Something I’ve come to love about Sakura Haruka as a character is that despite everything, he has never given up—not on humanity, and certainly not on himself.
In Chapter 203, Sakura’s dissociative tendencies are elucidated; since he had no healthy outlet for his negative emotions, he wallows in them while simultaneously distancing himself not only from his feelings but also from humanity and other people as a whole. If nobody can perceive him in the darkness, if he can’t perceive himself, then these feelings will simply fade away right? But the sun still rises, reminding Sakura of his own horrid personal life. The world still spins despite the hell Sakura is personally in.
Despite all that, Sakura still had a smidgen of hope that he would be accepted. No matter how much one is isolated from society, humans still crave connection and security. We are social creatures, after all.
When Sakura does cling to his last shred of connection, he’s immediately rejected by his own father. Notably, Little Sakura is staring more so at the sky rather than at Daddy Sakura, reinforcing his dissociative tendencies. When he’s faced with an uncomfortable truth, Sakura can’t help but slink back into that darkness. Emotions only remind him of his place in life; emotions only make him weaker. They shouldn’t exist, because they only cause him pain. And if his own father thinks he’s a monster, then Sakura is an anomaly in an orderly society.
All his repressed emotions eventually spill over—Sakura snaps, and lets the new emotion called anger fester in him. This ironically causes him to be ostracized even more due to his delinquent-like behavior. It indirectly reaffirms his belief that his emotions shouldn’t exist, but Sakura embraces it with pride. He learns that by channeling his rage through a fight, by making people scared of him, that he can be free.
It is a twisted parallel to Shishitoren’s core principle; Choji believes that strength is freedom because being at the top not only lets you do whatever you want (which is fun), but it also gives you the liberty to protect those you care about. Sakura follows a similar line of thinking, but he sees freedom as solitude instead. For the first time in his life, Sakura can finally be free from jeers and mistreatment, because being at the top means being alone. (Sakura eventually learns that to be strong is to protect those he cares about in the end though.)
Conversely, you could interpret Sakura’s rage as his will to fight for himself. For someone who’s disassociated from his emotions for so long, the fact that he decided to stand up for himself shows that Sakura thinks he himself is worth fighting for. He lets himself feel rage even though it’s channeled through a medium like fighting. He stands up for himself and fights back, even though it doesn’t come from a desire to take care of himself; since Sakura believes that he doesn’t belong anywhere, he might as well do whatever he wants. His looks don’t matter in a fight, because one should fear for their safety more—but Sakura doesn’t care.
Sakura doesn’t resort to total delinquency to cope though. He only picks fights with wrongdoers and other delinquents who cause trouble. He helps others, even if it means he’ll get rejected. Because Sakura is a kind person who still instinctually believes in other people.
And the fact that Sakura so readily accepts people, how he secretly yearned to be accepted himself, the growth he’s experienced up to this point, shows that he’d absolutely never give up on the aspects that make him Sakura Haruka. Even if he’s isolated himself from humanity or his own emotions, Sakura was always willing to rekindle both.
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