observations on yuyuko tanaka and her penchant for playing dudes who die or are on the cusp of death constantly, whether by her own hand or just some silly little fate, and also how it's contrast to rui almost always being blessed with life (that's also given to her by yuyuko's hand or some silly little fate).
or: yuyuko "doomed by the narrative (that she wrote herself)" tanaka + rui "blessed by the narrative (that yuyuko writes for her)" akikaze.
so as said, a while back i noticed that yuyuko's roles are almost all like. guys who brush with death/just outright die die. i went down the roles she has in just her cards and listed them all down on my priv twitter and it looked like:
so a good like. 2/10 roles that don't end badly.
i ended up rereading like. basically almost every rmk story out there, from the earliest ones available and uhm. so.
(purple clouds of the afterworld chapter 5)
(tales of onikurenai chapter 2)
(shibahama final chapter)
all of these are from events pre-downfall (not sure about shibahama but i def know the other ones are). yuyuko's always been fond of tragedies.
obviously this manifests in a lot of her scripts (ghost patrol story rerun, shinsengumi rinpuden, her influence on arcana arcadia's script, and most importantly, rinmeiki), but what i think is interesting is that she saves a lot of the worst fates for herself.
in ghost patrol, whilst fumi and ichie's characters have some tragic interpersonal drama/trauma, it sorts itself out by the end. but yuyuko's character's entire existence attracts danger, death at every turn.
shinsengumi rinpuden has her portray okita soji. fumi describes the story to yuyuko as such:
(okita soji yuyuko bond story 1)
the romanticization of destruction. that feeling of knowing that you died a glorious and honourable death. and what role does yuyuko give herself? what does she do with herself?
die in the antithesis of it. if read as fumi described, the most pathetic death she could have.
i'd go into rinmeiki but that's a beast all on its own, and is mostly rooted in the characters themselves, and not character exploration through them acting as something else. there isnt even much of a script of it ingame, in the sense of the rest of the other examples, so i'll move onto arcana arcadia.
whether a quirk of the fact she was picked as the magician and it was planned from the beginning, or the fact that she is part of the scriptwriting team and therefore has some measure of control on her character, the magician has one of the worst fates in aa, quite literally selling her soul to the devil and damning herself to hell forever, all done by her own hand. she willingly damned herself.
interestingly in these same stories, the things she gives to rui's roles, is life.
kiichi miroku in ghost patrol is still quite equal to abe no suiren, but it's not her that's constantly attracting ghosts.
hajime saito was one of the two survivors of shinsengumi rinpuden. while he didn't have a role to play alive unlike fumi's nagakura shinpachi, hajime saito was still left alive, and given to rui.
now, the hanged man. which at this fucking point is hilariously on the nose, as the magician damns herself to ensure that the hanged man lives and changes the world, a human saving humans and not humans relying on god to save them. she gives up her hopes, her life AND her afterlife for him. the caveat being, if he decides to accept her offer of "becoming the main character". which he does. and while the path he chose by taking up the magician's offer still leads him to hell, he still leaves with his life and a goal to chase, a world to change. it is the magician that pushes the hanged man forward into making something of himself, of the world he lives in, and she herself is only one little spark to light the fire.
indeed, yuyuko is constantly reliving the transience of the stage that she is so fond of. but she does not extend this transience to rui. yuyuko is happy to die over and over again, but rui. rui must live. well, of course she must, yuyuko loves her.
like the hanged man and the magician, yuyuko would give up her life for someone so dear to her.
...
...
so anyways remember when ichie said this in arcana arcadia?
there's a difference in the cyclical deaths that yuyuko and fumi are portraying though, in that fumi dies over and over again to try and regain the past, whilst yuyuko plants her feet firmly in the present and dies over and over again for someone else's future.
she moves forward only when rui does, and in magician stories she does even tell nana that she'll decide to be rui's producer so she can make her into the best stage girl that akikaze rui can be. but what about her? she seems to understand that stage girls must keep moving on, keep moving forward towards the future with unparalleled hunger, but as of right now it appears that she has put herself in an odd stasis. she moves when rui does, she dies when rui does. it's an existence as a stage girl that cannot entirely continue.
this dependence can keep one going for a while, but it cannot last forever. could yuyuko move forward without rui walking the path beside her? could rui move forward without yuyuko's silent support? if the ties between them are severed, would they bleed out and die?
well, only time will tell. i patiently await what story is to be told in their futures.
though i will say, to be separated like this isn't entirely a tragedy. what they've gained from each other will follow them for the rest of their lives. even apart, everyone is still together.
tl:dr: hey little dude. why do you keep dooming yourself in narratives that you have control over. and why do you keep giving the big guy you love narratives that favor his life.
