#The Ashura Essay no-one particularly asked for

[completeoveranalysis]

hey! idk if you remember but i'm the person who asked if i could send in my own thoughts on ashura like way back when you were first getting to the celes arc :] sorry this is gonna be long admittedly my thoughts on him have changed since then, i think i first regarded him as a well meaning person bc, when i was a teen i saw a post in defense of him saying ashura was probably the one who taught fai about kindness and smiles. which with all i know about faux positivity now is. yeah. that's a lot to unpack ashura's whole thing with morally dubiously manipulating people he has power over (which he shares with clow reed actually) i think first and foremost serves to explore clamp's favorite narrative ploy: what claims to be the conflict between the self vs the world is actually the conflict between people's individual will and how power dynamics play into it. people like ashura (both in rg veda and trc) and clow reed and a load of other villains in clamp's other works expend the power of their will to make changes that they believe are good, in ignorance of others' wishes. but at the same time his relationship to fai is something just. incredibly fucked up and is bound to invite personal reactions

i think ashura really did care, or at the very least he personally believed what he did was the right thing, enough to justify the harm that he knew he was causing. i think in addition to that, it can be inferred that because of his condition he never functioned in the realms of human morality.

another thing to consider is how clamp approaches writing abusive parental/mentor figures. when people explore this kind of trauma it's entirely within their right to not humanize those who abused them. but they may also choose to do the opposite, not to justify the harm that was done but to come to terms with it, see the bigger picture of cycles of abuse, or any meaning they might find in it. i think clamp tends to do the latter. i can't claim to know ohkawa's original intents but, because of my asian upbringing i'm pretty close to the communal way of life that affects how people approach these things; works i know of that employs similar approaches are fruits basket and umineko no naku koro ni and they did a fantastic job with it. within clamp's own works, an example can be found in x/1999 (i'm not sure how far you are into it so i'll just leave it at that).

like you pointed out during your liveblogging clamp clearly laid out the horrifying nature of ashura's manipulation. but at the same time they spare him empathy, it's what they tend to do with their characters (even though people perceive them on the surface to be obsessed with writing suffering and that's another pet peeve i have with clamp fandom jokes...) but (x2) as a reader anyone can have their own feelings and interps of it it and i think that's what's important.

at the end of the day ashura is just one truly fucked up little man. i think we can all agree on that.

Ohoho I do remember! And thank you for giving me your thoughts! They are DELICIOUS, and I absolutely agree with what you say here.

I do think that Ashura cared for Fai, and thought he was doing the right thing for Fai - and was also willing to do great harm to a great number of people to achieve his version of love.

And considering how dark and heavy the entire plot thread is, I like that CLAMP don't present us with a "final answer" for what we should think about the situation. It's a complex and nuanced scenario that absolutely invites deeper thought and reflection, so, let's do that!

But behind the cut, because of spoilers and content warnings and the like.

Just for clarity, the content warnings include emotional abuse, murder, and suicide.

Goodness, I've had a lot of time to reflect on Ashura.

The big thing with Ashura is that he only sees his own perspective. He doesn't see (or perhaps does not care) that what he's trying to do is utterly fucking up Fai in the process. Either his goal/his version of "caring for Fai" completely trumps Fai's own feelings, and this thought comforts him to the point of complete confidence in his actions, or it doesn't particularly matter to Ashura what Fai's emotional state is as long as the curse is broken.

Another big thing with Ashura is we know WHAT he was trying to do, in that he wanted to break Fai's curse and die in the process. But we don't know which of these two things was his original intention, and if it even matters. WAS he selflessly offering himself as tribute to free Fai from the curse, or was he using the curse as a way to free himself from his own dark existence? Was he breaking Fai's curse out of love, or out of a calculated goal? Is he just trying to accomplish this item despite what it will do to Fai, or is he doing this for Fai's sake, no matter what state it will leave him in? Is there even a distinction for Ashura?

The OTHER big thing about Ashura that really starts to sway this in a darker direction is that Evil Wolverine KNEW what killing this would do to Fai. He knew that there was an incredibly undeniably strong likelihood that Fai would immediately kill himself after having killed Ashura, so much so that Evil Wolverine banked on this happening from the very beginning. It was his plan from the start - that Ashura would manage to break the curse by getting Fai to kill him, and Fai would immediately die as a result of his heartbreak. So is Evil Wolverine knew this so easily, how did Ashura not see this coming? Or did he not care about this either? Was Ashura so set in his own correctness that he genuinely did not know Fai well enough to guess what this would do to him, when even Evil Wolverine knew? Or was that also beside the point for him?

Though I think this term has lost a lot of its meaning in recent years, Ashura is presented as beautifully Morally Grey. He does Bad Things to accomplish an ultimate Good Thing. He's doing a Good Thing but it will have a Bad Effect on the people that survive. There are so many varied ways to interpret Ashura's actions that defining them as "good" or "bad" ends up losing all meaning, and I feel that's the ultimate point. CLAMP present Ashura with such an intricate mix of positive and negative qualities that the morality scale doesn't properly encapsulate him whatsoever any more. If he's purely a villain, then how do we measure the loving home he gave to Fai, and how he gave him the longest period of happiness in a life that was purely traumatic suffering before then? How do we measure the idea that his good advice ended up causing life long emotional trauma to Fai and the people around him? And on the other hand, if his actions are "purely good" because he wanted a "good thing", how do we measure the fact that he slaughtered almost an entire world of living people to accomplish it? How do we measure the idea that he broke Fai's curse against the severe emotional fallout that would have caused Fai to kill himself?

There is no ultimate answer to Ashura. It all comes down to an individual reader's interpretation, what things ring truest to them, and what things that they choose to emphasise over the others. And that's how it should be! No two readers will have the EXACT same experience with any text, and the same goes for Tsubasa. The reader's feelings towards Ashura are entirely personal and individual, and by their very nature they will be correct for them, and not necessarily for anyone else.

And that's where I draw a little line about what I'm about to say and clarify that my interpretation of Ashura doesn't need to match anyone else's, and everyone SHOULD be able to judge him individually. But here's my very personal take!

For me personally, Ashura rings true as a depiction of... I don't even know the right combination of words for it. A selfish type of love - a well meaning but harmful love.

Because I do think Ashura cared for Fai, and had a good effect on him at times, and gave him a loving home when he needed it, but that's not the full picture. Ashura's love is a narcissistic type of love that puts HIS views of 'what is right for Fai' above anything Fai himself might feel, robs him of any choice or decision in the matter, and is willing to absolutely destroy Fai emotionally in order to get him to what Ashura sees is the 'correct' result. It's a type of situation that I relate a little too strongly to not have a biased opinion of Ashura -because I do feel like I've lived through a very Fai-like experience in my personal life over the last couple of years, so it's become impossible for me not to project my own experiences on to what Ashura does to Fai.

Even though Ashura meant for a good result, that does not mean his love was not abusive, and it doesn't mean he didn't deeply traumatise Fai in the process, and it doesn't mean Fai ever has to forgive him for what he did. Not that Fai has that chance, because Ashura robbed him of that too - but in real life things get a lot harder to navigate and understand, especially when you're still in the middle of it. Like Fai, you get stuck on some of the positives and think that the 'bad' things can't possibly be real, even while they poison you from the inside and drive you to a destruction that the other person is absolutely fine with because it will give them what they want. And even then, you want to be a "good person", especially if you define your self worth off of making other people happy, so you may find yourself wanting to forgive them, or feeling like you HAVE to forgive them. But you don't. You can choose these things for yourself. You can redefine your whole life and leave behind the people who treat you like Ashura does - even though it hurts you, and it hurts them, because they don't even see that they're doing anything wrong.

But at the end of the day YOU are worth more than anyone else's feelings - and this is what I absolutely ADORE about the way Kurogane treats Fai, because he has ALWAYS been about that from the very start. Kurogane shows us that Fai deserves to live, to be happy, to be safe, JUST because he's Fai, and for no other reason. And he does!

Kurogane's love for Fai has always had Fai's wellbeing as the priority. It causes friction between them in Acid Tokyo when they don't agree on what that means, and they don't always make the best decisions, but at the core Kurogane's love is selfless, nurturing, and protective.

Ashura's love for Fai always had Ashura's love for Fai as the priority. It hinges on what Ashura wants, and while it does have nice experiences for Fai along the way, Fai's thoughts, feelings, and decisions are not a factor that comes into play. This ultimately leads to a situation where Fai's mental distress, trauma, and ultimate suicide are not only on the table but practically guaranteed, if Evil Wolverine is to be believed. At its core, Ashura's love was love, but it was selfish, damaging, and destructive.

So that's my take on Ashura! I'm very happy for other people to have alternate takes on the situation, because that's the beautiful things about stories like this, and it doesn't even need a big thought process behind it. Some people can just like Ashura for no particular reason, because it matches their own experiences better, and that's completely ok!

But because this is my post Ashura is a piece of shit, and like you said, a fucked up little man.