Hakubo and Sumire (analysis)
I really find this duo to be kind of special in this manga in particular, because I think that while they got their ending on their own accord, they are truly tragic at their core.
They got their agency back on their own, but at what cost ?
This makes me think about the parallels between Aoi and Sumire, not just because they are both Akane's and thread a new part of the lore, but because Aoi was able to avoid something that Sumire could not avoid : being used as an objet for the protection of others, lacking any sort of agency and not being able to live a life she wants for herself with the man she loves.
In a way, they are both similar, wearing a smile hiding pain and loneliness, but their circumstances are different.
Aoi believed that she was alone, that no one truly loved her and she accepted death as a way to escape a reality where she didn't feel true to herself, and neither were the people she loved towards her. But, it wasn't the case, Aoi is loved and has support in her life : Akane, Nene and Teru all went through hell to bring her back and could never accept her death.
But what people can Sumire count on ? A huge part of her life was molded by the rejection of others, she truly wasn't loved by anyone really (Besides, Hakubo). Her own parents gave her away to her death, everyone around were aware of her destiny and never cared to stop it. She wasn't a person in the eyes of people, someone to be love and respected, just an object to be disposed of because she wasn't important or precious to anyone.
This awareness of not being wanted affects a lot of Sumire's behavior. It explains quite literally everything about her because the way she acts towards others is based on the fact that she deeply craves connection, love and the sense that someone cares and is important to her.
We're going to come back to that when I will start talking about Hakubo, but I think it's important to understand that someone showing her respect, someone protecting her, someone caring doesn't feel the same way for her than for others.
Because when you never had something in the first place that you wanted, having it for the first time feels so much more significant and intense, especially if it's only one person providing for you.
They become your whole world.
But yeah, I think that Sumire assuming that people don't want her there and that she is unloved explain a lot about the ways he behaves towards Hanako and Nene when they met.
If she assumes that no one will seek her in the first place, then if she wants to keep people around, her "pets" as she called them, she has to imprison them, literally forcing them to be around her. It's also why I think she calls them "pets" instead of friends because she will never be an equal to them this way, having to have some sort of power over them to keep them around.
When you adopt a cat for example, you don't really ask them their opinion if they want to live with you, there is some sort of dubious consent in the process.
And you know, you're able to keep them with you not because they necessarily want to from the beginning, but because they need you or you don't give them the chance to just run away outside.
In exchange, you get a companion, someone to keep you compagny and even if it might not be by their own volition, you still feel less alone nonetheless.
This is I think that is the way that Sumire found to compensate for her lack of companionship, but it becomes even less cute and comedic when we found out about her "adopting hobby" she had when she was alive.
There is something to be said about her relationship to Nene that must feel foreign to her because she never had a girl to be friends with. The way she opens up to her specifically because it was probably the first time that she felt kinship with someone that was in a similar situation as her.
It's also foreign in the sense that Nene is really different than everybody she ever encountered in her life and in the world that Hakubo created for her. The people she lived with and is still stuck with years later don't care about her, they just want to use her for the sacrifice and their own safety, and this doesn't count all the people who are hostile towards her because she is the kannagi. Even Hakubo who treated Sumire with much more grace and care, never was someone she felt actually loved by or more precisely he was never plainly telling her that he cared as he was himself confused about his own feelings, which left Sumire confused about him.
If Nene does try to run away at the beginning, she is the one that empathise with her, that see a side of Sumire most people don't see and she feels much compassion for her. She even ask her to come with them and you can see how much it confuses Sumire. While it might not be emphasized much, I do think that Nene showing unbashed care for her, making her get out of her own prison must mean a lot for Sumire even if not shown.
It's especially significant when Sumire does try to get out of this "world", but doesn't found a solution, and that because of her helplessness, she is very much fine with being erased from existence.
Now, this may paint Hakubo in a not so good light, but I think it's kind of the point because that is from Sumire's perspective.
Nene calls Hakubo lousy because she just doesn't know him or why he acts this way, but she sees Sumire's pain, the fact that she is trapped by a man that supposedly consider her the most precious anything in his life, but never comes to see her, the fact that she has to relive her own death by people that dehumanize her again and again.
So if she must be suffering endlessly without the light of changing anything about her fate, then why not disappear ? This is why she is so casual about it.
I don't think that Sumire wants to be erased or she would have insisted that Nene removed the seal, not this is desperation. She did try to see if sacrifying Nene instead would change anything, but it didn't so she resigned herself to never be free, to die as it was her fate.
But Nene just doesn't accept that.
I think it's important for the discussion between her and Hakubo because Nene pushing for Sumire to defy her fate is ultimately what makes her able to see Hakubo again and to be able to make peace with herself I think.
This idea to "defy fate" isn't really coincidental because Sumire's character has for the foundations the fact that she could never be saved, that she never had the chance to be something more than a kannagi, she never left her prison. She is twisted reflection of Nene where she could never escape her imminent death.
Even then, I think a part of Sumire tried to defy her role in the grand scheme of things, and that is directly connected to her relationship to Hakubo (Yes this is not a Sumire only analysis, you have not been deceived).
So let's talk Hakubo for a bit now that we've established a bit of what Sumire's character means.
I think when analysing Hakubo, we can't analyse exactly like we do for the other characters because he is fundamentally not human.
This means that the way he acts might be jarring for humans and this is why I think Nene and Sumire have a hard time understanding him and come to the conclusion that he must not care because he doesn't show it like humans would normally do.
And you know that's why I chose this page, Hakubo complains about humans asking him questions because for humans, his behavior is puzzling, it doesn't make sense for them while for him, he doesn't really understand why it even matters.
This is a way that Hakubo is othered by the Minamoto guy and the village. He is not like them which means that he won't be treated the same. It justifies his exploitation.
And I don't say that out of nowhere, when the Minamoto guy realizes that even by Oni standards, Hakubo is different, he calls him a defect and then is like "Oh well that means I can just use you as my servant now".
I don't know if Hakubo is supposed to be neurodivergent, but even compared to other Onis, he is "weird". He eats humans like them but he doesn't have any thirst or desire to kill them. Look at this page.
Most Onis we see here are expressive and generally seem to act "normally" even by human standards, but Hakubo is almost completely apathetic to the world around him. He just exist literally. Minamoto guy is putting a blade under his neck, and he doesn't care.
But you know it's interesting that Minamoto guy calls him a "defect". He sees his difference as meaning that he is "failling" at being an Oni, or that he is imperfect. But it does mean for Hakubo that he is seen by him as less, as inferior by Oni standards. Him taking Hakubo under his wing seems less as benevolence, but as someone seeing something that is deficient and making iy at the very least useful in some sort of way, to make up for their failed existence.
It doesn't seem to me that Minamoto guy actually see Hakubo as an equal or someone deserving as much respect as him. He will always be below Minamoto guy in some way.
I think Aidairo eerily shows the way that people are dehumanized and objectified when they are seen as something that "failed" at being what they were meant to be. The way that Hakubo's exploitation is based on the fact that he is seen as inferior because of his difference.
And for the descendants of Minamoto guy, Hakubo is literally just a tool to make their life easier. He isn't loved by anyone, or cared for or respected. He is nothing more than an object to be used by humans at their whims.
Besides Hakubo being maybe neurodivergent, we can't erase the fact that as an Oni, he is going to be treated different just because he is a different species. He is useful, but he is also feared. This is another way that Hakubo is othered. Even if Hakubo doesn't have any desire to kill or hurt others (I mean he never had to kill humans to even survive for this long), it doesn't matter. Humans have declared that Onis were dangerous and it means therefore that Hakubo must be dangerous even though in this case, there are decades or proof that it isn't true. While the village has reasons to fear Onis (I mean they did kill humans, that wasn't a collective hallucination), I think Aidairo does imply that their fears are partially irrational. "Kill before it's too late", how many years has Hakubo been around and follow their orders ? How many years has he not eaten humans ? Why would he all of sudden just kill everyone ? Like the woman in this panel just say that it gives her "the willies". As if it was only motivated by their own irrational emotions, and not based on reality.
And you might point out the fact that Hakubo did in the end kill all of them, but as we will see, I don't believe it was caused by "his inner Oni" or other bullshit. I think that what Aidairo wants to express through Hakubo and the village is that people will judge an individual on their prejudices based on appearance and their association to a group, which will prompt them to dehumanize them and treat them with violence. The thing is that this individual, in response to their bad treatment, will act in a way that those people believed is caused by their assumption of them instead of their obvious mistreatment.
What I mean is that what killed the village wasn't that Hakubo is inner Oni came out, not what came out was a response to his mistreatment (and Sumire's) through violence. His response is violent because he was a victim of violence : I mean I have not mentionned it until but Hakubo is a victim of a genocide, his people were exterminated and his exploitation of human was also violence too.
While he might not be traumatised by those events, I think it's important to understand that when someone's interaction with a group is through almost exclusively violence, then it's not surprising that he will response with violence, because that's what he knows.
Also to add to this, the old man who tells Hakubo to take care of Sumire assumes that he is bad with kids, and yet he actually treated Sumire fairly well from what we see.
But see how the people around Hakubo are truly violent. The old man tells him to "do as you please with her", even though it's a goddamn child he is talking about here (I don't even want to think about the implication of this dialogue btw, it's gross).
Not only that, but just before, he told her to fucking break her legs if she doesn't obey.
I think it's significant that the environment that Hakubo lived in is violent (whether Oni or not), because he isn't violent out of nowhere or because it's his nature, he just replicates behaviors he has seen before and do what he is asked to do.
But this brings us back to Sumire.
So when Hakubo meets Sumire, she is this young little girl who is very eager to be married.
Now this seems really weird, especially after the whole "break her legs if she disobey". Why would she so excited at the idea to be a kannagi ?
Well, now I would redirect you to my post on Molesae where I talk about "The Condition of Brides", but what I think is happening here, according to my understanding that Aidairo is obviously criticizing the system of the heteronormative marriage through the Kannagis, is that Sumire has been groomed.
She is very young here and she probably has a general idea of what a marriage entail while not being aware at this moment what this marriage in particuliar means for her. But I think the fact that they frame this as a "marriage to the gods" is a way to manipulate the kannagi into being docile by making them think that their sacrifice is actually a good thing. In the case of Sumire, it works particularly well because she is at an age where she is much more malleable and can manipulated into believing things that are untrue.
But bringing back the fact that Sumire was rejected by her own family, her being promised to be married, knowing it means having a partner for life that you care for and cares for you in return, it must have been thrilling for her to "play" this role.
Compare to her, Hakubo has no real idea of what being marriage actually entail, besides the fact that you're are partners I think. He is not able to fufill the idealized role of a husband for Sumire and seem to struggle to follow her script of some sort.
Hakubo doesn't understand gender roles and social norms of humans, so it's interesting to see that Sumire falls for "unproper" husband, someone that shouldn't be desirable as her spouse and yet is probably the only person treating her with care.
The way that what the village expect her to do (What society expect women), being married to God (being married to a man), is actually shown to not be a fufilling life for Sumire, but a trap where endless suffering is inevitable. Sumire idealize marriage, but this is just a way for her to fall into it. I think what Aidairo shows here is that marriage (arranged marriage in this case) is often promised to women as something wonderful, but is also something that is expected of them as their role (it's script they need to play accordingly), the truth is that following this system is bound to end in suffering because women's integrity is not respected. If Sumire disobeys and says she doesn't want to marry God, her legs will be broken. Not only that but marriage isn't actually for women's happiness but to fufill the selfish desires of others (the village wanting to protect themselves). This system treats women as objects that are not worth to be respected as equal, they must always do things for others and their own wants are not taken into consideration.
Sumire does realize it herself that this promise is an illusion.
Her relationship with Hakubo defies that. Besides the fact that her loving him goes against everything that the village stands for as they hate Oni, it's a relationship where she doesn't have any expectations imposed on her. Hakubo doesn't want anything from her. Being with Hakubo also means that she wouldn't be sacrificied, she wouldn't fufill the role given to her. It would means they would both defy what is expected of them.
But the only way she found to actually find any sort of control was truly morbid.
You know I talked positively of their relationship, but you know there is something more messed up about it when you know how it ended.
The bunny and Hakubo being aligned hmmmm....
So here it recontextualize the scene where Sumire tried to keep Hananene as her pets.
Sumire is I think trying to get some sort of power knowing full well that she doesn't have any. The way she says "Including whether they lives or die, is all up to me" means to me that she is kind of recreating the unbalanced relationship she has with the village, but instead of her being and her fate in their palms, she takes the role of the person that has control. She role plays if you will.
As I have said before, Sumire craves things that she can't have like love, and in this case it's power. More precisely, I think she craves a sort of agency that she doesn't have. Everything she does is dictated by others and only in this instance, taking care of animals, it's an activity that she did because she wants to and that she makes the rules of.
She is always compensating for something she lacks of even in the more twisted ways.
But yeah, Sumire is definitively not docile, and I think it explains also why she likes being useful for the village even if they treat her badly.
She says "This is part of my role", but look at how Hakubo says "Coulda done that myself". It's like in this moment, Sumire wanted to do something that wasn't actually expected of her, something that is more unlady like. Women being expected to be the one to be protected, but Sumire takes the role of a "man" in this instance (also interesting knowing Sumire is part Minamoto and they are exorcist). It gives her agency, no one asked but she did. It also makes her feel less hopeless, being able to defend herself and important, the village here is praising her, which is I think the only time we see that happen. Sumire may be craving some sort of validation through this act, she wants to loved after all.
In the end it all comes back to the craving of importance, of significance, that even if she was disposed of as a child and is a mere sacrifice, she fantasized about someone needing her to a point they would go through her hell for her. This sort of devotion where she would never feel unloved and uncared for ever again.
But coming back to Hakubo.
For him, his relationship with her challenges Hakubo to not be contended with what he is given, to stop being passive and go along with everyone else. Sumire is the one to provoke Hakubo to have any sort of "desire", not in the romantic or sexual sense here, but more in the sense that he never really did things because he wanted to do them. Others decided for him what she should decide to do and what to make of his life.
Through his relationship with humans, we see a character that never even thought about himself as a being with agency, that can make decisions on his own. He is but a tool, and without its user he is nothing. He sees himself, even without realizing it, as a an object, as he is been so accustomed to being used, to not being considered another individual with thoughts and feelings that have worth.
Probably because as we've seen before, Hakubo feels complete apathy to the world, as if he is never thought that he could think for himself.
But this indifference is challenged by Sumire because even if he can't recognize this feeling yet, he cares and she makes him feel something. She is important to him. And he is even surprised by his own behavior that is a result of it.
I always found it puzzling why Sumire in particular caught his eye, but I think that they are the same, they are both treated as inferior, as less important. They are objects meant to serve people who do not care for them. In a way, the fact tha Sumire was the only to love him, to care for him while the village saw him a threat or a tool, well why wouldn't he cherish someone that genuinely sees him as a person ? It's the way that they were the only people there for each other, protecting each other, caring for each other that it was inevitable I think that they would become this deeply attached to each other.
Did Hakubo, even with his complete apathy, actually enjoyed "playing" husband and wife with her because it may be the first time he had a semblance of a relationship with someone. Not as master and servant, but as two partners.
But that's where we kind of get into the tragedy that is Hakusumi, because Hakubo only acted on his "desire" after what he cherished most was gone.
What's interesting here is that Hakubo doesn't do the thing that he is asked for. When Sumire ask him to his "husband duties", He bash her head and tell her to sleep because he doesn't want that from her, but he frames it as if she should be the one to ask for it because he is still unable to see that why thinks this way is because that's what he actually wants.
I think here Hakubo is just projecting his own wants onto her. He wants her to cry and tell him to save him because that's what he wants to do deep down, but his inability to see himself as someone that has desires and that can make his decisions on his own means that he desperately wishes that Sumire would have ordered him to do it because he would have done it instantly. The truth is that he let it happen because that's what he was used to do : watch and do what he is told.
But then, he kills the village. And in this scene, it's framed through Sumire's desire, she did that she wanted someone to through hell for her, so Hakubo makes her want a reality.
And now I think we circled back to the moment he imprisoned her. You see what Hakubo doesn't express here explicitly is that he feels guilt. He feels like probably as her caretaker that he should have done something, that deep down he cared for her and just watching Sumire die passively made him feel awful. Deep down, he wanted to save her and do something for the only person that also cared for him. She was the only person important to him and he still let himself go along with the decisions of people who didn't care for someone he loved.
I think it's also why he didn't do it out of hatred, anger or grief, but moreso that he did it because he thinks that it was probably the right thing to do, that he thought he had to fufill her last wish, her revenge on the people who treated her horribly. He went through hell for her as the last order that he had to follow.
In a way, isn't that just the way Hakubo found to show his love for her ? Even if it doesn't fall into the traditional display of love.
And I want to be clear, I don't think any of this is a good thing. Sumire was pushed into unhealthy coping mechanisms because she had no conception of what heathly love and care was. Hakubo was pushed to violence because he was engrossed into a system that was violent. They are what a relationship looks like when love can't grow through "normal circumstances". Their love is twisted because it reflects the society they grew up in. It's ugly, confusing and destructive, it doesn't look like a normal and healthy relationship because it never had the chance to be in the first place.
And in the end, they couldn't be together.
What Grim Reaper does for them is give them closure, but also a place to grow.
Sumire thought that Hakubo didn't care for her because he didn't react at all to his death (from her perspective) and Hakubo never sought her out because he was probably eaten by his guilt and he used this world to keep her always before her death as to absolve himself from what happened.
For Hakubo, who always frame everything he does as something that someone ask him to do, Kou make him realize through their fight that you don't have to be asked to do something, that you can decide on your own to take action because this what having agency is about.
But also Hakubo realizes something which is that his relationship to Sumire is not something that he was asked to do, in the sense that his feelings for her just are, they are not something he is supposed to do, and yet he loved her all the same.
And well Sumire, she left this world knowing that someone truly cared for completely, so much so that he would go through hell for her. Sumire's suffering came from this night that was never resolved, where they weren't able to express what they felt inside for one another, and she is able to leave in peace with closure.
(Never seen a woman so giddy that her man is being tortured his guilt)
Now we have to address the elephant in the room : Hakubo eating Sumire.
I will just say that I don't think that Aidairo is romanticizing cannibalism because while it is the way that Hakubo found to express his love his way, not through the standards of heterosexual marriage, but through his own desire to do something by his volition, not bound by orders and it's a way that he embraces his feelings Sumire in a very a gruesome manner because I don't think Hakubo truly knows what showing your care really means.
But I think it's clear to me that him doing this, killing her this way isn't because Aidairo thinks that this was the best way their relationship could have ended, but moreso that it was the only way it could end.
They share love one last time, but it's not cute like Hananene because the base of their relationship is messed up and in the end it's very bittersweet because they can't be together. Hakubo is still alive somewhere, still having Sumire in his mind, forever mourning her.
Sumire's escape of the system is granted by Hakubo through him eating her and giving her death.
The thing is that Sumire says it herself, what Hakubo does is his own personal hell, him not being able to get over Sumire, him not being able to save her from her death. He shall never escape his guilt.
I wouldn't say it's exactly positive.
But that's what Hakusumi decides is the best for the both of them given their circumstances.
Because if there is one thing that the village couldn't take away from is to decide whatever they would make of their relationship, they were able to take their agency, their humanity back through each other.
Even if they could never get their happy ending, this end was their choice and theirs alone.
This end my analysis of Hakubo and Sumire.
And whoa, this was an intense one to write.
I tried to make them justice because they have as much depth and complexity as hell and I didn't want to miss something important to explore about their characters and their relationship. They only have what 3 or 4 chapters dedicated to them and yet they are one of the most gut wrenching and intriguing duo in TBHK. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that they aren't just well written characters, they also have a political weigh. A lot of how I analyse is in context of the oppression of women and marginalized (I don't think Hakubo being dark skinned is a coincidence) and how society forms itself.
They feel like a ship that Aidairo uses to talk about their own personal beliefs through the story, but they are also a sort of warning for the other ships (especially Aoikane and Hananene) as to what could happen if they didn't have the support and the community they had. It makes you think about how precious life is and how losing it can make you wear guilt and regret forever.
I wish people talk about them more through the fascinating lens of their tumultuous relationship than through the lens of only the cannibalistic scene. They have much more food for thought than it seems.
Lastly, I would say that while they are tragic and they make me sad whenever I think about them, they do show that even in the worst circumstances, love will still prevail.
