Akashi. A very interesting and complex character from knb. This is my personal take on why I kin him. Feel free to add anything you'd like or tell me what you think, any and all feedback is welcome. Also my first language isn't English so sorry in advance for any mistakes I made.
So. Why do I relate to Akashi you ask? Well this one is a long one but I already talked to a lot of people about his character so I think I'll be pretty good at giving a summary about this.
Akashi is a character from the anime kuroko's basketball, he's introduced to us as the antagonist at first, as a crazy, sadistic perfectionist and a controlling person. As the show progresses, we find out he has DID, dissociative identity disorder which means his more "evil" personality (bokushi) is another part of his personality that gets out when he feels scared or threatened, a defense mechanism he developed to deal with the pressure he faced.
Akashi had a pretty hard childhood, with his dad being a strict father and a workaholic that demanded perfection from him, and his mother, the only person he felt loved and comfortable with after all of the things his dad made him face, dying (or disappearing, I don't think it has been confirmed) when he was around 9.
A feeling that was present a lot in his childhood was pressure, and therefore, a paralyzing, vital, overwhelming need to escape. Pressure to be perfect, pressure to live up to his name, pressure to be strong, to not make any mistakes, to not show any weaknesses, to not have any weaknesses, it's not that you can't show your vulnerability it's that you can't have vulnerability. You can't be human, you can't be flawed, you can't try you can only succeed flawlessly while looking like you didn't even try. Which is why akashi could never love himself, he was taught he should be perfect, that he's more then that, more then other people, more then himself, more then a human. Every time he finished a workload he needed to do, his father gave him twice the amount he did, because it was never about getting the mission accomplished, it was about making akashi the perfect robot, the perfect tool, the perfect son, the perfect soldier.
Something that standed out to me that akashi said once, and that I think summarizes perfectly why I relate to him so much, is him comparing winning to breathing. Now, it might look like what he was trying to say is that, like breathing, winning comes naturally to him, which is probably what he means to say, but the thing is breathing is not only something that you do naturally but something that you have to do to live. It's vital, and without it, you can't survive.
Akashi sees winning like breathing, something he has to do to live, like those cringy shirts that say "eat, sleep, watch anime, repeat" just that instead of watching anime it's winning because in his mind he must win. He needs to win. He has to.
In the battle against seirin, while akashi perhaps didn't want to lose, he needed to. And I think deep down in his original personality, he knew that he needed to feel what it's like to lose, to truly understand that winning is just a thing, and he doesn't have to do it to be worth something or survive. He can fail, and he'll still be there. He's human. He needed to fail so that loss will wake him up from the trance he was in. for Akashi, winning and being the best isn't just about success, it's a fundamental part of his identity and existence, something he feels he must do to justify his worth and existence. The loss serves as a turning point for Akashi, allowing him to realize that failure doesn't mean the end of his identity or worth. It helps him begin to connect with his other self again, and accept that he doesn't need to be perfect to have value.
Another thing that's important to mention is that the reason akashi's second personality is sadistic, mean, a bad person and all those other things, is because he feels like he's not enough of those things. Which is what I think a lot of the fandom gets wrong sometimes because the reason he has this personality in the first place is to protect himself from having to be those things all the time when he couldn't take it. He's not this strong, uncaring, cold, dominant person, he's scared and alone and feels like he has to be those things but he's can't. And that's where bokushi comes in. He's everything that akashi want to be but can't, sure they're similar in a lot of things because akashi himself is a smart and capable person, but the reason bokushi exist in the first place it to be all the things akashi had to be but couldn't.
I didn't exactly say what about him makes me relate to him because it's everything, this feeling that if you're not perfect, if you don't win in everything, it's not that you're worthless but you just can't comprehend it. It's not scary it's terrifying. it's chilling, incomprehensible, paralyzing. I relate to this feeling of acting like you're mean and perfect and can do everything and nothing bothers you, but you still want to run and hide and just have this perfect self that doesn't feel pain or guilt or love. He's a scared, pathetic, wear person, and he hides behind his other self because he's so terrified of the idea of not being what he needs to be. This is why I relate to him.
I have a lot more to say about this character and about so many others, so if you want me to write anything else I'll be glad to, just leave a request for me!
