Answered Question: Fandom’s Reaction to The First Reveal Of Glasses Chiaki (Crossroad)

Question! Don’t remember if you answered this before or if you were even part of the Enstars fandom back then, back the Crossroad event was the one that first revealed Chiaki wears glasses (and showed his meeker personality) right? If you were already in the fandom then, do you happen to remember how fans reacted to that? I imagine it caused quite a bit of chaos (affectionate) among ChiakiPs 😂

Sent in September 2024, answered in June 2025. tweet link of the answer

(i took a long while to respond to this but i finally got the time to do it now!!)

yeah, i was there for it! it was indeed The Event to reveal something so mindblowingly New and Unimagined about chiaki, which is so bizarre to think about now because, wow… past chiaki being meek and wearing glasses all the time is just a completely well-known fact nowadays, thanks to meteor impact.

alright, this requires SO MUCH CONTEXT BEFORE I GET TO THE FANDOM’S REACTION. there are layers to this (kinda)

theories about past chiaki

prior to crossroad’s release, fans had their own theories what sort of person chiaki was pre-3rd year. a lot of it was based on the very little we knew so far, which was:

• kuro mentioning that midori is similar to past chiaki (said right after midori was being meek and scared in front of kuro) (tough guy)
• chiaki mentioning he used to cry a lot when he first started out as a leader (christmas live)
• chiaki mentioning how he struggled so much that at one point, seeing the color red made him sick, and mentioning he used to cry himself to sleep (climax)
• kanata mentioning chiaki saved him and taught him many things (supernova, scroll of the elements), and kanata and chiaki making a promise to each other (christmas live)
• how desolate ryuseitai was back then and how it affected chiaki (wisteria), and chiaki saying he was actually in ryuseitai to benefit off of it (climax)

some of these made people go "WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN…???" but some were Just Enough to make up theories and think up ideas of how past chiaki must’ve been like.

past chiaki fanworks would range in various ways, but i’d say the two main ways were either "how did kanata and chiaki meet" (based on any hints the two spoke of about each other) or "depressed/meek chiaki" (based on the concerning things chiaki has said about his past self).

the former was a lot more focused on illustrating how the two met and how chiaki invited kanata over to ryuseitai, so it wouldn’t necessarily depict chiaki depressed or meek (at most, it would show chiaki cry but that’s about it)… but the latter was ALL about that, so there were some extremely depressing fanworks back in the day of past chiaki having depressing/anxious thoughts, or of him legitimately crying himself to sleep, etc.

there was one theory that wasn’t common, but i was a huge fan of and would hunt down anything that saw the vision, and it’s ryusei green chiaki. this one is obviously Very Fixated on the tough guy hint, where kuro notes midori reminds him of past chiaki, and chiaki immediately tries to change the subject. i was really obsessed with this idea because the depressed/crying chiaki hints gave me life back then, and i was hungry for ryuseitai reminiscence because i Wanted to die by the angst (this is funny in retrospect because when meteor impact finally came out years later i legitimately became emotionally broken by the heaviness of that story LMFAO. be careful what you wish for !)

and there was another past chiaki theory that had already been debunked mid of 2016 when element came out: ex-fine!chiaki. i came into the fandom late 2016, so i wasn’t really here for the craze of this theory nor how it felt to see it get debunked, but it existed (because of eichi calling chiaki by his first name) and it also explored a depressed/unsure chiaki being part of a "justice" unit that doesn’t feel like the real justice he wants. i talk in more detail about eichi/chiaki relationship theories prior to the hospital friends reveal in this ask for anyone curious!!

SO personally, that was my experience back then before crossroad came out. i was consuming any and all depressed past chiaki fanworks i came across, and chiakiP at the time were also very invested in the hints chiaki mentioned about his past self.

and no matter how different people approached it, all these theories and delusions had one thing in common: none of them depicted chiaki with a different appearance in any way, since none of the hints implied that he might’ve looked different.

crossroad event preview

there’s one more important thing to mention before i get to the fandom’s reaction. in 2017, we were hit with insane emotional rollercoasters one after the other. among some of them were setsubun, four beasts of fistfighting, and climax, which were big ones for fans of 1st year characters, but suddenly a month later we finally get a new reminiscence… FOR TRICKSTAR. the sudden resurgence of reminiscence stories made the fandom go wild, wondering if we’re getting any other past stories this year.

then suddenly we get a new character, The Mikejima Madara Himself, and now ryuseitai fans are going insane because THE "FESTIVAL GUY" WAS MENTIONED IN CLIMAX AS AN EX-RYUSEITAI MEMBER. DOES THIS MEAN RYUSEITAI REMINISCENCE IS UPON US SOON!? then wisteria (madara’s introduction story) comes out and REVEALS MORE INSANE SHIT ABOUT PAST RYUSEITAI, PAST CHIAKI AND KANATA, AND THAT MADARA AND KANATA ARE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS???? shit was so wild in 2017!!

personally, i was going even MORE insane about all the theories and possibilities of past ryuseitai after madara came out, like wondering what color madara could’ve been if chiaki was ryusei green. (note that we didn’t learn about ryusei purple until sept 2017 with aquarium) and chiaki being so meek and self-deprecating around madara fueled me to keep up the ryusei green chiaki theory. wisteria also has a scene that makes it sound like madara was the reason ryuseitai fell apart in the past, so THAT was fun to think about too. (note, this ends up being heavy unreliable narration from the characters since meteor impact reveals otherwise). but that was just me, for the fandom they were still mostly like "W-WAIT COULD WE BE NEXT IN LINE FOR A REMINISCENCE STORY…??"

well, lucky for the fandom because 1 month later IT WAS THE CHECKMATE. fans are now going fucking crazyyyyy. people are either dying by checkmate, or starting to list off what other things we could get reminiscence of, like deadmans, the other eccentric’s battles in the war, ryuseitai, etc… particularly ryuseitai, because madara was in checkmate and ryuseitai was mentioned a bit so it was like UMMM…???? ARE WE SOON…???

so by this point, people were expecting more and more reminiscence stories because it seemed like a "pattern". and so, when people waited on july 27th for the next event preview, it was both super hype that it’s yet another reminiscence for the month AND… THE APPEARANCE OF 2ND YEAR KEITO AND IN DEADMANS, NO LESS. THE MEGANE TEMPLE GUY LOOKING ALL LIKE THAT. honestly crossroad keito’s reveal had its own interesting reactions, but i’m not keitoP so it’s sadly very badly documented on my old twitter. all i know is apparently according to my tweets, we had already known a deadmans song was gonna be released with the undead CD by this point (i don’t remember through what, because i can’t find what deadmans song announcement had happened before crossroad event), so that’s why it made sense that we’d get a deadmans reminiscence event.

anyway, crossroad event has been previewed. since the high rarity cards were keito, rei, koga and kuro, people assumed that it’s going to have all the undead and akatsuki members in the story. but that only adds up to 7 cards, and events back then always at least had 8 cards released per event. and back then you HAD to wait for gacha/event release to know all the cards. it wasn’t like how it is now where they just post all the cards of each new content.

so now, there are theories of who the last 3* could be. i don’t remember people’s speculations, but mine at the time were madara, eichi, ritsu, or kanata. madara because he was being inserted in every story back then probably to get him caught up with the other characters + his relations with keito were established by this point. eichi because it’s eichi. ritsu because of rei, and kanata because of the hints in scroll of the elements that keito and kanata had some sort of beef in the past. note how there is 0 chiaki speculation in here, despite how excited and obsessed i was with past chiaki…❤️

things are calm between the preview and the few hours before event story release on july 31st. hinata was the gacha for crossroad, and tetora was a 3* card in it, and i tweeted this at the time: "anyway august just started and a ryuseitai member got a new card, so that silence for half a month was nice while it lasted" (me @ 2017 me: They Don’t Know.) i was just tweeting random shit, posting random screenshots, until…. it was The Day Of The Event.

crossroad event release

as soon as the event started, i opened the event rewards to see who the last 3* was (the usual way people would learn who the 3*s were for an event back then), and i’m just gonna post the tweets at the time because i think they speak for themselves:

and meanwhile, came the flood of everyone’s reactions (including mine):

"HE WAS A NERD?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"

"I CAN’T BELIEVE CHIAKI WAS A MEGANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

the entirety of enstars twitter fucking broke apart, regardless of the language. the whole story was released at once, so everyone was dying for several different reasons. the depressing story, the reveal of how the characters looked back then, their casual outfits, everyone had some reaction to Something in the story.

my first reaction, as well as some others’ first reaction to chiaki’s appearance? Well:

guys. (still relevant to this day btw He He He He…)

there was also a megane chiaki card tweet at the time that got A LOT of RTs and likes saying, "clothes are green! glasses are black! attribute is yellow! feelings are blue! ryusei red! morisawa chiaki!!" WHICH I STILL THINK IS REALLY CLEVER OMG… do they know they predicted meteor impact’s themes for past chiaki /lh

as someone who was insanely obsessed with the idea of ryusei green chiaki, this was CRAZY. THE IDEA THAT ENSTARS WOULD ACTUALLY RELATE CHIAKI TO GREEN IN SOME WAY, EVEN IF IT’S JUST HIS CASUAL OUTFIT??? i was broken. not to mention i fucking LOVE nerd megane characters (enstars initially piqued my interest because of keito being the ultimate megane anime guys trope), so it felt like fate for my favorite character to actually be a megane all along, even if it’s possibly only how he was in the past.

speaking of which, then came in everyone’s theories of what this could mean about chiaki’s eyesight… wait, does this mean current chiaki wears contacts? did he only wear glasses to avoid standing out in the past? IS HE JUST THAT MUCH OF THE NERD TROPE ALL ALONG!? there were memes just as much as there were genuine attempts to figure out what this means for 3rd year chiaki. by this point, stories did make it more clear that chiaki isn’t actually an idiot, but he was still mostly seen as "the idiot hot-blooded hero" by the fandom, so the thought he could actually be The Megane Nerd Trope was mindblowing for the general fan.

checkmate had a megane reveal too, that revealed arashi used to wear glasses… but it did give an explanation of why in the story (she was imitating akiomi), so chiakiP wondered if it’s possible chiaki’s reasoning could be something similar (i.e. purely temporary thing he had done for a very specific reason, rather than because his eyesight’s bad)

meanwhile, fandom was also compiling all reminiscence appearances for characters, and the only one left for the yumenosaki 3rd years at the time was kanata. so there was THAT "HOLY FUCK WE’RE DOOMED" feeling too, knowing this means kanata is FOR SURE going to be the 5* of the ryuseitai reminiscence. i remember trying to predict when ryuseitai reminiscence could happen PURELY through how long ago kanata’s last 5* was LOL.

event story thoughts

translation of chiaki’s scenes in crossroad can be found here, in case re-reading them helps envision the fandom’s reaction back then!

AND THEN, I FINALLY UNLOCKED THE STORY AMIDST MY MINDBLOWN BRAIN AND SHAKINGS HANDS, AND STARTED TO LIVETWEET IT. i tried to get a translation out asap BECAUSE HOOOLY SHIT CHIAKI’S SCENES WERE CRAZY. HE WAS SO MEEK AND SCARED WHILE BEING MADE FUN OF BUT HE WAS STILL TRYING TO BE A HERO!? HE TRIED TO SAVE A TIED-UP EICHI?! THIS IS RELEVANT TO THE CROSSROAD PLOT BECAUSE HE INADVERTENTLY RUINED KEITO’S PLAN BY DOING THIS…!?!? CHIAKI USED TO CALL THE OTHER 3RD YEARS BY "-KUN"!? KURO AND CHIAKI FRIENDSHIP!??!?!? KURO AND CHIAKI WERE THE NERD BEFRIENDS DELINQUENT TROPE!?!?!?

this is the 3rd reminiscence in the same year, so fans were fueled even more that SURELY, SURELY RYUSEITAI IS SOON?! AFTER ALL THESE BUILDING BLOCKS WERE ADDED IN THE SAME YEAR…??

little did we know they had WAAAAY more in mind for us than just that (like, we didn’t even know about how kanata was seen as a living god by his household yet, that was revealed a whole month later. WE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT JIN HAVING RELATIONS TO RYUSEITAI JUST YET EITHER!!!!). little did we know that chiaki wearing glasses wasn’t even a thing of the past. that he actually STILL wears them… and we only found out about THAT part months later in sweet halloween, another insane event for chiaki’s lore!!

but gosh i remember so many fans, me included, feeling both shocked and pleasantly surprised by the story reveal, but also so sad for him because he Did Not Seem Okay. there’s the obvious one where he was mocked on stage, but his last chapter in crossroad gave really worrying signs of someone desperate to be a hero and struggling in an environment that’s constantly against him. so a lot of crossroad chiaki fanworks were either meek glasses chiaki trying his best but clearly scared, or sometimes much more desolate like him being bullied.

meanwhile, him legitimately being A Megane Boy Who Was Made Fun Of made chiaki’s classic "SHUT UP, FOUR EYES" at akiomi in the main story even more ⁉ because wait a second… YOU were a megane too, though?! huh!? (little did we know, we were eventually going to learn that chiaki has a complex about his glasses self and it actually makes perfect sense… 😊)

the theories and meta were FLOOOODINGGGG my twitter TL throughout the event period. sadly i don’t remember much of it anymore, and i can’t find them either, but based on my reaction tweets back then, people were likely linking 2nd year chiaki back to all the hints we got so far (like how chiaki said he got sick of the color red at one point), as well as talking about how far he’s come based on climax, supernova, etc.

but most of all, "oh god, are we really ready for ryuseitai reminiscence???" like okay we knew chiaki was depressed, we knew he cried a lot in the past, but… possible bullying!?!? he was a nerd!? like, it was really shocking but exciting to see the hints we had known thus far come to life in an ACTUAL 2nd year chiaki scene, while still not knowing much about ryuseitai’s reminiscence yet.

it took until gang came out in 2018 for us to find out JUST HOW HORRIBLE HIS SITUATION WAS BACK THEN. HE WAS LEGITIMATELY BULLIED BY RYUSEITAI MEMBERS???? WHAT???? while crossroad does mention that the ryuseitai members weren’t Good Students, it was still mostly fan speculation that he could have been bullied by them. before gang came out, most of us were still under the impression that it’s mostly just the delinquents who looked down on him, not his own unit members…

random tangent about the fandom, but tsumugi’s birthday happened in the middle of the crossroad event, and his birthday somehow broke the servers and it took a WHILE for it to be fixed. i don’t 100% remember anymore what the bugs were, but it was practically impossible to play his birthday campaign and i think the crossroad event too. fans could barely celebrate the poor guy’s birthday. so that was also mixed in as a new historical event for the fandom too LMAO

but yeah, for crossroad chiaki, there were just… SOOOO many fanworks of connecting 2nd year chiaki to his present (3rd year) self, happy with ryuseitai!! getting what he wanted! so much focus on how his "it’ll be okay!" sounded so weak and fearful… so much on how he tried to be a hero no matter how scared he was… the resurgence of theories about eichi and chiaki’s possible relationship (i talk about that here)… some people just straight up feeling so horribly sad about his crossroad scenes that they instead drew nerd chiaki being cute and happy

keep in mind crossroad WAS IN THE SAME YEAR AS CLIMAX, THE RYUSEITAI REPAYMENT FESTIVAL STORY. AND THE SAME YEAR AS ALL THESE OTHER INSANE EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTERS ENSTARS THREW AT THE FANDOM. AND NOT TO MENTION!!! RYUSEITAI 3RD CD WAS JUST AROUND THE CORNER TOO SO IT WAS AN INSANE WEEK FOR A RYUSEITAIP!!

in retrospect, 2017 was truly fucking insane in so many ways omg… like megane chiaki was IN LATE JULY. we still had the rest of the year for whatever else they were planning to throw at us. and god, did they throw A Lot on just ryuseitaiP alone.

to conclude… it was truly a monumental moment. who would’ve fucking thought crossroad would be where chiakiP get to be fed. the fact it still took another 2 years for us to get ryuseitai reminiscence after all those reveals makes it even crazier… they really made us sit on all those random hints and small reveals of past chiaki until we finally got The Story. kanata’s appearance reveal took all the way until meteor impact too, so even though fans knew chiaki was a megane by now, fanworks depicting past chiaki and kanata still had kanata looking the same as he did in his 3rd year. which is interesting, because it means you can actually pinpoint when a past kanata & chiaki fanwork must’ve been drawn based on their appearances alone LOL

this was really long, but i had to break down every layer of what it meant to wake up on july 31st to megane chiaki. genuinely crazy and chaotic and unpredictable. and now i can’t imagine an enstars without megane chiaki, hehe 😊💞 i hope this was a fun read, and i badly hope megane chiaki makes his comeback in !! era eventually, because i just know it would break the fandom all over again… it’s been so long since his last megane card (since 2019…)

thank you for asking, it was so much fun to go down a nostalgia trip and really remind myself how Important that moment was for chiakiP!! if you’re interested in more fandom history, i’m slowly compiling all my answers in the fandom history category ❤️