Also still working on brothers posting but that thing is going absolutely amazing when I manage to somehow wreck my own theories before I've even fully written them down
Like case in point, don't think I didn't notice this guy wearing the same tassels as Suo
And at first I thought it would signal them being the disciplines of the same master (and how cute would that be) but then I was looking up an unfamiliar term I saw in a fanfic and ended up neck deep reading about Chinese symbols (again)
And I think I found out what Suo's earrings mean. And I'm not okay with this info
*deep sigh*
"Coral (珊瑚, shān hú) symbolises longevity and promotions in rank
Coral was historically thought to be an underwater "iron tree" (鐵樹, tiě shù) that blossomed once per century. Red coral is believed to be auspicious for its colour. Coral buttons were worn on the hats of government officials. Coral resembles deer antlers, and deer are associated with longevity. Coral is considered to be one of the Eight Treasures."
And as for the second white bead in his earrings? I always kinda thought it might be a pearl but now I'm more or less convinced it is
"Pearl (宝珠, bǎo zhū) symbolises endless transformation; perfection and enlightenment (when chased by a dragon); wealth, treasure, pure intentions, and genius in obscurity
Chinese dragons are often depicted as chasing a pearl-like jewel object. The pearl also resembles the moon, and as a dragon devours or disgorges the moon, it appears to wane or wax. The flaming pearl is one of the Eight Treasures."
Throwback to that scene of Suo admiring the moon (which could represent Furin)
I also looked up what the tassels mean. And apparently yellow/golden tassels symbolise authority. So Suo's earrings could literally be - and likely are - his rank insignia as a Red Chanpuru officer
(Also take note how the other guy I pointed out appears to have two larger coral beads in his tassels so would that mean his rank is higher than Suo's? Unless the meeting they're headed to next that Suo appears to be dreading is another promotion. Imagine if we see him next time with two red coral beads in his earrings)
Now I understand what Nii-sensei meant by saying Suo's arc is a trump card. It's been in front of us the whole time. Nii-sensei planned this from the beginning
Before I go to write any longer analysis posts, there's a few things I need you to know about the new chapter. Pls excuse me as I go on a bit of a rant from a professional standpoint
*clears throat* English and Translation Studies major in uni here, hi
THIS IS BAD TRANSLATION. THERE IS IN FACT NO TRANSLATION HAPPENING HERE. Translating is the act of transmitting a message from one language into another. Interpreting is transmitting the message in spoken language while translating usually refers to written texts. In layman's terms, both are included under the umbrella of translation so that's what I'm using here. But what Suo is doing is simply policing people in multiple languages. He's not transmitting any messages between any languages even tho he clearly knows multiple
The core ethics of a professional translator/interpreter are also to maintain neutrality and transparency. We are not allowed to change the message we're transmitting in any way, we're not allowed to insert our own opinions into the message, and we're not allowed to pick and choose which parts of the message get transmitted. A translator isn't supposed to draw attention to themselves, our role is to be invisible. We're simply there to transmit messages between people who lack a common language, and who we are outside the job and the role of a translator - our identity and problems - is left behind at the door. These are things we're taught in Translation Studies 101. So if Suo and his brothers are supposed to act as translators/interpreters/multicultural community mediators, this is UNETHICAL PRACTICES
Secondly, I need you to know the term "linguistic imperialism" that popped up very early in my studies (and might be something of a special interest for me). In our modern world, English is the global lingua franca and Anglo-American culture has spread all over the world via Hollywood movies, music, memes and other media. In our modern world, knowing English gives you a privilege over people who do not know English, and an advantage in education, the job market, etc. and just gaining worldly knowledge in general. So if English is not your native language, you're more or less forced to learn English in order to get ahead in life
It appears to me that in Bankoku-gai, knowing English is not the privilege, multilingualism is. The more languages you know, the more privilege you have in a multicultural environment. And that gives the multilingual people a position of power over the people who only know one or two languages. Which is why we get Bacchus complaining here about being "only bilingual". And then Rakta makes fun of him for it
And anyway, this was just the first one of MANY fishy things I spotted in the chapter
Some days ago I saw people talking about seeing Suo's fighting aura in his character tag... and that may have stayed niggling in my brain. At first I was thinking to myself like "ofc it's gonna be a dragon bc RC = dragons and at the end of this arc, Suo will have proven himself as the most noble of all the dragons". But then I saw some official art and was like "wait but the dragon is already assigned to Sugi, and Sakura is a tiger (that is probably black and white like his hair)... that means we have two out of the four legendary beasts already" and then we have this guy with a bird in his name, whose whole theme is resurrection (also literally coded in his name), and his theme colour is red......
Imagine if this arc culminates to the little falcon flying out of his golden cage and transforming into a magnificent, flaming phoenix and then raining hell on whoever took his freedom
Also how do you think Suo's going to react when he meets Sakura & co again in Bankoku-gai?
Would his eye sparkle for a moment in happiness thinking "they really came for me" or would it break his heart a little?
Would he show them around Bankoku-gai for a day, acting smiley and nonchalant as usual, trying to convince Sakura & co that he's perfectly happy being back home, or would they immediately be faced with Officer Sun Fei who coldly tells them to go back where they came from?
Or would Suo just watch from the balcony and send his cronies brothers to either kick his friends outside the city gates or to bring them to the headquarters to meet with him?
(And then cue that meeting quickly going completely off rails from what Suo planned bc his friends are surprisingly pushy lol)
Add on to my previous post where I said Suo has four different death flags hanging over his head. Thought I should probably explain that a bit more
1. His constant association with the number 4, which we know is associated with death in Japanese and Chinese cultures due to similar pronunciation (tho this could also be a hint to his ties to mafia/triads/organised crime, I did some research on triads a while back and found out all the ranks have numerical codes and all those codes start with 4)
2. His flower/tree symbolism being about "renewal, revival, resurrection, new beginnings" (both sappanwood and Chinese redbud carry these meanings) and while "resurrection" isn't the same as death, it kinda includes the idea that you first have to die somehow in order to be resurrected/revived/renewed (and the Chinese redbud specifically is also "often associated with the fleeting yet beautiful nature of life")
3. His tree, the Chinese redbud, is a deciduous tree meaning it drops its leaves (or maybe you could say "withers") in the winter. And I also saw someone else's theory talking about a Chinese folk tale about three brothers fighting over a redbud tree and the tree withering as a result. Anyway. They're currently approaching winter in the manga
4. ...I actually forget what my fourth flag was but I think I just clocked him seeming a bit depressed? Like I was thinking to myself about Suo's hobbies one day (listening to music, listening to different languages, people watching) and I got these visuals in my head of him laying down on his bed listening to music on his phone while staring at the ceiling or listening to his brothers and master talking in Chinese in the next room and him standing apart from others by the windows in class, just quietly observing his friends rather than taking part in activity and just went to myself like "oh wow that feels dissociative and depressive af, is he okay?" And then you add on to that all his wistful smiles towards Sakura and Nirei when they're not looking, the way Suo appears to deeply emphasise with Sakura implying he may have (had?) similar experiences, the way Suo can't take a compliment, how he makes himself useful to his classmates rather than opening up and connecting with them, and his rather dismissive attitude if not outright disregard towards himself ("I'm just a guy who happened to be in your class, I'm just quitting school, it's not a big deal, why are you even so upset? We aren't anything")
So tbh atm I'm slightly more scared for Suo's mental health than any physical threat that being at the RC headquarters could possibly impose on him. Like the biggest danger to this boy could easily turn out to be himself.
This isn't really here or there, more or less unrelated to anything I'm working on in my drafts currently. But I fucked up my sleep sched and my brain is in full angst mode tonight and there's a thought that refuses to leave me alone
You know in the back of my mind I'm still squinting at that empty lot in Makochi. Bc Suo doesn't tell outright lies (or only ones so outrageous that only Sakura and Ume will believe them). So maybe his actual Makochi address was somewhere nearby or he was actually camping out in the shed thingy at the back of the lot. Or maybe, if we go the ultimate angst route, that address was his real address a long time ago
Maybe Suo was actually born and raised in Makochi for the first few years of his life, before something happened to him that landed him in Bankoku-gai and in RC's ranks. Maybe that's why he came back to Makochi for middle school, after whatever went down with RC that might have cost him his eye
Maybe if Nirei were to talk to some old grandmas in that neighbourhood about people who have come and gone through Makochi over the years or went digging into newspapers articles from his childhood at the local library, he'd find out the story of a family who moved out of Makochi all of a sudden after something happened at their house. Or came across newspaper clippings of a boy his age who went missing when they were children and was never found. Maybe he'd even see a photo of someone who looks remarkably like his friend, sans the eyepatch and about ten years
Maybe they could never find info about Suo bc there has never been a Suo family in Makochi. But there was once a family with a different surname, with a son called Hayato. And something horrible happened to them
Hello new fandom and congrats wbk for making me dig out my nearly abandoned personal blog. I'm usually more of a lurker in fandoms but I stumbled into this one right around the time ch210 dropped and eyepatch-kun has been driving me insane ever since and venting to my (non-otaku) irl friends is no longer cutting it
So anyway about 2-3 weeks ago I had this horrible thought that we're probably going to see Suo get hurt really badly in this arc like. Whatever made him go that far to push his friends away is obviously very serious and very dangerous and the boy already has like four different death flags hanging over his head (but it's okay, he's one of the MCs, he has plot armour and this isn't that sort of a manga - I hope - but esp with his flower language being "revival, resurrection", I feel like some kind of a metaphorical death is def in the cards for him... but even if it's metaphorical in the end doesn't mean a literal death can't be a very close call). And Suo has already shown himself to be a wild card when cornered (changing his strat three times on Nirei when the situation started spiralling out of his control) and his mental state is looking p fragile in recent chapters. And if this arc is going to end up being about two factions (Bofurin vs RC, his friends/found family vs his "real" family) fighting over Suo and his loyalty and Suo feels torn between them... if he gets distressed and cornered enough, I unfortunately can't put it past this boy to pull some insane mental gymnastics and decide that the best solution to his problems is to simply remove himself from the equation.
I'm putting a read-more here for your benefit (cw: I'm known to get very wordy and my brain excels at churning angst), below are my theories on how this scene could play out and what clued my thoughts to go that way
So far I've come up with two (three, but I'll get into option #3 on a separate post) possible options for Suo's metaphorical death. My first thought was that he might attempt seppuku with a pair of scissors or some other bladed object that has been mistakenly left near him (wbk has notably not shown any other bladed weapons than scissors and small knives) but then I thought him jumping from a bridge (here I was still thinking of one of the Makochi bridges where they fought Noroshi if Suo were to turn up again with RC as a new threat to Bofurin) would probably be more compelling narratively (and we already have the precedent of Ume jumping from a roof top and Momijikawa jumping from a bridge and if there's one thing Nii-sensei loves it's foreshadowing). And then the revelation of Bankoku-gai being on a river island in ch216 and the way Sakura underlined it in his thoughts (ofc I could be wrong and he just recognised the location from somewhere else, maybe Suo and Sakura met each other briefly as children/were childhood friends like in the game) def made me squint suspiciously at the page. Honorary mention also to Suo's "I will die if I touch water" line which also feels like foreshadowing now
Suo jumping would also allow his friends a more proactive role to try and save him instead of just descending into panic and calling an ambulance for him. I even have the perfect candidate for who would jump in after Suo to get him out. I mean he literally has a friend called "Great River" who's also the most athletic in their group and thus probably the strongest swimmer even if the river surrounding Bankoku-gai has strong currents that only someone with a death wish would choose to dive in
Additionally, Suo attempting to take himself out would serve as a wake-up call for RC to stop doing whatever they're doing that is distressing Suo so much and driving him to that point. And also getting Suo wet would be a great way to show us readers what he's been hiding under his clothes and eyepatch this whole time
So now I have this visual repeating in my head of Suo falling. Like in the middle of the Sakura vs Suo/Bofurin vs RC fight, where Suo is slowly but surely losing to Sakura and his mental state keeps fracturing the longer the fight drags out and as Sakura gets closer and closer to the truth. Suo finds himself both mentally and physically backed into a corner on some balcony overlooking the river (the balcony scene in ch216 really living rent free in my head rn) and then- it's a bit unclear, it's Suo we're talking about so you know he could easily make it look like he just accidentally and tragically slips over the edge but also it's Suo so you know he could just as easily catch and pull himself back up if he wanted to. And it would be his expression while falling that finally clues us readers in on whether his fall is intentional or not. You know Nii-sensei could draw it oh so prettily- a large, half a page at least, panel of Suo mid-fall; his RC robes billowing gracefully around him, him still smiling as always, looking both remorseful and relieved at the same time. Sakura screaming his name in the background. And the battle around them comes to a halt when both Bofurin members and Suo's brothers come to the horrific realisation of what just happened. And then the chapter would end in that cliffhanger bc ofc it would I have seen your game Nii-sensei!!!
Now, I could write the scene I have in mind + the aftermath into a fanfic but my writing muscles are p rusty atm... we'll see how much this idea will keep torturing me over the next two weeks lol. I think I'd also prefer to find out the names of Suo's brothers before potentially using them in a fic (edit: take a guess who went into name research before even finishing this post lmao)
Anyway, this is just speculation from my part, all I can really concretely say rn is that the river/water theme seems like it might become important soon. But with all the other hints (including the balcony scene in ch216 living rent free in my head), I'm almost willing to bet money that Suo will take a dip in the river at some point during his arc, one way or another
I'm also fully aware that it might take a full year before canon either vindicates me or proves me wrong. So for now, just mark my words in case Suo does end up going for a swim lol
1. He needs to experience failure. He needs to learn that the whole world won't fall apart the moment if/when he fails
2. He needs a good cry. Preferably in front of the dojo kids, his brothers, and Sakura & co. Bc obviously this kid has been bottling up all his true emotions for who knows how long and he needs to release them somehow. It would also be for everyone else's benefit to see that this fifteen-year-old is in fact a fifteen-year-old who has been pushed way beyond reasonable limits and expectations and needs their support
