#wb meta

[occasionalficwriter]

things suo says that if you take too seriously are a bit concerning

this is the one that started this post. i think this is a normal advice, but the way suo is so intense about it makes it kinda ominous to me

specially when you consider the other time suo flicks nirei, he's talking about being reckless. if you combine those two moments we could have suo being reckless, closing his eyes, and having something happen to his right one because of it

even without the context of the red chanpuru being a family i find this concerning. but with that context, plus umemiya considering the whole town his family (therefore, he can be in everyone's business if needed) puts suo in a different ideological field to sakura and umemiya. i wonder, at what point would suo consider he has to interfere in a family issue, or someone should interfere in his family?

the correlation of having a weakness and being a good fighter suo has its crazy. again, this could be normal, but in the same day suo is unable to share a weakness he has with the group. so even if it seems like a throwaway comment i think that at least for himself, if not others too, suo believes having a weakness means you cant be a good fighter

ok, this does happen to everyone in the manga (except suo) when they're training. but, i do have to wonder how serious are the injuries suo's talking about here, what kind of injuries he had training, what would it take for him to consider training went too far?

last one, let's go to the beginning. the entire shishitoren affair is crazy to me. the humiliation ritual he did with kanuma would not have worked if the real conversations hiragi, sakura and umemiya had with shishitoren, hadn't happened. what suo is talking about here feels like "i talk, you listen", an authoritarian view on education that i belive isn't productive

[occasionalficwriter]

*grabs you by the shoulder* WHAT IS WRONG WITH SUO??!?

i think we can count adultification/parentification as basically confirmed to be one of the things happening with him - since he's a fifteen year old with an important role in a gang where he not only has to fight but also: babysit adults, worry about the food and education of the children, and maybe other roles. while kids join at fifteen, suo seems to be the exception, being maybe groomed for this job

so that explains a lot. his mature posture, his knowledge and abilities, he's inability to show any weakness. it makes sense if he has such an important role, he can't show vulnerability. his job is to worry so other people don't have to. at fifteen

but it feels like there's more and its been driving me crazy but i think this chapter gave me the answer

kids are being abandoned, and as i noticed here, we have a history of kids being abandoned by their parents in this manga, so i think its likely suo was abandoned by his parents and i think the reason why is in his right eye. i think the eye will be really important for his backstory

maybe suo's parents wanted him to be "perfect", maybe they abandoned him for not achieving that. maybe suo had heterochromia. maybe he took his eye out, maybe an accident happened and now in their eyes he can never be "perfect" again

but even after that suo is still striving for that perfection so he cannot let himself be anything but. ive wondered before if some of suos oddities come from that. can't play that game because i never played before and dont know if i will be perfect. cant go in the water cause i dont know how to swim so i cant be perfect, etc

suo in makochi: i hope i'm getting a good grade in being a friend, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve :)

[occasionalficwriter]

i think not everyone gets that suo doesn't like to lie.

he could have lied about what his fear was

what happened to his eye

his name

why he doesn't want to go in the water

but he doesn't lie - and i mean actually lie, not something only umemiya and sakura would believe in - because he doesn't want to.

he will say nothing, he will deflect, he will joke he will tell the truth in a way no one will notice was the truth.

he will do anything to avoid lying. even though lying could make his life easier. because as it is, everyone knows he's hiding/doesn't want to talk about some things. if he lied it would be harder to tell.

tldr; suo is not as much of a liar like people say he is. and i think it's important to know that everything he said while at furin he was being sincere about

p.s.: a post i remembered after i was done about suo lying lol.

[occasionalficwriter]

thinking about the three big symbolism in wind breaker and suo's connection with them:

fights as conversation

food as connection

plants as growth

as we know, suo uses fights to monologue and not have a conversation. he already knows everything that he has to know about the person he's fighting, he doesn't need to hear from them.

he also doesn't eat with other people. i don't know if he's consciously trying not connect or if there's another reason as to why he's not eating. regardless, the outcome is the same, he's not deepening the bond he has with his friends.

and then we have plants. everyone in furin has a plant name, including suo. umemiya has a garden at furin and has everyone helping (including suo) and then umemiya feeds them (not including suo) the food they cultivated together.

suo also recognizes plants and he knows flower language. theoretically he's ahead. but in practice he isn't.

suo is not trying to have conversations, he's not trying to connect with anyone. but he is still trying to grow, that's his whole thing, growing into a mature adult.

but his interaction with plants don't come from an active place. he's not planting, he's not eating the food either. he's helping sometimes when asked. just likes how he is the rest of time; he observes, he passes judgements, he reacts.

even thought he is trying to grow, his growth is stunted. for growth to happen you need to come out of your comfort zone. suo needs to stop being an observer and interact with the world for him to fully grow

[occasionalficwriter]

What is Tsugeura's deal?

i made many crack posts about this, but i decided to be serious this time

wind breaker is a fighting manga, and everyone's first fight says a lot about their characters:

sakura says he wants to fight his way to the top, but the first thing we see him do in the manga is protect someone. even as he rejects people with words, his actions show where his heart lies

before the shishitoren fight suo seems amused with the situation, but when the fight with kanuma starts we see how disdainful he actually is of childish bullies that hurt others

nirei was once saved by a furin student, so now he wants to do anything to be that person for someone, even if he doesn't currently have the skills to help someone without getting hurt

kiryu is attentive to girls and wants to protect them in and out of fights

sugishita wants to protect the world umemiya created

tsugeura and kiryu have their first fight together, a fight kiryu is involved in for trying to protect a girl, while tsugeura just happens to be there. when he learns those man are after the girl his thoughts aren't about the men hurting a girl, but about how kiryu is cool.

protecting people is a side effect of his real objective of fighting strong people. his virtue is letting opponents get the first strike. is that a sign of his chivalrous nature? not really. i would argue that for someone obsessed with people's virtues, his are surprisingly unclear and unsubstantial.

one way to write a mystery is by misdirecting. look at this shiny thing and dont worry about whats happening over there! i see this happening with tsuge's character all the time. have his introduction be with kiryu so we can pay attention to kiryu protecting the girl and forget about tsugeura's own motivations!

another fight that establishes everyone's character is the one against keel. for tsugeura, he... cares about his friends? but is that ever relevant for his character? in the same fight, suo caring about his friends is more relevant than it ever is for tsuge.

what sakura said he was (someone that only cares about fighting to the top) is what tsugeura actually appears to be. as far as i know he could be upset only because they weren't putting on a good show.

moving on, i was checking this document again, and to my surprise tsugeura's name has large river in it. surprising because suo - who has been connected to tsugeura since the beginning - is from a river island. maybe tsuge's from there too?

another interesting thing in his name is the connection to betrayal. is he betraying suo? bofurin? if he's from the kasai district too, is he betraying them? is he the one who's going to be betrayed?

when tsugeura finally talked about his past with suo everyone felt underwhelmed. 200 chapters of build up for this? tsuge didn't offer any information on suo even when anything could be of help, he only said anything when asked.

but what i'm thinking now is that he never tried asking suo again after that first day. is suo's virtue really that interesting? no one ever says their virtue to tsuge, he's the one that assigns people virtues after observing them.

i think its clear what suo's virtue is. was that really the question tsuge made that suo didnt want to answer? when they met again he could have said "wanna tell me your virtue now?" instead of what he says here.

we're getting their history now, when suo isn't there to disavow tsuge if he's lying. i would have actually trusted suo more than i do tsuge because i already know suo doesn't like to lie.

suo's actually even more honest then i expected. i thought because we see a silly side of him and a colder side of him, the truth lied in the middle and that would be his personality in the red chanpuru, but that's not what happened. he acts there the same he does in makochi. (at least with the population). and when given the opportunity to lie, he still chooses to say nothing.

is tsuge being an optimist here or did his strategy to keep people out of his business work? since i've noticed it, i've been obsessed with how tsuge keeps people out of his business by doing the opposite of suo.

the way i see it, suo is evading questions in canon but leaving it obvious for the readers he's hiding something. while tsuge is misdirecting us. he's Too Much, so the characters leave him alone and don't ask him anything, which frees him from the responsibility of having to lie in the first place! brilliant strategy. suo, take notes.

in the grande scheme of things, this isn't much, but its actually what started this unraveling for me. out of our six main first years, tsuge is the only one that doesn't have school as his favorite place. does that mean he's evil? no. other characters have other places too, like tsubaki and anzai.

but having all the other evidence, i think muscle power could be important. if tsuge is part of another group, they could be hiding in plain sight as the workers of muscle power.

suo's absence is so big we don't think about how tsuge is also missing. and while we had a hint of suo's backstory around chapter 100, we don't have anything for tsuge. why make him such an important character? there has to be more to him. we have anzai's backstory, sugishita's backstory and now suo's close before getting even a hint of tsugeura's.

i think suo and tsuge are used by nii sensei to misdirect each other all the time. suo is a traitor don't look at anyone else. suo is annoyed at tsuge don't think about who else suo should be annoyed at.

while i never doubted how much suo cares, i do doubt tsugeura. does he even care about protecting makochi and its people?? what is the principle of his life?

one of the only things we know about tsugeura is that he's interested in suo. he went looking for him in middle school, and now looked for him again and managed to become friends with him. are they from the same place? is tsuge with a group that wants to take the red chanpuru down? was the fight a set up? did suo hurt his brother? is he really only interested in knowing his virtue?

suo left, and tsuge is still in makochi. is what he wants in makochi? what if the first years go to find suo and makochi is left more vulnerable to attack?

IDK!!! but if tsugeura's going to be a traitor it has to be this arc because we're not gonna do fake traitors two times (i dont think tsuuge is going to be pure evil either). bankoku-gai (not red chanpuru, we haven't really been introduced to them) is more like makochi than i thought it would be. so maybe the danger will come from something else. something tsuge is involved in.

at the end of the day what i have is: why is tsuge even as important as he is? it could be only sakura, suo, kiryu, nirei and sugishita. we didn't need another character, tsugeura could have been part of anzai's group. so if he was included, it means his character is more than he seems.

and that's my thing, when you stop to think about what tsuge's deal is, you have nothing. and you don't even realize you have nothing! we have more on suo than tsuge. we have more on anzai and momijikawa than on tsuge. and yet, no one is going crazy wondering what his backstory is. and that's what makes it suspicious.

i know i started this by asking what tsugeura's deal is, but unfortunately that's also how i'm gonna end it too.

Tsuge, what's your deal?

[occasionalficwriter]

The lesson Sakura will learn from Bankoku-Gai

when i was looking into autumn symbolism i kept seeing change as a big one, which makes sense since autumn prepares for winter. so i tried to make sense of it with the new arc. and what i want to talk about is how bofurin will start changing this arc.

my first thought about the red chanpuru was that it would be a dark version of bofurin. i thought that's where it was going when endo revealed they're similar.

we only have one chapter with them so far, so i don't know if that will be the case or not (and in that chapter we spent more time with the population of bankoku-gai than the red chanpuru), but i now think it's likely this won't be a completely "evil" group.

i think it will be a group we'll have something to teach, and also something to learn from.

the most important aspect of bankoku-gai so far is the multi-cultural one, and that's in direct opposition to makochi, the town that doesn't accept outsiders.

not only that, but bankoku-gai is a place people come from the outside to abandon their kids there. which makes me think of the alternate universe where sakura was abandoned there, and was accepted like he was in makochi.

is that what happened with suo? i think so. two boys abandoned and how where they ended up affected how they grew and the person they became. what would have happened if they had exchanged paths?

hilarious moment from this arc. suo spent 200 chapter translating sakura to others and others to sakura, only for that to be the tip of suo's translation iceberg.

just like suo understood sakura deeply, i think sakura will be the same. it will be his time to interpret suo's actions and feelings to others. since they can relate to each other.

bankoku-gai is an island, which will naturally make them isolated - we just don't know to what level yet. i've kinda jokingly made a post about there being no bridge to kasai, but i can see it really happening. they're so isolated it's hard to get there and hard to get out.

but even if not literally, i think sakura will become a bridge between bofurin and red chanpuru. this will be something umemiya can't do himself, which means slowly bofurin will need sakura more than umemiya.

just like sakura observed roppo-ichiza to learn from them and decided what's admirable and what he wants to do differently, sakura will observe bankoku-gai and red chanpuru and learn from them.

when i started watching wind breaker and saw the teenagers were acting like the police the show basically became an utopian fantasy in my mind. but bankoku-gai woke me up:

if this place is an utopia, it needs to be a place where everyone from everywhere can be accepted.

i think bankoku-gai will inspire sakura to make makochi into a place that accepts outsiders. that's already the type of leader sakura is. because sakura is an outsider he can see past the borders and unite everyone.

umemiya became the bridge between the students and the population. suo was the bridge between sakura and the first years. sakura will be the bridge between the population and outsiders.

connecting suo - now outed as at least partially an outsider - back to everyone will be his first job. if he can do that, he can do it with others. he can become his own leader with his own goal. when sakura becomes a leader in spring it won't just be because they need someone else in umemiya's place, but because the need him.

[occasionalficwriter]

at first i wondered if this was a sign of suo's lack of admiration for umemiya. but i think it can just be a reflex of how things are in the red chanpuru. the different type of respect you need to have to someone above you

and if i want to extrapolate even more: suo's distance as a consequence of him always being around people above him or below him, so he doesn't have a lot of contact with other people. he can only imagine what that would be like

[occasionalficwriter]

this was a moment that never left my mind. i thought it was a crazy projection from suo's part. but how can he even think sakura is like this? it doesnt make sense when suo knows how honest sakura is

but then chapter 210 happened and we saw a new side of suo, expressions he never made before

and at first i thought he was annoyed here. but i think suo is actually desperate. i think he's grasping at the lies he told himself like his life depends on it. maybe because it does

suo now is like suzuri was here when confronted with his own lies

while i don't think suo lies to his friends frequently. i think he lies to himself all the time and that's where his strange phrases come from

if he's relied upon, it means it's a betrayal when he leaves... so suo has to tell himself sakura is just using him instead. he's easily discarded, exchangeable

he has to tell himself for them he is just a classmate. they don't even know each other for a year. they won't miss him. the focus is on their feelings. as always. is he upset? we don't know.

but we know they shouldn't be upset he's leaving their lives. that's nothing. their lives will continue the same as they've been

maybe even as he says he hopes sakura feels closer, he's telling himself there's no way sakura will feel that way. he's free to leave when he has to without hurting anyone. he won't be missed

sakura fend off endo because of his friends. but that probably didn't include him. when he leaves sakura will still have nirei. did he ever even tell sakura he was there personally for him or was it always the entire class?

he is the one willing to do anything to hold on to his lies. accepting the truth is unthinkable

if he accepts they want him to stay. if he accepts he wants to stay. he will crumble into dust. this lie is the only thing keeping him from falling apart

the number 1 person suo lies to is himself