#and re: conflicting loyalties ; i mean ...goddamn; people are complex

[shenanigumi]

Hello! My question follows one of your recent responses. You mentioned that your favorite 'husband' is Okita (yes! I share it completely), your favorite pairing is HeiChi (for solid reasons) and your favorite character is Kazama due to his complexity. If you want, could you expand this statement? Why is Kazama so complex in your opinion, what are the possible reasons of his complexity (his inner conflict, his motives etc)?

Ohhhh man… ‘If I want’? I’m always down to talk about my faves. You’d best be prepared for a goddamn characterization essay, because I love Kazama to death. Also, it’ll be good practice for getting started on an actual essay, so I thank you for this wonderful way to wake up the brain!!

I’m throwing this under a read-more for those of you who can see it, because wow I talk a lot:

First off, let me get one thing straight: I hate Kazama. I don’t hate him in the same way or as much as I hate Kaoru; my ‘hatred’ for Kazama is rooted more in awe (e.g. “Wow, that was badass, but what an asshole”) than in genuine dislike (e.g. “I AM GOING TO SKIP ALL YOUR TEXT AND THEN KILL YOU”). By no means is Kazama a good person, but one doesn’t have to be a good person to be a good character.

Admittedly, I think the games could have handled Kazama’s characterization a lot better, and hopefully some of it has been resolved in Shinkai. Though I’ve made the connections that fit all the different sides of his personality together, and will hopefully be able to prove it below, I feel like it should have been more obvious in canon. He’s so different between routes that unless you spend a lot of time thinking about him and his character, like I apparently do, it can be pretty jarring.

Since I’ve already practically written an essay on the wiki I made, I’m going to be lazy and use my four fucking paragraphs I wrote on Kazama’s personality as a basis for analysis. The wiki-entries are as objective as I could make them, but I’m gonna give a warning for possible speculation/headcanons re: how I interpret them. Basically, I’m gonna try to explain my perception of Kazama’s characterization, which is pretty self-explanatory as far as why I like him is concerned, but I can’t guarantee that there’s any solid evidence. These are just the conclusions at which I arrived after considering what I have seen in canon:

Kazama is proud, selfish, domineering, and often cruel. He is severely prejudiced against humans, and even more so against furies. He refers to them almost exclusively as “fakes” or “abominations”, and sees it as his duty to dispose of them. Having little respect for those incapable of adapting to changing times, Kazama asserts his superiority of race and cause whenever possible. He is fatalistic and detached from his own violent actions, regarding them as proof of humanity’s frailty without ascribing any agency to himself. However, though Kazama maintains a clear dislike of and disdain for all humans throughout all routes, he strives to keep his emotional distance and remain aloof.

Whenever Kazama must do something he considers unpleasant, he tries to find a way to further his own enjoyment in the meantime, up to and including using Chizuru as an excuse to toy with the Shinsengumi. However, though he initially considers this a game in which he holds no real investment, he eventually becomes genuinely intrigued by the humans and their ideals. In Hijikata’s route, Kazama is unable to reconcile his existing values with his newfound attachment, and—once Amagiri confronts him about his errant ways—finally abandons his title and status in favor of engaging them. Thus, though Kazama has an extreme sense of responsibility and loyalty to his clan and people as a whole, he “[sees] no charm in command”, and is willing to step down from his position and pursue his own agenda if he finds a purpose he perceives as more worthwhile.

First and foremost, I love Kazama because he is not the person he is trying to be. Even though his development is never directly focused on, and in fact I’d actually argue that he develops the least on his own route, that little tidbit is an enormous driving force in his side of the story. Kazama’s Thing™ is that he’s an Honorable Demon, and tries to live Honorably, but he just doesn’t have the temperament to keep his distance. He’s too naturally curious, too easily driven to anger, too arrogant and drunk on power over humankind, and he knows it. He simply doesn’t care until these tendencies cause him to become completely entangled in the Shinsengumi’s affairs. Although this doesn’t happen on every route, the foundation for that frustration is there in all of them.

Essentially, Kazama is in pursuit of an ideal he cannot obtain for as long as he continues acting the way he does… and eventually, his behavior gets him to the point where he must either change that ideal or change himself. Each time he hits that crisis point, Kazama has opted to change his ideal, and that speaks volumes about his strength of will and character. Rather than ‘improve’ his flaws and conform to demonic expectations, Kazama would rather change what he is fighting for. Sometimes, his new goals do change him in turn—but his shifting priorities always precede his development in any direction. (More on that later.)

Kazama is persistent to the point of obsession when he wants something, demonstrated most prominently in Saito’s route, in which he turns his back on his previous concepts of good and evil, joining forces with Kodo for the sake of marrying Chizuru. Similarly, once his pride has been wounded, Kazama will stop at nothing to get revenge, and does not consider tipping the odds in his favor to be morally dubious. This is most evident when (in Hijikata’s route) he procures his family’s legendary sword, the Demonslayer, to vanquish Hijikata. However, despite his willingness to ensure his victory by any means necessary, Kazama has his own brand of honor in that he views lying as beneath him and will always tell the truth as he sees it. Though he may twist situations to his advantage or omit certain information if his own interests demand it, the few direct lies he tells are obviously identifiable. This applies to even the smallest matters, such as insisting that he rested during the night when in fact he was tending the fire.

Kazama is the voice of the conscience, and of radical reason (which I use in opposition to emotion in this case). I love Kazama because he’s never wrong. There are a lot of things you can say about Kazama, but you can’t exactly say he’s wrong. Humans are weak in comparison to demons? Absolutely right. They don’t know what they’re doing? No, they don’t. Furies aren’t supposed to exist? Indeed they aren’t. His methods may not always be sound, and I certainly don’t always agree with them—but his statements are generally true, if harsh.

Despite his aforementioned inability to live up to expectations of aloofness, Kazama is still duty-driven and follows a very strict, largely self-imposed code of honor. This also says a lot about his character, since it does not allow for direct lies, but it is extremely flexible since it is wholly unconnected to his sense of responsibility to his clan. Rather, it centers around whatever he has chosen as his goal—and, once he gives up on the idea of staying out of human matters, his code relaxes. Once Kazama no longer tries to maintain his distance from humans, he becomes more comfortable with acting based on his emotions. Through his fixation on humans, Kazama seems to become more human himself (and his choice to use the Demonslayer is incredibly ironic for exactly that reason).

Now, to circle back around to priorities… In his own mind, Kazama is always fighting for demonkind. If he cannot keep his distance as is expected of him, then he chooses to discard that notion and instead dispose of furies (in Hijikata’s route) or even dispose of humans (in Saito’s). No matter what his goal is, Kazama never abandons his self-identity as a demon or his wish to live an honorable life. He may change his definition of what exactly that means route to route, but no matter what he perceives as the right way to go about fulfilling it, he still centers himself around that idea.

In both Hijikata’s and Saito’s routes, Kazama concludes that it is impossible for him to operate within his current boundaries and chooses to pursue a new ideal, each one still rooted in what he believes to be a cause worthy of the demon he is�� even if his people openly disapprove. However, even though anger plays no small part in Kazama’s decision to seek revenge in Hijikata’s route, he thinks of that decision as built more on moral righteousness: a fake spilled demon blood, so of course he should die for it. There is still a rationale for his actions, and while Kazama demonstrates and acts on his anger more freely, he maintains his morals (however gray). His mission is specific and personal, so all his wrath—as uncontrollable as it may be in the moment—is deliberately directed at Hijikata.

However, on Saito’s route, Kazama demonstrates what happens when he stops fighting his emotions altogether, and instead allows them to rule him. Because his goal is now to resurrect the Yukimura clan by marrying Chizuru and to eliminate all humans, his mission becomes less focused, and so too do his feelings. He no longer has a singular cause to fight for; he’s simply thrown in his lot with Kodo. He loses his conventional moral compass somewhere amid his natural arrogance, exacerbated by these loftier ambitions. Since Kazama still believes that the end justifies the means, and this end requires more power and the exercise thereof, it’s little wonder he abandoned his usual reluctant restraint. The only thing that changed was the ideal he chose to pursue, and that in turn altered his behavior almost beyond recognition. The potential was always there; his new goal just turned him inside out.

(Again, I think the game should really have made this connection clearer, because the consistency in Kazama’s motives between Saito’s route and all others is a tad indistinct.)

…And lastly:

Though Kazama’s attitude is cold, direct, and serious by default, he does have a sense of humor, which is dry and sarcastic and usually manifests at others’ expense. He also readily displays scorn, anger, and conceit, all of which appear impossible for him to fully conceal. However, Kazama finds it difficult and/or unpleasant to openly admit more sentimental emotions such as affection, sadness, gratitude, or even agreement.

Yeah, so let’s not forget about the sense of humor, since it’s a more prominent (if somewhat shallow) reason why I love him. On Heisuke’s route, their sass battles are legendary, okay. Plus, on Kazama’s route, some of his one-liners are pure gold. And speaking of humor, as a postscript, I’d also like to point to my previous essay about Kazama and Shiranui’s similarities, which everyone has probably seen by now, but which further my point that he’s really an interesting character. Anyone who can be so similar to another character yet so strikingly different is A+ by me.

Okay, I think I’ve talked enough, considering I just spent two hours putting this mess together. Hope that actually answered your question!!