Akimafu

Akimafu is the het ship between Akito Shinonome and Mafuyu Asahina from the Project SEKAI fandom.

Canon
Mafuyu is a second-year high school student at Miyamasuzaka Girls' Academy, while Akito attends Kamiyama High School as a first-year student. They both have a habit of hiding their true selves under a mask, although Akito does it to a lesser degree and his case is not as severe as Mafuyu's, who keeps up a fake personality in front of her peers, classmates and parents.

Akito and Mafuyu do not have many interactions together. They first meet during Ena's first side story for the "Distant Summer Festival" card. Mafuyu runs into Mizuki, Akito and Ena hanging out. Mafuyu greets Mizuki and Ena apathetically, before she notices Akito with them, and introduces herself to him after switching to her honor student personality. Akito also puts his "good guy" mask on and introduces himself, before asking if she's from Ena's group and mentions he hoped things are going well between them. Suddenly Akito gasps and hides behind Mizuki but then insists nothing is wrong. It is then shown that Mafuyu and Akito were standing in the way of a person taking their dog out. Mafuyu decides to interact with the dog, which flees from her, and she apologizes saying the dog probably doesn't like being touched. The owner says he [the dog] usually loves meeting new people, and Ena emphatetically mutters how animals must sense that Mafuyu's just hiding her true self. The owner walks away and Mafuyu also mentions needing to leave. Ena shrugs her off, telling they'll meet on Nightcord later, and Akito apologizes in her stead.

Their first meeting in an event story happens during the "What lies behind. What lies ahead." event as Niigo members coincidentally run into Vivid BAD SQUAD after exiting the family restaurant, but they do not exchange any words other than introducing themselves. They later interact in the 2nd anniversary event, "At This Festival Tinged With Twilight". When Emu gets injured before their show, Mafuyu, Rui and Akito take her to the first aid tent. Akito sighs how they can't use the tent's equipment, before being surprised by Mafuyu offering to try and treat Emu's injury, also pointing out how the volunteers like her are allowed to use the equipment when the situation calls for it. While he watches Mafuyu and Emu search for the first aid kit, Akito ponders how he thinks he's seen Mafuyu before, and that she is possibly in the same music circle as Ena. He then says it looks like they can depend and trust Mafuyu to do first aid. Later, while Mafuyu watches Vivid BAD SQUAD perform, Akito starts showing off his skills. Mafuyu thinks his singing voice so powerful to the point where it's hurting her ears, before her expression changes to a sad one as she realizes how passionate he and the other Vivid BAD SQUAD members are when compared to her, the hazy feeling in her chest spreading again.

Fanon
Akimafu is a rarepair in the fandom. It is mostly rivaled by Akito and Mafuyu's most popular ships, AkiToya and Kanamafu respectively.

The ship gained a bit of notoriety, especially in the Western Twitter fandom, due to an Akimafu fanfiction (that was eventually deleted) on AO3 which featured the two very badly out of character. A sentence that particularly became a meme from the fic was Akito saying "Come here, Mafuyu-chan" as a reply to Mafuyu's "I want to hug you Akito-kun." However the meme eventually died off, mostly due to roleplaying accounts on Twitter spamming the meme to death, and many people are now expressing their disappointment and/or shock about people trying to keep it alive.

At the same time there are also people who genuinely enjoy the ship and their possible dynamic but have had not the opportunity to properly express or show it due to being afraid of getting dunked on about it, or having people claim they only got into it because of the meme. Many have also not been able to talk about the ship without somebody immediately mentioning the meme.

Fandom

 * FAN FICTION


 * FAN ART


 * TWITTER


 * TIKTOK

Trivia

 * They are both skilled at sports.
 * They have a height difference of 14 cm, with Akito being 176 cm, and Mafuyu being 162 cm tall.
 * Some of their Cheerful Carnival Team names is "Two-Face" and "Inner & Outer Selves".