Michel and BB.

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/The Lovers/

BB never actually makes it onscreen in the duration of Gundam 08th MS Team, but she's mentioned enough to infer things about her (And we all know how great I am at reading implications!). In the beginning of the series, Michel, who is comparatively younger than the other soldiers, is grappling with the fact that he misses BB, who is, apparently, the girlfriend he left behind when he came to fight. He writes her letters day and night (Which gets kind of irritating after awhile), informing her of all the events that are transpiring on and off the battlefield. His main objective is to send off these letters, because his fear is that if BB stops getting his letters, she will infer that he's dead. And this is bad, for two reasons. One: he doesn't want her to be sad, blah blah  blah, grief, compassion, wah, cry. Second: (and most obvious, for me at least) he doesn't want her to move on and find a new boyfriend. (There's the archetypal jealous male we all know and love!) Kiki (who in my opinion, though infatuated with Shiro, loves Michel) constantly makes fun of Michel for writing to BB, and she reads one of BB's return letters aloud. This is when she realizes a few things: 1) That Michel really loves BB and vice-versa, and how painful it is for both of them; 2) That she can actually relate to Michel, though the object of her affection (That would be, presumably, Shiro) is right at her finger-tips, she's still as distant to him as Michel is to BB; and 3) She was actually being kind of an asshole in her constant mockings of poor Michel. So then she feels slightly bad, and later, when Michel finds that he can't send his letter, Kiki offers to take it for him to a nearby mail center. (This, of course, is the prequel to a Giant Emotional Display between Kiki, Michel, and Shiro, though the latter is slightly confused -- about, well, everything-- but more about that later.) Michel tells Kiki something along the lines of, "I'm a big whiner, if you haven't noticed, and I'm really scared that BB doesn't realize that I will always love her--and that I'm really serious about our relationship and the prospect of being with her when I return (I.E., her not running off with some other guy just because she assumes that I don't care about her/I'm dead/I don't really love her anyway!)!" And vehemently, Kiki responds--"You have to make her understand!" (Talk about insight. Thanks, Captain Obvious.) And our suspicion that Michel isn't always writing G-rated letters continues to grow. (Helpful Hint #611: writing kinky sex letters to people is NOT a way to prove your undying emotional love, NOR to secure theirs.) But of course, you assume that somewhere in the series, Michel is going to get to go home and be reunited with his beloved BB, whose name he'd grown accustomed to screaming out for no apparent reason. (Cut scene to jail cell, where Angsted Musician Soul Eledore is having a nervous breakdown concerning the prospect of dying too soon to reap the royalties of his hit song, which, I might add, he has to request on the radio himself. Michel realizes that being executed means no more love letters, and that BB will never know what happened to him, and thus will get married to another guy! Horrors!) But of course, this is not so, because at the start of the 12th episode (which is not really in time with the rest of the series and is actually more like a Strange and Bizarre Follow-Up) we see Michel mourning over a picture of a girl -- presumably BB--on her wedding day, with a man --presumably the BB's new husband-- who is tall, dark and handsome, and is, as if the "tall, dark and handsome" weren't clues enough, NOT Michel. So this means, for those of you a little slow to pick up implications, however obvious, that BB in fact DID NOT wait for Michel to return, and went ahead and married Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome Dude. (Making her Mrs. Tall, Dark and Handsome Dude. But of course, we can't all shed our maiden names for easy-to-pronounce surnames like "Smith." Unless, of course, you're neo-feminist like me, and have no intention of shedding your maiden name in the rare event that someone was to marry you). Presumably, Michel has spent all of the time since he got the photo sniveling and whining and contemplating suicide--so Kiki is probably justified in ripping up the picture. That doesn't make Michel whine any less for the time being, but eventually it pays off when his life is suddenly threatened and therefore forgets all about BB--of course, this also means he has to take to writing letters to himself since writing to BB is now out of the question. No doubt he will write himself on how much of a bitch that BB really is.