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demonladys · 3 months ago

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Journey to Myself - Help Get This Manga about Gender Identity Licensed

Over the past decade, publishers like YenPress and SevenSeas have allowed us to see a greater diversity in manga titles that get licensed. Both in particular have sizeable LGBTQ+ libraries which have led to some incredible works being available in English, such as Adachi and Shimamura and Our Dreams at Dusk.

Unfortunately, many LGBTQ+ stories still remain unavailable in English. One such manga is “Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made.”

Summary:

Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made (roughly “Until He Becomes Her,” “The Girl He Would Become,” or “Until I Become Me”) is a “gender-bender” manga written and illustrated by Satou Hatsuki. It is a coming-of-age story focused on Fujimiya Akira, a young second-grade boy who bullies the girls at school before waking up one day as a girl due to a rare affliction. The boys in class immediately turn against and abuse Akira, while the girls he once harassed shun him completely. With no friends left at school, Akira is forced to move away and live as a girl. Initially resistant to her new life, a budding friendship leads Akira on an emotional journey towards growing up, forming bonds, and learning to be kind while understanding who she wants to be.

For those unaware, “gender-bender” is a genre of fiction wherein a character, through some means – bodyswapping, magic, etc. – becomes another gender. Many of these works do not depict the trans experience per se, but are based in the perspective of tying gender to sex and play around with it in more crude or simplistic terms. They can play into foibles like gender essentialism, but also offer a space to break down societal ideas of identity. As such, some trans people may sometimes see their experiences reflected in these works, while at other times finding them distasteful or overly simplistic in their portrayal of gender and identity.

OreWata is, despite its inciting incident, very grounded in its exploration of gender identity. Early on in the story Akira is told that if she wishes to return to being a boy, she could start puberty blockers and later on use hormones to transition. The acknowledgement of not only gender dysphoria but medical interventions to alleviate that dysphoria are rare in stories in general, and a refreshing inclusion in a series such as this. As Akira adapts to her new life and grows into adolescence, she learns joy in being called cute, wearing skirts and dresses, and being able to express her emotions more vividly with her friends. Meanwhile, she also struggles to tell her mother about these feelings, afraid of her family's expectations and uncertain how they'd react to her desire to remain a girl. These aspects end up feeling deeply resonant with a trans experience, and we wish for more people to be able to read it.

How to help:

YenPress can be contacted via either Twitter/X (@YenPress) or via Email ([email protected]).

1. Contact via Twitter

If using Twitter, be sure your message is being sent via a public account. Include a picture of the volume 1 cover as attached above. Additional anecdotes help, but are optional. (Special thanks to BehindTheManga for base templates!)

Templates

Hello! I'd really love to see オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki licensed in English! @yenpress

Hello. A friend of mine recently recommended a manga to me, but it’s not available in English. The manga is オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki. Is there any chance we could see it licensed? @yenpress

Hello! There’s an LGBTQ+ manga that I’d really like to read, but it’s not licensed in English at all. It’s called オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki. I would really like to see it in your catalog, if possible! @yenpress

2. Contact via Email

If possible, it could help to add additional writing or anecdotes are encouraged. This is optional, though.

Basic Template

Subject: Manga Request

Recipient: [email protected]

Message: Hello, Yen Press. I have a manga title I wanted to submit for your company to request.

Title: オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made)

Author: Satou Hatsuki

Japanese Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten

Templates for Extra Messages

As an LGBTQ+ reader, I really appreciate your wide selection of stories highlighting experiences of those like myself. It is important to me that stories like this are accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and given the quality in your releases of other LGBTQ+ works like “Adachi and Shimamura” and “I Want to Be a Wall,” I believe your company would be a great fit for bringing this manga to overseas audiences.

I have a lot of transgender friends, so I’m really interested in seeing more manga on the subject of gender identity. A friend recommended this story to me, but it’s only available in Japanese, so I’m not able to read it. I’ve enjoyed your other releases that play with gender in the past, such as “Magical Girl Incident” and “Miss Savage Fang,” so I believe your company would handle this manga with the care required for it to reach a wider audience.

This story has resonated strongly with me, but when I talked about it with some friends that seemed interested in reading it, we sadly found out that it had not yet been licensed in the US. I have read your releases of LGBTQ+ series’ including "Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl" and enjoyed it, therefore I think you would handle this manga well too.

(Please change or add other works if there are other titles you feel strongly about, and expand messages if you have more to say. These are just examples, and we want to avoid spamming identical messages.)

3. SevenSeas Survey

Manga can be requested to SevenSeas via their monthly surveys available in the right sidebar on their website. https://sevenseasentertainment.com/

Under “What non-licensed *MANGA FROM JAPAN* would you like us to license and publish in English? Type it here,” fill in with “オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki”. Complete the survey, filling out the rest however you see fit.

How else you can help:

If you could share this post to your friends, especially other LGBTQ+ folks who might be interested in the manga and ask them to participate and share as well, it would be greatly appreciated! The important thing is that the publishers need to know there’s an audience who really wishes to see this published in English, both so that we can support the creator and so that this story may reach a wider audience and get the love it deserves.

Thank you so much for even a small amount of help. We hope that with your support, we can see an overseas release for this story.

#ore ga watashi ni naru made #until i become me #trans #manga #transgender #coming of age #gender bender #オレが私になるまで #orewata

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grainjew · 8 months ago

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Nikaposting Pt 1: Crypto-Religion

This is the first of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

The Nika Cult is a Crypto-Religion

Terminology note: I will be using cult in these posts in the sense of “cult of worship,” rather than in the modern pejorative sense. Additionally, I tend to use “tradition” rather than “religion” as a general term, because “religion” is a messy and difficult to define concept, while “tradition” is much more inclusive of traditional practices, folk beliefs, and cults of worship that may not be considered religions by Western scholarship.

Raise your hand if you saw Kuma’s church and Bible, concluded “oh, the Nika stuff is basically One Piece Christianity,” and moved on with your life.

It’s an easy assumption to make, and for all I know authorial intent may well stop there. I’m not Oda. I’ll never be able to guess what goes on behind those fish eyes of his. But a second look at the worldbuilding around both Nika and Christianity in One Piece brought me to a very different conclusion: that the Nika cult is a crypto-religion and is, in Kuma’s case, using the outward appearance of Christianity as camouflage.

First of all: We have ample evidence that Christianity (or some variation of it- I’m fascinated by the implied existence of such things as One Piece Jerusalem and the One Piece Council of Nicea) does exist in the One Piece world, and is both fairly widespread and quite legal. Flevance was pretty explicitly Catholic (Law went to church as a kid), Miss Monday and Mother Carmel masqueraded as nuns to imply harmlessness, many if not most of the graves shown in the series are crosses, whatever Usopp was on about with that exorcism equipment, and, yes, Kuma’s church and Bible.

Even mentioning the Nika cult, on the other hand, is grounds for the government to assassinate you with extreme prejudice.

A crypto-religion is what happens when a religion is suppressed to the point that its practice is grounds for exile, torture, and/or execution: Some people will convert. Some people will flee into exile. Some people will die. And some people will outwardly adopt the dominant religion, but will continue to practice their own traditions in secret; ie, they’ll create a crypto-religion.

One of the more famous examples of this is the post-Spanish Inquisition crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal, who converted to Christianity in public but kept what Jewish traditions and rituals they could in private. To this day, descendants of these conversos whose families have been Catholic for centuries are discovering that their family tradition of lighting two candles on Friday or not eating pork on Saturday are in fact the legacy of a violently suppressed heritage. There are countless other examples of crypto-religions throughout history, both among Jews (my own personal field of knowledge) and among other traditions (for an example that would be known to Oda, the crypto-Christians of Japan).

There’s no way the Nika cult could have survived except in cryptic form. If it ever had physical infrastructure in the form of temples or pilgrimage sites, the government would have sought them out and demolished them long ago if they were not adequately disguised, especially in World Government member states like the Sorbet Kingdom. Likewise, anyone foolish enough to speak publicly about Nika will be summarily assassinated.

In fact, I have doubts that the Nika cult ever existed outside cryptic form, at least in a significant or long-lasting manner. It was specifically introduced as a slave tradition, likely nigh-exclusively oral, practiced in secret either from its inception—if Nika was a figure created by slaves, including the buccaneers—or for a very long time—if it was the cultural or ethnic tradition of the buccaneers, which spread from enslaved buccaneers to non-buccaneer slaves because Nika was a figure that resonated with them. I tend the favor the second option, but either has merit.

As @oriigami said when we were talking about this, Kuma has a church. Kuma has a bible. Kuma worships a god about whom absolutely nothing is written except in the oldest texts.

Additionally, I’ll expand on this more in pt 2 of this series, but the pendant Kuma leaves for Bonney, a large circular sapphire surrounded by eight smaller circular sapphires, matches the circular symbol inset into the crosses of his church. Bonney immediately identifies the pendant as a sun even though it really doesn’t look like one, and it can be surmised therefore that it’s a Nika amulet, and the sun with disconnected rays a Nika symbol. Following this read, and especially because this symbol occurs across the world in other contexts (see pt 2 for my thoughts on that), its presence in the church is a very careful bit of architectural sleight of hand on the part of whichever of Kuma’s ancestors built the place- echoing a very common practice of real-world crypto-religion adherents to mark the true nature of their allegiances and houses of worship in ways only those in the know might recognize.

And on a storytelling level, Kuma’s entire presence in the narrative and in the world has been a tragic saga of appearing to be one way until he’s revealed, again and again, to be the opposite. It makes thematic sense for him to be fooling the world about his faith as well!

#nikaposting #sun god nika #gear 5 #opmeta #bartholomew kuma #meta tag #zephflix original #if i hadn't dropped out of college i'd be a religious studies major and this tag is how you know

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attroxx · 11 months ago

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𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐓𝐎 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐇𝐘𝐏𝐄𝐑 - 𝐅𝐎𝐂𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐕𝐄. why did sasuke have to have such a weird stove ? he fiddles with the nobs, brow raising at the stupid machine. he'd been so focused he hadn't even heard sasuke stand and follow him into the kitchen. at the sound of the other's raspy voice he jumps, turning to look at sasuke who is glaring at him like an annoyed feline. a frown settles on his face before he opts for a classic roll of the eyes. of course sasuke would assume such a stupid thing. he's offended, but not enough to stop.

❛ i've been cookin' for myself for my entire life, sasuke. i think i know how to cook. ❜ it was just a skill he had to learn or he would've starved to death. it's not as if he had a family to do that for him. not that he didn't mess up now and then but . . . he could make a good soup. but sasuke continues to protest and naruto huffs, turning to face him again after finally getting the burner to turn on. ❛ it's just a simple soup, sasuke. it'll help your throat. now go. lay. down. ❜ it's naruto's turn to glare, one that might even put his own mother's to shame. turning back to the stove he hums, getting to work on the soup he'd made himself many times when he himself had been down with a cold.

𝐇𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐝𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐭 he felt every bit of deathly sick in the moment, though maybe he was just being a little dramatic then. His felt clammy, his chest felt heavy and the cough that kept escaping him was deep and painful. Sasuke didn't get sick often but when he did, it was hell. Then there was Naruto that ended up in his home and Sasuke tried to downplay everything and get the blonde to leave because he had issues with showing weakness to others around him. His voice had come out so raspy with sickness that it surely didn't seem to convince the other, he could tell by the look on his face.

Inky brows furrow at the words that spill from Naruto's lips. Why was his kitchen even in question here? He goes to open his mouth to speak up again but the blonde is already on his way to the kitchen and Sasuke is left there to let out a painful sigh and throw his hands in air in frustration. Naruto just did whatever he wanted. He gets to his feet, pulling blanket around his form and shuffles to the kitchen, staring at Naruto like an angry cat. ❝ How can I know you won't end up giving me food poisoning ? ❞ He finishes speaking just in time to sneeze. Rubbing at his nose, he scowls. ❝ But really, I'm not hungry, Naruto. It's fine. ❞

#mythcaels #naru is so offended jfdgklfg #naruto is going into mother mode beware sasuke #〈 naruto reply. ★ 〉#〈 blank period / post war verse. ★ 〉

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ikeoji-subs · 4 months ago

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Zettai BL Ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL Ni Naritakunai Otoko 2024 - Episode 4 Eng Sub

VS SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS and VS SCHOOL FESTIVAL

For downloading instructions and where to find the raw files, please check our masterpost.

[Subs link]

We ask that you not upload our subs to streaming sites.

Sharing with friends is fine. We’re also OK with folks sharing them in other ways as long as they aren’t public. Please use discretion when talking about the fansub outside of tumblr, but don’t hesitate to get the word out in other ways, and feel free to promote it here. Please credit ikeoji-subs whenever possible—we put a lot of time and effort into this.

Feel free to use the fansub for fandom purposes. Gif-making, meta-writing, and other fandom-related creative endeavors made using our fansub are not only welcome but encouraged.

We'd like to thank everyone who has left messages in the tags and elsewhere who've had nice things to say about the fansub. We'd particularly like to thank @respectthepetty for some especially kind praise. Every word of encouragement is deeply appreciated!

And big thanks to @my-rose-tinted-glasses for gifs! We’re so lucky to be able to benefit from your skills.

translation notes:

about “konpuraiansu” (4:28)

This was a tricky situation because Japanese uses an English loan word, compliance/konpurainsu, in a way that has a really different connotation from the way that word is usually used in English. It usually makes sense to translate Japanese words that are loan words from English as the same English word in a subtitle. But in this case, it didn’t really mean the same thing.

Personally, when I think of the meaning of “compliance,” I think about bureaucratic systems of rules. Before grad school, I worked for a number of years in admin positions at a large university. Every year we would have to do “compliance training,” which mostly involved reading interminable powerpoint presentations and answering quiz questions about them. They were about things like using a strong password or not accepting gifts worth more than a certain amount of money. Not exactly the same type of thing Mob alludes to here.

From what I gather, in Japanese “compliance” means something more like acting in accordance with social mores. English really doesn’t have a word that gets this idea across, as far as I’m aware. Thankfully, we do have a number of ways of talking about social norms.

Another factor that complicated the task of translating Mob’s observation about contemporary teenagers is that the literal translation was that they are “too conscious of compliance.” This also wouldn’t be a typical way to use “conscious” in English. So I ran some replacement word options past Snow that described various ways in which a person might be too aware of or focused on something, and we landed on “preoccupied.” The line then became, “Aren’t high schoolers these days too preoccupied with social expectations?” (Correspondingly, the title of the segment became "Vs Social Expectations.")

In my conversation with Snow about this line, I also learned about some cultural context for this line that I hadn’t been aware of before. She explained that it was related to the Japanese word seishun, which basically means “the spring of youth.” Apparently, the literal meaning is “blue spring.” Part of the idea of seishun is that when you’re young, you can act in an impulsive, passionate way that flouts societal rules because you aren’t as aware of the rules and/or as concerned with the approval of others as a proper adult would be. Thus, if adolescents are excessively worried about adhering to social norms, it’s like they’re wasting the opportunity to enjoy a kind of freedom that won’t be available to them later in life.

This theme continues when Mob chases after Hatano and his parents see them running from below. Not recognizing Mob, his mother comments on the “energetic young men” they see. When they each mention “the spring of youth” (starting at the 5:46 mark), they’re saying “seishun.”–Towel

about “when I’m 20” (4:39)

You might think, from this line, that Hatano is saying he’ll confess to Mob again when he’s 20 because that’s when they’ll be legally able to date. That’s what I presumed when I first heard it. But there’s actually no legal reason why Mob couldn’t date Hatano if he wanted to. Hatano’s dramatic daydream about Mob being handcuffed in a jail cell aside, it’s actually not illegal for someone in their early 20s–or any adult, for that matter–to date or have sex with a 17-year-old in Japan. Actually, when I looked up age of consent laws in Japan I was surprised to learn that the age of consent was only raised to 16 a year ago and that prior to that, it was 13! But of course, laws are one thing and social norms are another. If Hatano wants to date Mob openly without fear of being judged, criticized, or snubbed–or, perhaps more importantly, without fear of inflicting that sort of treatment on his beloved Mob–he’ll have to wait until he’s an adult in a social sense. Snow explained to me that traditionally, this happens when a person turns 20. Apparently 20 was also the legal age of adulthood for a long time, and it remains in place for some purposes (for example, the legal drinking age in Japan is 20). But even though many laws have changed, the idea that 20 is the age when someone becomes an adult in a social sense remains.–Towel

about “if I keep on believing” (9:09)

Here’s a little Easter egg. I was finalizing the lines Haruhiko speaks here when I noticed something–they were already very close to the lyrics of a song from the Disney movie version of Cinderella called “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” I haven’t seen Disney’s Cinderella very many times, but my sister sang this song at a school recital in fourth grade, so the lyrics got burned into my brain. The part in question goes like this:

No matter how your heart is grieving If you keep on believing The dream that you wish will come true

This part of Haruhiko’s dialogue was already really close to these lyrics, so I exchanged a few words (no change to the meaning, just switching out synonyms) to get it even closer. Here’s what his lines look like if I arrange them to match up with the song lyrics:

No matter how sad I feel now If I keep on believing My dream will definitely come true someday

Not the same, but kind of a remarkable resemblance, all things considered.–Towel

blackboard writing (16:44 and 18:20)

At a couple of points during the scene in Mob's university classroom, there's writing on the blackboard at the front of the room. Snow translated what was written there, but there was no way to fit that translation in the subtitles. The information given there wasn't so crucial that this posed a big problem. But it's interesting enough to be worth including here.

At 16:44, the writing on the blackboard says:

School festival play: Momotaro Cinderella - 26 votes King Lear Yotsuya Kaidan Prison Break - 1 vote 101 Dalmatians Toyama no Kin san Planet of the Apes 24 - 1 vote

This is clearly a list of ideas for what story to base the class play on, along with the number of votes each idea received.

At 18:20, it says:

Cinderella: Cinderella Prince - Ouji Stepmother Stepsister 1 Stepsister 2

This is clearly a list of roles, only one of which has been assigned so far--the role of the Prince, given to Ouji.

about Mob’s horse sounds (19:24)

This might be a bit excessive, and it’s certainly an example of my perfectionism. But when I got to the part of this episode where Mob starts making horse sounds, it didn’t seem sufficient to just caption it “horse sounds.” I knew there were some specific terms for the sounds horses make, and I had heard of some of them, but I didn’t know their exact meanings. I went looking around for resources and finally found a really good youtube video that explained a bunch of different noises horses make and what they mean. In the end, the only new term I needed was “nickering.” When he’s not neighing or saying “gallop gallop,” Mob is nickering. The person who made the horse sounds video had an amazing quote about this type of horse sound–they described nickering as “a melodic symphony in the equine lexicon.” I’m guessing that other people watching the show with our subtitles mostly won’t already know the exact meaning of “nickering” either, so maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. But I like getting the specifics of things right. And who knows, maybe a horse enthusiast or two will watch this and appreciate the accuracy.–Towel

If you'd like to hear some examples of real horses nickering, or hear the narrator of this video wax rhapsodic about horse vocalizations, here's the video I mentioned:

youtube

Tag list: @absolutebl @bengiyo @c1nto @come-back-serotonin @lurkingshan @my-rose-tinted-glasses @porridgefeast @sorry-bonebag @twig-tea @wen-kexing-apologist

#zettai bl #zettai bl 3 #zettai bl season 3 #zettai bl 2024 #zettai bl ni naru sekai vs zettai bl ni naritakunai otoko #a man who defies the world of bl #absolute bl #translation notes

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witchhuntress · 22 days ago

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Just recalled a JP GH fan say how Luella knew Mai’s name from the start when they first met and I just can’t help but think omfg that’s right Madoka must have gossiped about her to Naru’s mother hfhfhchchchggcgchvg

Also, when Madoka and Mai met again, and Naru’s parents were afar, Mai asked about them and Madoka asked Lin if she should introduce Mai to Naru’s parents after smiling jjjsjdijsjjdjdjdhhxj IM CACKLING SO HARD MADOKA IS SO ABOARD THAT NARUxMAI SHIP LMAOOOOOOOOOO

#ghost hunt #ghost hunt light novels #Madoka Mori #SHES THE BEST WINGMAN #Naru #Mai Taniyama #Oliver Davis #Kazuya Shibuya

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importantdestinydefendor · 5 months ago

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Arslan Senki Chapter 129 thoughts

In the comments on this post of @tired-reader-writer I already somewhat voiced my general reaction. But I try to write some thoughts down her as well.

Hilmes reactions - my poor baby

The differences in Arslans and Hilmes mentallity and thoughts on their heritage! The back and forth! Wonderfully written!

how Hilmes sees fighting as his only out of his mental missery :(

Narsus, you naughty naughty man lol

but quick to act so nobody interferes!

Saams faces :( my poor poor sad soldier boy!

Make way for the Zots! And Gurazeh! I have never been happier to see you!

heh Narus tactics coming full circle! Suck on that Andycakes!

(but I do not look forward on how he will treat Kishward bc of that...)

ARSLAN MY BOY!!! I feel like a proud mother! (but also like a bad one bc I am playing favourits... sorry Hilmes...)

sad that we didn't get to see the fight between Daryun and Zandeh nor a solution and that the fight betweeen Hilmes and Arslan was really short... but it makes sense due to Hilmes mental state

I will make a seperate post about my AU thoughts for when I get there for writing! (bc I mayheps have found a way to switch from canon to fanon story!)

#arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan

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vashtijoy · 2 years ago

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Do you hc akechi as a momma’s boy? I’ve always found his relationship to his mother kind of unclear, like he seems like he really cares but also it definitely doesn’t seem like his main motivator but most definitely the cause… idk

Okay, let's start with what we know. First of all, here's Ren's image of baby Akechi from the Proof of Justice OVA:

He's not very old. If he's the same age as the kid Ren was watching, he's what, six? Seven? Eight? And already, he doesn't look like a happy kid. Doesn't he look kind of nervous and worried and too old for his age?

In the OVA, he says he didn't have friends to play with even then—something separated him from his peers even before his mother died—and that pretending to play hero made his mother happy. Like he was already responsible for her that young, as she faded and died. Like he was already putting up that perfect front before she was gone.

Of course, that's present-day Akechi talking, and I'm not sure he has much investment in thinking about times when he did dream of being a hero—if they ever existed. But I think we can conclude that his relationship with his mother was difficult. In the engine room, he says she became unhappy after he was born (不幸になる fukou ni naru, to become unhappy) and eventually died—she fell into depression because of him, he believes, and died. He played not for himself, but to please her—presumably because she wanted him to play, because watching him suffer compounded her misery. He talks about putting frozen meals in the microwave for himself as a kid. He talks about wanting an apology for his mother, from the father who abandoned them.

The picture is really bleak—a young elementary-school age kid in a single-parent household, neglected by a depressed mother, burdened with her care and his own, determined to be so good and so perfect and not cause problems and just be whatever she needs. A kid who thinks maybe an apology from his father will put his world to rights. No friends. No family that he knows yet, or would want to know. His mother, and his obligations, are his whole world.

and then mom dies

Akechi remembers his mother being in the sex industry (waiting at the baths for her clients to leave), but he also remembers that she left it—presumably to give him a better life. Moving into headcanon, I wonder to what extent that may have isolated her—cut her off from support structures she had, and the people she knew, contributing further to her depression.

She's working longer hours. She has a kid she wanted—I think there's no question of this; there are many ways to get rid of kids you don't want—but maybe can't cope with, who watches her with huge, too-old eyes and poorly-hidden expectations she never meets, so that she breathes guilt at the sight of him.

She lets him down at every turn. She's a burden on him. She's destroying his childhood. He'd be so much better off without her, wouldn't he? And one day she just... doesn't come home. She's just not there when he gets back from school, or she never arrives back from work. He microwaves his dinner, does whatever he does alone at home, and waits, and waits; he goes over his planning for what he'll do when she doesn't come back, the kind of plans kids make when they can't rely on their parents. But he still waits for her. And when someone does arrive, in the early hours of the morning, it's not his mother; it's the police.

and then

OVA Akechi says that he "bounced around his relatives" after his mother's death, that they passed him around like a parcel. It's a popular HC that he spent time in orphanages etc, but I don't think this was the case; his situation closely parallels Futaba's, with her succession of exploitative relatives who didn't care about her and only wanted money. Akechi describes this himself: his desperation to be good enough that someone would want him around.

Remember, he's been putting up that front with his sick mother, long before she died, and now that he's with relatives who don't want him, he keeps going. Anything inconvenient, anything ugly, he buries deep. He gets better at it. He becomes polite and perfect and cheerful; he gets perfect grades; he tries to be the sort of kid you can't help but notice, the sort that makes you proud.

On the outside, at any rate. Because it never does a damn thing. We can speculate about whether and how Akechi's caregivers were outright abusive to him, but one thing seems crystal clear: none of them wanted him. Nothing he did ever made them love him. The only person who ever needed him was his sick mother, and she's gone.

And what do people who need to be needed do, when they don't have anyone? What do people do when they're desperate for love? They do anything, and find anyone they possibly can, who will need them and love them. Which is how Akechi ends up working for his estranged father, believing with every part of his being that he hates the man, while being led around for words of praise that would have meant nothing to him if he was truly as indifferent as he thinks. Like Cognitive Akechi insists, "you wanted him to love you, didn't you?"

but why does he do that and where's mom in the equation

At eighteen, Akechi still blames himself for his mother's death. He uses the wording 生まれる事を望まれな��った子供 umareru koto o nozomarenakatta kodomo, "a child whose birth was unwanted; a child who should never have been born"—rendered "cursed child" in the localisation.

But he never talks much about his mother, other than to dripfeed personal information to Joker and Futaba. She doesn't seem to feature overmuch in his thinking, like you say. I think what's going on is something like this:

Akechi's mother dies some time in his early elementary school years. Part of his thinking has been this idea that, if he could only find his father and get him to apologise, maybe that would make his mother happy; maybe that's something Akechi could do to help her. I think that "back then, Shido was on the Tokyo Assembly" line ("he was already a high-ranking official by then") is not referring to when Akechi got his powers, but to when his mother died.

And when she dies, Akechi knows, he knows whose fault it is. And it isn't his absent father's. It's Akechi's fault. He has not been good enough. He hasn't hidden his irrelevant little sadnesses well enough. He hasn't been independent enough, strong enough, supportive enough. He woke his mom while he was getting ready for school one time, I don't fucking know, okay. But all the things we tell ourselves when someone dies unexpectedly—if only, if only, if only—on the shoulders of a little kid. A kid with no support, because he's been passed to relatives who don't want him and see him as a burden.

Essentially: Akechi, at six or seven, has not done what Joker will do so effectively at sixteen. He hasn't hidden his messy reality, his messy little-boy needs and fears, behind what his mother needed him to be. And now his mother is dead.

So, first of all: he is very motivated to make that mask better, to be more perfect, more independent, less real. And second? If he doesn't find somewhere for all that guilt to go, somewhere to displace that secret knowledge to, he will break. And broken boys are not perfect. They are never wanted. Nobody ever keeps them around.

an apology just ain't going to cut it any more

This is Akechi's start of darkness. The father who used his mother as a plaything and cast her aside, never knowing her name—the father who left her with a child who destroyed her (and he'll just brush over that bit, if you don't mind)—the father who left them both alone with nothing—he murdered Akechi's mother. Her death was his fault.

This is how Akechi becomes the boy we know, consumed on the inside with hate that has eaten him up like acid. For almost as long as he's been a person at all, he's been obsessed with revenge on his father—first for the death of his mother, for Akechi's own suffering and aloneness as he's grown, and ultimately for all the indignities he's made Akechi swallow under his thumb.

Letting it go was never an option. Because if he stops thinking about what a monster his father is, if he stops thinking of all the things he wants to do to him and dreaming of a future where he can somehow bring him down, he has to face the fact that he, and he alone, caused his mother's death. It might be bullshit, but Akechi believes it. And—because the adults around him have no interest in him—he has no support in dealing with all of this in any other way. He's a little kid, who's dealt all his life with things that would tax most adults to handle.

so what does this ultimately look like

At eighteen, Akechi is still in a very real way that little kid who lost his mother. He doesn't really grow up. He's probably the one cast member whose dialogue most prominently foregrounds the divide between kids and the adults who exploit them, right from that first conversation in the TV studio. He still thinks of himself as a child, and of adults as this vast, oppressive sea of other—a sea he can navigate and control and oppress in turn.

But I don't think he remembers his mother. I've written him sometimes as remembering things like the smell of her perfume, or the sight of her hair from behind, but not her face; the rhythm of her voice, but not its sound. He remembers her as an anxiety, a burden; for this almost-grown boy who refuses to fail no matter the cost, the death of his mother is still his greatest (and possibly only acknowledged) failure.

I said further up that Akechi's motive has shifted over time. Avenging his mother made sense when he was seven or eight. Later on, as he stores up insults and rejections, the focus shifts to avenging himself. And after he's worked for Shido for a year or two? After Shido has, despite everything, never quite acknowledged Akechi or rewarded him as he deserves? Well, then the focus is going to be on getting Shido.

Because Akechi is essential to him. He made him. Shido needs him like nobody ever has. Not since his mother.

That's the core of the twisted connection Akechi has to Shido. He hates him, and he blames him, and yet Shido is his only true family, poisoned as that relationship is. He is the only one who needs Akechi for anything. And Akechi needs so desperately to be needed....

I dunno. Shido could have had a devoted assassin for life, and been lifetime dictator of Japan, if he'd been just a little smarter; I suspect that thought unsettles third semester Akechi more than almost anything. Instead, Akechi's hate somehow deepens, and deepens, and deepens until he drowns in it, in all the things he's done in its service. To be needed so deeply, and yet still to be neglected....

Well, that makes the death of his mother look like nothing at all.

#persona 5 #p5 meta #goro akechi #masayoshi shido

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