Thread:Shanethefilmmaker/@comment-397235-20140829052131/@comment-397235-20140831011553

Holly wouldn't be the first to laugh at Kirk, but she would be the first to tell him perhaps he should stop letting other people make decisions for him, since he's not a toy. The girls and Nolan aren't being malicious, they're trying to help him, but their methods aren't necessarily the best. Granted, the whole "be yourself" thing is a cliche, but cliches come into being for a reason.

As for Mei, the only person she's really assertive with is Kouichi, which is part of why those two have chemistry: they act differently around each other. Part of Holly's development as a character is her willingness to eventually stand up to people. She'll stand up to her mother by the end of the first year, tells an extremely impotently angry Isabel to shut up, and by their senior year even tells Kirk no when in the interests of looking out for her tries to persuade her not to do something.

The thing I've always liked about Mei, and it's present to varying degrees in everything, is she's a fiercely protective person, but the people she loves are such a small group it's not often evident. There's the obvious bits with Misaki, but her attempts to kill Reiko are motivated at least in part by a desire to protect Kouichi from that memory; she attacks Takeru in the film for more immediate concerns about his well being (this occurs here too, and Lincoln's angry retaliation nearly prompts Kirk to kill him).

This group of people Holly cares about expands as things progress, from at first being just Kirk, then Amy, then their immediate friends, to Sarah Martin, to the members of Class 319 during their senior year (Holly takes a job as a teacher's assistant in the class to spot the Extra, directly connecting her to the class and royally pissing off Kirk). I do something very sadistic to her because of this, by forcing her to chose between someone she loves and the rest of her class. It's one of the plot points I'm rather proud of...