Just a silly lil idea I have about how Kenya probably cried a river and rushed immediately to the hospital after the news and remembered this is his childhood crush so he actually took his time to fix himself up before meeting satoru and acted like he wasn’t a mess.
Bonus: he actually waited for Hiromi cause he’s nervous about meeting Satoru alone lol
It's important to clarify that this is my own interpretation of Yashiro, and I understand that not everyone may agree with it. I'm open to new interpretations, but I really felt I had to talk about this, as I feel most people tend to address this topic very superficially, even though it's actually very important to Gaku's character. It might sound like I'm overanalyzing some scenes, but I truly believe no one gives it enough importance.
This analysis is based on the anime and parts of the manga, as I haven't read it completely, but I'm focusing on the chapter dedicated to Yashiro's story, without considering his relationship with Satoru (which I feel would only give me more reasons to confirm my thinking). Again, I'm open to new interpretations of Yashiro, and I'd actually like to see what everyone thinks about him.
There may be some spelling or translation errors, as English is not my first language, apologies for that.
TW: Mentions of child abuse, psychological manipulation, pedophilia, and homicide. !!!
Gaku Yashiro is a character with a rich and deeply dark backstory. There are several interpretations of him; however, one of the best-known and most popular, but also one that is often viewed negatively or misinterpreted, is that Yashiro is a pedophile (though not a pederast in the purely physical sense). While different perspectives exist on this, my analysis focuses on how this is, at the very least, one of the most accurate and profound interpretations of Gaku's true nature.
First, if we analyze his mindset, we can find two complementary interpretations. On the one hand, Yashiro believes that people who manage to succeed in desperate situations do so at the expense of others. When he sees a thread hanging over the head of a child trapped in a familial or social "hell," he truly convinces himself that he is cutting that thread to free them from their suffering. For him, murder is not an act of cruelty, but an act of control. He cuts the thread to end their misery, but at the same time, the power to decide when and how to cut it is what gives him existential pleasure.
He plays as God with the fate of the vulnerable.
On the other hand, there is the interpretation that he simply enjoys the absolute power he feels in deciding the fate of "sinners", in this case, cutting off any hope they have of escaping that hell and relishing their downfall.
Gaku grew up with an older brother who his family saw as a failure, which placed all the pressure and support on Gaku, causing his brother to essentially abuse him out of jealousy and frustration. Gaku's brother was a pedophile and a child molester, and Gaku ended up becoming the accomplice who followed the victims to prevent him from continuing to beat him. I've seen other opinions where they say that Yashiro killed his brother because he didn't agree with what he was doing, but at least from what I interpreted in the manga panels, Gaku never seemed bothered by his brother's actions. He was completely indifferent to it; for him, helping him was just a bargaining chip so that his brother would stop abusing him. There was no morality in Gaku, only a survival instinct and total indifference towards the girls. The only reason he decides to kill his brother, making it look like suicide, is because the brother was planning to frame him after an abuse gone wrong, and because at that crucial moment, Gaku saw the spiderweb on his head for the first time.
After this event, the manga shows us a very strange panel where Gaku appears with several girls, and "the wish he had been holding back" is mentioned. From then on, the story shows how Gaku strives to build a facade and pretend to be a normal person. There's one panel in particular that interests me, the one he shares with his fiancée and future wife. The manga mentions that she's a specialist in psychology and child development. From that moment on, it's revealed that Gaku was only interested in her for the clinical and professional information she could give him, which helped him fulfill what he felt he "had to do."
There's a panel that's very important to me, the one where his wife is shown with her back to the camera. The fact that she's completely exposed but with her back turned conveys Gaku's total disinterest in her as a person, on an emotional, physical, and sexual level. She's not a woman to him; she's just a tool to camouflage himself from society and a source of information on child psychology that he uses to refine his methods. Immediately after this, Gaku says the phrase "my older brother was living inside me," which speaks volumes. It means that he has inherited his brother's "desire," but he has refined it and made it much more dangerous thanks to his own intelligence. Gaku isn't someone who cares about adults or anyone else, really; he's only interested in trampling, manipulating, and controlling those below him in his web, turning the abuse he suffered in his childhood into the driving force behind his own monstrosity.
Yashiro is probably an incredible villain, and one of the most complex. I feel the reason most people don't believe this is because it's never explicitly stated or mentioned, since the manga doesn't hesitate to address sensitive topics directly. But I don't think it needs to be stated directly when it's already so implicit in the character, although I feel everyone can interpret it in their own way, though it should be taken with great care.
I hope you enjoyed this analysis. Give me your opinion and let me know if you think it makes any sense.
Perhaps I'll do an analysis of his relationship with Saturo later, as that's almost a completely separate topic, even though it's a key part of the final Gaku arcs.
