Idk much about group homes in Japan, but I'd like to know why it would be likely he was independent at age 15+ onward because of that ?
okay, so let's start with the basics. akechi mentions being in foster care a couple times in the game.
this is a bad translation, as vashtijoy gets into here. a better translation is found in the anime, where akechi states he was passed between relatives after his mother died.
with his abandonment issues, and considering the fact he's entirely on his own now, it stands to reason that eventually, he would have run out of relatives who wanted him. at this point, he would have been sent to a group home.
in japan, the vast majority of orphans are never fostered. instead, they are sent to group homes, which are often overcrowded and rife with abuse. the foster system simply does not exist in japan the way that it does in the united states, due to baked-in biases about the importance of blood relations. it's both far more difficult to adopt or foster in japan and people are generally less interested in it, thanks to these biases. if your blood family either can't take care of you, or doesn't want to, you're basically fucked.
okay, so akechi probably got sent to a group home, but that doesn't answer your question. why would akechi be independent from 15 onwards? well, group homes generally have no obligation to care for teenagers once they stop attending school. since most people in japan attend high school, this means that a lot of kids in group homes have to leave at 18 whether they're ready to or not--two years before the age of majority in japan until very recently. however, some kids can be abandoned even earlier.
in japan, high school is optional. the state is not obligated to ensure everyone has access to education beyond middle school. this means that if a kid in a group home chooses not to attend, drops out, or is expelled, etc--at that point, thanks to common issues with overcrowding, group homes will often kick them out. usually, the group home has to provide orphans some kind of work and housing. but if either of those arrangements fall through, from that point on, the kids are entirely on their own. this has led to many orphans becoming homeless.
the fact that akechi would have been 15, a freshman in high school, when he awakened to his powers, does not seem like a coincidence to me. the timeline matches up way too well to the age when an overcrowded group home would have been allowed to kick him out to prioritize caring for the younger kids in the home. it's not at all unlikely akechi wasn't going to be able to attend high school at all until he met shido, and even that he was homeless when yaldabaoth gifted him his powers.
some people push back the timeline to 14 for when he awakened to his powers. i'm not entirely sure why? the game is pretty explicit about it being two and a half years ago.
akechi is a senior in high school and 18 at the time of this conversation, so two and a half years would bring us back to the spring of his freshman year (american sophomore), when he was 15, almost 16.
maybe they want to make him younger to emphasize his innocence, i'm not sure. but i don't think that's at all necessary. 15 is more than young enough. there's no reason to make him younger when the canon age is fucked up enough as it is. there is good reason to believe that akechi had nothing and no future when he awakened to his powers.
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