#kiden was a love letter to kasen kanesada <3

[ikusayu-no-hana]

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)