Sackett wrote: ↑Wed May 02, 2018 11:47 pm
Okay, let's look at the possibilities here:
Excellent post, that's the sort of let's-consider-all-the-alternatives thinking I tend to try to push (despite it usually just making me annoying
) So please consider the following as minor nits not intended to diminish the thumbs-up I am feeling towards it.
Scenario 1: The man is one of Junko's clients, one that she actually likes, and he is fooled by Ping and thinks this really is Junko.
Scenario 2: The man is one of Junko's clients, one that she actually likes, and he is not fooled by Ping, but thinks this is girl is interesting and so decides to play along.
The above scenarios are the only ones that are only dependent on information we already have.
Technically we don't yet have explicit confirmation he's a client. In 1507, Junko says "stupid lover"
before she reads the notification.
She refers to the plan to "get together" which is ambiguous enough to include either an enjo kosai session or a completely platonic meeting for other (legitimate) purposes. In 1508 Ping asks if she is meeting a "stupid lover"; Junko responds only "He's not stupid." This could apply to either him indeed being a client, and Junko is correcting the "stupid" part;
or it could unpack to "[He's not a client either, but I don't really care about that part relative to assuring you that] He's not stupid." That does assume that Junko doesn't particularly care who Ping thinks her clients are, but that doesn't seem like too big a stretch. (She did freak out when
Largo found out, but that was more because of his
official capacity as sensei to potentially get her in trouble.)
Why would Junko just happen to be "dating" Ping's lead developer.
If I may be allowed to substitute the (hypothesis-neutral
) phrase 'meeting with' for 'dating', then, for my money, this is pretty much the main point why I suspect this is
not an enjo kosai client, and whatever meetings he and Junko have had so far have
not been dating. Yes, that does require assuming he knows something about Ping (how much is yet to be determined). But the alternative is assuming he is oblivious enough that a much, er, fuller-figured girl than Junko, sporting earblades and one of the freakiest cases of heterochromia on record (they are literally changing intensity if not color from panel to panel
) is passing as Junko for him, so oblivious that Largo could have shown up sporting one of Yanagisawa's mops on his head and passed equally well for Junko. If he does recognize Ping in any capacity, then her presence is certainly "an unexpected surprise", but
not one that has passed undetected.
Under that assumption (he knows something about Ping), then under the EK hypothesis, Junko has this client that she's meeting now (for reasons that have nothing to do with Ping) AND he happens to know something about Ping (unrelated to his dating Junko). Under the not-EK hypothesis, him knowing something about Ping is the
reason Junko wants to meet with him in the first place; there's no "coincidence", and only one thing to explain (not 2 independent ones). (I said in my first post that my guess is Junko is trying to find out more about Ping, has posted inquiries about this in some form (forum?
) or other, and this guy has responded to those inquiries, hopefully as an anti-Ed rather than Yet Another Ed
. But one could imagine a variety of scenarios that map roughly to the same end results, I don't think speculation on the specific details is worth too much just yet.)
And if she was, why would she not have said something to Ping about it earlier?
"I have been increasingly curious about you since meeting you, and in particular since finding out you're a
robot. I would really like to learn more about your origin and design but realize this could end up posing big problems for you depending on what I find out. Oh but I'm not like my mom and still do want to be friends with you."
Junko might be a bit hesitant to reveal all this just yet (if ever), just as if she were planning on digging through someone's medical records (even if she thought she had the best intentions and at least some kind of justification) she might not want to announce that openly at first. Presumably if she finds out something negative about Ping she can keep it under wraps, or if something positive she can then choose to share it with Ping.
Is that what Junko would do? Can't claim for sure of course. She does seem to enjoy her role as class president, but she has been shown to be a bit selective in enforcing it. (She went along with the other girls when they
insisted on confronting Ping, but more to try to keep those girls from getting too out of hand. She was much more
relaxed about it when it was just Ping and her without the other girls around.) So it seems plausible to me, not obviously in contradiction with what we've seen of her so far.