/lit/ - Literature

>>1940969
Hands off of MAI waifu.

>>1733440
The short answer is it gives her an inviolable sense of security, in contrast to the later episodes where her identity and self-sameness begin to unravel.

The more pretentious answer is that the bear suit symbolizes the absurdity of the embodied self. Our fantasy that we are autonomous and discrete egos, buffered and abstracted from the world, is disected again and again throughout the series. Of course the real revelation is that at the though the embodied self may be a myth, it is nevertheless tenacious, and doesn't lose its power simply because it isn't real..