Medalist - Ch. 51 - All-Japan Junior Women's FS (Part 1)

[Quality_Reads]

After 12 volumes we are back to square one: Inori realizing her gap from Hikaru and trying her best to catch up all over again.

Although, I'm not sure why Inori had to fail so hard to the point that she disconnects with Tsukasa just to show this scene. I hope the author has something in store to fix Inori and Tsukasa's relationship in the next chapter.

She didn't disconnect from Tsukasa though?

 

[Tierdra]

Nothing stronger than the "platonic rivalry" between a wolf and shrimp tempura

 

[lasercats]

Hikaru being such an amazing character really pulls the whole thing up. I want to see Inori win but I can't for the life of me wish for Hikaru to fail. I'm so happy to see Hikaru gets just as much out of their relationship as Inori. I live for this day every month.

 

[Ajira]

Thanks for the translation. Man... How does Tsurumaikada deliver peak after peak? She is a monsters. Look at the paneling, details, face expressions, silhouettes etc... I bought all available Turkish and English volumes to support the mangaka.

 

[Aoitenshi]

She didn't disconnect from Tsukasa though?

I feel that she's been hiding more things from him ever since he got that broken rib. She even made a fake smile because she doesn't want him to worry. Meanwhile, Tsukasa is tiptoeing around her because she can see through any doubts he has.

 

[J_the_Man]

Now that I've had a night to sit on this - my more complete feelings on this chapter:

First, the amount of people invested in Medalist purely to ship Inori and Hikaru is too high and disappointing. This is not a romance story, and you are missing the entire picture of this story arc interpreting things from a romantic coded lense out of interest for a 13 year olds yuri ship.

Is Hikaru skating for Inori? Yes. Absolutely. But she's skating for more than that. This is the culmination of her current character arc, her culminating moment of growth. The entirety of this free skate program was designed to send a message - Hikaru Kamisaki is not Jun Yodaka, nor will she accept being seen as the next Jun Yodaka anymore.

"Cages" have been an underlying theme of this story, and each of the main characters have been stuck in their own cages that they've been struggling to escape from.

Hikaru's life was determined for her without her consent by her foster caretakers. They hired Jun Yodaka to turn Hikaru into Jun Yodaka. Jun Yodaka has been nothing short of a shady and questionable mentor, but these last several chapters has made it undeniable that he did instill a pure, innocent love for skating inside of Hikaru.

But all of that was suppressed because Hikaru embraced becoming Jun Yodaka and making all the sacrifices she felt necessary to meet his standard. She shut herself off from forming connections with people because of the gap in ability between her and the people she crushed and overshadowed.

The reason she became so attached to Inori is because she thought Inori was capable of matching her own pace and reaching the level of Jun Yodaka with her, which relieved her feelings of isolation from people. Perhaps she wanted someone to beat her, even, and free her from Jun Yodaka.

The irony of moving to Tokyo and joining Starfox was that this was supposed to be yet another sacrifice, but it caused some serious introspection that made her realize what she had and what she was giving up. She had family that cared for her. Her club mates never truly resented her, they always wanted to connect with her. She has a lot of things, and she doesn't need to become Jun Yodaka to justify her existence.

This is why this moment is such a big deal - it's Hikaru finally breaking from her cage. She's skating for herself, the way she wants to, and she doesn't care what anyone thinks. This isn't a display of newly mastered abilities, it's a display of personal growth. Her first order of business is to skate for Inori, but it's not like from here on out She's only skating for Inori.

And this is why it won't work: Inori doesn't need motivation to catch up. She never has needed it. She's always been aware of the gap between her and everyone else, and now it's bigger than it ever had beem (Quad Lutz lolololol).

Medalist has never portrayed Inori pushing herself to catch up a good thing. Go back and read when she learned the Quad Salchow. When she started staking her being on being able to make the jump, Tsukasa stepped in and corrected her.

Inori right now is stuck because she's mentally stuck in her cage. There are multiple issues, but the biggest is that her entire self-worth is based around needing to win in order to validate herself. That's why Hikaru likened Inori to Jun - figure skating is essentially their very existence. Until she can grow as a person, Inori is going to continue to stumble. Everything is ultimately rooted in her self-worth.

 

[SuperOniichan]

Now that I've had a night to sit on this - my more complete feelings on this chapter:

First, the amount of people invested in Medalist purely to ship Inori and Hikaru is too high and disappointing. This is not a romance story, and you are missing the entire picture of this story arc interpreting things from a romantic coded lense out of interest for a 13 year olds yuri ship.

Is Hikaru skating for Inori? Yes. Absolutely. But she's skating for more than that. This is the culmination of her current character arc, her culminating moment of growth. The entirety of this free skate program was designed to send a message - Hikaru Kamisaki is not Jun Yodaka, nor will she accept being seen as the next Jun Yodaka anymore.

"Cages" have been an underlying theme of this story, and each of the main characters have been stuck in their own cages that they've been struggling to escape from.

Hikaru's life was determined for her without her consent by her foster caretakers. They hired Jun Yodaka to turn Hikaru into Jun Yodaka. Jun Yodaka has been nothing short of a shady and questionable mentor, but these last several chapters has made it undeniable that he did instill a pure, innocent love for skating inside of Hikaru.

But all of that was suppressed because Hikaru embraced becoming Jun Yodaka and making all the sacrifices she felt necessary to meet his standard. She shut herself off from forming connections with people because of the gap in ability between her and the people she crushed and overshadowed.

The reason she became so attached to Inori is because she thought Inori was capable of matching her own pace and reaching the level of Jun Yodaka with her, which relieved her feelings of isolation from people. Perhaps she wanted someone to beat her, even, and free her from Jun Yodaka.

The irony of moving to Tokyo and joining Starfox was that this was supposed to be yet another sacrifice, but it caused some serious introspection that made her realize what she had and what she was giving up. She had family that cared for her. Her club mates never truly resented her, they always wanted to connect with her. She has a lot of things, and she doesn't need to become Jun Yodaka to justify her existence.

This is why this moment is such a big deal - it's Hikaru finally breaking from her cage. She's skating for herself, the way she wants to, and she doesn't care what anyone thinks. This isn't a display of newly mastered abilities, it's a display of personal growth. Her first order of business is to skate for Inori, but it's not like from here on out She's only skating for Inori.

And this is why it won't work: Inori doesn't need motivation to catch up. She never has needed it. She's always been aware of the gap between her and everyone else, and now it's bigger than it ever had beem (Quad Lutz lolololol).

Medalist has never portrayed Inori pushing herself to catch up a good thing. Go back and read when she learned the Quad Salchow. When she started staking her being on being able to make the jump, Tsukasa stepped in and corrected her.

Inori right now is stuck because she's mentally stuck in her cage. There are multiple issues, but the biggest is that her entire self-worth is based around needing to win in order to validate herself. That's why Hikaru likened Inori to Jun - figure skating is essentially their very existence. Until she can grow as a person, Inori is going to continue to stumble. Everything is ultimately rooted in her self-worth.

There is indeed romance here, but far out of focus and not between Inori and Hikaru, let alone any age gap ships. Personally, the problem for me is that people regularly greatly simplify any depth and message of such stories to the primitive "one character wants to fuck another", thus showing that any psychology and dynamics for them are just the background for creating pairings. If I could still formally understand it in titles like Hibike because of their all-female and yuri bait nature, then in titles like Medalist or MHA it starts to remind me of "I read it for the plot" meme.