(long i’m sorry) you are so fucking based for your ai no kusabi take on it being highly metaphorical because yes that’s literally the point. imo it’s very literary and almost philosophical in the way it approaches suffering, love, and desire as annihilation and cosmic surrender. ppl view it through a strictly political lens (which is flimsy at best if you’re trying to totalize the experience) when everything makes WAY more sense if it’s viewed through an erotic one, something similar to the way gothic classica) often use eroticism to express deeper, more complicated themes about our nature as human beings. i think it’s so easy to clock if you have basic media literary too because the central object, a literal cock-ring controlling riki’s desire, somehow doesn’t come off as ridiculous!!!!! it’s so incredibly serious!!!! its an expression of riki’s desire being chained to iason, who can only touch the limitless potential for human passion from a distance, and how both their sex and their death is an act of radical liberation from a society that will always, always demand them suppressed, but also a surrender to the base, often cruel instincts that make us people. even the bdsm pet aspect comes off as way more in-depth than your average yaoi manhwa and it’s not bc it’s a literal expression of systematic oppression, but a broader take on the human condition tbh. its amazing and it’s hard watching it be collapsed into an incomplete political framework by ppl online. the philosophical and the political must work in tandem in order to create a clear picture of art. it cannot just be one or the other for the sake of an easy “video essay style” analysis you can cleanly wrap up and discard.
(The second part of the ask)
Hello, anon! I want to start this by saying that I'm sorry for taking so much time in responding to this ask. I have been quite busy, and I really wanted to take my time to respond to this ask and do so well. Also, really thank you for sending an ask at all ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و I really enjoyed reading it and felt very happy someone also sees the work similarly to me.
To start off, I really agree with what you mention about the interpretations of Ai no kusabi online leaving a lot to desire. For what I have noticed, those misinterpretations are less about seeing the work through a political-only view as you mention, and more about having a very surface level understanding and interpretation of the work and it's themes. I feel like if people were analyzing it with an exclusively political lens, while that would be wrong and fail in a lot of aspects (as you mention, “the philosophical and political must work in tandem in order to create a clear picture of art”) it would still be better than most of the current discourse surrounding Ai no kusabi. Though, I do understand perfectly why you think so and definitely there's a lot of truth in that. Analysis of Ai no kusabi usually revolves exclusively around how the work talks about systems of oppression, usually ignoring and completely forgetting the other main themes of the work like love (which is literally its main theme!! And they all forget!!!), Human nature, sexuality, and identity. I find that the reason so many people have only noticed the themes of oppression is because it's honestly the most easy to identify theme on the work. So people being people, they only point out the most easy to identify theme and ignore the rest. I find that one of the most tragic aspects of this is that the other themes and oppression are extremely interlinked. You cannot talk about oppression in Ai no kusabi without talking about love, humanity, and sex, and you cannot talk about that either if you don't talk about oppression in the work.
I really agree with what you said about Ai no kusabi and eroticism. Everything that has to do with that part of the work is often ignored when people discuss the novel, and that often leads to people misunderstanding a lot of the aspects of the work. You can see it in the way people talk about the master and pet aspects (like you mention) and also I have noticed it a lot in the way people discuss the sex between Iason and Riki. People concentrate so much in the themes of power, that they forget that a key part of the sex Riki has with Iason is the pleasure. A pleasure that goes against what society tells him he should be and what Riki himself thinks he should be. The ending is Riki choosing and accepting that identity that is completely at odds with that society. That's why, with that acceptation Riki has to completely reinvent himself, something that is symbolized with his death, due to his new self being fundamentally incompatible with the society he lives in.
“Even stripped of class and carnal desire. iason would have always destroyed himself to let riki be free, and riki would have always come back for him” I think you put it perfectly here!! This is exactly what the ending is about!!
To finalize this, I'm very interested in what you mentioned about the work approaching love and suffering as annihilation and cosmic surrender, I have to admit I never thought about it that way, but honestly I'm very interested and curious. Something I love about ank is that its metaphoric nature really allows you to interpret it in so many ways, and I really love reading interpretations about it, it's my special interest after all.
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