Glossary

That's a new way to start things off. Upon seeing this face, we have approximately 2 types of Senseis: one group seeks to protect that cheeky smile, while the others want nothing more than to pinch those cheeks in a gentle but, nonetheless firm, way.

Koyuki is, for all intents and purposes, an 'annoying' character by design, given the fact that she's written with many vices and, as a result, is often the target of punishment. Despite this, something about this little gremlin is too charming to be completely irritated with.

This analysis is a long time coming, and conveniently, Koyuki presented the perfect opportunity to deconstruct one of the most popular Blue Archive genres: 'The Dork'. To be clear, this refers to characters who are, in some way, often the butt of jokes and, sometimes, indicated with a facial expression that needs no mentioning at this point.

To kick things off with both our beloved dorks and Koyuki, let's take some time to break down just what about these characters are so fun to see being girlfailures.

Lovable Little Beans

Dorks, as we lovingly refer to a select few students, is an archetype with quite a bit of history to it. What makes these characters interesting is that, conceptually, they're well understood across most regions, given how much they appear from American cartoons to anime in the East.

It goes without saying that dorks are effective at making the audience laugh--there's something about seeing a character being comically dysfunctional that never gets old. Strangely enough, they're simultaneously predictable, in that we know they're set up to metaphorically trip over their own shoelaces, and unpredictable, in that their actions, how they trip over themselves, tends to catch us off guard.

For how much dorks fail, there are key qualities that separate them from being pitiful wrecks, which can be summed up as:

• Ambitious and persistent: oftentimes, the 'dork' has an objective or goal that they constantly pursue--often to their own demise. Despite repeated failures, these characters get right back up like a BoBo doll and try again.

• Ignorant (but not willfully): despite how loaded the word comes off as, ignorance simply refers to one's lack of knowledge/expertise rather than their capacity to learn/understand. As part of the above, dorks tend to dive first into scenarios they are not prepared for.

• Above all, Earnest: Failure can be funny, yet a few wrong turns with a characters design can create an annoying individual who exists to collect pity or 'stupid' characters whose actions harm, not just themselves, but innocent bystanders. Dorks, however, are fools, but have qualities that somehow make us want to cheer for them--or at least not wish for them to actually be harmed.

With that being said, dorks have a long history in character design and stem from/branch off to sub-archetypes.

The 'Teddybear' refer to (usually) males with a very large stature who are simple-minded and less gifted when it comes to intelligence, something that is often used for comedic relief in a similar fashion as the dork. Yet their positive traits always outweigh the negative, as they are kind-hearted and often determined, virtues that everyone can recognize as wholly positive. Above is Raphael of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, an absolute unit of a guy who is among the least intelligent of, not just his teammates, but the entire playable cast. Still, Raphael is admired by most his peers and the audience, leading to these flaws of his being brought up playfully more than anything else.

Moving to more familiar grounds, Aru is essentially the premium dork of Blue Archive. Unlike Raphael, her actual intelligence isn't stated to be low (although we have yet to see her report card). Instead, Aru plays a character that...couldn't be less fitting for her actual personality. As much as she tries to be a villainess, Aru is unable to hurt a fly, mostly because she'd end up with a few fly-swatter indents on her face and a perfectly living buzzing insect (up until Haruka blows up everything around it).

Aru is ultimately one of the most pure-hearted characters in Blue Archive, only falling behind the likes of Mari--her intentions do not include harming anyone else, she's extremely kind to her peers, most notably having been mentioned as stepping up for Haruka as she was being bullied, and although she is quick to dip when an irritated Hina makes her way on the scene, Aru will utlimately seek to do the right thing.

'Gangster Aru' or Mina, if we're using real names, earned such a moniker for very understandable reasons. As far as dorky traits goes, Mina and Aru overlap in many ways, most notably the fact that both seek to appear as hard-boiled. If we were to place Aru and Mina in a room to face-off against a single fly, it's no exaggeration to say that we'd open the door to a victorious insect and two K.O.'d students with fly-swatter indents all over.

Aru puts up a front, but isn't so, err...quirky to actually believe that she's a hard-boiled villainess, as we see some monologuing with Aru that involves her panicking when put in a tough situation. Mina, however...is a few mirrors short of self-reflection. Regardless, Mina is only blissful, while her quirks are simply motivated by her love for L.A. Noire films, as well as president Kisaki.

Koyuki...is very different from both Aru and Mina, something we'll get into after the next part of this analysis.

(Un)Lucky Rabbit

Finally getting to the girl of the hour, we have an interesting case of a character whose first appearance ended up being different from her launch/playable design:

Koyuki, as she appeared in the Bunny C&C event, appears as an energetic girl with a pretty standard casino-bunny look. Although both iterations of Koyuki are great, I personally think this one best represents her character with the bunny motifs, cocktail-waitress attire, as well as her posture and Koyuki being presented with casino currency flowing out of her hat.

Bunnies, of course, have heavy associations with casinos and gambling due to their association with luck. Their association with luck goes back to Chinese symbolism, where the zodiac sign is linked with prosperity, while certain Native American tribes would link the furry forest animals with problem-solving, as rabbits are known for their ability to adapt to various conditions, hence why they are so adept at growing in population. At some point in history, rabbit feet were used as charms for luck, although nowadays, you'll probably only see fake rabbit feet due to the fact that severing animals' limbs for fashion is actually a pretty rude thing to do.

Koyuki, of course, is themed around luck, although that's not to say she is lucky.

Before we can understand how luck serves as a theme for Koyuki, it's important to have an undestanding of Koyuki as a character. As stated by Yuuka in the C&C event, Koyuki is a problem-child who causes mischief and a bit of white-collar crime. Compared to other troublemakers in Kivotos, Koyuki is far less dangerous...mostly because more apt to having her plans foil themselves with only a bit of a small push from C&C.

With that being said, Koyuki is well aware that her antics will land her in trouble with Yuuka and Noa. When we first meet the troublemaker in her bond story, Koyuki notifies Sensei that she could exit her detention cell without much effort, but refuses to do so as she'd be quickly caught and punished. This shows us that Koyuki doesn't act without a plan, but also that, even after various failures, does not regret her choices. Infact, she's been thrown in detention so many times that Seminar doesn't even bother to check for Koyuki's belongings and clean it out after Koyuki is set free--it's essentially become her secondary dorm up until Sensei reports Koyuki to Seminar. One would think this act would frustrate the gremlin--but Koyukkers is built a bit different and sees it as a challenge from Sensei.

Further in, after being told not to mess with Schale's database, Koyuki uses her talents to hack into Sensei's computer, only to be caught in a trap by a waiting Sensei. This moment further clarifies that, while Koyuki is a genius at math and technology and plans out her antics, she doesn't consider smaller parts of her plan, be it attempting to escape via riding on a slow drone in the sights of Karin, a sniper expert, or an adult who is accustomed to dealing with students with various personalities who also happens to live in the very place she's breaking into.

So, why, exactly, does Koyuki have her plans foil so easily when she very well has enough intelligence and planning to be Kivotos' Dr. Doom (hyperbole)? This is actually where things get interesting. Later in their conversation, Koyuki states that she actually doesn't like playing games that require careful planning (i.e. chess), rather, she prefers fast-paced games where difficulty is stacked against the player. This makes sense, as Koyuki's troublesome actions fit that description perfectly, where she does come up with a plan, but goes at it without consideration for every detail, even if failing to do so leads to her defeat.

In a more heartfelt scene with Koyuki, Sensei finds the girl searching for a four-leaf clover, as she explains that she wishes to increase her luck. This is ironic, as four-leaf clovers are rare mutations of the standard three-leaf clover, so you have to be lucky to obtain such luck. Despite what her actions in this scene suggest, Koyuki is actually a very practical individual--however, she chases superstitions and tests her luck simply because doing so makes life entertaining. This is something that I believe applies to us gacha players very well--when we hand pyroxene to Arona, all that's really happening is that a bunch of numbers do their thing to determine if we get the blues or if that rare purple file ends up being the rateup or a rat. We aren't Fate servants with individual luck attributes, hence why we can be luckier or unluckier than what we actually believe ourselves to be, but it's a lot more exciting to think that Arona has it out for us on a given day than it is thinking about the inner workings of the gacha.

Koyuki's unique weapon is named 'Mulli-gun' a pun of the term 'mulligan', which originally refers to a second chance given to golfers after making a very bad shot--a do-over, essentially. This would eventually become a popular perk in shooting games, usually as an ability that returns ammo that has failed to land on a target. This perk is usually luck-based, fitting the major theme of Koyuki's character.

Strangely enough, this gun has a very strange phenomenon going on with it:

A machine gun that has overcome all kinds of hardships together with Koyuki.It changed its color when it was sent for repair once. It is a sturdy gun, just like Koyuki, who does not care about trivial things.

As mentioned in the flavor text, this gun has essentially morphed into an aspect of its owner, to the point where it actually changed pink in color to match the main scheme of Koyuki. This is something that we can infer Koyuki shrugged off, despite how weird such a trait is.

Here we have Koyuki's halo, and while it made me assume she was a Red Winter student before her event, the gear-shape is actually a common symbol for the settings icon on most smart devices/computers. This is where users are able to do such things as make technical changes to various functions of their device, fitting Koyuki's talent with mathematics and tech.

In anything related to math, the 'Chaos Theory' (the name of Koyuki's sub-skill) refers to the unpredictable nature of devices and systems, given that even small mis-steps in coding/mathematical problems can lead to major issues (simplified explanation). This is funny in the context of Koyuki's character as it matches how her plans are usually foiled by one small oversight. Fittingly enough, Koyuki's sub-skill is an RNG skill tied to her RNG EX skill.

Lovable Trouble: What Goes Around Comes Around

For all intents and purposes, Koyuki is annoying. Unlike, say, Aru, Koyuki actually causes a share of trouble and headaches for Seminar and will even actively go against the words of authority figures as Sensei.

Yet it's very hard to want to do more than pinch Koyuki's cheeks until they blush red. As mentioned early on in this analysis, lovable dorks tend to have their good qualities overshadow their bad qualities, but in Koyuki's case, she is intentionally designed to be aggravating. As funny as it sounds, Koyuki is similar to Aru, in that she avoids being outright unlikable as it's simply fun seeing her being a girlfailure. That is to say: we know Koyuki's mischief will payoff against her, be it having Neru practice her juggle combos on Koyuki or having the mischief-maker being tossed in detention for an amount of time that only Noa knows.

Speaking of Noa, the next analysis will be focused on Millenium's secretary, finally giving Yuuka company in this series' glossary.