Yess Thank You She One Of My Favorite As Well

yess thank you she one of my favorite as well

Why Tenko Chabashira is a Great Character pt. 1: Tenko’s Backstory and PersonalityA

Another essay excerpt because that did better than I expected last time and I'm suprised people actually want to read my stuff.

Tenko Chabashira is an over-hated character in the fandom with people before the game even came out criticizing her and hoping that she died.

Now this is not everyone’s opinion.

I've seen many people praise Tenko, but it’s a widely accepted opinion that she sucks, ranking near the bottom on a lot of people’s tier lists and having people post on every social media platform how much they hate her.

I love Tenko.

She is my favorite character in NDRV3 and right now my favorite character of all time.

With the game already in its eight anniversary I thought, what a better time than ever to fulfill my civic duty as a Tenko fan and explain why she is a great character and doesn’t deserve nearly all the hate she’s gotten.

Backstory

One of the main reasons people hate Tenko is her hatred of men.

I would like to lessen this to dislike because Tenko shows multiple times in the game that she does not hate men and there are also reasons behind her sentiments.

Tenko took her master's teachings very seriously; he was like a father figure to her (which makes sense especially since her parents abandoned her), and she was adamant about mastering neo-aikido.

Tenko is also really gullible.

It's why she believes Himiko can do real magic, so she would believe her master wholeheartedly when he tells her that interactions with men would weaken her.

It's similar to a child being told by their parents that if they are good Santa will give them gifts.

Another factor contributing to Tenko’s dislike of men would be her crime fighting which not only adds to her childlike nature but gives more of a reason to her so-called “man-hating.”

In one of Tenko’s ftes with Shuichi, she says:

“As practitioners of Neo-Aikido, Master and I… are also heroes of justice! Master and I wear masks to disguise ourselves! We serve to save, whether it is day or night! We do everything! Help an old woman carry her belongings… Help a child cross the street…Oh, yeah! I caught a thief the other day! We also punish degenerates who cheat and bring divine justice to gropers on trains. And even help girls who just had tough break-ups!”

Even though those don’t seem like the best reasons to “hate” a whole gender overshadowed by being hurt by men emotionally or physically.

If you think about it, it’s not the worst reason either, Tenko was just a kid and her master filled her head with misconceptions and stereotypes about men.

(In the end, he was just trying to protect but there are many more ways to go about it.)

Of course, Tenko didn’t have to believe it, but by being exposed to bad men on the streets when she and her master were fighting crime, and not having many interactions with good men, you can start to see where she comes from.

She’s just like a kid who never grew out of the boys' cooties phase (with a little more trauma), and as a kid, she wasn’t taught that all men aren’t bad, she wasn’t shown that all men aren’t bad, and she wasn’t exposed to the idea either.

I don’t think we should blame Tenko for something really out of her control.

Children are very impressionable that's why they're easy targets (well them and elderly people).

Their frontal lobes aren't fully developed so they don't think critically plus when your a kid small and vulnerable you tend to look to your parents for safety and guidance.

Imagine yourself in Tenko’s shoes. The man who is basically a father figure to her tells her all these misconceptions about men—and that they will stop her from fully mastering Neo-Aikido, something she has dedicated years to. With her low self-esteem, she likely already believes she isn’t good enough.

(While most of her self-esteem issues seem to be tied to her physical abilities, strength could play a role in that too. )

Wouldn’t that make you dislike them?

Then when he takes her out and she sees the men doing exactly what her master told her that they would do it would not only prove that her masters teachings are true it would solidify that hatred.

Now at the beginning of this section I said that Tenko doesn’t hate men but now I’m saying she does?

I believe Tenko had bad teachings and exposure that made her man hatred reasonable.

I don't think Tenko hates the whole male species as she says she does but if you're a man who hurts women Tenko is going to hate you with a burning passion an important distinction I need to make.

Tenko’s backstory isn’t perfect I’ll admit that but based on how she interacts with men during the game and how she acts overall bad exposure and teachings are a fine reason.

Personality

She’s rather boisterous and is like a ball of energy and can be overbearing to other students especially Himiko since how she acts with other students (not just the boys) is not “normal” per se (but no one in this game is normal) many people chalk it up to her just being annoying.

Still, I would like to add something else that may be a factor in her upbringing which I know I have already discussed.

Still, Tenko grew up in a temple with priests she was sent there when she was very young (there isn’t a specific age but many suspect five to six) so we can assume that she didn’t have a lot of interaction with kids her age (especially boys) with the only time interacting with people probably being people going in the temples for religious purposes or the people she saved while fighting crime.

A person’s upbringing especially if it’s bad or not normal can influence how someone acts just take Maki Harukawa, for example, she grew up in an orphanage and was trained to be an assassin during the game when Shuichi and Kaito are fighting she makes Shuichi watch her teaching Kaito to assemble and disassemble a crossbow so that they can make up, and when Kaito is kidnapped she reverts to the only thing she knows and tries to kill Kokichi.

Or Gonta Gokuhara who was raised in the forest by wolves doing odd things like not wearing shoes, lacking general cultural knowledge, getting suddenly controlled by strong emotions and having trouble with language.

So it makes sense for Tenko to act strangely and lack strong social skills, given her isolation from kids her age when she was young.

Unlike someone who has been interacting with others their entire life, starting from kindergarten, her experiences have been limited.

Or you can just say it’s her lack of understanding social cues and she’s neurodivergent coded.

...

Tenko, while claiming she hates men, gets along fine with them and shows them support. Some of these scenes include:

Joining Kaito’s strategy meeting

Telling Shuichi not to be too hard on himself after Kaede’s death

Yelling at Kokichi when he makes fun of Shuichi without his hat

Promising to avenge Rantaro and Ryoma’s deaths

Complementing Gonta for being calm and reasonable after Kirumi accuses him

Feeling bad after flipping Shuichi over her shoulder and carrying him back to her room

Allowing Shuichi to participate in Aikido with her

Telling Shuichi he needs to gain more confidence in himself.

She is also lovely and caring, volunteering to protect all of the girls, placing herself at risk alongside Kaito and Gonta to save Kaede from her execution, and her friendship with Himiko, in which she tries to help her overcome her emotional suppression, demonstrates her compassion for others.

She is one of the most vocal characters when it comes to opposing the killing game they were imprisoned in, and she is always willing to offer assistance or emotional support.

Tenko has a wonderful personality. Her deep emotional core, supportive persona, and childlike thinking are qualities that I and many others can identify with.

These qualities, in my opinion, dampen the hatred of her "male-hating" mentality in some aspects and make her a charming character.

Tenko's development

While having many ‘annoying/ undesirable’ traits Tenko eventually does have character development.

The main one is her dislike of men. I've already discussed that this dislike doesn’t seem genuine because, since the beginning of the game, she’s been having friendly, kindhearted interactions with men but taking that out of account Tenko does develop from the beginning of the game to her death.

Tenko’s journey reveals layers of her personality, showcasing how bad experiences shape beliefs and attitudes.

And how a good experience can turn it all around for the better even if her transformation is not entirely linear and overshadowed by other major characters (Shuichi Maki and Himiko.)

In her Free Time Events (FTEs) with Shuichi, she is very mean to him.

Nicest thing she says is that he can improve himself through Neo Aikido and become a good man like her master.

However, the interactions in her FTEs specifically with Shuichi amplify her disdain for men making it seem worse than it is in the game.

Despite all this she still she moments of genuine growth realizing that not all men are as bad as the ones her master told her about and the one she saw while crime-fighting through her experiences with Shuichi and the other men in the game she slowly but surely alters her perspective, and the journey leads her to form a friendship--though some would say acquaintanceship--with Shuichi (a man 😱.)

It’s a shift for her from her initial male-hating persona as she learns to accept that not every man is as bad as she was taught to believe by her master.

I could go on but this is getting long so in Part 2 I'll delve deeper into Tenko’s character arc and development in chapter 3.