#arsfantasia89

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Thank you for your analysis of Ch 274. You keep calling your theory crazy, but the more I think about it, the more plausible it sounds. We know that Ogata was “liberated” after he left the hospital. Could it be he found out the truth about Yuusaku? To my recollection, we have never been shown his complete face so that would make sense. If true, the big question would be whether or not Hanazawa was a part of the lie. Did he “replace” his son with a fake rather than accept Ogata his other son? Or is this all Tsurami’s doing? Also, I know that the theory of how Ogata survived his fall was that Kiro helped him. But I have wondered if maybe its Kikuta? Since they appear to be working together, perhaps it was Kikuta that he was meeting. I find it plausible that Kikuta infiltrated Tsurami’s group while Ogata infiltrated Hijikata’s and Kiro’s. Maybe that was the plan all along. Sorry for the ramble....🥴 Thank you for all your hard work with your analysis and theories. Always love reading them 🌟

I’m glad you like my analysis of chap 274!

Well, it’s a crazy theory.

There’s little I can use to support it, just small hints and the general theme of fakes being better than originals, yet easy to destroy/damage.

I’ve been wondering a lot about Yuusaku with other friends at Discord, we’ve been trying to understand him but his image is always filtered by Ogata’s vision, by his confused feelings for his brother, who somehow seems so perfect yet hollow.

Ogata believes Yuusaku’s nobility comes from coming out of a family who loved him, but it seems hard to imagine Hanazawa, who spoke in such a way to Ogata, encouraging Yuusaku to connect with his brother, Hanazawa who sacrificed so many soldiers without a blink wish for his son to live in such a way he wouldn’t make soldiers feel guilty as if he cared about their psychological state.

Of course we know little about Hanazawa as well so maybe he was a better person than he looked like but Noda had no problems showing us his face, which usually means whose were Hanazawa’s true colours.

Yuusaku’s face instead was always shadowed, to hint that either we didn’t know him or Ogata couldn’t face him.

So well, when Sugimoto jumps in and Kikuta tells him he has to ‘forget everything about Hanazawa Yuusaku’, as if what had happened was something bad... well, it makes me wonder how’s possible that something bad is tied to Good Boy Yuusaku.

We’ll have to wait and see though.

As I said I might be completely off track.

We know that Ogata was “liberated” after he left the hospital. Could it be he found out the truth about Yuusaku?

That’s the text in question according to @piduai‘s translation

Q18: What made Ogata grow out his hair after hospitalization, thus becoming the one and only sexy Superior Private he’s known as?

Noda: He felt liberated.

After the scene in chap 243 that shows how Ogata escaped from the hospital my interpretation is just that Ogata’s hair grew while he was in the hospital (in fact as he talks with Tsurumi we can see his hair is longer under the bandages) and since Usami revealed Tsurumi knew of his betrayal and he escaped, he didn’t have to cut them anymore to play the role of good soldier. His feeling ‘liberated’ means just he wasn’t anymore forced to obey to Tsurumi, to play the part of the good soldier (good soldiers were supposed to keep their hair cut short, as Tsukishima, the Nikaidou brother, Tanigaki prior to his desertion, Noma, Okada, Tamai, Sugimoto when he was in the army, Toraji, Komiya, Mishima, Maeyama and even Yuusaku himself).

Ogata is no more in the army, he doesn’t have to obey orders anymore, he’s free to do what he prefers, so I think in this sense he felt liberated and as a proof of his rebellion, let his hair long instead than cutting them short again.

To my recollection, we have never been shown his complete face so that would make sense. If true, the big question would be whether or not Hanazawa was a part of the lie. Did he “replace” his son with a fake rather than accept Ogata his other son?

I’m not the best person to ask about Hanazawa as I really don’t like him, but on a general note, I think the chances of Hanazawa’s involvement are possible only in few circumstances and actually extremely low.

I mean, if Yuusaku died prior to the war, I can’t see Hanazawa hiding his son’s death and replacing him with a fake. Losing a son happened, it was nothing to be ashamed of, hiding his death and replacing him with a fake, if discovered, would have pushed on him such a huge amount of dishonour it wasn’t worth it, especially considering he could easily replace it with Ogata with no dishonour whatsoever or adopting someone he could deem worthy openly.

Japan had absolutely no problem whatsoever with adoptions, even when those adoptions involved adults... but had a lot of problems with deception.

Now, let’s say, Yuusaku escaped instead than taking part to the war.

This is dishonourable for the whole Hanazawa family, even if Hanazawa can disown and strike him out of the family. Still, placing a fake in his position and giving him the role of the flagbearer so that it will be quickly killed off with honour and he could bury it claiming his son died with honour seems a bit over the top... and such a deception would have probably brought dihonour to Hanazawa’s ancestors and such. In short, no, unless there’s a reason I can’t think of, I don’t think Hanazawa would have done it.

Besides, Tsurumi would have surely discovered it quickly and would have used it to blackmail Hanazawa. He was keeping his eyes on Koito senior from prior the war started, surely he was doing the same with Hanazawa.

In this case there would have NEVER been a plan to kill Yuusaku, keeping him alive would have been much more valuable right from the start.

Or is this all Tsurami’s doing?

I would say, if Yuusaku is a fake, it’s Tsurumi doing. That or it’s a third party doing, like the real Yuusaku died and the new Yuusaku was a Central spy... but it feels a bit hard to assume this because they placed him in a too risky position. I mean which use a spy has if it gets killed easily?

Also, I know that the theory of how Ogata survived his fall was that Kiro helped him. But I have wondered if maybe its Kikuta? Since they appear to be working together, perhaps it was Kikuta that he was meeting. I find it plausible that Kikuta infiltrated Tsurami’s group while Ogata infiltrated Hijikata’s and Kiro’s. Maybe that was the plan all along.

We actually don’t know how Ogata survived that fall and the more the thing remains unexplained the more I wonder if it’s just that Ogata, like his name implies, is as ‘immortal’ as Sugimoto and so he simply survived such fall same as Sugimoto would have done (it’s something I discuss more in deep in my reply to this post if you’re curious).

The problem with Kikuta being there to save Ogata is, first of all, that Kikuta was recovering at Noboribetsu at the time, so quite distant, along with Ariko.

I’m pretty sure Tsurumi was keeping an eye on his so if he had moved Tsurumi would have noticed.

Then we’ve all the sort of technical problems involved in the rescuing.

For start if Ogata and Kikuta were working together they both would have been lead there by the smoke of the fire Asirpa and Sugimoto had when Asirpa was drawing the tattoo of their prisoner, not just Ogata, and would have cooperated in dealing with Sugimoto.

I mean, Ogata faces Sugimoto alone and is almost killed by him, hadn’t it been for Asirpa. Kikuta is good with his guns, I would have expected him to shoot Sugi to save Ogata if the two were partners.

Even if Kikuta hadn’t noticed the fire, it wouldn’t make sense for him to be too distand from Ogata and when Ogata and Sugimoto started shooting he would have rushed there.

Plus, in order for Kikuta to notice Ogata has fallen and rescue him he should have been close... but Sugimoto and Asirpa stood over the cliff looking down. They would have noticed him.

Also when Ogata escapes he doesn’t think he has to reach his partner, just that he has to escape because he’s no match for Sugimoto.

If it was weird for Kiro to rescue Ogata and then leave him there to freeze to death while the 7th search for him, it’s even weirder for Kikuta, who either would have to alert the 7th he was there or just abandon him there to his fate and hope someone were to find him before it’s too late.

So, although how Ogata survived his fall is still a mystery beyond his ‘immortality’... or if you prefer his many lives as a cat I don’t think Kikuta could be involved. Said so as there’s no a canon answer I might very well wrong so take my answer with a grain of salt.

Thank you for enjoying my analysis and theories and for your ask!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

In reply @arsfantasia89​ said:

Thank you for your thoughts on Noda’s response. I am glad to see that I wasn’t the only one confused by the answer. Was the lesson of GK and Asirpa that you need to have resolve to kill people? Didn’t we know that from the start? Ok well loads of people tried to kill Sugimoto including bears…but Ogata was somehow the key? Well then why make him commit suicide? I think this all could have been explained better in the manga if the ending had not been so rushed (volume #) but that’s just my opinion

Thank you for apprecciating my attempt at making sense of it.

I’m still not sure if I’m up on something or I completely missed the meaning of his words. Also, at this point I don’t think there was a lesson in the whole thing or even a discussion in which various ideas are presented and the reader can chose which one he can agrees with.

If we assume Noda always meant to ‘heal’ Sugimoto in this way and it wasn’t a recent decision, Ogata was created with this purpose, with the idea he would be saved by Asirpa, almost kill Sugimoto in front of her eyes, and then be ‘murdered’ by her so that Sugimoto can get better.

Only, from what I read, the Japanese fandom wasn’t so keen on having a young girl commit murder so the scene needed to be twisted in such a way Asirpa didn’t really kill anyone and Ogata removed himself from the plot on his own and Asirpa never gets to shoot at Tsurumi.

As a draft it can work but you’re right, in the manga it would have greatly benefitted of a better development... same as plenty of other things.

But sadly we got what we got.

Noda will probably fix/expand some things in the volume version but, unless those volumes will come in giant size, I doubt much will be solved considering they’re supposed to contain 12 chapters each (if they split them among them) when usually the norm is 10, meaning they are already meant to be bigger than usual just to contain the content printed on the magazine.

Extra pages would make them even bigger and I don’t know how much bigger they can get. But well, we’ll see.

Thank you for your reply!

"Back in Karafuto, Asirpa didn’t kill Ogata because she lacked the resolve of taking a human life. After she reunited with Sugimoto, she was reassured in how important he is to her. If it’s about protecting Sugimoto, she decided that she’s ready to go to hell. Seeing her determination, Sugimoto also resolves that he’s ready to take the VIP seats to hell with Asirpa. Which is why Asirpa was able to risk her life taking the land deed back. Ogata had a very important role in facilitating this whole process."

it seems to me an unanswered answer. she eliminated Ogata brutally and senselessly. and instead of answering he shifts his attention saying that now Asirpa feels capable of killing people like any Sugimoto … it was better if he didn't say anything. thank you for the continuous observation and research you do

Well...

... let’s start by pointing out that quote comes from the interview @piduai was so kind to translate for us all to read.

I actually banged my head a lot around this answer because I’m not sure I understand it correctly.

So take my words with a huge grain of salt.

A possible explanation is that Noda wanted Asirpa to ‘heal’ Sugimoto. I’ll try to explain myself better. By showing Sugimoto she was willing to kill to protect him, this might have helped him to revalue himself, to accept he has killed people and would always guilty for that but that he can still be loved and accepted tot he point someone else would kill to protect him. In fact when Sugimoto shows up again in the epilogue, he’s in peace with himself and decides to move with Asirpa.

Sometimes in manga happens that you just use this narrative trick to ‘heal’ a character who feels he is unremendable. “I love you to the point I’ll do everything for you, so your life has worth” is a common trick.

Now... if this is the right explanation... well, maybe I had bad luck but I hadn’t seen anyone reaching it with just the manga, meaning if it needed to be verbalized to be understood, it was explained poorly.

Even people who loved the ending seemed to be puzzled by how Sugimoto just seemed fine, meaning people didn’t connect Asirpa being willing to kill Ogata with this... and, honestly, with good reasons since Asirpa shoot Ogata AFTER the latter has shoot in Sugimoto’s direction, so, by the time Asirpa let go of the arrow, Sugimoto’s brains might be dripping on the roof of the train.

Instead Ogata apparently only wanted to trigger her into killing him since Sugimoto’s head doesn’t have a second, gaping hole as far as we know and it’s not possible at that distance Ogata would have missed him.

But, honestly, I might be wrong.

Back in Karafuto I would have said Asirpa didn’t kill Ogata not because she lacked in resolve but because she believed taking a human life was wrong, even if it was in revenge or self preservation.

Instead it seems the idea is she just didn’t do it because ‘she lacked the resolve’.

I also believed Asirpa has plenty of courage since she risked her life more than once.

But no, it was all thanks to Sugimoto being willing to go to hell with her.

And Ogata was the plot device Noda used to quickly wash away Sugimoto’s issues and give Asirpa bravado, which, okay, could have symbolical sense since he was actually the second person Asirpa saved from Sugimoto (the first being Kasahara who’s however unavailable due to being long dead) but... well, this is a personal opinion but I overall don’t like how it was handled.

I could list why, but it would probably feel tedious so I’ll cut the reply here.

Anyway, yeah, I might totally be off track in my reading of Noda’s words so just take this as a theory and nothing more.

Thank you for enjoying my work and for your ask!