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|| Star || 20 || ♋︎ || Nanbaka theories and thoughts blog Practically all my posts will contain spoilers!

[contemplativestars]

Welcome!!

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Hi nice to meet you!

I go by Star (she/her), I’m 20.

I’ve made this account as a place for me to put my random thoughts, theories or headcanons regarding Nanbaka that I come up with in my free time (or when I’m procrastinating Uni stuff lol)

Will contain heavy spoilers!

This will be a pretty inactive account but I’ll post occasionally when I feel like it.

I hope you enjoy your stay here ☺️

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[contemplativestars]

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Not my usual stuff to post but I managed to get my hands on a copy of the first manga hand-signed by Futamata!! Crazy what you can find when you dig around on Mercari

[contemplativestars]

My way of coping with stress in the lab is by imagining that Isou is my work partner keeping me company as I try to troubleshoot why my 5th attempt at an experiment failed again this week even though it’s worked fine in the past and why my plants keep randomly not germinating 😭

Isou you have been carrying me mentally through this past academic year thank you 🙏

[contemplativestars]

Just a dump of my thoughts on Elf’s character!

Spoilers for end of the manga!

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Can I just say I absolutely adore the explanation to Elf and his creation start of chapter 422? Like having him turn out to be an organism amalgamated from a bunch of parasitic cell which uses others as a host to duplicate and practically take over the being.

By such nature we can tell that Elf is a self- preserving organism. They infect others as their mechanism to ensure their longevity - as long as their DNA/ RNA is being passed on the strain’s rate of survival will continue to increase. With this Elf is able to slowly take over the individual before once again spreading its cells to infect others. The fact that Elf also ended up developing its own body from the original virus like cells further support this - it now has gained a conscious and freedom to move and survive (either that or the formation of a human like body was influenced by Shiro during his creation).

We can also presume that elf’s cells have a high turn over rate (rate of generation to replace dead cells) hence why it can continue to live in the hosts of the other Shiki, Jyugo, etc. without a need for re-implementing them.

It’s expected that Elf was created by Mashiro as a direct response against Jyugo’s dad. Though when comparing the timeline it’s mentioned he was being developed during/ just after the First World War, and that Mashiro claims "I will become closer to a God" with the release of Elf. What was Mashiro’s original goal with Elf? To take control over all Togabito’s in the world? Would Mashiro even be able to handle Elf if he was implemented on such a wide scale? Had he actually been made as sone sort of biological warfare weapon instead?

With all that though we also know that Isou had been there for at least the majority of Elf’s creation. If he so desired, would he be able to create some sort of vaccination against Elf’s cells? I’m sure he’d have all the power he’d need to completely destroy Mashiro’s plan if he wanted. Though with his quote at the end of the manga about how both togabito and humans should be basically wiped out I doubt this is the route he will go. If anything I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to take Mashiro out with his own creation.

(Can you tell I like science? Haha)

[contemplativestars]

Nanba Prison’s High Security and Inmates - Short Analysis

Spoilers!!

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Reading Nanbaka I always thought it was weird that none of the characters surrounding Jyugo had done any extremely violent crime (murdering, etc.) but if Hiiro had created Nanbaka as a safe haven of sorts for him of course he would have avoided putting the most high risk inmates around Jyugo.

Like none of the friends Jyugo made at the prison had done anything like that, nor held any strong harmful intent towards him (not including characters like Musashi, with him being a togabigo his interaction with Jyugo was likely apart of Hiiro’s plan). This all seemed rather jarring for being in the most high security prison in Japan though, as you’d expect a place like this to hold nearly all people who had committed terribly bad crimes.

It’s only just clicked that the whole time, the concept of Nanba being the highest security prison might have actually been focusing on keeping things out rather than keeping the inmates in. It was all in Hiiro’s objective to keep Jyugo hidden and under his watch.

I guess it all leads back to the whole concept that Nanba Prison is in the hands of Hiiro to manipulate around his plans with Jyugo.

I definitely could have wrote this a lot less convoluted, apologies haha

[contemplativestars]

Symbolism of the sparkles ✨ in the Nanbaka Universe

(Includes big spoilers to the end of the manga!!)

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So you know how in the anime and manga there’s tons of sparkles?

Could it be possible that they’re supposed to represent the delusions Jyugo has been under this whole time? Like the fact that his friendship with Uno, Rock and Nico was all staged and that Nanba Prison was all being controlled by Hiiro? The sparkles representing Jyugo’s viewpoint in that everything he is witnessing is just a made up fever dream like experience for him or maybe they’re a representation of all the lies within the Nanbaka Universe?

In the final chapter of the manga where he realises who he is, whenever the panels would focus on him there’s no sparkles surrounding him at all (if I looked correctly). Once he discovered the truth, he stopped being associated with sparkles. However when the panel focused on Mashiro at the end, Mashiro was still surrounded by sparkles - maybe because he still has things he hasn’t revealed to Jyugo yet, hence still remaining a mystery with secrets.

I don’t know if this makes any sense or if I’m reaching for straws but but 😭 i refuse to believe there isn’t a deeper meaning to all the sparkles other than aesthetic (exam stress may be messing with my ability to think properly right now though)

[contemplativestars]

Taura Twister and her significance as ‘observer’:

These are all just my own thoughts and speculations. I may have misremembered info or be completely wrong :) I apologise for how long it got as well.

Also I love her so much ahhh wifey

Very heavy spoilers in this one!

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I like to think that in any future works Futama releases relating to Nanbaka and answering its unanswered questions, Taura Twister would be a great viewpoint to portray these through. She plays such a significant role in the story, I feel she’s such an underrated character!

Mainly focusing on the role Mashiro gave her as ‘observer’ she’d be the perfect character to give true, unfiltered perspective on the final events in the manga. She’s supposedly a neutral characters within these events, and although her being affiliated with the Shiki may bring doubt to her genuinely being neutral, it’s expected that Futama would have established this role for her through the Shiki.

Realistically she would never have been able to through the Zodiac Police. They hold the sentiment of ‘getting the job done regardless of what gets in the way’ (which I feel is strongly expressed through the events of Jenny and Jemmi, one literally left the other to die to try and save herself, as well as letting a child die in crossfire rather than trying to save him; though the grey morality surrounding the Zodiac Police is a discussion for another day). If anything the Zodiac police would have probably manipulated her with her brother’s death into loathing the organisation and holding no mercy. There’s also no obvious way she would ever have been affiliated with Nanbaka - why would she be?

So naturally from a plot perspective the only other way she could be involved in the events of the story is through the Shiki - she was already aware of the organisation and held a tie with them now unlike Nanbaka.

Of course one could argue how reliable would one be if they are under the watch of the Shiki? I genuinely believe that Mashiro wanted her to have a purely neutral perspective. E.g, it was never explicitly stated or showed that she had been put under the control of Elf as the other Shiki members had been. Aka. he showed no intent on using her against Hiiro. He also explicitly states that she can decide her standing after having witnessed everything:

This may be far fetched but I believe his motive may stem from his recent discovery that his clones can go against him - such as with Hiiro. He knows he has competition which puts his position in potential danger. In the case that something happens to the him and say another clone has to take over his place he would need someone that he can trust to tell the clone the events which are happening truthfully.

It’s been made clear as with the case of Jyugo’s mother that after cloning it takes time for their memories to come back. If we presume that this is the case with all clones then Taura works as a living testament to all that has happened since her agreeing. She can re-encount everything that has happened thus far to the clone without bias, without leaving out information due to her beliefs on the situation since she is being made to have no standing to the events themselves.

Mashiro also shows a strong interest in her ability to see and be possessed by ghosts as a strong suit of her position as observer. Further reinforcing to me the idea that he genuinely wants her to just witness: he’s specifically chosen her based on her abilities and I doubt he would risk such a valuable asset in her being an observer by tainting her view.

I like to believe that her sudden entrance in the story towards the end and her continued prominence thereafter hints that Futama plans or at least planned to use her in some way to give a wider perspective on the final events in the manga. Futama established her as a neutral character and made it so that we’d be able to trust her perspective on the events. She works as a perfect witness to explain all the plot holes and questions within the later story. Although she was never shown present at the end of the manga, by the role she had been given we’d expect her to have witnessed it all. Hence why I believe she is such an important character to the lore.

The only thing which doesn’t make as much sense to me is how emotionally in tune she is with others. She holds a strong sense of responsibility and justice compared to other characters as seen by this panel:

(Side note but I absolutely adore how she was drawn in this).

This would appear to be a weakness in having her be the ‘observer’. She’s also seen to have gained emotional bonds within the Shiki such as with Kujaku and her desire to do ‘normal’ activities together such as shopping.

Overall though, I’m certainly hoping that in any future works Futama does on Nanbaka we’ll see her character again!

If you’ve read this far thanks for bearing with my rambling, hope you enjoyed reading.

[contemplativestars]

I like to imagine that Kojiro owns a bunch of Blåhajs, like the thought of him in his free time disguising and going off to Ikea to buy them fills me with so much joy

[ourwiredstars]

(Spoiler warning!!!)

Potential Relation Between Uno and the Shiki?

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Just a little food for thought for the Nanbaka fandom: people may have already spotted this but with everything going on especially with Uno at the moment (11th anniversary art…) I thought i’d may as well point it out.

It’s pretty well known how all the inmate’s names have been some sort of play on their inmate number. Like Nico sounding like ‘ni’ and ‘go’ (2 and 5 in Japanese), same applied with Rock, Musashi, Honey, etc etc all having Japanese plays on their names.

Yet I always found it odd that Uno was 1, despite being inmate 11 and it recently clicked for me how ‘Elf’ translates to 11 in German. Why would Futamata call him 11 when Uno’s already associated with that number? Would this further support the theory that Elf and Uno have some sort of untold link together in the story? With that I decided to dig around within the names of the Shiki and nearly all included one kanji in their name meaning a number:

Natsumi = 七罪, 七 meaning 7

Isou = 一索, 一 meaning 1

Kujaku = 九雀, 九 meaning 9

Kojiro = 五死郎, 五 meaning 5

Etc etc.

Going through and crossing out all the numbers from 1 to 9 found in the kanji within the names of the Shiki, every number had been crossed out exactly once except for the number 2, wrote as ニ, which could bare a resemblance to 11. I feel like there could also be some sort of link between this whole thing and the tattoo he has on his upper left arm??

This could be completely irrelevant though and I’m probably just reaching for straws. But I wanted to make my contribution to a fandom that I’ve loved for many years and never really interacted with :) (also looking to make friends in the fandom plsss)

[contemplativestars]

Reblog from personal cause I want to make a dedicated blog to this stuff~