Something I've noticed for a while is that Akechi doesn't appear to say that he was in foster care in the Japanese script.
Akechi
ăăăă§ĺăŻăč˛ăăŞćă蝢ă
ă¨ăăăăăŚăăžăăäťăăć°ăžăžăŞä¸äşşćŽăăă ăăŠăă
okage de boku wa, ironna tokoro o tenten to saserarete, maa, ima ja kimamana hitori kurashi da kedo ne
Thanks to him, I was passed from foster home to foster home. But, I do quite well by myself these days.
After that, nobody would keep me for too long, so I got moved about a lot. But now I'm alone and free to live as I choose.
There are a few interesting points here:
ăăă㧠okage de, "thanks to"
Akechi does not specify what or who he's crediting here; the translator has glossed in "thanks to him". IMO it's more likely to be "because of the death of my mother"âthe thing he was just speaking of. Shido is responsible, but (at least according to Akechi's flow of speech) he is slightly indirectly responsible.
蝢ă
ă¨ăăăă㌠tenten to saserarete
tenten to suru, in this context, means moving around often from place to place; living at a lot of different addresses. But note the passive-causative on suru here, saserareru. This is something that was done to Akechi, something others inflicted on him, something he experienced as a profound negative. This was bad. Looking at what he goes on to say laterâ"so someone would want me around!"âI've tried to capture this with "nobody would keep me".
Also note that tenten to suru, while not usually violent in this "moving about" context, is also a term for e.g. kicking a ball around, which again makes it an interesting choice of words.
ć°ăžăžăŞä¸äşşćŽăă kimamana hitori kurashi
This is a set phrase, essentially meaning "a free and carefree life alone"; it's used, often with a little irony, to describe the joys of living alone, or of being single. Note that Akechi does not mean thisâhe sounds (JP audio) miserable as fuck, and he's brought this up, rather ineffectively, to try and lighten the mood.
It comes across as "I was alone, and I'm still alone, but at least now I'm alone on my own terms and can do as I please"âwhich he knows is untrue, and we know is untrue, and Ren and Futaba can surely tell is untrue.
By the way, this quick use of a throwaway stereotype, as if it explains everythingâima ja kimamana hitori kurashi da kedo neâis one of Akechi's verbal tricks; he becomes laconic in this way when he touches on things he doesn't want to discuss, things that are sensitive to him.
This is how he explains to the others in the engine room that he's illegitimate, for instanceâtsumari kakushigo sa, "In short, I'm his secret child", kakushigo ("hidden child") here being a popular term, with no real English parallel, for the secret or unacknowledged child of someone famous or powerful.
You could maybe render his line here as a detached-sounding "but now I'm footloose and fancy-free", for the same effect.
č˛ăăŞć ironna tokoro
This is what has been translated "foster homes", but it just means "all sorts of different places":
Akechi
č˛ăăŞćă蝢ă
ă¨ăăăăă
ironna tokoro o tenten to saserareru
I was passed around from pillar to post.
So: he was passed from place to place, from pillar to post. Like a pebble rolling on a beach, or a ball being kicked around a field. Do we know what any of those places might have been? No; he doesn't tell us. There's IMO nothing here to suggest that he was in the care of the stateâbut equally, there's nothing that excludes it.
But Akechi returns to this in the anime, in Proof of Justiceâand he is far more specific:
Akechi
ă ăăăćŻăćťăă ăă¨ăŻă茪ćăŽéă蝢ă
ă¨ăăŚčĄăŁăă
dakara, haha ga shinda ato wa, shinseki no aida o tenten to shite itta ne
After my mother died, I was passed around my relatives.
Anime Akechi gives us more detail, again with tenten to suru, but he removes a lot of the emphatic forceâwe gain the detail that he was with his relatives, but we lose that outraged passive-causative, that makes it clear this hurt himâwhat I've tried to capture with "nobody would keep me for long" up at the top.
Is this canon, though? Well, usually when the game and the anime contradict, I prefer the game for its lack of adaptation drift. But there are a couple of occasions when the anime seems to clarify things that were not clear in the game textâand IMO, this is one. Per the game, Akechi was passed from place to place; the anime clarifies that those "places" were with his relatives.
TBH, even the localisation's "foster home" doesn't necessarily imply state foster care; a relative who takes you in is a foster parent. Of course, if you want a backdoor here (which is in no way required, I'm not your mum), he never suggests how long he stayed with his relatives....
does anything in-game support this?
Well, there's one thing in the game that supports this reading, and it's actually on 8/28 itself. Immediately after Akechi says he was passed around after his mother's death, Futaba does this:
Remember, Futaba already does not like Akechi. She resents him for his pursuit of the Phantom Thieves, even before she suspects him of killing her mother. Yet when he mentions his sad past, she connects with him.
Why is that? It's because Futaba, too, was passed between her relativesâwith the results we all know: they were abusive, exploitative and cruel, leading to her being rescued by Sojiro. The game draws an explicit connection here between Futaba and Akechiâsuggesting that they have this backstory in common, of being passed between abusive relatives. It suggests we can glean a little more about Akechi's past by looking at what we learn about Futaba's.
And she was rescued; he was not. They both turned to crime to work off some of what they enduredâbut Futaba retained her moral centre, while Akechi fell off the edge. This is why she tells him what she does in the engine room: "You thought [being alone and not trusting anyone] was enough, right? That part I totally get."
but isn't he just lying his ass off here?
BTW, as to whether Akechi is just trying to ingratiate himself with Futaba (or with Ren) on 8/28âI don't think so; I think he tries, and then gives up after his performative cut-in. We just saw him trying to ingratiate himself with Sojiroâhis failure there, at the start of the scene, is what upsets him and opens him up. So far, so good.
Is he trying to get in with Wakaba Isshiki's daughter, to continue his pursuit of her research on Sae's behalf?âthe reason he was at Leblanc in the first place? No, because he never mentions it to Futaba, ever again.
What Akechi will do later is stand up for her, on 9/13, protesting Sae's threat to remove her from Sojiro's custody:
Sae: There have been frequent occurrences of mental shutdowns surrounding Okumura recently.
Sae: If only there was a clear connection between him and the Phantom ThievesâŚ
Sae: Well, it would be problematic if there wasn't one.
Akechi: So you're jumping the gun here.
Akechi: You really told a man you would terminate his parental authority based purely on your speculation?
... and notice what he's doing here. Akechi clearly already knows about Sae's threats to Sojiro; she does not explain them in this scene. And Akechi has clearly not questioned her on it, as long as he thinks there's a reason for it. When it turns out there isn't one? He calls Sae out. Because Akechi knows it's what's like to be a child with nowhere to go.
Sure, it's not beneath him to throw Futaba to the wolvesâor, ultimately, to try to kill her in the engine room. But he views it as distasteful, as unjustified, and as wrong. He knows gratuitous cruelty when he sees itâand it repels him. He knows the difference between right and wrongâhe's just elected to ignore it.
And he expects far better than this from Sae.
click here for the latest version.
v1.0 (2023/11/20)âfirst posted.
