58 and a Half Hours/Minako Underwood
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Personal Info |
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Gender |
Female |
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Birth Date |
April 18, 2002 |
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Physical Age |
14 Years |
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Relationship to Yuu |
Younger Sister |
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Class Seat |
Row 1, Seat E |
Minanko is one of Yuu's younger sisters and one of the three founding members of his harem.
Personality
Minako is an energetic and intelligent young girl who is fond of making symbolic displays to try and make a point, even if she doesn't always think them through. She is, in many ways, the ringleader of Yuu's harem, and is often the first to suggest that they try to add any particular girl. Perhaps it has to do with the way her relationship with Yuu started, but it's almost like she gets off on how many girlfriends he has. She doesn't quite realize it herself, but she does actually like to oogle the other girls.
While she does not quite go so far as being an otaku (collecting merchandise, obsessing over minutiae, etc.) she is an avid anime fan. Her favorite series for years has been Sailor Moon, though it is replaced by Oreimo after a classmate introduces her to it in September 2016. She also likes playing video games with people she knows, and so tends to prefer Nintendo's party type games.
She has a minor dark side; she likes to think of herself as the chessmaster archetype, and will generally try to manipulate people if she thinks her manipulations will end up making them happier, even if they don't realize it in advance. Up to this point, this trait hasn't backfired... so far. Also, she has shown that while she would prefer to avoid collateral damage when it comes to protecting those she loves, she's quite willing to inflict it if that's what it takes.
It should be noted that while no one in her family feels the Westermarck effect at any real strength, it's completely absent in her; her getting off on the taboo aspect of it has entirely to do with breaking a rule she's been told but never felt her whole life.
History
Her earliest memory is from back when her parents were divorcing. Like many very young children, she thought that the whole family was breaking apart, and that neither of her parents loved them anymore. And she remembers Yuu coming into her room and holding her until she stopped crying. And yes, she does find it ever so slightly odd that she remembers this, given that she was three at the time.
She also remembers when she was a little bit older, asking her mother just why people get married; after being told that you marry someone you love, she exclaimed that she wanted to marry Yuu. While her mother laughed it off the way you would any child's naieve statement, Minako was serious, and never let it go. When she reached puberty and began to understand that there was more to romantic love than merely spending lots of time together, she began to flirt constantly with Yuu; squeezing her chest against him a little to hard, offering to flash her panties at him, and so forth. Unfortunately, everybody around her read it as if she'd learned she had something new to tease her brother with and was seeking to make him as uncomfortable as she possibly could.
After learning that Yuu was going out with Valen, she briefly lost all hope of ever winning his heart, before resolving to make one last attempt. When she convinced him to love her as well, she realized she had no interest in taking Yuu away from Valen. Perhaps it was because her first night with Yuu was so focused on sharing him; both with her sister, who was also in love with him, and with her oldest friend who already had a place in his heart, she felt that she wanted to share this feeling she had with everyone she cared about.
From that point on, she has essentially been the ringleader - the person most involved and enthusiastic about expanding Yuu's harem. At one point she described her line of thinking to Yuu as saying is that each of the girls she ropes in can love him in a way that she can't; just like none of them can love him in the way that she does, and that she wants him to experience as much of it as possible.
In order to stick by Yuu's side as much as possible, just before the 2016-2017 school year began, she took a placement test to jump ahead two grades. (Until I post that part of the story, I'll point out that while the decision to take the test comes abruptly, she's following the footsteps of others in her family; her oldest sister graduated high school at 15, and her grandmother graduated at 13.)
Character Conception
When I was originally was making up characters for this story, I knew I wanted to have one overt, unapologetic brocon sister in there. It was a fairly easy to decision to make it the younger sister, given that the other archetype of the doting onee-san seems to fit an older sister better. Some of the inspiration for Minako's personality (the part where she's an unapologetic flirt with the boy she likes, despite how uncomfortable it makes him), and definitely the inspiration for making her hair red, comes from Yuriko Shinonome from the Eiken OVA.
You may be thinking, "Minako Underwood?" As will be mentioned in the short setting description, the in-story reason for the Japanese names, at least in Minako's family, is that her grandmother was adopted by a Japanese/American couple, which led to a smattering of Japanese names being used over the following two generations. The out of character reason is because, while I decided on the family name before I started writing, I asked my wife to name all the characters in Yuu's family. She's kind of an otaku, and for whatever reason, ended up suggesting almost exclusively Japanese names for the maternal side of the family. Yuu's grandmother was going to be adopted anyway, I just had to say that her adoptive parents were Japanese American.