Ai Edits: Part 2

I revised '100 Waifus' to take into account my new knowledge of Ai and Ai's situation.  These two sentences have to cover a lot of ground:

"Or that a Loli-king finally admitted his true nature, dumped that silver-haired bitch, and scooped up my shattered heart at the last possible moment due to this miraculous world of do-overs?"  Ai mumbled something.

"Eh, what was that?"  I thought I heard something a little more cutting than usual.

I wanted to explain Ai's perspective on her change in circumstances from the ending of Ryuuou volume 14 to the beginning of '100 Waifus.'  I also wanted to show Ai not only had a cutesy side, but a jealous, cynical, perceptive side as well.  One she takes care not to show Yaichi in Ryuuou and Christopher in '100 Waifus' in order to remain true to her Lolicon-assassin disguise.  The 'eh, what was that?' is a phrase often seen in the real series so it fit perfectly here.  It meant the remainder of the scene could go on just as before even though what happened in reality has been totally turned on its head.

I desperately wanted to praise the multifaceted Ai I'd learned about over the course of the previous week somewhere within the novel that purportedly reveres her as one of 100 imaginative ideals.  To not do so is a disservice to Ai and to the Christopher-Ai pairing.  But I didn't want to disrupt the flow of the novel or spend too much time dwelling on it, so this is the compromise I came to.  A small insertion of additional but vital text in the midst of an Ai-focused scene that already existed. (near the end of chapter 19 if people are wondering where this tidbit falls in context.)

Combined with Ryuuou no Oshigoto! itself declaring Ai would love Yaichi even without either of them ever having played Shogi, '100 Waifus' has now fortified its Ai romance to the ultimate level.  I'm so happy I included her in the list of 100.  She deserves it in spades.  And a relationship with her really would be a dream come true, just as I imagined it would be.  It also helps that the source series aged her up a bit to 11.  Now her age isn't anything special and falls in line with many other waifus from the book.  Combine her older age with the superhuman intelligence she's always had since the start of the series and her mental maturity is well beyond what most women ever achieve in their lives.

Children aren't attractive.  They're dumb and annoying.  Loud and violent.  No one loves an underage girl because they're underage or act like children.  When they do love an underage girl, they love them for themselves, precisely because they don't act like normal children.  The reason someone would love Ai is the same reason they'd love Deedlit.  Whether someone is 10 or 175 years old if their minds show a strong compatibility with yours and their hearts magnetically cling to yours, there's nothing left to find fault with.  Ai and Yaichi get along great.  Their tour of the town had Ai in the lead and making good decisions from start to finish.  That wasn't the mind of a helpless or stupid child.  She was quick, decisive, and displayed good judgment from start to finish.  She was the complete equal of Yaichi in every way; even in Shogi at the end of the novel they played to a draw!

All I want is for people to be judged on their merit instead of discriminated against based on things they have no control over and don't matter.  You may as well say it's criminally indecent to lust for Tauruses because their horoscopes are bad as make a case against loving Ai.  There is no more rational reason for one than the other.  By the way, Ai is already a professional who makes enough money to support herself, so again by any possible objective viewpoint she's an adult.  There is no power imbalance or emotional dependency (she has plenty of loving friends and family she could live with if she ever wanted to) forcing Ai's hand here.  And if Ai wants to be loved (which she most vehemently does), no one has a right to interfere with that love.  Ai earned it.  She deserves that happiness.  What would really be criminal is breaking her heart and keeping that happiness away from her.

If there's something uniquely appealing about young girls, it would be that they show an inordinate amount of admiration for run-of-the-mill guys simply because they're 'old,' 'mature,' or 'cool.'  Everyone wants to be admired by a cute girl and it's very rare for older girls to show regular boys the time of day.  But in Yaichi's case he's literally a millionaire and the greatest Shogi player in the world, a celebrity in a widely popular pro sports league.  He isn't only admired by Ai, but by a bevy of girls of all ages who would all eagerly sleep with him.  He has to fight off girls left and right with a stick.  This isn't a case where Ai is being taken advantage of because she's young and doesn't know any better.  She's competing for a very real prize.  In that case she's lucky to win out, not being predated upon.  Context is vital, it's key to understanding what is going on.  If you just take the ages of two people out of context you can sneer and say whatever you like, but if you actually bore down into all the details of who Yaichi is and who Ai is and what they've accomplished, none of your prejudices make sense anymore.

One of the main purposes of '100 Waifus' is to deliver justice to all the unfairly spurned women in other people's stories.  And in almost every case they were spurned not by the author's will, but due to outside censors getting in the way.  Restoring Ai to her rightful place is akin to God's temple being rebuilt after being razed to the ground by outside invaders.  Things have finally been set right again.  There's really no excuse for Yaichi getting with Ginko instead of Ai.  But there doesn't need to be an excuse anymore because now we have an alternate ending -- '100 Waifus,' where Yaichi and Ai get to be very much in love after all.  Anyone who wants a love story gone right after being disappointed with the published version of events should soothe their souls with '100 Waifus' instead.