This chapter. Tsukasa, let me hold your hand and cry with you!
I have so many thoughts and they are jumbled right now.
This image of a teenage Tsukasa clinging to a figure* that looks like his dad, who has given up after he resigned from his job. He wants this figure to take back his words about his value as a person, who measures it with how much money you bring to the table. This person who’s broken.
It is only one of the many aspects of Tsukasa’s load on his shoulders.
Also these manga caps…
As Tsukasa talks to Kago-san, Tsurumaikada takes us back the reason for Tsukasa’s salvation and desperation. The root of all his suffering: Jun Yodaka’s ice-skating performance. This sounds like I am blaming Jun, but I don’t. There’s a good reason that Tsukasa met him at this point in his life. Though his parents didn’t officially divorced they were practically separated. The home was not particularly close knit anymore. While the father suffered a severe depression due to discrimination (they said it was about his educational background) and losing the ability to provide for his family, his mother decided to take his two younger brothers at his grandma’s. Money problems. Broken home. He lived with his dad and older brother Hajime with his aunt at their grandparents’ house. It was good that Tsukasa had discovered ice skating and Jun Yodaka. He was saved. It gave him focus what he wanted to do. Of course, it was a double-edged sword. And Tsukasa suffered, but methinks there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.
This was his impression, these were the thoughts running in his mind, the moment he saw Jun ice-skating for the first time.
What is this? Is this theater? Why is this person so intense? Sports? What kind of rules…? Why am I so moved? From the body, sparks—sparks like he’s bursting out.
With passionate heat, it feels like I’ve been burned through the screen.
What sport is this? To me, who doesn’t even know who this person is—those hands and feet… With only the body, it proves the strength of life. With only the body…
The juxtaposition of Jun giving all his energy and beauty while dying inside because it would be the last time he’d perform on ice in front of the public and then you have Tsukasa who saw the performance as his redemption, of taking it as a cue to help others just by skating and be the burning light to pave the way for the others to follow is a powerful imagery.
Another one that has broken me is that image of a young Tsukasa crying on the floor, headphones on, while he watched Jun skate not only due to the sheer beauty of it but also because he was helpless and desperate to skate asking for someone to take him to the world of skating as they guide him.
I want to skate. I… want to try.
Even without the power to help others, there is meaning— if your life is burning, you can give so much warmth to everyone around you. I want to make people think that too…
This sport… I also want to try becoming a figure skater! I want to know about figure skating!
Me too… like him.
(* this could also be Jun Yodaka in Tsukasa’s imagination begging him to take him. After he saw Jun’s performance his google searches consisted of Jun Yodaka, why did he retire, figure skating, part time jobs.)
The core of Tsukasa’s regret is his low self-esteem due to the lack of support at home.
At the end of the day you have to be careful of what you say to a child (his father, those skating club members) and grab the opportunities (the Kago family and Sho Takamine) right in front of your eyes. But Tsukasa was a child then and did only what he thought he could only do. Kago-san reminded him of that.
“I stare up into his eyes, marking each fleck of gold just in case I won't get another chance to.”
— the fact that this is a parting Viorson line in Iron Flame right before Xaden goes off and does turn Venin (along with those golden flecks slowly turning amber and disappearing in a wash of red) meaning this was just that; one of the last times she’d get a chance to… and I just broke my own heart a little more.
