Oh yea you were an absolute blast to talk to also. No way was I going to vote for you, even if it might have made more strategic sense to do so, which I'm 100% convinced it would not have.

Hey dudes, I wanna talk you about my boy Shuichi. Because I think he has an interesting story, and uh, I do enjoy stories right.

So I met this guy in Mediators, 2nd tribe right, he and Kirumi swapped in as the green pair. There was also a blue pair of Ibuki and Chihiro, and a pink pair of me and Sonia. Oh man Sonia remember her? Uh anyway so if you go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to the very first challenge, one thing that happened right was the greens and the blues teamed up against us pinks, Chihiro had me in a chokehold for like 30 minutes straight, so when they swapped in together the greens were like "hey blue dudes we had a lot of fun working together and targeting pink tribe let's keep doing that thing." And the blues were like sure whatever. But thing is, both Kirumi and Shuichi were super gamebotty types right, beepboop let's only talk about votes, so they didn't really connect that well with their new blue allies or well anyone else really. (Chihiro and Ibuki can y'know corroborate all this stuff too) Meanwhile Sonia and I are both really liking the blue team, even though they were mean to us, so we got close to them and the blues seemed to like us too.

Our first vote we bumped off Toko. She was one of those new people who didn't have a starting tribe, and her RP was like really weird and people didn't like her much so it was an easy vote. But then next vote, I was thinking Mikan was probably the odd person out, like all the pairs would stick together and she was alone right, but Ibuki came to me like "dude I can't stand these greens". Shuichi had won an individual immunity that round (surprise surprise) and so that meant Kirumi was the target. And I was like wait what this is weird, but Mikan had charmed Sonia and I guess the blues too so Kirumi it was. I hadn't made any progress with either of the greens myself so I was like yeah ok whatever let's vote Kirumi it's fine. And of course we don't tell Shuichi about all this.

So morning after Kirumi vote, some other greens got bumped too and suddenly Shuichi's entire first tribe was gone. I think his plan was to meet back up with them eventually? Anyway he comes to me and he's like "well Hiro my old tribe is dead and like, nobody told me about Kirumi and the blues hate me I guess so uh.... LET'S BE FRIENDS???" And I'm dying because like if this dude is coming to me of all people then clearly he's desperate but I say sure because you don't turn down alliance offers right. And then I tell him, here's how I think everything went down, and I tell him about basically all the above stuff, and he's like "but but" and I say well. Thing is you gotta make connections in these games right, Survivor is a big social experiment, you gotta get people to wanna help you and if all you do is beepboop gamebot then people aren't gonna go outta their way for you right?

And the weird thing is... the dude LISTENED. All the sudden he's telling me about mountain climbing and stuff and I'm like WHOA WHERE WAS THIS SHUICHI ALL THIS TIME? And it wasn't like he ran off and perused some How To Survivor ok, he was actually suddenly a real human being that I wanted to talk to. We got split up pretty soon after that and I was thinking like, this dude is already a challenge beast, now he's suddenly clued into social stuff, is he the total package?? We didn't meet back up until Bronze Tribe (aka best tribe don't even). And you're thinking but Hiro, you weren't on the same tribe? Except Nagito and Shuichi were in a clique and so we could relay messages back and forth there! It was awesome to see the whole clique thing actually get some fun use y'know? So I kinda kept up with him through that, and it seemed like he was still doing a pretty good job with social stuff, I mean his tribe kept going to Trials and he kept living through them right.  I think Sayaka can talk more about this one.

So merge! We finally meet back up at merge, and early merge was a mess, so lemme just talk about a bit later. Ibuki was gone, Hiyoko just did Hiyoko things, Chihiro just medevaced, my 3 best allies all gone in like 48 hours and I'm really depressed. Like I know it's just a game and stuff ok but I get invested in people leave me alone. Anyway who's the dude that comes to me, picks me up, says hey Hiro this thing isn't over, people are thinking you've quit, let's get this game? Shuichi. That's no gamebot, that's a dude helping a friend out. Then I died immediately after haha.

Point of all this is, there's more to Shuichi than just that he's a challenge beast. And look that's a pretty awesome thing too ok, don't take that away from the dude either. But I think he's got a really cool story of growth in this game that I dunno if a lot of people are aware of and he should get credit for. So if he does make it to FTC, this is all just something to keep in mind. Uh. Thanks for reading I guess!  Also yay my thread isn't at the bottom anymore.

man shuichi was 100% gamebot with me, but i kinda got gamebot once we got a bit later into merge so maybe he was just returning the favour.

I second the stuff that Hiro said. I actually thought Shuichi was going to be the weakest link on future cuz he didn't have any friends left from other tribes really, but I adored him so much. He was always honest with me about his vote, he always kept me in the loop with what he was thinking, and overall I genuinely trusted that dude. It's actually going to be a really tough choice for me

I think one of the main proponents of Mikan and Shuichi for me is that a lot of the time we were on opposite sides of the vote, but they were always 100% honest with me about where they were voting and why. Despite the fact that we were on "opposite sides" I absolutely trusted them and never considered pushing them until we were running out of people. I think it's a huge testament to their social game that I wanted to keep them around and work with them despite knowing they would come for me eventually.

Oh no that was true.

I guess I should clarify that it took me awhile to get to know her because she was the only person I hadn't met, so what I said above doesn't really apply to the first few rounds after merge.