Menou x Akari

Menou x Akari is the femslash ship between Menou and Akari Tokitō from the The Executioner and Her Way of Life fandom.

Canon
Menou and Akari are destined to know each other. Both of them are from different worlds. And before even knowing each other, both of them dream about the other. Once Akari arrives at Menou's world, she meets her at the balcony of the room she was staying at. Since all the people who arrive in Menou's world are called "lost ones" and should be killed, Menou, a priestess, is the one who has the job of killing the lost ones. Therefore, on her first meeting with Akari, she thinks about her mission.

However, when she does, Menou is shocked to realize Akari has the power to control time. So she reverts time and survives, seemingly not remembering she was killed by Menou. So Menou remains acting towards her as if nothing happened, and decides to escape with her to the old chapel where she lives. At night, Menou calls the archbishop to let her know of the great encounter she had with Akari. And she tells Menou to bring her to the old capital of Garm, where there will be sufficient tools to kill Akari. The next morning, when Menou tells Akari that they should go there, Akari already starts fantasizing about the romantic adventures the two of them can have on the journey, but Menou tells her to focus on their quest. However, in that moment, Akari makes a beautiful confession to Menou about how destiny brought them together, and as she says so, a tear falls from her eye, which deeply shocks Menou.

In the visual novels, this bond of destiny bringing them together no matter what is explained further. Due to Akari's incredibly powerful time-controlling power, she is revealed to be a time traveler. She has been repeating the same time loop over and over again to find a way to save Menou's life, but she can't reveal that fact to Menou herself. Despite the fact Akari is not a villain, she has no problem sparing the rest of the world if they get in the way of saving Menou, because there's nothing more important to her than Menou. As the novel expresses it: "She had said it before. She had thought about it, too. Menou was more important to her than the rest of the world, and she didn’t care if she had to destroy the world if it meant saving Menou’s life, she thought. As for Menou, at first she starts with the firm mission in mind to kill Akari, as her job as priestess orders her. However, as the story progresses as well as Menou's feelings for Akari, she finds herself really getting so attached to Akari that she even starts questioning her own life goal as a priestess.

Fanon
is the most popular ship in the The Executioner and Her Way of Life fandom. This is due to the fact that the entire story revolves around their love. Fans of the ship adore the fact that they are "fated mates", destined to meet no matter in what timeline. Also, they find Akari's devotion to Menou beautiful. In the story, Menou is mostly (as of yet) oblivious to Akari's feelings for her so the fans often joke about this, as well as Menou's contrasting tsundere-like personality, that contrasts with Akari's more upbeat one.

After the release of the first episode of the anime, the story and the two characters' relationship received a wave of homophobic and sexist hateful comments from people who were extremely upset at the fact the boy first introduced, who these people thught was going to be the generic isekai MC, gets killed by Menou. Then, after realizing this is a yuri story, with two female protagonists, the hate was even worse. Fortunately, after this wave of comments, as the show progressed, the fans who stayed loved the show and the positive comments heavily outweighted the hateful ones.