#Samurai but his swords getting trashed honestly didn’t seem to bother him much. he had other stuff going on to be fair

[pizzazz-party]

“the daisho is the soul of the samurai,” but honestly your mileage will vary

daisho are symbolic of the samurai class. but even among samurai, swords yield different meanings to the characters of Usagi Yojimbo.

gen loses his swords (gets them taken from him) and doesn’t give a shit once he finds a nicer replacement. there’s a value of sentimentality that strikes him once he realizes these new ones were the same daisho his father wielded, but overall gen doesn’t seem to put much stock in tradition. it’s his personal history that makes these swords irreplaceable.

tomoe, i can only speculate on. she was denied the destiny of taking over her father’s fencing school, despite being the superior swordsman among his children. she brings a bokken with her (or acquires one?) after moving into the Geishu castle as a lady-in-waiting. the samurai daisho, in her case, are just one more status symbol she’s been arbitrarily denied. the first time we see her wield a sword in her backstory, it’s something she stole off a ninja’s corpse because she is a swordsman, not a spearsman. and there’s frankly no time to be anything other than practical when the geishu castle is under attack. the sword back then is just a tool in her hand, even if it is one that suits her like nothing else.

(does she keep that sword? we just don’t know. probably not. we never see her as she gets her swords, so it’s possible that her daisho are, to her, representative of new beginnings, of this new purpose she’s risen to beyond her original station. maybe they go on to become more than a symbolic soul to her, maybe.)

usagi on the other hand, has had his swords since he was roughly sixteen, ever since he won that tournament. they were presented to him by mifune. he bested kenichi to get them. they were exquisitely made. there is so much history wrapped up in them, and he has always thought of them as more than mere symbols. they are manifestations of his character that he wields in his hands. every decision he has ever made, he carries the blood of it in those swords. he heals with his hands too, has saved people by cutting others down, but taking a life in any case is irreversible. it’s never been something he takes lightly.

(fuck. usagi cut off mifune’s dead head with those swords.)

he can’t get a new pair. in many ways he is a ghost in his own life, and he has so few things from his past that he holds on to. for all that he’s achieved this kind of easygoing serenity post-adachigahara (and i think there is a very good reason we don’t see any comics of him until two years of wanderings later), those swords are a pillar of his mental security and a part of him will die if they get destroyed.

but i wanna see what he’ll do next anyway, if that were to happen.