nene yashiro will always be my favorite manga/anime protagonist because literally no one is doing it like her. she's such a wonderful character. i always love the ones that take a really common stereotype for women or girls and flip it to make it much better and more interesting and nene is one of my favorite examples.. i love that she's so focused on romance but it feels more like a character trait than sexism because she's just so earnest about it. those kinds of emotions are completely congruent with the rest of her character and so it adds to her instead of detracting from her.
but also, she just loves herself so sincerely. she's so well adjusted that the story's conflict comes from her being too normal rather than too weird. she's insecure especially near the beginning but she never seems to be ashamed of the person that she is -- she feels remorse when her actions lead to something bad but she's not riddled with guilt over it; she dislikes her legs and her bust size but she focuses less on it as the series progresses. she develops as a character but her personality barely changes because 1) she's resilient and 2) she loves herself, in every sense of the word. she values who she is now rather than wanting badly to change.
maybe she's not super popular with boys but she has friends and people she's familiar with, she's kind, and friendly: she's just some girl, and the story works so well because she's so normal. she's scared of bugs, she's not very good at school (at least enough that she had to worry about remedial classes), she does foolish things, she's reckless and impulsive. she's only fifteen, and she's not used to this world, so what more would you expect from her? but she manages to survive through everything, she continues trying knowing she's going to die, she believes that everything will be okay as it is because she is stronger than she ever thought she could be. it's less that she changes as a person and more that she recognizes parts of her that she couldn't see before. i love you nene yashiro
