The thing that I think I find most impressive about Parker's CR with Ishimaru is that, just by virtue of interacting with him, he's managed to advance her character development to a lot of the places she ultimately reaches in Season 5 of the show, when her canon pull point is really early in Season 3. But the thing is, a big part of those seasons was Parker's advancement toward learning to trust people and to have faith in the dynamic of her team, and Ishimaru ended up on a fast track to that because he gets her in ways that people in Leverage canon never did. He makes Parker feel less alone because she's often had the experience that her very quirky viewpoint on things tends to isolate or distance her from the people around her, but more often than not Ishimaru either sees things the exact same way or can understand her logic fairly quickly, so there's still always that reassurance that yes, he gets her, even if he doesn't agree with her outright.
The other thing that's been kind of impressive about the development of their CR is the fact that one of Ishimaru's predominant influences on her has been the idea that she would do pretty much anything for Ishimaru, but there's a fair amount that she won't do because he wouldn't want her to. He's never going to be able to influence her out of the habitual (and sometimes unconscious) stealing; that's just such an ingrained part of her that she literally does it on reflex sometimes. But more and more she'll have these moments where she'll either do something and reflect on it, or have an impulse and stop herself, and it'll occur to her that while her moral code raises absolutely no qualms about it, Ishimaru's would be violated and so she heeds it because what he thinks is important to her. The classic example of that being, if someone threatened a Dangan and her impulse was to haul off and murder somebody for it, she'd stop herself because she'd recognize that while she wants it to happen and maybe it's even completely deserved on the part of the threatened party, it's not what Ishimaru would want and it's no good to fix someone's problems if you just hurt them more in the process of doing it.
But he is her family. As far as she's concerned, there's no difference between a surrogate brother and a blood relation, largely because all of her family members have been surrogate in some capacity or another. And if he were to voice aspirations in Johto above and beyond just keeping all the Dangans safe (which she intends to do anyway), she'd be right there at his side the whole time, because that's what you do.
In canon it takes Parker until the middle of Season 5 before she really comes to terms with her difficulties at trusting people; in Route, Ishimaru is probably the one person for whom she really would jump based on his word alone. Which is kind of a big fucking deal, and understandably so. c:
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The thing that I think I find most impressive about Parker's CR with Ishimaru is that, just by virtue of interacting with him, he's managed to advance her character development to a lot of the places she ultimately reaches in Season 5 of the show, when her canon pull point is really early in Season 3. But the thing is, a big part of those seasons was Parker's advancement toward learning to trust people and to have faith in the dynamic of her team, and Ishimaru ended up on a fast track to that because he gets her in ways that people in Leverage canon never did. He makes Parker feel less alone because she's often had the experience that her very quirky viewpoint on things tends to isolate or distance her from the people around her, but more often than not Ishimaru either sees things the exact same way or can understand her logic fairly quickly, so there's still always that reassurance that yes, he gets her, even if he doesn't agree with her outright.
The other thing that's been kind of impressive about the development of their CR is the fact that one of Ishimaru's predominant influences on her has been the idea that she would do pretty much anything for Ishimaru, but there's a fair amount that she won't do because he wouldn't want her to. He's never going to be able to influence her out of the habitual (and sometimes unconscious) stealing; that's just such an ingrained part of her that she literally does it on reflex sometimes. But more and more she'll have these moments where she'll either do something and reflect on it, or have an impulse and stop herself, and it'll occur to her that while her moral code raises absolutely no qualms about it, Ishimaru's would be violated and so she heeds it because what he thinks is important to her. The classic example of that being, if someone threatened a Dangan and her impulse was to haul off and murder somebody for it, she'd stop herself because she'd recognize that while she wants it to happen and maybe it's even completely deserved on the part of the threatened party, it's not what Ishimaru would want and it's no good to fix someone's problems if you just hurt them more in the process of doing it.
But he is her family. As far as she's concerned, there's no difference between a surrogate brother and a blood relation, largely because all of her family members have been surrogate in some capacity or another. And if he were to voice aspirations in Johto above and beyond just keeping all the Dangans safe (which she intends to do anyway), she'd be right there at his side the whole time, because that's what you do.
In canon it takes Parker until the middle of Season 5 before she really comes to terms with her difficulties at trusting people; in Route, Ishimaru is probably the one person for whom she really would jump based on his word alone. Which is kind of a big fucking deal, and understandably so. c:
tl;dr OH, TOTO, INDEED