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

[claudio_rolna]

Guys…. I’m too sad right now 😭😭 will Inori and Tsukasa even be able to keep their promise?? Is he even good enough to still guide her?? This just seems like the biggest wall ever made, and don’t forget about all the staff and facilities that help Hikaru. I just want my girl Inori to have her dream come true 😭

Idk man. Even the things Hikaru doing right now is not even realistic at all. A quad lutz at that age?... yeah...

 

[doomrider7]

Guys…. I’m too sad right now 😭😭 will Inori and Tsukasa even be able to keep their promise?? Is he even good enough to still guide her?? This just seems like the biggest wall ever made, and don’t forget about all the staff and facilities that help Hikaru. I just want my girl Inori to have her dream come true 😭

Realistically, no. Series jumped the shark HARD with Hikaru. It's telegraphing the "author fiat" win way too much and way too hard that there's no way to view Inori winning without a sort asterisk to it.

 

[irondark30]

To all the remaining competitors, you all have my sympathies. I'm unsure if anyone will be willing to skate after getting their self-confidence nuked by that performance.

My worst fear is that her performance would be counter to she’s trying to do for Inori 😭

 

[trixg315]

My worst fear is that her performance would be counter to she’s trying to do for Inori 😭

Inori's so weird that she has never been intimidated by Hikaru even from the start. And Hikaru knows that, that's why she hoped to "inspire" her once again with her performance. I really hope that Tsuruma Ikada will not change that part of her in the coming chapters.

If it was any other average teen who saw that performance, they would definitely say "F*ck this sh*t, I'm out!".

 

[doomrider7]

My worst fear is that her performance would be counter to she’s trying to do for Inori 😭

Honestly I would prefer THAT over what we're likely to get of the whole inspiration thing and Inori's issues being sorted from watching Hikaru's performance as it trivilializes her relationships with her coaches and family especially Tsukasa and Mika and other skaters she looks up to like Iruka. It's pretty much shunting them aside to out Hikaru front and center.

 

[irondark30]

Honestly I would prefer THAT over what we're likely to get of the whole inspiration thing and Inori's issues being sorted from watching Hikaru's performance as it trivilializes her relationships with her coaches and family especially Tsukasa and Mika and other skaters she looks up to like Iruka. It's pretty much shunting them aside to out Hikaru front and center.

My hope is that if she is discouraged, Tsukasa will have something to say about it. It’s always nice to know that his words carry both belief and some truth.

 

[kl-ai]

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.

I don’t wanna dwell on the first part of your comment too much because it looks like the rest of the comment section after yours has just devolved into arguing about shipping in general and I don’t want to restart that lol. BUT - is it that serious? You say that there’s too many people but i can see like only 2-3 comments before yours talking about shipping the two of them….i can only speak for myself (bc i like hikaino too, so maybe I’m biased) but i just like the idea of the two of them having feelings for each other because it’s fun to imagine that along with the context of their respective feelings about skating 🤷‍♀️ it doesn’t mean that the themes go over my head, it’s just a nice little bonus! genuinely not trying to come at you (bc I know how combative MD forums can get) this is just my perspective :]

But overall yeah I do agree with the rest of what you said, especially regarding Hikaru and sacrifices and her reevaluating her relationship with jun. it really puts her conversation with tsukasa (I can’t remember the chapter number but it was where she splashed mud on him) in a new light, and I am really excited to see if it gets brought up again in future chapters. And we don’t get to see inside Jun’s head much (or at all, really) so how IS he going to react to hikaru breaking away from becoming his mini-me?

 

[LoliJuicy]

At this point, Hikaru can just pull a Quad Axel at any time without any consequences, which none of the woman figure skaters in real life have successfully performed to this day...

Or have Inori pull a Quad Axel out of her butt hole (even Hikaru can't do) at the very end of the story.

 

[exxeld]

This is a great moment of self actualization for Hikaru who has actually gone through her full character arc at this point it seems. She's come out of this with a completely new way to approach ice skating and is fully doing it for herself now and also for those who helped her realize this.

What I'm hoping is that Inori will regain her spirit from this after realizing the rivalry is more than just her one sided longing to reach Hikaru's level with Hikaru bringing forth how important Inori is to her. By Hikaru providing an impossibly large gap and also a hand to reach across that gap perhaps she'll return to form but I'm still leaning towards the potential coach swap. I think with Hikaru having shown her individuality, Jun will have no interest in developing her further.