Hey... I *did* like it. I'm still shocked that she's 14, but hey... weirder things have happened in anime (Wang Lui Mein). It's cute and fluffy and angsty and generally speaking I have no criticism for you. Cute one-shot. 3

I finally get to leave a review! I actually had the chance to read your story earlier, but left my house before I could write what I thought. I used to go through and write what I thought AS I was reading for the first time, but now I usually do two read-throughs, and I don't review until I'm on the second one. I can absorb more about your work that way.

"None of them knew yet what was between her and Kamina!" It seems such a childish thing to say. It shows that, although Yoko seems super mature for her age sometimes, she really is just a fourteen year old little kid.

"It wasn't just that she had been in love with him, but that he, the great Kamina-sama, loved her too." I get what you're saying here, and I LOVE this paragraph and what it makes us think about as readers, what perspective it gives us. The idea that Kamina is so great that even YOKO - the one all the readers think is such a badass hottie - would feel insecure around him and worry that he won't even notice her. THE GREAT KAMINA. It's just so BIG, all of it. However... you've made Yoko sound so young thus far... that when that first sentence about love came, I actually got distracted by it, thinking, "Oh please, can a fourteen year old like that even know what love IS, never mind that Yoko hasn't known him long at all? Would an eighteen year old Kamina be able to love her back, really?"

Maybe I'm just so ridiculously skeptical because fourteen is so far away from me. So is eighteen, even. Even Simon at the end of the series is not as old as I am now. I think of what I know, and what all my friends my age know, and determine that fourteen and eighteen year old characters that are fictional can't possibly know anything. *snort* Well, whatever the case.

She's giggling an awful lot, and I guess I never considered Yoko the type who would "giggle." Ever. Laugh out loud, yes, but "giggling" makes her seem more girly and childish and naive than I ever thought she was. Maybe it's the way you're painting her that's making me so skeptical of her feelings of love and etc.? I always found Yoko so mature, and kept forgetting she was fourteen, but here, all I can think about is how she's such a dumb kid. I wonder if you were doing that on purpose, to draw attention to the before-and-after difference? DID YOKO EVER REALLY GIGGLE? It's been ages since I've watched the first part of the series, and maybe she DID giggle back then, before Kamina kicked it. Dang, now I really want to go find out.

"already fourteen," "kissed a few boys"... it sounds like she's trying to make herself sound so mature, like she BELIEVES she's mature, but then she says things like, "he was a MAN," like it's this huge new concept, and she can't figure out that ten times a kiss from Kamina is Kamina fucking her brains out. Little girl, you're walking around with your under-boob hanging out, you skanky little slut?, and I'm supposed to believe now that you're actually just innocent, and you don't know what you do? Yeah right. You're a mess.

THIS IS A PROBLEM.

Not your writing, mind you, or even your characterization. Yoko herself is a problem, hahaha. I think it's just that I always had a very different idea of who Yoko was and how she worked, and yours is so different that as I try to open my head and make room for this new interpretation, I'm having a series of "DOES NOT COMPUTE" moments. *blink blink*

I think I can understand, though. You didn't make Yoko like Simon, fourteen but everyone thinks he's twelve. You didn't make her too mature for her age, either. You made her exactly her age. Fourteen. The age when average people are getting pretty mature in a lot of ways and they understand a lot of things, but the truth is that they're still just a kid and they don't understand jack shit anywhere near as much as they think they do. With that in mind, I think you've done a good job. I guess in my own head, Yoko was never an "average person/fourteen year old." BUT I CAN ASSUME SHE IS HERE. :P

I like the stars not seeming so far away with Kamina there.

"Their lord and his woman?" BWAHAHA. Oh, Yoko, I don't respect you as a woman at all, if you're going to be like that. You're so strong and badass, so why are you subjugating yourself and objectifying yourself by labeling yourself as nothing but "Kamina's woman?" You're BETTER than Kamina. You lived and learned. The stupid "his woman" thing completely renders inconsequential all the other great things about you in my eyes, because you obviously can't see them in YOUR eyes, or you wouldn't be "his woman." If you can't respect yourself or see yourself as an epic individual, why should I? *shakes head* But that whole bit about how the team would react is cool. It's so realistic to wonder, "What will everyone else think/say?" You do so well developing Yoko in such a short amount of time.

Yoko... doesn't... wear cowboy boots. ESPECIALLY not if you mentioned that her boots unzip. *blink* Yeah, I went to look up what her boots actually look like to be sure. They're maybe inspired by the cowboy look, but they're not at all cowboy boots. Cowboy boots have pointed toes and very little heel, and have never zipped as far as I know. My Mello boots are cowboy boots. Hers are rounded toe, kind of chunky, and look like they have a bigger heel. Herp derp. Yes, I'm anal.

Kittan snoring, LOL.

Okay, now the next section with those four short lines. THAT THERE IS BRILLIANT. YOU ARE BRILLIANT. That was the most perfect thing to do ever, and I love you for it. You didn't waste words of description about a death that we all already knew was coming and that we have heard beaten into the ground already, and in doing so you did even MORE in the way of affecting us than you would have done had you written the most fantastic descriptive paragraph of Kamina's death from Yoko's POV. By eliminating nearly all words, you conveyed that there really ARE no words to describe the horror of the death. You tossed us directly into Yoko's feelings, her state of mind. "Kamina was... Kamina was..." Yes, indeed. GOOD FLIPPING JOB SAYING MORE WITH LESS.

The idea of Yoko spiraling down is potent and scary, since everyone else in Gurren Lagann ever only seems to spiral up.

"It was all so tender and raw inside." That's a durn good visceral sentence. Grah.

"Suddenly, all her dreams of them together seemed pitiful and inconsequential. She had gotten so far ahead of herself, hadn't she." Aha. It's like Kamina's death has forced Yoko to grow the hell up. On one hand, it's kind of sad that it had to happen to her that way, but on the other, at least if Kamina had to die, he died in a way that woke Yoko up and allowed her to eventually become the more realistic and strong woman that she is later in the series.

"Her rifle was worthless if it hadn't saved Kamina." Whoa, big statement. Do you think this is why Yoko eventually gives it up and goes to teach children?

"Her passion seemed to have burned her from the inside until it rolled through her defenses to douse her in a flood of tears." The more I read this sentence, the more I feel like the metaphor doesn't make as much sense as I first thought. Passion here is hot, right, because it "burned her." But then "it" [the passion?] breaks through her defenses and... douses her? Flood? The passion is now like water and not fire? ...The passion is putting itself out? I feel like I almost grasped it but now can't, and I can't decide if it's me or you missing something, bwaha.

THINK THE UNTHINKABLE. OH GOD, I LOVE THAT.

The unbreakable actually breaking, but not in a good, positive way like people like Kamina would have assumed. Man, Kamina was wrong, wrong, just wrong. Poor Yoko.

"She would have chosen ten kisses over piercing the heavens." OH DANG, THAT IS A LOADED ENDING, AND REALLY AWESOME. It says so much.

But we obviously find out later that such is not the case, don't we? Yoko is NOT a woman who would choose ten kisses, or romance, or her own life and happiness over piercing the heavens. She becomes a woman who has decided to leave that all behind, because of what things like Kamina's death and Kittan's death did to her. In the alternate reality, Yoko flips off the TV.

DANG. You did such a good job of showing us the person Yoko was, and of getting us to think about how and why she changes so much throughout the series.

I was super curious to see what you would do with Yoko, because I had no idea what -I- would do with Yoko, and I figured you might do it better anyway. Thanks so much for writing this! It makes me want to try my hand at writing her some day so I can better understand my own views of her. It, uh, might have made sense for me to do that, to discover what I think Yoko is to me first, before I came here and shot a million skeptical things about Yoko's personality at you. In the end, I think we have some very different ideas about who Yoko is as a character. BUT LOL, DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. In the end, you just really force me to THINK and to question all my preconceived notions. That is fantastic.

THIS IS SO MUCH FUN. I LOVE GURREN LAGANN. AND YOU ARE AWESOME.