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Ugh, my phone battery is dying so I can't type as much as I want to in response to this till later, but!! Dumping a quick thought wrt (1): "is Allen a Stepford Smiler?" And do you think his smiling, "everything will be alright" deal is part of his trying to act as Mana would or just a general consequence of his original personality + subsequent trauma?

I think you'd have to explain what you mean by Stepford Smiler. I get the reference but I'm not sure how you mean it to apply here.

As far as the second question goes, I think that if you're thinking of anyone's actions in terms like "original personality" then you're never going to get very far.

Does Allen change over the course of his time with Mana? Yes, undeniably. Is there a simple either/or, cause and effect answer to how and why and what the before and after results are? I don't think there is. If any character was to try and deal with the loss of someone dear to them by just emulating aspects of their behavior as a kind of "tribute" then that would be an aspect of their personality and how they individually cope with loss.

I don't think that's what Allen has done on any conscious level, like he's just going through motions to mimic Mana. The aspects of Mana's outlook and approach that seem to have touched Allen most did so in much more fundamental ways. But I think that his behavior and approach to things had already changed long before Mana died. I don't think that he remained the same bratty child who Mana met at the circus right up until Mana's death and then started to copy him after. Identification would have happened by small degrees while he and Mana were together, a bit at a time. If that hadn't been the case, then I don't think Allen's actions upon Mana's death would have been what they were, and I don't think he would continue to hold him so dear after.

If I'm understanding your sense of "Stepford Smiler" here, I don't think it applies to Allen. Allen doesn't smile and pretend everything is okay, or even that everything is going to be okay because his hope and optimism is very different to him having a rose-tinted view on the world-he's had too much life experience to pretend that everything is actually just going to be fine if he smiles about it enough.

Personally, my take is that the smile isn't about acting like everything is/is going to be okay, but it's just Allen's way of keeping his personal pain or discomfort hidden wherever possible. The above anon wasn't wrong about Allen not crying for himself and only for others and in the same way if he wore his own negative emotions on his sleeve that would be self-absorbed and being a burden on others.

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