The BEST WRITTEN WAIFU in All of Anime | Who is Yohane?

 I think all of us, somewhere in our hearts, desire to be special. The mediocre person that we are is just not what we see in ourselves, what we want to see in ourselves. The world isn’t kind to regular people like you and I, cursed to be unexceptional, or even in some cases downright unlucky to be in our circumstances. Things never go our way, you can never quite do what you want to do. Perhaps…this is something more than simple misfortune. Maybe this is a sign that you are more than what you seem, an angel cast out of heaven and cursed to be stuck to this world…at least, that’s what you want to believe. This is what a little girl from the city of Numazu wanted to be, what she thought in her heart that she had to be because being nothing but herself was boring. But that too she grew to hate about herself–the idea that she would resort to these fantasies at all…until a girl with a dream handed her her wings.

Let me tell you about this girl. Let me tell you…

Who is Tsushima Yoshi-

…Yohane.

Tsushima Yohane is a first year from Uranohoshi Girl’s Academy in the city of Uchiura as well as a member of the school idol group Aqours. She, along with You, actually lives in Numazu, the town close by to the town of Uchiura where Uranhoshi resides, so compared to the others, she’s more accustomed to city life…that is if you don’t take into account the fact that she’s a weirdo. To describe her in simple terms, she is a Chuunibyou, a term derived from “chuugakkou ni-nen” meaning “second year of middle school” and “byou” meaning “syndrome”, coming together to mean “middle schooler syndrome”, a phase where middle schoolers will act with delusional behavior during an awkward transitional period of their lives…and then just don’t stop. They’re nerds. They’re weebs. They’re weirdos. However, for Yohane, this isn’t something that originated in middle school but rather something she’d been doing for as long as she could remember. Hanamaru, who knew her from kindergarten, can attest to this. You see, Yohane believes that she is a fallen angel cast out of heaven into a mortal body, cursed with bad luck and forced to recruit what she refers to as “little demons,” and has done this all the way into highschool, something she has currently begun to be ashamed of. This behavior, this fantasy that she keeps clinging onto is something she knows is embarrassing, yet she can’t seem to stop doing it. She loves it, yet is ashamed of herself for being that way all the same.

This alone is what I believe makes her a perfect fit for the school idol group Aqours and why I believe her role in the series is so important.

Of the many themes that Sunshine implements into its story, the most prominent tend to be those of regret, self-acceptance and pursuing one’s passions wholeheartedly, and as someone who can sympathize with the plight of someone who actively engages in weird behaviors and pastimes yet still loves them all the same, this aspect of her character is what keeps me unable to not love her. Yohane is constantly ashamed of who she is, refusing to even attend school for a long period of time simply because she made a mistake and introduced herself in the only way that seemed natural, something she promised herself that she would not do. Yet despite her shame, here she is bringing full-on costumes, blankets with magic circles, ceremonial candles, tarot cards and so many other things that would obviously prompt her to engage in it. Despite being ashamed of her behavior, she doesn’t like being called by her “mortal name” and prefers to be called Yohane. She has nightly streams where she dresses up in costume as Yohane to do fortune telling for her little demons as they all shower her in support of her weird hobby. Trust me, that hits a note very close to home. Even though she shows and obvious love and pride for that side of her that she wants so desperately to keep hidden, she crushes it simply because she knows no one will accept her as she is and she’s ashamed of that fact. I mean, who in their right mind would accept some weirdo like her who has these fantasies at such an age? She should learn to act normal. She needs to, because otherwise there’s no way anyone will accept her…until a girl like her reached out her hand.

No other group could possibly understand Yohane’s plight quite like Aqours. Here they are, this group of girls with a pipe dream of wanting to rise to the top in a town no one knows or cares about, in an old school that has nothing of note about it, where there’s nothing notable and nothing special and they’re still trying to shine. These girls themselves are a collection of failures. Riko’s a pianist who ran away. You is someone who couldn’t even stay by her best friend’s side. Ruby is so insecure that she screeches and loses it upon any kind of human interaction, Hanamaru is a bookworm who does nothing but hang out by herself in the library…and Chika is nothing but a worthless, plain and unexceptional girl. Yet here they are, dancing in cute outfits and singing to their own songs with dreams of being like u’s, this legendary group that quite literally changed the world forever. If anything, they’re the only ones who could understand someone like Yohane.

There are things all of us fall in love with, be it games, anime or some other weird hobby. I mean, hell, here I am with a channel dedicated to overanalyzing cartoons, but on some level we are ashamed of that. It doesn’t even have to be a hobby, something about you: your appearance, your demeanor, the way you speak–all of that could become a source of ridicule, of being a social outcast. Yet on some level, something within us wants to declare that that thing makes us special despite the shame that it brings us. There’s a reason that we are the way we are. In Yohane’s case, it’s made very clearly apparent that she doesn’t actually believe she’s a fallen angel. She acknowledges it as what it is, a fantasy. But, there has to be a reason for all of the things that she does, why she is the way she is. She’s unlucky, anxious around other people, constantly finds herself in misfortune and has a wide imagination, so she HAS to be a fallen angel. How else would she be able to justify all of this happening to her? I mean, without the wings that she claims were taken from her, all she is is some loser who was dealt a bad hand in life. She’s just some weirdo with a hobby that isn’t accepted by others. Plain, unexceptional and worthless.

But there’s something to be said about the power of having others by your side who understand you. While Ruby and Hanamaru didn’t necessarily get anything that Yohane was saying when she did her little rituals or called them little demons, what they did understand was an inability to connect with other people. After all, Ruby is cripplingly unable to interact with anyone and uses Hanamaru and Dia as a buffer or a defense mechanism. She loves school idols, but doesn’t have the confidence, or insanity, to be like Yohane and declare that passion straight out. It took a full group effort just to get Ruby to the point where she could declare to her sister that she did in fact love school idols and that she wanted to become one herself. Hanamaru loved books, but it was also where she was most comfortable because like Yohane, she too lived in a world of fantasy, but unlike Yohane, hers was private and could only be experienced by her. In a sense, it’s admirable that someone can be so open about what they love and move into it with full force…and a shame that she feels like that’s something to be ashamed of.

But those two first-years understood this about her, that feeling of wanting to run away from yourself out of shame. In that understanding, Hanamaru and Ruby offered to help Yohane from having her outbursts, and in return for their support, Yohane gave them hers. When Ruby wanted to proclaim to her sister that she would be fine if she was gone, when she wanted to show to Leah that their sisters gave them power that they never knew they had before, it was no one but Hanamaru and Yohane who stood by their friend’s side. In this bond that they shared grown from understanding, it could not have been gained if Yohane the fallen angel didn’t become a school idol. In that sense, a certain girl from Otonokizaka felt that all too well.

No one could understand the shame of running away like Riko. No one could understand throwing away her passion out of fear or feelings of inferiority better than Riko. She loved the piano with all of her heart, but that same heart grew distant from music, causing her to lose confidence in her ability to play. She lost what made her fall in love with that music and as a result threw away that which made her fly…she lost her wings. But in this group named after the water where she saw the light, Riko gained that love back. By trying her hardest she learned to love it once again. By singing and dancing onstage full of anxiety and joy, she remembered how warm the light could be. All of that was because of Aqours, this group that she came to as if she was drawn to it by destiny. Who could sympathize with that more than Yohane? Yohane was ashamed of herself, of that which she loved yet over and over again she kept coming back to her fantasies, felt so unsure of throwing it away yet incredibly embarrassed of it all the same. This back and forth she does internally is something that Riko could understand and saw in Yohane. 

It’s depressing to think that you are nothing. It’s sad to believe that you are worthless, that you’re nothing but a normal girl and that’s why Yohane chose to believe what she does. She doesn’t actually believe she’s a fallen angel, she knows those things aren’t real. She knows that everything, from her name to her wings, is all just a fantasy. In fact, hilariously, when it comes to the group’s fantastical ideas, unless it’s something that strokes her ego, Yohane is always the first to point out how ridiculous, how juvenile, how silly some things are. She is very much self-aware of what it is she’s doing but she does it anyway. But she wants to believe in it.

To believe there is nothing special about this world, what you love and about you is sad. It’s incredibly uninteresting, so why not believe that there is more to you? Why settle for being a regular person when you can be an idol? A star? An angel? There is nothing worse than being ordinary, so Yohane wanted desperately to believe she wasn’t. In something as silly as even a chance meeting with a dog, that affirmed those beliefs that everything in this world is drawn to one another through a mysterious power. There was a reason she was the way she was and she desperately wanted to believe that it was because she was special, and in that ability to take what she wanted, that made her exceptional…and that’s what made her so suited to becoming a school idol.

A school idol is someone who believes they are normal performing onstage and shining as if they were as bright as a real idol. It’s a chance to believe in a dream, to live out that dream and show the world a side of you that even you didn’t know existed. It’s a stage where girls who have things that they love trapped within them release those feelings out in full force as they sing and dance with people who are just like them, and the fallen angel Yohane was someone who needed to hear the words that she is fine the way she is…that she’s exceptional and special the way she is.

Being a school idol does something magical to the ones who become one. Ruby found that she had strength and a power within her that she never knew she had, something that Yohane helped her find. Riko found that love for music once again and regained her wings that she loved so long ago, something she sympathized with in Yohane. This power known as the school idol connects people in ways that the ones who become one never thought possible, and for those who feel nothing but contempt for the people they are, like a certain fallen angel, there is someone there who followed the light of school idols who knew that all feeling all too well.

While Yohane saw herself as weird, embarrassing, shameful and all of that, what Chika saw was someone who was far more exceptional than she could ever hope to be. For Takami Chika, who had nothing that she felt passionate about or anything about herself that she thought was exceptional, here was this girl who was full-force into a hobby that might seem weird to others yet made her seem so radiant. Chika reached out to Yohane because she saw someone more exceptional than her yet despised who she was like herself. Who cares if she’s weird? Isn’t it weird that she’s trying to sing onstage and be someone that she’s not? Who cares if she dresses up in weird costumes? A school idol make costumes for the sole purpose of dancing in front of crowds of people. Who cares if people don’t understand? That just means that you need to show others your love, regardless of shame, regardless of acceptance and regardless of how different that makes you because what makes you different is what makes you so bright. 

It’s hard to accept yourself for who you are. There’s things about you that might make you weird, different, an outcast or even outright cringey. But if anything, it’s more depressing to be nothing special. It’s painful to accept that there’s nothing special about you, so why settle for being part of the crowd? This doesn’t mean you have to be obnoxious or go wild to the point where you turn others away. It means that you find others who can accept you for who you are, and for Yohane, who desperately desired to be more than who she was yet at the same time was ashamed of that which made her special, it was in this group of girls who ran after her as she ran away from herself that she learned to accept herself for who she was. Yes, she is just a regular schoolgirl with fantasies that might throw people off, but she loves doing it. She loves dressing up, fortune telling, streaming and having others join her side as her Little Demons and in that love, in how full force she is into that passion she is more than that. It only took five girls to reach out to her and give her back her wings. It was in a group of 10 that the Fallen Angel Yohane found others who accepted her for who she was and gave her something that she would never forget.

In this boring world where all seems mundane, this regular girl learned to accept the side of her that made her exceptional. Both sides, white and dark.