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ikusayu-no-hana · 2 years

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kiden!! act ii

LETS GO THIS IS MY MOST FAVOURITE SCENE IN THE HISTORY OF TKRB EVER

genuinely fully in love with the idea of kasen narrating events like theyre a story. because thats such a rare glimpse of his vulnerability. and.......this is the first time we see him open up about his past and describe what really made him who he is, apart from the sanjuurokkasen incident.

he’s so full of love isn’t he? burdenless, still innocent, pure happiness. what we’re being shown is his time as a tsukumogami, several decades before tadaoki baptized kasen in blood. but as of now, where gracia is singing her child to sleep, kasen’s heart is, dare i say, the purest it’s ever been, because the tragedy comes in way later. it almost hurts to see what kasen used to be in the past.

(ofc the part of him being a tsukumogami at this point is just speculation and how i choose to interpret it)

oh yougknow i cried. i cried so hard when the camera switched to him mouthing the lullaby and tapping his finger on his sword to the rhythm. how many times had he heard that song before? he’s got it completely memorized . its about the tenderness its about the fondness its about the soft feelings . he’s had all these stories stored away in him with no one to tell them to and its so sad. its so so sad.

the way kasen adds his own little interjections in their conversations even though they cant hear him? love

nodding his head as his parents (thats what they are, arent they?) happily discuss their child’s future. this is the happiest scene in the entirety of kiden.

whenever kasen switches to narrating again he’s the present kasen, more somber, pained. it gives me whiplash.

i’ll mention it here for the sake of perspective: in the first scene, tama and tadaoki were 17 years old, and that baby was the future hosokawa tadataka. the honnouji incident would happen in 1582, when they were both just 19 years old (holy shit thats nearly how old im gonna be.............anyway). and kasen, at that point, was ofc a relatively young tsukumogami, having been forged in 1505.

he looks at his hand like he’s surprised it moved on its own.........

i find it so infinitely profound that it’s kasen himself who gives gracia that name. ‘the grace/blessing of god’

tadaoki’s terrible temper and jealousy were the real cracks in their relationship werent they.

FUCK FUCK FUCK EVERYTIME KASEN TURNS AWAY FROM THE VIOLENCE I CANT HELP DOING THE SAME. its such a human thing to turn away from something so morally terrible and kasen cant bear watching it. if he turned away from just this one murder, imagine how he mustve felt when tadaoki used him to end 36 innocent lives at once. its one thing to kill that many people in battle, because obviously the purpose of a sword is to be a weapon of war, but quite another to be used to end innocent lives as a means to set a mere example. kasen’s first kills ever broke the samurai code. no wonder he says the others dont know what kind of face to make around him.

there it is. she calls tadaoki a demon. an oni.

when you grow up in distrustful, toxic environment like that you learn to shut yourself up because you dont feel safe in it anymore and internalize it all as a method of coping, and thats exactly what happened to kasen. as the scenes go on and on he talks to them less (+ the fact that one by one, most of the hosokawa swords left the family, and kasen was left mostly alone for the next centuries, but i digress) the sanjuurokkasen incident just solidified that permanently . and as we’ve seen in the past sutes, that + tadaoki’s temperament affects the way he interacts with others, most notably ookurikara. and him absolutely coddling sayo, keeping him to himself, not letting him mingle with the Date swords.

The cherry on top of this scene is how kasen comes forward, saying the same lines from giden, ‘a bloodstained kimono isn’t elegant…not elegant at all’ while looking at his right sleeve, paralleling gracia’s own bloodstained right sleeve. He’s horrified, but at the same time, looks at it with resignation. The pure, untainted kasen of the past is………..no more. Love is pain, is the lesson tadaoki carved into him.

the sword tadaoki used for stabbing the gardener wasnt kasen. its obvious that kasen identifies himself with gracia, as a horrified witness, a victim even. him looking at his sleeve and being dyed red as well is proof of that.

on the other hand, if we discount the tsukumogami theory, it becomes like this: kasen is reliving the story inside him, right from the beginning of their marriage, and somewhere deep, deep inside, he’s still capable of being as kind and tender as we saw. full of love and trust. he’s just built so many walls around himself that it doesnt come out as open display after all.

im not sure which interpretation hurts more.

The next scene is like a bandaid over a gunshot wound lol

>Nikkari and kotegiri look at each other like ‘ah, there he is, let's do our thing’

I really like how the two wakizashi (sasuga wakizashi, always there to support you <3) have their own unique ways of comforting kasen. nikkari offers to have a bath together, an indirect way of offering concern, while kotegiri straight out asks him what happened. Im . you can see the concern they have for him, to approach him like that. im so glad kasen has friends that notice and look after him (<- sounding like a parent)

I know kasen says theyre not his memories but rather tadaoki’s story inside of him, but, in essence….arent they the same? Everything kasen narrated felt like his own experiences, the story he lived through, and the will he inherited.

>nikkari kneeling next to a lantern is such subtle nod to his story

awwwww its so cute how nikkari and kasen explain the battle tactics to kotegiri, he feels like their little brother wwww i love these three

kasen is right to be concerned about chougi taking kokin out for a ‘stroll’

I love how nikkari is honest without being overbearing thats literally what kasen needs and i will scream about it from the rooftops. I really really like him so much and I hope hes involved in future plays as well Please god !

oh he’s so perceptive. literally leaves kasen, the poet, speechless. nikkari is amazing.

Kotegiri is so ????????? considerate?????????????????? he didnt want kasen to meet tadaoki in that state bc he thought he’d be disillusioned??!?!!?! im. thats so fucking sweet of kotegiri. to think of sparing kasen more pain. urhgrhghdghdfjnjdknfjdn going to cry wait. (kasen gives him a little smile at this. ueeeeueeueueeeee)

'utsukushisa wa, tokaku hito wo kuruwaseru' is such an abstract, raw, line. what the fuck kasen. it reminds me of this one paradigm i came across: beauty is terror. and what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? its important to note kasen says beauty (美しさ), and not love.

kasen's implicitly wondering if tadaoki's madness came from his perfect, married bliss. you could actually write an entire thesis paper on this scene alone.

btw just a thought but i think these screencaps should be framed and hung up at the Louvr–*gunshots* im totally biased when i say he's the most beautiful character in touken ranbu. in all its adaptations. forever and ever. ok just had to get that out lets continue.

im counting this little uta-gumi-interaction as the canon altered one after his kiwame. our kasen knows kotegiri well enough, and accepts the other forms of ‘uta’ that the other honmaru’s kasen couldnt. bless sute for drawing from original game content and somehow coming up w an even better interaction. viva la moonwalk !!!!!!!!!!!!!

(yay lets go on to the next scene while im still reeling about the hosokawa family!)

chougi hiding the fact that he's an inspector is an intentional plot point isnt it. i think he's going to be a central character in piecing together all the hints and clues from all the altered timelines to solve the Great Mikazuki Mystery. thats why he asked for the other honmaru's report from kasen at the end of kahakugeki.

oh my god that means no one recognized even his voice? i mean he was disguised and had a mask and everything in jurakutei's investigation so understandably they wouldnt know what he looked like, but his voice, surely???? i think manba will come back and surely surprise us with the fact that he knows. im counting on that.

kokin is SO perplexed and his face screams ??????? but he's being so nice about it. to be fair it WAS chougi that derailed their conversation anyway so kokin's justified .

man. kokin-sama is so beautiful. tsukaryo is so beautiful.

i like this chougi way more. the guy from the other honmaru in kahakugeki was more...stoic and brutal, suggesting theyd kill jizou if it came to that. but our chougi (<3) doesnt comment further on kokin's wish, just apologizes for suspecting him.

>kokin's senses r apparently sharper than chougi's bc he picked up on kikkou and shishiou eavesdropping on them

I LAUGHED THEYRE SO ADORABLEEEEE

here! chougi's interest is peaked as soon as shishiou mentions the troublesome bunkyu tosa-han inv. it must be this that sets chougi's sirens off, along w kuroda kanbei.

yeah, theyre not humans but stories.....fictionalised, romanticized accounts from unreliable memories, all mixed up and messy.

seifu.......

just occurred to me that once they got back to their inn (?) they mustve found kasen nikkari kote relaxing in the bath jdsnjsdnvkjnjkzsn. chougi, to kokin kikkou shishiou: saa, guzuguzu suru na! *finds the wakizashi and their captain in the ofuro after a traumatic event*

why make promises no one can ever hope to keep......😭😭😭😭

the way this timeline operates is completely different from the one in tosa worked. its actually terrifying how connected it is to gracia's will. like its completely living. (imagine if the city in this one started moving randomly tho. they wouldve never gotten out the dark passage). while ryouma is the last person to transform into his.....alternate form, gracia is the first, and only when she has transformed do all the other daimyo also transform

yea i lost count of how many times theyve said chichi naru deus rip. (would their god really wish for such a thing to happen to the natural world though? such an ...... unworldly thing. just saying . if i was a christian i wouldve immediately known the history revisionists were the devil's minions. but then again i cant imagine how terrible it mutsve been for them as a religious minority to be persecuted and hiding their entire lives in fear of death. they wanted to live. its different from the bunkyu-tosa humans where they wished for the future of the country as a whole. here, the christians make their own country for their own benefit.)

i love how everyone’s instantaneous reaction to being surrounded by enemies is to gather around kasen in position.

i remember being tired out in the second half of kahakugeki bc there were a lot of fights but they werent fights with real actors. kiden fortunately doesnt bore me because all the swordfights are so much cooler, and with real enemies too :)

i was just thinking 'wouldnt it be too crowded to fight so many people in such a narrow tunnel?' and then kikkou and nikkari literally save the day by chipping in!

i love the fact that sute emphasizes the 'aoe' instead of nikkari. i think kotegiri is the only one who calls him 'nikkari-san', everyone else calls him by his smith name, creating this sense of formal distance.

'bokutachi wa kigai sou da na' in many ways, aoe and kikkou are the same; werent they both shortened? aren't they both a little strange?

KURAGIRI TSUURO MY BELOVED

the way kokin says he found something is so funny like. they mustve been groping around in the dark for some kind of clue as to where theyre going and kokin just finds something that very coincidentally happens to be just what they need and kote and shishiou r like OHHHHH. and then they start dancing. i was surprised but i loved it. esp the lighting.......the overhead dark blue complementing their lanterns’ orange glow was a palette artists (me) would go crazy over . kasen looks beautiful btw.

🤡🤡🤡 besties how could you get lost you were LITERALLY DANCING TOGETHER A SECOND EARLIER.

noooo jizou dont run awayysydyfhdsajsf youre hurting kokinnnn

HOW is jizou stronger than kokin despite being there for the same amount of time. but its true that kokins bad at fighting (said so himself) and has been in lesser fights than jizou has been in. so.

what a pair they make. a traitor’s daughter and a traitor touken danshi.

i like this interpretation of the game’s lantern mechanics.

badass gracia badass gracia BADASS GRACIA BADASS GRACIA. tousute women are such strong characters but they come at a heavy mental cost tho

in kahakugeki jizou literally screamed kokin’s name like he hated him, but in kiden our jizou sounds apologetic, and seconds later he does apologize.....;-;

actually they do it twice dont they. at first its ‘jizou yukihira!’ ‘kokindenjunotachi!’ but when theyre leaving its ‘jizou...’ ‘kokin...’ softer

if kasen said 無粋な真似はやめてもらおうか to my face i’d kill myself

they still have their lanterns in hand and its insane to think about how all this is happening under a castle in a narrow dark passage where they can possibly hear each other’s fights and yells and basically th entirety of the characters r fighting in the kuragari tsuuro. like all 19 of them + the TRA. it mustve been chaotic

ARIMA HARUNOBU AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

his existential crisis strikes me the most....in reality he was ordered by hideyoshi to commit seppuku BUT since suicide is a sin in christianity, he requested to be executed. his wife reportedly kissed his severed head after his execution.

but this harunobu doesnt know how he died because hes a mix of reality and rumours and. its painful not to know who you are

pls sute can we have kotegiri dancing with kikkou shishiou and nikkari some time in the future pleaseeeeeee. you already mentioned in muden that they do but i also wanna see it

second time kasen says ‘katsute no aruji ga aishita’

chougi chougi CHOUGI BELOVED

i had to wipe a tear bc chougi and kasen fighting together so in sync was too beautiful. you dont get that type of synchronicity at random. they mustve practiced a lot at the honmaru.

a moment to reflect on how killing even these fake humans is painful

and of fuckng course nikkari would be concerned about where their souls would go ...... if they would even be counted as souls

‘do not pity the enemy you cut’ ........

FUCK kote had a nosebleed accident

the absolute sarcasm in chougi’s voice when he asks kokin if this is the Time to be reciting poetry. bestie let him be, poetry is his coping mechanism.

‘have you forgotten the poem?’ implying kasen has recited it to him in the past ok ok ok

very interesting how kasen addresses everyone else by either ‘kimi’ or ‘kiden’ but kokin by ‘anata’ but in his kiwame it remains ‘kimi’. this may mean nothing at all. or it may mean everything.

kasen......the kindness kasen knows is different. its brutal. it has an undercurrent of violence to it. he’s actually ready to cut down jizou for this mission, even says so in a later scene, telling him to defend gracia with his life. with kasen it’s always extremes.

yeah, and kokin does struggle with too much kindness

LETS GO LETS GO KASEN KANESADA NO UTA O

she calls kasen ‘ano hito’.......like he’s a person. actually he is, since he carries tadaoki’s heart, which ties in to gracia calling him a demonic husband. a demonic person’s sword will also be a demon. or the devil himself.

oh boy shinken hissatsu sequences!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im so happy they had ALL of them battered bc in iden only tosa-gumi were hissatsu’d and it was kind of disappointing (<- she wanted to see izuminokami’s awakening)

YESSSSSSSSSSSS kikkous inner.........restraints!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sute did that. sute REALLY DID that

KOTEGIRI . he’s so fierce

you can really hear the italian/spanish (sorry idk what that instrument is but its def european!) influences. manzo did say they put a lot of effort into adding christian influences into the soundtrack . and by god did they succeed.

BUT THE BIGGEST SURPRISE WAS NUE WHAT THE FUCK NUE I KNEW YOU WERE ALIVE BUT SUTE MADE YOU EVEN MORE ALIVE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE IT HES BITING THEM shishiou has abs KILL KILL KILL BITE KICK ASS YEAHHHHH THEYRE SO COOL

im just going to say it: nikkari is sexy as fuck. just the right amount of exposed skin. cursed red eye free from hair curtain. unhinged laugh. sensual action sequences. disheveled hair moving like water. my image of pure soft mashiro is shattered by those abs. and perfect bgm btw it feels like im ascending

chougi walks onto the battlefield like god sent him. like he’s the hecking reincarnation of death. which he is. (umechan’s growling is spot on.)

oh this silence after chougi leaves. i know whats going to happen but it still makes my hair stand on end. here we go

FUCK

FUCK FUCK FUCK

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

FUCKING HELL

that opera wants me dead.

kasen emerging like he’s a statue made from marble, looking like that??? all ruffled up???? the shadow of anger on his face? with THOSE muscles? i think its my bias speaking. but that exposed shoulder is the single most sexual thing ive ever seen. i mean that in the most respectful way possible. and wadakuma has literally bulked up for this so his hissatsu in hiden pales in comparison to this.............

and his voice comes out like its being dragged out from him. like he can barely get the words out due to anger. he’s super fucking mad

THIS. this is the most spirited fight he’s ever had. its so obvious he’s on a completely different level from his teammates (he’s lv99 isnt he) with the way he’s slicing and controlling an entire crowd . he’s grown so strong....................... 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

i forgot to breathe

how does kasen still look like the most beautiful being in the universe despite being injured.

just like gracia, kasen feels the pull of fate trying to bring them to each other. there is literally no other explanation. their stories are just that strongly connected to each other.

he’s being honest for a second and admitting he had doubts. also the third time he says ‘katsute no aruji ga aishita’ like its drilled into him.

taken aback by being called an oni......maybe he thought gracia hated him, was looking at him with the same hatred she felt for tadaoki

kokin isnt supposed to cry please nooooooooooooooo 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 we all wish honnouji hadnt happened but seeing kokin finally lose his composureeeeeeeeee

otomo sourin is..........undeniably one of the most sincerest christians in this. he wanted to genuinely let all the christians born there live their lives, but in the end, this place he thought would be better became engulfed in the same ‘blood and war’ he wanted to escape from. its so heartening to see the touken danshi respond to him with that same sincerity. ‘we’ll certainly carve it into our chest’

here lies jesus betrayed by most of his disciples. the last supper lived up to its name

‘the presence i feel from you is one im very familiar with.’ is a strong (and the first) confirmation of the fact that chougi and manba are directly Connected to each other. fused and attuned to each other. i mean chougi hadnt even met manba for very long, with the latter leaving for his kiwame journey on the same day that chougi arrived. because no one other than chougi himself seems to feel that kuroda kanbei is.......different from the others. in any case, we can safely conclude that a piece of manba is lodged in chougi, just like a piece of chougi is lodged in manba. theyre the same but different, destined to have this indivisable connection.

in the same vein, i wonder if those from the same smith schools also feel the presence of their fellow crafted swords? perhaps those who’ve spent a long time together? or replicas and originals? would kasen be able to uniquely perceive izumi? would horikawa and yamabushi too, like chougi, be able to discern manba’s presence from a sea of swords? its an interesting idea with countless possibilities, so i’ll wager yes.

(chougi senses manba, kasen senses gracia, their connections run parallel)

kokin’s first human kill is ukon. its a shame the camera didnt switch to a closeup of kokin bc right after he stabs him, kokin strokes his sword and looks at his hand....

im not completely sure about this, but kasen is fearful, or at least very wary, of ukon. in kahakugeki when ukon yelled at him in his altered form, kasen flinched terribly. and now, when ukon is requesting kasen for something, kasen is suddenly on his guard, eyes widening. honestly idk why? maybe he thought he’d transform into something else? scared of what ukon might say??

about the bell tolling after ukon dies: its a death knell. ‘the ringing of a church bell immediately after a death to announce it.’ also symbolizes the end of something, or something that will end soon. in this context, the last of the christians has fallen. harunobu, sumitada, yukinaga, sourin, ukon, and then the tensho embassy. kuroda kanbei has essentially deserted them, and now only gracia remains. (when i typed this out i realized how bleak that sounds)

their roles were brief but.......the tensho boys did leave their mark behind. and their last words were haunting. and otomo sourin’s last few words as well.......

(i think nikkari may be subtly suggesting they all were spirits?)

‘surely someone somewhere within this sky is watching over you. kotegiriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii im going to shake you so hard

FUCK THEY SHOW KIKKOU NIKKARI SHISHIOU KOTE LOOKING ABSOLUTELY REMORSEFUL AND STUNNED WTFFFFFFFF

i mean i know thats manba, in some fucked up way, but i cant help not feeling attached to him (it?). and he is definitely acting on his own will, even fighting against the tra whenever it suits his own purposes, but its simply not our manba. theres this theory that that’s what manba is reduced to after his kiwame training goes wrong or something but i dont buy that. our manba is strong enough. he wouldnt be reduced to a time-hopping masterless sword like that.

this time chougi wins. you know how stupendous that is? just in his last appearance on stage, chougi had his ass handed to him in front of everyone by manba. now he fucking breaks manba’s fake with his own two hands. fucked up but also amazing narrative.

and he’s SO hell bent on protecting manba’s legacy. He’s so mad on manba’s behalf. AND HE DOESNT CALL OUR MANBA NISEMONOKUN HE CALLS HIM YAMANBAGIRI KUNIHIROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DELICIOUS DELICIOUS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

‘yamanbagiri kunihiro. until you come home, i’ll protect this honmaru’ FUCKED ME UPPPPPPPPP he’s one of them now he’s one of them he has companions and he’s become less prickly than he used to be he’s HE’S BECOME A SUTE SWORD!!!!!!!!! that loss and uguisumaru’s lecture mustve made him introspect what his ideals and attitude entailed for the first time . that scene at the end of jiden where he’s standing at the top looking at everyone go about their daily chores? that was the start of his turning point. he realized he still had so much to learn about this honmaru before signing it off as merely pitiful. they tamed him <3

it all ties back to fucking oda nobunaga at the end im going to tear my hair out

pain pain all i know is pain . all kasen and jizou and kokin know is pain

be ready to protect her with your life because kasen knew a man who couldnt and regretted it till his dying day . he’s literally threatening to kill jizou i havent seen a sword wanting to destroy another ever since hiden. the hosokawa swords r fucked up

organs in the bgm are taken directly from the game ost

when gracia makes the slightest movement kasen and kokin r immediately on their guards . cryyyyyyyyyyying

um UM???? KAI-CHAN’S LINE DELIVERY????????????????????

‘anata wa inferno ni itte naranai. jizou bosatsu no michibiku ni shitegainasai. mada modoreru.’ english cant do these words justice. she’s choosing to give jizou up bc not only are they not supposed to be together, and she wants jizou to follow his own path rather than force himself to follow hers, which would be an irreedemable sin in both their faiths.

there we go. she cut their connection.

THE WAY kasen puts himself between jizou and graciadknsdkjnesjknfnsfkjnfkjneakfnueihnivasndkvwniugniufvnsfdjkanvuancuiasnkjcdsnvjkarnuesnkfjfnskdjvniuafnjesniuwenifunewanfiuwnfiu keysmashing isnt enough i need to jump on my keyboard

he tells kokin to take care of jizou not because kokin needed to be told or ordered to do so, but rather because kasen needs confirmation they’ll be safe and okay till he comes back. bc despite threatening jizou, he cares. and this line isnt even in the game event btw.

i hate and love this part. hate it bc it makes me cry.

(puts on my tinfoil hat) ave maria as a choice is actually so interesting because:

loved one's death I wonder who that could be djsdjdbcnsgshdodhdjfjdbdjdbfbd 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 KASEN’S BELOVED GRACIA OF FUCKING COURSE

note: ‘full of grace’ in latin is literally gratia plena (as in gracia, get it?)

of course, this bgm has drawn inspiration from the last boss bgm in the game’s keichou kumamoto event itself, so the ave maria bit comes in from there, but sute (full of absolutely insane people) have extended ave maria’s duration so that it perfectly lasts for the entirety of kasen’s and gracia’s fight.

oh btw this is the actual wall painting inside kumamoto castle’s honmaru goten!

they changed the original painting to that of a couple which, 99.9%, is supposed to be gracia and tadaoki ;-; stabbed me in the heartdfghjk

(side note: the game has this change as well, but only on the first time you defeat the last boss. all subequent times you defeat the boss, the wall retains its original form, implying history has been corrected)

and thats not all the significance this painting has!!!!!!!!!!! according to the official kumamoto castle website, the original painting depicts wang zhaojun, one of the famous ‘four beauties’ of china. you can read a more comprehensive version of her story here, but the most important thing is that she, too, despite being hailed as virtuous and intelligent, was denied her rights to return home because of men in power, and died by suicide. like gracia, she also was a symbolic political figure (whereas wang zhaojun is said to represent the ties between the han dynasty and the mongolians, gracia’s death served to drive tadaoki to ieyasu’s side and arguably aided in winning sekigahara). what kind of coincidence is that.

theres a moment where he simply gazes at her. i cant emphasize how much him just looking at her means so much.

its like kasens body moves on its own but his mind is still clouded and the reality and hasnt caught up with the reality of what he is about to do.

for those two seconds she was saying nikukute nikukute nikukute, kasen must’ve thought she was talking about him, but then she adds that very soft ‘itoshii’ and his eyes cant go wide enough, like he’s woken for the first time, realizing the severity of the kill. ill never forget that face.

and tama sinks to her knees, fallen, just like she did when begging tadaoki to kill her.....time is a flat circle

my eyes popped out when tadaoki appeared like he was some kind of angel sent by the heavens. or some kind of ghost.

theres nothing but love theres nothing but pure love in his eyes as he looks at gracia.

i once read somewhere that home is the first place you learn to run from. kasen’s been trying to outrun a lot of his past but this scene is like coming back home after a long time out in the rain. his parents finally notice him and are proud of him, for being as he is, painful stories and all. i cant stop looking and choking up at his bewildered face when tadaoki says those words. genuinely. this was his divine salvation, the first time we ever see him cry.

unlike cain and abel, kokin is his brother’s keeper. he nearly lost him once and he’s not letting him go ever again.

‘jizou yukihira [...] i will pray for your flower to bloom....’ says gracia as she disappears..............a play on the title. you knwo what that means? it means gracia has transferred the title of flower over to jizou. (kasen later also reaffirms this, saying ‘it is not the time for you to scatter yet’ to jizou when he asks kasen to kill him. wait now that i typed it out thats so dark)

isnt it quite ironic that he chases them after they’ve disappeared and gone? there’s a limit to how much a heart can restrict itself.

(the arm which kahakugeki kasen and kiden kasen wipe tama’s blood on r different. in kiden, he does it to his right forearm, which takes me back to the time he was looking at his own sleeve after tadaoki bloodied tama’s sleeve. that right forearm is like a sort of landmark for emotional pain. red blood on a blue kimono makes purple.....)

the first time he ever offers a smile to kokin and i break down. i

to some swords their master’s feelings come easily enough, and everyone else recognizes them (like mutsu in iden) but kasen and jizou, because they were part of a cosmically complex story about something that to most swords is indecipherable (love) they dont know how to understand or know sansai-sama and tama-sama’s heart.

‘what are you thinking of right now? what am i thinking of right now?’

there’s so much of kasen in this dialogue. and. i dont have any words left. like kasen said it isnt something to be described by such everyday, ordinary words. but what remains is that even if he thinks he’s far away from being elegant, he hasn’t lost his poetic spirit in all this violence. that integrity, he has kept.

compared to kahakugeki, his voice is less brash and abrasive when telling jizou to stand. these small differences actually make a whole world of difference.

the absolute look of heartbreak jizou gives him

and its almost imperceptible, but kasen nods at him. and im not 100% sure but he offers him a small smile as well.

there it is. the amatsukaze. the heavenly wind that with it hopefully took away with it the souls of those that died. (since the wind is representative of kokin it feels like he’s wrapping up the events of this investigation, bringing it all to an end.) (i read a repo by someone that wondered if what kasen glimpsed at those last moments was actually paraiso, heaven, and thats why he was so shocked. its left up to our interpretation)

these lines of dialogue feel like kasen wrote them down in his own diary. in kahakugeki this was the exact dialogue given to the kodanshi. i wonder if kasen simply handed the script he made to him so he could tell a story from it.

‘the year after gracia’s death, the christianity ban wasn’t lifted, but tadaoki established a church. at the mass, it was said he lamented gracia. even now, tadaoki’s and gracia’s two graves, lie side by side in the hosokawa clan’s cemetary.’

kokin’s incoming call, again, is: 来ぬ人を　待つ夕暮れの秋風は　いかに吹けばかわびしかるらむ [What is the nature / of the autumn wind’s blowing / that it brings such grief / when in the dusk I await / someone who fails to appear? (from the tkrb wiki)

summarises all the longing and pain wholly.

also, its coincidental he mentioned 秋 here because the kikyou flower, symbol of the akechi clan, is one of japan’s ‘seven flowers of autumn’. despite all the association kiden and kasen have with spring (new creation, blossoming ideas etc) the seasonal and character developmental journey has left us at autumn, with kasen coming back to us with a kikyou replacing his peony.

i suppose some would call it sute wanting to quickly end kasen’s character arc, but him departing for his kiwame journey goes to show how frantic and eager he was to really achieve his full potential. and you know what? fucking good for him. he deserves it. i was fully happy with it. more than happy in fact. ecstatic.

but also, its funny how he left right before the incoming call came in again. i mean surely he didnt know when exactly it’d come right? in the game, kokin literally says ‘to wait or to keep one waiting, im not very good at that’ and kasen, absolute mad lad, does exactly that omg.

apparently, only kikkou and nikkari knew of kasen leaving.

nikkari’s smileeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. he’s happy for kasen.!!!!!!!!!!!

kasens smile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! his pure, genuinely delightfully rare smile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! while he’s off !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! im so happy i was alive to witness it

church choir in the bgm!

them. kidengumi. dear dear dear kidengumi. rode out this hard mission together. high fiving each other. i dont even have words

KASEN MAKES THE SAME POSE AS THE TIME HE EMERGED IN HIS SHINKEN HISSATSUUUUU

as far as i’m concerned, this is what divinity looks like in mortal form . i could wax poetic about the composition of this scene, his costume, which solidified completely my love for his kiwame, the little butterfly accessories, wadakuma’s constant dimple..... (i say this very calmly for a person who went into hysterics for the rest of the day after seeing it live. all that emotion nearly made me throw up. im so so so so so, so proud of him.) i don’t think i’ll ever stop getting goosebumps from his shinken hissatsu and kiwame. even though i’d been spoiled since the start of april i cant believe that it really happened. kuma’s triumphant smile right as he struck all the tra at once.....i wonder how it mustve felt like. being so powerful, the centre of this story, and that being the last performance too.....man hold on i need to cry

The first words he says to us, after returning, are literally tadaoki's death poem (despite his nonchalance about sansai-sama's death in his kiwame letters, it must've hung heavy on him): 皆共が忠義戦場が恋しきぞいづれも稀な者どもぞ (sorry idk how to translate this without it sounding incomplete but the gist of it is that he misses the battlefield, and all the rare people that left him) . and kasen adds in his own little line as well: やがて僕たちもそうなるのだろうか？でもその時までは. will we eventually become thus as well? but, until then...

(kasen’s understood and seen mortality right in its closest proximity. he’s contemplating the possibility of them one day becoming nothing.....having to leave the battlefield for good. which ties into something ive been wondering as well: when they finally defeat the tra, save mikazuki etc, when there wont be any enemy left, what would their purpose be? kasen’s answer is simply, we won’t know until we reach that point. until then, they will keep fighting. that is all.)

kasen left reciting gracias death poem and came back to us with tadaoki's death poem on his tongue.

its like he’s casting off who he used to be and, like a butterfly, has reinvented himself by letting his old self go. I'm not a christian, and haven't witnessed any christian rituals, so I say this with secondhand knowledge only: kasen's kiwame reveal felt like a Baptism. an interesting commentary on one of the bible passages comes to mind: "O merciful God, grant that the old Adam in this child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in him." what is metamorphosis if not a temporary death? he buried the old tadaoki in him. i mean buried as in come to terms with. he’s no longer fighting and struggling against him. acceptance, like kasen mentions seeking in his kiwame letters, becomes him.

i can’t get over how in the curtain call bows, wadakuma cant stop looking and smiling at the audience. you cen literally feel his happiness radiating everywhere. no more crying like in kahakugeki’s daisenshuuraku, they made it out the dark tunnel. just. god. im so full of emotions whenevr kiden is brought up. kuma loves kasen so much.

im glad suemitsu-san spent so much effort on making kiden as faithful and true and sensitive to everyone’s characters. im so so glad that we got two keichou kumamoto adaptations. im terribly happy that they could tell us the story of our sute honmaru’s investigation, without compromising a single thing. i’ll carry this happiness within me for a long, long time, even if i wasn’t there in person. if anyone has managed to get done reading both of my silly posts and made it till here, i hope you’ve felt the same gratitude and bewilderment and all the various mixture of emotions kiden threw at us. kasen is my favourite character, and i hope this beautiful tale has left a mark on everyone who saw it, just like kuma said.

(thoughts on the ed here)

#keysmashing and meta paragraphs co-exist in this #anyway......there was a fuckton of symbolism and somehow i managed to empty 50% of my mind through these two posts #kiden was a love letter to kasen kanesada <3 #tousute #kiden ikusayu no adabana

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ikusayu-no-hana · 2 years

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kiden!! act i

first off. I watched kiden with the most kasen-biased lens, and even after like 6ish rewatches there are things I might have missed out. second, this is long. hehe. so that's a much needed disclaimer before I unload everything I've been thinking of for the past few weeks.

ofc......this is an abandoned timeline. even so, the only flowers that bloom are those near gracia.

Kokin’s shriek thank you very very very much

they skip half of the plotline of iden and straight away make it clear that everyone knows who the touken danshi are . and the fact that they know they are living in an abandoned timeline. no existential conflicts here?

takayama ukon, I think, as far as I can remember, is the first sute human ive seen that justifies not killing the touken danshi on the basis that they have the same hearts as humans, and are not mere objects. He’s so emptathetic towards them it almost makes me uncomfortable bc well….we know whats going to happen in the end .

jizou running away with gracia is the softest portrayal of a touken danshi denying his duty we’ve ever seen. maybe its the hand holding, treating gracia like she’s fragile.

Urghrjdnf I know it’s a world that came into existence from gracia’s wish but hearing don francisco say “what if we let her be free?” leaves a bad bad taste in my mouth. Sure it may be what she wanted but does she anymore? Isn’t she already supposed to be free in this new world? But then again, would her happiness ultimately lie in her husband living like a depraved madman…..? debatable.

i feel terrible for the honmaru that lost their daisanbutai...all six swords broken in one investigation....*logs in to my honmaru to poke all six of them to make sure theyre ok*

Kokin’s message…

Always always alwaysssssss mouthing the opening dialogue…fuck ive been waiting to hear it in kasens voice forever and ever.

why is kasen so beautiful. like. they really set his wig and did his makeup to make him look divine, like one of those sad noh maidens (thoughts on the op here)

(A bit of an aside, but I find it funny how some of them still have flower petals on their costumes www. Chougi looking fully serious while having a petal lodged in his cape as if just seconds earlier he wasnt dancing. and shishiou scattering petals in his wake as he runs.)

SITTING AROUND A FIRE HOW CUTE. i forgot that this scene in almost its entirety was also in kahakugeki, because this time it’s a completely different setting and theyre doing something other than walking. this feels more lively :)

they discuss a little poetry! specifically the poem kokindenjunotachi recites in the incoming call. kidengumi poetry discussion session in full swing! i still am surprised to find out shishiou also liked poetry bc his former master was an accomplished poet, and also that chougi and nikkari are well-read in old literature. I wonder if that was their own acquired knowledge or from kasen's influence.

feels like everyone has an appreciation (or at least, an understanding) of the arts that kasen likes ("please group me with people who understand elegance").

kasen voice: in most cases the 'uta' you're talking about is not the 'uta' I'm familiar with! (he mustve heard a lot of kotegiri's songs already.)

kikkou truly must be a good cook if kasen is relishing the food he made........mmmm watching them made me a little hungry ngl

who's the sender of the message??? does kasen know????

"well I do have a feeling of who it might be–"

"one of your old friends, perhaps?"

I love how kasen and nikkari have this exchange between them, where nikkari consistently sees right through kasen and his discomfort and frankly cuts right to the point. nikkari’s role here is to act as a foil of sorts to kasen.

I feel like. kotegiri and shishiou bring the much needed light-heartedness to this unit. tsurumaru, koga, mutsu and horikawa did that in iden but in kiden we’ve got like. more somber characters havent we. like seriously in any other setting I wouldnt imagine characters like kasen and nikkari doing an enthusiastic group shout . (kikkou looks at chougi bc hes the only one not doing it lol. and i think nikkari also gestures to chougi to go along w it

so the farmers mention that katō kiyomasa was defeated and bc of that the christians made kumamoto-jo their hideout. looked him up and....this guy was absolutely brutal towards them....stabbing pregnant christian women and cutting off their children's heads. making kumamoto castle a christian place feels like the ultimate fuck you to kato kiyomasa.

seeing kasen give out instructions feels so..........and everyone looking at him. thats his unit. thats his daisanbutai. thats their captain. and hes such a trustworthy captain <3

the reason why nikkari’s so set on poking kasen about his ‘mukashinajimi’ is definitely bc kasen is mysteriously reluctant about to bring it up (shinpaishite iru yo). in kahakugeki kasen begins to say kokindenjunotachi’s name in the first scene when nikkari cuts in and i wish theyd have kept that little bit in kiden. i think kasen......definitely didnt want to face his past. ive said enough abt that in well...a lot of posts. but also, i think he was also a little fearfulof what meeting old friends would mean. itd be too many coincidences, wouldnt it

it just occurred to me that tadaoki, most definitely, like in giden, thought kasen was a geisha just standing in the middle of his way. just like that. thats why hes like ???????????

oh man. kasen. it mustve fucked him up to see tadaoki like that. i feel like having watched kahakugeki took a little shock out of it bc we all expected it, but it really mustve been a massive shocker and eye opener to kasen to see what a fully christian country entailed. (if gracias wish hadnt come true tadaoki wouldnt have to suffer like this would he...? but then neither wouldve been able to make the other happy if their repsective wishes came true) its jarring to see your father, who was once full of pride and one of the wealthiest lords in the country, fall to the bottom of the barrel.

obsessed with the way kasen shows his nervous tics: tucking his hair, tapping his sword, flourishing his cape. kuma does it all so naturally.

???? chougi smile out of nowhere???? i think he only did that in daisenshuuraku stream bc in 4/3 stream he didnt much smile at kikkou kjsndv thank you for that though

chougi and kikkou r literally . team rocket but more cunning and scheming. its like theyve already had experience in reconnaissance together.

if im not wrong kikkou says “even though it’s god’s country, there’s no equality among its citizens” yes king thats been the problem w christian kingdoms throughout history! *cough* europe *cough*

"bluffing is also a weapon of war" go kikkou go!!!!!!!!

i wouldnt want them as enemies ever theyre genuinely terrifyingly good at drawing out information. but also theyre just bluffing it as they go huh lol

still, its impressive they came up with all that on the spot.

DEATH BY KIKKOUS WHISTLE

jk rowling wishes she couldve made draco malfunction as sexy and ruthless as chougi

MAN THEYRE SO ANNOYING D SJKNDV everyone whispering "hidari! hidari!!!!!!" but he still gets slapped. imagine ur just here to protect ur religious country and these meddling touken danshi LIE to ur face and give u weird riddles to solve and u still get clocked while the other guy is having the time of his life whistling at ur misfortune. and the blue cape guy tops it off with “i have utmost respect for ur guys’ devotion to ur faith :)”

theyre so good. chemistry is out of this world. digging my grave as i speak

“where is she?!?!?!?!?” *stomach suddenly starts rumbling* sorry i know its like. a plot point to get tadaoki to where shishiou and kotegiri at the eatery but i couldnt stop laughing

i think its safe to say kiden part i is more of a comedy to a certain extent. to a certain extent only though.

kotegiri is so earnest and it feels like shishiou is his elder brother.

they finally got to sit at the same table T-T

i really like how the three sets of touken danshi move to different places to gather intel; kasen + nikkari going to the crowds near the castle to observe them (i loved the bgm here), chougi + kikkou slyly making their way to the church, shishiou + kote going to a restaurant. it feels characteristic to each of them.

that one guy inthe background doing a double take @ nue

shishiou talks to kogarasumaru a lot for a guy who claims to not like being treated like a kid hmmmmmmm admit u like being spoiled like the rest of us

also i wonder if shishiou simply didnt ask kogarasumaru for an explanation or if kogarasumaru didnt go into too many details or if shishiou simply forgot about what the former meant by a ‘troublesome’ mission. he may be a himbo

nveeeveerrrrrr getting tired of shishious koga impression. ever

and his smile while talking about his jicchan....... :D

shishious the kind of friend that has No Shame and No Reluctance to be full on weird in public settings and honestly good for him ! (kotegiri nodding to the other people in the restaurant wwww like yeah excuse us, im sorry)

shishiou knows archery confirmed.

he’s the first one to sense that the ‘humans’ arent actually humans. its his innate sense isnt it? he’s more knowledgeable than he lets everyone else in on.

i love how theyre all told gracia was taken by a touken danshi but they dont suspect the other members

honestly i dont want to delve too much into the historical figures bc that would make this post longer than i think its goign to turn out :(

kotegiri’s wavering confusion at the sight of tadaoki........i love how touken danshi retain their former master’s bonds and feelings toward the people in their lives. in a rudimentary sort of way kote must have felt like he was looking at his father.

well. can you really blame tadaoki for wanting to kill gracia? actually no this isnt really a story about who bears the blame. if you try to search for moral validity in this play youre going to spend eternity here. its simply a story about desire. in kidens case, gracia gaining something meant making tadaoki lose something, namely his wealth, title, lands, perhaps even sanity. and because of that he hates her. but because of his memories he also loves her. and thats the central conflict of his character.

like ive always thought: in tkrb there is rarely black and white morality, what they define as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends upon whether they can carry out their orders and protect history, and thats also apparent in a few later scenes. its the fact that the swords are drawn from so many different stories (+ also the fact that modern morality has no business being applied to the people of yore. also re: the oda swords’ different views on oda nobunaga. hasebe hates the way he did things, but yagen thinks it was fitting for a man of that period) ok ive derailed enough lets go back to the play !

ofc kote follows after tadaoki,,,,,,,,

right before meeting him, a strong wind blows over kasen and nikkari . personally i think that “wind” that notoriously blows in some scenes is a sort of euphemism for kokindenjunotachi -> in the keichou kumamoto chousa in the game he tells us to call him kaze at first. ofc, this is just a speculation but it ties in with later scenes too so bear w me

i love how kokin straight up lies to them ‘i called you so we could recite poems’ kasen is right to see through his bullshit jkdsnvjk. still, i think kokin was sly to have waited until he was sure they were trustworthy and strong enough to handle the mission to formally tell them the details of what happened.

this little exchange between kokin and kasen is my favourite bc it says a lot without many words. its almost like a fight between siblings but not exactly, kokin has this emotional distance that kasen cant get through to. id liken it more to a father-and-son thing. the son never being able to understand his father is such a famous trope isnt it? thats whats happening here. kokin’s got something up his sleeve and kasen is dissatisfied bc he cant guess what it is and why kokin’s keeping it from them.

>ikuzo, aoe. ah, yarou! killed me x2. two of my favourite swords interactignrgksndfjnvdfjnvkjnsd

this bgm slaps

low-level kokin ganbatte

NITOU KAIGAN LETS GOOOOO

ahhh canon that nikkari and kasen spar a lot!!

man kasen is so sarcastic . ‘have you lost your poetic spirit?’ bestie chill he’s doing his best at the level he’s on

NOW kokin trusts them after they rescue him. he suddenly goes all serious and then says those words like theyre coming from his heart.......in this investigation, he specifically asked for kasen didnt he? it wasnt like iden where hizen called for all competent touken danshi. i suppose that was part of his plan as well, to strengthen kasen (we dont get to know if like in iden, the saniwa deliberately also wanted kasen to grow. its simply not mentioned but the mission pays off doesnt it?). what a roundabout way to do it tho. though, kasen wouldve been petulant if he Knew what this investigation was meant to entail right from the start. thats why kokin couldnt fully go into the details right away.

:(((((((((((((((((((((((((((( gracia...........

‘why did that man order my death?’ god this reminds me of musou’s dainibutai’s chapter where kasen just. randomly asks ‘do you think tadaoki wanted gracia......dead?’ its so out of character bc he’s being vulnerable for the first time since the mission, and namazuo tells him ‘it doesnt matter how it happened, if someone precious dies, anyone’d be sad’ (paraphrased from the jp game i didnt play the en version dont tell me im wrong vdbjsndvkjdsfnvkj)

haraiso.......inferno.........they’ve read their dante alighieri

as far as i can make out the touken danshi that perished were......kashuu, yagen, ichigo, nihongou, horikawa, and izumi

AHHHHHHHHHHH jizou’s internal conflict AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

‘just like me, you’re also taken captive’ ah it strikes again, the fixed and unflexible nature of the touken danshi’s duty that is the root cause of all pain in tkrb.

this is so funny and cute awwwwwww. its so hard for jizou to comprehend human relationships. its easy to understand at a superficial level, but hard once you actually are a human. and thats what’s happening here: jizou is getting humanized.

oh jizous so cuteeeeeee

yeeeeee the table scene !!!!!!

i came to the stunning realization that this scene references the scene of The Last Supper. but ofc.......there are supposed to be 13 people in the painting, but ukon and yukinaga and gracia aren’t there. i initially thought gracia would be representative of jesus, but she’s betrayed them and run away right? jesus is the one that stayed and was killed. with that logic, it’s otomo sourin that’s symbolic of jesus since......well........he gets betrayed in the end. this is a table of traitors.

so i looked up what seisan meant and

oh my god it IS EXACTLY THE LAST SUPPER TOUSUTE DID IT DELIBERATELYYYYYYYY

ahhh i really love the proverb kikkou uses here: 郷にっては郷にしたがえ . i didnt get it immediately at first but i did get a sense of it being similar to ‘when in rome, do as the romans do.’ i love this kikkou’s characterization so much

otomo sourin feels like their babysitter rip

theyre so pretty I loved the set-up of this scene

this scene is significant in so many ways 1) we dont have enough scenes in tkrb where touken danshi are subtly given the position of unbending, ruthless, unnegotiable villains. 2) it reiterates what we already know: that protecting history is a touken danshi’s instinct. 3) it makes a distinction between the concepts of ‘instinct’ and ‘justice’ 4) kikkou likes to wave at people 5) chougi is the more passionate one, kikkou the cooler, level-headed one.

yoshitaka says that no one is in the wrong. hmmm

kotegiri’s face as tadaoki is denouncing tama 😭😭😭😭😭😭

shishiou talking aboutkasen😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

even though he’s a government sword, kokin displays so much human emotion, wanting to save jizou even after they parted ways. it reminds me of kasen when he’s with sayo orz

kasen has this air of resignation as he recites the origin of his name. i feel like shaking him and saying NOOOOOOO cant you see nobody thinks those 36 dead people were your fault?? youre respected and loved just as you are!

‘kasen kanesada, will you kill gracia? you, who was tadaoki’s sword, will you kill the person he loved?’ crying screaming throwing up ripping my curtains apart smashing thw windows tearing out all the pages from my books this line isso bonkers insane . and kokin using kasens full name too

holy fuck kasen has so much of an internal crisis about it its insane.

ofc kokin smiles bc he also Knows that.

ofc kasen bites back w his own questions. thats just how those two are . its like they view human emotions as a sort of weakness, that kasen is inherently weak for not feeling completely sure about killing her, and that kokin is weak and denying his purpose as a touken danshi for wanting to save jizou.

>scene ending with kokin alone, talking to no one in particular (or is he?) wondering if he’s naïve.

>next scene starting with jizou saying ‘kaze ka?’ you see the connection?? The heavenly wind and kokin???? The hecking amatsukaze???????????

God. Isn’t it ironic how jizou prays to his god so that he can preserve gracia’s connection to her god? (note: in kahakugeki he only used one hand for this line, in kiden he uses both)

Hmmm aren’t flowers ephemeral and fragile? I understand where jizou’s coming from, heck my guess for what he’d call her was also a flower, and why kokin calls her a blossom of the Hosokawa, but I cant help but wonder if that’s a way to simply emphasize her weakness and inability to live as she liked, having her life mostly dictated by the men around her. Tadaoki’s the only one who calls her a snake, capable of biting back. The same snake that threw humanity into sin. Ironically enough it’s the person who loved/hated her that could understand her. But then again, its tadaoki’s heart inside jizou that’s also calling her a flower. Honestly she can (and does) symbolize both.

Having no home to return to must hurt…….

Im so happy they can finally fight with real enemies instead of like last time ><

The reason im so glad they paired up Kasen and Nikkari is bc both of them are haunted by the sin of what they killed, and seeing them get along so well, like they know each others intricacies, what the other is thinking, its like a genuine bond.

Ok and now one of the most emotionally charged scenes ever………..

hmmm how to put this simply. it’d be easy to leave it as simply ‘straight married couple argument’ but it begs a more deeper nuance than that. lets see. gracia and tadaoki meet for the first time in what is probably, a long time. all this time tadaoki was so worked about hating her and wanting to kill her and yet his first instinct is to let out all his pent up feelings and.....cling to her........ ‘why did we become this way?’ ..........even though they loved each other and were married for over 20 years, held on even through akechi mitsuhide’s betrayal, tama’s conversion. ….how were they reduced to this? Its precisely because of that bond that gracia asked him to kill her, and precisely because of that bond that tadaoki couldn’t. its so so simple to say what we want to do but when the reality of the situation catches up, can we really stay the same?

and tadaoki’s last words to her were literally ‘my snake’

oughoughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhOUCH rip

and thats her breaking point. shes literally driven to hysterics. and she didnt want to ascertain tadaoki’s heart....she simply wanted to be forgiven (the reasons that cut the deepest are the most simplest ones) for the sin of hating the person she loved.

but,,,,,,,as much as i loved thisscene, as much as i couldnt bear to watch it in consequent rewatches,,,,,this gracia isnt the real gracia.....she just isnt. the humans in altered timelines never are.

‘let’s go, aneue’ ‘where?’ ‘anywhere. maybe even to hell’ <- wtf twfffffffffsdjnfffffffffffffffffff jizou said GOODBYE TO KARMA AND MORALITY I’D FOLLOW MY BELOVED ANYWHERE

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭tadadsifkofjkasensdnfkasjfnkjnsakjfnajnfajsnjcksanfwehfiuhwenudnjfuwfnzsexdrctfvgybhnjkmgbhjnk YOURE GOING TO DIE IN YOUR BEST FRIEND’S ARMS AND YOU PLAY ALONG BECAUSE ITS WRITTEN DOWN YOUVE MEMORIZED IT ITS ALL YOU KNOW 😭😭😭😭😭😭

tadaoki’s honshin was that he didnt want to kill gracia and jizou and kasen inherited that same heart are you listening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!111!1111!!!!!!!!!!!!

it physically hurts to see kasen so very nearly crying . its like everytime he meets tadaoki he’s left perplexed and dissatisfied and so so upset and he doesnt know what to do with all these feelings

ending with all the revisionists so far......ito, ryoma, takeuchi, toyou, those two from tenden/muden, the black armour, oboro manba.......kuroda kanbei.......who’s absolutely digging that long hair............

#watch the act ii post become even longer than this #tousute #kiden ikusayu no adabana #revisiting this like no this is not even 25% of my thoughts . i have more each day these are jusf the base

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