#also she wanted to kill takaya and had to be held back so

[ancient-day]

Persona 3 FEMC? For the Blorbo Blingus

our little sun shower

[lostsoulaltair]

OnS Chapter 99 - Deep analysis - Love

Hello everyone, I hope you’ve been well; remember to take care of yourself everyone!

The new chapter is out, and of course,analysis and theories will come but, there’s something I want to talk about which was discussed with two friends from discord.

Therefore, let’s begin!

One of the things this chapter carried was “Love”. And many might say or state it’s the cliché of undeveloped romance but, the issue is, that’s not the central point of the story, how can I say this?

In one of the Afterwards Kagami released that sadly it’s not translated and I asked my friend which translated the raw chapters each time they were released to translate it; Kagami states the value of family and love, but for that, let’s talk about it on how that applies towards the story.

First of all, Kagami Takaya stated long ago that Romance wasn’t the main theme of the story; which so far has been true until the doubt that was born during the current chapter. But there’s a huge issue everyone dismisses, what could it be?

The issue is, love takes many forms, it’s not only romantic love or yearning for another person; how can I say this?

Within each chapter, we’ve seen love countless times among humans; and this isn’t romantic wise; it goes to the small shape of caring for another, it goes to worrying for the well being of another:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 20

It might seem like it’s a common panel with comedy but actually, that’s the first time Shiho Kimizuki shows love and affection in the shape of caring twards a friend, towards family; towards someone who supported and encouraged him to take a decision in way more early chapters.

It’s true the squad is young, it’s true they’eve spent at least 5 months together due to how the story began; but yet, they slowly started to take care of each other in their own ways without stating it clearly.

Another proof of such emotion is this:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 23

Another view of this is back in chapter 23 when Shinoa was going to tell Yu about the incident that happened when he became a seraph for the first time; but before that, the squad wanted to make a peaceful dialogue first and for that, they started to do it like a family would; Shinoa and Mitsuba aimed to cook for the guys that technically are the strength of the squad when it comes to defense; but of course, both ladies don’t know how to cook and this ended up depending on Shiho Kimizuki to cook a breakfast for the whole squad, therefore, what’s the point to this?

Correct. Love isn’t romance alone; love is caring for each other, making sure to deliver an appropiate notice to someone you care and that’s what the squad did together; they worry about Yu and true, they might not express it towards words but they can do it through actions:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 35

Yoichi used something Yu repeated to them and that goes to what Mika taught him back when they were in the vampire capital; they became family, they took care of each other’s back and this applied to Mikaela as well not due to him being an important person to Yu but rather because they care about Yu’s happiness and well being; they care for a person that means a lot to someone within the squad and it’s reflected a lot on Mikaela when he showed distrust towards Yu’s friends.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 56

Another form of love despite the picture uploaded is the fact that Guren loves deeply his friends and specially Shinya, does this mean it’s romantic? 

No. Shinya was the very first friend Guren had, a friend that supported his idea to destroy the Hiragi Family so they could be free from their graps ever since the events before the Catastrophe; they trusted each other in order to find out what they Family planned along what Mahiru aimed; both were partners in arms to check each other’s back and eventually, those two started to find more friends which later on became Mito, Goshi, Sayuri and Shigure; and the reason for Sayuri and Shigure to be friends was because they’ve been loyal to Guren; they were supporting pillars but they saw themselves as followers from the Ichinose household until that slowly changed; they saw each other as equals and friends as well.

Even when the world was going to end, they raced towards it bravely even if it meant dying in the process, but of course,Guren couldn’t withstand such event which lead to the Resurrection.

Is there any other form of love?

Of course there is:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 58

While it’s true the scene displays Kureto struggling agaisnt Shikama Doji and relies on kissing Aoi; it’s true that Kureto does harbor feelings towards Aoi but the fact that the shadow of his father, the shadow of the whole Hiragi Family was casted on each member; this only made that Kureto couldn’t express such feelings at ease, but such emotion of love could be seen back in the last volume of the LNs of the Catastrophe.

After the fight Kureto had with Mahiru; Kureto dialed his father to ask if this was also aware of everything to which Tenri replied that it was; that everything was proceeding according to certain plan.

And of course, during this conversation, Aoi Sangu became Tenri’s hostage since he ordered to shot Aoi; Kureto of course worried about her and made Aoi use her cursed gear to heal herself; and you might wonder, where’s the love within this?

The love in there as it’s pure form is the fact that Kureto does care about Aoi’s well being despite her being the least enjoyable character to see within the story by what the fandom has expressed so far and. Kureto despite having a cold demanor cares a lot about Aoi and it’s well seen in the fight against Tenri, when he goes and protects her.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 5

Another form of love is the one that displayed Mikaela Hyakuya towards Yuichiro Hyakuya, a selfless love that was born from the very bottom of his heart:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 90

Correct. Mikaela told Yu he loved him; such form of love it’s the purest because Yu meant the world to Mikaela; Yu became his light to fight all the things his heart endured, Mikaela wanted to see Yu happy, he wanted to see him safe after the events of Ferid killing their family in front of them without mercy.

Yu and Mika have had a strong bond with all the time they’ve spent together; they knew what bothered them along when to scold each other whenever was uneasiness.

The love Mika displays towards Yu is a sincere form of love, the one that aims or seeks to see the well being of an important person; a love that aims the total security of said person but within this, it does not only focus on that; Mikaela despite being a vampire was able to keep lingering emotions since his reason to live was still alive; he was aware of Yu’s nature and yet, he did his best to ensure his safety despite adversity; but within this, he was aware Yu was in good hands, he had a family that cared about him, and of course, may might say chapter 95 was the opposite of it but, chapter 99 really striked down on such beliefs:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 99

Shiho and Yoichi were the first ones to get triggered by Yu’s easy emotions of just hearing Mikaela will be saved.

They doubted Guren for his actions and how it delivered to Mikaela’s death. They’re young, they don’t know how to express the form of love that goes by embracing someone or giving support words but one thing they do display is through actions; they care about Yu and care about what Mika held dear as well; they’ve lost their important ones in the process and they’re not willing to lose more.

And lastly, the love that confessed Shinoa Hiragi to Shikama Doji; while it’s considered quite surprising and even as something manipulated; in fact, that’s not really the case; Shinoa wanted to have a normal life, being a normal girl but she was aware she wouldn’t be one from the beginning and specially after remembering the events on which Mahiru ended sealing her emotions:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 99

I understand very well that this might be unpleasant to some, or joyful for others; as the writer of this analysis, I don’t find it joyful nor unpleasant; everything is held within a neutral point of view; and what it’s displayed in said chapter is actually Shinoa accepting what her heart feels. She’s aware her heart does beat fast when she’s close to Yu but it doesn’t mean she’s obsessed with him nor means she lusts for him; but rather, just like Mikaela; she wants to see him happy, that for once he manages to have a happy life, that he is safe just like the squad does too.

The main focus of the story asides from defeating the First Progenitor isn’t about creating romance; but rather to show that love takes shapes, love is built with time, it can go for appreciation, respect, careness, happiness for the wellbeing of someone that changed a life.

P.S: Analysis are held within a neutral view, they don’t support ships nor anything. The choice of shipping goes only to each respective reader.

The purpose of this analysis is not to justify or say Kagami is enforcing romance but rather, he is aiming to show that adminst catastrophic events, “love” is the key to keep standing, to keep fighting even if the reasons to live may be silly. 

And just like my favorite lore story which is Honkai Impact 3rd, they always state: “Fight for all that’s beautiful in the World.”

That is applied within this chapter as well. A fight against a being that has a God complex. 

What do you think dear readers? Do you agree love takes different forms? Let me know.

GIF belongs to hopeymchope

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket, Se3, ep11 (part 1)

Breaking toxic bonds & accepting healthy ones isn’t a miracle. A bond that started with love could end up chained & toxic, another that started wrong could’ve become the joy of a life time. You can do it. Break the cycle of abuse & stand up for yourself, it is easy yet so difficult, you aren’t alone, tho, loved ones stand nearby cheering. Be kind on yourself, otherwise you’ll throw your life away. Life isn’t just happiness & joy, it’s also sadness & loneliness. Break free from the shackles that held you down. Embrace life & Live.

-Tohru’s “ I’m okay” mask is finally shattered! (the Importance of kyo’s rejection for her development):

This is the last part of tohru’s character development! The last few eps were abt her role in Akito’s redemption & their similarities. she staood up for herself & choose a path away from her mom while keeping her mom’s memory in a healthy manner. No more planning my life according to mom’s wishes, no more talking to mom ‘s picture 24/7. Now, I’ll plan my life & move forward even if it is with the guy mom said she cant forgive. even If it is without him, I’ll move forward. I love him so much, yet I won’t force our bond & let go. So easy yet so difficult!. tohru doesnt know anything abt kyo after her fall. All she remembers is his heart-broken face as he wept beside her. Those tears on his face, she caused them. He cried cuz it is too painful to see her hurt. She was a burden to him! tohru restored to her old coping mechanism of pretending “ i’m Okay” & smiling. She did so numerous times before. Always worked. No one noticed. Except him. Se02, ep7. he urged her to show her true fears. Now, she’s faced with a pain so big she can’t pretend no more. the pain of loosing him. She cried in front of yuki! The smile & chatting abt chores couldn’t conceal the running tears! Yuki’s first time seeing her like that. Se01, ep14, yuki wondered how could tohru smile after her mom’s death. She can’t pretend no more! She’ll have to wear her feelings on her sleeve! cuz it IS ok to do so! She tells kyo to give her a moment to compose herself. She couldn’t lie & pretend like she did with yuki. Here she either run away or just try to compose myself! I LOVE THAT! This way, whenever kyo/tohru fight or have any misunderstanding in the future as a couple, you’ll know tohru won’t just bear it & pretend, “ i;m okay” No! she’ll talk to kyo & express herself! I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! It gives her so much strength as a human & I’m happy all the obstacles & set backs in kyo/tohru’s romantic journey has led them to be better ppl little by little to build healthier & more realistic love! 

-The mechanics of writing a compelling slow-burn romance:

1. Igniting the romantic feelings slowly: Slow burns don’t work with love at 1st sight. It must first sparkle naturally, slowly & subtly. Both kyo & tohru repeatedly stated they don’t know exactly when they first fell in love. The author’s decision to create an environment where the two live together is a genius way to start & nurture their romance quietly & subtly. Kyo was tricked to stay in shigure’s house while tohru had to stay cuz she had no home, Natural reasons that force the two to spend days together & get to know each other gradually.

2. Dynamics of their personalities: For slow burns to work, the two characters need to be similar yet opposites! Kyo & tohru are both kind, endearing, innocent, good at chores, independent & hardworking. They both have history with their mothers that is filled with love yet traumas. However, tohru is calm yet prefer maneuvering around subjects, can’t stand up for herself, reads ppl easily, tends to trust ppl easily & disregard herself. Kyo is fierce, strong, tends to distrust ppl, despite ppl loving his spontaneous character, he has hard time figuring out if they’re mocking him or teasing him, very straightforward with his words & actions. The similarities helps them understand each other, however, the differences creates chances to clash & come even closer thro various situation. Ex, se01, ep2, kyo apologizing for hitting her head with the table which created the situation where she needed to confess she always loved the cat zodiac! It is HER gush of emotions that struck kyo. ppl really want my friendship? the cat is loved? Thro those difference they learned to better themselves so they won’t hurt the other, kyo toning down his anger for her, tohru desiring to know him even more as he becomes even more awkward.

3. Creating natural, realistic  & convincing obstacles that prevents them from being together:  This is the most important part! Slow-burn is two characters in love & cant be together despite everyone wanting them to be! if the reason that stops them from uniting is trivial, stupid, one-sided, can easily be solved, then the slow-burn would be a fillery & no one would cheer for it! Takaya-san is a genius!

Kyo can’t be with tohru cuz he thinks (a) he killed her mom! we saw thr flashback, he could’ve saved her & couldn’t save her. It was a split of a second difference & he hates himsef for NOT trying! that split of a second also prevented from thinking of better ways to save her than holding her! it happened to fast, he couldn't think of a better alternative cuz this was his 2nd time loosing someone (b) his mom’s sucide being pinned as his fault created this immense guilt & defeated feeling that “ no matter what, I just cause death & misery! There’s (c) too!, he knew tohru! thinks she deserves the world & cuz he didnt save her mom, he watched tohru talk to a freaking picture for two years! heck! he is the only one who can see thro tohru’s “ i;m okay” mask, so in se01, ep 14 in the grave yard! kyo wasnt the only one who is sad! tohru was too! & kyo could tell! (d) her mom’s death is the reason tohru is accepting shigure’s offer to stay with them rent-free in exchange of doing housework! (e)? he saw her confess crying her heart out abt missing her mom so much that she imitated her dad! so tragicly sad! (f) he saw her die in his nightmare!! how can he accept her love,now? Perfectly orchestrated obstacles! 

Tohru, unfortunately, in the anime it wasn't that clear due to shortening her backstories & trauma in se03, ep6. But she too couldn’t see herself confessing love to kyo. Tohru is has low self-esteem, always thinks she’s a burden to others, an orphan who just wants her mom, so scared, lonely & sad! we the audience believed the mask! we saw her work her motherly charm yuki, isusuz, kisa & believe her issues are not that deep.  tohru wont cry for herself but shed rivers for others! grief is so ugly it broke her! I cant let go of mom, must keep her always in my heart, such a hard emotions to write & I believe 100% the director couldn’t understand her grief & decided to split ep6 between her, kyo, isuzu & shigure. But Tohru struggling to confess to kyo is no laughing matter. ppl who are grieving find it the hardest to live after the loved ones die. they wont mostly commit suicide, they are alive, but they arent living. they just go thro the motions & live for the sake of those around them but not themselves. Tohru deciding to confess to kyo is her deciding to live for herself.

4. Writing a perfect psychologically & emotionally packed climax: I dont need to explain how perfect kyo’s rejection of tohru in se03 ep9 was. How much we felt for him yet were mad at him. He we were “ ugh! kyo no!!!! I mean I get why you do that , but you idiot no! come back! poor kyo! He was just so sad & broken! OMG he’ll kill himself after finding tohru’s injured body!! he totally would! his nightmare came true! But Tohru reached him! she wanted him to be okay! he wont kill himself but still feels hella guilty! but so utterly in love with her that his instinct upon seeing her come to life after near death is kiss her! Perfect display of psychology & emotions! filled with right, wrong, sad, happy, guilty, innocent! basically so human~ As the audience you MUST have this mixture of feelings of wanting to hug him so bad cuz this boy has been killing himself for years now yet want him to stop & just see that he was a good boy afterall. Tohru is THE best girl & if the audience are cheering for kyo to be with her, kyo really deserves her! The only problem is for kyo to see that now.

5. The Perfect wrap up of all romance: If you make your audience suffer the slow-burn this long, you gotta reward them good! & Takaya-san delivered! Just like how the entire romantic story is realistic, the reunion must be as realistic too! Tohru is hurt by kyo;s words. Facts remain his words were hurtful to her. I love that was addressed! tohru gets to tell her side, too! If you love someone, you are bound to be hurt by them as much as be happy with them. Simply cuz they matter so much to you! you arent one person, but two ppl coming together. Kyo must work hard for this confession. Must run & chase her. Must earn her proper! He gets on his knees, I cant express how important that is! he is way taller than her, Imagine apologizing while she looks way up & he looks down? He gets on his knees & apologize like a man, for every mistake, all while not loathing himself. He aint going back to that deep abyss again. He did wrong by her & he is owning up to his mistakes. Give me one chance. I’m not gonna force you with persistence or guilt you into taking me. Give me ONE chance cuz i deserve it & no more. The choice is yours. She asks to confirm, he shows her, they kiss, they hug, they are rewarded with a blessing from the heavens! One of the most simple yet emotionally fulfilling confessions in anime!

- Hugs over kisses: (And her kiss hugs her & the curse was lifted):

Prince charming kisses the princess & she wakes up~ they live ever after~ except furuba is all abt “ eternal ever after is not true, real life is where the real love is”

Kyo kissed tohru once, she didnt wake up, she didnt even think he loved her back. didnt even remember the kiss.

Kyo hugged tohru once. se01, e024, He initiated it, tohru was all in tears, surprised, happy & so utterly in love. he called her name for the first time ever, for a brief moment, they both connected, they both comforted each other. The rain stopped, he became a man not a monster, she got him back. She got her kyo that she fought for with none other than kyo himself.

kyo hugged her again, se03, ep6. They both initiated it. He made the first move, pulling her just a little closer, she made the second move & hugged him hard, he transformed, it was a moment were they both connected, both so sad & broken, both feeling needy for the other, both desperate for the other, both just living the moment. the result is them coming closer, her wanting him more, him realizing her love, there is no escape. Admit it. she loves you. You can tell.

Kyo hugs her again today. He asks permission. No spur of the moment feeling. But a long lasting permission to be together. To hug. He wants to hear her acceptance of his cursed body. “ is ok to hug you? this body will cause you pain as it wont be able to fulfill your wishes of constant hugs & intimacy”. She responds, permission granted, for love, for hugs, for a life long acceptance of you as a whole. weakness & strength, sadness & happiness. I accept you all in better & worse! we’re invincible. Why? cuz we understand love isnt magic. It is a path for us to walk together~~~ reward curse break!

Every time kyoru are closer it is a hug. The one thing the zodiacs cant do. A hug. They can kiss. But cant hug. comes this Zodiac Ruler girl so lonely, away from ppl, so sad, meets a cat boy who comes to the house she’s living in, a house away from ppl, the boy is drawn to the girl, However, when the boy needed to leave, the girl was able to let go despite loving him, the boy comes again, this time wanting to stay, the girl accepts the boy. They both accept the realistic reality of life. Embrace the obstacles & the achievements, celebrates the weakness above the strength. Both so imperfect. Both so endearingly dumb! that’s why the girl’s hug broke the boy’s curse. The girl’s acceptance of the cat broke all curses.

Side Note:

Kyo’s confession is so kyo! so straightforward, so direct, & so physical. He’s on his knees, holding her hands, looking at her eyes. “ i want to be WITH you. If I’m gona live, I want to to do it with you & no one else! cuz I love you” that’s it. That’s all.  So sincere & so romantic!

it is crazy how different tohru & kyo are now after the confession! she stood confidently & happily & said “dont you know, I love you!” all while teasing him, her giggle is so girlish & cute! my girl is a happy woman in love! long buried the angelic mother image of se02! YES! also, kyo’s happy face is love! Dude! when was the last time he smiled so freely? Did he ever do that? He smiled in se01, ep4 with kazmua, but not like this! T_T. my son is healing~

Kyo’s “ i wont ever feel afraid if you’re with me” is a huge growth from his “ I want to protect her” mindset. Now he realizes it is two-sided mutual desire. She gives him strength as much as he does! <3

I dont like open eye while kissing, but here it is so perfect for tohru in this moment! cuz she spent days thinking kyo rejected her & even ran away as soon as she saw him, now he’s not only confessing, apologizing, admitting she is his life, but also kissing her signaling they’re romantic couple. kissing on lips is so personal, what more evidence she needs? still, her thoughts? “ it’s like a dream?” aww~~~ tohru~~~ my precious girl! she just cant believe all her suffering is over, now? She was just practicing “ i’m okay” smile & now she’s an official girlfriend to the man of her dreams? He just bent da kneeee~ go for it queen!

yuki’s face when tohru cried is exactly what I meant of “ allowing yuki to have strong facial expressions”! XD these types of faces humanize yuki so much into the teenage boy he is! Unfortunately the anime team only sees him as the pretty prince in most times. That’s why fave yuki is when he’s with kakeru. He becomes so un-princly as he should be.

Speaking of yuki, I see you anime team~ postponing his moment into next ep so him & machi wont be overshadowed by the long awaited kyoru!! While this defies the perfection of all cursed zodiacs breaking on the same ep making akito’s breakdown less perfect & poetic, I take it as the anime team admitting they underdeveloped yuchi & decided let’s give them more screen time & not putting them in close distance from any couple. A week later ep is enough with lots of time. I dont mind at all, I’m just saying more time after/while confession is not what i was hoping for~~ sigh~ At least I hope yuki would say sth along the lines” all this time I was looking at you, i realized i love you” to imply he was thinking of her as a lover not his kindness for someone he helped. I just dont want their love to be sudden simply cuz yuki needs happy ending. oh well~ I’m sure whatever it will be, the anime will give it utmost attention.

That sad moment when kagura wasnt allowed a moving image. lol. girl was given a still image that didnt even move with the breeze! T_T

Not gonna lie... the scene with kazuma & kyo was underwhelming. Why the wide shot? I mean you dont need budget for that. Just give me a closeup from the waist up with kyo head buried in kazuma’s chest. Dont need to waste budget on kazuma’s face, either.... do the old trick of hair covering eyes & show me glittery tears~  why the awkward shot of kazma towering in his own house! how tall is this man & why cant he he fix his roof?...lol

Also, shigure, you got scars man... who can hurt shigure? akito? gotta be her. I dont think hatori scratches...lol.. Aya? nah~ too busy with Mine! yup, akito... another steamy night? could be, she’s changed as he wish now. But scratching a face is weird while..um..kissing? a quarrel? but why? I bet she wants him now & we know he wants her....

More on part 2! especially abt the curse’s lore~

[sparklyjojos]

the promised summary of Smoke, Soil or Sacrifices. [tw: a lot of child abuse in a dysfunctional family, mentioned suicide]

--

The narrator is Natsukawa Shirou [ 奈津川 四郎], an ER surgeon working in San Diego. You know the type: workaholic with a god complex, wearing Armani coats and having casual sex left and right, but also constantly sleep-deprived and popping anxiety pills like its candy. He has deep-seated aggression issues that even he himself is afraid of getting out of control, and to manage it he trained boxing for a while before a gang drove him out of the gym (long story). As his name implies, he's the youngest of four brothers - in order of birth: Ichirou [一郎], Jirou [二郎], Saburou [三郎] and him, Shirou [四郎] - but since he's working in the USA, he hasn't seen his family for a while.

One winter day Shirou learns that back in Japan, his mother got seriously hurt and is currently in a coma. He flies back to his Japan hometown, Nishi Akatsuki, meets with an old classmate Takaya Yoshio (who everybody calls “Rupan”, like Lupin the Third, after he once wrote that word instead of ‘renessaince’ on a test), and learns that there’s more to the attack: someone has been attacking the women of Nishi Akatsuki, hitting them in the back of the head and then partially burying them in the ground. None of the five victims died, but most were still unconscious, and no one saw the attacker. Even if his mother is alive, Shirou gets so furious about the attack that he nearly destroys Rupan’s car before he can calm himself down; he really does have violence issues. (Also Rupan is dating a high schooler Yamaguchi Usagi behind his wife’s back and Shirou has a really bad feeling about it).

We learn a little about the Natsukawa family. They’re descended from a German immigrant Hans who left them two things: first, ridiculous for Japanese standards height (the brothers are all >185cm tall); second, a mysterious warehouse with triangle-shaped floor and ceiling that he built next to the family house. Its history is grim: Hans’s son Daimaru (大丸) hanged himself inside the warehouse, and then Daimaru’s son, Maruo (丸雄, the narrator’s father) tended to close one of his kids inside a lot for misbehaving. Shirou remembers Maruo, and thinks about how as a kid he saw that his father’s body was scarred all over, which Maruo claimed was a remainder of injuries from one or another war.

Shirou has a reunion with two of his brothers, Ichirou and Saburou. Jirou, the second oldest, has mysteriously disappeared at 17 and nobody has seen him since, it seems. Ichirou is a politician, just like their father Maruo, while Saburou writes mystery novels starring detective Runbaba 12. (Shirou thinks they’re ridiculous, and remembers one that had the hero looking for his daughter and somehow ending up living with an amnesiac woman and a gay guy, or some nonsense like that.)

---

The serial attacker case is overseen by a Tokyo police officer Marikku Takahiro (真陸隆宏) and a Nagoya prosecutor Shirai Masami (白碑将美), both Shirou’s old schoolmates. Upon learning the facts about the case from them, Shirou figures out something nobody else realized: if on a map of Nishi Akatsuki you draw lines between some houses of the victims, and draw a spiral based on it, it’ll go perfectly through all the victims��� houses. [I’m not sure how to explain it in text, so here’s the map in question -- the numbers are houses:]

Shirou goes to where the origin of the spiral points to, at the shore of the river Shounokawa (not pictured on the map), and finds an empty coffin buried in the ground. He alarms the police and Saburou, who arrives at the scene with his detective friend, Banba Junjirou (番場 潤二郎). [Interestingly enough, he shares the last two kanji of his first name with Jirou, but it isn’t brought up ever -- I don’t know if this coincidence is done just for the sake of having a red herring, or will it be important in a later book]. Saburou often affectionately calls Banba ‘Runbaba’ and it seems he based the character in his books off of him. He originally hired Banba to help find Jirou, the missing brother, but they’ve been unsuccesful so far. Banba doesn’t really do anything useful at the scene, only claiming nonsense like the coffin being actually a time machine.

Shirou learns that the serial attacker always makes a photo of the crime scene and writes some nonsensical letters on it, and always puts an animal plushie in the ground next to the victim (so far: sheep, elephant, lion, sheep, koala). Through some truly inspired reasoning Shirou notices that since the victims were only partially buried, their body parts were always kinda sticking out in a grid pattern, and you can ‘read’ them like syllabary Braiile code. The resulting message is ‘MAMATASUKE’, seemingly a part of ‘mama tasukete’ = ‘help me mom’. And if you treat the letters on the photos as a Caesar cipher key, and pair it in a very complicated way with the names of the victims, you’ll get DRMN / NOBT / SZK / SNEO / GIAN... which looks like nothing, but these are abbreviations of famous kids cartoon characters, eg. the first one is Doraemon. Soon after this discovery, they learn that another victim was attacked (incidentally it’s Marikku’s mother), and the discovered pattern of plushies/words/etc. seems to continue.

Shirou goes to the hospital to visit his mother, meets Ichirou there and they start physically fighting kinda out of nowhere. Not because they hate each other for any reason; just because, it seems, there is something inside them that drives them to violence-as-bonding. After they flee the security, they talk about the case, and wonder if it wasn’t their missing brother Jirou who’s at fault. This conversation sends Shirou on a long trip down memory lane.

---

When Shirou was 9, he took three abandoned puppies home. The brothers were told they couldn’t keep them, and so the puppies eventually got entrusted to Jirou (then 12) so he’d find them a good owner somewhere else, but as he later admitted he’d just drowned them in the river instead. Jirou didn’t seem to care about the horrible thing he did. In fact, he always did horrible things, like breaking windows in other houses or killing and eating the neighbours’ chickens, and their father Maruo always locked him in the triangle warehouse for that. In primary school Jirou enacted long painful revenge on his bullies, and even called the terror he instilled his ‘Days of Creation’, as if the things he did were ‘a seal given to other by God’. But Jirou’s acts were (as present Shirou now thinks) a natural result of the violence that had been bestowed upon him finally exploding.

Jirou had been abused by Maruo ever since he'd been a tiny child; his every mistake was viciously criticized, and he was ‘jokingly’ threatened with getting abandoned in the mountains. After some time Maruo started beating him, and while Jirou pretended like he didn’t care, it was clear he was terrified and in pain. Ichirou as the oldest brother tried to stop Maruo or get outside help, for years and years, but nothing ever worked.

Eventually one day Maruo seemed to see his mistakes, crying promised to do better and embraced the kids (except Ichirou, who was skeptical and didn’t want to take a part in any display like that). Maruo really seemed to behave a little better after that, though mostly he was completely ignoring Jirou now. This caused Jirou to act out in order to get attention, which each time made Maruo close him in the triangle warehouse. Again, Jirou acted like it was nothing, and called the warehouse his ‘summer residence’, even if all of them were terrified of the dark place that was allegedly haunted by their grandfather’s ghost. Eventually Jirou’s actions escalated into committing petty crimes, and then all-out violence, though he drew a line at murder.

It was only after Maruo’s mother’s intervention that Maruo finally moved to Tokyo for some time, leaving the kids in her charge. Ichirou started tutoring Jirou and was surprised to find out that Jirou was actually incredibly smart; the boy could recite entire passages from books after flipping through them once, and draw complicated maps from memory. He still walked the path of violence, though, and once Maruo came back from Tokyo, the boy got hit and locked inside the warehouse a lot again. Because of his deeds Jirou at times seemed positively demonic to our young narrator; he even once recited Shirou a poem he wrote, which basically said ‘hey, remember those puppies? I killed them with a knife’ (actually it was deeper and more interesting than that, with a hidden promise from the poem’s narrator towards the dead puppies that ‘if I became god, you’d be the first ones I revive’, but obviously talking about that event hurt Shirou a lot all on its own). But even then, Shirou recalls he still held love for Jirou; they were brothers, after all.

Time passed. Ichirou moved toward a political career like his father. Saburou got attacked on the street and had his hand broken, which made him paranoid that somebody from the neighborhood / some organized crime group was out to kill him, but he still laughed at Shirou’s suggestion to run away from home (’and where would we run?”). He ended up ditching the piano that he had always loved playing, and instead got into fights a lot. Jirou by the time of high school was very popular among his peers, infamous among the Fukui policemen, had ‘fans’, and often smuggled girls into his bedroom, which again earned him a trip to the warehouse if Maruo caught him.

In 1986, when Jirou was 17, their grandmother (Maruo’s mother, the same who made him leave that one time) was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and stayed in the hospital in constant horrible pain. While Maruo tended to run away from the situation excusing himself with work trips, Jirou unexpectedly stayed by his grandmother’s side every night. On her death bed, she told her grandsons that “no matter how great or rich a person is, death will turn them into smoke, soil or sacrifices; the burned ones turn into smoke, the buried ones into soil, the others into sacrifices for wild beasts.” She apologized that she couldn’t protect the kids better, and that’s it’s her fault for raising Maruo badly. Then, in pain, she suddenly yelled ‘Daimaru, who killed you?!”, and then just before death demanded to see Maruo once more, to tell him that he’s still the one she loved the most in the world -- that last dying line was shocking to everyone, but hurt Jirou the most.

From then on, Jirou and Maruo’s conflict escalated even more, with Jirou for some reason starting to blame Maruo for Daimaru’s sucide. On 19 December the two started a horrible furniture-breaking physical fight while Saburou and Shirou could only helplessly watch. Suddenly their mother entered the scene with a knife in her hand, but she didn’t use it to stop the fight or otherwise help Jirou, who was looking at her with hope. Instead she screamed that it was Jirou she felt like stabbing, that it was all his fault and he should apologize to his father. Jirou didn’t intend to apologize (instead yelling that maybe it’d be better if he’d never been born), and the situation ended in Maruo brutalizing him and still bleeding throwing into the warehouse.

The next morning, Jirou couldn’t be found anywhere, as if he just vanished from the locked warehouse, and if the other brothers were honest, they were actually pretty glad about that.

--

Back in the present day, Shirou notices that the way a victim’s head is positioned always points like an arrow to the next crime scene, and tells Shirai to guard the houses the last victim points to.

Shirou then goes to the hospital once more to check on his mother, and surprises himself by crying a lot. Later he meets a nurse called Hatakida Atena that catches his eye with her red coat, but nothing comes out of it (he’s bad at / afraid of / unable to have anything more intimate than purely sexual relationships going on, it seems). Then his mother is visited by another victim of the case, Satou Ryouko, who tearfully recalls her joyful near-death experience she had after being attacked. She saw bright light, felt a warm god-like presence, then wandered through a giant forest and met the dead poet Raymond Carver that she had no prior knowledge about (she even recites his poem ‘My Death’). An unassuming student called Nozaki Hiroshi approaches them and seems to be very interested in Satou’s experience, asking for an interview, which she agrees to, as she feels the need to share her wonderful experience with the world.

And then there’s this... out-of-nowhere fragment in which Shirou and Ichirou’s wife Rihoko in the spur of the moment have sex in a random hospital closet (they apparently had an affair two years earlier), and some thugs hired by Ichirou’s political opponents snap pics and try to blackmail Shirou, but he fights them like it’s a damn martial arts movie except with more violence (like ‘biting into someone’s jugular’ kind of violence), and Shirou comes out of it alive but in pretty horrible shape, with the photos destroyed, and what the hell was that?

--

Hitching a ride back to town with Marikku, Shirou realizes that it’s possible it’s actually Marikku who’s behind the murders, as the sixth victim was his abusive mother, who it seems has still been inflicting physical abuse on him even after all these years. Maybe Marikku figured out the pattern of the attacks early on, and used it to arrange a copycat crime that’d get blamed on the original culprit? But just as Shirou confronts Marikku, they get into a car accident. Shirou gets some bones broken, while Marikku dies. Shirou isn’t sure whether it was suicide or not, but suspects the original culprit may have wanted to get rid of them -- later an investigation of the wreck proves that somebody tampered with the car.

Saburou and Rupan help Shirou make a daring escape from the hospital, and the brothers are having quite a lot of fun working together during that entire scene, even if Shirou’s injuries are so severe he has to fight his body not to faint from pain at times. Later, as they return to Nishi Akatsuki, Saburou admits that he and detective Banba believe the criminal may be Jirou, back to take revenge on the town (Banba didn’t disclose more information, as apparently he doesn’t like to tell Saburou anything until he has everything figured out). As proof, they found an old paper -- with the exact spiral pattern used in the crime drawn on it -- in the triangle warehouse, so it’s likely Jirou drew that before his disappearance. During the ride the brothers learn from Yamaguchi Usagi that the plushies found with the victims are their corresponding Doubutsu uranai animals (a sort of new hip horoscope that gives you a different animal depending on your date of birth).

Saburou tells Shirou that there’s another link between the victims: the two women that regained consciousness so far both had a Near-Death Experience (Saburou says it’s super interesting and mentions he’d like to use it in another book of his). Shirou thinks that it may not be a coincidence; maybe the attacker intends on giving the victims NDE like it’s some weird modern ritual, and the plushies serve the same purpose as ritual dolls, as empty vessels to which illness or other bad stuff would be passed? Suddenly Shirou remembers that random Nozaki Hiroshi guy who seemed very happy hearing about NDE from one of the victims, and something clicks. Shirou phones Nozaki’s mother and through some seemingly innocent questions (’Was he in Nishi Akatsuki lately? Does he act like this and this? ...Does he like Doraemon?’) realizes that the serial attacker really is Nozaki. They alert Shirai Masami and local media and rush to Nozaki’s house.

But they’re too late. In the house instead of Nozaki they find the body of detective Banba stabbed to death twenty one times, and Nozaki’s parents strangled by their own son. It seems Banba had figured out the solution before everyone else, and came to this house yesterday without telling Saburou. (”Rest in peace, Runbaba 12,” Shirou thinks reflexively.)

--

In the house they find a note from the criminal, who claims to be fulfilling orders of ‘the Great God Jawakutora-sin’ (or Jawakutora-shin), who governs over all human souls, but as those souls are ‘dirty, unaware, unseeing and ignorant’, the god wants to make them clean. The cleansing proccess has to start with mothers, so the next generation of humans would hopefully already be ‘clean’. Apparently Nozaki in his childhood had a NDE himself, saw ‘Jawakutora’s light’ and understood his guidance. The method involves hitting a precise spot at the back of a person’s head. This causes a ‘perfect opening’ in the skull to form, through which the soul can briefly fly out and have a NDE, that is, ‘be shown reality’, and also be shown Jawakutora’s great spiral structure (a spiral being its symbol) -- that’s the spiral on the map of Nishi Akatsuki. Jawakutora also told Nozaki to do all the other things: bury the victims, write the letters on the photos, and use the plushies (’animals who have never been given souls’. Or something).

While this note shows clearly that the culprit is just some religious fanatic, something bugs Shirou, and he still thinks Jirou may be involved, especially since the two dogs of the family were also killed without any reason.

--

After Banba’s death, Saburou mourns him and closes himself alone in the triangle warehouse for long periods of time. This unexpectedly allows him to discover something, and he calls Ichirou and Shirou to the warehouse. (Maruo and his wife at that time have a job-related meeting with a few other people in the house). This something is the mystery of their grandfather Daimaru’s death.

As Saburou points out, the old stains left from the corpse’s bodily fluids are spread over a significant area, in an arc, which would mean that the hanging corpse had to somehow move around in a circle. Saburou found out that the ceiling of the warehouse can be moved, independently of the walls, by pressing a hidden button. The ceiling rotates in such a way that the building seen from above eventually looks like a 6-pointed star, which was the warehouse’s purpose in the first place: apparently, their great-grandfather Hans was secretly Jewish, and while he was afraid of persecution if he showed his identity outright, he constructed this mechanism as a great big fuck you to the bigoted society who had no clue a giant Star of David was right under their noses.

When the ceiling is moved, there are large enough gaps in some places that a person can fit through; that’s how both Jirou and Daimaru’s murderer could get out. Yes, Daimaru was actually murdered -- by his own son Maruo, the son that he had abused for years and years. That abuse was what gave Maruo his scars. The violence instilled on him, which he then passed to his own sons...

While the brothers talk in the warehouse unaware of anything else, Nozaki sneaks into the main house and stabs everyone he runs into, eventually wounding every single person there. Maruo manages to dodge him and runs towards the warehouse, and in the heated moment yells, ‘Ichirou, Jirou, Saburou, Shirou! Run!”. The names of all his sons.

The brothers run out and see Nozaki stab Maruo, and as Ichirou moves to help his father he also gets injured. This makes the other two brothers’ blood boil and they fight Nozaki, with Shirou eventually using the attacker’s own knife to stab him. But Shirou’s job isn’t done yet: with help of Saburou he gets everyone moved to one spot, grabs his doctor bag, and through his sheer skills of an ER surgeon, lightning fast decisions and improvising on the spot, he manages to keep everyone including Maruo and Ichirou alive until the ambulance arrives. [And it’s fucking amazing to read.]

--

After Shirou heals physically (he did run away from the hospital earlier, after all), he goes to Rupan’s wife Takaya Mari, who’s a psychologist, and makes the first step on his way to heal emotionally. He cries like a baby throughout the entire session, finally lets so many emotions pour out chaotically out of him, and leaves with a lot of things in his head finally sorted out.

Later through his own investigation he learns that Jirou is alive and well, now working in the Ministry of Finances under the name ‘Kawaji Natsurou’, which is so obviously an anagram of ‘Natsukawa Jirou’ it’s surprising nobody noticed.

...but another romaji spelling of Jirou’s name (’Natsukawa Jiro’) is also an anagram for ‘Jawakutora-sin”, and Shirou now understands who was the mastermind behind Nozaki’s actions; who wanted to enact revenge on the mother who in a critical moment turned against him, and most likely on the entire family sooner or later. ...Although Shirou has a feeling he won’t try anything like that anymore.

During the therapy session, Shirou expresses forgiveness towards his father, and wonders whether or not this quick forgiveness isn’t just a foolish decision made in spur of the moment, under strong emotions... but after he heard Maruo yell all their names trying to save them in a similar moment of emotions, he has a feeling things will get better. Shirou’s mother hasn’t woken up yet, but he’s sure she’ll come out of that wonderful giant forest eventually. The force putting their family together is powerful like gravity -- whether this power won’t just bring another disaster, nobody can tell. Certainly, it’s best if Jirou still keeps as far away from them as it’s possible. Maybe it’d be for the best if every single one of them stayed apart, never had children, and let this cursed family be finally destroyed; maybe it’d be for the best if all that remained was smoke, soil or sacrifices. But it’s not the time to think about death. For now, what matters is that they’re all alive and have to try and keep on living.

In the end, Shirou calls Atena (the nurse from earlier) and asks her to sleep with him -- literally sleep with him, mostly -- and with the warm and safety, and another person’s heartbeat so close by, he can finally sleep calmly.

[newstfionline]

School Officer: A Job With Many Roles and One Big Responsibility

By Stephanie Saul, Timothy Williams And Anemona Hartocollis, NY Times, March 4, 2018

Maple syrup gumming up the gun belt isn’t normally a hazard of police work. But it is a common problem for Cpl. Pamela Revels when students have been eating pancakes at the school breakfast.

“Kids like to come up and give you a little bit of a hug,” Corporal Revels said. “They don’t wipe their hands that well.”

Ms. Revels freely dispenses hugs and smiles at the schools where she works around Auburn, Ala. But she is also a sheriff’s deputy who wears a sidearm and a bulletproof vest, drives an official S.U.V. and has an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle stored nearby.

On Thursday afternoon, when a report came in about a man in camouflage carrying a gun near school, she sprang into action. As worried students and teachers locked themselves in classrooms and closets, she bolted outdoors, hurriedly walked around the sprawling campus and scanned the nearby woods until she was satisfied that it was safe for everyone to emerge.

“I can turn into a mama bear really quick,” she said. “And I’ve made that decision that nobody is going to hurt my babies if I can help it.”

For millions of students, the first adult they see every day at school is not a teacher, or principal. It is a “school resource officer” like Corporal Revels, an often-overlooked role in law enforcement that is under the national glare like never before.

Their duties range from perking up sullen students to directing bus traffic to settling disputes to keeping an eye out for threats. It is that responsibility as the first line of defense that is getting the most attention, as questions swirl over whether the school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., failed to do his job when he remained outside the school on Feb. 14 while a former student, Nikolas Cruz, shot 17 people to death inside.

The position, with its genial-sounding name, is an unusual hybrid of counselor, educator and cop, and perhaps no other job better personifies America’s shifting ideas about schools, policing and safety.

Their numbers exploded during the community-oriented policing wave of the 1990s and even more after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.

As the memory of that shooting faded and local budgets tightened, their ranks thinned in many places. Now there are calls for installing more of them in schools across the country, with new positions announced in a number of districts just this past week, even as the president wants to arm more teachers.

In interviews, school officers around the country spoke of performing multiple adult roles, having to alternate between nurturing and authoritative, with a guiding philosophy known in the field as “the triad”--counselor, teacher, law enforcement officer.

“They have to be a mentor--a kind, caring, trusting adult, the nice police officer who will give you a high-five and ask you how your day is going,” said John McDonald, the security chief for the Jefferson County, Colo., school district, which includes Columbine High. “And very quickly they have to become a tactical cop. That switch is not for everybody. The ability to do that is very difficult.”

Mostly, though, their job is to keep order on campus and among adolescents whose fuses are not yet fully grown. Officer Kingzett, 38, was in the cafeteria of a Fargo middle school last week when a fight broke out between a girl and a boy. It started with name-calling, but Officer Kingzett could sense it escalating. As the bell rang and students streamed to their classes, she pulled aside the antagonists and just let them vent, using the listening skills she had learned as a negotiator on the police department’s SWAT team.

Crisis over. “It was one of those small victories you could tuck into your back pocket,” she said.

Nationally, there are no specific training requirements for the job, although the National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that officers complete a 40-hour course that includes emergency plans for schools, de-escalation techniques and academic work, including studying the adolescent brain. Since most officers are members of their local forces, they also receive the same shooting training their colleagues do.

Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

The most recent calculations of the number of school resource officers, from 2013, showed that about 30 percent of schools had one, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, just 1 percent had.

In some cases, it is not an easy job to fill, according to Mr. McDonald of Jefferson County. “Most cops don’t get into law enforcement to be in school,” he said. “They want to be on the street catching bad guys.”

That problem has helped feed a stereotype that school officers are not the cream of their departments.

Mac Hardy, director of operations for the national organization, said bad school resource officers fall into three categories--“hostages,” those who are ordered to work in schools; “retirees,” older officers who are nursing their pensions; and “vacationers” who like having school holidays off, though many work as regular patrol officers during the summer.

“You’ve been on the job 20 years and we’ve got to park you someplace. We’re going to put you in a school,” Mr. McDonald said, describing the attitude he said some departments have. “That’s much less of an effective model. We want go-getters.”

As the first line of defense, school resource officers are often hailed as heroes when school incidents are defused, or, as in the case of Deputy Peterson, criticized for failing to avert disaster. Mr. Peterson, who resigned from the department, has disputed accusations that he did not fulfill his job, saying through his lawyer that he believed the shots were coming from outdoors and so he waited for the gunman there.

One of the heroes was Deputy Carolyn Gudger, who faced off an armed school intruder in 2010, becoming the toast of her eastern Tennessee community, which named her grand marshal of the Food City 250 Nascar race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The man had arrived at the school and asked to meet with the principal, then drew a semiautomatic handgun. Deputy Gudger pushed the principal out of harm’s way, drew her gun and held the intruder at bay, negotiating with him for 10 minutes even as he still had his gun drawn.

Other officers arrived and killed him when he refused to drop the weapon. Officer Gudger said she heard criticism that she should have shot the man right away. “I can’t give you a concrete answer on that,” she said last week. “It just wasn’t the time to do it.”

Asked whether she had ever averted an attack, Corporal Revels, the Alabama officer, said that several years ago, she began monitoring a student who had a habit of pushing, kicking and bullying other students. “I went deeper and found writings and drawings that were concerning,” she said, and saw to it that the student began mental health treatment.

On the day of the lockdown--it was unclear if the gun-toting man was real, or perhaps a wandering hunter--Corporal Revels also helped a kindergartner who had dropped his breakfast get new helpings of sausage and apple juice; saw a teenager storm out of Spanish class, talked with him briefly, and had him back in class in five minutes; complimented students on their choice of pajamas for the school’s Pajama Day; and then drove home to her farm an hour away, where she would respond to three phone calls regarding bullying or other misbehavior at school.

Takaya Dupree, a 12th-grader, said Corporal Revels knew almost every student well, since she had been around the school for years. “So I feel like she’ll protect us,” Takaya said.

Even if a gunman burst into the school?

“It wouldn’t get to that point,” she said. “She’ll probably talk him out of it, before he came to the school.”

[otogakuretakaya]

mirror, simple, or tails.

((I hear you say ‘or’ and decide it must mean ‘and’, thank you. =3 ))

Send ‘mirror’ for my character as something that’s the opposite of what they are now.

“Report.”

The young hunter-nin straightened. “Target eliminated. Identity confirmed.” He held up a dark bag, its underside waterproofed but still covered in bloodstains. Something always seemed to seep through when one took a head, unfortunately.

“Take it back to collections.”

“Will do, captain.”

Takaya’s mask could show no emotion, but even if it had been removed, there wouldn’t have been much difference. Missing-nin were targets, nothing more. They defected from Kirigakure, and he hunted them, and they died. It was all so very simple.

Perhaps one day he would be called to succeed his elders as head of the family. Until then, he would simply increase their prestige. With every kill, with every rise in his reputation, their renown grew, for having given the village such a deadly shinobi.

He could wait for things like titles – they mattered little, compared to the hunt. He could wait for a wife, too; the family was still choosing a suitable woman, one who would produce a strong child… and one who would not be missed too deeply when, inevitably, she died.

In this as in all else he would obey. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for the clan, or for the village.

In his own way, Takaya was also a kind of inevitability.

Send ‘simple’ for my character as an ordinary civilian.

The scarred kunoichi shuddered, but tried to hold still. “Aren’t you done yet?” she asked, through gritted teeth.

Shifting to look her in the eyes, the young doctor smiled slightly. “Almost. Just give me a moment longer, and… there we go.” He mopped the remaining blood away, leaving only the neatly stitched wound behind.

At the door, the second kunoichi stood guard, looking tense. “The sooner we get out of here, the better. Anbu could come looking any time now.”

“Try not to do too much for a while,” Takaya advised, as he set his tools in the sink to rinse and disinfect. “You don’t want to tear that wound back open.”

The scarred woman nodded, but her hand slipped closer to a kunai.

“Oh, dear. Were you going to kill me instead of paying for my help?” Takaya sounded mildly regretful. “Then who would patch you up next time?”

The woman at the door sighed. “Just pay him and let’s go. He’s too useful to kill right now – there aren’t many medics who’ll treat missing-nin and not say anything to the authorities.”

When the pair were gone, Takaya sat down, looking weary. His little clinic took just about any patient, even if they were fugitives, which had its nerve-wracking moments now and then. He pulled his files closer, and jotted in the obligatory false information about his patients.

If an Anbu team did turn up, they’d find nothing useful here.

Send ‘tails’ for my character as a jinchūriki.

The Batori clan had for a long time possessed a great capacity for storing chakra, even beyond their own natural reserves. Thus, when the Sanbi, the Three-Tails, suddenly lacked a host, they were very glad to volunteer a child of their clan. It was as if fortune had smiled upon them --

though not upon that child.

Years later, two men in black cloaks, emblazoned with red clouds, sat in a tea-house on one of the lesser islands of the Land of Water. It was bold indeed for one of them to come here, after leaving Kirigakure as he had, but neither man was noted for timidity.

“You’re members of the Akatsuki.” The soft voice belonged to a slender youth with haunted dark-grey eyes, a strange contrast to his smile. “You’re hunting jinchūriki. Please, would you tell me what happens to them?”

He was given a strange look, but the dark-haired man set down a stick of dango and answered him. “Three days and nights of pain, followed by death.”

“Ehh -- Itachi, you --” The other, Kisame, almost protested, but subsided, realising quickly that there was a reason for his partner’s honesty.

“I see. Thank you for not lying to me.” The youth bowed and smiled sadly. “When they heard you were coming, I let them lock me up for safekeeping -- or my clone, at least. I think I’d better go with you.”

“You’re the jinchūriki?” Kisame looked the boy over. “And you’re choosing to go with us anyway?”

“It’s easier this way. No-one else will have to die trying to keep me from your organisation. And if you want to take my tailed beast... you’ll be quicker about it than my clan.” He gave the pair another of those strange sad smiles. “Three days and nights? They have been harvesting this power of mine for years. I’m not afraid of one last bit of pain, if all of this will be finished afterwards.”

He wasn’t supposed to be their target, but when they left, Takaya walked between them, placid as a lamb. They wouldn’t turn down this opportunity when it came to them so easily, after all.

And for him, at least, the pain was over soon enough.

[ableism-in-anime]

Mikaela Hyakuya and Krul Tepes: The Vampire Queen and the Golden Seraph: A Romance

Property rights belong to Kagami Takaya, Yamamoto Yamato, Furuya Daisuke, Shueheisa, Inc., and Shonen Jump and the numerous scanlators and translators of the online manga Seraph of the End. (終わりのセラフ)  

This a Mika x Krul meta that I wrote two years ago yesterday. 

 If you have not been hiding under a rock in the world of Seraph of the End (終わりのセラフ)      then you will have come to know the ship Yuumika or Mikayuu, which is the romantic pairing between Hyakuya Yuuichiro and Hyakuya Mikaela.

However, this essay will focus on the relationship between Krul Tepes and Mikaela Hyakuya, and why I believe it is a possibility of a romantic relationship between them.

When we first meet Krul Tepes and Mikaela Hyakuya, it is on opposite sides. Krul is a vampire, the Queen of Japan and over one thousand years old. Mikaela Hyakuya is an eight-year old human orphan whose parents had abused and abandoned him years before. On that day, Mikaela Hyakuya and the other orphans, including Yuuichiro, were supposed to be killed. Unknown to them at the time, Mikaela and the others had been human experiments by the Hyakuya sect, being known as “Seraphs.”

               Krul, as the Queen of Japan, had a duty to kill all the Seraphs in the Hyakuya orphanage. However, she did not. Instead, what did she do? She transported the Hyakuya orphans into the underground city and kept them as livestock. Livestock, yes, having their blood taken by vampires, but alive. Why would Krul do such a thing?

               In the first chapter of the manga, Mikaela is depicted as a cheerful and bright individual that taught Yuuichiro the meaning of family. He was the leader of the orphans, and selflessly gave his blood to Ferid in order for the orphans to have a better life. It is noted that the orphan has a nickname, Mika. His family members, including Yuuichiro, call him this as opposed to his full name. At age twelve, Mikaela and his family try to escape from the underground city, but Ferid catches them.

               Mika’s arm is detached from his elbow, and is bleeding heavily from his wounds as Yuuichiro believes he is the last survivor of his family. Bodies of their family members surround him, and Mika is grateful that at least Yuuichiro got away. Several vampires come onto the scene are shown in Mika’s flashback in chapter 5 of the manga, and they immediately see Ferid on the floor with a surviving human child. One vampire raises his hand to kill Mika, but –

                                       Krul enters the manga for the first time. Her first official line in the manga is to stop the unknown vampire to kill Mika. Her second line is “This human belongs to me.” At first glance, Krul appears similar to a child. With light pink hair and gothic clothing, she does not look like a queen in charge of thousands of her kind. However, it is immediately disregarded when she address Ferid.

               She scolds him for killing “her” Seraphs and notes that one is dying. Ferid comments on her conduct, telling her that the Seraphs were supposed to be killed. He added that he should bring the matter to the Senior Council when Krul snaps and detaches his arm out of anger. After Ferid walks away, Krul focused on the dying Mika. She crouched down to her knees and tastes his blood for a moment before offering to give him eternal life. Mika weakly refuses.

Smirking darkly, Krul bites her lip with blood flowing down her chin as she crouches down onto Mika and…

                               Kisses him.

               Mika screams as half-formed tears appears in his eyes. However, his emotion at this point is not the focus.

               Krul could have turned Mika any way she wanted to. She had the power, knowing that he was a dying human. Instead, she kissed him to transfer the blood into his mouth. It is known that vampires are disgusted by any show of human affection and form of intimacy between humans. Why then, did Krul choose to kiss Mikaela Hyakuya in one of the most infamous ways of human affection?

               We do not yet know of the relationship Krul and Mika had during the time-skip. However, we do know that Krul had been giving Mika her blood to feed as opposed to human blood. During the time shortly after Mika was transformed into a half-vampire in chapter 11, both the half-vampire and vampire were in her throne room. Krul is facing Mika, who is gasping as a human child is held captive in the room. Krul encourages Mika to drink. The blond continues to refuse. Krul then cuts her arm, and allows her blood to flow onto her wrist. Mika becomes agitated.

                Crying with tears rolling down his cheeks, Mika continues to feed on Krul’s blood. However, Mika feeding on her blood is not easy for Krul.

                                 She is sweating and breathing hard. It is not easy for her.

               Still.

               “You’re my dog now. My loyal servant…for all eternity.”

               This sentence may cause some confusion among the readers. So then, does Krul only see Mika as her dog for all time? No. Look how she embraces him.

                               In hiragana, ぎゅうtranslates as hugging. However, the English version misses it completely. It is not a simple gesture of affection; it translates as a “big hug,” if you will.

               Why does Krul initiate so much physical contact that her kind hate?

               In addition to this note, chapter 43 has a mention of Mika’s reference to Krul. In the English translation, Mika stated that she raised him. However, in the Japanese raws, the kanji Mika uses is 飼う (かう, ramaj: kau), which is translated as to keep (as a pet or an animal). It can also translate as to feed, as in an animal in a morbid sense. However, does Krul truly treat Mika that way?

               You would think with Mika’s hatred of vampires and self-hatred of himself because of what he is would cause him to hate the vampire who turned him. He hates Ferid, the one who wounded him to cause him to be turned into a vampire in the first place and slaughtered his family. But he does not hate Krul.

               He cares about her.

               When Mika was summoned by Krul, the pink-haired vampire was putting her blood into a vial for him. However, Mika was so thirsty that he caused the vial to shatter onto the floor as he roughly latched onto her neck. Any viewer of this scene would believe that Krul would be angry at Mika for his rough treatment. But she was not. Instead, Krul was amused at Mika’s actions. Mika, as soon as he regained his senses, looked horrified and apologized to Krul.

                               Look how at the sweat drop on his face, and of how violently he pushes Krul away from him.

               “Oh…I-I’m sorry, Krul. I-I lost control.”

               Since being turned into a vampire, Mika normally has an apathetic expression. Self-hatred and guilt over his family’s deaths, and thinking about Yuuichiro made him a shell of her former bright self, and he does not associate with many other vampires. Unless it is with Yuuichiro, Mika’s expression remains apathetic and dead. However, the concern on Mika’s face is not only limited to situations involving his last remaining family member. The emotional Mika is also present with his interactions with Krul.

               During the senior council meeting, Krul looks shocked to see Mika there.

Later she states:

“Eight years ago I eliminated the Hyakuya sect. Every last one of the guinea pigs in the Hyakuya orphanage…who bore the Seraph gene…I killed with my own two hands.”

 But she did not.

The Queen allowed one to escape with another by her side. After the meeting, Ferid and Krul converse about the Seraph of the End project again. Ferid explicitly tells Krul that meddling with Seraph of the End is a death sentences for vampires. However, Krul states nothing. When alone, Mika begins to question Krul and her motives. Krul then holds his hand and squeezes’ it behind his back, causing Mika to collapse onto the ground.

                 “I could end a puny life like yours.”

               Krul continues to state of the reasons why Mika depends on her: feeding on her blood. She then releases Mika, telling him to trust her. She then tells him the reason why she is researching Seraph of the End. Mika is shocked, but Krul smiles and calls him “my selfish son.”

                                 Now, many of you might also question of why I believe there could be a romantic relationship if Krul considers Mika her son. However, let us look at the relationship of another two characters: Hyakuya Yuuichiro and Ichinose Guren.

                A year after Yuuichiro escapes and is confused for Guren’s son. Guren later corrects then but immediately calls him “his kid.”

               Two other moments.

                                               Guren treats Yuuichiro as his son, and sees his former self in the young man. However, does Krul treat Mikaela Hyakuya in a subordinate position, or treat him as an equal? I agree with the latter.

               In the Japanese raws, vampires refer to the vampire they turned as 子(こramji: ko), which translates as child. However, Krul called Mika her son (息子、むすこ, romaji: musuko), which indicates her affection for him.

               Krul orders Mika to find Yuuichiro. The vampire knows that Mika loves Yuuichiro and would do anything to get him back, and instead of giving him a mission to slaughter humans, she gives him an order to which corresponded to one of his deepest dreams. In another note, Krul referred to Yuuichiro by his nickname that his friends and family call him, which indicates that Krul cares for Yuuichiro because he is important to Mika.

               When the Seraph of the End is revealed, Mika takes Yuuichiro and Krul tells him not to give his brother to the humans and that they should escape. The three are about to escape when Ferid appears with Crowley as a diversion and bites Krul on the neck.

She tries to make a deal with him, but look at this:

                               Krul stopped trying to make a deal with Ferid and…was more concerned with Mika.

               Not herself.

               Not the Seraph or the Seraph of the End.

But only Mika.

Krul tells Mika an incomprehensible message as a conflicted expression appears on Mika’s face before yelling at him to leave.

He does not want to leave, but she has told him to.

It is noted that Ferid stated that if he drinks too much of Krul’s blood, she would die. Why then was Krul giving Mika her blood for years despite the knowledge that she would die if a vampire drank too much? Why did she smile when after Mika regained his senses when he could have possibly killed her?

               It is revealed in the later chapters that Krul being chained to her throne, bloody and unconscious. She is later seen hung upside down, blood slowly dripping onto the ground. Krul then reunites with Sato, one of the ancient vampires, and reminisces about a time one thousand years ago. Her older brother Ashura Tepes became a demon one thousand years ago to protect both of them. Krul had begged him not to, crying as she stated she didn’t want to live in this world without him.

                               It is unusual for a vampire as powerful as Krul to refer to her own kind as monsters. However, it is noted in the series that vampires usually begin hating of who and what they are, and attempt to resist any type of temptation human blood has to offer. However, vampires crave nothing but blood. If they do not drink blood, then the vampire turns into a demon. It was revealed in later chapters of the manga and the light novel that vampires begin to lose their human emotions. Shortly after being turned into a vampire, Crowley began to forget the faces of his comrades and of why he wanted to kill Ferid for turning him into a vampire. In the Japanese text, the sires of vampires refer to the vampires they turned as child. However, Krul did not refer Mika as her child. Instead, she referred to him in a more intimate form.

But I do not believe that her affection for him is a mother’s love for her son.

               Mikaela hated himself for being a vampire and wanting to feed on human blood as Krul once did. It was also noted that vampires lose all human emotions at some point, and Mika himself noted that he is losing his feelings and love he had for his family except for Yuuichiro. Mika and the others are present when the punishment for Krul and Ferid is read. For ten days, Krul and Ferid were tied to crosses and placed into direct sunlight for ten days. There was also a possibility of both of them having the punishment for eternity. Both Ferid and Krul screamed from the agony and pain. Crowley commented on the punishment both vampires had to undergo, and did not appear to be concerned about Ferid’s agony. Mika continued to stare at Ferid as his body burned almost black in the sun, burning and screams of agony and horror echoing in the atmosphere. However, if Mika had no feelings for what happened to Krul, then why

                               Would this be his face?

                               Why would Mika have to look away when all the vampires didn’t care, including Crowley who seemed unaffected at Ferid’s agony?

               Why would Mika look sad when Narumi mentioned Krul?

               Yuuichiro states in the manga that they should save both Krul and Ferid. Mika had asked for what he would do, and agreed. At this point in the manga, the plot is focused on what occurred on the Apocalypse and the relationship between Guren and his squad, and their history with Hiiragi Mahiru.

It could be ten or twenty chapters before Yuuichiro, Mikaela, and the others save Krul and Mika.

               Why does Krul want the Seraph of the End? Why did she choose to save Mika? Why does she care about him more than any vampire would?

               The reason, I believe, is simple. Krul understands what Mika is going through. She has been where he is with her own brother who disappeared for one thousand years as a demon by being sealed in a sword belonging to Hiiragi Mahiru and then Hyakuya Yuuichiro. It can be argued that Krul only wants Mika to get to Yuuichiro, but I do not believe this is the case. Originally, perhaps, that was her end. However, I do not believe this is her intent.

Despite one thousand years passing, Krul is still the small child with tears in her eyes. She wants to see her brother again. Guren choose to revive his friends at the cost of so much life. I predict that Seraph of the End has the power to revive demons, vampires, into life once more. Krul wants the Seraph of the End to revive her brother Ashura in order to not being separated from him ever again.

               This scene is almost exactly the same.

                  It could be ten or twenty chapters before Yuuichiro, Mikaela, and the others save Krul and Mika.

               Why does Krul want the Seraph of the End? Why did she choose to save Mika? Why does she care about him more than any vampire would?

               The reason, I believe, is simple. Krul understands what Mika is going through. She has been where he is with her own brother who disappeared for one thousand years as a demon by being sealed in a sword belonging to Hiiragi Mahiru and then Hyakuya Yuuichiro. It can be argued that Krul only wants Mika to get to Yuuichiro, but I do not believe this is the case. Originally, perhaps, that was her end. However, I do not believe this is her intent.

Despite one thousand years passing, Krul is still the small child with tears in her eyes. She wants to see her brother again. Guren choose to revive his friends at the cost of so much life. I predict that Seraph of the End has the power to revive demons, vampires, into life once more. Krul wants the Seraph of the End to revive her brother Ashura in order to not being separated from him ever again.

               This scene is almost exactly the same.

                                                       “No! Don’t go with him! Who cares about some damn future? Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone in this world without you!”

               “Yuu…forget about all of them and run away with me!”

               “I’m your only true friend! I won’t try to deceive you! Those humans are only trying to use –”

               Both participants wouldn’t give a shit if the world ended, or if everyone else would die. All Mika – and Krul – want is to have their brother by their side, and to never lose them again.

               Because they are the light for their humanity.

               Krul knows that Mika hates being a vampire. She had said before that there was no way for him to die in a normal way after being turned into a half-vampire. Therefore, despite the risk of Mika turning into a demon, Krul allowed him to drink her own blood despite causing her pain not because he is her pawn, her dog, or her son. Why then, after one thousand years, is Krul so kind to this former “live-stock?” Human emotions are supposed to have faded away from this time, but yet Krul is unflinchingly human in regards to Mikaela Hyakuya.

Krul Tepes loves Mikaela Hyakuya.

If the Seraph of the End is obtained, then there could be a possibility that Mika could become human again. That is Mika’s dearest wish, along to be with his brother Yuuichiro. We do not know if Krul would allow him to become human again, but we do have the interaction between them in chapter 41.

Krul did not gloat or smile at the sight of Mika turning into a vampire. She did not react in a way that she had before, smiling darkly. Compare this to before.

 There was none of this in that chapter.

Krul simply told him that it was time to go with Yuuichiro.

She cares about Mika, not more about him being a vampire, in the end of the chapter.

Mika stated during the drive to Osaka that he is not certain if he trusts Krul. Why? The former Queen of Japan has been the only vampire kind to him during the four years of separation with Yuuichiro, and yet he stated that he is not certain of trusting her. It is because she is a vampire. Vampires were taught to be inhumane, and thinking of only blood and treating humans like live-stock. However, vampires are no more inhumane than vampires. They have a side to them that many are not willing to see.

Krul, did not, treat Mika as “live-stock.” The blond vampire continues to see the world with a narrow perception, and his view of Krul mainly as a vampire. What is Krul was human? In the famous chapter 13, there is this exchange between Mika and Ferid:

“Yes, I do hate humanity. But I hate vampires too.”

“Ooh, whatever shall you do?”

Mika hates vampires and humans. However, the only exceptions to this rule are Yuuichiro and Krul. A human and a vampire. Yuuichiro is the only family Mika has left, then what is Krul?

If she is not his mother or the vampire who used him as “live-stock,” then who is she to him?