ARASHI NARUKAMI INTRO+ANALYSIS THREAD

Tons of people get interested in Enstars for Arashi, but I’ve never seen an intro that covers more than a few superficial traits. She’s a wonderful, compelling, flawed character, so let’s fix that!! First half of the thread has no spoilers.

Starting with some Arashi trivia:
- 2nd year -> 3rd year member of Knights
- has worked as a model since childhood
- member of Track Club; now in Dramatica and Pretty 5 circles
- hobby is shopping
- has a pet cat named Nyanko
- loves hardworking boys and girls

Arashi’s personality is friendly, sociable, compassionate, and a bit frivolous. As a self-proclaimed “big sister” to everyone, she naturally cares for others. A central theme of her character is self-love, and she encourages others to be confident and kind to themselves.

Arashi dislikes “troublesome things” and doesn’t care for working hard, but she admires people who do. She’s generally well-liked, and many younger characters have come to look up to her, while her peers and seniors often rely on her warmth and positivity.

At the same time, Arashi can be very cagey with her own feelings. Though she preaches self-love, she has deep-seated insecurities and can sometimes overcompensate to the point of narcissism. Her friends love her, but she struggles to call attention to her own problems.

Arashi has been a model since childhood, where she met both Izumi and Makoto and was mentored by Akiomi. Though modeling plays into her image issues, she’s very successful. Izumi remains one of her close friends, and she’s also best friends with Mika.

Within Knights, Arashi plays a uniquely supportive role. Knights is a very individualistic unit, and Arashi is no less of an individualist than the rest, but she helps hold them together with her warm, outgoing, caring personality. She teases them a lot, but clearly out of love!!

At times, Arashi is sweet and affectionate to the point that it’s excessive, but it’s always cute. Knights tends to resist her coddling, but Mika accepts it more readily, which makes their friendship especially heartwarming.

Something I love about Arashi is that, though she’s feminine and supportive, she’s never reduced to an emotional labor role and is no less flawed than anyone else. At times she has awful judgement. She withholds her own feelings to an unhealthy degree and can grow resentful.

I take issue with fandom’s portrayal of Arashi as a relationship expert or “therapist.” In Knights, Ritsu’s the one who can usually tell what everyone feels / needs. Arashi is compassionate, but her fears and insecurities lead to poor decision making.

She also has some “gentler” flaws. Arashi can be silly and frivolous. Her teasing can be rude (but very very funny). And she has an obsessive streak--she has an overt crush on Akiomi, going as far as imitating his appearance as a 1st year.

A lot of trans and LGBT fans in general relate to Arashi!! In addition to regularly calling herself a big sister, a maiden, and a woman at heart, Arashi encourages open-mindedness. When it comes to attraction, she’s suggested that gender matters less to her than what’s inside.

For new fans, it’s important to be clear: Arashi was NOT always written sensitively regarding gender, initially embodying the homophobic/transphobic “onee” stereotype. Early stories (2015-2017) use offensive terminology and make her the butt of jokes. Read with caution!

Since then, the writers have stopped using offensive terminology, and they’ve started playing the gender issue VERY straight. Multiple stories explore feelings of discomfort/dysphoria, and some other characters have acknowledged her identity explicitly.

This aspect of her character ties directly into her themes of self-love. It can also parallel another recurring conflict of hers, a general discomfort with strength and her own nature. (I’ll dig more into that in the spoilers half of the thread.)

As a side note, please go seek out her solo song, Jewel Stone. It’s about smiling and loving yourself and also it’s a fuckin bop.

If you want to read more about Arashi, here are stories I recommend for new fans: Bouquet of Desire, School Trip, Star Festival, Beasts, Hansel & Gretel.
If you’re more familiar with Enstars, make sure you’ve read these: Marionette, Checkmate, Requiem

Spoiler-free overview ends here! Content warning for discussions of suicide in the following analysis.

Analyzing Arashi’s character arc is a bit difficult, because more so than with many characters, her arc is still clearly unresolved. By the end of Requiem, she has probably gotten less concrete resolution than any of the four other members of Knights.

This is seemingly by design, though. A major flaw of Arashi’s character is her habit of deferring attention from her own problems and keeping others at a distance. And while Knights cares for and appreciates her, they’ve yet to truly center her problems in an event story.

Over the years, we’ve learned a bit about Arashi’s backstory. In StarFes and Marionette, we learn that her personality has changed a lot. Apparently when she was younger, she was sarcastic, impolite, calculating, and maybe a little scary.

As a 1st year, Arashi’s personality is a bit closer to what we see in the present, including her friendliness, teasing, and feminine way of speaking. But she comes across as MUCH more careless and insincere, staying mostly uninvolved with the drama of Checkmate.

The most significant detail we’ve learned about Arashi’s past is revealed in StarFes. In this story, Leo and Tsukasa spot Arashi standing at the epitaph for students who lost their lives to suicide during the war at Yumenosaki.

At the end of this event, it’s revealed that Arashi knew someone whose name wound up on that epitaph. Here’s what she had to say about it (after Leo was able to coax this out of her in private):

Although later stories barely touch on this detail from Arashi’s backstory, it’s not difficult to see how it informs her character development. Ostensibly this occurred somewhere between Checkmate and the beginning of the following year.

At some point, Arashi becomes more openly concerned with Knights and starts seeing herself as a full (rather than an occasional) member. As Leo later notes, she makes it a much warmer place, and they all start learning to rely on one another.

Arashi’s trauma seems to manifest in part as a desire to make sure her friends are supported, to remain present enough to be there when they need someone. She was able to make Knights a friendlier place through her earnest desire to protect them.

As someone who has experienced pain, Arashi is also especially appreciative of kindness, and she can be easily emotionally moved. It’s always very sweet to see. (These caps are all from Cheval Live.)

But Arashi’s love and desire to take care of the people around her is often countered by a fear of getting TOO close, and an expectation that people will wind up hurting each other. This is touched upon in StarFes.

Arashi’s habit of distancing herself isn't too explicit. On the surface, she seems very clingy and affectionate, even with characters she doesn’t know very well. She spends all of School Trip trying to support Yuzuru, who isn’t a close friend of hers.

It’s only when it comes to sharing and centering her own problems that Arashi seems to hold back. She’ll vent and complain plenty, but ultimately tries to act as though her problems aren’t a big deal. And several stories show her repressing bigger problems.

IMO, Arashi’s dynamic toward romance demonstrates this habit in interesting ways. Arashi is very flirty, but she tends to flirt with others in a lighthearted, unserious way. (Contrast with the Enstars characters who will monologue about their feelings at length.)

The only character she REALLY admits to having feelings for is Akiomi, and she’s pretty over-the-top about it. But she’s also very sincere, and suggests that her feelings toward him stem from a genuine place of wanting to be loved and cared for.

Even so, Akiomi is (obviously) an off-limits choice in romantic prospects. Arashi has deep emotions, and she expresses them openly. But she also has deep emotional needs, and though others might be willing to meet some of them, she doesn’t REALLY let that happen.

Thankfully, other characters recognize this habit of hers, and they want to help her overcome it. Leo touches on it specifically in Requiem.

There’s another internal conflict that Arashi consistently demonstrates. Arashi often expresses discomfort with her own body type, and even her name for how “strong” it sounds. (Her given name means “storm,” while her family name reads like “thunder.”)

Izumi states that she’s disliked her name since before Checkmate, so it’s not new. It would be easy to equate this discomfort with her gender identity issues, claiming that one emerges directly from the other, but I’d rather not oversimplify either.

Arashi seems to have a desire to lessen her impact, to be not only small but also incapable of harm. But others point out that this meekness isn’t exactly in her nature. As much as she holds back, she still “makes waves.”

This desire not to cause harm leads to some bad decision making. The most obvious example of this would be Requiem, where she tries to DISBAND KNIGHTS rather than risk that they’ll hurt each other once again.

On a few more minor occasions, Arashi internalizes her sadness, stress, or discomfort so as not to call attention to them, but acts petty or resentful under pressure. This happens with Tetora in Beasts and Tsukasa in Requiem.

There is other evidence that Arashi struggles with identity and self-image. The fact that she had a major personality change at some point before arriving at Yumenosaki, and the fact that she tried to imitate Akiomi’s appearance, support this idea.

On the subject of identity, I love the detail that Arashi is the youngest child in a very detached family. There’s a sense of earnest naivety that I get from the idea of a loner youngest child who tries desperately to act as the loving big sister with her friends.

Arashi is characterized by a sharp contrast between her idealized self and who she is by nature. Again, I don’t equate this with her gender dysphoria—though they’re likely intertwined in some ways, this ideal standard she can’t reach is not defined by gender.

Arashi talks a lot about self-love, but the goal she struggles with most is self-acceptance. She resents and suppresses traits that don’t match her ideal. But I’m glad that, even in the midst of this, there are still moments where she’s able to love herself authentically.

Arashi shows that learning to love oneself is a process that takes time, and isn’t fully linear. Even if she’s occasionally narcissistic, I think it’s only because she holds onto the moments when genuine self-love is possible, and makes the most of them!!

Before ending this thread, I want to speculate a bit about where Arashi’s arc seems to be heading in Enstars Double Exclamation Point. There are hints so far that she’s struggling, but hopefully those are building up to big developments.

There are hints that Arashi is struggling more with body image. While she used to gleefully treat herself to sweets, she refrains in the Hansel & Gretel story. Poor eating habits are even hinted at in the shaved ice mini game (yes, the shaved ice mini game).

She may be under stress stemming from unresolved emotional issues. In her first idol story, she talks wistfully about Akiomi and her desire for someone to look after her. Requiem earlier suggested that her desire to support others is becoming too much for her.

New stories also seem eager to touch on the topic of gender. Arashi continues to experience frustration over her modeling jobs, which often put her in masculine roles against her own interest.

In the new main story, Aira explains that Knights fans treat Arashi like a “beautiful girl,” but Arashi seems a bit apathetic about it, and says that she doesn’t want to do anything to contradict the feelings of fans who struggle with their own gender.

This may suggest that Arashi is experiencing pressure on both sides to represent herself a certain way. Recent Enstars!! stories have explored the contrast between an idol’s public image and their private feelings, and this might be a problem for Arashi, too.

Overall, several stories suggest that Arashi is struggling a bit. The current escalating drama in Knights revolves around Tsukasa and Leo, but I’m hoping that Arashi gets some attention in the midst of everything. I’m reminded of this exchange from Operetta:

Even Ritsu, the other emotionally distant Knight, now openly recognizes them as a family more readily than Arashi does. The story has left her behind a bit, but I think the writers fully recognize that, and I hope they have plans for her development!!

IN CONCLUSION... Arashi is strong and inspiring, she’s kind, she has a big heart, she has a lot of relatable flaws, and she’s painfully funny. Actually I don’t think I touched enough on how funny she is. Arashi is so so dorky and funny.

Everyone loves Arashi, but she deserves to be loved holistically, not tokenized over one aspect of her character. I hope I gave you a little bit more to appreciate!!