#manga spoilers until chapter 103-1

[sleeping-phoenix]

What Yato really wants

There is something bothering me since the last chapter (103-1)... Yato wants to die...

He doesn't have the strength or will to get up and fight for his life anymore. And he's not wishing for someone to save him before it's too late either. He is wishing for a quick death, not to be saved. He doesn't seem to have a will to live anymore. I read this panels in shock. Yato is the character that time after time has shown an unbreakable love for life and the strongest will to keep existing. The Yato we knew has always wished to live no matter what. He taught Ebisu to appreciate his life, to clung to life and not want to be replaced by reincarnating.

If a reason to make him want to die now existed, what would that be? What could possibly have changed that could make him want to die?

It's not because of his past. Sure he has always been haunted by his past and there's so much he regrets but he lived more than a thousand years with those regrets and never wanted to pay for them by dying, dispites he believing that's what he deserves.

This time he hasn't once think about what would feel like to get out alive and be reunited with Hiyori and Yukine like he has envisioned other times before when his life was in danger. This time he has envisioned himself so many times as a reincarnated child that is like he wants to be replaced by a younger version of him. Like if that was the best possible outcome for everyone. Better for whom exactly?

After he decided to kill Father to put an end to the calamity to protect everyone specially Yukine and Hiyori, he thinks about how a new gentler version of himself would be good for Yukine.

But that's not it either. That thought was after he already decided to go on a suicide mission. He was doing the aftermath of his decision that's all.

The real reason why he made the decision was because he read Hiyori's journal, we already know that much. While he read it, blushing, he had to realize that Hiyori is in love with him.

Hiyori herself acknowledge that her feelings are evident from what she wrote. Of course this made Yato really happy. But why instead of make him hopeful and wishing to return to her side like he wished in the yomi arc, he's now wishing for a quick death? He made the promised to Amaterasu before to risk his life and go kill Father but he wasn't intending to die. Hiyori's words not only give them the strength and motivation he needed to do what he had to do but completely change the way he regarded his own life.

He has shown during this arc that he doesn't care what happens to him anymore but the last chapter even make it seems like he does wants to die. He's literally thinking "Yeah that sounds good. Hurry up and finish me off"

Why is he not fighting for his life anymore? Why is he giving up and accepting death? Could reading Hiyori's thoughs and learning about her feelings make him not only want to risk his life but actually wanting to die and reunite with them after reincarnating?

Is it possible some part of Yato wants to die for Hiyori's sake?

The thing is, Yato doesn't want to robe Hiyori from his human life. He has change and mature a lot as a God since the first failed marriage proposal. He rejected her in the hospital arc saying he couldn't take her with him to the far shore until she's an old woman. He tried to find her a suitable match in Kamuhakari, a good man to tie her plaque with. He never intended to tie his plaque with Hiyori's like Kofuku did.

His feelings have evolved from "I'll make Hiyori the happiest person in the world" (chapter 27) to "I'm going to make sure she's happy" (chapter 82.5) Meaning he'll not be the one to make her happy. Going so far as to say that she's going to have dozens of grandchildren and marry an up-standing, self-sufficient man, then starts drunk crying at the thought of Hiyori getting married.

He is so in love with her and protective of her that he won't allow to take Hiyori for himself, not only because he considers himself to not be worthy of her but because they belong to different worlds. Yato wants the best for Hiyori, he wants her to experience and have a full human life, that she have the opportunity to become whatever she wants to become and have things he can't be or give her... children, grandchildren, a husband that would provide for her family, that at least won't be a burden to her economically and socially, that can keep her company, be seen by humans and grow old with her. He can't be someone that can provide her with a fulfilling human life. He is a God, it is his job to make sure she appreciates and seizes her life to the max.

Therefore, the fact of knowing her feelings makes things more complicated for her to have a normal human life. If the feelings were only on his side, he already committed to push down his feelings (the best he can) so he wasn't going to get in her way. But by the feelings being mutual it'd be far more complicated to ignore them and keep away from each other. So maybe he's considering himself, his current memories and feelings an obstacle for Hiyori's life and thinks it'd all be solve if he reincarnates. His feelings would go away and he we'd be destroying any romantic connection by turning himself into a child. Maybe he thinks he'd even be saved from the pain of seeing the woman he loves marrying another man.

Honestly I can't see them being together while Hiyori is alive because of Yato's strong wish that she has a happy fulfilling life to honor the gift she was given, to honor the opportunity she has that was robbed from Yukine, Sakura and all other shinkis.

After all Adachitoka have always tried to express through Yato the importance of appreciating the life we were given. Hiyori's death now would be a punch to the stomach to that principle so I believe Hiyori will survive and die of old age. Yato and Yukine will always protect her. And I'll be in my corner crying as hard as Yato will cry when Hiyori gets married T-T

[here-lies-golden-kamuy]

The Case of Ogata Hyakunosuke and Love (2)

Thank you for supporting the first meta and happy birthday to the one and only Ogata Hyakunosuke!!! Because of that, I was pumped to continue my observations and thoughts on our favorite (derogatory) catboy and his views on [tsurumi voice] loooove~! 

Wanna read the first part? Click here! 

MAJOR manga spoilers and a lot of thoughts under the cut! 

Main argument: Because of his less-than-savory upbringing, Ogata craves love but (1) doesn’t exactly realize that he does in the first place, and (2) does not exactly recognize nor react well when he is loved. This may arise from the fact that Ogata sees love as something that is obligatorily passed on from one source to another, rather than something that may evolve given time, effort, and patience. I personally think Ogata is attracted (not inherently romantic) to people who love and care for him first. 

Okay, so we tackled a little bit about how Ogata’s past affected how he views love. To reiterate, because of his poor upbringing and modeling of love from his mom (and to a certain extent, his dad too), he grew disillusioned with the notion of love and decided that maybe he didn’t have the capacity to love in the first place.

For this ask, I’d tackle the second part of the argument: Ogata has an interesting way of viewing love, at least for me. For him, love is something inherent and obligatory. What do I mean by that? Ogata has an idea that love is something “passed on” from parent to child. And what’s important about this idea is that the parents are the “fount” of love, and from that shared love, they pass on the ability to love to their child. 

Where does this come from? I kinda extrapolated this mindset from his words in chapter 103, page 11: “A child born from two parents who don’t love each other…grows up to be an adult that’s lacking something fundamental, don’t you think? Regardless of how high-ranking their father might be.” 

But it’s also interesting that Ogata also thinks that the love is affected by social rank. He seems to put his high-ranking father on a pedestal with those words — there’s seemingly a sentiment of a different aspect of love when he considers the social rank of his father. Is it purity or quality of love? Is it the depth of the emotion? Or was he referring to how his father’s “pure blood” should’ve contributed something different in himself? But because he thinks his parents never loved each other (well, until chapter 310 that is), he was born “broken”. 

(On a side note, I would love to think more about Ogata’s relationship with his father — I feel like from early on his life, there was heavy resentment for how an absent man would steal all his mother’s love for him. And of course, he would resent him that he didn’t come to his mother’s funeral, after all the “work” he did to make them see each other again. But at the same time, I think he was also longing to know his father: the one his mother loved to her dying breath. I wonder if the first time they truly met was when Ogata killed Hanazawa…I feel like Ogata was severely disappointed.) 

Let me expand more on how Ogata may have viewed love as inherent and obligatory. I think that for him, love was supposed to be present in a person for everyone they meet. Again, love is passed down from parent to child — a “normal” child is someone who experiences a sense of love for the people they meet. Which is something I’d like to connect with his interaction with Yuusaku during the war with the Russian prisoner of war (chapter 165). 

In chapter 165, page 13, Ogata says that he (and everyone else) doesn’t feel guilt for killing people. But Yuusaku quickly refutes (in a way that comes off condescendingly, if I may say. I know he didn’t mean it though), that he’s wrong. I think it just fully reinforced in Ogata’s mind that he’s different from others because he doesn’t have this inherent love for other people — something that comes so easy to Yuusaku, someone he sees as a blessed child. He sees a further divide from himself and other “normal” people, and further resents love (and Yuusaku) in itself.