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givemeanaccountalready · 11 months

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Haruka Sakurai: the Breakdown of a Soggy, Blue Blorbo (1/2)

I really started this post going, “Oh boy, I can’t wait to talk about one of my blorbos,” and I have once again made a new conspiracy board. I swear to you, I just wanted to do a character analysis. Now, I’m certain that something happened during the night of fireworks involving the girl, and that this is how Haruka ‘started’ (more like grabbed and thrown down the first leg of it, at least) down the wrong path.

Night of the Fireworks: Haruka, what happened?

When it was very slow at work, I took the time to play “Weakness” at 0.25x speed to take as many screenshots as I could of the music video to break it down.

The music video opens with Haruka sitting at a vanity, toying with the pendant on his necklace as he looks at his reflection. I know the theory that the younger boy in "Weakness" is actually his younger brother, but I lean towards the idea that the younger boy is Haruka as a child. They look too identical to be brothers. If I had to estimate how old younger Haruka is, I would say between the ages of 10-12. He looks like he's in the last years of elementary school.

Because I can, we're going to call 17 year old Haruka Haruka, and his younger self can be Chibi. I could call him YH for young Haruka, but I like Chibi better.

When Haruka sees Chibi, he falls backwards and we're treated to the first image of Haruka sinking as the first verse begins to play. There's a bit of a cut to Haruka with his knees up to his chest and we can see a child's doodles surround him. We also see the Frankendog and then Chibi with Haruka's mother. Chibi and Mom are walking along, with Chibi smiling and talking while Mom's face is cut out.

If you look closely, it looks like Chibi is trying to hold Mom's hand, but she isn't closing her hand around her son's. She seems to be letting him hang off of her. Since she doesn't have a face, it's hard to tell what she's thinking, and tbh, the dark shadow over her face makes her seem menacing, to me at least. Her posture seems a bit stiff to me, and she's not turning her face like she's involved in the conversation. Chibi just seems to be talking, and his eyes are closed, so he's blind to how involved in this conversation she's in and her emotions, (since we can't see her dang face). But do you know whose eyes are open? Haruka, and he is currently singing asking what went wrong to cause all these changes:

“Tell me, why are you drifting away from me? / Tell me, why do you say it's my fault? / The words I tried to say were "You're unfair," and those words thought how pitiful I am / Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don't change”

Something clearly happened but Haruka (and us) are out of the loop. The next line in the song is when Haruka grabs Chibi by the back of his shirt. For the first time, Chibi isn't smiling as he turns and faces his older self. Haruka responds by shoving Chibi into the puddle. However, Haruka is the one sinking, not Chibi and he watches a memory of Chibi and the Girl in Pink walking hand in hand.

Haruka almost seems wistful when he looks at that memory. Then the screen cuts to him with his hands over his ears while blue and white fireworks appear to be going off in the background while, “The right future chose the wrong me,” plays. Then we see Chibi and Girl are running together, still hand in hand, and Haruka sings, “I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling / I was in denial, I was in denial”. Then, there's a brief cut to Haruka being surrounded by yellow camellias, and then to his hand reaching out to grab the Girl.

I am 85% sure that those are yellow camellias, and not yellow carnations. From what I've seen on Google Images, yellow carnations have a more concentrated color evenly spread out while the yellow camellias seem to become paler yellow/light tanner the farther from center of flower (pistil?). I'm not a botanist, so please correct me. From what I've found online, yellow camellia flowers symbolize longing (for love, to love, to be loved, it doesn't specify beyond the heart wants what it wants). If it was a yellow carnation, I found one definition being that "you disappointed me/rejection" which also fits Haruka's story.

Haruka reaches out for the Girl, and does his chorus routine of throwing his head back and laughing while "AHaHa, please notice me," plays. Then, the light shines on this mf's hands as he admits, "I was wrong / Yes, it was me," and then he wakes up in his bed. I just want you to note that Haruka's hands are clean.

We go on so Haruka can sink to the bottom of the screen while his many childhood drawings are shown and then Frankendog makes his reappearance! Chibi is petting Frankendog while his mother watches. We still can't see Mom's face, but she's crouched down like she's interacting with Chibi and Frankendog, which is better than before. Then, oh no! Frankendog runs away into the dark, scary, red-lit woods with Chibi walking in after him. We see mountains, more yellow camellias, and a blue moon (the moon was grey before).

Now, Chibi is getting nervous. We can't see his eyes, but we can see a little sweat drop of tension on his face, his shoulders are hunched forward, and his arm is grabbing at his shirt front, probably him trying to fiddle with the buttons or pluck at the shirt to let out his nervous energy. Then! We see dog prints! Or maybe a bear's! I'm not a zoologist either. But the important thing is that the scribbly blood is on the ground. Chibi wipes his brow, and that's when he notices that there is scribbly blood on his tiny hands! But whose face do we see react to the bloody hands? Not Chibi since the hair is too long. It's Haruka.

Then we cut to the chorus where Haruka’s bringing a large rock down over his head onto something offscreen and he’s throwing his head back and laughs. We see his clean hands one more time and he wakes up in bed.

We cut to the next scene where everything is his fireworks doodlings on LSD. It’s bright, loud, and there’s just Haruka’s bright blue silhouette staring at us with anguished eyes. Then we see him reach out for his mother (whose back is towards Haruka and us) and she fades from view. Jump cut to Haruka, where a single tear rolls down his cheek and into a pool of water. (It looks like there's a little crown when the water splashes up.) And while all this happens, Haruka sings:

“Even if I keep trying it / It’s broken right away / The things that aren’t here, and the unneeded things / Is it still living somewhere?”

Haruka sinks one more time and watches the memory of him (as Chibi) walking with Mom, and Haruka looks rather ticked off. An open, outstretched hand shoots out from the screen. (There were so many of these throughout the entire video, from when he grabbed Chibi at the beginning to him trying to reach out to the Girl and then Mom.) Haruka catches Chibi again, this time by the throat. And then Haruka proceeds to strangle Chibi. Despite having free hands, Chibi doesn't fight back. His hands are semi-curled like he's going to make a fist, but Chibi doesn't lift them up towards his neck to try and pry himself free. They twitch like Chibi started moving, but his hands don't really go above his hips. It's like he started to fight and then froze up. These lines play during this scene.

"I cried, I screamed / I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling / I was in denial, I was in denial / I just had to make sure / I've become a victim, I've become a victim / My loneliness was desired / I was falling, I was falling down / My life started in the wrong spot"

The chorus finishes up as Haruka throws his head back and laugh, only this time, tears are streaming down his face. Haruka briefly becomes despondent as he admits he was wrong. We're treated to another show of light uncovering his still clean hands. There's a scribbly silhouette underneath him that looks like Chibi and then quickly becomes distorted into something I can't recognize. The song ends on Haruka's tearful smile as he admits, "I was wrong / Yes, it was me" and then it cuts to black.

Now, what's the point of me dragging you through a fricking play-by-play summary? Something happened the night of the fireworks. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. What happened?

I think the Girl is Haruka's sister. Younger sister to be specific, though definitely not more than two years younger than him. Girls tend to be slightly bigger than the boys at 9-12, which would explain why she’s almost the same height as him despite Haruka being not much older than her. I would say that they're probably about a year apart, since she is only slightly smaller than him. Why not twins? Well, because during the second trial written interrogation questions, on Question 4, Haruka wrote down that "It seems like she [his mother] wanted a girl. She had already chosen this name." If they were twins, the girl would have been named Haruka, and Haruka probably would have gotten some generic boy name, or maybe a different, but still feminine name similar to Haruka. If we can take Haruka’s statement at face value, we could say that Haruka’s mom wanted a girl more than a son. If Girl is Haruka’s younger sister, then her wish for a daughter had been fulfilled, but now her daughter doesn’t have the name she had originally wanted to give her. Haruka’s second strike (his first being born a boy).

His mother seems distant to him in the beginning of the music video back when Chibi tries to hold Mom’s hand but she doesn’t really wrap her hand around her son’s. But like I said, Chibi doesn’t seem to notice since his damn eyes are closed. We don’t see Mom with the Girl, which does put a hole in my theory. Perhaps a memory of Mom favoring Girl over Haruka really would have set him off, or perhaps this theory is wrong.

Even if the Girl is Haruka’s little sister, what the hell do you think happened the night of the fireworks? Okay, this is what I think what happened that night:

Chibi (10-12 year old Haruka) and Girl went to a festival or some sort of celebration where fireworks were being set off. Mom gave them special permission to go by themselves so long as they stick together, with the implication that Chibi looks out for his younger sister. Chibi gets distracted by the dog. The kind of dog doesn’t matter (hence the Frankendog), but Chibi does get separated from his sister. Maybe the fireworks scared the dog off? The important thing is that the two kids are now separated, and it’s implied to be Haruka’s fault. Chibi doesn’t seem bothered by losing the dog at first, but what makes him freak out is him realizing that the Girl is gone. Mom will “make that disappointed face again” and he is scared of being in trouble. Chibi has to find her.

Now, the Girl is either dead or hurt when he does find her, and there are two possibly perpetrators: someone unseen (because of the giant hands keep trying to grab the ladies in the video), or Chibi. Whether the Girl did die or was hurt doesn’t matter, what matters is that the damage was done. We see Chibi wipe his brow in relief, and then flinch when he realizes there’s blood on his hands. I think that’s supposed to symbolize Chibi finding the Girl and then realizing she was hurt and that he is responsible (either for losing her, or because he did it). Chibi seems like a normal, happy kid. If he did hurt the Girl, I think it was an accident. We never see Chibi lash out in “Weakness” only Haruka. It is possible that some unknown party was hurting the Girl and Haruka interrupted, leading to him being attacked by the same perpetrator (you do see a weird doodle of some fanged mermaid looking thing a couple of times in the background which could represent the perp). Maybe Chibi had gotten a head injury for interrupting. They have been known to cause a flip in personality (see Phineas Gage) and bad concussions and other severe brain trauma can lead to memory problems and other cognitive issues which could explain why Haruka doesn’t use kanji more advanced than what a grade schooler can use. I’m not a medical doctor either, and assuming he has a head injury is a big leap of faith.

But a head injury bad enough to impair his functioning could explain why others call him crazy (being unable to describe the attacker well or tell a clear version of events) and why Haruka has gaps in his knowledge. Something has happened, even if he can’t remember it and he blames himself. But what’s done is done. It cannot be undone. But Haruka is left to repeat that day over and over because he feels responsible for it.