That is a pretty interesting take on things! How does a character, aligned to such a stereotypical representation of a trope, truly feel about being such? Take the tsundere archetype for example: it has gone from being a fad (back in the louise/shana/taiga/tohsaka rin era of anime) to being a metajoke (with MCs outright calling tsunderes as “tsunderes”) to god-knows-what it is right now. But writers never really take the chance to look into how being assigned that specific archetype represents the character’s motivations.
In a way, Kud’s does. Her stupid english and multiple quirks (wafuu excluded) are well-explained as being part of her social strain. In a way, it also doesn’t, as she still keeps some quirks unexplained. And even if Helios says
That’s pretty bullshit, because the views of the writers do not represent the views of VisualArt’s as a business. Perhaps they designed a mini-moe trope to begin with, but Chika Shirokiri went above-and-beyond, and went in to explain how being like that really affects her as a person.
That’s one thing that I like about the romance: it is, without a doubt, innocent. Kud is a pretty clingy girlfriend, and, considering the background of her “love at first sight” with Riki, it gives context as to why she was always so eager to invite him to hang out with her. She’s aggressive with the way she expresses her fondness for Riki but, at the same time, she isn’t forceful about it. It’s a kind of fondness that we don’t see from most characters in this medium. Most other “anime girls” would be shy and sweet about it (which the fans go crazy over), or aggressive but in denial about it (which the fans also go crazy over…?) or just outright tells them to come along (a la Tomoyo and Kurugaya).
It’s a unique perspective and it would have worked really well… It’s just that there were about 2-3 scenes too many after they already made that point clear that it personally got tiring to read
but one thing is true, continuing from both @EisenKoubu and @Naoki_Saten ‘s thoughts: Kud’s route is all about identity and all about connection. This entire route journals kud’s own discovery of her own identity, through her trials and tribulations. She learns that, at the end of the day, as long as she can find what is important to her, that will become her identity, and she doesn’t need to follow others’ identities. This identity itself is shaped by her connections: Riki helps her realize this, as does her roommate, no matter who she ends up staying with.
I’ve recently finished the additional scenes post-refrain and I have to say, it does make things much more impressive in this regard:
Before Refrain, when Riki chooses for her, she needs to sacrifice herself, and realize that that is wrong in order to find her own identity. Now that you let her choose for herself, there is a different spin on this! She makes the decision to abandon her family, throwing away her regrets. But Riki makes her realize that she should not do that. That she should accept her family as her identity, no matter what may have happened in the past, and continue striving to be her own gear in her own way. The problem does not change, but the solution does, and I know I did say that if she ends up staying, she’ll end up blaming herself to the point of no return; but Riki finds a way to help her overcome that, and it’s just beautiful.
This ending changes the route from a good one to a very good one, in my eyes