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capobegone · 3 months

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Spiraling About Kimetsu Academy Hakukoyu (Again)

EVERYBODY WAKE UP THE NEW KIMETSU ACADEMY CHAPTER CONFINED THAT KOYUKI’S SICKNESS IS STILL A THING :’(((

Like she clearly seems healthy now?? Which means that this follows canon in which she got better by the time she was sixteen and Hakuji was eighteen—but considering Hakuji is still set to take over Keizou’s dojo, a lot of the tragedy in their past might still have happened.

The thing that surprises me here is that it specifically points out both of their parents, which means Hakuji’s dad has to still be alive (unconfirmed about Koyuki’s mom, who may have still been unable to cope with her daughter’s illness). However, the death of Hakuji’s father was what caused him to meet Koyuki and Keizou in the first place—so how would that have happened?

So, of course, I’ve made a theory.

The Kimetsu Academy canon states that they’re neighbors, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched to assume that they are friendly with each other. In order for Hakuji to become so close with Koyuki’s family, though, it would make sense if his father still got sick. Assuming that Hakuji’s mother is still not in the picture, Hakuji’s father would likely have a hard time keeping his family afloat (hence their sudden dip toward poverty).

Of course, Hakuji would be prone to getting into trouble around this time. He described himself as a rule breaker, which is very common among young students with trouble at home. (The pickpocketing habit is debatable—it would have been much less effective nowadays, when getting medicine is a lot more complicated.) This could be the time where his childhood persona ‘Akaza’ came around. Unlike Hakuji, Akaza wouldn’t have to worry about people he loved getting sick or going to bed still a little bit hungry, because all he had to worry about was being tough and strong. I could definitely see this as a way for Hakuji to channel his stress—because who doesn’t love beating people up as a coping mechanism? He might have been spending a little more time around the dojo at this point in an attempt to keep getting stronger, which could lead Keizou to notice the subtle signs of struggle.

Assuming that Koyuki was sick around this time as well, I can see Keizou setting up a deal with Hakuji’s father, who I imagine must have been ashamed to ask for help. His proposal: Keizou would provide free childcare by letting Hakuji stay at his place while his father worked (also would keep him out of trouble!), and in exchange, Hakuji would help out with keeping Koyuki company and doing chores around the dojo. This arrangement obviously worked out quite well, and would take a little stress off both families. As Hakuji was exposed to Koyuki’s gentle influence, he grew out of his Akaza persona (around the end of middle school, probably.) And, of course, both Koyuki and Hakuji’s father got better!! Yay!

Obviously, this is all speculation. But it would piece together all the little pieces of their backstories we have, and explain how Hakuji and Koyuki’s families became so close. The one question I still have…is Soyama Hakuji’s family name, or Koyuki and Keizou’s? (of course, thanks to my trusty translator fertheart on insta who is literally my only source of Kimetsu Academy content lmao)

#demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kimetsu academy #kimetsu gakuen #hakuji soyama #koyuki #hakukoyu #akaza #with cameos by #kamado tanjiro #inosuke hashibira #zenitsu agatsuma #thanks for getting Hakuji to spill all this lore guys good job lol

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linkspooky · 10 months

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Rengoku vs. Akaza

Hello, I’m back talking about Demon Slayer and what is probably considered to be the most iconic fight in the manga. So iconic, that they made the entire fight into a high budget movie that destroyed box office records. What makes the fight so iconic isn’t just that Rengoku is so likable a character, that his heroic sacrifice is one of the most heartbreaking moments in the manga.

The fight is good because it’s got a strong thematic backbone, it is like many things in the demon slayer manga about death, and the way both Rengoku and Akaza react to the deaths they’ve experienced in their lifes. The parallels between the two become even stronger when we learn about Akaza’s backstory during his second fight.

Weak vs. Strong

Rengoku and Akaza don’t only represent opposite elements (Akaza is ice/water, and Rengoku is fire), they also represent opopsite social ideals. Akaza is a social darwinist who believes in the right of the strong. Whereas, Akaza’s entire character is based around the idea of noblesse oblige. Strong people are obligated to protect weak people because they are more capable.

Akaza pursues strength at the cost of everything else, even begging Rengoku to accept a demon’s blood and become immortal because that will give him even more time to grow stronger. His opening act is to even attack Tanjiro while he’s helpless on the ground and injured, because he wanted to eliminate another weak person so he could talk to Rengoku without being interrupted. While he is a demon Akaza’s worldview that the only option the weak have is to die off and be taken care of by nature.

Akaza however, only defines strength as martial combat ability. Rengoku is able to counteract his argument right away by pointing out that people can be strong in more ways than one, which cuts to a panel of the innocent people on the train who are not demon slayers but have the strength to keep going and crawl their way out of the wreckage of a disaster. In Rengoku’s world it’s difficult just to live because life itself is fleeting, therefore surviving is it’s own strength.

Rengoku’s opinions on weakness go even further in his own spinoff chapters, where you learn that his philosophy on strength vs. weakness doesn’t just come from his mother telling him he’s obligated to help others because he’s born strong, but his father also constantly trying to discourage him from becoming a Hashira by insisting he’s weak. His father’s own mental breakdown into lounging around all day drinking, came from the fact that he felt that flame breathing was inferior to sun breathing therefore it wasn’t worth trying if he could never measure up.

In response to his father’s words, Rengoku instead of insisting that the only people who are strong have value, searches for other values people have and other strength besides physical strength. His brother Senjuro being the example, despite Senjuro being incredibly eager to train he’s not talented enough to become Rengoku’s Tsuguko. In spite of that fact, Senjuro keeps trying without getting discouraged which Rengoku sees as a strength.

In Rengoku’s mind a weak person striving to be strong, even if they don’t accomplish anything, or make progress is a strength, because that ability to put effort in and strive is what matters not the results. Rengoku’s chapter further on goes to praise the rank and file members of thedemon corps who never become Hashira simply because they don’t have the talent to advance and yet risk their lives all the same. In his mind value lies in effort and striving for something not talent or results.

Rengoku’s ideas of strength and weakness comes from his admiration of the people around him and humanity in general he praises their strengths. While we learn in Akaza’s backstory, his social darwinism comes from the actions of people around him poisoning his viewpoints, to the part where he can only see their faults.

The irony of Akaza’s backstory is how different his behavior as Kyojuro is from that of him as a human. Hakuji’s loved ones are two weak people entirely dependent on other people for their care, the kind of person that Akaza claims to despise.

Hakuji’s father dies because of the same social darwinist philosophies that Akaza espouses. His father needed medicine but couldn’t afford it because he was poor. Rather than just give him the medicine, society lets him die off like it was his fault in the first place for being poor, therefore he doesn’t deserve medicine that could heal him. Society punishes Akaza for simply trying to steal money for medicine when he was no other options, rather than just making the medicine cheaper, because the rich are right by the virtue they have more strength in their society.

His second loved one is obviously Koyuki, the girl he nursed after being taken in by his teacher. Koyuki is also someone weak that everyone has written off as dead simply because she needs care from other people and can’t get better on her own. The simple task of taking care of her is apparently so dificult that her mother commits suicide and her father leaves it to somebody else entirely.

However, Koyuki’s recovery proves that this social darwinist philosophy is wrong, because after three years of nursing her Koyuki is fully recovered and finally able to take care of herself simply because someone put the effort in of giving her help when she needed it rather than letting her die. Because, society doesn’t actually function on social darwinist ideals, it’s cooperative. If everyone was out for themselves, people wouldn’t form cities and towns, they wouldn’t have jobs, they wouldn’t even bother taking care of the sick.

Hakuji believes similiar to Rengoku that it’s worth the effort to nurse sick people, and take care of people that can’t take care of themselves, he never once felt like either of them were a burden. They’re even both inspired to help others because of the dying request of a parent. Rengoku’s mother was too sick to continue living and told Rengoku before he died to live his life taking care of others. Hakuji’s father kills himself so Akaza will no longer have to steal to support him, and his last words are a request for Akaza to start his life over again.

They’re also very self-sacrificing in nature, Hakuji said repeatedly he didn’t care at all if he was beaten or marked as a crimminal for his father he would have endured all of it just to help him get better. Rengoku himself even endures his drunken father’s constant abuse with patience because he understands that his father became that way out of grief for their mother, and his dying words to his father are just requesting for his father to take care of himself.

They are both strong people who wish to take care of the weak people in their lives, so what exactly was the branching off point where Hakuji turned into Akaza.

Life vs Death

Demon slayer is a manga about death, and more particularly the difficulty of living in a world where no matter what you do all life ends in death and there’s no controlling when either you or someone you love dies. It’s why the first event in the manga is the senseless slaughter of Tanjiro’s entire family, which Tanjiro was not even around to witness simply because he slept in town for the night because it’d be dangerous to climb up the mountain in the dark.

Akaza turns into Hakuji after the senseless death of his loved ones, something that just like the death of Tanjiro’s family happened when he was not with them. Hakuji only leaves for a day to visit his father’s grave to tell him of his marriage, and he’s back by nightfall on the same day only to discover they’re dead by a poisoned well.

Of course if Akaza had been there, it’s likely there was little he could have done but drink the poisoned water and died alongside them because nobody knew that the well was poisoned. There are two differences in this scenario of course, number one Tanjiro still had one person left in his life to take care of while Akaza was stranded alone. Number two, at that point Akaza gave up on living entirely and only wished to die alongside his family.

After this point Hakuji becomes Akaza, and his views towards life resemble nihilism. In his mind death makes life meaningless, because no matter how much you strive to take care or protect someone it’s always going to end in their death. Of course if he’d been allowed to make a few more happy memories with Koyuki instead of suffering such an early and tragic loss things might have been different, but the sudden loss of her robbed him of all strength to continue believing in any value in life.

This is in contrast to Rengoku who insists that life’s epehemeral nature is what makes it beautiful. What makes it special and unique is that it doesn’t last forever, therefore people need to value the loved ones and the times of happiness they have because they’re not going to have them forever. Rengoku gives worth to what is fleeting, but Akaza suffered too much loss and seeks immortality even if it’s a pointless one.

Hakuji and Rengoku have the same values of protecting the weak, but Rengoku is able to live up to his goal of protecting weak people, even finally giving his life having succesfully protected not only everyone on the train but Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke. Rengoku succeeded at his duty, and Hakuji failed at his.

Which causes Hakuji out of guilt for his failures to flip his entire identity around. Even in the symbolism of his name. Hakuji has the same character as “Koma” in Komainu, and he lives his life like a Komainu protecting a shrine.

This philosophy of life vs. death even incorporates budhist values. Akaza is the third pillar because he represents the three universal truths held be budhism. Dukha, suffering (the idea that all suffering is inherent to life), Anicca (impermanence, the idea that everything is change) and Anatta (Non-self soulless / lack of self) the third being the way that he’s beaten by Tanjiro.

Akaza’s driven to become who he is because of his inability to cope with the first two values, the suffering inherent to life and it’s impermanence. His reaction to Koyuki’s death causes him to veer into nihilism, the belief that his whole life was worthless including his love of Koyuki, his father, and his master (there are three people in his life he decided to protect as well, and when he loses all three he’s no longer able to uphold the values in his life).

In fact, impermanence is a running theme to his character. His relationship with Koyuki is symbolically tied to fireworks, she fell in love with him out of his belief that she’d be able to see the fireworks next year so she didn’t have to apologize for missing them this year. When the two of them officially get engaged there are fireworks exploding in the background. Akaza’s moves are all named after fireworks. Fireworks are, brief and beautiful explosions in the sky that fade quickly.

When he becomes a demon he also violates all three of those values, he becomes immortal instead of impermanent like a human being, he causes suffering to others, and he’s unable to reach the state of “no-self” that Tanjiro climbed to in order to defeat him. However, Akaza prolonging his life only keeps him trapped in the cycle of suffering. This is also inherent to budhism, that as long as people are alive, their human desires will cause them suffering because they’re inherently selfish. In the cycle of reincarnation, people are born again and again until they purify themselves and escape the cycle completely.

When Akaza embraces both his painful memories of the past, he’s finally able to remember the things that were good about his life, the love that he had no matter how brief. It’s through embracing his suffering (finally remembering the people he lost instead of forcing himself to forget), and the impermanence of his life, that Akaza is finally able to die and escape the cycle of suffering.

Rengoku and Akaza are finally the same in that their last and greatest act is to die. Rengoku dies protecting three innocent people and is consoled by his mother for his hard work in life, and Akaza’s redemptive moment is to finally let himself die rather than keep fighting pointlessly and he is similiarly embraced and reunited by Koyuki who makes the decision to go to hell with him. Even though death is tragic for both of them they’re also offered that final comort.

#kyojuro rengoku #akaza #hakuji #koyuki #demon slayer #kny meta #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer analysis #demon slayer theory #demon slayer meta #kimetsu no yaiba analysis #kimetsu no yaiba theory #kimetsu no yaiba meta

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