Certainty and Miracles @plumfragments - Tumblr Blog

CHIHIRO AND HIRUHIKO: LIGHT AND SHADOW

Let me describe to you the moment that Kagurabachi clicked as a manga to me.

The first arc of Kagurabachi is what I would call the embodiment of good not great. IChihiro is likable as a protagonist for the first two volumes of the story, but he never really breaks the mould. There’s nothing to make in the story that makes you stop and question his actions. Sure he slaughters people en masse, but they’re bad people, they were experimenting on a little girl.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this but it also adheres to a specific formula. Everyone who read Kagurabachi from chapter one clocked what kind of character Chihiro was going to be. He was going to slowly unlearn his edgelord ways over the course of his revenge quest and show everyone his softer side. It’s very paint by numbers is what I’m saying.

Then chapter 9 rolls around and Chihiro is hit with this earth shattering revelation by the weapon’s dealer Sojo. Sojo rocks Chihiro’s world by telling him that swords… kill people.

QUOTATION: Kagurabachi Chapter 9. Sojo: I truly love Kunishige Rokuhira. The weapons he created were exalted. To feel a closer affinity to them I read everything I could find about him, and just recently cloud gouger fell into my hands. It was a dream come true I was so happy, but only for a moment. Now back to my question, Why does a punk like you have an enchanted blade I’ve never heard of? Where’d you get it? Chihiro: I don’t have to answer to you. Sojo: That’s cold. Then, at least… tell me why you wield the sword. I want to know if you’re worthy of it. Chihiro: To defeat evil, and protect the weak. Always. Sojo: I knew it. I’m the only one who understands him. All the literature says the same thing. I can’t stand it. Calling him a hero… what an insult! On and on with their flowery words. There’s only one reason to make weapons. You don’t understand anything. I’ll tell you what he wanted. Chihiro: Hey! Sojo: He gave birth to the enchanted blades, the ultimate weapons of slaughter. Their only purpose is to kill!

It’s through this single confrontation and then Chihiro’s subsequent loss that I learned Chihiro was a completely different character than anyone thought. Chihiro isn’t a murderer with a secret heart of gold who just needs to be nurtured so he can learn there’s more to life than revenge.

In fact, Chihiro does not hide the fact that he’s kind, humble, and protective of others. He’s already all those things we’d expect someone obsessed with revenge to learn as a part of their character arc. In fact there are several points in the story where Chihiro puts his revenge on hold, in order to help someone like Char, Hakuri or Iori. Chihiro already has all of the heroic qualities that traditional revenge story characters are lacking.

Chihiro’s flaw and what sets him apart from every other revenge story ever written is that he’s naive.

To Chihiro, being told to his face that weapons kill people is a shock even though his father told him the same thing several times because Chihiro is a traumatized child who still sees the world through a child’s logic.

Chihiro grew up in a loving household, but also one that was completely sheltered from the outside world. He quite literally grew up inside of a fish bowl with only him and his father, he never went to school and only left his home a few times growing up. Even before his father dies Chihiro is shown to be too mature for his age, as he’s thrust into the role of his father’s caretaker, cooking his father meals, and doing most of the housework for the both of them. Chihiro already had a tendency to act like a mini adult when he was living with his father in an otherwise stable household. When his father was ripped away Chihiro grew up instantly.

The thing about children who grow up too fast though, is that they actually don’t grow up at all. They just get good at pretending to be adults. Chihiro’s outward stoicism is a facade, everyone caught onto the fact that his edgelord personality was a fake in chapter one. However, most people don’t understand what it’s hiding. Chihiro isn’t hiding his soft heart, he practically wears his heart on his sleeve. He never makes any attempt to conceal how he cares for people like Hakuri and he’s also pretty open about the way he relates to Iori. What Chihiro is hiding is how vastly inexperienced he is with the outside world. He is a child acting as an adult. Chihiro doesn’t reject Sojo inherently because he’s a bad person. Chihiro can’t comprehend the fact that Sojo would 1) have a different interpretation of Kunishige Rokuhira’s legacy and 2) that Cloud Gauger would harmonize with someone else’s convictions.

Sojo is a bad guy so in Chihiro’s mind he can’t have any personal convictions whatsoever, because as we all know evil people do nothing but kick puppies all day long, when they’re not twiddling their thumbs and thinking about evil things. Chihiro doesn’t need to contemplate the motivations of an evil person because they’re evil.

Chihiro’s supposed convictions are rooted in his hero worship of his father and the other swordsman and also a childish notion of black and white good and evil. Which is why that someone else could look at the weapons of mass destruction his father made, and see that their only purpose is to cause mass destruction throws him for a loop. Chihiro is pretending to be an adult, but lacks any of the life experience to see the world with any sort of nuance. A sense of nuance he might have developed if he went out to experience the world, but Chihiro grew up in a fish bowl, being told a sanitized version of the past by a father who was unable to come to terms with the guilt for his sins.

Chihiro’s development at the end of his arc is not revealing he was secretly a softie all along, but the point where he’s forced to admit that other people exist and they may see the world differently than his. That the world does not play by his storybook ideals of good and evil, heroes and villains.

QUOTATION: Kagurabachi, Chapter 17 Sojo: You helped me understand some things, I tried not to see it, but…” Chihiro: To defeat evil, and protect the weak. Sojo: …I accept it. That nauseating belief of yours. Chihiro: Then, you have no business with a sacred bldae. Sojo: I disagree. I’ll wield the sword with my own beliefs. As a weapon of mass destruction. Chihiro: But that’s wrong! Every day I saw how my dad approached the sword. Every single day! Sojo: The message I get from his work is “go slaughter.” Every single day? Every day with Rokuhira? Wait, stop! Every day! I’m so curious about who he really was. No! I don’t want to know. I’ve already reached my conclusion and I don’t think I’m wrong. Because just like you rescued that kid, the fact remained. It answered my convictions and harmonized with them and gained slaughter. Sojo: You think you’re the only one who can speak for Rokuhira. I thought the same, but that’s wrong. Anyone can take that role. That’s why battle is meaningful. Chihiro: I accept that. Both of us speak for my father. Which is precisely why I won’t show you any respect. The only thing I will do is cut you down with an even thicker bloodlust.

Chihiro makes headway here by acknowledging that other people exist, and have different points of view than his own. Which puts him on roughly the level of a particularly smart thirteen year old. However, even after being forced to acknowledge an outsider’s point of view he still concludes that the only way to put a stop to Sojo’s violence is even more violence. Good news everyone Chihiro’s figured it out we can go home. The way you break the cycle of violence is actually just being the best at violence… the most violentest… Chihiro’s big moment of character development is not going to save a little girl. Chihiro would have done that at the beginning of the arc. What moves the needle forward on Chihiro’s arc is him being forced to acknowledge Sojo’s point of view. Does Sojo have a point of view that is worth acknowledging? That’s debatable, but it’s important to understand how Chihiro sees the world. He slaughters the most low level yakuza members like they’re npcs in a video game without even a second thought.

He doesn’t care about the interiority of these people at all, whether they might have family members, whether they might have gotten involved in crime because they were down on their luck. Sojo is the first person to make Chihiro stop and consider his motivations, because he’s not fodder that Chihiro can just rip apart limb by limb without even a second thought. Sojo is strong enough to make Chihiro stop and think and actually acknowledge him as a person and not a non-player character in a video game.

INTRODUCTION

Kagurabachi sets itself from classic revenge tales because the enemies that Chihiro kills are not targets on a list for him to cross off one at a time. Each enemy is instead a character for Chihiro to learn from, and develop from a child mentally trapped in the worst day of his life to an adult who is able to freely navigate a world where things are not always so clear cut as they appeared in his childhood stories of heroes and villains.

The villains that Chihiro sees as pure evil and in need of culling in order to protect the good are also the primary force that pushes Chihiro’s character development along.

Chihiro’s primary character flaw is his naivete and therefore the people he fights are outward manifestations of the the things he does not want to confront about himself or the world around him. There is no clearer case than of this than Hiruhiko, someone who insists him and Chihiro are the same every time they are on panel and someone who Chihiro tellingly does not want to acknowledge at all.

A character with a split identity is a common shonen trope. In the big three, two of the three main characters have a hidden evil self sealed inside of them that occasionally comes out to cause destruction. A split identity doesn’t always manifest in a literal split personality. A vigilante like Batman wears a costume in order to survive Gotham’s dark and twisted underworld. Similarly Chihiro adopts the persona of a stoic and brutal killer when we know he is anything but in order to mask his vulnerabilities and shield the child he was before his trauma. What results is an apparent split self, Chihiro is split between the brutal and efficient killer who mangles bodies with little to not hesitation and the thoughtful, kind and supportive boy he shows himself to be around people like Hakuri and Iori. These two Chihiro’s contradict each other and thus a split identity.

One of the most iconic examples of a character with a split self comes from the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, in the original story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde aren’t actually a split personality. Instead Dr. Jekyll is a virtuous man who afraid of the judgement of his peers creates a potion that can transform him into a hideous monster. While masquerading as Mr. Hyde he indulges in all of his vices away from social judgement and consequences as Mr. Hyde will take all of the blame. Eventually though the potion stops working and Mr. Jekyll stops being able to transform back into his original self. When he is stuck as Mr. Hyde 24/7 he is no longer able to evenly divide himself between the virtuous Dr. Jekyll and the vice filled Mr. Hyde.

In Jekyll’s final letter he concludes that “Man is not one, but truly two.” Victorian society strove to set the good from evil in human nature in order to purfiy it, but all humans contain both.

“I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”

Basically you can't rid humanity of evil, because all humans contain both good and evil. There's this scene in Angel the Series season 2 where Angel has been fighting an evil law firm that works for some really important demons. He's convinced all he needs to do is suicide bomb and go to hell and defeat the demons and he'll rid the world of evil. He gets in an elevator and ends up back in the streets of New York understandably confused, because he thought he was going to have a last showdown in hell against a final boss and score a victory for the forces of good.

Angel: "You're not gonna win." Holland: "Well - *no*. Of course we aren't. We have no intention of doing anything so prosaic as 'winning.'" Holland laughs and for the first time Angel turns his head to glance in Holland's general direction Angel: "Then why?" Holland: "Hmm? I'm sorry? Why what?" Angel: "Why fight?" Holland: "That's really the question you should be asking yourself, isn't it? See, for us, there is no fight. Which is why winning doesn't enter into it. We - go on - no matter what. Our firm has always been here. In one form or another. The Inquisition. The Khmer Rouge. We were there when the very first cave man clubbed his neighbor. See, we're in the hearts and minds of every single living being. And *that* - friend - is what's making things so difficult for you. - See, the world doesn't work in spite of evil, Angel. - It works with us. - It works because of us." And with that the elevator comes to a screeching halt. The doors open and Angel looks out to see a homeless person pushing a loaded shopping cart across the plaza in front of the Wolfram and Hart Office building in LA. Holland: "Welcome to the home office." Angel: "This isn't..." Holland: "Well, you know it is. - You know *that* better than anyone. Things you've seen. Things you've, well - done. You see, if there wasn't evil in every single one of them out there (Angel watches as some people in the plaza start yelling at each other) why, they wouldn't be people. - They'd all be angels."

If there wasn't evil in every single human being then they wouldn't be people, they'd all be angels.

In Man and His Symbols, The founder of analytical Psychology Carl Jung identified Jekyll and Hyde as an example of this consciousness “splitting” in two. Just as Jekyll concluded that all humans contain good and evil, Jung concluded that all humans were divided between the conscious outward facing self he termed the ego, and the hidden self dubbed the shadow.

The shadow formed because just like in Victorian society, we are taught certain traits are undesirable so we must hide them. The shadow is the despised part of our being. We are all born whole but somehow culture demands that we live out only part of our nature and refuse other parts of our inheritance. We divide the self into an ego and a shadow because our culture insists we behave in a particular manner. The repressed parts of our personality never go away though, all of those traits that we hide still exist inside of us.

“The psychic energy that appears to have been lost in this way in fact serves to revive and intensify whatever is uppermost in the unconscious - tendencies, perhaps that have hitherto had no chance to express themselves or at least have not been allowed an uninhibited existence in our consciousness. Such tendencies form an ever-present and potentially destructive “shadow” to our conscious mind. Even tendencies that in some circumstances be able to exert a beneficial influence are transformed into demons when they are repressed. This is why many well meaning people are understandably afraid of the unconscious…”

Batman - yes we’re going to talk about Batman a lot in this Kagurabachi video. Batman, and his rogue’s gallery are an example of Jungian archetypes. That is the idea that instead of being blank slates, all humans have an inherited nature called the collective unconscious, an inborn stratum of the psyche made up of abstract symbols and patterns called archetypes. Certain themes and character types emerge in legends and myths of every culture of the world because of these archetypes. One of these archetypes is a shadow, the symbol that stands in for the repressed self.

Batman is a shadow character, Bruce Wayne corfonts his own darkest nature early in life, chooses to work with it, and use it to instill fear in others. His bright and dark sides work together in order to face evil. Because Batman is already a shadow oriented character his rogues gallery becomes particularly freakish, more complicated, and a darker reflection of Batman’s own psyche. Lots of comics have analyzed Batman’s relationship with his villains from this angle, in particular Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A serious House on Serious Earth.

QUOTATION: MAD HATTER:

“Sometimes I think the asylum is a head. We’re inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps its your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass and we are you.”

Two Face quite literally mirrors the split between Bruce Wayne and Batman’s two identifies, by being split right down the middle with his scarred and unscarred face. Then there’s the Joker.

In Batman and Psychology, analyzing Joker from a Jungian Angle: “The joker, laughing murderous psychopathic, brightly colored Clown Prince of Crime, shadows only Batman, not the whole character. The joker has no alter ego. [...] He does not want to see Batman by daylight. The Persona is the mask, essentially a collection of masks that the ego wears when interacting with the outer world. [...] The persona helps keep the shadow hidden. The joker hates the nice, bright masks people wear. He strives to smash masks, trying to unleash people’s Shadow on the assumption they’re all monstrous at heart.”

This is an example of how in a story a character can act as a symbolic representation of the main character’s psyche, by acting as an externalized shadow. Every time Batman conrfonts one of his villains he is essentially confronting a part of himself projected outwards onto another person. With that let’s finally talk about Kagurabachi.

HIRUHIKO and Chihiro’s First Confrontation

There is Jungian symbolism built into the world of Kagurabachi itself. In Kagurabachi spirit energy exists inside of every single person, but sorcerers are able to amplify it to use sorcery in the form of one technique they are born with. That is similar to Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious people in Kagurabachi aren’t blank slates but rather are born with inherited natures. Swordwielders on top of that have to make a contract where they permanently lose their innate sorcery technique in order to use an enchanted blade. That is in order to use these swords that were built for a higher purpose, they must split themselves in half and sever their connection to the innate, primal nature they were born with. Chihiro has formed a contract with enten long before the beginning of the story so his innate sorcery is gone. Chihiro is also a character who unlike batman does not incorporate his shadow and ego together in order to do good. Instead Chihiro is almost entirely severed from his shadow. He refuses to look at the darker part of his nature, which is why he can slaughter people on mass in the most inhumane way possible, just butchering their corpses until there’s nothing even left to bury and still act like a pure hearted hero who buys little girls ice cream. Chihiro hasn’t reconciled with his shadow self he just doesn’t even acknowledge it. We never see him seriously grappling with the guilts of the hundreds of people he’s killed as a part of his revenge quest, not to the extent that someone like Samura has grappled with the death toll.

In fiction a character will often be forced to face the outward manifestation of their flaws in an antagonist that embodies the shadow archetype. Harvey Dent is a version of Bruce Wayne who failed to maintain the boundary between his two identities and started to suffer from full on dissasociative identity disorder. Jason Todd was once Bruce’s own protege until being killed by the joker and resurrected left him orphaned, and led him to concluding that Batman needed to execute his rogue’s gallery.

These are all outward manifestations of Bruce’s internal struggles that he suppresses in order to function. The fear that he might not be able to keep a clear line between Batman and Bruce Wayne. The fear that one day he might go too far and decide to start executing criminals.

Chihiro’s repressed shadow takes the form of Hiruhuko. A character with such an intimate relationship with Hiruhiko he claims to be the only one who can understand him upon their first meeting.

Quotation: Kagurabachi Chapter 52

Hiruhiko: I’m so glad you’re raring to go. I’ve been really looking forward to this moment. Hiruhiko: I’m 18 too. Same as you. Chihiro: So what? Hiruhiko: Killing people. Hiruhiko: I first learned about that option when I was three. It became etched in my bones. But the kids around me weren’t like that. Up till now, I’ve never had anyone my age I’d consider a peer. Chihiro Rokuhiara, You and I could be friends. Hiruhiko: Finally, we meet! When I turned 18, my hands were already covered in blood, and you’re the same. Chihiro: Don’t you dare equate me with you and your heinous deeds! Hiruhiko: We’re equals! You can call me Hiruhiko.

Chihiro is quick to reject any similarity between him and Hiruhuko, so let’s be overly pedantic and list off all the way the two characters parallel each other. They are both only eighteen years old and became murderers after being exposed to violence at a young age. They’ve never gone to school a day in their lives and have little if any exposure to the outside world. They are both incredibly effective and brutal murderers, Chihiro and Hiruhiko don’t just kill people they sever them limb from limb and chop them up into little pieces and brutalize the dead bodies like they’re mannequins. They are both mass murderers, one reddit user counted and Chihiro’s body count is actually in the hundreds.

They both had the direction of their life significantly influenced by a paternal figure, for Chihiro its his father Rokuhiro and for HIruhiko it’s Yura. They both join sorcerer organizations as child soldiers on opposite sides of a war, the Kanumabi and the Hishaku especially. Blurring the line even further is that the Kamunabi is infiltrated with several Hishaku sympathizers all the way up to the top brass who share the Hishaku’s goal of gaining use of the enchanted blades.

They both have little actual experience in learning swordplay having relied on sorcery all their lives instead, but because of their aptitude as geniuses they pick it up. They both also pick up swordplay quickly by imitating others and fighting stronger opponents. Chihiro was an artisan who wanted to be a swordmaker before he started his revenge quest, and Hiruhiko’s sorcery takes the form of paper cranes which is considered an artform of the upper class.

Hiruhuko also is shown enjoying theatre, another upper class activity. Hiruhiko grew up in poverty, whereas Chihiro’s mother is elevated nobility and he is technically a member of the prestigious Soga family as revealed in the Seitei war arc flashback.

Their corresponding childhood trauma is also shown in their art forms, Chihirio wanted to become a bladesmith along with his father out of admiration. Hiruhiko imitates artforms out of the upper class out of envy for his lower than dirt position in life. Even the Oiran he summons as a part of Kumeyuri add to this symbolism, as Oiran are elite, highly educated performers trained in art, music and dance who were considered to be a step above prostitutes. The women are faceless because the women themselves don’t matter, just the fashion and the jewlery that symbol their status.

They’re both exceptionally childish, and even though Hiruhiko is a self admitted murderer he sees the world in terms of heroes and villains just like Chihiro does. Except in Hiruhuko there’s a longing to reverse the role and be seen as a hero, as shown when he finds the play he sits in on boring and tries to cast Chihiro in the role of villain in front of the audience.

QUOTATION: KAGURABACHI CHAPTER 52

Hiruhiko: You feel it, don’t you? Hiruhiko: To the average person, you’re a monster.

Chihiro: Who’s fault is that? Hiruhiko: Don’t you see? I’m the only one! I’m the only one who can understand you!

Chihiro: Cut the BS!

During the Sword Bearer assassination arc, Yura offers to do a coin flip just before invading the Kamunabi headquarters. Later on he also fights Soshiro Azami whose sorry involves flipping a coin. It’s the same reason that Two face flips a coin that is scarred on one side in order to absolve himself of the guilt of having to make a decision. (Okay, I’ll shut up about Batman for a little bit I promise). Two sides of the same coin is a common phrase used to describe two things that are seeming opposites, but are in fact closely related.

Persona and Shadow are also, two sides of the same coin. They are both manifestations of the ego, but one is outward facing and one is hidden away. It’s not coincidence that Chihiro and Hiruhiko’s first significant confrontation takes place in a theatre. Traditional japanese theatre called for restrained acting and instead relied on masks crafted to display different emotions to outwardly project what the character was feeling to the crowd.

Robert A Jordan: Owning Your Own Shadow

“The persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world. It is our psychological clothing and it mediates between our true selves and our environment just as our physical clothing presents an image to those we meet. The ego is what we are and know about consciously. The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know.”

Chapter 53 itself is called Darkness. Chihiro confronts HIruhiko on his true nature as a killer. He uses Kuro to draw the paper cranes to himself, as the entire panel turns black. In the last panel of the chapter he is drenched in his own blood, which is covered in a thick black as well. Hiruhiko is metaphorically searching the darkest corners of his soul, but at the end of this chapter what happens isn’t an acceptance of his shadow but a further rejection.

Quotation: Kagurabachi Chapter 53

Chihiro: Don’t worry, I’m a sinner too. The first time I killed a person I accepted that I’m a monster. The least I can do is refrain from causing harm to others and take you Hishaku bastards to hell with me. Now talk.

Kagurabachi Chapter 54:

Hiruhiko: Why would you go to such extremes just to protect them? In the end, they’re nothing like us. Chihiro: As long as they’re safe I don’t care. It doesn’t matter how they see me. Killing is horrible, yes we’re both killers, but… Hiruhiko: I don’t get it. Like me, his sole purpose in life is to kill. Now we finally meet! Chihiro: I refuse to accept your ways. Hiruhiko: But killing is killing. Chihiro: Not all killing is the same. (If all killing was equivalent to what you guys do. I’d be betraying the beliefs of my heroes.) I refuse to accept that. Hiruhuko: (But you’re like me? Why don’t you understand? If we can’t meet each other and connect) We’re the same. Chihiro: No. That’s why we seek to kill each other. Hiruhiko: (I get it. We seek to kill each other because we’re different. That’s why when we meet we fight to the death. With everything we’ve got. This is friendship!!!)

Chihiro accepts the fact that he’s a killer, but I’d argue on some level he doesn’t truly accept it. We’ve seen how someone wracked with guilt acts, Samura is a character who is struggling to come to terms with the sheer amount of people he has killed in his life even though they were apparently “bad people.” Chihiro however still has this narrative of seeing himself and the other swordbearers as heroes that he clings too. He has this justification that there needs to be somebody who does the dirty work eliminating evil of society, and that his mass murder is actually in part a noble sacrifice so the rest of society can function.

Kagurabachi, Chapter 111:

Samura: Throughout our history, humankind has been plagued by evildoers. Leading up to the Seitei war, my job was to kill them. It was a duty shouldered by those who had honed their skills. To eradicate evil and protect the vulnerable, but killing people is scary, I was afraid of severed flesh and it was never ending. Soga: those scars. Are you seichi samura? Samura: Who are you? Soga: You can go home. Samura: It’s truly horrible isn’t it? (He’s performing his duty too.) (Amid that pile of corpses we felt a sense of mutual understanding. That was my first encounter with Akemura). Soga: But that’s precisely why people like us, must continue to wield the katana. Beyond all this I’m convinced there’s a peaceful world.

Chihiro’s moral justification is yes murder is evil, but I only murder evil people in order to protect the weak because someone has to do it. Japan’s crime rate is out of control and the Kamunabi lacks the manpower in order to put a stop to events like the Razukaichi so I must make the sacrifice of getting my hands dirty.

Chihiro’s foundational belief is “eradicate evil and protect the vulnerable.” By massacring evil in the way that he is, he’s protecting innocent people, and he has to do this because Japan’s government is too weak right now to enforce its own laws. Akemura Soga repeats the exact same phrase, “To eradicate evil and protect the vulnerable.” Which means that Chihiro’s mantra is the exact same as Genocide Mcgee over here. Chihiro’s sense of morality is not as adult as he pretends it to be, is what I’m getting at over here. Chihiro puts on a facade of having accepted his morally grey position in the world while still thinking in black and white terms. On Kohlberg’s six stages of Moral development, Chihiro is right around Stage 1 Light Yagami. Society would be better if we just eliminated all the bad people. What bad people? Who gets to decide what qualifies as bad? What is the difference between a bad person whose committed a killable offense and a person who deserves a second chance?

Stop asking so many questions nerd! Let’s ignore the morality discussion for now and go back to Chihiro. God Chihiro’s cool, like he’s got a cool sword. It’s pointy and sharp and it’s a sword. Setting aside the morality of Chihiro’s actions this is also not a good answer for Chihiro’s personal development as a character. If you’re a fan of Chihiro’s character growth, does killing off all of his enemies, dying and going to hell sound like a good ending for his character? Does that sound like a character arc where he’s learn to see more in the world than just his short sighted revenge?

Chihiro frames his taking down evil as a martyrdom, he’ll never have a normal life, he’ll live with the guilt of killing hundreds and eventually die with that and go to hell, but the world will be a safer place. This martyrdom is shown in Samura’s decision to die alone after killing all of the swordbearers, and its a solution that Chihiro thoroughly rejects when he gets in the way of Samura’s attempts to sacrifice himself. Samura’s attempts to martyr himself and die taking all of his sins with him did not fix the problem either, it just caused pain for everyone around him, and made him act like a deadbeat and abandon his responsibility towards his daughter.

Chihiro’s inability to accept that he is a killer, and instead dressing himself up like a hero. Clinging to the outward persona he is projecting and not acknowledging his shadow is bad on two levels, it’s morally shaky because Chihiro never has to face the amount of people he’s killed or the particular brutality he goes about killing, and it’s also bad for his personal development because Chihiro cannot grow as a whole person if he cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. Samura concludes that Soga turned into genocide Mcgee because he stopped seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The manga goes out of the way to show us that Soga was not a madman, he was perfectly in his right mind. He made a rational decision to kill everyone on that island with the same disregard for life that Chihiro shows for random yakuza mooks.

THE SHADOW AND PROJECTION

Chihiro denying Hiruhiko is an act of self-denial. It’s more than just being disgusted with Hiruhiko for being a killer, Chihiro does not even want to look at him. This is because Hiruhuko reflects all of the things that Chihiro finds undesirable in himself. Including his guilt for murder which as I have illustrated above he definitely has no come to terms with.

ROBERT A JORDAN “Unless we do conscious work on it, the shadow is almost always projected: that is, it is neatly laid on someone or something else so we do not have to take responsibility for it.”

Hiruhiko in many ways come to embody the shadow and the repressed unconscious mind. As stated above the unconscious mind is in part made up of inherited animal instincts that are repressed due to the civilizing force of society. Not only is Hiruhiko positioned as an outsider who grew up dirt poor and can only look to art and culture things that signify the upper crust of society with envy. He is described as a wild animal. His first kill is biting a man to death like a savage beast.

Kagurabachi Chapter 70: Narrator: A wild animal. Hiruhiko killed a man for the first time at the tender age of three. He bit to death a full grown man who was assaulting him. Fighting is his way of life. Using spirit energy is like breathing for him. It transcends consciousness and enters the realm of pure instinct. Those survival instincts, hand in hand with Hiruhiko’s unorthodox fighting style gave birth to an extremely innate and unconstrained sword technique. Hiruhiko: You doing that kata thing again? You guys are idiots? All this tradition stuff is a load of crap.

Hiruhiko like the Joker seems to have a complete disregard for the persona. The oiran he summons are faceless, their faces, the outer masks they wear to face the world don’t matter. Tradition, culture, even things like learning straightforward swordplay Hiruhiko shows disregard for any hallmarks of society. Just as Joker does not care for Bruce Wayne or anyone under the mask, Hiruhiko is only interested in Chihiro the murderer, not the boy underneath.

Hiruhiko’s contract with Kumeyuri also fits his characterization as Chihiro’s shadow. Each of the six enchanted blades has included allusions to the cycle of Samsara. Cloud Gauger with its ice abilities is a parallel to the ice cold Naraka. Tobimune with its rebirth abilities. Then there is Kumeyuri with its illusory abilities (Maya).

Jung’s theory put an extra special emphasis on dreams. As the unconscious mind is suppressed throughout most of the day time, the only way it could communicate with the conscious mind is through dreams. Dreams which are an illusory world made up of a mixture of symbols, emotions and past events

If you want even more Jung, the next step after the confrontation with the shadow in personal development is acceptance of the anima the feminine part of the male mind. Chihiro starts to get a grasp on Iai white purity style by observing Hiruhiko’s swordplay but he only gets the full picture when he sees Iori’s way of drawing the sword. Iori is a feminine counterpart to Chihiro, she is the daughter of one of the swordbeaers and like him her entire childhood was stolen away because of the war and her father’s legacy.

When Hiruhiko appears forcing a confrontation, all of Iori’s repressed memories flood to the surface again, they move from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind and she becomes a whole person again.

Kumeyuri’s other revealed ability is play. Due to the fact that he sees almost everything and everyone as objects, Hiruhiko is able to manage things like resurrecting corpses in order to fight on his behalf and even destroying a whole building because he considers the building to be an object. This objectification is another way in which he reflects Chihiro.

QUOTATION: Kagurabachi 75

Toto: See, your wounds are serious. With Kumeyuri’s abilities, we can get away. You don’t have to get risky here. Hiruhiko: Let me get risky. If we miss this chance ther ewon’t be another… We need to get his daughter. Toto: Tell the truth. There’s no way your mind is thinking that far ahead. Hiruhiko: Harsh! (I won’t end it like this). That’s all it is, right? Toto: Just like a kid always wanting to play just one more game. Hiruhiko: Is it that obvious? Toto: Totally. How long have we known each other!? Hiruhiko: No quitting! Just one more time!

Toto who has known Hiruhiko for a long time claims that Hiruhiko is just like a kid playing a video game over and over again, that’s how abstracted other people are to him. THis again is a reflection of Chihiro who doesn’t fully accept the gravity of all the people he’s murdered. What do I mean by that?

There’s this video game called No More Heroes. The main character Travis Touchdown accepts a job to assasinate a man because he’s broke, and after completing it he’s informed that he’s the 11th-best hit man. If he kills the ten other high ranking killers above him then the girl who recruited him into the assassin organization promises to have sex with him. He then proceeds to fight all of the higher ranking assassins with his laser katanas. The joke of the game is that Travis despite having this kill bill style mission to track down these ten assassins is just a loser doing this for the flimsiest of reasons. He’s a broke otaku with no friends who spends all of his free time with his cat. Killing is basically the only thing he is good at. The reason I bring him up though is that in between the big boss fight missions you have to level grind by taking missions where you just slaughter mooks over and over. They’re very repetitive missions you basically just stop paying attention and shake the wii remote the whole time while Travis Touchdown chops a guy’s arms and legs off.

The same way I treat those level grinding missions when I’m playing No More Heroes is how Chihiro treats every low level Yakuza he comes across. They are just npcs to be slaughtered with no regards for their humanity. Except we’re not supposed to think what Travis Touchdown is doing is heroic, he’s parodying characters like Chihiro.

Hiruhiko mirrors Chihiro’s dirsregard for life but at its rawest and most honest form. Chihiro at least draws distinction between innocent and evil people, whereas Hiruhiko draws no distinction at all everyone else is an NPC.

The only person that Hiruhiko acknowledges as an equal is Chihiro who he is desperate to be seen by, but after their second confrontation Chihiro again does not even look his way. He is too focused on Samura.

Narrator: Tobimune’s third power is suzaku. The power of the immortal bird to self combust and rise again. However, he’s already further evolved that power in previous battles. In his true form, he can apply that boon to more than just himself. Seeichi Samura’s suzaku flames reached everything affected bt the altered stat Hiruhiko inflicted with the Kumeyuri. The first time Hiruhiko ever cared sincerely for anything, his all-or-nothing rampaging blitz in a single moment was completely nullified.

This again is reflecting a negative flaw of Chihiro’s that is his selective empathy. Chihiro basically divides people into good victims and bad victims, if someone is in the good category than it doesn’t matter what they’ve done Chihiro will move mountains in order to find some way to help them. Samura may have killed far more people than Hiruhiko but because he was one of Chihiro’s childhood heroes, Chihiro will not give up on trying to stop him from sacrificing himself in order to save the world. Chihiro was willing to give a lot of grace to Hakuri, even though Hakuri participated in human trafficking because of his family. He even sympathizes with a few of Hakuri’s family members, but only when they show traits Chihiro identifies with, that is a desire to please their father and chafing under their father’s legacy.

Chihiro does not utilize his shadow self, he is almost completely cut off from it. He’s not an objective person a lot of his decisions are based on personal projection. Hakuri, Iori and even Samura reflect parts about Chihiro that he sympathizes with, but all of the unsympathetic parts of himself he sees reflected in Hiruhiko he ignores and rejects. At the end of this confrontation Hiruhiko is left suicidal with no reason to live.

KAGURABACHI: CHAPTER 78

Hiruhiko: Kill me. Those eyes… Hiruhiko: Those eyes. He feels nothing for me, not even hatred. Aaah. *(crying noises).

This looks like it could be the end of Hiruhiko in the manga, but I highly doubt it. For one, Hiruhiko is still reflecting parts of Chihiro’s character journey. He loses an arm just like Chihiro did in his confrontation with Sojo. Chihiro ends part one of the manga in a similar situation to Hiruhiko. Hiruhiko tried to win in a three way battle between him and Samura and Chihiro only to be ignored by both opponents and lose possession of the Kumeyuri. Chihiro ends part one trying to fight in a three way battle between him, Samura, and Akemura, only to be ignored by both opponents and have Enten Broken. If Hiruhiko was no longer going to be relevant than why is he still mirroring Chihiro to this extent?

My prediction is that Hiruhiko will be important to Chihiro’s development after the reforging of Enten and the Seitei arc flashback.

But before I get to that I’m going to start talking about Batman again.

WHY DOESN’T BATMAN KILL THE JOKER?

Batman’s no-kill policy is a common point of controversy with his character. If Batman really cares about stopping crime why not put an end to his worst enemy who has proven time and time again to be iredeemable?

Jason Todd: Ignoring what he’s done in the past. Blindly, stupidly disregarding the entire graveyards he’s filled, the thousands who have suffered, the friends he’s crippled. I thought killing me - that I’d be the last person you’d ever let him hurt. If it had been you that he beat to a bloody mass. If it had been you that he left in agony. If he had taken you from this world, I would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death worshipping garbage and sent him off to hell. Batman: You don’t understand. I don’t think you’ve ever understood. Jason Todd: What? Your moral code won’t allow for it? It’s too hard to cross that line? Batman: No, god almighty no. It’d be too easy. For years a day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t envisioned taking him and spending an entire month putting him through the most horrendous, mind boggling forms of torture. All of it, building to an end with him broken, butchered and maimed, pleading, screaming, in the worst kind of agony as he careens into a monstrous death. All i have ever wanted to do was kill him. Batman: But if I do that, If I allow myself to go down into that place I’ll never come back. I want him dead, maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Jason Todd: Why? Batman: What? Jason Todd: Why doa ll the cub scouts in spandex always say that? If I cross that line there’s no coming back. I’m not talking about killing cobblepot, and scarecrow, or clayface, not riddler or dent. I’m talking about him. Just him. And doing it because he took me away from you.

Jason Todd is upset notably because Batman didn’t take revenge. He was put in the same situation as Chihiro, the catastrophic death of a loved one and he didn’t decide to start getting his hands dirty and rid the world of the joker permanently so that he can never harm anyone again. Jason interprets this as a sign that Batman doesn’t truly care for him. While Chihiro believes his revenge rampage is born out of love for his father.

Batman’s response is that it would be too easy. It would have been too easy for him to decide that this is his breaking point, and start executing crimminals from then on. Purge gotham’s streets of all the evil the way Chihiro does. It reflects a simple kind of logic, the childish kind that Chihiro ascribes too, all you need to do to make Gotham a better place is get rid of all the bad people.

Batman can’t believe in that childish logic the way that Chihiro and Jason Todd can because he is a fully functioning adult, he is someone who has integrated both of his persona and his shadow together in order to fight crime. We can answer the question of why the Batman doesn’t kill the joker from a Jungian perspective, because all of batman’s villains are reflections of his fragmented psyche. As a whole person Batman does not feel the need to repress, or try to ignore his shadow like Chihiro does. He can instead integrate parts of his shadow into his self, which is why he is shown to have such a unique relationship with his villains. Batman accepts his shadow into himself so he is not projecting his flaws on others like Chihiro. He doesn’t turn away from people because they reflect parts of himself he doesn’t like. Rather Batman is able to see humanity in his enemies because he is so aware and accepting of his own flaws.

Let me describe one of my favorite scenes in Batman the Animated Series.

Baby Dahl is a former child star who was unable to get an acting job later on in life due to suffering from dwarfism or something similiar. After reaching her breaking point she decides to kidnap the rest of the cast of her old cancelled tv show and perform for her in an attempt to recapture her lost youth. Baby Dahl is frankly speaking off of her rocker, and her story is a bit less tragic than most batman villains. She’s basically a washed up vain star, even Dick Grayson Robin has little sympathy for her when he hears about her circumstances.

Batman eventually catches up to her and foils her plot. He pursues her into a mirror maze and this is where we get the most famous scene in the episode, Baby-Doll is still dead set on killing Bruce (this is also where Bruce shines, Baby-Doll is actively firing a gun at him and he is still calling out at her to stop because she might get hurt).

Baby Doll fires at the mirrors over and over again, until one of the funhouse mirrors shows her what she might look like as an adult, at which point not only does Baby-Doll come to a complete stop, but she talks not in her Baby Doll voice, but as Mary-Dahl.

Mary Dahl: Look. That’s me in there. The real me. Mary Dahl: There I am… BUt it’s not really real, is it? Mary Dahl: Just made up and pretend like my family, and my life and everything else. Mary Dahl: Why couldn’t you just let me Make believe?

She then grows angry at realizing that she is trapped on the other side of the mirror and will never exist in that adult body, she starts firing at every mirror around her trying to get batman who stalks her once again as an unspeaking shadow, until she gets impatient enough to destroy even the idealized image of herself represented in the funhouse mirror. At which point the gun itself runs out of ammo, and Mary breaks down cying. At that point Batman could say that Mary is just throwing a tantrum, that being a washed up child star doesn’t entitle her to hurt others, he could say that her tears aren’t even real because Mary Dahl has pretended to be a child in order to manipulate other people and merit sympathy literally this whole episode. Bruce does not do any of that. Bruce’s only action after following her this whole time, is to remove the gun from her hands so she’s no longer capable of hurting someone, and then when she hugs him, to return her hug and comfort her.

Mary Dahl: I didn’t mean to…

Because, utlimately she’s a human being who needs help. Batman is a hero, and heroes don’t fight victims they save them. Bruce can see the humanity in her because Bruce is also mentally trapped in childhood because of life altering trauma. Bruce also cannot grow up into the person he was supposed to be. They are both trapped in a life they didn’t want and never planned for, Mary can’t physically grow up, and Bruce emotionally can’t leave his childhood trauma behind. Instead of looking away from the ugliness produced by Mary’s trauma Bruce instead finds a common humanity in the both of them.

If it were Chihiro in this scene than he would have just taken Baby Doll out back with the shot gun and got rid of her old Yeller Style. Batman doesn’t kill the Joker because from a Jungian perspective you don’t ignore or destroy the parts fo yourself you don’t like, you learn to get along with them, you harness your shadow. Batman’s empathy is born from his shadow, from his shared trauma with all of his rogue’s gallery he’s able to see them as human underneath the masks and silly costumes because of that.

Which is where I think we are leading to Hiruhiko’s and Chihiro’s next development in the story. Every arc so far has shown Chihiro trying to get through to someone and then recruiting them to his little group. In the Rakuzachi arc it was Hakuri. In the Sword Bearer Assasination arc it was Iori, as his ability to find common ground with her led to her recovering her memories and accepting them.

THe showdown between Akemura and Samura ends with Samura declaring that Chihiro dispelled his curse by facing him head on.

Kagurabachi: Chapter 111

Samura: The war cursed us. I wasn’t able to face my daughter. Chihiro dispelled that curse. Soga: Is that so? Samura: He’ll dispel yours too.

However Chihiro does not perceive genocide mcgee over here as a person at all. He ignores once again the similarities between Akemura and himself, to cast him as another villain he needs to defeat.

Chihiro’s actions of reforging Enten at the arc are significant though, as this shows that Chihiro will be re-evaluating the way he sees the world. If Chihiro is going to dispel Akemura’s curse it won’t be through cutting him down with an even greater bloodshed, but by seeing the humanity in him the same way he does with Samura. Akemura was once a human being who wanted to protect his sister, he was once a person Rokuhira trusted with the most powerful sword, the flashbacks show us that already.

Which means Hiro needs to learn to see humanity in his enemies. The best way to show that is through the character most desperate to be acknowledged by Chihiro and the one who is Chihiro’s unacknowledged shadow reflecting the worst parts of him. Hiruhiko exists in the plot to give Chihiro a much needed lesson in empathy. Thanks to my friend Det_Crits for giving me his notes on Hiruhiko it helped build this post.

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