How would you characterize Ii-chan's relationship with Kunagisa?
Ii-chan and Kunagisa in the first novel alone already begin on pretty shky grounds with their relationship. However, the first novel does have a decidedly romantic climax where Kunagisa proves her affection for Ii-chan, and Ii-chan is able to admit his feelings for her are those of love. After that point their relationship gets progressively darker through each succeeding novel. So, to talk about their relationship you kind of have to go novel by novel.
To start with though, the entire basis of their relationship is an analysis on a codependent relationship.
Codependency is a concept for a dysfunctional relationship where one person enables, another person’s addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement, among the characteristics is an excessive reliance on other people for a sense of identity. It’s not really a psychological disorder but rather a description of a type of relationship dynamic.
In the first novel we are introduced to their relationship. Ii-chan is a dropout of the once prodigious ER3 program which was meant to raise geniuses of research. Iichan defines himself as a normal person who tried and failed at being a genius more or less, a teenage burnout who is now coasting through college. Of course Ii-chan’s descriptions of himself, and assessments of his own abilities and intelligence are never accurate but we’re only going novel by novel so let’s take him at his word for now. Basically, the Ii-chan we’re presented in novel one is a burnout, somebody who actually tried hard studied abroad in an exclusive program, dedicated a significant portion of his life to it, and tried to become one of those special persons known as a genius and then gave up and went home for undisclosed reason. He’s someone who fought hard against his own normality and tried to improve himself, and then gave up on that too. Now, Ii-chan barely remembers his past and claims to have forgotten everything he learned in the ER3 and possesses a faulty memory that makes it seem like all of those years of hard work amounted to nothing, and tries his very best to not stand out and pass as an ordinary person in every situation.
Then in comparison you have Kunagisa. It’s casually mentioned that she led a group of hackers that reformed the world in the first novel as a side detail. Despite being an international terrorist she has a happy go lucky personality. She’s smarter than Ii-chan by leaps and bounds and also she was born that way. It’s remarked many times that she’s a savant and is able to reach heights that even hard workers like Ii-chan must have strived to naturally. However, unlike Ii-chan she cannot do several things a normal person might do. She’ll go long periods without bathing, she has several tics like how she cannot climb stairs alone. She also in general doesn’t seem to read or be affected by mood at all. She’s off in her own little world unaffected by the rest of the world. It’s no coincidence that Ii-chan is the characters whose always walking around struggling with human interaction and most of the time Kunagisa is off to the side for the majority of the novel.
So the two of them are contrasts to one another, Ii-chan is the struggling normal person who can do normal person things for her and often goes out of his way to take care of her and protect her. Kunagisa is the abnormal one who seems to exist purely, without any kind of struggle affecting her, and can usually achieve exactly what she wants to achieve without effort while Ii-chan will struggle the whole novel and his actions will be ultimately meaningless. However, Kunagisa cannot do several things for herself and cannot engage with others like a normal person and relies on Ii-chan entirely for that human connection in her place. They have complementary personalities, so from the first novel it can easily be seen why they are attracted to each other. However, as the novels progress it becomes clearer and clearer that rather than being in a mutual relationship of support it’s more that they are clinging to the ideas of one another.
So, starting from the first book after being introduced to these characters there’s several hints of the darker shades of their relationship. The first thing he says about their relationship is that Kunagisa needs him, but also that it doesn’t really need to be him. He views himself as replacable to her, because she’s a one of a kind genius and he’s just a normal guy and therefore she just needs someone to take care of her and do normal things for her and Ii-chan believes it could be anyone who plays that role.
“I met her before I was in the program. So there’s a blank of five years.”
“Mmm, and when you got back she turned out to be a cyberterrorist, huh? That’s a sordid little tale.”
I saw it coming even when we were thirteen years old. Nevertheless, reuniting with her after my five years of study abroad, I was honestly surprised at how little had changed from the old days. Anyone would be surprised to suddenly return to their early teens. Of course, that was just how things seemed. In reality, she had become much more human in terms of personality.
Asked flat out, it was a tough question to answer.
Kunagisa needed me—that much I knew. However, it didn’t really have to be me. It would be extremely difficult to explain the circumstances that surrounded us. To do so, I’d have to explain a lot about Kunagisa herself, and I didn’t especially want to do that.
There’s also Ii-chan’s trademark complete unwillingness to confront or explain anything. As you’ll see avoidance is the word of the day when it comes to hm. It’s in this talk that codependence is first brought up in regards to them.
I haven’t talked with Kunagisa-chan all that much, but it seems to me she has too many shortcomings to go through everyday life… Hmm, I guess I shouldn’t say shortcomings. It’s not like she’s defective. But her focus is just so skewed. It reminds me of my friend whose kid is a savant.”
Savant—in French, it means a person with wisdom. I was aware that Kunagisa, too, used to be called a savant. I probably knew too much about her.
“So she probably really does need someone like you looking after her. There’s no doubt about that. But I mean, how does that make you feel?”
“It seems like you two have something of a codependent existence,” Akane-san continued.
She tilted her head as if to say, “Haven’t you heard the word?”
“It’s a symptom of addiction that affects human relationships. Like, for example, let’s say there’s a recovering alcoholic who has a caretaker by his side. He needs that caretaker, and the caretaker devotedly looks after him. But when that devotion goes to extremes, it’s a sign of codependency. They get drunk on serving. You even see mild cases of it in romantic couples. Needless to say, it’s not a good thing. You end up putting each other to waste. I’m not going to say you two are like that, but you might want to take care.”
In general, Ii-chan suppresses his existence to try to live as conflict free as possible. He’s avoidant to extreme and tries to avoid any kind of close relationships, having to have others have feelings for him and at the same time not wanting to have feelings for any others. He doesn’t like conflict and finds any kind of it exhausting to continue to deal with.
You won’t argue but you won’t agree. You accepted my shogi challenge because you knew you would definitely lose, isn’t that right? You wouldn’t accept a challenge or compete otherwise.”
I didn’t hate losing, I hated competition. I was thoroughly put off by the idea of vying with others over something. I hated fighting as well and thus never made friends.
Anxious and avoidant are the words of the day when dealing with him. He avoids everyone because of this, and talks about how it’s actually much easier to live unattached but at the same time he also admires the genius part of Kunagisa. He wants to be special, to be unique like a genius is, and he also wants to be special particularly to her.
“So that’s it,” Akane-san said. “You don’t want to be loved by her. You want to be chosen by her. As her one and only.”
Couldn’t argue with that.
“Hmm, but why her? That’s what I can’t figure out. It seems like there must be some obvious reason, but I don’t get it. If you two were a couple, there would certainly be some clashing factors, right? In fact, one would think you would be unattracted to someone so easy.”
“You mean easygoing?” I said.
“Right. Anyway, theoretically someone with a personality like yours wouldn’t be able to endure a relationship with a girl like that, emotionally immature despite being in a superior position. Plus, you’re a man.”
“It’s fun being with her. Or well…” I chose my words carefully. “Rather, it’s fun being by her side.”
My favorite place in the world was by her side. I had returned to Japan for that very reason.
So basically, from the start Ii-chan’s desire towards Kunagisa are a paradox. He’s given up on trying to be a genius himself and seems to resent geniuses, but part of the reason he loves Kunagisa is her genius. He wants to be a special person to Kunagisa, but that also comes from a desire to have himself feel special, irreplaceable, a person who stands out in the crowd in some way and it also comes from the fact that no matter how extraordinary Kunagisa is there’s a certain part of her that’s dependent on him which gives him power in the relationship.
In the first novel alone Kunagisa and Ii-chna’s relationship gets compared to Akane and her accomplice in the murder. A pair of people, one of them an unbelievable genius, and Shinya her helper who serves her that kill people and take over their identities. Ii-chan compares himself to Shinya over and over again and realizes Shinya is the dark side of him, somebody who enables a murderer just so they can continue to stay by their side.
Nothing really matters to me.
The world just does what it wants, and even if it didn’t, that would have nothing to do with me, and even if it did have something to do with me, I wouldn’t be interested. I’ve never wanted to become someone, and I’ve never felt like there was something I had to do. Sometimes I wonder if that’s okay, but in the end, that doesn’t really matter to me, either.
Somewhere along the way I just cooled off. No, that’s not right. Probably, I dried out. Apathetic and indifferent. And that’s why Kunagisa was moisture to me.
Then take passages like this and it quickly becomes clear, Kunagisa is a substitute for Ii-chan, because he refuses to try to engage with the world at all at this point. He wants it all to pass him by. He wants to simply be a nobody, but he also can’t deny the part of himself that needs human connection and to be seen as a human. So he invests absolutely all of it in Kunagisa, and uses her as his substitute for the whole world.
So he’s closer to her than anybody else, but he’s also farther than her from everybody else. As what he’s seeing is not Kunagisa, but rather the image of her that he clings to. Her purity is remarked upon agian and again.In volume 2, it’s basically elaborated on all the darker parts of Ii-chan’s character that were concealed in volume one. Summarized very succinctly, Ii-chan basically doesn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. To get into it deeper, it’s basically impossible for Ii-chan to return, respond to, or even react to other people’s feelings unless it has something to do with himself, or Kunagisa.Hence why the only person he really gets along with in the book is his dark reflection HItoshiki Zerozaki. He forgives and lets go a mass murderer and makes no attempt to stop them because they have something in common with him, but goes out of his way to antagonize somebody who killed one person because that girl was not like him in any way. Ii-chan is basically self absorbed. I’m going to point out some genius symbolism here. The only name we know him by is “I”, he really only cares about himself and his own ego. However, it’s trauma that’s rendered him that way. “Something” happened it’s never really clear what, and Ii-chan retreated completely into himself and got stuck in his own head and doesn’t want to engage in the world at all as a complex way of dealing with the trauma he’s saddled with on a daily basis. So, Volume 2 is basically about how Ii-chan can’t engage with the world at all, he gets involved in a normal friend group and basically forgets about all of them by the end of the group, and doesn’t really care about their emotional struggles even when he was at the center of them. He even antagonizes two girls into suicide, even though he considers murder to be an absolute evil and a line he’s terrified of crossing for himself.
However, Kunagisa is barely in this book and only shows up at the end. Which is the point, hmmm I wonder why Ii-chan barely cared about the events of this book. It’s because they barely involved Kunagisa at all. What Ii-chan considers his “Humanity” and his “Human Emotions” and his “reasons to keep livnig’ or whatever you want to call it are entirely invested in Kunagisa. She’s something he considers entirely detached from the world. Twice within one chapter he remarks on her purity.
She was pure innocence .She had heard everything I had just discussed with Aikawa-san, and still she hugged me like this.I had cruelly antagonized two people, and yet completely overlooked a mass murderer.
And Kunagisa didn’t harbor a single negative sentiment toward me for it.… .
Aikawa-san had been wrong about just one thing.
But it wasn’t her fault. She probably just didn’t have me fully figured out yet. By no means do I consider myself a deep person, but I do recognize that my sins run so deep there’s no way to see all the way to the bottom. The depths of me were invisible, no matter what kind of contract work you did.
The reason I didn’t want to have that discussion in front of Kunagisa wasn’t because I was afraid of her judging me. It was because I knew she would neverjudge me that I never wanted to expose my ugliness or my ego to her.Hers was an all-embracing love. Unwavering, undiluted affection.If I killed a person directly, she would probably forgive me even then. She would love me all the same.
To me, that love was just a little too heavy. I could feel it crushing me.That wide-open devotion.It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel affection toward others. It was that I couldn’t receive affection from others. No matter how much adoration Mikoko-chan showed me, all I could respond with was disdain for a murderer. No matter how much her feelings for me had inspired her actions, all I could see was another homicide.
“Uni? What’s wrong, Ii-chan?”
She blinked at me with those big, pure pupils.
Exactly the same as five years ago.
And now it was five years later.
Sooner or later, the time would come.
When I’d buckle under the weight.
And the urge to destroy her would arise.
Even then, she was sure to forgive me.
Even if she was murdered or destroyed, she would forgive me.
Just as she had done five years ago, with that innocent, beaming smile, as if nothing had even happened.
Once again Ii-chan’s paradoxical feelings manifest themselves. What he loves about Kunagisa is her purity, because she’s a person who kind of just accepts him and needs him without condition and he can’t stand the conflicts or emotions of other people. At the same time, he can’t stand her purity either because that too is still too much affection for him.
In a way, Ii-chan fetishizes her purity like a lot of other people do around her. He invests his humanity in Kunagisa, but at the same time he refuses to see her own humanity. As if she was a human she could stop performing the role that he’s assigned to her, she could stop being dependent on him, and he might lose the person he’s dependent on. Humans have legs that can get up and walk away, objects generally don’t. What he feitshizes about her is her own innocence, her purity, he infantalizesher and treats her like a child rather than someone his own age. He remarks several times how she’s exactly the same as five years ago, and treats her like a child who does not have thoughts, feelings, or emotions or reactions to the outside world. That Kunagisa simply exists int a little Kunagisa world of her own and Ii-chan is a special privileged visitor of her.
Not only that but if you’ll notice the way Kunagisa lives is the way Ii-chan wants to live. He wants to be pure, he wants to be untroubled by anything, he wants to be able to completely shut out everybody else’s feelings and perspectives. Ii-chan strives to be pure by rejecting everything, whereas Kunagisa already exists in that pure state and Ii-chan is her connection to the normal world. She lives unattached which is how Ii-chan desperately wants to live.
As a quick aside this is also like, a common way people on the autism spectrum are treated. Infantalization is a way of denying them any agency or autonomy. Then volume four hits and the entire start is a deconstruction of their relationship. Not only Ii-chan but basically anybody that Kunagisa comes into contact with seems to idealize her, to objectify her. Green green green rants on and on about how she’s somehow the perfect being, how they all want to exist to just be her toys and are honored by it, and then he elaborates the nature of Kunagisa and Ii-chan’s relationship. That not only is Ii-chan stopped five years ago since meeting her and refusing to grow, but the same happened for Kunagisa Tomo. Their mutual love is a fixation on one another.
That’s what’s called mutual feelings, mutual love – but, in that case we can think this way, too. What if you and Dead Blue are similar and share a similar relationship, then just as your time has ceased by being with Kunagisa Tomo, then what if, just the same, because of you, Kunagisa Tomo’s time has also ceased–”
This is the novel where we start getting hints to that the dark side of the relationship is not only Ii-chan’s fault, not only his fixations, but Kunagisa is partially at fault as well. That Kunagisa shows possessiveness over people like toys exactly as Green Green Green Green Green describes her.
“I place what belongs to me by my side. At the very least, it’s unpleasant to have him owned by the likes of you.”
”….. That’s your own opinion,” the Professor barely managed to retort. He retorted to Dead Blue. “You threw that away. What’s wrong with picking up what’s on the ground?”
“Even things I’ve thrown away. Even things I’ve thrown away are still without a doubt mine. It’s unpleasant to have something you’ve thrown away picked up. … you know, Professor. Dead Blue is extremely greedy. Do you not even realize that much…?”
Not only that, but there was something Ii-chan did six years ago, that Kunagisa is unable to forget and also.
She did not forget. She cannot forget.
That was why Kunagisa Tomo would never forget.
How she was duped by me six years ago, how she was treated by me six years ago, how she ended up because of me six years ago – she cannot forget. Even if Kunagisa herself wants to forget, she cannot forget.
How sinful, how encompassed in penalties a human I am.
Remembers.And yet, she embraces me like this.She forgives everything.Like a mother toward an infant child. Like an owner bitten by their dog. Like a tolerant goddess.She forgives everything
In the end, I am just like Green Green Green, just like Cheetah, just like Double Flip, just like the rest of Team – simply owned by Kunagisa Tomo.I am the one being owned.The way I was being owned was just different from Utsurigi and others. And the way I am owned is just more vicious than Utsurigi and others, that was all.
That her purity is the exact reason that he did this terrible thing that is never elaborated on. Now, as Ii-chan is unreliable what exactly he did to her is kept vague however the result is their current relationship five years later. Kunagisa is unable to move on, Ii-chan feels like he wasted five years in the ER3 and didn’t change at all, their relationship remains exactly the same as five years ago.
Over and over again, the words “Using each other”, “Ownership”, “Pure”, comes up and by the end of volume five we see the dark side of Kunagisa’s purity.
Kunagisa – probably knew everything from the start.
That Ishimaru Kouta was Aikawa Jun.
The truth, the reality behind the scenes.
And yet she remained silent.
She remained silent, and watched.
Alright, that is not bad at all.
There is no betrayal where there is no conviction.
There is no betrayal where there is trust.
Kunagisa plans a murdere and Ii-chan helps her get away with it. Even if Kunagisa didn’t kill that person with her own hands, she still enabled somebody else to commit the murder so she could get one of her possessions back. Not only that, she also knew the whole time and pretended to be innocent even when she was accused of the murder.
Now, Kunagisa has become what Ii-chan was afraid of her and him becoming in the first book. Ii-chan is akane, killing someone and replacing them, and Ii-chan is Shinya, covering it up for her and allowing him to get away with it. The darker side fo Kunagisa is made manifest, these people are possessions to her and those that take away her possessions she’s willing to even plan a murder to get them back.
Then volume six happens and we finally get Kunagisa’s own perspective of their relationship. Translation by @darkcherrymystery
In Hitokui, about halfway through I think, iichan wakes up in the house he and a bunch of others were staying in and finds everyone dead
He has an elaborate mental breakdown and runs back to Tomo. Whereupon she tells him
“So I don’t really mind. Whoever you like, whoever you love, whoever attracts you, whoever you embrace, whoever you kiss, whoever you have sex with. None of that matters; actually, I’d support you. If you’re having fun, it’s all fine, Ii-chan. There’s no need for distortion; you can be yourself. If you become an honest person, I’d be super happy for you. After all, I’m interested in how you’ll turn out, Ii-chan. Ii-chan’s happiness is my happiness. So you’re free to do and think whatever you want. –But, just one thing.”
Changed from blue, to blue.Clearer.Purer.
“If you stop being mine, Ii-chan, I will destroy this planet. You mustn’t ever leave me like you did back then. If I don’t have you, I won’t want anyone else. I will destroy everything without a trace. I will kill everything and not even cinders remain.
It’s implied that the terrible horrible thing that Ii-chan did to Kunagisa five years ago, might have just been moving away to the ER3 and trying to be his own person separate of her. It still could be something else that Ii-chan never tells us what it is, but my reading of the implication that destroying Kunagisa was just leaving her.
As the two of them are so close to each other they’re almost overlapped. Part of Kunagisa is in Ii-chan and part of Ii-chna is in Kunagisa, because they’ve divested the entirety of their humanity in their connection to one another. Him leaving would destroy a part of her, she’s absolutely terrified of it.
So, this is the result. Not only is Kunagisa not allowed to change or become any less innocent, but Ii-chan is not allowed to leave her in any significant permanent way. As a result of dehumanization by everybody around her, Kunagisa’s purity becomes a sign of her inhumanity.
Like, Kunagisa is in fact a person.These are people in the end, despite the dramatics that others make them out to be. Ii-chan when Jun thinks that if he put his mind to it could destroy the world with his nonsense tells her to calm down that he’s a normal angsty emo kid. Kunagisa is too, a person. She’s a person no matter how much talent she has. She’s a person no matter how much her neuro-atypical personality makes her act childish or prevents her from grasping the normal world. So, Ii-chan’s precious “purity” is dehumanizing, it’s terrifying. It’s abnormal and indecent, she treats people like toys, she treats Ii-chan like an object.
But it’s also a pretty logical result of everybody around her treating her like she’s either a baby, or the most talented, most special, most amazing thing in the universe just because she happens to be smarter than most people.
Not only does Ii-chan have no human connections, but Kunagisa has almost nothing to ground her. Her hacker friends just consider themselves her toys and would commit murder for her with no resistance. She’s cut off from her family and apparently her brother has a serious complex about her and doesn’t treat her like a normal brother would. Everybody around her is either utterly, utterly in love with her or loathes her very existence for being a genius but everybody only sees the genius, not the person.
Therefore, why Ii-chan is so special, he’s the closest thing to a normal relatinoship that she has as well.
So this is the result for both of them. Both of them don’t want normal relationships, they’re terrified of it, but also both of them can’t stand to be alone. Losing Ii-chan would mean being alone for Kunagisa. So, they’re both closer than anybody else, but farther apart from anybody else.
Kunagisa tells Ii-chan straight up that she’s not going to make demands of him of a normal lover in a normal relationship, because any of that might drive him away. She’s afraid to be attached to him, so she makes no demands except that he’s never allowed to leave her for good. Ultiamtely he always has to return to her.
So, she makes no demands, but she restricts his freedom. Because ultimately what matters is not Ii-chan, not what Ii-chan is giving her, but rather the idea of Ii-chan, once again she wants to make it so Ii-chan will never leave. So she makes no deamnds of him but demands everything from him at the same tie. She tries to avoid doing anything that will scare him away but also uses intimidation and threats to rob him of his own autonomy.
Once again, it’s a paradox. That’s what you have with a mutual codependency. Both Ii-chan and Kunagisa are each other’s normal human connection, but both of them are also terrified of having to do things normal people do like engage with the world, have conflicts, and struggle, so both of them are instead fixated on the images of each other they have. They use each other as a subitstute for all of their other relationships.
Yet at the same time that also prevents them actually being able to advance their relationship in any significant way. As both of them are too busy running circles trying to maintain the paradox of their relatioship, and keep their relationship exactly as it is for fear of losing it, for fear of losing their one human contact, their one refuge of the world, their one thing, that they never ever try to change or develop their relationship.I cannot live with you, or without you.A mutual codependency.In other words a paradox. In other words it’s nonsense.
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