I've been saying they're folds of each other, they parallel each other, Suo understands Sakura to an extent the others didn't and part of it might be from being like him, we can already deduce he was abandoned by his parents at the dojo from chapter 217...
Anyways, I want to wrap Sakura in a fucking blanket and hold him tight, hang in there, your support system is going to help you get back on your feet and then you're going to go find Suo and get an explanation, I promise
i think not everyone gets that suo doesn't like to lie.
he could have lied about what his fear was
what happened to his eye
his name
why he doesn't want to go in the water
but he doesn't lie - and i mean actually lie, not something only umemiya and sakura would believe in - because he doesn't want to.
he will say nothing, he will deflect, he will joke he will tell the truth in a way no one will notice was the truth.
he will do anything to avoid lying. even though lying could make his life easier. because as it is, everyone knows he's hiding/doesn't want to talk about some things. if he lied it would be harder to tell.
tldr; suo is not as much of a liar like people say he is. and i think it's important to know that everything he said while at furin he was being sincere about
p.s.: a post i remembered after i was done about suo lying lol.
I spent all day losing my mind for this exact reason. The number of times you just go "yeah, sure. I guess that's my name now." instead of correcting people is unreal.
Imagine Sun Fei was the heir to his part of the Red Chanpuru triad. And he normally wouldn’t have taken over at such a young age, but maybe something happened to his master (or whomever his predecessor was) that kinda forced him into it before he was really ready.
And maybe they sent him away to Furin to train and see how a clan of guardians similar to their own started out, and he was tasked with observing how they functioned and helping them somewhat passively. Like some sort of special training before he officially took over for the Chanpuru. And maybe he was under orders to keep his affiliation with the triad secret, to not share information anout himself. Maybe he was meant to keep himself at a distance, but despite his efforts, “Suo” got too attached.
Because maybe, just maybe, his time at Furin was the first chance he ever got to just be a kid, the first time in his life he got to make real friends who actually viewed him as an equal, without the triad obligations hanging over his head.
And maybe he knew his time would be limited at Furin, but it still hurt when he was finally ordered to return home because he came to truly love life in Makochi. And he was mourning the loss of a life he couldn’t have because he was always meant for something else.
And he couldn’t being himself to face everyone because it would hurt too much and because they would press for answers he wasn’t allowed to give, but he cared too much to not at the very least tell them he was leaving. And when Nirei wouldn’t let it go and kept pushing him, something in Suo snapped. Because he was so torn between two places that he loved so dearly. But he ultimately couldn’t explain things because he wasn’t allowed. And he couldn’t betray his family’s orders. So he tried to force himself not to care about leaving Furin. But all of these overwhelming emotions came to a head and he ended up pushing too far and hurting Nirei in the process. And that only made him suffer more.
He said his silent goodbye, then quietly turned in his withdrawal forms and disappeared without a word. And back in his hometown, we see him standing alone and holding a leaf like the one he left with Nirei, gazing out longingly and saying how he could hear the wind’s voice. And it’s obvious, given Bofurin’s association with wind, that he’s referring to his friends. Even back home, two weeks later, “Suo” Sun Fei is still thinking of the friends he had to give up when he left to take over his role.
And maybe it’s just me, but he looks…melancholic? Like, despite the lone highlight in his eye, it still looks pretty empty. Maybe the way his face is cast in shadow contributes to that. Idk. It’s like he’s happy to be back but also sad to be back. Mixed feelings. Which would make sense if his bond with the Red Chanpuru really is like brothers, and he genuinely did build a connection with the people in Makochi too.
And maybe Sun Fei is proud to be in the position he’s in but also equally mourning the loss of the freedom/childhood he got a taste of at Furin.
i dont think endo has all the facts here idk something feels Off to me. why did suo attend middle school in makochi? what was his goal in coming to furin and why go back NOW? i feel like theres stuff abt the red chanpurus inner workings endo (and us by extension) isnt privy to
Alright hear me out. What we have so far fits both for organized crime affiliate but also with a cult:
The organization is associated with dragon symbols right? And Endo thinks that either they’re too dangerous to mess with or that Suo will be too hard to retrieve. And there’s hints of association with Okinawa and China/international connections.
Suo jokes about his eye containing a Chinese spirit and references dragons. We assume that he’s being funny, but what if this actually an opaque reference to abuse he suffered at one point. Is it possible that a cult with weird beliefs about spirits damaged Suo’s eye and left him with scars? It’s not outside the realm of possibility when you consider the behaviors of real life cults.
Suo uses terms ‘brothers’ (which some people have said the Japanese term more likely references non-biological relation) and ‘master’ — this is language that could absolutely be used by either a cult or gang. And I know people think of Suo’s master a positive figure, but we don’t necessarily know that is true. And martial arts training wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for a cult.
Additionally, we know that Suo seems weirdly focused on maturity and acting like an adult. For a gang situation, that’s honestly kinda strange? But for an abused child in a cult, it could make sense. Especially when you consider that Suo seems to value his own ability to hide his emotions and ‘convince’ other people to do things, as has been noted. It could also explain the vague sense of sadness and self-blame we get from him? Like he had to be party to abuse of others as a child?
Cult might also explain why he’s weird about eating tbh
At one point someone noted (probably @asofspades) that we see Suo’s shirt ride up at various points and expose his lower back while fighting, which lends points against a yakuza tattoo (usually full back)
I think all these things work for organized crime and for a cult. BUT! As other people have noted, it would be really difficult to save Suo from a true organized crime syndicate. But it’s possible, although still tricky, to help extract someone from a cult. Which might make more sense for the manga. We assume that they do have to be able to rescue Suo at some point because this is windbreaker.
WBK's Overarching Theme (and what it means for Suo)
Windbreaker (Nii Satoru) has a lot of good messages, but the overall theme that plays out through every arc is that you should accept help from others; you shouldn’t try to do everything alone. This is a message that repeats throughout the series.
Now, I’m not gonna go into every little detail, but I will discuss some of the major instances that this theme impacted in the story. This is gonna be long.
Manga spoilers below.
In the grand scheme of things, this is the very ideal that Bofurin represents. This is a gang of delinquents that have come together to help each other and their community. They don’t allow the townsfolk to deal with troublemakers on their own. They always have each others’ backs too (hence patrolling in groups). They fight for the people and for each other. They also help the townsfolk with everyday tasks and errands, like painting walls, hanging decor, etc. No one has to deal with their problems alone.
Kotoha first told Sakura that he could never be at the top of Furin because he was alone. That’s because Furin isn’t a school/gang where people fight for/by themselves. It is at its core a group where everyone helps each other. So Sakura’s original goal was unreachable with the way he was at the beginning of the series. He would first have to learn how to help and accept help from others.
Sakura is introduced to this idea at the same time he’s introduced to Bofurin and what it stands for. He’d been surprised when other Furin students jumped in to help him. He’d been skittish when an older woman tried to attend his wound. Kotoha taught him to accept help from others.
But it’s not just Sakura that this theme affects.
With Shishitoren, Tomiyama was experiencing some issues that he kept to himself (depression, I believe) and tried to handle these feelings himself – which clearly didn’t go too well, as it made both himself and everyone around him miserable. And Togame, who noticed the change in Tomiyama, decided to deal with the change himself (instead of consulting their other friends) by changing himself to match Tomiyama’s new energy. This went very poorly for everyone involved, and the whole gang ended up being terrible for their community and to one another. They even kicked their own friends from the group. It took the Furin guys fighting them (conversing with them) to get them to actually speak to one another about what was going on and accept help from each other. Shishitoren became a good/friendly group again after this.
With KEEL, Nagato ended up in a pretty shitty situation where he is forced to hurt others (via theft) and was hurt himself by other members of the group. He refused to allow his childhood friends to help him, which obviously was not going to change/help his situation. Anzai also tried to handle the situation himself by trying to fight KEEL himself, refusing to tell anyone what was going on, and then attempting to refuse help under the excuse that it wasn’t Furin’s problem. But that denied the whole point of Bofurin – which was to help each other and others in the community. Sakura and the rest of class 1-1 essentially forced Anzai to accept their help. However, they didn’t request help from anyone else in Furin and ended up biting off more than they could chew. Class 1-1 needed the help of the second-years. In this fight, Sakura had to accept help from Kaji in taking down the leader while he was busy fighting others. And Nirei ran away from Suo’s help/protection and tried to fight people himself (despite his lack of strength/skills) and ended up beaten because of it.
Sakura got sick and didn’t tell anyone – because he was used to dealing with illness alone. His vice captains barged in and gently reminded him that he didn’t have to handle everything alone anymore. His classmates even gifted him a bag of goodies and get-well notes to push the message. And Kotoha brought him food and essentially reiterated the same message – that it was okay to accept help from others. And when Sakura came back to school the next day, the very first thing he did was seek out someone (Kaji) and ask him for help.
We learned about Tsubaki’s upbringing – how he’d always been drawn to more feminine things and how it tore him up inside that he was so different from other boys. It was only when an older couple accepted his interests and helped him via makeovers that Tsubaki was truly able to be himself.
In the Roppo-Ichiza arc, Shizuka was being hunted down for human trafficking purposes, and she had purposely tried to keep the issue to herself in hopes that just running away would solve it. It took Furin and Roppo-Ichiza stepping in to solve her problem – otherwise, she would have inevitably been caught. And with Gravel, their issues with money were solved by accepting help from Roppo-Ichiza in finding some of them jobs (which they used to help support the rest of their group).
Umemiya has no problems accepting help in the present, but there’s a reason he told his traumatic backstory to Sakura. He’d lost his family and had fallen so deep into depression that he’d lost his will to live. He’d refused to accept help from Yuki and the others at the orphanage. He hadn’t even told them he’d been feeling suicidal, and instead, he’d tried to handle it himself – via attempts to get gangs to kill him or to take his own life more directly. It was a Furin student that helped him realize his parents had been glad to sacrifice themselves for him – helped him realize he’d wanted to live. And it was with that realization that he’d finally been able to open up and accept help from Yuki and the kids at the orphanage. And it was that whole ordeal that inspired Umemiya to create a community where people would help one another. And the reason he’d told Sakura was because Sakura needed to hear that accepting help from others could genuinely change one’s life for the better.
Sakura learned a good bit from these past experiences, and he utilized this theme of accepting help from others by reaching out and asking their new allies for help in the Noroshi War. It was also in his fight with Endo that Sakura nearly gave up and went with Endo – to which his friends offered to fight for him because they weren’t going to allow Sakura to fight alone. This decision also pissed Sugishita off because Sugi had actually accepted Sakura’s help in this battle by leaving it to him (despite not getting along), and it was a betrayal of that trust for Sakura to just give up.
Super minor thing but I still wanna point it out – Sako and Hiragi would probably still be awkwardly dancing around one another if Inugami hadn’t basically (enthusiastically) forced them to make up.
Anyway, Sugishita reached out to Nirei because he needed help figuring out his issue with Sakura – and accepting Nirei’s help also encouraged him to engage more with the class, which will help him in the long run (given his only friends prior to this would be graduating in less than a year).
Kiryu tried to handle his dad’s disrespect alone (not knowing that his sister was also handling it, just in her own way). He then tried to handle the gang planning to harass his sister on his own, but Sakura showed up and made it known that Kiryu would not have to handle things himself.
Sakura doubted his original goal of becoming the top of Furin. He tried to deal with those feelings himself, but Togame extended an offer to talk to him about those sort of things & Sakura actually opened up to him about what had been bothering him.
In the past, Kotoha was reluctant to accept help at the orphanage and would act out. It was because Umemiya accepted her feelings and even agreed with them that she was finally able to accept everyone’s help. Same with Natsuki, who wanted to deal with her feelings herself and felt hurt by the others’ trying to welcome her – Sakura got her to accept that she didn’t have to deal with all of that by herself.
And Sakura had gotten so good at accepting help from others that he’d even been willing to share his life story and trauma with a huge group of people (and then later with Momijikawa).
Momijikawa, having lost everyone and everything he loved one after another, was dealing with his dying grandmother who also had severe dementia. He didn’t confide in his classmates. No one knew what was going on with him because he was dealing with it all himself – and “dealing with it” to him was essentially throwing himself into fights, which didn’t actually solve any of his problems. Not only that, but it nearly cost him his last moments with his grandmother. It was only because of Sugishita (and his grandfather) that anyone else knew what was was going & that the Furin guys were able to track him down and get him to the hospital in time. And after that, they didn’t let him handle the grief alone. They were there for the funeral and cremation. Sakura (probably seeing a bit of himself in Momi) even chased Momijikawa down afterwards to talk with him. He shared his story, they fought (had a conversation), and Momi ended up accepting Sakura’s help more than anyone’s – even invited him over and cooked dinner.
Anyway, I know I’ve definitely left some stuff out, but you can see the overall theme of the story – Accept help from others. Don’t try to handle your problems alone.
And this is paired with the occasional theme of conversations via fights (which we primarily see in Shishitoren arc, Noroshi arc, and a little bit at the end of Momijikawa arc).
______________________________________________
These themes seem to affect just about every character – except one.
Suo.
He doesn’t seem to ever need help from others in battle. And he puts up a front that makes him appear emotionally in-control and reliable – Someone that is always willing to help others but silently claims to never need any help himself (even Sakura has trouble imagining Suo ever needing to be saved).
Suo hides information about himself. He doesn’t like people knowing what truly goes on in his mind, and he uses jokes and other manipulation tactics to avoid topics that might reveal more than he’s willing be share. He refuses to be seen as weak, and he refuses to be seen as someone who might need help.
Not only that, but he actively avoids being injured in fights. If fights are a conversation, then Suo is doing all the listening by beating his opponents down and revealing their weaknesses – all the while not allowing them a single hit on himself. In other words, it’s a one-sided conversation. And that’s exactly why he refuses to fight Sakura, knowing that Sakura is the type of person in which a fight becomes a conversation – Sakura always tears into his opponent’s core and reveals the truth.
So, following the overarching theme of accepting help and not facing things alone as well as the underlying theme of a fight being a conversation, I think it’s safe to say that Suo is going to be thrust into a situation that he tries to handle by himself, and it may take fighting Sakura (and possibly Nirei?) before Suo can finally accept that he needs help. And looking at how drastically some characters have changed since they accepted help – Togame, Tomiyama, Umemiya, Suzuri, Kotoha, Momijikawa, etc – I think that “conversation” could possibly reveal an entirely new side of Suo that he hasn’t allowed to be seen before.
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