do you ever come across a fictional character that is just… so your type that it physically hurts that they don’t exist?
that’s cheng xiaoshi for me. i am 10,000% positive that if i met that man irl, i would be head over heels. taller, cute smile, dark hair and dark eyes. super kind and sweet. empathetic, a bit selfless and cares deeply for his friends. effortlessly goofy. and even though he’s a bit immature, he can be serious when he knows he needs to be.
of all of the fictional characters i’ve found attractive, cheng xiaoshi is the one that i know FOR A FACT i would date irl. my heart hurts knowing he doesn’t exist😭
So I got fleur’s skin and it’s a little sad. In a nutshell, he’s on the quest to bake the bread from his memories because it was made by this old lady who accepted him when everyone else in undercity 38 rejected him because of his charms.
He always hid at her place and when he was eventually forced to move out of undercity 38, he never got to say goodbye to her. Fast forward to now, he finally found the perfect method to make the bread that grandma Thora used to make because the Navigator bakes like an old lady afjafjajfafks
Coincidentally, because they were baking in a legit bakery, an illumina soldier comes in and asks for bread because it smells like the one grandma thora used to make. From there we find out that she passed away while fleur was gone and wished that he visited her again.
Over come with grief and a new determination, fleur makes a new dream (next to mecha dream) to set up a bakery in undercity 38 to give bread to the people who needs it like he did, and to honor her memories
esp how they emphasized each allied member's motivation in toppling the first affiliate (and ultimately, the workers)
it seemed like a lazy move to reuse panels to fill the episode, but it gave them a more solid and realistic drive for joining allied and fulfilling their mission rather than just fighting for 10+ chapters just for the heck of it...
episode 451 gave us flashbacks and backstories that flesh out their characters:
hudson - taesoo ma's acknowledgment
jay - his friendship with big daniel (my fave part of the episode ❣️)