You might have noticed that he isn't wearing his iconic cat ear hat. He also looks exhausted. And his hair is nice and neat.

That's because I wanted to play around more with him being J's younger brother. I'd imagine that her being the leader would put her younger brother under the impression that he needs to be absolutely perfect (or at least, perfect in her eyes) and he puts a lot of effort into being that way (or more APPEARING that way.)

The only reason that all changed was because being "dead" in the snow for so long caused him to become damaged to the point of being defenseless, and pretty close to useless, which meant he'll physically never be able to achieve "greatness" and so he decided to stop trying.

In fact, that's how he bonded with N. It started out with their shared experiences of feeling "useless," and then they started talking more and learning more about each other, and E started to like him a lot.