Just dying for some community with folks who like Noragami as obsessively as I do while I fight my way through (hopefully) finishing my first long form piece.
These posts are going to be a stream of thought kinda deal, and people like it, great! If not, at least I got my thoughts out.
It's called "If Iki Hiyori Didn't Wake Up..." and I've got the first chapter on AO3 already. https://archiveofourown.org/works/77692631/chapters/203500416
Fanfic summary:
When Hiyori pushes Yato out of the way of the bus, she doesn’t wake up again. Trapped in her spirit form with her body in a coma, Hiyori becomes Yato’s Regalia and breaks nearly every rule that comes with it. Heaven disapproves of this violation of the natural order and Yato's Father attempts to tighten his leash. And Yato is forced to reckon with what it means to bind someone who was never meant to be bound.
---
The premise is: "what if Yato made Hiyori his Regalia at the beginning?"
Turns out it changes a hell of a lot of stuff. Which I love, because Hiyori feels sidelined in her own story (open to debate, but I feel it strongly enough that I wrote out a whole outline for this nonsense).
I've got an outline figured out, and I've got 30% of it written down in first draft format. I've got about 10 to 11 arcs planned out, and I've just been jumping around as inspiration strikes me.
Chapter 1 is up because a friend liked it, but Chapter 2 humbled me fast. Turns out “this is done” and “this needs a full rewrite” are sometimes the same thing. Which is sad, cuz I thought I had three good chapters written and ready to post. But progress is progress, and if my writing group has taught me anything, it's that getting it written, even shittily, is the most important thing.
Anyway, re-reading the manga has been dangerous. I've been driving my boyfriend up a wall talking his ear off about the lore bits that I remember or learn about that affect my story. The Bishamon arc changes dramatically when Kugaha can't just kidnap Hiyori to pit Yato against Bisha. The introduction of Yukine and the trajectory of his whole emotional arc takes place later and differently. Also, the entire "God's Greatest Secret" arc where they hunt down Yato's Daddy-o is non-existent in my story. Maybe I'll talk about it later.
Can we talk about how dumb it is for godly weaponry to be completely nuked instantly by just saying "Hey kid... how'd you die?" We could nuke the entirety of Heaven at once if you just gathered all the Regalia into a conference and shouted into a megaphone "Hey, y'all DEAD!" *surprised Pikachu face* Yukine's whole emotional arc was about being dead and unhappy about it, you really going to say ✨magic✨ is the reason he never thought about why that is? No weird little habits or quirks that carried over from his life that made him wonder?
I can accept Yato's Dad being cracked by having an OP regalia that can corrupt other Regalia with a poke. He's the big bad™️, of course he's got bullshit like that. But just by any body asking Regalia a question? Nana shows up like a last-minute patch fix and then barely matters. That whole situation feels like duct tape over a narrative crack.
When I was originally reading the manga many many years ago when it was still getting published, I remember rage quitting when Yato told Hiyori goodbye to go hunt his Father. Man, that really put the final pin in Hiyori's narrative coffin. I like Hiyori a lot and she has so much missed potential.
That's why I'm putting all this time into writing a fix for this horrible miscalculation that I see in the story.
It's no wonder Yukine is seen as the main romantic interest for Yato more than Hiyori when Yato calls Yukine his "one and only" and other gods say God's and Regalia share "body and mind" and two of the three pairs of gods are CLEARLY in domestic or close to romantic relationships. The fuck you mean Yato and Yukine aren't fucking on the down low?
Anyway, I'm Yatori for life, so I am putting her in the spotlight.
It feels good to get these thoughts out. Maybe I'll write more when I finish the manga and write more of my fanfic.
If you’ve got thoughts, arguments, or just want to scream about Noragami, I’m listening.
Well, I was re-reading Noragami a while back because I was bored and found a bit I always thought was a little weird in regards to the translations. This was when Yukine stung Yato because Nora had kissed him, and Takemikazuchi sends Kiun to go give him a ‘talk’. I went ahead and found the raws, and found out that the context was heavily changed in regards to Kiun as a character, specifically his love affairs (lol) so I thought I’d make a post to elaborate (also because it’s interesting).
So, here is where I think the translations started diverging from the original context. Takemikazuchi uses questions and open ended suggestions: “You’re the romantic expert, right?”, “I’m sure you’ve made plenty of women cry”
This makes the readers believe that this is merely based on Take’s assumptions and not actually how Kiun behaves. With the way the panels and the expressions were flowing, I thought it was a little weird that Kiun would be this surprised over open ended suggestions like this, so I checked the raws:
What this bit says is actually “You’re the expert on ‘色恋’ (irokoi), aren’t you?”. While 色恋 can be used to refer to love affairs, it’s typically used on sexual affairs without romantic connotations. Takemikazuchi then says, “And I want you to tell Yukine just to what extent you made all those women cry.” (Mandarin translations also says the same thing). Essentially, there is a really huge difference between “I’m sure you made women cry” and “You definitely made all those women cry.” because the next bit is the part where it sets a completely different tone on Kiun’s character:
Now taking the previous English translations, you would be inclined to think that Kiun probably made all the women cry because he rejected them. However, Yato’s dialogue about shinkis fooling around and Hiyori’s flustered reaction would make no sense, because Take should be suggesting otherwise. If Kiun was so uptight and aloof and does not play around, why would Yato say something like this in response? Below are raws and translation:
It actually goes something like: “The list of women Kiun has abandoned just goes on and on and on. I’ve gotten quite sick of having to sit and listen to them complain and complain until they were satisfied so that their emotions wouldn’t affect me.” Again, the mandarin translations also leans towards this sense of certainty too.
This would imply the complete opposite of what the english version was suggesting, as it is possibly and most likely canon that Kiun does in fact sleep around, and Takemikazuchi is just confirming the fact and elaborating it, leading to Yato’s and Hiyori’s reactions that makes more sense now.
BUT, the next part where Kiun talks to Yukine also kind of confused me, but I think it does give clarity to my previous suggestion that he probably isn’t as uptight as we thought he was:
The translations are correct here. I think the reason he was saying “I don’t exist for my own enjoyment anymore” was probably because he viewed romance and courting to be something self indulgent, while sleeping around without romantic/emotional attachment is probably just ... stress relieving? a biological need? Or whatever else he considers it as... it’s definitely not something he believes to be ‘enjoyment’. (Truly an ancient mindset).
Also, note that Kiun uses the word 恋人 (koibito), which translates specifically to lovers, a word you use with romantic connotations. He’s telling the truth here, he doesn’t have lovers. And the next bit, he says:
When Yukine says “Aren’t you super old? I’m only 1 year old as a Shinki”, Kiun switches to 色恋 (irokoi, aka sexual affairs) once again when explaining that ‘love affairs are all the same’ to Yukine about his encounter with Nora back in chapter 74. As we know, Yukine is flustered and confused by what Nora did to him, not exactly because he has a ‘crush’ like Yato has said. This is why Take told Kiun to give him the talk, and pretty much confirms that Kiun differentiates between romantic affairs and sexual affairs and does probably, ‘fool’ around’ when he’s not busy dozing off or running errands.
Again, his next line “People are ruined by love more than I imagined” or simply “People truly can’t control themselves when they fall in love” would make more sense in this case. He probably thinks that being in a romantic relationship would hinder his ability to work, and probably in turn affect Takemikazuchi too (and little does he know the consequences of his actions that is women crying and affecting Take anyway lol).
Anyway, that’s about all I wanted to say, I can’t believe I really made such a long post to prove that Kiun sleeps around LMAO. I thought it was pretty interesting and saw that no one made a post about it, so here.
Ps. I definitely do think that this isn’t out of character for him considering the things he has said in the omakes, despite them being played off as jokes:
A cornerstone on which the Tsukuyomi theory is build, revolves around how Yato, an obscure minor God was able to survive for so long.
He has been alive for over 1000 years at least. This question is quite important if you ask me, because it was raised multiple times within the series itself. It is almost as if Adachitoka wants to draw our attention to this point.
Yato was born out of a strong wish that Father made. And according to him, this wish was enough to sustain Yato throughout all these years. Meaning, Father is Yato’s lifeline. It is possible that a very strong wish could have helped Yato survive this long.
But, Yato’s father is a God who possesses humans. He might have been a human when he wished for Yato, but he is a God now! The question is this,
can a God’s wish sustain other Gods? Or can a new God be born out of the wishes of other Gods.
Ofcourse, whatever father said could be wrong, and Yato could indeed be Tsukuyomi. But, what if that isn’t the case. Who or WHAT exactly is Yato?
Noragami’s female characters are great and I love all of them, but man do I wish they had... more actual meaningful and complex relationships with each other.
I mean, we do have some glimpses of female friendships here and there -- the first thing I can think of is Hiyori and Kofuku, for example, and they’re cute and all but there’s not really anything more interesting than that to them. Bishamon and Kofuku are said to have a bit of an history and apparently see each other more or less frequently, which could be rife with possibilities? But concretely in canon they only interact, like, twice. Hiyori and Bishamon too, the two most important female characters of the manga, talk maybe two or three times in the now almost 100 chapters?
Aiha and Tsuguha were cute but only minor characters, and then Tsuguha gets killed off anyway... There’s Hiyori’s friends Yama and Ami but... so far these two are barely characters at all honestly. There are some nice scenes with Bishamon and her female shinki Aiha/Tsuguha/Kinuha and Hiyori and her mother/grandmother, but nothing that really stick. There’s not even a single god/shinki duo with two women, not with the same deep bond the others are portrayed as (maaaybe Benzaiten and her guidepost could count as that? If only they were to become more relevant at some point?)
We did get a little bit of something with Nana and Bishamon, but then they got kinda shifted when Bisha fell into her coma and Arahabaki got his girl back, so... Now that Bishamon is finally awake I do hope their relationship continue to get more developed.
I dunno, I guess I’m just sad cause there’s a lot of great, complicated male/female and male/male relationships that are central to the plot and further the characters’ arcs throughout the story, but despite there being a lot of potential, nothing much of the same with women... The fact so far we never got anything with Kofuku and Bishamon’s relationship or any more interaction between Hiyori and Bishamon is seriously so much wasted potential...
That’s why I’m pretty excited about seeing Hiyori and Nora developing an actual interesting dynamic at least, and I really wish they’re going to do something with this, and not just drop it after a few chapters.
I’m obviously late to the tumble party... but I stumbled across your Notagami Essays posts and they are absolutely Fabulous! Love your writing and the amount of detail you go into :)
So I figured you may be a good person to ask - if you just had to guess (bc as far as I know it’s never been officially confirmed?) but if you had to take a guess or give a rough estimate, how old do you think Yato was when he first met Sakura? We know he’s estimated to be at least a thousand years old, we know he’s - from the start of the series to present - estimated to be somewhere between 18 and his early 20s (physically)... but I can’t find a single thing/discussion/post/stickynote/whatever where it talks about how old he might have been when he first met Sakura - let alone the emotional/psychological effects of Sakura coming into his life and introducing healthy mindset/morals/maternal-influence etc. etc. (obviously no mom and Father’s neglect played a big role in him not knowing how inappropriate it was for him to ‘accidentally touch’ and yell “boobs!” but you can also just say he was so young he didn’t know how inappropriate that was?) My point is: how old do you think Yato was (physically anyway) at the time of their meeting? and Do you know of any discussions or care to share your opinion on how being the no more than the age of blank affected his mental/emotional understanding of Sakura teaching him a new narrative?
Sorry this is a random out of the blue ask 😅😓 if I rambled on and you don’t feel like answering, I get it, just figured it was worth asking :)
I fell down a serious rabbit hole trying to see if I could figure out the answer to this question about Yato’s age but unfortunately I’m mostly coming up empty-handed.
The answer to this question actually depends on two different pieces of information which--as far as I can remember--we’ve never actually been given for certain.
1) We would need to know when Yato was actually born.
The manga has kind of hinted at a total (not physical) age for Yato in the flashbacks which showed him as a young child during the Heian era (putting him somewhere in the vicinity of a little over 1000 years old) and Father not making masks before ~1100 years ago, but the problem is we still don’t know how many years might have passed between this scene (the youngest we’ve ever seen Yato):
And the next flashback scene, where Yato meets Nora:
If gods age normally when they are children, these two scenes might be only a handful of years apart. But if gods don’t age normally, then these two scenes could be decades or centuries apart, which leads to the other missing piece of information (under the read more to save people’s dashes):
2) We would need to know the aging process for gods who are just born/reincarnate.
Up to this point in the manga, we’ve only seen two gods reincarnate--Ebisu (who reincarnated too recently to really help answer this question) and Takemikazuchi. The implication of Takemikazuchi’s backstory is that his shinki forced him to reincarnate and then hid his reincarnation from all of Heaven. The only way they could have kept other gods from noticing that Takemikazuchi had reincarnated would have been by not allowing him to go out at all until he had grown enough to match his previous reincarnation in appearance. This seems to suggest that gods probably do age normally when they are children--hiding Takemikazuchi away for ~20 years seems a lot more likely than being able to hide him away for centuries, after all... (I also feel like I have very vague recollection of some scene in the manga where someone comments on Takemikazuchi not having been around for a “few years,” but it’s been so long since I reread I can’t recall if this is a real moment from the manga or just me misremembering.)
Overall, however, based on what we’ve seen in the manga, my guess would be that when they’re young, after just being born or being reincarnated, gods age pretty normally. This would suggest that, for the first few years at least, the physical and mental ages of reincarnated/newly born gods actually overlap; baby Ebisu acts like a little kid because he is, in fact, both mentally and physically a little kid.
That would mean that, for all intents and purposes, Yato’s physical and mental ages lined up when he was young and meeting Sakura, and he acted like a little kid because he really was just a little kid, god or not.
(Detour for a second though:
This line always struck me as interesting in that it might, just might, give us a more specific timeframe for Yato’s “birth”: although the constellations, of course, are visible in the sky every single year, this particular combination of concepts (kanoto-tori, yin metal rooster) is known much more commonly as one of the sixty years on the cyclical Chinese calendar, also used in Japan. Counting back on the calendar, 961 A.D. was a yin metal rooster year and would align just about right for what we know about the timeframe in which Yato later met Sakura (~970ish). Just referencing constellations doesn’t mean Adachitoka was pointing to a specific year, but it might have been another hint as to the timeframe of the flashbacks.
Okay, detour over.)
Anyway, without 100% confirmation on either of those pieces of information--when Yato was born and whether gods age at the same rate as humans after reincarnating--I don’t think it’s really possible to pin down Yato’s “real” age (physically or mentally) at the time he met Sakura. We mostly just have to estimate.
Personally, based on his size and behavior at the time, I’d put him somewhere between seven and maybe up to ten, but the way Adachitoka draws characters kind of makes it impossible to judge their ages by appearance; Yato is about the same size as Nora when he meets Sakura, implying that he and Nora were around the same physical “age” at that time; meanwhile, Nora is later portrayed as being roughly the same age as Yukine, suggesting she was maybe 12-13ish years old when she died. So, despite being drawn tiny, it’s possible Yato was meant to be anywhere from a little kiddo (6-7) to all the way up to Nora’s age by the time he met Sakura.
But all that said, I think what you were really asking about was more the mental state Yato would have been in when he met Sakura and how his young age would have impacted his ability to change his world views, right? The answer to that is... complicated and could be approached a lot of ways. Coming from a background of working with and educating social work students, there are several common psychological theories of child development that might apply here, for example.
I’d recommend checking out Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, though.
(Pulled from here.)
I don’t have time to explain the entire theory with the complexity it might deserve, but the basic idea is that, as children develop, they experience a series of crises or challenges that they must overcome. Successfully overcoming each challenge results in successful psychological and social development; failing to overcome a challenge in childhood will result in long-term negative impacts later in the child’s life. (There are plenty critiques of this theory too, so don’t take this as gospel or anything--just a theory worth thinking about!)
Given Father’s lack of interest in teaching Yato basic concepts of humanity, I would put Yato at approximately the “Initiative vs. Guilt” stage when he met Sakura. At this level of Erikson’s theory, children struggle with asserting themselves and developing a healthy sense of how their personal desires might conflict with the expectations and rules set out by others. In this stage, giving a child positive feedback for their actions teaches the child that those actions are “right,” while giving negative feedback teaching the child that their actions are wrong. In order to overcome this particular challenge, children need to begin taking initiative and aligning their actions with social standards; the child acts, and the parental figure reacts--through this process, children learn “I can do X thing but I cannot do Y thing.”
When you hear things like “Children are cruel,” most often what people are referring to is that it takes time for children to learn empathy and to experience guilt when they cause harm to others; children do not natively understand the repercussions of their actions. It’s only through a process of testing the boundaries, of receiving praise or punishment, that children define what is “right” versus “wrong,” and begin to feel bad when they do something deemed wrong.
And this is pretty much word-for-word what we see Sakura teaching Yato.
If they have healthy role models and caretakers during this phase, children develop successfully. Successful children in this phase get their first taste of personal responsibility; unsuccessful children are (supposedly) plagued for years afterward by a sense of guilt and shame when their actions produce disapproval from everyone around them.
Yato... doesn’t exactly make it through this development stage unscathed, because he receives conflicting definitions of right and wrong from his Father an Sakura:
Which ultimately results in, years later, the Yato we know and love who still does his Father’s bidding to kill humans even though it fills him with a horrific sense of guilt:
Through his time with Sakura, I think it could also be argued that Yato moves into the next stage of Erikson’s theory as well, getting into the “Industry versus Inferiority” crises.
Meeting Sakura brings out Yato’s true, deep down desire as a god: to help people. (I think it’s important to note that this isn’t something Sakura teaches him--it’s a quality Yato already possessed; it was explicitly Yato’s desire to please people that led to him murdering in his father’s name.)
Once he learns what makes people happy, Yato immediately pursues that with intense focus:
The primary goal of this phase of psychosocial development is to experience a sense of confidence in one’s actions. When children practice their skills, pursue areas where they are praised, and gain new skills and aptitudes through mentoring from healthy role models, they gain confidence in their ability to excel, to fit in with peers their age, and to create meaningful things. By encouraging Yato to pursue positive behaviors--playing peacefully with other children, appreciating natural beauty, and creating useful things like boots for the needy--Sakura moved Yato toward successfully completing this phase and developing a sense of confidence in his actions and his ability to achieve positive things in the world.
Of course, Father cannot have that (because confident children with a sense of self-worth are much more difficult to abuse), so he puts an immediate end to Sakura’s influence over Yato in the most insidious way possible: although he clearly manipulated the situation to achieve Sakura’s death, out loud, he blames Yato, implying that Sakura’s death was all Yato’s fault, the results of Yato taking unwanted action “industry” and yet failing--creating a sense of “inferiority” instead.
This, of course, haunts Yato all the way to the present, as he--again and again and again--blames himself for things outside his control or failing to live up to expectations that no one in his situation (still being manipulated) could possibly hope to get “right.”
Finally, you could say that Sakura’s presence is Yato’s life is ultimately what sows the seeds of the manga’s main plot up to this point, with Yato’s quest to create an entirely new identity for himself as a god of fortune instead of a god of calamity. Personally, I would say that Yato is currently still in this phase of development, still working out how to define himself and who he will ultimately become once he is finally free to decide on his own path in life. It was Sakura’s gentle influence--his desire to become the kind of god who could make her smile--that eventually sparked his conflict and finally led Yato to the brink of catastrophe. If he wishes to become the god Sakura told him he could be, he can no longer suffer his father to live.
So, long story longer, I think it can be argued that Yato meeting Sakura at such a young age is EXACTLY what made it possible for him to change, and exactly what has led to his crisis in identifying himself and redefining his sense of right and wrong.
An unnecessarily long, super biased and very spoiler-y analysis of chapter 87-1
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If this isn’t Father’s motto, I don’t know what is. We’ve already seen him use it on Yato and Mizuchi; seems like it’s Hagusa’s turn.
The chapter starts with Yukine’s memories that we already saw at the trial. Except now that the truth about the mysterious “box” is out, Adachitoka aren’t trying to hide anything anymore – it’s painfully obvious that it’s an old fridge that was thrown away. Haru’s father closes the door and says the last goodbye to his son.
Haru is fixing his sleeve – his arms must be hurting. Is it because they were tied? Or is it from the shots? After all, fans have suggested that he may have been ill for a long time. His bare feet and pajamas indicate that the father probably placed a sleeping boy in the fridge. I have nothing but curse words for this man, so I’ll keep my silence.
The chapter is called “The way to darkness”. Since this month’s half-chapter is only 15 pages long, the second part should be longer; that’s where we’ll see the way to darkness in all its glory.
While nothing scary happens in the chapter, it’s still kind of creepy. Father is being very, very nice to Hagusa. We know what hides behind his smile and fake care, but Hagusa doesn’t. His calling Father “father” isn’t the scariest thing here, ‘cause it can be the effect of kotonoha. But it’s unnerving how fast they have bonded, even though there are reasons for that.
Father says that Hagusa is tired from walking all day. It’s not just the fact that the house is very far from the place where he gave the boy his new name (although that seems to be the case, too) – they must have spent the day before visiting places that Father had seen in Hagusa’s memories. Except none of them did the trick – Hagusa recalled nothing about his past life from being in those places. What’s so special about the locations is hard to tell – they seem to be a 1) café, 2) probably a school, and 3) a neighborhood where Haru used to live.
And of course, the house. The building being so run-down that it’s scheduled to be demolished is not particularly surprising – who knows when it was built. The thing that interests me is its location. A house in such a close proximity to the railway is not a nice place to live in. People settle for those when they don’t have better options. In other words, Haru’s family was poor; which is nothing new, it has already been suggested by the fans, I believe. Although Father says it’s Haru’s final place of residence. Maybe the family had to move in there from a nicer house.
Haru’s memories are fragmented because they are 35 years old. Can we trust Father’s words just like that? Of course not, it’s Father we’re talking about. But I think that’s it’s one of those cases where he wouldn’t benefit much from lying, so he tells the truth. And even if there was some other reason for Hagusa’s memories to be fragmented like that, Father probably could have bent it as he pleased. For example, if it had something to do with Hagusa being part-ayakashi, he could have said “I’m sorry, but some of your memories disappeared when you started transforming. I did everything in my power to keep as much as I could”. But turning into an ayakashi is usually accompanied (or rather, caused) by an influx of memories, not their loss. Conclusion: Father isn’t lying, and we’ll come back to this.
Some of the partial memories that Father saw are: a letter, this time addressed to the sister; a symbol on a building (school?) – a flower; Haru’s father’s face; a door handle. That’s doesn’t seem to be a lot of information, but… If you’d hoped that somehow Father didn’t get to see Haru’s last moments, then I’m sorry to disappoint you. The lighting on Haru’s father’s face seems to be similar to the one in Yukine’s memories from the trial / the beginning of the chapter, so it’s probably the same memory. Father saw it, and he’s planning to use it to his advantage.
Apparently, there’s a minor translation error on the top left frame. Hagusa’s facial expression doesn’t match the phrase, and the speech bubble isn’t coming from him. It’s Father suggesting that he plays a game of finding his real name somewhere in the house, which Hagusa happily agrees to do. What Father’s doing with this little “treasure hunting” game reflects the bigger picture: he’s nudging Hagusa to look for answers about the boy’s past without actually causing any suspicions towards his intentions. What can I say, Father loves giving his kids something to play with; ask Yato, he’ll confirm that.
Hagusa discovers his nickname from when he was alive – Haru – near some height marks that belonged to him and his older sister Yuka. The smallest number that has Haru written beside it is 3 (years). It means that even if the family moved here from a nicer house, it had happened long before the boy’s death. The names Yuka and Haru are written over semi-erased names of some other children. It isn’t at all surprising, since the house is very old.
So the name Haru was useless to Father’s plan after all, since it turned out to be a nickname. For the next three pages he’s quietly seething, trying to understand why Hagusa is so happy to learn little bits of his past. Maybe Father is comparing him to Mizuchi who (until recently) has been always so reserved (too reserved) when it came to her being dead. Or maybe it has to do something with Father thinking that all humans are monsters whose real appearance starts to show when they are nudged in the right direction. In stark contrast to that idea, Hagusa is simply happy to learn that he had a sister, and a home, and the cutest nickname.
Father’s words about giving Hagusa a little push to discover the truth on his own are pretty interesting. It means that he’d planned that by this point, the boy would start getting angry at the life he could have lived. But something went wrong, so Father has to revise the plan on the go.
Hagusa asks a reasonable question: if Yato never told him anything, why is Father being so nice to him – giving him a tour, playing “treasure hunting” with his name as the treasure? Father’s answer is… intriguing.
Father manages to tell a truth and a lie within the same sentence. Hagusa, for example, finds the answer honest and not needing any further prying, so he happily goes on a walk around his neighborhood in hopes of finding someone who knew him when he was alive. And technically, the things Father says aren’t a lie. What he’s been revealing so far can hurt Hagusa, and he does trust that the boy will be able to survive. However, he’s withholding the most important part – what is this all about. His words aren’t a lie. but his intentions are.
Hagusa recalls something while looking at the door but is distracted by the ayakashi wolf. I originally assumed that the door itself could have somehow reminded him of the dreaded fridge, but the thing that actually caught his attention is obviously the door handle. It’s the same one that appeared in the bits of memories that Father saw when naming him. I’ve already made a separate post about that door handle, but I’ll repeat it here anyway. So here are a couple of things why it could have appeared in the fragments of memories that Father’s received.
1) Haru’s father was abusive to the point where the boy would be afraid to come home. So he would just stand at the front door looking at the handle, too afraid to pull.
2) Some kind of trauma could have occurred. Haru could have fallen on the handle and got an injury, either by accident or with the help of his father.
This last page shows that Father’s intentions are very serious. He’s done being the game master; he’s going to be a full-fledged player from now on and will be actively involved in the further events – and for that, he needs Hagusa. Up until this point, despite Yato’s concerns that Father was a bit too flattering when talking about Yukine, I assumed that Father only needs Yukine as a pawn; a hostage of sorts that could be used to bring Yaboku back to his “loving family”. However, Yato made it clear that that’s out of question when he tried to kill his father in earnest. So now Father has another plan – to turn Hagusa into an unbelievably strong weapon; and the one wielding it will be him, not Yato. Except Hagusa’s buoyancy has been ruining this plan so far.
As for the fragmented memories that I’ve promised to return to, I really believe that Father wasn’t lying and has only seen bits and pieces of Haru’s life, not the whole thing. It has to do something with the boy being a sudama when he was first named and not a regular ghost, like Daikoku, for example. Nora said it in the previous chapter that when Haru’s memories were intact, he had a form of a person. It means that he either started turning into a sudama after his memories began to fade, or, conversely, started losing his memories because he began turning into a sudama.
The important thing here is that if Father only saw fragmented memories, then so did Yato. Nothing in the manga suggests that the new master gets fewer of a shinki’s memories than the previous one. When Yato named Kazune, he saw Kiotsugu’s entire life from birth to death – well, maybe not all of it, but definitely the important parts. So I assume that the information Father and Yato got was identical.
And this shows once again just how much Yato cared about Yukine from the very start. Think about it: throughout this chapter we’ve been getting more and more proof that Father initially wanted to break Hagusa as soon as possible. He dragged the boy around potentially familiar places, urged him to look for his name in the house – nothing. Only after that Father decided to change his tactics and let Hagusa discover the GGS on his own, so he allowed the boy to walk around the neighborhood looking for other clues. But if he needed an immediate result, why not take Hagusa to the place of his death, which was bound to be the best trigger?
Because Father doesn’t know where it is.
Do you see it now? Father, who needed something that would break Hagusa for sure, wasn’t able to figure out the most suiting place from the bits of memories he’d received – or didn’t bother. But Yato did everything in his power to find that damn fridge, only with completely different intentions – to keep Yukine safe from that place and everything that discovering it entails. Who knows how many bridges and dumps he had to visit before finding the right area.
Nevertheless, Hagusa is with Father now, not with Yato where he belongs. As I said, the chapter isn’t frightening – by which I meant “we haven’t been shown more horrifying things from Haru’s life yet”. It’s scary in an entirely different way, because it shows how easily Father was able to earn Hagusa’s trust. He exploited everything. He turned the kid’s natural curiosity into a game – “find your name”, “go talk to the neighbors”. When Hagusa complained that Yato never told him anything, Father didn’t say a single bad word about Yato, didn’t try to turn them against each other. Instead, he focused Hagusa’s attention on himself – how he’s ready to “help” Hagusa, even if it’s dangerous, because he “cares” for him and “trusts” him – the two things Yukine has been missing lately. And the background to all this is his terrible inner monologue: how come a dead person is enjoying his “life”? It should be rectified, and the result should be used to my advantage. For ease of use, abuse.
Did you read the most recent Noragami chapter yet? Yukine's "Dark Persona" is honestly pretty cool - so far, kind of a classic "demon in human form" look and powers. Dark hair, red eyes, what looks like fangs, black claws, shadowy tendrils that appear around him when he's getting emotional, inhumanly strong, fast, and agile. On a more meta/analysis level, Yukine really has become a lot like Nora (right down to black hair and red eyes now) while she's become a lot like him.
I DID. And yeah, Yukine and Nora have kind of switched roles at the moment, which is really intriguing because it gives Nora a good look at herself and also at what Father has done to her, and hopefully how it’s not okay.
Honestly, Nora and Hiyori’s team up is great because they should be the ones to save Yukine. Yato and Kazuma, I love you both, but you’re useless and playing right into Father’s hands. I totally can’t fathom how your current plan could possibly go wrong (sarcasm).
It’s not as if it’ll be terribly easy for Father to make your attempts to help seem like attempts to control Yukine, when your current problem is that you haven’t been there for Yukine. Father’s manipulations are chillingly effective and realistic: now Yukine feels as if his desires and wants are being acknowledged by Father, and even if he knows Yato is trying to protect him on some level, there’s also a question of what exactly someone who has hurt you by not being there for you thinks they’re doing trying to protect you. Like, from what exactly, Yato? (Not saying this mindset doesn't have its flaws; it does, and Yato is trying to save Yukine in a good way. But Father is stoking this exact line of thought in Yukine).
Anyways, Yato and Nora have also switched roles in a similar way to Yukine and Nora, in that Yato is now the one who is (albeit unconsciously) doing exactly as Father wants, while Nora is the one grappling with the reality of how their father uses them. Nora and Hiyori saving Yukine could be great for Yato’s growth as well.
If people are looking for Noragami theories and analyses, either because they can’t find that old post about that specific thing or if you’re new to the fandom etc, you can find some of them on my blog under noragami meta where I’ve collected them (for a long time) for easy access
