in occam’s razor, there’s a repeating line indicating yura’s feelings towards sanya - in the first chorus, it goes “but i can’t let you in - wouldn’t even if i could”. the second instance of this line is at the end, and it goes “but i can’t let you in, even though i wish i could”.
this type of technique is pretty common for characters like yura, those who build up walls and have facades to keep up. and usually, these types of line echo each other to indicate a change in the facade: the first line is typically one where the character has their walls up, and the second indicates them being more vulnerable. and at first glance this is what these two lines are - first is yura being very hardline towards sanya, and the second is him, seemingly, indicating a desire for connection still, a desire for the ability to open up to her.
however, occam’s razor isn’t a song about yura opening up. it’s the complete opposite - it’s about him closing himself off even more, becoming even more hardline and choosing to sever the connections he still has left, and going down the path of a ruthless manipulator. and these lines play into this idea in an interesting way, by subverting an expectation of what these types of lines typically indicate: you see, these two lines in occam’s razor aren’t contradictory to each other.
in the second line, yura is not indicating a desire for a connection with sanya, he is indicating a desire for the ability to choose to keep his connection with her. in the first line, he indicates a reality: “i can’t let you in”, and then outlines what he would do in the hypothetical where this is not the case: “wouldn’t even if i could”. in the second line, he again indicates his reality, however also expresses a desire for the previous hypothetical to be a reality: “i wish i could”.
there’s no reason to assume the first statement about what would happen within the hypothetical no longer applies, so in the second line what he basically says is “i wish i had the opportunity to open up to you and choose to not do it”. yura’s entire character arc throughout the story is about taking control of his own life and claiming the power to make his own choices, which at first seems to start out hopeful and wholesome with kt’s view of it, and quickly turns gruesome and bleak with yura choosing to take control of destiny by shooting a guy and going off to manipulate children.
the change we see him undergo in these two lines is going from feeling defeated and resigned to his reality, only being able to make conscious choices in hypotheticals, to expressing an active desire to make his choices and to specifically choose to be closed off instead of just drifting towards that path due to the currents of life. he wants pushing away sanya to be an active choice on his part, instead of just a circumstantial consequence. this is the change he undergoes throughout the larger song, as well: he goes from almost giving up on finding kt and being resigned with his powerless state after his previous stunt, to being dead set on his goal and achieving it through any way necessary, including those he knows to be wrong and non humane.
in conclusion, occam’s razor uses a type of parallelism often used to show characters opening up, to instead shows a character closing himself off as well as tying it into yura’s larger arc of empowering himself to gain agency, which in itself is a subversion of a hopeful, virtuous lesson kt taught him, twisted by his environment into something dark and cruel. and i think that’s neat!
jacobvanloon
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2087
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