Manic Bird Energy

hayao's intro scene he walks past everyone without looking at or acknowledging anyone at first.

it isn't until he turns around that he finally addresses the group. and the first person he looks at is MC, and very intently lmao. for a good long moment too. i don't know exactly what his Look meant but it gave me the sense that he was sizing MC up lmao.

i think he was trying to figure out just who or what he was, knowing almost certainly MC was his brother's knowledge but having never actually met him. and the circumstances were too unusual of a coincidence overall. i guess there was kind of an oppressive/threatening sense to it maybe similar to the scene a bit later after aogami's maint where hayao basically gives aogami a thinly veiled threat not to rebel or something lmao. was he threatening us from the get go? trying to judge how obedient we would be? i don't really know but it stood out lol.

i did also get the sense that everything he presented in that intro scene was intended to give us the impression that bethel jp were the 'good guys' just 'trying to protect tokyo'. but oh…they're so short on manpower…((won't you help us for the greater good??))

dazai then asks if he can help too, since hayao JUST said 'yeah we employ students too basically!' and he follows up by clarifying if dazai means 'protecting tokyo?' which ALWAYS struck me as odd because why would you need to clarify that when you just said that like 5 times 😭

i just thought he kept saying 'we're protecting tokyo okay! that's our mission and goal!!' to really emphasize that lol. to some degree i mean hayao is also genuinely convinced that's what he's doing so i guess there's some copium trying to fool himself in that too.

anyway, yuzuru also first describes bethel jp as something like a group trying to save the world from demonic threat. basically, in a very heroic manner lol. is this basically what's being sold to the students in general? even though from the very get go hayao is like emanating an extremely dark and menacing aura that's not at all in line with the image of a heroic org lmao? also funny to think about how he might've been aware of how atrocious his vibes are and he's like i REALLY need to sell this better. i guess he is a politican in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ anyways

2. other thing i noticed is everyone in these two scenes immediately following our return to tokyo treats aogami kind of especially like an object. he himself also kinda reverts to a very…inanimate and lifeless state. this is a bit odd because after his reawakening in daat, he behaves a lot more like a real Person in all the interactions before we make it back to tokyo. he expresses thoughts and feelings.

everyone in these scenes who don't just straight up ignore him as if he weren't even there talk as if he were just an object and not a person present in the room. i guess hayao does directly address him towards the end but it's only to give an order for maint. even abdiel threatens MC specifically and not aogami. it's probably not intentional on tao's part, but she does also talk in a manner where he sounds more like some asset they lost all those years ago than a person or something. idk how much that's just translation though.

it's hard to tell what aogami might be thinking or feeling during these scenes, if any of that is happening at all. he doesn't say much of anything nor express or react to anything. it just seems odd for him to actually revert to a 'lifeless' state after his reawakening upon meeting MC, so i wondered if it's more likely he did have thoughts and feelings during this time but for some reason he just reverted to pretending like he was just an object instead the moment they got back to bethel.

interestingly, he doesn't even make any move to protect MC when abdiel threatens him. he doesn't really react at all, not even just to stand between them or something. he acknowledges abdiel but rather emotionlessly and then does nothing else really.

we do know that by the time his maint is done he's starting to express some hostility/suspicion towards hayao lmao, so what were those initial scenes upon getting back to bethel for the first time? i don't really know, but i wonder if he was also just confused and afraid.

i wonder if that was also a source of guilt for him later on, that he was just kinda paralyzed that entire time while BOTH abdiel and hayao threatened MC and he just…kinda let it happen. was it because he himself was too afraid to have fought back against his former authority figures in the moment? i always wondered just how 'human' the aogamis originally were before meeting MC. were they truly emotionless robots devoid of any personhood or did they just have their thoughts and emotions mostly suppressed both through programming and through their own denial as…an attempt to cope or something? i suppose it might make the mistreatment easier to bear if you just pretend you really don't have any emotions, right? it's pretty sad to think about but i think about it sometimes lol.

maybe aogami never understood emotions both because he never had a chance to understand them, and because he didn't want to understand them since it was easier not to. i guess now he has an incentive to want to understand them though and he CAN be rather perceptive.

susanoo is associated with ne-no-kuni as its ruler after being banished there by izanagi. sometimes ne-no-kuni is equivalent to yomi, but there does also exist a distinction between them where yomi is associated with death and ne-no-kuni with rebirth specifically. there is some overlap given both are stated to be where izanami resides, so it's kinda unclear. that being said, there is also an association between 'death' and 'transformation' and sometimes 'transcension' as well, especially accompanied by 'rebirth'.

susanoo, being a rather contradictory god with both good and evil qualities, seems to commonly undergo some sort of 'transformation' and 'purification' or 'atonement'/'redemption' within his myths. his destructive acts are considered heavenly sins causing ritual impurity that must then be purified, and susanoo himself 'transformed' and 'redeemed' through some process of purification/atonement. there is some talk about a process of exorcism being performed on susanoo, through a process of "cutting off his beard, fingernails, and toenails". this is also sometimes seen more as a process of corporal punishment, through the likely painful and torturous process of *removing* his fingernails and toenails. this was a fun bit of trivia for me because it also features in higu :) ripping off your own nails as punishment.

either way, punishment can be related to atonement. through enduring a punishment through pain and torment, you are 'purified' and absolved of your sins. and with the impurities removed from susanoo in this process, he 'transforms' into a more benevolent and 'heroic' deity. so there are i guess also themes of sin and punishment and redemption within susanoo's myths.

there is also the concept of a cyclical process of life, death and rebirth such as samsara, the goal of which is to reach a state of enlightenment and liberation from the cycle through nirvana. orphism is also a similar concept where our dual nature as material (body) and spiritual (soul) means that the soul must escape material existence in order to achieve salvation. this is done through a process of 'ritual purification' and suffering, connected to dionysus and emulating his suffering, dismemberment, death and rebirth to be freed from the cycle of reincarnation. there are those shared themes again of purification, death, transformation, rebirth, and eventually, salvation, liberation and enlightenment.

each cycle of death and rebirth is another process of transformation and purification that leads you closer to salvation, or something like that. i'll also note the element with dionysus of being 'torn apart', which gives the imagery of being broken down to your fundamental pieces and then being put together again and reborn. also a process that resembles the creation of the aogamis through the sundering of susanoo. he was, in a sense, torn apart and put together again, and then reborn.

so i got this idea that perhaps susanoo underwent multiple cycles of this process, being broken down and unmade, then put together again and reborn, each time an attempt to 'cleanse' him of his sins and impurities. i suppose he could have also only needed to undergo it once with the creation of the aogamis. but my headcanon or whatever is that he was taken apart and reborn over and over again throughout history as attempts by his siblings to mold him into who they needed him to be, each time failing to fully remove his willfulness, but each time closer to that goal.

and the end result is aogami, the final step before attaining 'enlightenment' and 'transcension' as the nahobino. in this sense, maybe you can say that aogami was the 'perfect ideal version' of the protofiend susanoo who came to be after millennia of purification. the final perfected version of susanoo. a being that has become fully pure and empty (as in the sense of the concept of sunyata, an intrinsic state of emptiness that allows for the creation and rise of the 'true' or 'higher' self, a state of enlightenment), with the nahobino being representative of the end state of that enlightenment and transcension. so maybe it isn't even nahobinos themselves that represent 'enlightenment', because the components that make up the nahobino fusions have to also attain a perfect state of 'purity' and 'emptiness' in order to reach enlightenment and liberation. otherwise they'd still be fettered to various earthly things like desire and resentment and the past and all. so maybe that's also why the nahobino was based off a deity of purification, as a being that has become fully pure itself.

additionally, the irony of aogami actually being the 'perfected' version of susanoo is obviously that hayao, and by extension aogami himself, viewed him as the exact opposite of that lol. a broken, imperfect abomination that was just a mockery of the REAL susanoo.

but if susanoo was also reborn over and over again through a long, cyclical process of death and rebirth and purification, the idea is that the goal would have been to mold him into a pure and empty being, devoid of intrinsic self and will, so that he could be fully obedient. the ones to remake him would have been his siblings, perhaps tsukuyomi specifically. and this goal would have been what they wanted. so then it's extra ironic when tsukuyomi realizes Too Late that this ISN'T what he wanted after all, as he comes to resent the aogamis instead.

i don't know i just really like irony lol. tsukuyomi might come to gradually realize then the horrors of just what he had done to his brother all this time, and that he was maybe wrong all along. but that's too scary too confront now!!! so it's time to sunk cost fallacy to the end and project his own guilt onto aogami as resentment and disgust :). in general i don't think tsukuyomi was someone who understood responsibility at all and only begins to do so in his current incarnation as hayao, because things have Changed now and he has no choice but to confront his own responsibility, though he continues to struggle with it.

which led me to wonder if maybe that was why lucifer chose aogami. it's just kinda funny thinking of lucifer being like ah yes that guy reminds me of myself so i will adopt him now. he is my new fav son now

i kinda like the contrast of lightning being both symbolic of god's judgment, so wielders of lightning are maybe in similar positions, but of the humiliation and pain of the fallen. susanoo as a mythological figure seems symbolic of maybe both these contrasting aspects

susanoo is banished from the heavens by both izanagi and amaterasu, to ne-no-kuni and the earth. if ne-no-kuni is a sort of netherworld, then maybe you could view this as a fall to demonhood, i dunno. the fall to earth however gives susanoo more of a human aspect

in contrast to his heavenly siblings susanoo is a lot more human in that sense? he becomes engaged in human affairs and learns to relate more to earthly things and beings. i dunno i skimmed the myths but ig these aspects fit right in with smt themes

ig it would make sense that aogami wouldnt have nearly as much attachment to the amatsukami and their heavenly reign or whatever as tsukuyomi did, given he didnt rly have much of a place in heaven. maybe hes always related more to humans but could never rly be one of them

reminds me of smth he says at one pt at the bench where he expresses hes somewhat glad for the separation of Life and Knowledge bc at least it meant he could meet MC. which is like Aw but also maybe it allows him to feel closer to humanity with a part of himself being human now