Himeka's role is sort of like the princess that is watched over by the knights, but I must say that her other, earlier role was seemingly that of Kujou Kazune's love interest. (I know, I know, they're supposed to be "cousins" and she didn't know that Kazune's basically a clone of her dad, but put those aside for a while.) I know that she views Kujou Kazune not in a romantic way but more like in a dad, parent, guardian way: but you can't help but say that the author's desire was to mislead the audience into thinking otherwise so there's a bit of tension between the three of them, and even if you look at it in other angles, that blushing face and the connotation of "person that I like" bit, it's unnatural to link those reactions of hers (before the moment where she revealed what her feelings specifically were: guardian feelings, not really romantic feelings) to simple feelings of love towards a parent. No, really. In other words, while it is quite clever and it got the desired outcome reaction, "Himeka likes Kujou! Wait, really?! So she thinks of him like a father? So that's how it is! Phew! I thought she would be a serious rival for Karin..." and the resulting desired tension(Karin herself seemed suspicious of the goings on between those two before she got to know everything from both sides, about Himeka's specifications and Kazune's secret identity(clone), in spite of those, one has to admit that it ended up looking all unnatural. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that it kind of makes the tension scenes of Himeka's feelings appear more ridiculous than they should be, because her feelings seem more ambiguous than they simply need to be.
So, to give my mind closure and to seam up the contradictory nature of before and after Himeka, (It's like putting bright blue next to vivid red), I'll simply think that Himeka did view Kazune in a romantic way, but after being with Karin, she realized that he's more like a guardian than being an actual potential romantic interest. That'll be the "purple", the "link" between the blue and the red. And before one thinks, " ew, what's with that speculation? They're basically relatives", well, that's what the author implied first, before she cleared it up with " I see him more like a dad or a guardian", and even then it is UNNATURAL for her to immediately say that after all the fuss, "misunderstandings", and tension around the 3 of them.
Himeka's role is sort of like the princess that is watched over by the knights, but I must say that her other, earlier role was seemingly that of Kujou Kazune's love interest. (I know, I know, they're supposed to be "cousins" and she didn't know that Kazune's basically a clone of her dad, but put those aside for a while.) I know that she views Kujou Kazune not in a romantic way but more like in a dad, parent, guardian way: but you can't help but say that the author's desire was to mislead the audience into thinking otherwise so there's a bit of tension between the three of them, and even if you look at it in other angles, that blushing face and the connotation of "person that I like" bit, it's unnatural to link those reactions of hers (before the moment where she revealed what her feelings specifically were: guardian feelings, not really romantic feelings) to simple feelings of love towards a parent. No, really.
In other words, while it is quite clever and it got the desired outcome reaction, "Himeka likes Kujou! Wait, really?! So she thinks of him like a father? So that's how it is! Phew! I thought she would be a serious rival for Karin..." and the resulting desired tension(Karin herself seemed suspicious of the goings on between those two before she got to know everything from both sides, about Himeka's specifications and Kazune's secret identity(clone), in spite of those, one has to admit that it ended up looking all unnatural. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that it kind of makes the tension scenes of Himeka's feelings appear more ridiculous than they should be, because her feelings seem more ambiguous than they simply need to be.
So, to give my mind closure and to seam up the contradictory nature of before and after Himeka,
(It's like putting bright blue next to vivid red),
I'll simply think that Himeka did view Kazune in a romantic way, but after being with Karin, she realized that he's more like a guardian than being an actual potential romantic interest. That'll be the "purple", the "link" between the blue and the red. And before one thinks, " ew, what's with that speculation? They're basically relatives", well, that's what the author implied first, before she cleared it up with " I see him more like a dad or a guardian", and even then it is UNNATURAL for her to immediately say that after all the fuss, "misunderstandings", and tension around the 3 of them.