Your Choujin X writeups are great, it's a shame the fandom is so small that they get relatively few notes. I'm glad you appear to have a more sympathetic view of Azuma than most CX readers I've seen. I think I remember you predicting before the time skip that Azuma would be the one to leave Yamato Mori, but recent chapters look more like Tokio will diverge from them - any predictions for the how our main trio may be split up?
This is a great question anon, and my answer is... I dunno. By which I mean to me it could go either way at this point. Me and my friend have actually debated on this, which one is more likely to side Sora and which one is going to stay with Yamato Mori. I'm still leaning towards Azuma leaving Yamato Mori, but there's evidence for both sides of either Azuma or Tokio leaving. Predictions about the Azuma and Tokio breakup underneath the cut.
Evidence of Azuma Leaving
The first piece of evidence is that Azuma is pretty clearly headed for a negative character arc, to parallel with Tokio's growth. While Tokio grows more self-confident and independent, Azuma in turn starts to feel inferior and resentful. Azuma states it pretty clearly at the end of their first fight, he's no longer Tokio's hero, the relationship they had in the past where he was the one who Tokio looked up to is gone now. Azuma can't really handle the shifting power dynamic because he was as dependent on Tokio as Tokio was on him.
Instead of bridging the gap in their relationship, Tokio leaving has made Azuma even more distant from him. Azuma isn't even on speaking terms with Tokio right now. When he's introduced to Tokio, the first thing he learns is that Tokio freed an entire province from a dictator while Azuma just a few days ago failed to stop a plane crash resulting in the deaths of so many people.
It's not like Azuma wasn't training while Tokio was gone, and yet from Azuma's perspective it seems like Tokio is still leaps and bounds ahead of him. Which could push him to conclude that Yamato Mori is not enough, either out of a desire to be stronger, or personal resentment for Tokio.
Evidence number two, Tokio and Azuma are a clear parallel to Sandek and Batista. The two of them trained alongside each other to be heroes, probably all their lives, only for one of them to betray the other. Batista is the one who either left Yamori, or fled after his brother attempted to kill him. Azuma is the Batista in that parallel, he has the ability that's less powerful than Tokio's, and Batista has multiple times took a vested interest in him even asking Zora if she could hand off Azuma to him.
Azuma also made Tokio promise to kill him if he ever went rogue, which is another parallel to Sendak being commanded by their profit to kill Batista.
Why go so far to make this continued parallel throughout the story, unless Batista was planning on inviting Azuma to their side?
The third is more recent and may just be me going out on a limb here, but Azuma met this clearly supsicious girl searching for corpses on the beach, and didn't really investigate into her any further. Noh Mask met with her shortly after this scene and dragged her into a bigger conspiracy with The Tower / Zora's followers, so she's going to be plot relevant and the fact she ran into Azuma isn't a coincidence. After all, every single detail that happens in a story is purposefully put there by the author to mean something. IE, if they ran into each other once it's likely they'll run into each other again.
One more important detail is, Azuma's not dumb. He found her right next to a washed up corpse, and even the girl thought she was done before at that point. Only for Azuma to quickly change his tune and act totally oblivious. This is the face he makes, before he smiles and offers her crabs instead. It's likely he actually knew what she was doing there, but for some reason decided to let her go, maybe to investigate her further instead of blowing his cover right there.
While Tokio is the one who is more curious right now about hearing what Zora has to say, he's also steadily growing and gaining influence in Yamato Mori.
It's Tokio of all people who spoke up against the Opium mission, and Tokio who convinced the higher ups to listen to his plan instead. He's once again the one gaining more strength and confidence, while Azuma's position in Yamato is stagnating. Sato even makes a comment along the lines of Yamato's soldiers not being what they once were.
If Azuma isn't making progress with the Yamato Mori, if he's stagnating and not getting any better that's even more reason for him to want to leave.
Evidence of Tokio Leaving
The first and most obvious is that Zora is pretty desperate to choose Tokio as her successor. Tokio is also the one who seemed to have inherited the most power from Zora, as she comments that being an iron choujin makes Azuma unworthy of the mark. In the parallel between the big three Choujin X of the past, Tokio is clearly the parallel to Zora, he uses the same wings and scythe swords she did. Azuma is the parallel to Queem because they both use recurring tank and gun imagery in association with their characters, and Azuma's choujin power seems to have come about because of his obsession with war, weapons, the military, etc...
Tokio is also the only one who's spoken in favor of listening to Zora about her prophecy. Azuma's been keeping his head down the entire time just listening to orders in Yamato Mori, Ely even points out that Azuma didn't speak up when he disagreed with Tokio. It's Tokio who's questioning authority and speaking up directly in front of them.
Tokio is also the first person who sympathizes with Zora, when the whole of Yamato Mori who are the ones who cast her out seem only intent on hunting her down. He's expressed a clear interest in talking to her.
Tokio also has been diagnosed with a clear case of Kaneki Ken SyndromeTM! By which I mean Ishida Sui reuses ideas from previous works all the time, and in Tokyo Ghoul his last manga he had the hero defect from Anteiku when he became too afraid that he lacked the strength to protect his friends. Tokio seems to suffer from a similiar fear of losing people. He even resolves to strike Zora down if the danger becomes too much and just ignore her prophecy.
Tokio has also already left once, leaving both Ely and Azuma without a word because he feels he'd become too dependent on them if he stayed. His growth was also jumpstarted when after the island arc he wasn't able to contribute a single thing in the battle because he wasn't strong enough. He could leave for a similiar reason, if Yamato Mori isn't enough to protect his friends he could try to go off on his own and work from the outside instead.
The last piece of evidence is that we still have Tokio's prophetic dream to worry about. Considering Tokio shares so many of Zora's powers, he might have even inherited some of her future seeing.
Tokio hasa dream of a ruined Yamato, and an Azuma who turns around to face him and declares that the disaster is all his fault. Tokio defecting / siding with Zora could start the chain of events which leads to this. In a version where Tokio defects, we could see an arc of Tokio joining with Zora, only for Azuma to hunt him down while working with Yamato Mori.
It still fits the general pattern I outlined before of their positive and negative charater arcs, if Azuma stayed with Yamato Mori he might become more like a blind servant to justice, hunting down Tokio no matter what the cost without listening to his friend. Especially if Tokio really is the cause of a disaster.
To mention Ishida's previous work again, Tokio shares a lot of parallels to Arima Kishou, to the point of even wearing glasses like him and having worsening eyesight. The fact that Arima for most of his life was a blind follower of the CCG is not a good thing and led to his tragic ending as a character. So Azuma's character could follow the same general pattern if he chooses to stay with Yamato Mori and hunt down Tokio after he defects.
There's plenty of evidence for either side of the argument, so we may just have to wait and see how it plays out. Considering it's Ishida though, it'll probably be painful when the boys finally do break up.
This is such a good explanation and still remains true to the recent chapter update.
I'm also personally of the belief that Azuma would be the one to depart Yamoto Mori. Adding on to what OP said, it's clear that Ishida is purposefully guarding Azuma's thoughts post time skip and only revealed some of it in regards to his relationship with Tokio.
I think there is a reason why Ishida never revealed to us what Azuma was actually thinking. Even during his disagreement with Tokio's plan, Azuma kept his mouth shut. And with the recent chapters, we now know what Ely and Tokio each wanted to accomplish from the current raid, again, except for Azuma.
But just like OP said, one thing we do know clearly is Azuma's frustration towards his stagnation.
The images above are the most explicit Ishida has ever revealed to us about Azuma's psyche. Though they have managed to resolve the current tension between them, there was no indication that Azuma would stay within their current dynamic. After all, we already know that Azuma's aspiration was to stand equal with Tokio.
But for me, the nail in the coffin is this panel right here.
Which is reminiscent to this panel.
(An interesting thing to point out here is how Azuma was considering war to gain experience while Yubiko is indeed a survivor of the Great Choujin War, but I digress.)
For me, this is just an obvious setup for Azuma to go and find more experience outside of Yamoto Mori. So far we have:
A frustrated teenager who felt like he was left behind by his friend.
Said friend went to leave him behind and gained experience through combat, which proved what Yubiko said.
His dissatisfaction with his current condition shown by his remark that essentially what Sandek taught him was not enough (the first image I inserted), which may or may not refer to what Yubiko said.
And the cherry on top is these two panels right here.
Azuma running the opposite way and one unlit candle on Elly's cake.
And last but not least, Azuma being named as Yamoto Mori's Hope would make his defection so ironic.
- The Glory -
Just finished watching it yesterday…(finally hehe) and now I need more SasuHina ver. … ;-;))) also I’m dying to see H helping S get revenge on prisoner 3724!!
_ 2023/4/13
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