Why Strophaia’s Interest in Ichiro is Purely Strategic
Let me be clear up front: I get why people love Strophaia. He's got the most striking design out of everyone (though I refrain from calling him 'sexy' as all of these characters are, essentially, ovals and circles). He's cunty. He's chaotic. He's the kind of villain fandom eats up. And look, I love a chaotic evil as much as anyone.
But I think that love for the idea of Strophaia has led a lot of people to misread what the show actually does with him. And nowhere is that more clear than in the sources that claim Strophaia has a genuine love for Ichiro.
This is understandable. Akuma-kun (2023) runs mostly on vibes, themes, visual storytelling, and implication. It's made for you to fill in the blanks, and if you have a strong emotional reaction toward a certain character, well… there’s no question as to how you’ll fill those in.
So this post is my attempt to walk through the claims I’ve seen made versus the actual canon evidence (as best as I understand it and as unbiased as I can be).
One: Strophaia Didn’t Know Ichiro/Aeshma was Akuma-kun
We’re just going to have to use Occam’s razor on this one.
Strophaia is an entity that has existed longer than the Earth. He is incredibly powerful and is only threatened by two things: the scroll we see in episode 12 (which history seems to have almost forgotten) and Solomon's Flute. The latter is tied to a once-every-10,000-year genius.
So: is it more believable that Strophaia took in an abandoned child (for reasons unknown) with the intent of corrupting him, and that child just so happened to be the one being who can properly operate the weapon that threatens Strophaia?
Or: does it make more sense that Strophaia intentionally took Ichiro in because he knew he was Akuma-kun and wanted to eliminate a threat/had a specific plan for him?
Two: Strophaia was Surprised when Ichiro/Aeshma used Solomon’s Flute as a Child
I've seen this used as further proof that Strophaia didn’t know Ichiro was Akuma-kun. But we can't actually conclude what Strophaia is surprised about here.
Let's look at what just happened. Ichiro, a boy presumably abandoned by his family and taken in by demons (plus one angel), has just been convinced that killing a woman bound in chains is the right thing to do. We know Solomon's Flute is connected to the user's emotional attachments. So what if Strophaia isn't surprised that the flute recognized Ichiro as Akuma-kun—what if he's surprised that an Akuma-kun with no existing attachment to humanity can still use it?
Three: The Flute Cracked when Ichiro was Separated from Strophaia
This is a fact, but it seems to be brought up as a way to prove that the attachment between these two is genuine, as though the show doesn’t give us a lens to view this.
Problematic parental relationships are a major theme in Akuma-kun. Over the course of its limited run time we see:
Two mothers who killed their daughters when they defied their mother's image of them.
A father who exchanges his daughter's life to write a masterpiece.
A child who wants to turn into a demon to protect himself and his mother from her abusive boyfriend—a man, as Ichiro points out, she is willingly engaging with.
The show is aware of two things here:
Children are attached to their caregivers, even if they are causing them harm.
Parents do not always want what is best for their children.
So the flute cracking here is merely evidence that a child, with no family to care for him, formed an attachment to a being who wanted to use him for his own purpose. It’s not holy. It’s not genuine. It’s child psychology.
Four: Strophaia's Touch and Words Prove he Cares
The touches, the wounded language about Shingo, the sense that he's reaching for Ichiro across the years—all of it gets read as proof of genuine feeling.
In almost every scene they share, Strophaia winds up touching Ichiro—caressing his face, playing with his hair.
This reads closer to grooming.
Strophaia had access to Ichiro during his early childhood. Now he's been away from Ichiro for years—long enough for Ichiro to go from child to young adult. What we're seeing isn't affection—it's reestablishment of ownership. Strophaia's touch is always initiated by him. Ichiro never invites it, never leans into it, never reciprocates. And Strophaia often chooses moments when Ichiro is focused on something else. That's boundary-testing. Checking how much access he still has.
Meanwhile, on Ichiro’s side, the first time Strophaia touches him after years apart (i.e. the infamous scene), he physically withdraws. He leans back. He snaps his mouth shut. That's discomfort. After that? He tolerates it. But, here's the thing: Ichiro tolerates everyone's touch. He doesn't pull away from Gremory either when she behaves similarly. His lack of reaction later on isn't special to Strophaia—it's just who Ichiro is. Someone who is touch neutral and emotionally detached.
So which moment is more telling? The first one. Before he learned to brace for it. That's the one where his body told the truth.
But if you want to know what Strophaia's physical relationship with Ichiro actually looks like when the performance drops, there's one moment that tells you everything.
When child Ichiro activates Solomon's Flute for the first time, Strophaia's instinct is self-preservation. He screams. His projected hand—larger than Ichiro's entire body—extends fast enough to cause damage. His first move is to attack a child holding the only thing that can threaten him. And, in fact, poses no risk of harm to anyone else in the room.
A caregiver whose first instinct is violence—even while shouting instructions—is not a caregiver. That's a threat responding to a threat, with words as an afterthought.
Then there's how Strophaia talks about Shingo. He refers to him in terms that suggest personal offense—as if Shingo stole or "kidnapped" Ichiro from him. This sounds at first like wounded attachment.
But this works better as manipulation language. It's the kind of framing a controlling figure uses to recast their loss of access as a wrong done to them. And practically speaking, what Strophaia is actually annoyed about isn't Ichiro specifically—it's that Shingo's interference put his plan on hold. The separation from Ichiro meant the derailment of whatever he'd been working toward. The language of theft and personal affront is a reframe of a strategic setback.
And then there's the active deceit. In the childhood flashback, he convinces a young Ichiro to drive a Demon Nail into a woman's head by telling him it will "release her light." A kindness, supposedly.
But later, when Strophaia wants Ichiro to kill Shingo, he says something very different: "Even releasing him as light would annoy me. Maybe I'll return him back to complete nothingness"—as he drops the Demon Nail to hover over Shingo's forehead.
The implication is clear. The Demon Nail doesn't "release" anything. It erases. Strophaia lied to Ichiro about what he was doing—not as a one-time slip, but as a fundamental deception about the nature of the violence he was asking a child to commit.
So when people point to Strophaia's soft touches or his wounded language as proof of genuine feeling, this is what they're brushing past: a being whose first instinct is to attack a child holding a weapon that can only hurt him, who touches without invitation, reframes theft as something done to him, and lies to a child about what he's asking him to do.
Five: Strophaia Just Wants to be With Ichiro
But even setting aside how Strophaia behaves toward Ichiro, the strongest argument against genuine attachment is simply what he's actually trying to do.
We actually get a pretty good sense as to what Strophaia’s whole plan is and it isn’t to have Ichiro by his side necessarily. This is where I’ll have to do a fair bit of conjecture but I will try to show my receipts.
We know that Strophaia has two goals:
Destroy Solomon's Flute
Destroy the Physical World
Now, we see Solomon’s Flute destroyed. It’s for less than a minute, sure, but nothing happens to suggest that this may be leading to the destruction of the physical world which means:
Destroying the Physical World is Phase Two of the Plan.
So how is this achieved? This dialogue from Ichiro (Episode 11) may provide some clue:
“Why is he trying to destroy the physical world? What is it Strophaia wants? That dream. The red nail. The woman in chains. That’s where Strophaia is. My memories from the demon world. Maybe that’s where the answer is. My becoming a demon was the key. Becoming a demon…”
Granted this is Japanese translated to English subtitles and I’m not familiar enough with the original language to get the nuance but to me this implies that part of Strophaia’s plan is to turn Ichiro into a demon in order to destroy the physical world.
Which isn’t as crazy as it sounds at face value because:
It is possible for a human to become a demon. Episode 8 gives us Mahiro, who goes to Ichiro and Mephisto II and asks to be turned into one. Crucially, neither of them say it's impossible. It is implied that it doesn’t happen often or easily. But not that it can’t happen.
Thematically, Ichiro's arc is about making connections, understanding friendship, learning what it means to be human. Strophaia is the antagonist. So what he wants for Ichiro should be the opposite: no attachments, no value for humanity. Perhaps to become a demon. His given name for Ichiro—Aeshma, a demon of wrath—supports this reading.
Strophaia is clearly not done with Ichiro after Solomon's Flute is destroyed. He still wants Ichiro to kill or erase his father. He still offers him knowledge. There's still something he wants Ichiro for. The plan doesn't end with the flute's destruction—it just moves to the next phase.
It's worth noting that there is also the character The Count who had some hand in this. Strophaia references him in the childhood flashback, implying The Count had some authority over or involvement in the environment Ichiro was raised in. Shingo also references him, suggesting he provided some level of care for Ichiro. We don't know The Count's role or how much of this plan originates with him versus Strophaia.
What we can say is that his existence deepens rather than undermines the strategic reading—Ichiro's presence in that world appears to have involved more than one deliberate actor, and Strophaia's interest in Ichiro remains strategic regardless of who originally devised the plan.
Six: Both Times, in his Final Moments, All Strophaia can say is Aeshma
This is read as a tragic expression of love—his last thought being Ichiro's name.
But listen to what's actually happening. He doesn't plead. He doesn't bargain.
Someone who genuinely knew Ichiro—who cared about him—would know what lever to pull. His memories. Information on the demon nail. His parents. Something. Anything that might make him stop.
Strophaia has nothing. Just the name he gave Ichiro. Aeshma. The demon of wrath. The name of the person he wanted Ichiro to become—not the person Ichiro actually is.
Because you don't have to know someone's interiority if you're just going to override it.
So what we're seeing isn't heartbreak. It's disbelief. He can't comprehend that his plan failed—that Ichiro isn't his project anymore.
Just like those mothers we see in episodes 1-2 and 6, Strophaia has a fixed idea of who Ichiro is. His entire model of the situation didn't include this outcome because he never took Ichiro's interiority seriously enough to account for it.
That's not love. That's a villain who never understood the person he was trying to control. And it's arguably the most revealing moment in the show for what Strophaia actually is.
So, Where Does That Leave Us?
I'm not here to say my reading is the only correct one. The show leaves a lot unsaid, and that's by design.
But I do think the evidence points more strongly in one direction than the other. Strategy. Possession. A plan.
"But can't it be both?" someone might ask. "Can't Strophaia want to use Ichiro AND also genuinely love him?"
I would say, no—but let's look at the source material anyway.
Akuma-kun knows how to frame a genuine bond. Take Mephisto III. When Strophaia dangles Mephisto's danger as bait, Ichiro doesn't hesitate—he sprints across terrain to get to him. That's instinct and blind concern. Or take Shingo. When Strophaia threatens him, Ichiro sends Mephisto II and III ahead while he stays behind—then tears through every book he has, searching for any way to hurt Strophaia. The concern is real. He just doesn't show it.
These relationships are messy, difficult, but ultimately reciprocal. Strophaia never gets that framing.
What he gets is the same framing as the mothers who killed their daughters: someone so locked into their own version of the child that they can't see the actual person at all. That's not tragic love. That's tragic narcissism.
I could be missing something—The Count is a loose thread. The mechanics of demon transformation are never explained. The show runs on vibes and themes, not airtight mechanics. So any reading—mine included—involves some degree of filling in the blanks.
But I've seen a lot of sources/posts claiming Strophaia has a genuine, loving interest in Ichiro, and I wanted to offer an alternative reading of what's on screen.
Hope this gave you something to think about or, at the very least, was entertaining!
