#toichiro and mrs suzuki are two wild fires who met ok

[bugcatcherkit]

having mrs suzuki thoughts again. specifically i always thought of her leaving as smth that she’d intended to be temporary. bc it was in direct response to toichirou saying that he Does have the power to control people, because he’s strong enough that he can just Make them do what he wants. and it was both an assertion of a boundary (“i will not tolerate this behavior. if you continue to act like this, i will remove myself from the situation”) and a direct response to toichirou’s stated belief (“oh yeah? control this, asshole”). and i think that her intention was to make him think about himself and what he was trying to accomplish and the consequences his actions have on himself and everyone around him, and that she’d originally intended to come back when he came to his senses. and COMPLETELY underestimated his total refusal to ever question or consider anything ever.

(btw i think shou’s murder attempt was if not the same, then at least a very similar principle. bc if it had really been about killing toichirou, he probably would’ve just “played the obedient son” and poisoned him or smth. but it wasn’t! it was about confronting him and trying to force him to understand and deal with the consequences of his actions, especially wrt the people who cared about him most! the message being communicated was “look! you’re going so dangerously overboard that even your son, who cares about you, who is still trying to reason with you, is willing to kill you if that’s what it takes to get you to stop!”) (and it just completely flies over toichirou’s head)

sorry for rambling but u know how it is with the suzukis

HI I FINALLY GOT TIME TO ANSWER THIS. I think you summed it up well though !!!

I definitely believe it was supposed to be temporary! It really plays out like a spur-of-the-moment thing, where she suddenly realizes Toichiro is not really who she Believed he was (<- she had a certain image of him in her head I think) and also that would not listen to her WORDS at all. So she had to do something impactful.

Their relationship was very important to them both, and I believe she expected her Absence to lead Toichiro to self-reflect and FINALLY push himself to change so they could KEEP it. But he sucks. And he was already so wound up in the power fantasy that he ignored anything he could not rationalize with it. You can't exactly make semi-divorce seem like a Super Epic Protagonist Battle.

She was making a point to him!!! Showing him that his idea of psychic power being absolute was WRONG because people have power over themselves (free will). Her leaving is like the physical culmination of everything she had been suggesting to him up until then (that he could change, if he CHOSE to).

She has a whole thing about free will. He was supposed to realize he does not, actually, have power over everyone. He ONLY has power over himself, just like everyone else. To think otherwise hurts himself and everyone around him because only focusing on power meant he didn't care about anything else. But yeah she totally overestimated his ability to Self Reflect and also Be Considerate. Aforementioned image she projected onto him, I think (not normal).

and that is where Shou gets it I BELIEVE!!!!!!! The thing with him is that. Like when you said his parents were his only examples and he kind of had to work with what he knew through them.

His philosophy (of kindness and free will and righteousness etc etc etc) was heavily based on what Mrs. Suzuki is shown to believe in, and this is what he based his opposition to Toichiro's ideals on.

Though, he also had to oppose his mom's Methods in favour of Toichiro's in this process. So he was kind of opposing them both while also Not at all doing that. Because he learned from them and was influenced by them. As per the themes. BUT ALSO with that its like. Nothing Shou did was ever really for himself or because of himself and it makes me. ggrhrgrge.

I forgot what else I was gonna say. Suzuki family drives me insane <3