Chapter 152.1
I’m not sure this is obvious unless you look at the raws, but this chapter’s title and Chapter 151’s title are matching. “Tsuna gu mono” and “igyou no mono” both have the word for “something” in the same place. It makes this title feel like a direct response to the four weeks of build up to seeing Mizuha again. The "thing that connects" her to her friends has been warped. Maybe this is an easy connection to make and I'm just being pretentious as usual.
Tonari's pain in the ass song makes her seem childish, even though she’s still trying to maintain an adult persona. In the short time we saw her, she expressed the idea that Fushi’s such a child that she, their mature mentor figure, has to help them out. I’m pretty sure it’s to cover up she actually worries about them just because she loves them, but even so Tonari restricting her role in Fushi’s life to cleaning up after them is demeaning for both of them.
By the way I am absolutely going to take a decent chunk of this post to talk about Tonari even though she did practically nothing. Because I love her. But first: you can see that Bon's been discarding his shit here too. The macarons and tea set are definitely his.
Twice now we’ve had Tonari’s point of view as she thinks about Fushi while they’re meeting with the left hand. It’s to show the contrast between two people who like Fushi (Mizuha and Tonari), obviously, but also going way back to the Jananda arc, Tonari was the only one who tried to save Fushi when they pretended to go with Hayase. Right now, they've gone off with one of her successors, but Tonari's not going to save them because she doesn't want to be controlling like Hayase. She's matured, but not in a good way! Her childish selfishness (for lack of a better word; basically the freedom to do what she wants) was what let her foil Hayase's plans way back in the day, but she can't do that anymore because she already tried to take an active role in Fushi's life, and it didn't work out. It’s like the timing was off, and now that Mizuha is actually an issue, Tonari’s worried about Fushi, and there are weapons right in front of her, she's not going to do anything. It furthers the feeling that things were supposed to play out a certain way, but they've gotten twisted somehow (like the present era being a subversion of the concepts introduced in the previous era on purpose, not like Ooima accidentally fucked the story up).
Mizuha, by the way, is absolutely living selfishly. She has what she's always wanted: someone who dotes on her and exists only to fulfill her desires. Obviously this is not a healthy relationship, which is what Mizuha truly wants. I've said this before, but Mizuha won't conceptualize a relationship with two people who are equals, because she's never seen one. The closest she got was trying to convey to Hanna way back when she ran away from home that Hanna was special to her with the feather hair-tie. Mizuha's character deterioration my beloved.
Literally eating Fushi is fulfilling Hayase’s wish to “become one with them” by technicality. If you've read Chainsaw Man, you know what I mean. But although Mizuha possesses Fushi in a materialistic way, she doesn't have what she needs, the immortality part. It would be easy for her to just ask Fushi to make her immortal, and they would agree, but as Mizuha says in this chapter, she doesn't trust them. Why should she leave her most important dream in someone else's hands when she can do it herself?
And then Fushi's response, that there's no real Fushi... Unfortunately this explains how Fushi could agree to let Gugu live with them forever and then jump at their first chance to get themselves killed like his determination means nothing to them. Overriding other people's decisions because they think that they can do better is something Fushi does a lot. Reread the last sentence in the previous paragraph please... yeah. They're just as selfish as Mizuha, in their own way.
Like Tonari says here, regardless of what Fushi does, their friends' wishes will come to pass. Even March and Eko can live on their own and rely on people better equipped to help them grow, like Mimori and their tutor. Fushi's been thinking of themselves like a tool they can use to help their friends, but that tool isn't necessary anymore. So there's no reason for them to stay.
Fushi's response to Mizuha's request, and the fact that eating them isn't enough to become immortal, really emphasizes how difficult it is to pin Fushi down. Unlike Tonari and Satoru, and presumably the knockers, their personality isn't affected if their vessel changes. It remains constant, which is actually pretty special if you think about it. Even if the knockers have one of their bodies, their self isn't affected at all, although their memories are. They're real, like Mizuha says, they can carry a conversation, but everything that makes them them is intangible. This is why the knockers have been having so much trouble finding out "where Fushi's life is located."
Even though Mizuha would probably say she's freer than she's ever been, she's physically trapped inside the Defense Corps. base, and her hair in this chapter is completely black even though her mother's has its usual shine. Funny how her hair only loses its luster after she casts aside the people she was afraid would make her dull. Besides that, it also looks like she’s unwell. I mean, physically unwell. She's always been mentally unwell. The overall vibe is that her depression has actually gotten worse.
About the reason given for why she's being kept underground: it's been hinted that the knockers now want to bring Paradise to humans instead of the other way around. This is exactly what Fushi wishes for as well, so it's possible that this meeting will turn into a negotiation between the Defense Corps. and Fushi about how to collaborate and create a perfect world. But like I said earlier, Fushi's realized that humans will help each other and make a happy world without their interference. It's not impossible to convince them, because we've seen pretty clearly that they're married to the idea of proving themselves to Mizuha, and they change their mind a lot, but it really depends on how the left hand/Mizuha approaches this.
For the majority of this chapter, Fushi was just parroting things they’d heard from someone else. It's especially blatant when they do this with Mizuha, but they do it practically all the time to everyone. Even this trip to find Mizuha in the Defense Corps. headquarters was based on Fushi's assumption that what worked with Fuuna would work with her.
This is one of the reasons Mizuha says nothing they say rings true. You can sort of think of Fushi as a collection of experiences they've had since they took on Johann's form, that just recites the stuff it knows. An oversimplification, yeah, but that's how Fushi thinks of themselves, and it affects how they interact with the world around them. It's funny, all the blocks they've put up to try and prevent themselves from feeling negative emotions are preventing them from connecting with other people. Rather hypocritical of Mizuha to call them out on this, seeing as one of her expectations after achieving immortality is that she'll stop feeling like shit all the time and be able to make friends easily.
By the way, Mizuha herself has a habit of speaking in riddles and half-truths, but she’s never technically lied, as far as I can tell. She values honesty, but as Saki said, she never says what she really means. For comparison, Fushi has lied to her a genuinely impressive amount since they met. And Tonari has been brutally honest. Thanks to Izumi's knocker, Mizuha knows that the Defense Corps. will accept her unconditionally, and as such she doesn't fear the repercussions of acting on her desires, meaning that she doesn't bother mincing words anymore. We saw this in Chapter 146.1 when she kissed Hanna and told her straight (ha) that she liked her, but she almost immediately reverted in Chapter 146.2 when she ran back to Fushi, and couldn't tell them what was wrong. That was because she hadn't had a lot of time to sit with her newfound confidence before confronting Fushi and Hanna, so she ended up cracking pretty quickly when pushed.
When it comes to herself, however, Mizuha has probably become a liar. In this chapter, she kept the conversation focused on Fushi's faults with blunt statements, and avoided their questions about her true feelings. The opposite of Tonari, who's now honest with herself but doesn't share her private thoughts with anyone anymore (another reason why the two of them are foiling each other within the narrative, but not practically).
I’m so glad Fushi having only cried once is actually getting covered in the manga. We’ve never seen them crying and I assumed it was a small mercy from the Beholder, but I also thought Fushi having never cried being something that marks them as the individual “Fushi” instead of a quirk of someone else’s body would be really cool. I mean, their other bodily functions work fine. But what Mizuha's implying is that this makes them less human. This is bullshit and she knows it, but she's still deliberately provoking them because even though Fushi said they don't exist like a page ago, they still get upset at the idea that they appear less than human. God was created in man's image and all that.
Mizuha is so obviously manipulating Fushi but because she/the left hand knows them so well there's nothing they can do. Like how they couldn't act against Mimori's knocker because of a moral loophole even though it was so obviously not doing anything good. They’re trying to rise to her challenge but in the end they’re doing what she wants anyways. I pretty much got my answer and Fushi will probably die. They've decided earning Mizuha’s approval is more important than returning to their friends, and to earn that approval, they’re going to have to use their own words. That would be a lot easier if the few times they tried to reach out to Mizuha about things that they found exciting, she hadn't shut them down. Fushi taking off the rope was a signal that they're willing to do whatever it takes to get Mizuha to listen to them, but also that they're releasing themselves from everything holding them back from saying what they want.
The different directions in Fushi and Mizuha's character development can be summarized like this: if Fushi's learned that having to ask someone not to hate them probably means that they should reassess what they've done to make that person hate them, Mizuha's learned not to ask for forgiveness at all. Why should she? She's convinced that she must be right. And Fushi's learned that they're always wrong.