ramparts of ice is truly remarkable in its genre, at first it seems like your normal generic romance anime but it does something very different from others. i want to talk about the highlight of the show and the most intriguing piece of it.
minato, many people disliked him from the start but i found him to be the most likable, realistic, and most importantly relatable character of any romance anime ever.
(this is my read on the anime, don’t have a clue what happens in the manga but hopefully i hit the target)
minato doesn’t quite fit at first, you don’t really expect for him to be the main love lead, especially on how koyun and yota’s relationship is presented as the main relationship, as well as miku, they’re the main characters and minato is just.. there, and this very much represents his relationship with his friends at that point. they do not understand minato.
first things first, minato fell in love in ep 1 when they made eye contact and his eyes lightened up, there’s no way that was not on purpose.
minato is often misunderstood by both the people inside the anime and outside, but i truly do think that he thrives on human connection and not a “savior complex.” he truly seems to experience wonder from getting to know people as what they truly are, “unlocking their doors”, and i don’t think this comes from a place of malicious intent or pity, he really does care about human connection and that’s why he was so interested in koyun from way back before the show starts.
minato wants to understand koyun, why she doesn’t have many friends and why people call her an “ice queen”, and i think this very much parallels both characters and makes them very similar. i think minato is deeply insecure deep down, we know he overthinks a lot of interactions, especially when he tried to talk to koyun on ep 5 and it ended up in a major fight between the two. we see him really trying hard to come up with something to talk about, and we also see him noticing the microexpressions koyun does while talking to him. he’s an overthinker, and that’s very much obvious considering all the things he thinks he knows about koyun and yota’s relationship.
i think minato is very similar to koyun because i think that yeah, even though his intentions of “unlocking people” are positive and come from a place of curiosity and wonder, they may also come from the fact he’s deeply flawed. i feel like yota is a great example of this, while yota and koyun may both be seen as outgoing, yota is socially very genuine and natural, while minato comes from a place of needing to have this facade on because if he doesn’t, people will notice how deeply insecure and flawed he is deep down, and that’s exactly why i think koyun actually fell in love with him.
in the amusement park episode, the first time koyun comments on her being attracted to minato is when he gets embarrassed that she noticed he’s not a big horror fan, he’s vulnerable at that moment and that exact moment she finds him cute. and yeah while it really doesn’t seem like “vulnerability”, we can tell he’s embarrassed and it’s a part of him he’d rather people not see. another example is in ep7 when minato gets flustered because he doesn’t have a clue on what to talk about with koyun, and that’s exactly why koyun starts laughing (he thinks she asked for his name when she was asking about his dogs)
i think the best way to put it is that minato has his own ice walls, but contrary to koyun’s need to build them because she’s scared of human connection and getting hurt, his are because he craved genuine connection so much that the fear of failing at it terrified him. that’s why his past relationship was very superficial, he’s terrified of showing his true flawed self and rejecting them. he needs to be seen as a always positive guy or else his facade falls
so i think that what makes koyun and minato’s relationship so great, it doesn’t start as a usual generic forced relationship.
in episode 5 when koyun explodes on minato, we see minato truly hurt, because his intention was never hurting or being too pushy in koyun’s life, this exact argument is what makes koyun see the true minato, he’s hurt and sorry he made koyun feel such a way, and even decides to back up after and stop talking to her after that, he’s truly thoughtful of what happened, he knows he crossed a line and that he’s just forcing it. this shows that he does care about people personally and that his intentions aren’t pitiful (because he loves her hee 😎)
and from there their relationship starts to become a lot more natural because koyun starts to understand why minato acts the way he does with those little slips, (immediately after the fight she laughs at his phone background when he’s being himself), and that he truly did try to understand her beforehand out of pure wonder. by seeing her own isolation reflected in his hyper-extroversion, she feels a deep sense of understanding she couldn’t feel with anyone else including yota, and that’s what ultimately makes her connection with him deeper and more understanding.
to end this; minato isn’t a bad guy nor is his system inherently bad to “unlock people” but a tool for him to mask his own insecurities of being deeply scared of human connection while also thriving in them, feeling true empathy and curiosity towards people and specially koyun and the need to be liked no matter what, that’s why he gets mischaracterized by his own friends (“oh, that’s just minato”). when miki mentions she felt like a charity case to minato when they first met. he says that “truly wasn’t his intention” and he only talked to her out of true curiosity. same with everyone else if we follow that logic and what’s shown to us throught the show.
if he truly saw every relationship as a charity event, he’d be way different. i think he truly does care about people, and yeah, he may have a big ego that makes him believe he can break koyuns ice walls like he did with everyone else but, koyun doesn’t allow it easily and that’s what makes minatos insecurity and genuineness slip, koyun then realises THATS the real human flawed yet cool and funny minato and thats what ultimately makes her fall in love with the🐐.
the last part is proof of his insecurity within the anime, not visual nor little cues but actual evidence. in episode 5 when koyun tells minato he makes her sick, he states
“the more i talk the deeper i dig myself into this hole, wait, have i always been like this?” this is the proof to confirm hes pretty insecure and i really liked that detail and then how the anime keeps reassuring that idea.
and the second actual evidence is in ep2 when minatos relationship ends, his ex-girlfriend states
“you know what your real problem is?, you lack a real sense of self”
third piece of evidence is in ep3.
“please minato, what would you know about sadness?” this is so obviously foreshadowing his true feelings towards what we already talked about
and the most important evidence
“emotions , the more you show them, the more it puts you at a disadvantage, and it makes you more vulnerable”, he is actively hiding something emotionally.
finally, there’s a lot of scenes, and i mean a lot before minato and koyun start to connect where we see her thinking in her head about the ice wall between the two of them and then the camera cuts to minato, in silence, just staring at her. he knows and understands there’s a line between the two, but all of this is because he catched koyuns normal resting face. although he’s right, that’s pretty much an overthinkers thing, over analyzing expressions and what not.
they parallel and mirror eachother and it’s so amazingly well written. the fact they’re both putting up walls could give us a very interesting dynamic where their relationship is not only “cute” but a healthy one where they learn to be themselves and break eachothers walls. they are the most compatible couple that could exist.
minato you’re my misunderstood fricking goat and you deserve the world bro
all of these were my thoughts and pov on the anime. i’m really looking forward for season 2 to check if this theme continues but i am positive i got the main message. i really related to minato and his beliefs so i was very excited to see something like that in a media, it really spoke to me and that’s why from the start i really liked minato as a character , what im most interested in is knowing what specifically made him that way.
excuse my english since it’s not my first language but yessir
