having a casual sexual relationship probably wouldn’t have fixed them but it would have made their art way crazier and for that reason i think they should give it a go
emerging from a hole under your askbox floorboards. hi! i really like your blp posts especially the ones abt hashida and murai! if you want could you talk a little more abt your thoughts abt them? hashida haunts my brain frequently i like talking abt him😅
man i’m glad i never got that hole patched up. this rules!!
full disclosure that i have a policy of waiting until i can buy the volumes in official english print to read them (not to shame anyone who reads the unofficial scanlation or anything ofc!! do what you want and more power to you, im just particularly fond of the phrasing choices in the official release) so all of my impressions of them are solely from up to volume 15. if anything i say is contradicted in later chapters please forgive me 🙇♂️
but basically
i think to get to the core of haruka hashida you really examine all the carefully cultivated external flags he throws. the braids, the unabashed artistic voyeurism, his entire body of art- it all begs to be read on a surface level and not necessarily discarded, but certainly… almost debased, i would say? it says ‘here is my laughable art. here is the laughable artist. wouldn’t you like to laugh at it?’ and there’s about a million ways to interpret that (he is the loving eldest brother to three sisters - he is jangling keys at the viewer, entertaining, the same way you might a small child; he is an appreciator of art first and foremost - a voyeur in the most traditional sense - and this is the product of his desire; this is his inscrutable body of work and he would ask you not to try and fucking scrute it, thank you) and quite honestly, at any rate, i think his reluctance to stay down-to-earth in any capacity is plain and simple misdirection. he has more to say, and he either isn’t saying it or he already has and he refuses to let anyone listen.
and the other thing of note for that particular flippant mask is that when it slips, he is Fucking Scary. haruka hashida is a man with the capability to be terrifying!! there’s always kind of an underlying unease with him (and i generally regard this as more of an uncanny valley thing than anything else- an air of inauthenticity, which makes sense, given the everything about him) but there are also times where he is truly fucking intimidating, plain and simple (that one panel during the summer teaching arc comes to mind).
and then there is yakumo fucking murai. his introduction comes right on the tail end of the geidai exams, where the naked body and what it represents was very much the question du jour, and the conclusions reached were not only textually that nakedness was a natural state, but also subtextually (kind of. it’s pretty overt) that there is an inextricable link between an unashamed relationship to nudity and a certain comfortability with death. and with this fresh in the reader’s mind, how does yamaguchi introduce yakumo? he presents a larger-than-life full-body nude portrait of his friend. it’s not only a stunning piece of foreshadowing, but also such a fantastic indication of yakumo’s character right off the bat. this is a man who is loud and boisterous and not afraid to die!!
that relationship between yakumo and nudity continues, and the nature of that relationship is so fucking fascinating- it’s treated as a gag, not necessarily by the other characters (though there is an amount of flippancy there) but by the story itself. it’s framed and staged as a joke. yakumo gets naked when he’s drunk or comfortable (or fucking comfortable!), isn’t that silly? that’s our yakumo! and then the summer trip arc comes in like a truck to the head, and holy shit. suddenly that casual relationship to his body makes complete sense. of course he’s ready to die.
until that point, though, yakumo is effortlessly embodying the very image hashida strives for. he’s a joke. he’s a laughingstock. he’s deeply skilled, but no one takes him seriously. and yakumo allows that to continue because he cannot admit to being anything else because he doesn’t feel like he’s earned it. he considers his grief stolen and unearned even as he hallucinates the form of his dead friend and has a meltdown at her postmortem exhibit.
and the inverse is also true, which is where (i think) the real meat of their dynamic could really come into play- hashida could effortlessly embody what yakumo wants to be, too. because yakumo wants his art to intimidate. he wants it to be powerful and impossible to ignore. that’s why he makes insanely detailed realistic pieces on canvas larger than he is!!! and hashida is intimidating and larger-than-life by nature!! it’s something he has to actively fight against!!!
yakumo’s art strives to demean and hashida’s art begs to be demeaned to. can you even fucking imagine the crazy shit that would result from them being roommates or doing a show together. the potential of their dynamic makes me insane
anyways here’s a picture i drew of them as a treat for reading my inane rambling
still thinking about harukai btw. specifically about yakumo looking at hashida’s incredibly sarcastic tongue-in-cheek body of work and saying hmmm i think you’re trying to hide something with all this. and im gonna find out what it is. and hashida freaking the hell out about it
