Joyce and Walky!

“STOP!”
“What for?”
“Important questions.  Where did the tripod for your giant cannon come from?”
“look i don’t know”

Yeah, Rikk wasn’t the only one sizing Joyce up from the moment they met. And Rumy may’ve missed Joyce’s well-hidden maturity, but there’s no missing where her heart lies– her reaction to Walky’s decision alone made it obvious. Make it her choice to save people or kill them and Joyce will choose compassion every time.

I think an earlier draft had “boyfriend” instead of “commander,” but it wasn’t totally obvious to outsiders that Joyce and Walky were an item, and putting it this way seems more respectful in any case.

Despite her badass status, Rumy’s fighting style and an unchivalrous camera meant she gave the reader a lot of unintentional upskirts, a tradition borrowed from about 9,379 different manga series of the day. Sometimes you literally can’t avoid this, but with Rumy, it was a minor running gag.

I gradually got less comfortable with that gag and retired it for good about a year after this, but I try not to lose too much sleep to self-recrimination. The female fans I’d gone to school with, always an audience I bore in mind with the series, wouldn’t have batted an eye in the early ’00s. Norms shift. My attitude is similar to the ERB guys, talking about some of their old material. “It was funny when we made it. Now it’s not funny. So we don’t do it.”