Valjean Lafitte wrote:I was wondering if we could get an official dev statement on the nature of Emi and Misha's friendship? The subject was broached on page 226 of the thread, and the exchange went something like this:
OK, so here TheHivemind says that Emi and Misha having crossed paths before was never really "scrapped", just not explored. That there's still hints of it in the final game would seem to place it on the same "implied canon" level as Kenji x Yuuko...TheHivemind wrote: Like Aura said, there was originally going to be more hints that Emi and Misha had crossed paths on more than one occasion. It was discarded (or more accurately, never really explored) due to a myriad of reasons, some to do with being a lousy writer, others to do with the fact that Emi's path was scrapped and started from (almost) scratch about four years into development. Other hints of the Emi/Misha connection include some editorial comments from Misha during a lecture on PDA (which, come to think of it, might have also been removed but I don't remember anymore) and the fact that Misha is the one to talk to you if things go poorly (which was not so much a vestige as it was a reference to what could have been, if I'd been a) better at writing b) better at negotiating c) less burned out on the project by the end of the writing process). I think there might be one or two off-handed comments from Emi and Misha in the path that serve as more references to it (and there was something in the dinner scene at one point, but again I can't remember what made it in and what didn't).
Isn't it sad Micchan ;____; etc. etc.
...but then he jokingly implies that they were meant to be friends with benefits. This supports what I've heard about an earlier version of KS where Emi and Misha would hook up regularly in the art room. I know that we're only supposed to treat what's in the game as canon, but this seems to be a special case in which something is only hinted at, and yet by a dev's admission, not scrapped. So as a result we know that they are (or were) friends, but what's the nature of their friendship?TheHivemind wrote:Ha ha ha yes how ridiculous.Liminaut wrote:Heh. I thought that comment meant that Emi and Misha had been friends with benefits at one point. I may have been reading a little too much into it
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I'm struggling to imagine how a Emi x Misha "friends with benefits" relationship would fit with Shizune's route even if it had been fleshed out. I could see a curious Emi experimenting with Misha maybe once or twice, but I'd find it harder to feel sad for poor, "lonely" Misha if she was getting pussy every other day from her BFF. And if it's true--just not explored--how would it have fit into Misha's character arc, in which is she seems infatuated with only Shizune?
Like I said in my original answer (and like Aura further stated), Emi and Misha were meant to be friends--and to have briefly been more than friends, set around the time after Shizune first rejected Misha's advances (and Emi similarly would've made a pass on a completely oblivious, nonresponsive Rin...or something like that. There's a bit on the fanfic forum that explores the idea a little, but it's unpolished as FUCK, so consider yourself warned), but I fucked it all up--and yes, the two of them having experimented together was a real thing that I (and others) considered having happen, because if anyone was going to wind up experimenting, it was going to be Emi. As Aura said, she's open and pretty up-front when it comes to sex, and who she would like to have sex with. I even strongly considered making her bisexual at one point (there was a scrapped, time-skipping bad end that would've made that more obvious, and I considered it being one of the things she mentioned in her list of facts in the graveyard), but it would have taken a lot to get that off the ground (again, both in terms of convincing the rest of the team to put up with the extra work and coordination across paths to make it fit, and in terms of backfilling it into the path without it coming off as shoehorned in at the last minute). I've stated on multiple occasions that I have no regrets about how the path wound up--and I still don't--but it's completely true that Emi's path could've used way more work and skill than I was capable of producing at the time. If I were to undertake the project now, it would probably be better, but that's walking down the path of pure speculation.Aura wrote:Hive never put in the work necessary to figure out the Emi-Misha relationship so it fizzled out without getting anywhere. It's kind of a bummer because the story sure could've used character interplay that didn't involve Hisao. The amount of work would've been quite high though, so it's understandable that it didn't work out.
I don't think the friendship was to have a "friends with benefits" thing, but Emi and Misha, or Emi and Rin, having experimented sexually (once) was a real concept Hive had to underline Emi's liberal and aggressive attitude towards sex. It's one of the more interesting aspects of Emi's character, but Hive didn't quite get the theme and ideas polished to perfection. Emi sex scenes do an acceptable job communicating the theme, but maybe aren't reflected upon sufficiently?
That bloody track scene is probably my greatest failure, because it was meant to highlight something about Emi's character and everyone only remembers the goddamn lemons. Oh well.Aura wrote: Also, one of the most unfortunate things about Emi's route is that the track shed scene is a stupid fucking meme amongst the fans (THEM LEMONS XD) and no one actually thinks about why on earth would Emi act like that. This tangent aside, if you think there's "implied canon" or "early versions of KS", sorry to disappoint you. We had hundreds of ideas that got scrapped, and many of them have some remnants left in the script for whatever reasons. This is just another one. Also semantics lawyering is pointless. "Not explored" means the exact same thing as "scrapped", because both have the same end result, which is that the idea did not end up in the actual story. So yeah the official answer, whatever that means, is that they know each other, are probably friendly, but aren't really buddies.
But yes, Misha and Emi are on friendly terms officially, whatever that means. They are at least on good enough terms that Misha cares enough to step in and slap Hisao in his big dumb face if necessary to get him back on the right track.
Unofficially, they met up again when they both wound up in the same area for college and grew much closer, culminating in the traditional rainy confessions and they lived gayly ever after, I dunno.
