Talk:Horikawa Kunihiro/@comment-27049561-20180303195833

I was disappointed with his kiwame lines at first but I've really come to love the subtle character development in his character. I wrote up a little character analysis on him to celebrate 3 years since I joined this game and wanted to post an edited version of the kiwame-centric bit here :) I also can't quite break the habit of calling Izuminokami 'Kane-san' so sorry if that gets annoying. A lot of tourabu is centered around how you personally see the characters so I totally respect if anyone disagrees with me in places. I certainly don't think that Horikawa's kiwame is perfect and I'm still a little annoyed that he never mentions the ocean even once, but I've come to appreciate it. And although I talk so much about Kane-san here, I think it's kind of hard to talk about Horikawa without talking about Kane-san since a lot of his development centres around him, and although I love horikane, I also adore yasuhori so I'd like to think that that helps me be a little less biased in a way.

Before kiwame, Horikawa can’t help but see himself as inferior to Kane-san, he’s grown so attached to his ‘assistant’ label that he feels like he can’t do anything himself, or be given responsibility (“To disregard Kane-san... Is it alright for me to be the leader?” - I know the TL here says ‘to leave Kane-san alone’ but I think ‘disregard’ is a better word choice personally.) to the point where he can’t drop the habit of fighting as if he’s got a partner next to him (Sparring w/ Nagasone: “That's some bad habit you got for always having a comrade next to you.”), Horikawa is undoubtedly the most ‘wakizashi’ of all of the wakizashis in the game, but this comes at the cost of him being incredibly selfless and having very little confidence in himself. Perhaps this was made worse by Horikawa being tossed into the ocean like a worthless lump of steel, whilst Kane-san was cherished and put on display. This aspect of Horikawa is where the most notable change is seen after his kiwame training. Horikawa stops putting himself down completely, and it’s heartwarming to see, he’s no longer 'just' Kane-san’s assistant, putting himself down all the time (“Ah, I knew an assistant like me couldn't be someone like Kane-san.”), he’s “Kane-san's best assistant, after all!”, he prides himself in being the very best assistant he can be. He now realises that his role as assistant makes the others around him stronger, and that in-turn makes him strong too, but he also knows that he can do things other than just being an assistant, for example Horikawa is no longer reluctant to become captain, he just muses that he “hope[s] Kane-san won't sulk…”, same as with his MVP kiwame line. His inferiority complex is gone after kiwame, and he seems happier for it, and that's a really nice thing to see as a Horikawa fan.

I'd also argue that he becomes a little more open with the Saniwa after kiwame, in my opinion. We could only speculate as to why he would say “don't get angry... don't get angry…” after getting hit during battle, until his kiwame revealed that he does it for the sake of Kane-san in an attempt to stop him getting angry, and assumedly to reassure others in his team when Kane-san isn’t there (“Kane-san... is short-tempered like his previous master, so I get worried when I'm not around.”). Again, his restraint on his anger becomes more about himself post-kiwame, as before he wants to do it for Kane-san (“Since Kane-san is like that, I want to do it without getting angry, but...!”), he seems to prefer not getting angry  for his own reasons post-kiwame (“I wanted to do this without getting angry!”), dropping Kane-san’s name here helps to reinforce the idea of him becoming more independent after his kiwame, if nothing else.

As I said, I was disappointed by Horikawa’s kiwame lines at first, but the more I read them the more I realised that he really did change for the better, he didn’t have to change much because he’s always been a relatively calm and level-headed character, so he just worked on his weaknesses and came back stronger, but he’s still Horikawa through and through. I expect if there were a kiwame version of his aforementioned sparring line with Nagasone, he would comment on how Horikawa has dropped the habit of fighting as if he’s alongside a partner, because Horikawa is now able to be both independent and a reliable assistant.