Vigilantes 65 - a quiet sort of sorrow :(
This chapter isn’t as action packed or as straightforward as the past chapters in showing sorrow. It’s more subtle and I think it’s artfully done because of it. It shows how a person can mourn over years and years and never mention anything about their pain through words, but through actions and decisions you know that they’re hurting. I think anyone who’s lost someone can find a little bit of themselves in how Aizawa (and to some extent, Mic) spent the years after Shirakumo T_T
For example, we see the beginnings of cocoon!Aizawa, something that becomes a popular personality quirk he has. I don’t know about you, but I never thought that this mannerism of his that makes him so endearing to a lot of fans is actually related to him losing Shirakumo? That it’s actually something he does primarily to isolate himself from his (understanding) friends and classmates, and not just because he’s tired all the time. An attempt for him to comfort himself, in some ways, something that Mic accepts without question :(
It’s not a healthy coping mechanism, but people are allowed to grieve for as long as they want, right?
But Aizawa does this for the rest of his stay in UA. It’s implied that instead of opening himself up to others in his class, he works himself to the bone so he can be strong enough on his own. Mic is the only one patient enough to hang around him consistently throughout the years, but we see from his facial expression that watching Aizawa like this causes him a lot of pain too. :(
(I have extra appreciation for him as a person. Aizawa is really lucky to have someone like him who’s always there for him no matter what T_T)
And now we see that his decision to become an underground hero who’ll function more as a bounty hunter than a standard pro-hero is really directly related to Shirakumo. To the credit of his homeroom teacher, they notice what’s happening with him pretty early but there’s nothing that they can do to change his mind :( Aizawa is resigned at this point to never work with anybody else, maybe because he can’t trust himself to take care of someone on the field being the way he is :(
And we see that throughout the following years, he’s much the same–relying on nobody else but himself. On the day of graduation, he’s already in his hero costume and didn’t even stay behind for the groupshot :(
This is the typical work-yourself-to-the-bone-to-forget-the-pain sort of montage we’re bound to see in dramas. To his credit, Aizawa becomes a good hero, but we aren’t ever sure from his flashbacks if he’s ever happy with what he’s doing :(
I like these lil snippets of his life here, it really paints quite a picture. We see him passed out in an empty apartment, not bothering with a bed but instead his sleeping bed; relying on juice packs, like we see him do as 1-A’s homeroom teacher; training by himself, walking in the city by himself… there are only two pics I see that has him interacting with people who want to interact with him, and that’s the bit with Ms. Joke (who he blatantly ignores), and of Koichi and Knuckleduster from their first meeting in the manga, which is nothing but an accident. I might have just missed it, but I don’t see a trace of Midnight or Mic in these bubbles, so it implies that these past few years he’s blatantly ignored the few people in his life that he called his friends :(
And this chapter is kinda cruel for showing us happier times again, because I think in the very heart of him, Aizawa really doesn’t want to be alone. :( That dream agency would have been so good, you guys. They were gonna live together and raise a cat together, ksadjfsajfa it sounds like a rom-com OT3 waiting to happen and instead we only have heartache and pain alskjfaslk;jfasl;fjsalkfjasfjkls this is so frustrating and sad T_T imagine what a different universe it could have been if Aizawa, Shirakumo, and Mic had that agency?! Really really different, 1-A woulda certainly been raised differently and Aizawa would have been brighter than he is right now. Well, only fic will tell.
We could have seen Aizawa happy :(
Well, the road to recovery is unpredictable. It always feels like forever, until it’s not, and all you can say about it is, oh, the rain’s stopped.
We’re shown Aizawa with his (first) foster kid and the cat, and we see cameos of the beloved Hotta guys again. I love that they’re actively involving Eraser in making plans for their new cafe when they were so begrudging at first to have him in his life. Eraser looks kind of surprised that he is, like “wait since when did i have friends again” when all he wanted was a place he could steal coffee from
Kudos to the Hotta dude for calling him a Hobo Spirit, because he has summarized the essence of Aizawa so succinctly
And it’s strange but it suddenly clicks with him that Aizawa doesn’t really need to be alone??? T_T Well, maybe it isn’t so much as a sudden click as something that he needs to constantly relearn by himself every day he works. We see that by the time he teaches the current 1-A that he still has his gloom and his tendency to solve things by himself, but he’s learning just as much as everyone else that we all need help too.
We see him pay attention to Midnight again–to her credit, she seems to be as patient as Mic is in handling his grief–and we see Today’s Sushi too T_T I suppose after this he finally agrees to be a teacher in UA and the rest is history
Agh… this is a lovely chapter all in all. It doesn’t answer our question about why this Aizawa arc is shown to us at this time though. Maybe it’s merely an explanation as to who Shirakumo is, because he’s mentioned in the main manga? Or maybe because we expect to see the effects of this event more in the future arcs or in the upcoming movie.??? I hope it’s the second one because I want to revisit this again, Aizawa is a great character and I want more stories about him T_T
But in Vigilantes, it’s time for a new arc!!! I wonder what’s gonna come up next! I can’t wait to see it!!!
