#[ spider mother // kumi ]

[phntasmgoria]

small starter call for my kemono jihen muses! ( kabane, akira, yui, kon, mihai, kumi, and inari ! ) specify muse on both ends! capping at 4 :)

[jd-mirror]

Kemono Jihen: extended trivia and fun, mentionable things about a character I’d like to highlight.

Part 3: Shiki Tademaru

Tademaru is Shiki’s actual last name. Though his profile page says it is his father’s last name, it can he assumed that he got the name from his uncle Akio who pretended to have found the boy when he was still very little and since then, took care of him. Before that, Shiki lived together with his mother, a Kemono. Also, Kumi and Shiki’s father have never been married. This is further supported by Aya having the same last name despite not having any relation to Shiki’s father. Presumably, she also got the name from Akio Tademaru.

Just like everyone else, Shiki mistook Akira for a girl when first meeting him and was afraid, lost and confused upon learning he’d share a room with him.

Shiki has an instinctive and involuntary dislike for reptiles. This stems from his Arachne-heritage, since spiders are often prey to various reptiles.

Shiki’s favorite food is pizza, followed by curry. He also likes other foods with umami flavor, as well as sour, salty and spicy foods that are rich in texture.

This often makes him clash with Akira, who prefers sweet foods.

Inugami picked a random selection of Shiki’s many clothes for Kabane to wear. Also, Shiki’s trademark jacket is used time and time again to cover the nude. He usually gives it to Kabane but, one time, he gave it to Tamaki to also cover his snake hair.

Shiki is terrible at handling women, can’t converse with them normally and even has trouble with them just being around him. This even includes his mother now that he is in his teens and awkward around her. The most contact he has had to female characters (aside from mother and sister) are his lackluster interactions with Kon and some short conversation with Ichigo after the older girl tried to steal his wallet and even offered ‘favors’ in her desperation.

Shiki is a huge tsundere and even tries to stop himself from befriending Kabane too fast. Initially, he acts cold towards him but is still willing to share his food. When learning that Kabane has never had pizza before, he practically forces him to try it. Immediately after, he scold himself for being to nice to the new boy.

He doesn’t like wearing clothes that other people already wore, prompting him to let Kabane keep his clothes that were given to him by Inugami.

He once tried trapping Kabane in the bathtub but caught Akira instead because Kabane was able to free himself.

Shiki is incredibly short tempered and abrasive and freaks out at the slightest provocation or annoyance.

According to his profile, Shiki is 14 years old [born 10th of November] 163 centimeters tall, and weighs 48 kilograms. He has been working at Inugami’s agency for 8 months and uses his earned money to buy clothes, shoes, and games.

He is often seen playing games on his smartphone.

Shiki is in a family LINE-group with his mother and younger sister but only a small portion of the messages come from him.

When preparing for fights, Shiki often carries around water bottles using them to rehydrate after using his kemono powers.

At the start of the series, he can’t handle scary things and compensates for that by acting overly rational. Later, after overcoming his past and the fears attached to it, he is much less frightened while facing opponents and scary things.

Akira once made Shiki cross-dress and pretend to be his girlfriend, so they can inconspicuously tail Kabane and Kon and steer their ‘date’ in the right direction. Shiki went along for a time, but when Akira tried to kiss him to make Kabane do the same with Kon, it was too much. Shiki also complained about having to play the female part, rightfully claiming that Akira would have been the better fit.

According to his uncle Akio Tademaru, Shiki often got into fights when going to school.

Whenever Kabane loses his clothes, Shiki buys a new and completely identical set.

His earnings are by far not enough for a family of three, so Shiki’s mother Kumi and younger sister Aya work as well with Aya making by far the most with her golden thread.

He is passionately against Aya’s idea of dating Kabane and drops unconscious whenever her advances go too far in his presence.

Animals don’t like Shiki because he is abrasive.

His idea of handling a snooping Yuma in chapter 16 is to hang him upside down from a tree and bully him into silence and discretion.

He wears an apron while cooking because he doesn’t want his clothes to get dirty.

When Shiki was frozen solid through the power of the Null Stone, Akira broke off two of his fingers while trying to thaw him. Akira simply reattached them and Shiki doesn’t even recall it happening. Still, he mentions having an odd feeling in his fingers after being freed from his ice prison.

When asked if he is against being on full display, his answer is that he doesn’t care about it and that it depends on the situation. When among boys only, he is seen to not care being in the nude.

He didn’t travel with Kabane to Shikoku to to stay behind and train because he wanted to be strong enough to help Kabane in his quest to find his parents. The matter was so important to him that he even begged Mihai to help him do it.

Shiki prefers Soba over Udon because he likes wasabi though he is overall neutral if it comes to the Soba-Udon conflict.

He makes fun of Aya for being afraid of the ocean in an extra chapter.

Shiki once tried some of Mihai’s potted pomegranate but found a weird taste to it. Considering it’s an OgreHam-product and Mihai is a vampire, it is likely that the pomegranate is potted in human blood.

While playing the VR-game Mihai-Quest, Shiki tried the in-game options sleep (Mihai puts him to bed in the real world) and eat (Mihai cooks for him in the real world). Considering that, Shiki was rightfully critical and careful enough not to choose the option ‘bathroom’.

He struck up a quick alliance with Tsunamayo Watanabe when meeting him in Mihai-Quest… but only after learning that he is also a guy and only playing with a well endowed female skin. Shiki smeared his sweat all over Mayo to camouflage him with his invisibility thread. Over the course of the series, the two have a rather interesting dynamic as they battled twice with Shiki having the upper hand each time. Mayo also makes insensitive comments about Shiki’s family, calling his mom ‘hot’ and his sister a ‘loli’ though he is promptly and rightfully punished for it.

Shiki got seriously flustered after finding out Aya’s gift of her healing hair to Kabane was actually for him, since Kabane doesn’t need it. Aya was just equally flustered to give it to him directly.

Like all members of Inugami’s agency except for Kabane, Shiki owns a fake driver’s license that identifies him of legal age to have access to age restricted services like checking into hotels among other things if it’s necessary for the job at hand. His date of birth on the fake driver’s license is 10.11.1996, making him 21 in 2017 and of legal age in Japan.

In contrast to Kabane, Shiki has a much bigger problem with Kaede traveling along with the group, even if he is restrained in a badger-killer. Shiki voted for Kaede to be executed when he got defeated and restrained in Yashima. His stronger dislike for the kitsune might stem from him having to fight Kaede one-on-one on their first encounter.

An extra doodle shows Shiki eating grass to rehydrate after his first battle against Kaede.

When asked how he likes his meat cooked, he replies medium though he isn’t picky.

Along with Mihai, Shiki got the most Valentine presents and cards from fans of Kemono Jihen.

He thinks that Ichigo’s name doesn’t fit her.

As mentioned earlier, Shiki spends his money on clothes and he seems to prefer high brand clothing. He bought a limited edition t-shirt from the brand ‘killer wasp’ for 20000¥ / 158€ / 170$

He once used Kabane to beg his little sister for money and even prepared a list of things for Kabane to say. It failed and Aya immediately identified Shiki as the instigator behind the whole thing.

After not getting any money from Aya, he went boar hunting with Kabane to sell them for 10000¥ each. They managed to get 12 and therefore made enough money to buy the plane tickets they were out for in the first place.

A doodle from Jump SQ, later published in volume 9 as well summarizes Shiki’s fight with Kaede in a classic Pokémon battle screen. There, Shiki is Level 14, has 40 HP and can use the bug-type move ‘thread’.

When breaking into the OgreHam-Fabric, Shiki prefers Akira’s plushie Big Brother over Akira as a partner for the operation.

When asked about his preferred type [of girl] Shiki’s answer is “No comment.” Like established before, Shiki is terrible with women but likes stylish and modestly dressed girls.

After being the characters with the most valentines for another year, a Twitter doodle from Aimoto-sensei shows Mihai and Shiki preparing chocolate. Mihai is convinced they need more space in form of Inugami’s desk and proceeds to shove everything on it to the ground ignoring Shiki’s voice of reason. Inugami got mad.

He is creeped out whenever Kabane is decapitate, dismembered or in any other way disfigured but still continues talking. Shiki also can’t handle looking too long at the mountain of decapitated corpses that Kabane produced during the cliff climbing exercise.

During the same exercise, Shiki proves to be the fastest to pick up on things and use his powers in creative and effective ways.

I might add more with the series progressing and feel free to add yourself or correct mistakes if you spot them. This time I didn’t include the chapter and source references because I was to lazy dig through them…

[recentanimenews]

Kemono Jihen – 07 – The Spider with the Golden Silk

At Shiki’s request, the agency gang is off to his home village of Kinshigo, now that he’s ready to learn the fate of his parents. It’s bound not to be a pleasant stroy, but Inugami thinks it’s only right for Shiki to know if he wants to, and he does, for closure and to be able to move on.

After a little girl with pink hair gives Shiki a hard look (my first instinct, these two share mom), Inugami runs into his Uncle Akio, who tells Shiki that his parents are both dead. His father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was five. The reason he’s traumatized is that he walked in on her body at such a young age.

Having heard the news, Shiki returns to his friends to join them for ice cream, but even Kabane can tell he’s putting on a brave face, Akira tells him not to point that out so tactlessly, but Shiki can’t deny something is still troubling him. Enter Nobimaru, joining them at the bath, suggesting they go see the fireflies.

While Nobimaru is clearly still trying to trick Kabane out of his lifestone for Inari, that he takes Shiki into the woods helps trigger a memory involving a peculiar tree. This sets Shiki on a path of landmarks leading to a Creepy Shack, the very sight of his real trauma. It wasn’t seeing his mother’s dead body, but something far worse: her mother being forced to breed with a monster.

As Shiki recovers from the shock, Nobimaru inspects the now-empty shack, where there is still evidence of medical equipment and claw scratches. He recalls a report a year ago involving Shiki’s uncle, who was trying to make the local folktale about “golden silk” come true, which would expose kemono to the world, something both Inari and Inugami must prevent.

Still, Inugami kept Inari from “disposing” of Shiki’s uncle, knowing Shiki himself deserved to face him for what he did. When Inugami meets with Uncle Akio at his house (formerly Shiki’s parents’ house), he’s pleased to find Inugami is willing to spill the beans about his plan, because he doesn’t think what he’s done was wrong.

Shortly after he was born, Shiki came down with a nasty case of the Flu, and Akio coerced Kumi into horrific cross-breeding experiments with various kemono in the forest, hoping to find the pairing that would give them the legendary Healing Silk that’ll make them rich and make Akio famous. And while Kumi died in the process, Akio can report that he was successful in finding that pairing—no doubt the little girl is the result of that success.

Inugami happened to be recording Inugami’s confession/rant on his phone for Shiki to listen, and basically gives Shiki leave to do what he wants. Shiki grabs and suspends Akio from the neck with his silk, and out of deference for the years he took care of him, Shiki is willing to give his uncle a quick death.

While he has every right to make him suffer, there’s no escaping the fact that killing Akio will make Shiki a killer, and likely deprive that girl of her only guardian. Will Shiki follow through on his threat, or further weigh the enormity of his uncle’s crimes with the consequences of taking a life? We shall see.

By: braverade

[ahis2013-blog]

yashiro dissection

This is gonna be long so it’s also gonna be under the cut

Hi. I read very deeply into things. The nice thing, though, is the author of BokuMachi seems to write very, very much to read into.

I want to start with a disclaimer: while I draw heavily from canon, many topics I will discuss will also have a heavy basis in headcanon and personal interpretation. Since peoples’ interpretations can vary, you may not agree with everything I put down. Still, my main goal is to give food for thought; Yashiro is a fascinating character no matter how you decide to interpret him.

I will be sticking to the manga’s canon strictly, and I also want to make a note that I’m going to be more or less regarding Another Record as non-canon, as some of its claims simply don’t line up with the canon of BokuMachi and BokuMachi Gaiden (namely, that Yashiro in Another Record claimed he targeted girls who “knew that life was hell,” when it was made clear in the manga that Nakanishi Aya actually had a fine home life, and Hiromi was killed out of convenience. The first girl he targeted, Atko-chan, he targeted because he became interested since she also had a hamster).

So, without further ado: Mikohara Gaku, aka Yashiro Gaku, aka Nishizono Manabu.

The Canon:

It’s important to have a starting point, and so, let’s start from all the things we concretely know about Yashiro Gaku.

He is roughly 18 years older than Satoru biologically, as Satoru is 29 when he travels back in time, and in 1988, Yashiro is 28 years old. This makes him born in roughly 1960, and puts his fifth year - ages 10-11 - at 1970. His brother’s death occurred in the year 1972, during Yashiro’s seventh year, and presumably, he moved out shortly after with his mother, when his parents divorced. He left for college at age 18 in the year 1978; in his third year, he returned to Mikoto Elementary for a two-week teaching practice. His third year would be about 1980. It’s at this time that he attempts his first serial murder, though it’s thwarted by Satoru (who is, at most, three years old at the time). Three years later - 1983 - he becomes engaged to an unnamed child psychologist, whom he later kills. It is at that point he begins to see the spider’s thread on his own head. And finally, in 1987, he becomes the teacher for Satoru’s fifth-year class, setting the scene for the events in 1988.

In the final timeline, the serial murders of children end after Satoru’s “accident,” though the way Kenya phrases it, Yashiro did not stop murdering altogether (as he did in the anime). During the 18 years of Satoru’s coma, Yashiro marries into the Nishizono family, changes his last name and his first name’s reading (same kanji, but apparently “Manabu” is the more common pronunciation), and inherits his father-in-law’s position on the city council. He becomes the budget planner. His wife is never seen, so it is most often presumed that he killed her, as well.

Using an event planned for the hospital, Nishizono intends to reawaken Satoru’s memories and kill Satoru (and, less importantly, Kumi). However, Satoru catches him while he’s in the middle of his preparations, confronts him, and tackles him off the bridge he set alight to try to kill them both, where law enforcement is waiting. At this point, Yashiro’s own spider’s thread snaps, and he gives a full confession to law enforcement with “a smile on his face,” and is practically set to earn the death penalty for his crimes.

Yashiro’s murders have a very clear modus operandi - at least, the ones before Satoru’s “accident.” Yashiro will kill a target - most often a young girl, ages 8-12, sometimes multiple, and pin the blame on an unwitting patsy. This MO is so particular that the lack of a scapegoat in Satoru’s case is evidence enough for Sawada and Kenya to believe that Satoru somehow managed to throw the killer off his game - however, because of the patsy’s existence, official police never look further than a convicted suspect, thus allowing Yashiro to get away cleanly after each “murderer” is caught and start again somewhere new. It can be thus assumed that any murders he commits without a patsy are significant in some way. The murders have no sign of sexual violence, though Yashiro will definitely use sexual attraction to cast suspicion on his scapegoats, and the murders themselves are often dispassionate. Of our known murder methods, only one was outright violent - smashing Hiromi’s head open (more on this later) - while the other three are very tame - smothering a drugged girl with CO2 fumes, freezing someone to death quickly, setting a drugged girl afloat on a lake with a leaky boat. He also authored two “suicides,” which are only appropriately violent.

Yashiro also mentions that he targets people on whose heads he can see a spider’s thread - though the exact nature of these threads - supernatural, like Revival, or a product of Yashiro’s own delusions - is unknown. I am inclined to believe they are a product of Yashiro’s own delusions, for reasons I will elaborate on further; this essay as a whole will assume they are merely the result of Yashiro’s mind, and not some supernatural external force.

Satoru has never had a thread.

The entire conceit of Yashiro’s spider threads stems from a short story of particular interest to him, “The Spider’s Thread” by Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. The story itself is interesting, but not as important as Yashiro’s interpretation - and he helpfully provides a summary for us in his backstory chapter. There will be more on this later.

Finally, Yashiro once owned a pet hamster named Spice. He owned Spice some time after his brother’s rapes began and Spice died about two years later, some time after Yashiro’s brother died. Spice was the only hamster of a litter Yashiro attempted to drown that survived, and the sight was “so thrilling” that Yashiro decided to raise Spice.

That about does it for the hard canon that we are using as our framework. All sections after this will feature a heavy dose of theorizing.

Analysis: Childhood (1960-1973)

Yashiro Gaku was born Mikohara Gaku to a wealthy father in Ishikari. He attended Mikoto Elementary School, same as Satoru.

Now, the main problem we encounter when analyzing Yashiro’s backstory is that he is something of an unreliable narrator, but not in the traditional sense. I have no doubt that he is truthful about his account of the backstory - I would even call him candid - but Yashiro fundamentally lacks the emotional lens necessary for the reader to fully grasp the situations he describes without reading between the lines. That is what I hope to provide.

Now, the way Yashiro describes his life before his brother’s rapes begin is this: he is showered with blind love for his outstanding grades, he is adored by his classmates despite not being very close to them, his brother has always been violent and foul-tempered, and, upon becoming the unfavorite of their parents, began to take out his frustration about it on Yashiro through physical violence.

Yashiro’s tone remains dispassionate and practically apathetic throughout, even going so far as to say he was “indifferent” to his brother’s “daily” beatings.

Yashiro is a ten-year-old or younger when the beatings begin. There is no possible way for a child - human being, even - to actually be indifferent about receiving daily beatings so severe that they leave you bruised and bleeding.

Just ask Kayo.

The people who WERE indifferent were his parents. Yashiro’s beatings - an everyday occurrence that left him with bruises and bloody noses - happened in their own home (in Yashiro’s own room, even)! His mother is depicted as a housewife, who has the leisure time to hang out with friends after school, so it’s very easy to assume that at least one of the parents are present in the house while this violence is happening. And yet, for all the “blind love” they rain down on Yashiro, not a single mention is made of any attempt to stop his brother from committing brutal violence on him every single day.

There is also the specific language Yashiro uses to depict his parents’ relationship with his brother - that they “gave up” on him, that they “didn’t know how to cope” with him, and - most damning of all - that his brother became “useless” to them.

The point at which one child would describe his brother as being “useless” to his parents is the point at which those parents are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, failing in their duties as parents.

So when you extract from his indifferent tone the actual circumstances of Yashiro’s “oppressive” childhood, you get a horrific picture of daily violence, parents who refuse to do so much as chastise the one doing the beatings, teachers that don’t do anything despite how well-known the older brother’s problems are (it can be easily explained away as that the father is using his wealth to keep the school quiet to avoid scandal), classmates he can’t sympathize with, and pressure to continue to succeed to receive what little scraps of parental affection are actually up for offer.

Yashiro is not “indifferent” to his situation out of choice, but out of necessity. He understands that there is no one who will come to his aid, that there is no way to escape or relieve his suffering. His parents will not help him, the teachers will not help him, his classmates cannot help him, and furthermore, cannot even understand his position.

Here we can draw another parallel to Kayo - where Kayo reached out for help, sent an SOS in the form of her essay for the class anthology, Yashiro instead turned inwards, blunting his own emotions to the point that he could say that he was “indifferent” to the senseless violence that had become merely a fact of life. In order to rationalize his situation, he sympathized with his brother. No one would say “it’s fine that he beats me, it’s necessary for him” while in their right minds, but that’s exactly what Yashiro does: “He needed a target, now that he was useless to our parents.” Yashiro’s parents have taught him that his suffering - his very identity - are practically non-entities. All his parents can see is his apparent success at school; they intentionally turn a blind eye to his pain.

By the time his brother begins to force Yashiro to help him rape girls, Yashiro is already emotionally blunted and in a heavy state of learned helplessness.

In this section of his backstory, it is once again important to remember that Yashiro’s recollections may be factually accurate, but lack an emotional lens to process the information with, as a result of the emotional blunting he carried with him all through his life. He describes himself as participating “earnestly” as his brother’s assistant, but more often than that, he actually mentions how much of an unwilling accomplice he is.

Because of his apathetic tone, it’s easy to assume it wasn’t a big deal to him, but we have to remember his emotional state by this point, even if Yashiro himself fails to acknowledge it. Yashiro has been taught through what has likely been years of experience by this point that there is no one on his side. That he doesn’t have any avenues to go to for help: his parents obviously don’t care, the school likely has its hands tied with regards to the wealthy Mikoharas, and obviously, Yashiro’s 11-year-old classmates aren’t of any use.

For Yashiro, he only has two options available: either he refuses to help his brother (and this is assuming that the first time his brother asked for help, 11-year-old Mikohara Gaku even knew what sex and rape were) and gets “severely punished,” or he gets his brother what he wants and doesn’t get beaten like he has every day for the past few years of his life.

His brother would rape a girl “every month or so,” and in exchange, Yashiro stopped being beaten. Now, I won’t say Yashiro was born an angel - I think, even in the most idyllic of childhoods, he still would have grown up somewhat cold and aloof - but let’s be honest: this is a practically impossible choice to make for anyone. Daily, painful beatings, knowing no one will ever come to your aid, or tricking a girl every month or so into getting raped?

Yashiro is the type of idiot that goes all-or-nothing in whatever he chooses to do, so once he made his choice, he went whole-hog on it.

Again, Yashiro is incredibly candid and forthcoming with his backstory in this chapter, and it never at any point seems like he’s trying to excuse his actions - only give a factual account of the events that occurred. Therefore, as much as we should trust that he performed his job “earnestly,” we should also trust just as much that he was an “unwilling accomplice.”

Since, again, Yashiro was only 10 or 11 at the time, it’s also easy to interpret this as his first try being not only unwilling but unwitting, that he didn’t actually know what his brother was going to do, and, once he DID know, that it was already too late to back out.

In any case, there’s a line he says in this part that’s very interesting:

“I was not convinced of the ‘me who was forced by my big brother.’“

Now, it’s important to note that around this age is where children start to really develop their own identities. Yashiro is beginning to wonder exactly who he is, and he isn’t “convinced” of the “accomplice” role he’s being forced into - and, by extension, the “golden child” roles his parents and teachers expect of him. The Spider’s Thread comes into play at this point of his life. The exact way that Yashiro interprets it, too, is also rather interesting.

In the original tale, after the thread snaps, the Buddha watches with sadness; though in his eyes, a corrupt heart wishing only for his own salvation falling back into hell is just. Then he continues on.

Yashiro’s version makes the Buddha seem much colder in comparison, having the Buddha simply wander away while quipping “what a merciless man.”

Even more interesting are the questions Yashiro asks about the story. “What if the thread had broken under Kandata’s legs? ...Didn’t the Buddha predict what Kandata would do? Then, was it just his whim to send the spider’s thread down?”

These questions are easy to gloss over, but I think they’re vital to understanding the self-identity Yashiro begins to build during this critical point in his development. He is incriminating the Buddha for being frivolous.

If the Buddha had already predicted that Kandata would do as he did - if he already knew what the outcome would be before he sent the thread down - then, walking away while shaking his head, it’s as if all of Kandata’s suffering was merely entertainment for the Buddha to prove himself right.

This lends more meaning to Yashiro’s follow-up questions: “I wonder if Kandata kept staring up at the ceiling with longing every day? Or if he became nicer to the other sinners even though he’s stuck in Hell?”

There’s an obvious answer to the second question, and it’s no - why would Kandata become nicer, knowing there’s no second chance? What could Buddha have been trying to achieve, by basically proving to Kandata that Kandata deserved everything he had coming to him?

“What would Buddha do?”

The Buddha in Yashiro’s story is not a nice one at all.

It’s also important to notice his act of “vicarious gratification” with a younger Shiratori Jun here: he gives him a pair of shoes (because Yashiro has another pair at home, it’s not a loss to him at all) and then spouts some “mature-sounding lines” about courage. He later muses that those words were meant for himself. What are those words, exactly?

“No matter how strong a man is, he has his fair share of problems. Courage is all about your determination not to give up in times of trouble.”

These are words meant not for Jun, but for Yashiro himself. Obviously, Yashiro’s “times of trouble” are his current predicament of continuing to be his brother’s unwilling accomplice, or being severely beaten. So what does giving up mean?

For Yashiro, “giving up” already means “dying.” He has no other options available to him, after all - his brother is already strong enough to simply smother a girl to death; the next beating Yashiro takes from him could be his last. (Again, obvious solutions of reaching out to CPS and the like are nonexistent in Yashiro’s mind.)

It is also directly after this that Yashiro meets Spice.

Now, Yashiro’s drowning of the hamsters is about as far from the standard “sociopath tortures animals for fun” bit as you can get. Yashiro just needs to “take care” of them. Easiest, most efficient way to do that is just to kill them (death is already on his mind, after all). He doesn’t even stick around to watch them struggle; he leaves for dinner and the comes back to find the hamster that will become Spice standing on the corpses of his siblings.

Why the name “Spice”?

This is a manga in which names are meaningful - and, in most cases, almost painfully on-the-nose. “Satoru” means “to understand” (and, according to jisho, “to achieve enlightement”). Sawada’s first name, Makoto, means “truth.” “Kenya” means “to be wise,” Kayo means “addition,” Airi means “love,” Hiromi means “beautiful,” and Mirai, of course, means “future.” It just sort of continues on like that.

So what’s the meaning behind the name “Spice”?

Well, here’s where things really get interesting, since I think my theory diverges a bit from popular conceptions on this point.

“Spice” is named after the “spider” in the story of the Spider’s Thread.

First of all, phrases like “spice of my life” don’t really exist in Japanese, and while we can argue that the author knows a fair bit of English, it still seems out of place in a story with so many names so laser-guided to be on-the-nose. The theory becomes more plausible when we look at the katakana for both the words -

スパイス vs. スパイダー

Now, the more common way to say spider in Japan is “kumo,” but if we’re willing to assume the author decided on the name “Spice” because they knew some English, then why not assume as well that they knew enough English to know how “spider” sounds in it?

As we’ve seen with Yashiro’s interaction with Shiratori Jun, he’s desperately trying to convince himself to stay alive despite his suffering. And then, coincidentally, here comes a hamster who is succeeding in doing just that: fighting for his life and his right to live, Spice is practically a miracle.

What does “vicarious gratification” mean? It means gratification through the feelings or actions of another. Spice is the “spider” that Yashiro is saving, and the “spider” that will save Yashiro - because Yashiro can live vicariously through Spice. Spice, who has so much fire to live that he’s willing to step over the corpses of his siblings. Spice, who - if Spice can continue on, then Yashiro can, to.

Yashiro is not a sociopath. For his own safety, he’s simply blunted his emotions to the point where he’s unable to directly experience them. His emotional life consists only of the “void” left behind when he obliterates his own negative emotions, and the “thrill” that comes of things that make him feel as though he has worth in being alive, through “vicarious gratification.”

So - then Yashiro’s brother accidentally kills a girl.

Now, let’s remember that Yashiro actually sympathizes with his brother to an extent. He understands why his brother is lashing out, and even feels a little responsibility for it. So for Yashiro, when his brother attempts to frame Yashiro for the crime, is betrayed.

The spider’s threads are Yashiro’s own delusions, born of his own intentions. The moment he sees the spider’s thread on his brother is the moment, unconsciously, that he has decided to kill him.

If Spice can live standing atop the corpses of his siblings, well - so can Yashiro.

It is at the moment Yashiro kills his brother that Yashiro asserts himself as his own entity. The murder of his brother is Yashiro’s defining moment as his own identity. It is when Yashiro stops being the “me forced by my big brother.”

Too bad he can’t let anyone know about it.

In any case, to add more proof to the unhappy household fire, the parents divorce over a scandal, when a loving family should be banding together even tighter. For all Yashiro’s posturing, this was not a happy family by any measure of the word.

Analysis: Teenage and College Years (1973-1987)

“You often hear that someone is ‘as good as dead.’ What does that mean? It means they’re not fulfilled, either mentally or physically. Right, in other words... “...I’m dead, at this very moment, as I’m living a peaceful life without risk.”

Of all the few scenes we have of Yashiro as a high schooler, one of them was a pointed shot of him on the outside of the fence on a building’s roof, in the exact panels we have where he talks about how little attachment he has to life - his, or anyone else’s.

Now, Yashiro never explicitly mentions a wish to die. It’s likely he’s not even aware of it himself, considering how blunted his emotions have become by this point. However, he DOES mention that what kept him alive was Spice, and, well...he’s gone now.

There’s some other stuff in this chapter that I will be covering later when I get to analyzing his murder methods, so let’s just move on to the juicier topic:

His fiancee.

Now, Yashiro’s opinion of her is rather high. She’s smart, she’s pretty, and having her fail to recognize him was enough of a disappointment that Yashiro began to see the spider’s thread on himself.

This, again, has the same problem of being told in a completely apathetic tone, so let’s review the actual situation, and try to find the emotional lens that Yashiro was experiencing the events with, even if he’s not consciously aware of it.

The fiancee is a child psychologist Yashiro met when she did a talk at one of the schools he was teaching at. This being three years after his third year of college (read: he’s only had maybe two years of teaching under his belt, period), it probably means they were dating for perhaps a year prior to the engagement.

Because of Yashiro’s apathetic tone, it’s easy to write her off. However, there are four reasons why she’s actually a very pivotal character in Yashiro’s backstory:

1. She’s brought up in his backstory at all. In fact, several pages are dedicated to her, where a one-off text-bubble about once having a fiancee who got too close to the truth and then having to dispose of her would do. In fact, she’s more important than Spice’s death and all of Yashiro’s high school years combined, just going by page count.

2. Yashiro actually references her earlier in the story, when Satoru asks him out of the blue why he isn’t married yet. She’s the “painful mistake.” Now, this may just be her use to him as a “factor to project my normalcy,” but the wording is rather specific (and I checked the japanese raws to make sure) - he calls her a painful mistake. (”So I’ve been too careful, I guess...”) That’s an odd word to use when the official ruling was a suicide - if your former fiancee committed suicide before the wedding, wouldn’t you call it more of a painful “experience”?

Yashiro is, in that panel, telling the full truth - which he actually likes to do quite often. He views her as a “mistake,” not an experience. There was something that went wrong there that was significant enough to warrant referencing her as early as chapter 27.

3. Her murder is one without a false culprit. Again, there not being a false culprit for Satoru’s accident is enough for Sawada and Kenya to assume that Satoru managed to throw the killer off his game. The same can be said of the fiancee’s death.

4. It’s after her murder that Yashiro sees the spider’s thread on himself. This is a fact that can’t really be ignored: why her? Why then? The spider’s thread, after all, has a single meaning given to us: Yashiro kills people that has the spider’s thread on them (or, rather, once he has decided who to kill, he sees the spider’s thread on them). And yet, he’s unwilling to kill himself. And yet, the spider’s thread becomes present after he murders his fiancee and gets away with it. Why?

Well...Yashiro wants to get caught.

Someone as brilliant as he is can easily cook up lies that don’t rely so heavily on the truth. If he really never wanted to get caught, he could do it easily - he evaded Sawada and Kenya for eighteen years, after all. And yet, when he interacts with Satoru in 1988, he’s constantly dropping hints and half-jokes as to his true identity - “so only kidnappers like you visit a place like that,” “Kayo is now safe,” the entirety of his speech on how to get close to a girl and, as mentioned above, his calling his fiancee a “mistake.”

Remember all that discussion on the building of his identity? Here’s the culmination of it: Yashiro’s identity has been cemented as that of a murderer, and he can’t tell anyone about it.

He is completely alone, just like he was when he was a child. Not a single thing has changed. And Yashiro’s emotions are so deadened and disconnected from his conscious processing that he’s unable to realize that not being alone is what he truly wants, but on some level, it’s all he wants.

This woman, his fiancee, was brilliant. And she was a psychologist. AND she was his fiancee. If ANYONE would be able to piece it together and figure it out, it would be her.

Now, here’s the thing about suicides - the jumping-from-a-building kind is relatively hard to fake. If there’s signs of a struggle, it points to foul play; if there’s drugs in their system, it points to foul play; if the person in question obviously has lots of plans and an active social life, it points to foul play. The margin for error for making sure that it looks like a suicide is very low. And, what’s more...

...Her death probably took place quite a while after she asked the “forbidden question” as a result. Meaning that Yashiro was able to whip out an alibi he probably had prepared in advance, and assuaged his fiancee’s fears enough that he was able to maneuver her into a position where he could kill her and make it look like she jumped due to stress from her job.

The “mistake” Yashiro made was the hope that she would see him for what he truly was, because, by all accounts, she should have. When she died, so, too, did Yashiro’s hope that someone would be able to see him. That he would no longer be alone.

(In other words, that was when Yashiro realized he was in hell.)

But who would be the one to cut his thread, then, if no one could even prove he existed at all?

Analysis: Murder MO

Yashiro kills a young girl or girls and then frames someone. Then he skips towns, rinse and repeat.

Why?

We know he’s not sexually attracted to young girls - the lack of sexual violence and the dispassionate murder methods are proof enough of that. We know he doesn’t have grudges against young girls. So...why?

I’ve seen lots of interpretations, and I think mine is...quite a bit different.

Yashiro is recreating his brother’s murder.

“My big brother was living inside of me.”

Yashiro kills a young girl, just like his brother did. Then, like his brother tried to frame him, Yashiro frames an innocent person. And then he sticks around to watch them be apprehended. (Why else would he stick around to watch Satoru get apprehended by police, and risk Airi or Satoru recognizing him?)

“I needed ‘something else’ that could take Spice’s role. I was quick to find the answer. Someone's death on my behalf. And the sight of someone else who resists death, or their tragic fate...they made ‘life’ feel real to me.”

We’ve already established that Spice’s “role” to Yashiro was basically that of a surrogate life. If Spice could live, then Yashiro could live. And with Spice gone, Yashiro was faced with his loneliness, emptiness, and death once more.

The most crucial aspect to his crime is not the murder itself, but the false culprit that he sets up. The murder itself is just an aspect of the “scenario” he keeps repeating: the moment that he asserted his own identity, his own right to live. What he really gets out of murdering is that same feeling - the feeling of being alive - by watching his scapegoats struggle for their own lives.

What’s up with the spider’s thread imagery, then?

Well, let’s go back to one of Yashiro’s more pressing questions about that story: “What would Buddha do?”

Buddha, as Yashiro sees him, is not a benevolent figure. Yashiro’s Buddha is frivolous, toying with Kandata on a whim for “vicarious gratification.” In a way, Yashiro is emulating him, but let me be clear - Yashiro’s role in the story is not that of the Buddha. Yashiro sees himself as the sinner, which is why Spice - the “spider” - is so important to him.

If the Buddha sends down a spider’s thread of salvation on a whim, then on that same whim, Yashiro will cut it. What would Buddha do? Yashiro is only following by example.

Yashiro is interesting to me because of his tragic self-destructing nature. What he really wants is, in a sense, to be validated. For someone to see him as he truly is, for someone to acknowledge his true identity and existence. However, he’s too smart and too clever to get caught, and he’s too dissociated from his own emotions to realize what he actually wants.

He’s someone who’s been alone for all his life that desperately craves some nature of interaction with another person on a level deeper than superficial, but because of what he’s decided to do (that is, serial kill), he’s unable to share that with anyone. On one hand, he felt like he had no choice - he had to keep living, he’d do whatever it took to keep living - but on the other hand, he’s practically destroyed his own hope with his own hands, and on some level, he recognizes that, hence why he has a spider’s thread on his own head.

Analysis: Post-Satoru (1988- )

“You’re the man that is supposed to bring life’s happiness to me.”

Yashiro’s fixation on Satoru is also very interesting, since it’s basically the culmination of all his repressed feelings focused on a single point.

When Satoru was able to predict Yashiro’s movements and circumvent them, to Yashiro, it was like everything his fiancee was supposed to be.

Again, Yashiro’s only capability of experiencing emotions has become a “void” of blunted emotions and the “thrill” of anything even remotely resembling a positive emotion. (Yashiro’s life is full of misery, self-imposed or not, so his “void” is rather large). So Satoru represents to Yashiro a great many things:

Satoru is, first of all, an equal. Someone who sees Yashiro’s presence, someone who can validate Yashiro’s existence. On that count alone, Satoru fills Yashiro with thrill - because Yashiro is not alone anymore. However, after miraculously surviving the murder attempt, Satoru also takes the place of Spice in Yashiro’s mind - the “spider” that is to save him.

What is the decision Yashiro ultimately makes?

“I choose...to move towards the ‘end’ using my own hands. And so, Satoru, the things you risked your life for...take the form of ‘death,’ and be my ‘end’...”

In other words,

“The spider’s thread is mine alone!”

And, just like Kandata, the thread snaps, and Yashiro is sent back to hell - Satoru wants nothing to do with him, everyone glares at him with contempt in their eyes, and he has nothing left but the memories of the spider’s threads and all of his regrets.

Well, this scene can also be interpreted as Yashiro making it to “Paradise,” since, after all, he’s fished out of a lotus-filled pond - and make no mistake, BokuMachi is a work without coincidences. I’m still puzzling this one out, in any case. Thoughts are welcome, haha.

Though, since Yashiro is poised to get the death sentence...maybe it’s Paradise after all?

(In the end, Yashiro isn’t someone who holds grudges or hard feelings. I think the reason he admits to all of his crimes at court, rather than just accept the rulings on the few that Kenya and Sawada managed to actually nail him with, is just his final act of “vicarious gratification” - when the hero wins, they should win absolutely, don’t you think, Satoru?)

[sleepy-and-pretty-blog]

Unwanted marriage

@wild-untamed-heart

Some say third time’s the charm. Others say what happens twice is doomed to happen a third time. For Ritsu this was a situation of ‘one more and it’ll be a strike-out’ for good or for bad. He had met 2 out of 3 possible marriage partners, and it hadn’t been good... for not saying it had been awful.

They were ok girls. Rich girls in all the sense of the word, a bit spoiled but very girly. They were also on the pretty side and also seemed used to the underground world as they were probably the daughters of other kumi. Even so, he couldn’t really bring himself to try and get along with them, quickly getting their hatred.

He had thought that if none of these reunions worked his mother would accept that it was impossible to get him married and focus only in his older brother for this matters. However, it only got him an ultimatum. If he wasn’t going to get married with one of the selected girls, his freedom would get reduced greatly. And he might also get parted from his right-hand.

He didn’t appreciated that. No sir he didn’t. So either he went and apologized to either of those girls... or he somehow made it work with this, the last one. He didn’t had much hopes for either, but at least you could expect him to be a bit... civil.

Their first meeting had been agreed on a very expensive tea house, and he was just a bit late for the meeting, for it had taken a very long time for him to get in that suit. he disliked stuffy clothes like this after all. He yawned as he took off the shiny black shoes, announcing himself at the entrance and leaving his bodyguards there before making his way inside.

It was a fancy place as expected from the price. Wooden floors and tall ceilings with crystal spiders of light, beautiful tables and fancy zabutons. There were wide windows and behind it, one could see the reddish light of twilight falling over the spectacular Japanese garden in the outside. All waitresses were dressed with fancy kimonos and had fancy hair-decorations too. He looked around until he found the girl he was looking for, reddish hair and silver eyes making it easy to find her.

Walking over, he stood right in front of her to make himself noticed and bowed slightly before sitting down.

“Evening, Burnsworth Kajika. I’m Sakuma Ritsu.” he commented in a low tone, bowing once more. A waitress soon brought the menu over, so he looked down to the paper rather than up at her.

[phntasmgoria]

" are you sure my kids and i can really stay here ? " the arachne inquires, eyes darkened with slight guilt. " i wouldn't want us to burden you. " kumi sighs and crosses her arms, turning her gaze away from the harbinger.

@katokosmos // kemono jihen s.c.