Talk:Laura Sakuraba/@comment-32812011-20170925131802/@comment-26426093-20171011080450

Jeez, and here I thought this argument was supposed to be long dead and done by now.

One thing I need to clear up about both Yume and Laura is that the two of them had literally no idea how things were going to turn out at all. For Yume, all of a sudden she had this mysterious power that could have potentially ruined her career forever. For Laura, it's just as other users here stated: she had been training herself since birth-only for someone else to waltz in and take all the glory from her, not just once but multiple times.

The most important point that I should point out here however, is that both girls had zero knowledge of why they were trapped in their respective situations. In Yume's case, this can be easily chalked down to Hikaru's lioness-throws cubs down the cliff approach and "coughs" Hime's utter reluctance in not defying Hikaru's orders and guiding Yume through her ordeal much earlier. And we all know what happened by the time Hime finally decided to act: Yume got PTSD, Koharu left FSA, and a whole lot of other shittake mushrooms went down. So yeah, thanks a lot, Hime.

Laura's case, however, was more of a inner problem. As stated, one of Laura's main weaknesses in Season 1 was her aristocratic pride and reluctance to swallow any sort of defeat. It didn't help either that she was completely out of the loop when it came to the entire rainbow power situation; not to mention that she had to find out the hard way the positions of the giant and underdog were swapped-with her getting the underdog label. Even for someone as snobbish as her at that time, Laura's self-esteem had dropped to the point where Yume was seen as the villain. Yume, of all people.

Hence, the entire situation can be chalked up this way: Yume was hated primarily because she was unfairly labelled as a Mary Sue who stole glory from the rival when in reality she should had been the underdog we all had to root for, whereas for  Laura, it was the opposite for her. Both characters had their own faults, but in the end it was the result of external factors like rainbow power and Hikaru/Hime being total dunces that caused a rift to happen between those two.

In short, hating Yume is not the answer. Nor is hating Laura. Those two had gone through a lot in Season 1 to get where they are today, and it's better to appreciate their efforts rather than just rage on and on about how one of each other was unfairly treated and so on, etc.