#Hakuri is a tank obviously

[hestzhyen]

Chapter 70 Whelmed Posting

Subdued entry this time, dear void. And I'm back to form with a way-too-long yapfest.

Scans are too potato for me to TL the editor's notes this week, sorry. Might revisit when I can get a clean copy of the JP version.

TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter mentions a very sensitive topic happening in canon (toned down in EN) and I will be talking about it near the end. I'll have another warning reminder for those who'd rather skip that part.

White Purity Mechanics and a GILF(?)

Helloooo handsome.

Wasn't expecting to see this guy yet or get detailed mechanics for how the sword style he founded works in the middle of a fight, but hey, it's fine. I guess. Awkward time for that lore dump but powerscalers will surely be happy. I'm interested in the details myself as a world-building nerd.

Short summary of his name here: Shirakai Itsuo (白廻 逸夫), the master of the White Purity style. 白廻 (shirakai) could be roughly translated as "white game" and 逸夫 (itsuo) could be idle/elusive husband lol. At the very least, shira (白) means "white" so that's most likely where that part of the technique's name came from.

As for the rest of it...

居合白禊流 - read as Iai Byaku Gei Riyuu 居合 (Iai) is obvious, that's the type of move being executed here. We know that Byaku comes from the On reading of 白 [shira, "white"]. What are the last two? 禊 is misogi, a Shinto purification ritual; it also means ritual purification or ablutions in general, and/or "...the Japanese mountain ascetic* practice of ritual purification" (thanks, Wikipedia). 流 [riyuu] is simply "school" of method.

Anyway, Hokazono-sensei hit us in the face with a wall of technical terms for how this school works and I had to admit defeat until someone I trusted translated the yap page for it... dear God. Surely the official release will not mangle anything so I won't have to bother that friend for help with TL notes.

I've been thinking that Chihiro is essentially a DPS guy out of the "holy trinity" (DPS, Support, Tank) for a bit now. He's always been about hitting fast and hard without much room for error on his part if he unexpectedly gets hit in return. Thank you, Shirakai, for proving this dumb pet theory correct. Gotta Go Fast: The Move is all about being the fastest guy in the room because if you hit them first then they can't hit you back, right?

The difficulty of mastery part is pretty standard shounen to me in order to explain why someone can't just teach Chihiro how to use it the normal way. Two 18-year-olds picked up the style on their own fairly easily, so while I know we're supposed to see that as proof of how talented those guys are, it's not really anything special to me as a reader. It's unconventional and hard to use because it needs to be for the story more than anything else.

The real meat of this explanation was how changing the grip of the sword on the fly so quickly is ackshully a metaphor for being able to change your mindset. We are continuing the old vs. new themes with the sword style directly now, since Shirakai was mocked for trying to perfect this impracticably difficult Iai move. But the "new" won out in the end since he got the last laugh over all of his detractors. His distraction-free, flexible quick thinking outdid every traditional master that faced him, or so we can infer.

Shame the second coming of this fight left me wholly unimpressed outside of Iori.

(*If you don't want to look it up, then "ascetic" is similar to "austere" in meaning and is specifically for strict self-denial mostly for religious discipline, but can apply for personal discipline too.)

"Whatever," the Fight and Iori

All I could think of during this scene was the two of them chilling awkwardly as pleasant background music played.

I'm not really sold on this fight, honestly. All I'm thinking right now is "good, now that it's over maybe we can go back to the interesting stuff". The poses were cool and all but the theme just isn't hitting. We flew through the buildup to this confrontation and all we got out it was Chihiro winning again despite us being reminded that he's tired, pushing himself too hard, and that Hiruhiko's coming in much fresher and scarier after killing the master of a style.

Kagurabachi's biggest strength was doing character development, exploring core themes, and having sick fights at the same time. But ever since we took a sudden swing into this Iori subplot I've felt like the author is trying to speed run it as fast as possible.

Everything through chapter 59 was awesome. We took the time to introduce characters, set up plot points, threats, and motives, had spectacle fights to get insight into Chihiro's mindset- all the same great stuff that we'd all come to expect. Then we put all that on the back-burner for something related-but-different that wasn't exactly a welcome surprise.

The author primed us for Seitei War reveals and examining guilt as part of legacy. Then the he snapped our necks 90 degrees to witness this sideshow with geniuses, old vs. new, and another thematic foil to Chihiro. Iori was meant to glue this all together and strongly connect it to the main plot we left behind in chapter 59 but it didn't work. She's just a well-designed narrative device instead of a character and I'm still waiting for this stuff to finish so we can go back to what I thought the main event was.

And yet.

She did her best to save this arc.

I do love Iori. She's defending without killing, doing just enough to disfinger her enemies and get them out of the fight. Thanks to her example, Chihiro is able to choose a path that doesn't necessarily involve killing Hiruhiko to win. Yeah the clown is probably still going to be around (sadly for me), just hopefully in a less carnival side-show capacity and more as a proper enemy. Maybe even an object for redemption...

But this is probably going to be the foundation for Chihiro being able to redeem himself from guilt- choosing when to kill instead of thinking of it as the default option. She showed him the best swordplay comes from stilling the mind and heart to attack the reason the enemy bares their fangs, not necessarily slay them. Killing the reason they hold a sword is as effective as killing them but without all the murder stuff. Staying tuned to see if/when this comes back.

The Warning Section

Skip this if Hiruhiko's backstory reveal is not something you want to see a yap about.

The EN version toned it down but the JP and apparently some other languages are explicit. Let Hakuri protect you if you'd rather not read about a slightly different version of "assault"...

Hakuri buffer image for safety (it's super effective).

Alright. For anyone still here...

The FUCK was that about in Japanese?

In case the EN tones it down (bet they will): in the OG Japanese, the language used is very explicit: 手篭にしようと迫る成人男性を噛み殺した昼彦にとって

手篭め [tegome] is literally "rape/violation" and doesn't have any other connotations than what it says on the tin. So yeah. In canon, Hiruhiko was SA'd at 3 years old.

I'm very sensitive about how backstories involving CSA are used for personal reasons. The way it was used here for Hiruhiko did just about everything wrong, in my opinion. Completely wiped out the goodwill I had towards the author after how Hakuri's backstory was handled during the Rakuzaichi arc.

reinforced the stereotype of being SA'd as a child = deeply damaged/dangerous later in life

same-sex SA reinforced men as predators AND homophobic stereotypes

added with no context or buildup just for the easy shock value and pity points

I'm not okay with this at all. The nicest thing I can say is that it's used to explain the feral, bloodthirsty part of his nature and not the social ineptitude (which is probably a personality quirk and/or related to how he was raised). He's twisted but in a way that leans more towards empowerment through activating his survival instincts. Still not at all appreciated though.

100% of my hatred for this comes from my own struggles I'll admit. To see them reflected this poorly in a series I adore by an author I trusted to handle sensitive topics with care really did a number on me. I expected better from the author than to rely on negative stereotypes for this sort of thing and clearly I was wrong. That's my fault and I know better now.

It's fine to use CSA as part of a character's backstory but it needs to be treated with far more care than it was here.

If this had been applied to Chihiro, Hakuri, Iori, or any of the good guys instead I feel like it would have been fine. To show that even if it happens to you, it doesn't make you a bad person who can't function safely around others.

It also would have been fine if it was to show Hiruhiko's a true survivor that needed some help he probably didn't get afterwards- and that's what led him to be the freak he is. If Hiruhiko isn't dead after this chapter there's still time to get into that aspect, maybe even make a point that proper support makes all the difference in a person's outcomes after that kind of trauma. But even if that is the intent, dropping that sort of event without context is a terrible move.

To compare to other traumatic character backstories... basically, Hiruhiko's debut hint doesn't match up with the traumatic event behind it at all.

Chihiro

Give this boy all the hugs he can tolerate.

We see this early in chapter 2 and it's not really a surprise, since the premise of the story is that Chihiro is walking the bloody road of revenge. Something traumatic clearly happened to Kunishige due to the timeskip to "every morning I wake up with fresh hatred" Chihiro meeting Shiba alone on the train in chapter 1, so we were primed for this sort of thing. Batman origin story and all that.

Char

Protect her at all costs.

Char clued us in early on by appearing as a scruffy orphan in her debut chapter- whatever happened to her was not exactly pleasant. From there we slowly learned how she and her mom were experimented on, then separated forever. The logical flow of meeting her, seeing what happened, then watching Chihiro set her on the path to healing made sense. Thankfully she's going to be OK and she will never, ever have anything bad happen to her again (so help me God).

Hakuri

Someone give him all the love he's never had PLEASE.

I already wrote eight thousand words about how Hakuri's traumatic backstory was portrayed in a very realistic and hard-hitting way. The second thing we learn about him being that he "lost his family" five years ago while he's dripping soda out of his mouth on his lonesome was a good clue as to what happened, even if he and the author buried the lede on exactly how that happened and how bad he had it. He lost their love, twisted and manipulative as it was, and endured literal torture to try and earn it back until Ice Lady's suicide snapped him out of it. I honestly can't praise the writing for this character enough.

Iori

She chose her own path in the end...

Being dropped on us out of nowhere as Samura's daughter that everyone's forgotten about wasn't exactly a welcome surprise. But at least it let us know that she's got some difficult circumstances- which could have been expected since she's the daughter of the current arc boss to beat, but still. Her home was trashed and her dad abandoned her and we probably have more to see now that she's remembered everything. But all the reveals so far have been in line with the kind of trauma we'd expect to see given how she was introduced.

Hiruhiko

"Let's be friends, fellow murderer."

And then there's this guy.

Hakuri's the closest comparison to Hiruhiko in presentation with all the understatement going on. But we spent his intro to chapter 24 getting hints that there's something wrong with him that he wasn't talking about. Then we got context for his suicidal jump immediately afterwards, as well as even more hints that his issues go deeper than we've seen.

Hiruhiko's backstory had no build up to the reveal that he was SA'd as a toddler. We only knew he was a freaky, poorly socialised guy the same age as Chihiro who killed at the age of 3. Making us ask what circumstances would force and enable him to do such a thing was good- that's a decent hook to keep us interested in what his deal is while the immediate stuff is going on. Hokazono did it for all the other characters in this list too.

What flopped was the shocker reveal. That single line of "oh, he was assaulted by an adult man, anyway-" was pathetically delivered if it was meant to be an example of understatement. You cannot drop a heavy and sensitive backstory with no follow up. You cannot have it done by the omniscient narrator to launch into why he's such a battle genius.

The biggest problem really is that it's a convenient explanation more than something to explore like every other character's trauma was. When we got those horrific reveals, time was spent looking at them on the page and showing how it affected them. We saw Chihiro and Char crying and looking despondent, Hakuri internalising a harmful mindset about himself, now we've seen Iori pass out from the burden, waver, and will see more exploration of her difficult past to come.

But Hiruhiko, even if we do revisit this topic for him, got nothing except a long yap about what a genius of combat it made him. Nothing at all about his pain or the ramifications. If we still have more to learn about that incident then good, I fucking hope so. But it'll be too little to late for me. I don't know what I did to deserve the friends who helped pull me out of the tailspin this chapter caused, but I'm incredibly grateful to have them in my life.

So...

Current feelings. Also done after this, promise.

Hokazono-sensei isn't "cooked' or on a downswing, burning out early, deserving of being cancelled, or anything like that. I think we're just finally seeing the signs that he's a mangaka being serialised for the first time.

I still like the manga but I feel kind of isolated in being one of the apparent few that isn't having a good time with the story as it is right now. I've been waiting for the issues I've had with this arc to be resolved for a while but they seem to continue piling up. There will still be celebrations of hype moments and good writing but I'm not so keen on giving the author the benefit of the doubt any more.

I'm probably going to be more critical of the manga from hereon out so I don't mind if you unfollow me, dear void. I'm not above being a little anxious and upset when I see that folks have dropped me, but I also didn't start posting to gain a massive following. The idea was that I'd get my thoughts out there and hope a few folks were interested in what I had to say. That's happened and I don't want to chase validation through interaction numbers.

Right now I'm probably going to dial down the investment until either Hakuri comes back or we finally return to the Samura/Seitei War plotline. I feel like Hokazono tried to rush through this subplot with Iori and Hiruhiko as fast as he could to do just that, but that makes me ask a few questions.

What is the purpose of introducing Iori if we are trying to bumrush her big part of the story? Just to be a narrative tool? She's a contrast/compliment to Chihiro, a plot device, and a convenient excuse to get some fights on screen. But the execution was clumsy. It feels like she doesn't exist as a character herself but as a bundle of concepts to glue this arc's themes together and help the segue back into the main story.

Is this sort of thing going to happen every time the author wants to explore a new theme? Are we going to see Hakuri, Hiyuki, Shiba, Iori, and the rest shoved offscreen to introduce a new character tailor-made to explore things the way the author wants to instead of building on older ones? Hiyuki's a total unknown, why not use her? Why not give Shiba some screen time? I get that there are plans for them later on but frankly my patience has run out.

Are we going to see Chihiro running on fumes forever? Right now it doesn't seem like it matters that he's pushing himself too hard- he still got the better of Hiruhiko in round 2. I'm starting to get annoyed that we are being told Chihiro's exhausted, and sometimes shown it, but all of that goes out the window when it's time for him to look cool. Will this ever pay off in the narrative? If not, it's better to stop bringing it up so we stop thinking about it.

I'm still going to be here. I'm just not going to be glazing everything I like and hoping the things I don't like get better with future context any more. There's clear weaknesses in the writing that I can't overlook any longer. That said, I don't want each entry to become a negative rant, so moderation and objectivity as much as possible will be the name of the game.

Alright. If you got through all of this, thank you. Maybe see you next time if I'm still your cup of tea. If not, no hard feelings. Take care of yourself.