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cenvast · 16 days

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Kabru/Toshiro: A DunMeshi Ship Analysis

Kabshiro has been gaining more traction recently, so I'd like to dive into their canon dynamic and how a relationship between them could progress and benefit them both in the long run!

In my opinion, the main draws of this ship are:

Communication: Kabru's ability and willingness to identify and engage with Toshiro's true feelings and motives, Toshiro's consequential willingness to express himself to Kabru, and vice versa

Trust: The almost immediate trust they place in each other, despite their reservations

Canon Friendship: How naturally yet rapidly their canonical friendship develops, especially considering their characters (read as: their intimacy issues)

Growth: The potential for a) Toshiro to grow as a person by trying to be more expressive and caring towards someone who cares for him and b) Kabru to experience reciprocal effort and care from someone else when he's used to caring for everyone else

Bonus: I love to see queer men of color in love <3

1. Communication

Kabru is the character with the fastest and most accurate read on Toshiro's feelings and motives. This means little on its own, considering Kabru's skill is assessing people and giving them what they want as a means to his own ends. Initially, Kabru engages with Toshiro essentially to reach Laios. He hears Toshiro's retainers discuss Toshiro's love for "that girl from the North" and recognizes that if he offers to help Toshiro rescue Falin, he can get to Laios. As he does with most people, Kabru identifies Toshiro's goals and uses this knowledge to propel himself towards his own goals.

During Laios and Toshiro's conflict over ancient magic, Kabru again steps in. He de-escalates a situation where Toshiro quite literally has his tachi against Laios' neck by acknowledging Toshiro's concerns regarding ancient magic and reminding him of his actual priority: Falin. While his dialogue sounds harsh, Kabru still validates Toshiro's worries. His acknowledgement and engagement with Toshiro's actual feelings isn't something that Toshiro often experiences. In part, this is because Toshiro doesn't express himself, but we'll get into this more later.

From Kabru's perspective, reading and responding to Toshiro effectively is reflective of his usual habits and strengths. But their respective reactions to Kabru's de-escalation exchange remain notable. Toshiro tells Kabru to not finish his statement — the first glimmer we receive into Toshiro openly expressing himself to Kabru at a greater level than he does with other characters. Kabru immediately switches to looking relieved and sympathetic. He apologizes to and comforts Toshiro, establishing a foundation of genuine care and consideration between them.

2. Trust

After they leave the Dungeon following the first Faligon fight, Toshiro asks Kabru to go with him to the governor's house. Despite their only recent acquaintance, Toshiro expresses a need he has to Kabru, even if it's not a very personal one, and he trusts Kabru enough to rely on him in a high-stakes situation. (As a sidenote, Kabru telling Toshiro to "Please get some rest" is a sweet moment, considering both of their fraught relationships with self-care.)

Kabru trusts Toshiro in return. We as the readers don't learn about Kabru's backstory and how it drives his actions because he tells his own party or Laios. We learn about his past because he tells Toshiro.

Kabru addresses Toshiro by name before he recounts the death of his family and his haunting questions surrounding it. When he turns back to face Toshiro, he looks visibly determined and quietly enraged at the injustices he's experienced in his life for the first time during the narrative. Kabru does share his story to convince Toshiro of his position, but his straightforward, vulnerable delivery of his story and the emotions he has surrounding it speaks volumes towards the trust he has in Toshiro. He believes Toshiro will see him and stand by him.

Also, prior to Kabru sharing his backstory, Toshiro questions his motives multiple times. While Toshiro also questions Laios' actions, Toshiro feels comfortable enough to communicate with Kabru even when they might disagree and he isn't under duress.

Within the first few days of knowing each other, Kabru has witnessed Toshiro at some of his lowest points: passing out due to hunger and sleep deprivation and fighting Laios. Because Kabru has already seen him at his lowest and hasn't treated him worse because of it, Toshiro seems more comfortable engaging with Kabru than with many other characters. Toshiro's attempt to throw the companion bell away is a funny moment, but it also demonstrates how he's fine with acting impulsively in front of Kabru; he doesn't hold back as much as usual. He's likely also realized that Kabru can see past his reserved front.

After they speak to the Canaries, Kabru asks Toshiro to help him seal the Dungeon. Although Toshiro had originally planned to go back to Wa, he agrees to help Kabru. Compared to their initial meeting where Kabru was only using Toshiro to get to Laios, Kabru seems to genuinely want Toshiro and Namari on his side, telling them, "I'm counting on you." Both his request for Toshiro's help and his easy agreement demonstrate a surprising level of trust for how long they've known each other.

3. Canon Friendship

Neither Kabru nor Toshiro regularly open up to the people in their lives. We get the heart-to-heart between Toshiro and Laios after their fight, but other than that, Kabru and Toshiro are not very emotionally open even with people they've known since childhood like Rin and Hien. Kabru maintains his charismatic facade around Rin, and Toshiro has distanced himself from Hien in their adulthood. Because both of them struggle with being vulnerable, their friendship becomes close interestingly fast.

Beyond feeling comfortable around each other for the previously stated reasons, I'd suggest that the ease they feel around each other partially arises from their shared identity as Asian men and immigrants to the Island (Note: I read Kabru as South Asian). As a queer Asian man myself, there's sometimes an immediate sense of ease between people whose identities and experiences overlap.

Before they ever meet, Kabru explains Toshiro's background to his party. He opens with Toshiro's outsider status, drawing the reader's attention to the parallel between Toshiro being an outsider in his household and Kabru being an outsider as a tallman who was raised by elves. In this scene, Toshiro is also the only member of the Touden party whose motives Kabru ponders aloud. With Laios and Falin, Kabru simply declares them "not good people." Considering Kabru is intrigued by people he doesn't immediately understand, it's not difficult to assume that though Kabru approached Toshiro because of Laios, he was also interested in Toshiro as an individual.

After they join forces, Kabru and Toshiro frequently appear together in the story. The evolution of their dynamic can be seen through the mangacaps below. Initially, despite their trust in each other, they're still a little suspicious of each other. As time progresses, they develop a language of silent glances and casual touch. We often see them standing beside each other and exchanging looks after Laios speaks. Considering how Toshiro doesn't often voice his negative opinions and Kabru makes an effort to curtail his negative reactions around Laios, the fact that they've both taken to expressing silent concern for Laios to each other shows that they've reached a significant level of intimacy in just a week or two.

Since they're both men of color and Kabru is one of the only characters who doesn't call Toshiro "Shuro," they've likely discussed Laios' microaggressions towards Toshiro and bonded over how they find his sillier behavior of eating monsters disturbing. They also both care for him as a friend, so Laios remains another point of connection for them.

At the banquet, they sit beside each other, and when Falin revives, Kabru comforts Toshiro via a hand on his shoulder. The canonical affection between them is easy to track and consistent by the story's close.

4. Growth

As stated by @malaierba in their platonic kabshiro post, Kabru and Toshiro share narrative parallels like being raised by surrogate mothers, over-analyzing social situations, attempting to act in others' best interests at the cost of their own, and being terrible at basic self-care (I'm also realizing we both touched on the de-escalation and Kabru backstory scenes, lol). Both characters are actually extremely similar in the way they conceptualize themselves.

Kabru and Toshiro both avoid offending others by suppressing their discomfort. This behavior is deeply rooted in their backstories and their identities as people of color and immigrants. When you're the outsider, you don't have the luxury of acting as you please. Society expects you to keep your head down and not "cause a fuss."

They both fear selfishness. Kabru is the archetypal sacrificial hero; his goal is equality between the races and minimizing mass death no matter the personal cost to himself. On a much smaller scale, Toshiro tries not to burden others. They both forgo intimate relationships and falsify parts of themselves to accommodate others. Their willingness to minimize themselves for others' sake leads to them to not even canonically care for themselves and becomes a form of passive self-harm.

Toshiro doesn't eat or sleep during his rescue of Falin in what seems like a self-inflicted punishment for failing to protect her and save her. He seems to believe that he's only useful for what he can do and in particular, do for others. He seems to struggle to define himself outside of how he's overshadowed and overlooked by his charismatic father. Toshiro's arc is about learning to identify his own needs and wants, pursue those things, and express himself.

Because of how charismatic Kabru is, Kabru appears to have a secure sense of self, but I'd argue that he falls into the same trap as Toshiro. When Laios becomes the Dungeon Lord and seems to be ending the world, Kabru blames himself, saying, "What purpose does my surviving Utaya's tragedy have?" and "Please just kill me right now." Kabru hasn't ever established what he wants for himself outside of what he can do for others, just like Toshiro. While Kabru is far more active than Toshiro and his goals are more heroic, his arc is similarly about identifying his own needs and wants and expressing them as demonstrated by his confession that he wants to be Laios' friend.

Like Toshiro, Kabru is disconnected from his desires because he doesn't see himself as worth prioritizing over the greater good. He fails to regularly eat and clean his living space.

Kabru and Toshiro's friendship challenges both their negative habits of self-perception. Unlike with Laios, Toshiro wasn't quite as pivotal to Kabru's goal, so their relationship develops without as much pressure. Because of the extreme circumstances of their first meeting and their compatibility, they express their true feelings towards each other nearly from the onset, and by the banquet, they seem to hang around each other just for the joy of the other's company. When their friendship extends into a romantic/sexual relationship, they get to knock down yet another barrier to pursuing what and who they want simply because they want to.

In addition, because Kabru is the first person to care about Toshiro in a way that doesn't infringe on his boundaries, Toshiro would hopefully be motivated to become an active participant in their relationship. His efforts to be more emotionally open in order to support and care for Kabru would help him overcome his fatal flaws of passivity, especially in interpersonal communication, and walling himself off from others. But most importantly, Kabru would receive the same amount of care he invests in learning about and accommodating other people from someone else.

Toshiro is also an observant person. He's good at mapping out social situations to avoid conflict, and he is empathetic. With a little encouragement, he could easily turn skills he's used to pouring into his defense mechanisms towards actually reading his loved ones and engaging with their emotions and needs. If Toshiro was consistently clocking Kabru's actual reactions to things and trying to address his desires, Kabru would realize that he doesn't have to play a part all the time. He would learn to be more authentic and vulnerable in his relationships.

Notably, Rin does support Kabru, but he doesn't really accept her love or act vulnerable around her for a multitude of reasons. This is probably a good time to note that Kabru and Toshiro are both sexist. I want to believe that a healthy relationship between them would encourage them to mature without demanding emotional labor from the women in their lives, and by proxy, improve their relationships with Rin, Hien, and the other female characters. Personally, I really enjoy the idea of Kabru, Toshiro, Rin, and Namari getting close and bonding over being Asian.

5. Bonus

Because their identities as Asian men and immigrants impact their characters, their relationship has a unique type of intimacy. On a societal level, there isn't a lot of media about two characters of color in love. It's even rarer to see two queer characters of color in love in Western media (or Asian media like DunMeshi with an ethnically diverse cast) as oftentimes, the West falsely equates queerness to whiteness. I consider Kabshiro to be my personal contribution to making queer Asian characters kiss and decentering that white man /hj. I'd love to see more Kabshiro content!

Overall, I just think it's beautiful that these two characters who've resigned themselves to loneliness in completely opposite ways can overcome their intimacy issues to trust and care about each other. I like that being together is easy for them in many ways, but unlearning their habits of constantly putting on a front and rejecting vulnerability or not putting effort into relationships out of preemptive fear of failure still takes work. I like that their relationship is an intentional one where love takes effort, but the effort is part of the love.

₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ ₊˚⊹♡

If you read this entire meta, thank you so much, and please feel free to reblog and/or send me an ask with your Kabshiro thoughts! As a shameless plug, you might enjoy my canon-compliant Kabshiro fanfiction that spans from the banquet to a few months post-canon. There's both an explicit version and a version with fade-to-black sex scenes. You can expect:

Kabru and Toshiro's silly friends-with-benefits era

A resolution for Toshiro's feelings for Falin, lol

Toshiro's difficult relationship with food

Kabru trying to 5D-chess everything, and Toshiro overthinking and catastrophizing <3

Kabru, Toshiro, and Laios being friends! They are silly and well-meaning and do their best to support each other

Kabru and Toshiro unpacking Laios' racism

Extremely homosexual moments of tenderness

Kabru, Rin, and Toshiro trio and Namari and Toshiro duo friendship tidbits

Kabru and Marcille becoming friends and bonding over gossip

Angst with a happy ending and more!

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