could you describe us Douman's personality according to your own understanding? (i mean, with all this heels thing, he seems childish, but i love it)
oh man this is hard describing personalities is the one thing im worst at
(im taking "douman" as both his persona 1000 years ago and now)
the heels thing, I can totally understand, as a tall person whose only personality trait is being tall.
(and speaking of tall characters good god all the regularly appearing guys are so tall basically everyone is way above average height for asians)
i accidentally wrote an essay so im putting it under read more
In general
well, first of all, if i had to say in one sentence, he acts and tries to be serious but he's also not above participating in tomfoolery and being the butt of a joke (its a comedy manga after all)
like here from sports day
for all that he wears a mask, he's one of the easier characters to get a read on (aka know what hes thinking) whether he's being honest or lying or tsundere
funny enough, the one moment i couldn't get a read on him at all was right after he killed seimei
actually if you'll notice, that scene had douman's face super concealed most of the time, either by the blood or his hair, or just turning his head away from us.
which wasn't the case at all for ch89, where his face was totally visible the whole time, up until he killed seimei.
funny enough x2, the character thats most IMPOSSIBLE to read is seimei. this man is INSCRUTABLE
i think it'll be useful to break down the different faces the principal shows to different people (or, "who other people think he is")
on a scale of principal to douman, there's:
principal (public persona)
principal, in private (who he is to the teachers etc)
acchan (who he is to ranmaru)
douman (who he was 1000 years ago, and who byakko etc see him as)
The Principal
the first two can be differentiated by whether the mask is totally covering his face
how much of his face is shown is also correlated with how much personal investment he has in the situation
the "who other people think he is" definition is also important. for example, for most of chapter 1, when he's interacting with haruaki, his mask totally covers his face, reflecting how haruaki's scared, and also how us as readers don't know what to make of this guy yet. but at the end of the chapter, when he's giving an extremely personal description of haruaki in front of the other teachers who he's also more familiar with, he takes the mask off.
also importantly, check out the 3 whole versions of this one scene.
this is 3 whole versions of how he’s presenting himself, in one situation.
i’m inclined to believe ch1 is POV principal, ch92 is POV haruaki, and the one in yoseito what objectively happened.
he’s presenting himself as a professional, as the “principal”. to haruaki, he’s unfamiliar, and the mask is probably the most stand-out thing about him. objectively, he probably can’t help but have personal investment in all this.
also, let's look at these 3 pages from ch33
you can see his thought process going from "wait, like, me personally?" to "ok gotta be grown-up and mature about this"
(also sidenote, izuna's speech bubble on that 3rd page is a tl error, it's more like "he's treating us? is there going to be a typhoon next week or something?" that kind of tone)
also of note is his mask itself, which is an Okina mask from Noh theater. the Okina play is one of the oldest plays still considered Noh theater, originating around the Nara or Heian period, from Noh theater's predecessor sarugaku. the play itself is more like a ritual or ceremony, a prayer for peace. the mask itself is the soft smile of a deity symbolising peace, bountiful harvests, and long lives. of note is the fact that the performer dons the mask onstage as part of the performance, "becoming" the god.
im sure you can see how this is quite relevant to who he is as the principal of hyakki.
this exchange from ch 70 is also very interesting, because he’s showing his face this whole time. looking at it now, it’s because he’s entirely confident that haruaki would be able to pull it off from the outset. he is a gambler after all, as much as that’s played for jokes. he talks a whole lot, but it’s ultimately just to pressure haruaki into pulling it off properly. as such, his investment in this situation is entirely personal, instead of professional.
in that sense, i suppose him taking off his mask to threaten haruaki means the threat is coming from him personally, rather than him as the principal and his boss. i’m curious to know what other people’s read of this scene is, him taking off his mask is an interesting move, even if it was just for dramatics
i also wonder if the dramatic shading we see obscuring his face is also actually happening, obscuring his face from haruaki. in ch 88 little memory-aki says “that appearance, the principal?!”, the word used for appearance in japanese is almost always used for specifically clothes/figure, rather than face.
Acchan
the principal and ranmaru are especially complicated. theyre exes. theyre besties. theyre fighting. theyre kissing.
at least for a short while before the events of the main story, it seems like they didnt have much contact, considering principal had to ask ranmaru what name he was going by in ch61, when they’d already met twice (vol 4 kidnapping and ch33), he just never bothered to ask i guess.
at least in vol 4, ranmaru was actually pretty openly disdainful towards principal (probably bc he got ghosted for years)
in ranmaru’s eyes, “acchan” is probably somewhere in the middle of “principal” and “douman”, maybe even the 3rd corner of a triangle graph
on the principal’s part, it seems like he’s trying to keep ranmaru distant, at least at first. this is someone who knew him as douman, after all. every single interaction they have, he starts out with his guard totally up and as soon as he lets down his guard a little bit ranmaru gets under his skin and they fall into something like a routine. in terms of ability to get under his skin, ranmaru is basically second only to seimei.
there’s also the fact that they’re such similar people. they keep going to the same brothels/pachinko parlors, for example. this is probably also how ranmaru is so good at getting under his skin.
i think all this can be summarized by the way ranmaru calls him “acchan” and introducing himself as “ran-chan”, then principal going for the more distant “ranmaru-san” instead, because thats who ranmaru is to “the principal”, regardless of who ranmaru is to him as a person.
this all serves much the same purpose as his mask, I think. to distance himself from who he was as “douman”
Ashiya Douman
to be clear, it’s not like any of these faces are any more or less “real” or “fake”. they’re all the “real” principal
“douman” is.... complicated
even within the name “douman”, there’s a few versions:
who he is when his mask breaks
who byakko etc think he is
who he was 1000 years ago
though, it’s not like he turns into a whole different person when his mask gets broken, he just holds himself in a slightly different way, especially because he’s in front of byakko.
these two pages can really be picked apart.
he first appears with his face slightly showing, because that’s who the students see him as, and who he presents himself as to the students. a familiar, reassuring face.
then when he addresses byakko the mask is totally covering his face, distancing himself. he’s desperately trying to keep up the facade for as long as possible. i’m the principal, he says, look at my cute narration box! he wasn’t getting out of this with his secrets intact and he knows it.
he tries to keep up the facade, and for good reason. byakko and the other gods have stayed the same this past 1000 years, and as much as he’s changed, he’s also stayed the same in ways
his mask getting broken especially brings the point home. he can change the way he dresses, he can change the way he talks, but his face is not just the same as it was 1000 years ago, but specifically as it was the moment he killed seimei, and that’s all he is to byakko.
(and he does change the way he talks, by the way. you kinda have to hold yourself with some formality as a principal in the modern day, whereas 1000 years ago he talked in this kinda brash and vaguely disrespectful way about everything, and addressed seimei and suzaku without honorifics)
(though it could also be because of familiarity. in which case, “ranmaru-san” is like 10 steps down in familiarity from not using honorifics at all.)
as for who douman was 1000 years ago, it’s a bit hard to define because we really only get to see two scenes, and both are in relation to seimei.
i would try to define him by way of defining who seimei is to him, but because seimei is so inscrutable i don’t know how to do that.
what i do know, is that i don’t buy his spiel in ch90 at all
while i do think it’s not entirely a lie, it’s also not the entire truth.
as much as he acted tsundere about it, he clearly had some respect for seimei, otherwise he would not let him get under his skin that easily.
they were clearly friends to some degree, otherwise he wouldn’t be “always so obsessed with seimei”, as ranmaru puts it.
which, i am all the more curious, who haruaki is to the principal. did he see him as seimei at one point? does he still? i wonder if there’s an intentional parallel in who amaaki is to the students, to who haruaki is to the principal and ranmaru.
In Conclusion
uhhh TLDR, principal is my scrimblo, my blorbo, my meow meow, i care him a whole lot, i think hes a super fun character
hmm. im pretty bad at describing personalities. how did this turn into 1600 words
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