#im a reading too muchi nto it yes denintely but i couldnt help but notice (bc it bothered me in the first place 🤡 but yk work w what

[cacaitos]

somewhere lies the question of whether the subtle differences between the homunculi of men and women tend to be are deliberate. if they are, i mean they wouldn’t be any less patronizing for the reader, but they could very easly serve reveal a lot about intentional facts about nakoshi. 

IF it is intentional, then the fact that the great majority homunculi of women (or well them as characters or non-characters anyway) are sexual in some way or another... it is deliberate the portrayal of him objectifying women after he got plastic surgery, and started obsessing over the image of money etc, to say the attention he gets is shallow and this way of looking for it is too. but, that mindset came even before he got all that, when he was ugly and ignored. equally SCREAMING to be seen, but not putting the consideration to do the same, emphasis on women not doing so. like mf is/was just an incel and the residuals are leaking into his present perception of even the random women of the street. maybe the sexual part faded, but that same entitlement still persists, though he doesnt seem too counscious of it.

IF it is not deliberate. lol. like even if it were i’m betting an eye part is just the author’s also lack of respect for women and need to sexualize them at any given moment like the average mangaka lmao. It’s a mix of both if you ask me.

first of all, the physiscal forms of men's homunculi usually are some kind of hard protective shell, solid, that contains a human inside (gundam-esque mecha w a kid inside, egg-shaped mirror with the man himself inside), their cases usually involve having physically (usually with some sort of blade for some reason) hurt someone they appreciated and thus becoming detached/avoidant. while women's usually involve shape shifting, fluid shape, or hence lack thereof ("sand", face changing, lack of face), generally concerned with the pervasive nature of other's perception.

second of all that means men's cases here are worth shit thematically, they're an catalyst, an introduction but nothing more that in the big picture. yeah you have recognized now you have unresolved issues you're running away from, that itself doesnt mean much. it's on yukari and nanako's arcs that it really slams home the central thematic and emotional cores of the manga, Lies (symbols) v. Thruths respectively.

and again idk if it’s used as a visual device for integral characterization even outside of nakoshi's POV, but the middle ground that uses it as an intentional indicator for the reader I would say it's ito, like even if you're not all that aware of what's going on. like at the point of the manga Ito's conflict begins to get brought up, since we were still on the second with yukari, we don't have this (again, possibly unintentional) context of that difference between homunculi I'm discussing, that only comes in retrospective.

first we/nakoshi interpret ito’s homunculus as invisble, and shortly thereafter undertand it’s actually water. as ito explains (in some part subconsciously) yukari and her are actually very similar, their respective homunculi also begin to feel the same too; water and shapeless sand are not that far away from eachother, both are shorthand for a lack of consice identity and conformity to others’ molds (then see the pattern of womens’ homunculi). once ito is forced to use avoidant defense mechanisms and to act unbothered by yukari the water becomes better defined as ‘water inside a mold’ since the mold starts showing more distinctive characteristics instead of being nebulous and faceless. you could imagine that solid mold as.. a shell, even.

by the time se we ito again, in the arc after yukari’s, the mold is not only fully visible, but it has taken the form of ito’s father. it’s not shape-shifting, it’s a consolidation of the made-up image (also as a performance of the roles she's to perform relative to the sternity and stoicism of The Pathernal Figure) ito wants to show so as to avoid further interrogation after the no-involvement tactic becomes useless. she can concede talking about her parent, since yk it was one of the first things we/nakoshi notice in the story and the thing that sort of comes through as shes’s explaining yukari’s issues to nakoshi, but she wants it to stay in the comfortable awknowledgment of a ‘complicated father-son relationship’ and nothing more. 

so this mold-water dinamic doubles as expectations of both the general expectation of correctness (in the general sense) of fathers and society bestow into their children/ the apt performance of masculinity resulting as the neutering of individual personality/non conformity. 

i call ito's arc (and her) a bridge just by the way it and this stage in nakoshi’s life and arc are in a sort of limbo, being stuck between two worlds, it being the middle and mechanics-wise most particular arc (no homunculus tranferance), ito as the same but inverted image of nakoshi, and them coming over their refusal to look at their past.

bc ‘hardening up’ and image/identity issues are not limited to gender like i explain at the top i just said it was a trend in the main cast and some extras, but i do say that it uses those patterns and gendered associations (be them from nakoshi or the author) to visually signal the underlying dilemma of one or various of his characters.