#murai feels like he needs to move on but in the end yotasuke says he doesn't need to just when he sees a paintbrush that belonged to sanada

[delicious-p4ncakes]

Tsubasa Yamaguchi, you have done it yet again

[corioheinous]

Can I just say how much I love love love it when a character or a group of characters are haunted by the absence of a person who was once integral to their lives. Especially when the entire narrative is structured around that particular loss like hands down my favorite television shows right now are Fleabag and The Bear which are both Masterful fucking examples of this (Fleabag’s dead best friend, though you could probably make a case for her mother too, and Carmy’s dead brother respectively).

And it’s like. The loss of these loved ones is so inextricable from the characters that survived them to the point where everything they do and say every choice they make whether good or bad is ultimately influenced by their grief. I’m catching up with the current Blue Period arc right now and really enjoying it, mostly bc of the complicated friendship dynamic between Momoyo, Murai, and Hachiro—and the lone piece missing from their friend group—Sanada. Murai’s experience with grief in particular is so fascinating to me because unlike Momoyo and Hachiro, he hasn’t been able to “move on” or cope with his grief in a healthy way. It’s sort of become this unsurmountable weight on his shoulder, this ghost-like presence that looms over his character constantly. When Yatora reflects on his loss in ch. 62, there’s an interesting emphasis placed on Murai’s expression—

—which made me realize just how emotional of a character Murai is through his facial expressions alone. Not necessarily in this chapter, because he’s very much putting on a brave face, but in chapter 64, you practically witness him going through every stage of grief at once. It’s honestly a massive transformation given that he’d been stuck in the “denial” stage for so long.

I think it’s interesting to think of Murai as both a character who is avoidant, repressive, in denial about his own feelings and the reality of the world around him (it’s mentioned also in ch. 64 that Murai didn’t even attend Sanada’s funeral, which is exactly the kind of immature behavior/inability to cope that you would expect from a character like him) WHILE simultaneously being someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. I reckon he forces himself to feel nothing at all out of fear that he’ll feel too much at once, and thus end up causing a scene like he did at Sanada’s posthumous exhibition.

Besides the cool back tat and funky earring, I wasn’t all that compelled by Murai’s character until I read through this chapter and experienced this entire emotional upheaval alongside him. I kind of just had to sit down for a bit after reading the last scene, after Yotasuke’s Murai-san, it’s okay to live your life holding onto that grief forever, isn’t it? comment which is such a bonkers thing to say (/pos) and God. Not to quote The Bear FX here but it really is satisfying to watch a character that you know needs to let it rip just let it rip. That laidback attitude and nonchalant expression of his were never truly the whole of it. I’m really satisfied with the way grief & loss has been framed through Murai, and I’m excited to see what his character becomes as he continues to both carry these feelings inside him and live to grow around them.