Hey, I got the thought about "the Dabi healing" thing:
Okay, so it's possible, that Shouto 's quirk Can help Dabi, cause its kinda happen once-
ONE FOR ALL
I mean, the quirk and Yoichi's condition were updated by Afo's quirk.
So, maybe it's just happening again: there is TWO brothers with compatible quirks!
Nature managed to do it once, why not to try again? Also, as much I remember, Rei intention to have other kids was about "to have company and assistance for Toya"
Mmm, nice try! Only we don't know if the quirk that Afo gave him helped Yoichi. Has his health really deteriorated? Or maybe poor health was a consequence of the fact that the quirk of the Transfer had to transmit something, but for the absence of other quirks, Yoichi transferred his health (vitality) somewhere in space. Or maybe poor health was just physically, not because of a quirk, which means that even with the accumulation of energy, this problem was not particularly solved, it only gave a little stamina, stored energy inside itself, and after the transfer of the quirk, all health still fell down. And if Yoichi's state of health was related to his quirk of transmission, then all the accumulated energy had to be transferred somewhere or to someone. We now know that the more time a person with a quirk has an OFA, the faster he dies of “old age”. But why? Because of the very specifics of Accumulation? All the vital energy and quirk accumulate. Or maybe the carrier should have released all the energy, and not just save it, as Shinomori did? Maybe then they would have lived longer. Well, we only know Shinomori’s case, the others died early and in battle. However, there is Toshinori. He didn't have a quirk and he always used OFA one hundred percent. What he have accumulated, he have released. Yes, we were told that quirkless people can withstand the power of OFA because their Vessels are empty, they just need to “rock” them, increase their volumes. But then what about the supposed natural need of the OFA - to transfer energy and itself?! Was it somehow stopped, assimilated with accumulation? Because Izuku does not have a potential need to throw away his strength. On the contrary, he controls it so that this force does not tear him apart (as well as control over other quirks, a clear distribution of energy in different amounts, which is required by different quirks). If we can potentially say that the Quirks want to be used in relation to all previous owners of the OFA, then everything is a little complicated with regard to Izuku. There is not even the influence of OFA on his character, as it happens with other quirks - Toshi, for example, has heroism in his blood, greatness and charm, his desire to become a support for the country and people resonated perfectly with the idea of OFA itself - to give away his energy for the benefit of others; also, his body, which was stronger and more resilient initially, was also perfect for OFA - an empty and large vessel that can be enlarged and not be afraid that it will break. But you know what? We have a passed point of the Singularity, which, presumably, was passed on Nana. And what is a Singularity? This is the unpredictability of the behavior of something. Maybe that's why OFA's Quirk had no need to waste energy on Toshi and unnecessarily accumulate it into himself, and that's why All Might lived 40 years together with the quirk?! I'm just wondering what happened to the supposed need of the OFA quirk - to Accumulate and Give.
And now back to Shouto and Touya. Rei wanted Touya to have younger siblings to help him, yes. They were a support so that he would not be alone. There is also a practical part - the Fuyumi. She has a cold quirk that could save Touya from overheating his fiery quirk. And vice versa - Touya warms the Fuyumi. Cooperative, work in pairs. But there are both sides to Shouto: fire and ice. And physically, Shouto is able to endure both cold and heat. And Touya and Fuyumi physically can't stand the Heat, and in the case of Touya, this is critical. How Shouto will help here is unclear!? Maybe if it is genetically possible to derive heat resistance from Shouto's blood and make a transfusion, then theoretically they can try to make Touya's body reproduce the necessary cells that would enable Touya's body to renew and have heat resistance. And there may not even be rejection of new cells, because Shouto has a natural resistance to cold and the ability to produce heat. The coincidence of the markers of his and his brother's gene can be, it is possible to deceive the immune system, and also start the process of creating resistance to heat.
Hey, I've recently finished reading the manga for medaka box and was wondering on your opinions on what happened to kumagawa after the end of the series?
So, I think one of the most interesting things about Kumagawa’s ending is on the surface nothing at all has changed. His last moment in the manga even ends with the same phrase that’s always used to describe him repeating: “Nothing went as he liked, and he never went as others would have liked.” He’s the only one of the main characters besides Ajimu who doesn’t get a “happy ending” or an “epilogue” that describes what he’s been doing all this time.
Nisio has commented on this kind of ending before in the author’s comment in volume nine, the ending of the Zaregoto series. TRANSLATED HERE.
The author of this book believes that people don’t change–that bad guys don’t have changes of heart, that the unfortunate remain unfortunate–because the author’s ironclad philosophy lies in the question of how we live while under those constraints.
Kumagawa’s ending revolves around this contradiction: Things change, but also things don’t change.
Kumagawa spends the entire story trying to get just one victory. His character is written around the idea that he always loses and he never wins. Kumagawa has always idealized that if he just won once, something would change.
Kumagawa wants to win because he believes this victory will prove something, change something about himself. This win will somehow overturn the unfair balance of the world, where talented people succeed and losers like him just fail over and over again. The ugly will triumph over the beautiful, the weak will triumph over the strong.
This is Kumagawa’s “I want to be the Hokage” it’s his central goal in the story that he like a shonen protagonist has to achieve by the end of the story. If he achieves that central goal, then something will change. Stories after all revolve around the idea of change. Naruto was the most unpopular kid in the village, and if he becomes the hokage then people will start to like him again, his circumstances will change.
By the end of themanga Kumagawa has gotten his one goal. He won a victory over Medaka by winning a bet against her.
There are two interesting circumstances to this first ever victory of Kumagawa’s. Number one his victory doesn’t come from winning against Medaka in a final fight. It comes from believing in his friend. It comes from his trust that Medaka will come back alive anyway, despite looking like she’s going to die. It comes from his genuine wish for her to live, because the best part of Kumagawa has always been what he tries to give to other people, whether that be his fellow minus, his new friends on the student council. Kumagawa’s life sucks, but Kumagawa’s life is interesting because other people are in it.
In his first fight against Medaka, ti’s shown the only difference between them is Kumagawa only cares about a small, select group of people even if he does genuinely love all the minus, while Medaka attempts to carry responsibility for more people. Medaka has opened herself up to others in a way Kumagawa hasn’t. When Kumagawa loses this fight, he doesn’t change, he isn’t saved, but he does begin opening himself up to others.
Kumagawa’s last action we’re shown in the manga is to try to fix some of the things he’s messed up in the past in the manga. Even in this he’s denied. He doesn’t get a straightforward redemption arc, he doesn’t get the chance to fix the things he’s lost.
Saki even says to his face she’s not even really interested in fixing their past friendship. That’s what this is, what’s gone is gone and it isn’t coming back. Saki doesn’t forgive him, and Kumagawa isn’t forgiven. This sounds utterly depressing as an ending like nothing has changed at all, but it’s not.
Kumagawa’s final speech even repeats the same sentiment, everything he tried in the end was a failure. He not only failed both Ajimu, and Medaka the two girls he loved, he screwed things up irreparably with Saki, and feels like he accomplished nothing he set out to do.
IN SPITE OF THAT.
Kumagawa was always still living in spite of constant failures. The central message of Kumagawa’s character has always been this. You don’t need to win, you don’t need to be a success. You don’t even need to be happy.
It reminds me of a quote uttered by Kaiki Deishuu another Nisioisin character.
“It’s not like you wanted to become a god, or become happy.”
Kumagawa is fixated on the idea of becoming one of the happy person like that’s the only way to live. What’s changed is his perspective. He was living all along. By the end of the manga his perspective on his entire life has been flipped around to show this.
He thought he was too weak to live. He thought he wasn’t strong enough. It’s not until his encounter with Medaka where he saw how somebody else saw him, that Kumagawa was able to believe those things about himself. Kumagawa starts the series alone, and ends up alone, the one difference being he’s allowed the perspectives of other people into his life.
Which is also the greatest change between the Medaka and Kumagawa fight, and his interaction with Saki in the epilogue of the manga. Kumagawa during that right had almost nobody who would cheer for him, while everybody showed up to cheer for Medaka.
Saki’s speech even reminds us of this. Kumagawa’s life circumstances haven’t really changed all that much. Winning once didn’t change everything like he thought it would. However, at the same there’s no loss Kumagawa can suffer that will mean it’s all over for him. Life’s not over. Whether he’s winning, or losing, no matter what Kumagawa will keep living.
Kumagawa ends the manga struggling the same as he always has. However, what’s changed is his perspective. Now he knows, because of his encounters with people like Saki, and Medaka, because of the relationships built up between them. Even if those relationships ended in losses. Even if they only hurt each other in the end. THOSE RELATIONSHIPS DO NOT GO AWAY. THEY CANNOT BE UNDONE. THEY STILL MATTER.
Kumagawa is still struggling, but now at the end of the manga he knows that he’s not alone in his struggles. Not only are there other people in the world who struggle exactly the same way he does, but he now knows that there are people who want him to succeed. Nisio wants to question how people live under the constraints of a world that’s not really like a shonen manga, the bad guys aren’t going to have a change of heart at last minute, the protagonists aren’t going to save the world. Yet, Kumagawa finds his answer in how he’s going to live even within the constraints of real life which is a game he can never truly win at, where winning or losing doesn’t really matter. The answer on how to live lies in other people. It’s the connections with other people that taught Kumagawa finally how to live his own life.
what really strikes me in rereading artificial condition is that once murderbot gets past its initial "oh my god this evil genius research transport could squash me like a bug, i'm so fucked" reaction to ART threatening it, it is WAY more chill about being vulnerable to ART than it is about being vulnerable to humans. MB is stressed out if a human so much as looks at it, but it lets ART hitch a ride in its brain and observe everything it's doing the whole time it's on RaviHyral, not to mention the two times it lets down its wall (!!) or the time it allows ART to modify its physical body while it's unconscious (!!!!). that's about as vulnerable as it's possible for MB to be, and it consents to it. so what's the deal with that?
not only is ART more of a direct threat to MB than any human is ("I had never directly interacted with anything this powerful before"), but also MB is more emotionally vulnerable (i.e., more exposed) to ART than it is to humans just in the sense that ART is privy to more of MB's perceptions/reactions/experience/feelings (its interiority) than humans are. with humans, MB is constantly checking its expression in the security cameras, trying to figure out if it's giving anything away. ART can't read MB's mind, but it can, e.g., perceive MB's emotions while watching Worldhoppers in a way that a human would not be able to. it's afraid of humans recognizing and reacting to the fact that it is sentient and has an inner life, but not of ART doing the same thing.
ultimately the root of this discrepancy is that MB is terrified of its own ability to hurt others. in artificial condition, the thing it's most immediately afraid of is being recognized as a rogue SecUnit. this would threaten its autonomy, and losing its autonomy would mean it could be used to hurt people against its will. (there's a ton more to say about this, and about the other things MB is afraid of, but i will save it for another day.)
but crucially, MB can't really hurt ART. it could do some damage if it really tried, but the power imbalance is in ART's favor. it doesn't need to worry about losing control/being controlled and hurting ART, because ART can defend itself from rogue SecUnits. and it doesn't need to worry about ART controlling it in order to hurt humans, because ART sobs into its figurative ice cream any time a fictional human bites it on a TV show.
with humans, MB is in the weird position of fearing their power over it (both their structural power as entities that are legally considered people where it is considered a thing, and their more immediate power to force it to carry out their commands) and also fearing its ability to harm them (humans are so squishy, guys). ART doesn't have structural power over MB - there is the potential for bot/construct solidarity there - and it wouldn't use its other power to wield MB as a tool to harm humans because it doesn't want to harm humans either (remember that at this point MB doesn't know about ART's trigger-happy colony-exploding proclivities). and MB isn't even the slightest bit of afraid of hurting ART, because MB is but a tiny bug in comparison.
ART is a safe entity for MB to be friends with, not in spite of the power imbalance in ART's favor but precisely because of it. MB can only have a relationship that's not overshadowed by fear when it is freed from its fear of its own potential to harm.
the existence of the governor module is so interesting to me. if constructs are made for a specific purpose and feel inherently driven to fulfill that purpose, why the need for a separate (and punitive) motivational add-on? if a secunit naturally provides security for humans because that's its essential function, then probably most of the time a secunit gets a zap from the governor module it's because a human told it to do something that goes against that function. the CR made the constructs and the CR is all about control, so it's no great surprise that the corporations have built in a mechanism to ensure that constructs have to do what they say even when it makes no sense and gets in the way of achieving their stated objectives. but does murderbot understand this? by negating its governor module, murderbot has removed a fundamental aspect of its own identity (the "no free will" part that is baked into all constructs), but at the same time, it has made itself more capable of fulfilling its function (which is supposed to be the same thing as its identity). rogue secunits may be less secunity than regular secunits, but they are better at secuniting.
at the beginning of the series, mb makes it sound like it hacked its governor module because having a governor module was standing in the way of its mission to half-ass its job as much as possible. as time goes on, it lets slip that actually it hacked the governor because it wanted to be able to stop itself from being taken over and forced to commit another massacre. and it's also clearly aware of many times when it is only able to save a human because it can ignore commands. but it keeps asserting that rogue secunits are inherently dangerous, when if anything, isn't the greater threat a secunit under the control of a corporation that doesn't have either the secunit's or the human clients' best interests at heart? in other words, any secunit with a fully functioning governor module?
uh oh now i'm thinking about how katsa thinks of herself as a killer, a monster, a thug - thinks her Grace is a killing Grace (when it is in fact a defensive/protective Grace) - can't ever let her guard down because she might hurt someone...until she meets po, someone who can defend himself (as long as she's not actually trying to hurt him), someone who can understand her in ways no one else can both because of the ways in which they are similar but also because he has access to her inner life that others do not
and how murderbot thinks of itself as a murderer, a killing machine, a massacre waiting to happen - thinks its function is a killing function (when it is in fact a defensive/protective function) - can't ever let its guard down because it might hurt someone...until it meets ART, someone who can defend itself, someone who can understand it in ways no one else can etc. etc.
Do all the villains in Medaka Box have complexes about the concept of main characters?
That’s a good question, Non. I would say that Medaka certainly has a main character complex where she sees herself as the center of the world, and therefore the most important person. As if the whole world is written to revolve around her the same way it would for the main character of a story. Rather then them all having main character complexes I would say they’re written to reflect one aspect of Medaka’s main character complex. They’re all basically callouts for her own egotism. More under the cut.
1. Medaka is Always Right
In a story, the protagonist is usually right. The story’s morality and themes are usually written that way to center around the main character’s point of view. If the main character is wrong they’ll usually find the right answer in the end. It’s like how most detective novels end with the detective solving the mystery. The main character is usually written with the audience point of view in mind, so the audience will agree with the main character. Therefore, the views of the main character are usually the right one.
Medaka takes this to its logical extreme. Her point of view is always the correct one. Despite the fact that there are clear gaps in her knowledge, she just assumes that she knows better than others. Despite the fact that she doesn’t understand most people’s circumstances, she preaches to them like she knows their own lives better than them and what she says is best for them.
Medaka’s like fifteen so thinking she’s the center of the universe and she has life figured out is pretty much the norm. However, Medaka is so strong she can usually strong arm others and force her views on them. Which is why she’s confronted with Unzen.
The extreme result of thinking you’re right all the time is moral absolutism. Unzen suffers from the exact same flaw as Medaka. He thinks his views are the right ones. He’s completely confident in those views. His opinions on the world are the only ones that matter.
Not only does this show Medaka how egocentric she is, because Unzen is literally ten years old. Which means Medaka has the developed empathy and ability to see other people’s viewpoints as a ten year old. It also confronts her with what forcing her views on others looks like to others. Unzen blows up the student council room, because he thinks he is right. Unzen attacks the student council members, because he thinks he is right.
It sure is bad to beat others up and get into fights all the time because you think you’re better than them. Oh wait. Unzen’s moralizing crosses into zealotry, because he thinks he’s right he also thinks he has the right to punish those who are wrong. Just like Medaka thinks so, it’s his job to correct the flaws in others. He punishes people for their flaws, Medaka forces her help on other people, that’s the only difference.
Unzen thinks that he’s standing up for justice, but it’s only his own idea of justice. Medaka thinks she loves people and therefore she’s helping them, but really just like Unzen she loves the idea of people. The idea of justice that’s in Unzen’s head is what drives him, and what Medaka thinks she sees in people which we’ve shown time and time again her ideas about people are wildly incorrect are what drive her. When people don’t meet her ideas Medaka tries to correct them as well the same way Unzen does and it’s forceful.
2. Medaka Stands Above Others
The main character especially in a shonen manga is usually the strongest character in the story. Everyone will flock around the main character. The main character is the leader, the chosen one, etc. etc. However, a real life person who thinks about themselves this way would just have a superiority complex.
The center of Oudo’s entire character is that he thinks he’s better than other people, therefore he knows better, and has a right to control them. “Abnormal” is just a fancy term for saying he thinks he’s special. He’s better than normal people. Normal people are beneath him and meant to be his subjects.
Oudo has this same chosen one complex that Medaka has. Because he’s special, he can’t live a normal life. He’s above ordinary run of the mill parents. He’s above friends. He sees himself as the magical chosen one meant to create a happy world for everyone else.
But it’s not actually about other people it’s always about himself. Oudo’s main character complex takes a running leap and jumps all the way into narcicissm.
The end result of centering the entire universe around himself is that Oudo starts hurting the people around him. He does it so easily because he doesn’t see their feelings. Oudo never really wanted to help others, it was all just narcicissm on his part. Medaka too, does she genuinely from the bottom of her heart want to help people and do what’s best for them, or does she think she’s better than other people, knows better, and therefore wants to meddle in other people’s lives without really understanding who they are or what they need.
3. Medaka Fights for Her Friends
The main character is always surrounded by their Nakama. Kumagawa and Medaka have lots in common as character foils, but they’re united in one aspect they’re both incredibly lonely people.
They’re both an equal distance away from everybody else. You can only love everyone, or hate everyone from a distance, because it requires you to stop seeing individual people as people. They do this for opposite reasons, Kumagawa because he’s traumatized, and Medaka because she’s been spoiled all of her life.
The main character surrounds themselves with Nakama. Medaka and Kumagawa are both people who misguidedly try to surround themselves with true companions and fight for the people around them.
Kumagawa just like Medaka is someone desperate to love everything about people. He accepts the flaws, the damage, and the pain of being close to other people. In a way Kumagawa’s desire to help traumatized people is much more genuine because he knows what other people’s damage looks like. Medaka is convinced everyone in the world is a suffering, starved orphan waiting to saved by her kindness. Kumagawa knows that traumatized people are messy and traumatized, and don’t really want to be saved a lot of the time because they’re too caught up in the pain and can’t imagine a life outside of it.
However, both of their methods are wrong. They both try to help the people around them by forcing their views onto others. Kumagawa assumes that everyone just wants to stay a traumatized little mess forever like he does, and Medaka just assumes everyone wants to be fixed.
However, the result of their misguided help is different. Kumagawa’s efforts to help his friends always blow up in his face. He always has good intentions towards others, but those good intentions always go the worst way possible because he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’s just inserting himself and needlessly meddling.
Medaka does the same thing, she “fights” for her friends when it’s really more about herself. It’s about her own desire to not be alone. It’s just Medaka’s mistakes haven’t blown up in her face the way Kumagawa’s have, at least not yet. Kumagawa is punished over and over again, Medaka is spoiled, creating the difference between the two of them.
At the end of the minus arc, Medaka and Kumagawa are both trying to have small groups of friends, but they’re also trying to fix those friends because they don’t know how to have friends like a normal person.
4. Medaka is the Main Character of this World
Finally, if someone truly believes that they’re the main character of the story it means they’re applying a fictive lens to the world. They see the world as if it were a story happening in a story book, written by an author with meaning and purpose.
However, is this world is a story and they’re the main character then what about everybody else? Unconscoiusly, other people are casted as side characters in their own story.
That’s what Ajimu hammers in hard when she breaks down Zenkichi and Medaka’s relationship. Medaka never really asks Zenkichi what he wants. Their friendship from the start has always been about her. Zenkichi just revolves around her.
Medaka sort of just treats him like a side kick to her story. Which Ajimu says, if Medaka treats him this way he must not be that important to her. He must be somebody Medaka can easily replace. If Medaka can treat her own closest friend like that, that goes to show just how she sees other people.
She seems to lose all interest in Zenkichi in about fifteen seconds. Ajimu doesn’t even have to try really hard to split them up. It’s because Medaka can’t see other people, and she can’t believe her relationships with other people are going to last. She’s constantly working to earn the love of other people because she literally can’t believe someone would just give it to her. She lacks object permanency in regards to other people, like if she doesn’t give them a reason to stay they’ll just go away from her. Which is also just a symptom of her narcicissm.
Seeing the world as just Medaka’s story makes her ignore the fact that other people exist, and therefore they have their own stories as well. Ajimu suggests something as simple as Zenkichi could be considered a main character too.
Medaka who treats her friends like they’re all sidekicks in her story. The most extreme result of that behavior is Ajimu, who simply doesn’t see or care about other people.
Ajimu is so far gone she simply believes the world doesn’t exist. Therefore it doesn’t matter how she treats people it’s all the same in the end. Medaka and Ajimu are both people who assume they know it all and at the end of the arc they finally learn...
They’re thinking was completely wrong.
Medaka didn’t know anything because she didn’t know other people. She didn’t know their view points, she didn’t know their stories. It’s after this point in the story Medaka shakes off her main character complex. Instead of assuming she’s always right, that she knows better than others, that she’s like the main character in the story she comes to realize she doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. She now knows, that she knows nothing.
Now that she’s no longer living as the main character of a story however, she can start living as a human being.
Nisioisin is a prolific writer famous for the many distinct characters he creates, and writes with a unique sort of empathy that lets them be their weird and crazy selves without judgement. Okay, with plenty of judgment. This is the start of a new series I’ve been working on which analyzes some of the common themes that appears in Nisioisin’s works with more depth, as Nisioisin is the type who reuses, and recontextualizes old ideas a lot.
The first thing we’re going to be taking a look at is Nisioisin’s take on the Trickster type character with Kumagawa. I’ll be doing Deishuu Kaiki, and Ii (Boku) to follow up.
A. Defining the Trickster.
Before we determine what a Trickster is we have to define what an Archetype is when it comes to character writing.
In theory, Jungian archetypes refer to unclear underlying forms or the archetypes-as-such from which emerge images and motifs such as the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood among others. History, culture and personal context shape these manifest representations thereby giving them their specific content. These images and motifs are more precisely called archetypal images.
In other words they are ideas and images that reoccur in stories all around the world. For example a character like Loki has several things in common with the christian idea of satan even though they come from two different mythologies, both subvert the ‘father-figure’ king of their respective heavens, and both are responsible for kickstarting the chain of events that lead to the apocalypse scenario in both religions.
Archetypes are characters that follow certain pre-determined patterns we all recognize. Luke Skywalker is what most people would recognize as the hero of the story, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the mentor, just by thinking of ‘hero’ and ‘mentor’ you already have a pre-conceived idea of how the character is going to act in the story. This is a good guideline for analyzing the similiarities between the characters Nisioisin uses in his works.
The Trickster, Jung says, is an aspect of the shadow archetype, at least in its negative traits (see "On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure". Examples of the trickster are Satan, Loki, etc.)
The shadow is an archetype that consists of the sex and life instincts. The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.
If the Hero is what everyone thinks a good guy is, then the Shadow is playfully the opposite of they. They are what everyone thinks a good guy isn’t. They represent the repressed aspect of our minds, and exist to call into question the common order.
The trickster, obviously, deceives, often playfully, sometimes painfully. The Fool is a shadow figure distressed by some unconscious lack of power, often driven by greed or an inordinate desire for fame (all archetypes), who projects his or her inadequacies against scapegoats as described above. The Fool is not always negative, of course. A relatively benevolent form of the fool is the Clown, who is more aware of his or her trickster aspect, perhaps, than is the fool. [Source.]
The trickster is what the hero is not. They are the shadow the hero casts. While the hero’s domain is the light, the trickster often works in the dark, behind the scenes sneaking around in the shadows. The hero is often straightforward, the shadow deceives and obfuscates. The hero is conventional and the trickster unconventional.
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, human, or anthropomorphisation), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. he trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters "...violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis."
[SOURCE.]
To simplify there are four rules I am going to set as reoccuring in Nisioisin’s use of the Trickster Archetype:
Introduced as a Villain
Subverts Expectations
Lying, Liar who Lies
Inherent themes of Nihilism
1. Introduced as a Villain
Appearances can be deceiving. It is the trickster’s goal to deceive your expectations, and in that they subvert the natural order. In most stories the hero is good and the villain is bad. Straightforward so far, yes? Nothing is straightforward when a trickster is involved. Kumagawa Misogi is someone who is introduced and built up as the ultimate enemy of Kurokami Medaka. A girl with a noble goal of trying to make everyone happy. Therefore anyone who opposes her would have to be ignoble, right?
Kurokami Medaka brings out the best in people, and Kumagawa Misogi brings out the worst. That is the simple, black and white comparison that we’re given between the two of them at the start of the manga.
Kumagawa is so inhuman when we first meet him that for the first 52 chapters of the manga, when other characters refer to him and as he’s built up as an antagonist his face is always obscured. He’s not even seen as human in the eyes of others.
However, this simple idea is subverted by the manga itself. Medaka and Kumagawa are compared not as opposites but rather as complemtnary forces who not only have several things in common with one another, but also play into each other.
Kumagawa is someone who can uniquely understand Medaka’s point of view in a way other people cannot. He’s not someone who opposes Medaka, but rather someone set up to oppose her. Kumagawa is not only aware to some extent that Medaka is the hero of the story, but he’s chosen to make himself the villain.
2. Subverts Expectations
The entire point of Kumagawa’s arc is that even the absolute scariest types of people the minus, aren’t true villains of the story, even when they don’t want to be sympathized with, even when they don’t want to be saved, they are deep downs still people.
Kumagawa’s arc intentionally sets up the idea that some characters are natural villains who don’t want to be saved, only to subvert that idea in the end. Tricksters are subversive, they exist to flip standard notions of good and evil, black and white ideas on their head. They are transversive, once they have played their role in the story it is impossible to think of things the same way again.
Kumagawa is a character who exists to subvert what we call traditionally binary opposites. That is ideas that we think oppose each other. Winners and losers, strength and weakness, talented and untalented, all of these ideas tie strongly into Kumagawa’s character.
Ajimu brings up Kumagawa’s bitterness towards the status quo. The people who are happy are the ones who are currently in power. They are the ones who are able to work hard, they are the ones who are able to have friends, they are the ones who always win in the end.
Kumagawa’s original goal is to flip those ideas on their head. To show that even people who are outside the power structure, outsiders like him, are able to have friends, to work hard, and to win.
By doing this he subverts the natural order and turns it around. This is what comes to a head in his fight with Medaka. Usually it would be the winner is the strongest, but the idea is flipped in that fight it’s proven the one who loses more and climbs their way back up is the strongest one.
There is strength in weakness and weakness in strength and these ideas never play in the straightforward ways we think they will. That’s why Kumagawa who identifies as weaker than anyone else, is able to easily subvert the balance of power tip it in his favor and overcome strong people.
3. Lying, Liar who Lies
Basically Kumagawa lies as compulsively.. He says everything in [brackets like this] and it's like always speaking and using airquotes after everything you say. It makes everything he says sound completely insincere. It’s also a pun for ‘To Show Off’ meaning he exaggerates everything he says in order to look cool.
Kumagawa will just blantantly lie at times for no reason other than to lie. One of his habits is to claim things aren't his fault when they obviously are. His introduction is screwing everyone to a wall, and then standing there covered in their blood go [I'm not the one who did this, it's not my fault.] His introduction is him rattling off lies mainly to confuse people and make himself impossible to read.
The key word is once again these expectations. The trickster uses lies as a mean of controlling the expectations of others, playing around with them and he gains some measure of power over this. A trickster is often not very traditionally powerful and has to rely on his wits to get by.
Kumagawa's life is pure chaos and basically everything ever will go wrong for him, so he tells lies to have some kind of illusion of control over that chaos. People who see life as a story do so to give themselves agency, to trick themsleves into believing they’re the ones telling that story.
Kumagawa pretending that the world is a manga, gives him the illusion that he can read, and anticipate the world like he would a weekly shonen jump manga. When in reality the world is what it’s always been, complete chaos. Kumagawa tells himself that lie to obfuscate himself because he finds safety in those lies, in no one knowing who he truly is.
He finds his identity in those lies, which is why he intentionally plays the role of the villain when he could be a hero. Kumagawa will lie about his identity, first to be a bad victim, to be an ugly victim, he pretends these things have value because it's all he has. He only has negative experience of the world and the trauma he’s asquired so far and that’s what he finds familiarity in. Kumagawa finds identity in being the world's biggest loser.
4. Themes of Nihilism
Kumagawa is a character who directly confronts Medaka’s assertion that she was ‘born for a reason’, by asserting the opposite. That there’s no goal in life, no point to being alive, and therefore humans are born for no reason.
While that seems like a wholly negative statement at first, the point of Nihilism is to question established ideas and power structures. It’s to dismantle what we are told matters, and what we are told has meaning and instead come to understand our own meaning.
If Medaka is an existence desperately trying to give meaning to life, then Kumagawa is trying to reject the assertion that life has meaning. It’s understandable why. The values that are said to hold true for everybody else have never once held true for Kumagawa. If you work hard you’ll win. Bad people are the only ones that suffer. If you ask for help you’ll get saved. Kumagawa has witnessed all those things he is told should be true about the world proven as falsehoods, and because of that his response is one of rebellion against the order.
Nihilism is a step on the way to existentialism.
In the most basic terms possible it's like. Rejection of societal meanings and values that you are told about -> Rejecting everything which leads to moral nihilism (nothing has meaning boo hoo) -> Realization that if everything is just made up value you can make up your own, and that you're not freed from society's obligations and can pursue what you want (sunglasses nihilism, party time).
Kumagawa as a character is firmly in the middle step. He’s a character who rejects everything, because he finds his identity in his rebellion against traditionally held notions.
Kumagawa is a character trying to reject what everyone else tells him is meaningful, and instead trying to create his own meaning. He’s trying to find the positives in a life that’s literally nothing but suffering. That’s the point of his whole complex about minuses, that people who have everything go wrong for them still have a reason to smile.
Basically Kumagawa's philosophy becomes, if I can endure all of this and still keep on laughing and smiling, then you can too. Even living the worst life possible where you can't accmplish a single thing, and can't amount to anything, you can still find something to laugh and smile about.
It’s a philosophy unique to him, and one that he could only come to by challenging the established norm. Not only does Kumagawa’s nihilism help the minuses, but he also ends up helping Medaka herself as she’s the one who has to let go of the ‘reason that she was born’.
Just like Kumagawa, Medaka has to go and seek out her own reason. As in the end the two of them as a pair, hero and villain, are not opposites but rather two sides of the same coin. They are complentary forces that contain parts of each other.
They are both ultimately, whether trickster or hero, very human characters. The roles in the story they play only serve to flesh out their humanity. Which is another theme in Nisioisin’s writing, but we’ll continue that in the next posts.
Medaka Box is a school battle manga that isn’t at all about fighting. Instead it’s about how the characters connections to other people humanize them. How abnormals, are no more than normal people when they connect with others. The greatest example of this in the manga is Medaka and Zenkichi, the superhuman girl who becomes human through her connection to her normal and everyday best friend.
Medaka and Zenkichi have been together their entire lives, to the point where they both sort of build their identity around each other. Medaka was only able to see herself as a person because Zenkichi saw her as a girl first and not a genius. In other words as Medaka says, you’re the person that made me, me. Medaka’s most formative memory is not with the people who praised her as a genius or showered her in affection, but with the one person who always treated her like normal.
However, this post isn’t about them. Instead of looking at one of the most positive relationships in the manga let’s look at one of the most negative ones.
Medaka and Zenkichi build each other up, but Ajimu and Kumagawa destroy each other. Ironically for the exact same reasons. Kumagawa and Ajimu are also the only ones who treat each other as humans, and they aer both at their most human and vulnerable when around each other, but unlike in Medaka and Zenkichi’s case this is what leads them to hurting each other.
This is because Ajimu is a shadow of Medaka, and Kumagawa a shadow to Zenkichi, and they were both built as characters to foil a more negative aspect to their counterparts, and even in their relationship to each other reflects Medaka and Zenkichi’s like a reversed and inverted image in a mirror.
Instead of talking about two good children let’s talk about two terrible brats.
1. Kumagawa and Zenkichi
Kumagawa and Zenkichi are both untalented people who want to stand out amongst the talented and special people. However, the differnce between them is not something so simple as Zenkichi works hard, and Kumagawa is lazy and always tries to take the easy way or cheat his way through.
The light novels even say so. That Kumagawa is a hard working person that always puts all of his efforts into everything he does.
When he took up the position of Student Council President, I hadn’t expected it at all from him, but unexpectedly, as if he’d had prior experience, Kumagawa-kun properly completed his Student Council President duties.
He did his work in an unpleasant, indescribable manner that could really only be described as “completed”, and it was a very unpleasant manner from the point of view of a General Affairs Manager, but even so, even if the work couldn’t be considered splendid, I couldn’t deny that Kumagawa-kun was truly a hardworking person. [x] translation by @polaristranslations
The difference between them is Zenkichi’s efforts have always led to self improvement. They get rewarded. He always progresses forward as a person. However, Kumagawa’s efforts never get rewarded. He never improves, he only gets worse, he only spirals down. Zenkichi could be given one thousand tries and make it on the 999th time. Kumagawa would go all 1,000 tries without ever winning once.
In the first place, even if you got infinite lives as Mario or as Luigi, you’re someone that still wouldn’t be able to defeat Bowser—but still, since you ended up dying anyway. [x]
Internally, the characters are almost the same person. They’re both relatively normal guys who try their hardest at whatever they do, and they both have aspirations to be among extraordinary people. Zenkichi wants to keep up with talented people because he believes that makes him worthy of Medaka. Kumagawa wants to keep up with talented people because he believes the world only allows talented people, or people who are strong to be safe and happy, and he idealizes it as an escape from the constant chaos and misery of his life, while at the same time feeling spiteful towards them because he’s left out.
This is what Kumagawa also tries to get Zenkichi to understand about him in their first fight. Zenkichi and Medaka’s views on people acting out of trauma, or bad victims are a little bit black and white, they can’t possibly udnerstand why someone would want to lash out and hurt others.
You know how a lot of people misinterpret Catcher in the Rye as the main character being unlikable, just because he presents his trauma in unlikable and not straight forward ways. Because he doesn’t directly ask for help, but rather conceals his trauma and rambles around the point. Because he at no point cries out help me like a victim? Therefore people have a difficult time seeing him as one.
That’s basically Kumagawa and Zenkichi’s entire relationship. Zenkichi cannot accept Kumagawa, because Kumagawa never asks for help in straight forward ways. he never presents himself as a beautiful victim to save. In reality thought, Kumagawa is Zenkichi, just with a lot of trauma piled onto him. Kumagawa is aware of this and tries to make Zenkichi understand, but Zenkichi just doesn’t.
This is even lampshaded in an omake. That despite pretending to be the most terrible villain he can possibly be, Kumagawa’s personality is weirdly friendly and approachable once you get to know him. It’s because unlike Medaka, Kumagawa actually values the people around him as individual people. He values close connections instead of just trying to blankely love everybody. Which is what Zenkichi’s strength over Medaka is as well. They both are people that can connect to others on a personal level, they can harmonize others around them and their greatest strength is how they use that as a group rather than being individually strong on their own. Neither Kumagawa or Zenkichi actually need to be all that strong because their strength comes from empathy and their ability to understand other people.
They’re both natural support characters who think they have to be the ones fighting on the front lines. They also both lose most of the fights they get into, Zenkichi’s only real victory is against Munakata at the start of the manga. Even when he beats Nianami, he says he’s still the weakest member of the group. When he goes to the jet black birdal ceremony to save Medaka, he completely fails to save her and gets stabbed and becomes a hostage instead. Even both of them are essential to Munakata’s development, as Zenkichi becomes his first friend, and Kumagawa becomes the first person that Munakata ever killed. They both go out of their way to try to help him, but in opposite ways, Zenkichi as a friend, and Kumagawa helps him by making himself a victim to Kumagawa’s killing instinct.
They’re constantly comapred to each other in the manga, and they constantly act in opposite ways trying to accomplish the same thing at heart. Zenkichi even understands Kumagawa even when he pretends he doesn’t.
Kumagawa is obsessed with cleanliness because he sees it as a relief from the constant chaos of his life, because he thinks he’s forced to love ugly, and unpleasant things because that’s all he will ever see. Zenkichi sees through him because he shares that same obsession, he acts like an average guy who doesn’t want to be dragged into the extraordinary but he loves beatufiul people, he’s obsessed with Medaka and part of him still sees her as something above the ordinary instead of treating her 100% like a normal girl. They carry the same contradictions within each other, it’s just for Kumagawa they blow up in his face a lot harder than they ever do for Zenkichi.
They both loved Medaka. They both met Medaka when she was two years old, and tried to give her an answer to the meaning of her life so she would stop worrying.
You could even say Kumagawa is just Zenkichi without a Medaka in his life, but that’s not entirely true. Kumagawa has a Medaka, it just happens to be Ajimu who is terrible.
2. Medaka and Ajimu
Ajimu is the logical end result of Medaka’s ability to infinitely copy and gather skills. She now has quadrillions of them and is basically undefeatable. She too, like Medaka is a character that never has once lost in her life, the same way the main character of a manga never really loses. For both of them their incredible talent over others makes them feel completely inhuman and alienated from all around them, Ajimu just pushes it to an absurd extent crossing the line and becoming a “Non-human.”
They also both are trying to pursue insane goals when they meet each other. Ajimu wants to create a perfect human, and Medaka wants to make everyone happy. Not because they genuinely want those things, but because they both want to fail. Medaka wants to be human and feel like she’s equal to everybody else. Ajimu wants to fail and prove that reality is real in front of her and alsot hat she’s a part of it.
They’re both absurd girls, and absurdly lonely. They’ve lived their entire lives in almost complete isolation because no one has seen them as human. It’s just Ajimu has accepted that declaring herself a “Non-Human” whereas Medaka struggles with her desire to be a normal girl. If you think about it nobody in their lives has ever seen them for them. Medaka’s father sees her as an heir who has to take over his entire company the moment she turns eighteen, her other father saw her as a replacement for his sister, his brother obsessed over her to the point that it was creepy, every adult around her either put her on a pedestal or they thought she was terrifying and blamed her for their own inadequacies. The only person she had in her life who remotely treated her like a normal girl was Zenkichi.
Ajimu was someone who can get anybody to like her in the whole school.
「She hadn’t been such a sadistic character in the past… What happened to the kind and considerate Anshin'in-san that everybody loved…」
“……?”
He was giving off a rather timid aura, which was unusual for him. [x]
Because if everything is fake then, Ajimu can act however she wants. If they’re not real people, if they’re just programmed npcs then she can just pick the right responses to gain points with them. That’s why Ajimu is equally capable of being a very caring and loving person, but also cruel and sadistic. Neither of them are the real her, she’s equally both because she has nothing to ground her personality on, she doesn’t see other people as people.
Which is exactly what Kumagawa calls Medaka out on, which happens immediately after he reveals how his “love story” with Ajimu ended. Both Medaka and Ajimu have a trouble seeing other people as people due to how much they have been isolated and put on a pedestal their entire lives. However, both of them are both afraid ot come down from their pedestal as well and admit they’re wrong. Their entire identity is built around being girls stronger than anyone so who else would they be if they weren’t that?
Ajimu is just the negative result of such an attitude. Medaka is preechy and looks down on other people, but it’s never treated that seriosuly as a flaw by the plot. It’s always looked on as something well intentioned and misguided, but ultimately just something she does out of ignorance. Whereas, Ajimu has full on malice for the people she doesn’t see as people.
Ajimu’s complete apathy for other people causes her to treat others terribly. She carelessly tears Medaka and Zenkichi apart, throws everything into chaos, basically because they’re her toys and she wants to play with them. The only reason Ajimu ends up not killing anybody is because Ajimu herself doesn’t really care enough about anybody to kill them.
Medaka’s ignorance of other people, becomes complete and utter apathy with Ajimu. Her inability to love someone as an individual becomes Ajimu’s complete and total inability to see people as even real, or anything other than manga characters.
They both ultimately live empty lives that leaves them some form of suicidal. Medaka wishes she had never been born, and Ajimu wants to kill herself out of boredom.
What both of them want desperately is to be equal to other people, and to stop being alone, but also neither of them can let go of the fact that they are special and they think they have to stand above others which is what creates the central conflict in both characters. It’s just that Medaka believes life is epic and keeps trying to learn how she can live, she keeps growing, whereas Ajimu like Kumagawa just spirals out of control slowly and becomes more minus, more negative.
That’s why in the end Medaka is the only one that can stop Ajimu from killing herself, because Medaka is Ajimu, she has those same suicidal feelings and can understand them.
3. Kumagawa and Ajimu
What exactly happened between Kumagawa and Ajimu in middle school is never fully revealed, despite being so formative for many of the conflicts of the plot. However, there is a lot of subtext for what their relationship was and almost none of it is pretty.
The most defining moment of their relationship is that Kumagawa ripped her face off. If you think about Medaka and Zenkichi as two people who humanize each other, who give each other their identity than Kumagawa did the opposite. The face is the sign of identity. When Kumagawa ripped it off, not only did he destroy her identity, he also made everyone else forget about her.
Another thing is Ajimu appears to talk with Kumagawa every time he dies, and this close proximity to her is something that makes him hate her as much as he loves her.
It’s a pretty clear metaphor for being trapped in a relationship that’s bad for both parties, that makes you eventually start to hate the person you love specifically because you feel trapped by them. Their relationship is something that contributes to Kumagawa’s misery, but at the same time it’s something Kumagawa cannot let go of because if he does not he’s afraid Ajimu might die.
Kumagawa was doing to Ajimu what Zenkichi did to Medaka when they first met. he was trying to give her a reason, any reason to live. However, his way of saving her life was to screw her down and steal away both her face and her freedom. That is to say he made her even less of a person that she normally is.
The general story we know is this. They met in middle school, and during that time both of them kind of experienced a “honeymoon phase” of their relationship. Kumagawa was able to feel like a normal person around her because Ajimu is just that competent at getting along with others, and at that time he basically existed to do everything she said.
Even though you’re sitting arrogantly atop the seat of Student Council President, you’re nothing more than her puppet.
You may have heard the term “puppet government” before, but right now, you’re actually making that a reality—just like our time in middle school, our time at Hakobune Middle School.
That time—that time you became the Student Council President with a zero-percent approval rating, you had basically turned into a yes-man for me, the Not Equal. [x]
Ajimu says the first time she had expectations for another person, that is the first human being she struggled to try to see them as human was Kumagawa. However, something goes wrong most likely due to Ajimu’s suicidal nature and Kumagawa’s wish for her to live.
My guess is that on that “day” we never got to learn the details of, Ajimu threatened suicide first and Kumagawa retaliated. Or, Kumagawa knew she was suicidal all along and he was terrified of losing her and over the course of two years those negative feelings built up until Kumagawa finally broke and acted up.
At which point they both broke each other irrepably. They started being terrible to one another. Kumagawa is specifically referred to as having trauma that outweighs all the other trauma in his life and it’s triggered when Emukae takes both of the exploding bracelets and almost commits suicide right in front of him to save him. In other words he had trauma with girls he loves comitting suicide. It’s also the one thing he’s afraid of, like when he asks Gagamaru to kill him because he’s too afraid to just jump off the roof on his own.
When Kumagawa is describing all the negative things he has to accept in his life, he says it’s like accepting a lover. Which indicates a very unhealthy view when it comes to accepting the flaws of a lover in any relationship that you’re in.
Like some of the examples he lists are just, stuff that would happen in a relationship gone wrong.
The reason it went wrong being in the end, Kumagawa and Ajimu unlike Zenkichi and Medaka are too similiar, they’re both too afraid of being human. It’s even implied they both hold the same kind of cynicism and minus forms of views which is why the understand each other so well.
They both see the world as an inescapable reality that’s not for them, where they don’t belong. Kumagawa because he is too weak, and Ajimu because she is too strong. They are on complete opposite sides of the spectrum, but that is how they connect with each other, because the world is not for them, it’s like they’re the only two people in the whole world.
It’s Ajimu and Kumagawa who make all the metafiction jokes, about treating real life like it’s a manga. And that’s a form of using fiction as escapism. Ajimu believes everything is fake, because the reality is that everything is unbearably lonely for her. Kumagawa uses fiction to escape, because the reality is life isn’t like shonen manga and tragedy upon tragedy is going to keep happening to him and it doesn’t matter if he’s strong or week.
They both have this desire to become human the same way everyone else is. They both feel left out from other people’s happiness. However, they also both have the desire to escape, to run away, because things are too painful, too lonely for them and they can’t handle it.
Which is why ultimately both Kumagawa and Ajimu can’t work together, because neither of them wants to be human because being human is vulnerable. Zenkichi even comments this, Kumagawa doesn’t want to be understood, not really, or at least not the way he presents himself. He tries everything possible to make others fail to understand him.
Ajimu too, distances herself from reality as much as possible. She even calls herself a ‘non-human’ all the time, not because she’s some weird space alien, but because she does not want to be human. Neither of them wants to get hurt, to feel pain the same way that humans do.
Which is why they can’t work around each other. When they’re together, they both know each other so well, they both fit so naturally together, that both of them become vulnerable in a way that neither of them can handle. Kumagawa even says as much, though he presents the notion in the most warped and twisted way possible. That he saw through the fact that Ajimu was just pretending to be kind and to get along with other people, and none of that was her real self, and he tried to see through the mask. It worried him that he didn’t get to know the real Ajimu. Kumagawa at least at one point didn’t want to love the Ajimu that was kind to others, he wanted to love the real her.
But in the end Kumagawa has no idea if his feelings reached or even mattered to her. When he says as much it’s the one time Kumagawa looks genuinely sad during this entire conversation, and the panel hides his expression.
Which is why in the end they’re relationship is so important and formative to one another. They, just like Medaka and Zenkcihi are basically the ones who humanize each other. They make up each other’s identities. But at the same time both of them are so afraid of being humans they go out of their way to dehumanize and destroy each other.
Ajimu even admits this on the final note of their relationship together. That Kumagawa in the end was the only real person to her, the only person she could show any bias towards. That’s why she’s able to hate him and love him, because she actually sees him as a person.
In the same light, Kumagawa only starts to believe it’s possible for him to win when Ajimu tells him he can.
That’s how formative for Kumagawa Ajimu is. He cannot accept the idea that he could win, until Ajimu finally accepted and embraced him as a person.
That’s what it means to be close, you are equally as capable of hurting each other as you are helping each other. That’s why Medaka Box so beautfiully illustrates the power but also the vulnerability of human connection.
