shigure and akito - an analysis
one of the many factors to shigure and akito’s characters is that they are extremely childlike, immature adults in the way they approach sex and relationships, which i would pin on their unconventional upbringing.
akito, largely because of her coddling due to her position as god in the zodiac, and lack of any parental figures, very much has no understanding of how to treat others. as for romantic relationships - she has no absolutely no idea. you can see this with her tantrums and the way she conversates with the zodiac. she flips between cold, ruthless adult, to a desperate wide eyed child who sometimes offers sex. which is disturbing in itself because that is two complete, end of the scale extremes. whilst she never makes a move on the younger male zodiac (although it is shown in numerous scenes that she does touch them up quite a bit and get close to them) she does engage in sexual activity with the older ones like kureno and shigure (the ones who are aware of her gender.) which begs the question: does akito confuse sex as a currency?
that’s where ren comes in. akito obviously hates ren, but i also think that she emulates her mother. i mean, the pure isolation she faced in her childhood and a lack of positive role models makes this even more plausible. whilst even yuki and kyo have had the liberty of being able to observe relationship dynamics like cheating, dating etc through school and socialisation, akito never has. so i think she observed the way how her mother would use her sexuality in order to gain things and copied that as an attempt to keep the “bonds.”
akito struggles with the idea that someone could be attracted to her as a person, clinging onto her being an omnipotent god and insecure in being anythinh lesser than that. she sees sexual acts as an act of duty for the male zodiac and as just a way to get them to stay by her side. just like how kureno says he slept with her out of pity, akito even chastises hatsuharu’s relationship with rin, asking whether their relationship was based on pity. because she is so attached to the bonds of the zodiac, she sees them all as some kind of unit and not as individual people who have different wants and perceptions of her. even shigure, the zodiac member who is arguably the closest out of everyone to her, she still feels distant to him and insecure in their relationship. therefore, she struggles with the idea that shigure actually wants intimacy and loves her romantically. her dismissal of his desires and failure to see him as a person leads to create a worse dynamic between them, as he feels like he has to constantly belittle her in order to lessen this belief that the zodiac are just toys to serve her.
shigure from the get-go is a very sexual person. whether it’s his flirting, crude jokes or just overall energy, this guy is probably the most sexual person in the series. he was habitually isolated from a lot of kids his own age, spent his childhood going to boy’s schools, and because of the curse he has never even been able to hold a woman other than akito. which is why i think the reason his obsession permeated so much, why on top of the dream he had he was so singlehandedly obsessed with her. he is so blatantly sexual, but yet it is almost an act that deeply contrasts how distant he is from people around him. sure, he wasn’t horrifically abused in the way some of the zodiac members were, but with the interaction with his mother it is very clear that there are very few people he has affection for or holds dear, even including his own parents. its interesting that by the time tohru meets him, when he has been exiled from the sohmas and is living near the city, he is still basically just as isolated as he was when he was living at the sohmas. even the three other relationships he has with women in the series (mayu, ren and rin) is completely transactional, just like in the way akito uses sex.
just like how akito sees women as being just her mother, shigure tends to do the same and see all woman as variations of akito. ren and rin just look like akito with long hair, his editor has short hair just like her, mayuko has a slightly aggressive personality like akito. and that is what is so unhealthy about his obsession with her - he holds her to such a high degree that every woman is just a variation of her, a beautiful dream he had as a child that has spiralled into just a kind of posessive, broken up mess of idealisation that scattered in all directions of his life.
so the irony in his character, with the grand romantic gesture of the flower when he was a child, his fixation on writing crappy romance novels: is that he hopelessly idealises love itself, whilst still having largely transactional relationships and keeping things to a largely flirtatious basis with the women around him. even with tohru, someone he grows to actually care for on a platonic level, the only way he knows how to crassly express this is by flirting with her or joking about marrying her. the majority of the ways akito and shigure express love is sexual. whilst akito pines for a protective, almost maternal love from the older sohma men, shigure’s is romantic, seeing her as a woman and not as a god.
these two quite innocent children grow up to become monsters. because shigure can’t actually ever truly ‘love’ or truly be close and ‘hold’ another woman because of the curse he becomes a perverted, possesive man obsessed with love, no matter how twisted that version of love may be. and akito, because of her abusive and desperate need for love becomes a cruel and unstable woman. their posessiveness mirrors each other, but they want a different kind of love from one another. the reason why akito hasnt come to grips with that feeling of romantic love from shigure is because she doesnt understand what that is. shigure, with his nose always in a book and flirting his way through life, romanticises love to such a degree that his feelings has turned to that of sexual possesiveness and obsession, and made him have a lack of interest in others, completely having his life revolving around akito. whilst akito is so desperately seeking of love, that she sleeps with men just to secure that they love her.
almost the mirror image of tohru realising that she can have someone other than her mother in her heart, akito realises that she can have a mutual relationship with another person that is based on love and nothing else, to see someone else as an equal. to her, the zodiac members are possessions - that she can dispose of and treat how she wants. for shigure, akito is his life’s goal - the maiden he must save from the tower. they want to possess each other so deeply and so intensely, but in completely different ways.
i think the show also expands shigure’s capacity to care for other people when he comes in as a guardian to the kids, which even though he is still manipulative and still largely only interested in akito, he does grow to care for others like tohru and shiki, which is important. it even is shown at the end of the manga after the rather life changing event of kureno getting stabbed, that he actually offers akito the choice to leave him even though he has spent his whole life trying to pursue her. they also mature as adults in the future with how they raised their child. akito also has a change, and grows to not depend on the love or bond of the zodiacs, letting them be free of the sohmas and making sure she is the best mother to her child. so good for them.