy that at least Kiara was/is maybe even a little bit more than just friends into Mori for real, given her emotionality and possible preferences, but they do instead insist on acting out a pretend play they're both clearly not good enough actors for, so at this point I'd rather they drop it completely, if possible (or if Kiara absolutely must have a ship she's connected to, hopefully some better partner in EN2 comes along), or go at least back to square one and try better, if that's what we're stuck with.
