Once I bite. I never let go. Jagiya.

The adults' abusive gossip. Society's critical eyes. He shouldered all of that.

A Love As Strong As Theirs...

Sit down, you damned brat.

Yes. Even now, I still think of Ren...

For @troubled-mind 🤍

Someday I'll return to Japan and wait for Kazuma to come back.

After the shooting, Benson goes to get food. Not just that, he gets a full meal.

At the gas station when getting cigarettes he gets a bag of snacks too.

When at the diner in the evening, he says hes going to order food and coffee while looking intensely over the menu.

As an adult he takes food more seriously. He will make sure he eats. Even taking a shitty minimum wage job at a fast food place just to ensure he would have food on his breaks and to bring home if needed.

He makes sure to buy food for randy even if he says he isnt hungry (like the cinnamon bun in the first diner scene) which when Randy doesnt eat, he gives to his mother to at least keep her fed.

Coming Home

Open the door...

Randys mother is overbearing? Bensons is mentally absent and bed bound.

Randy got recognised by the adult from their traumatic memory? Benson did not.

Randy got closure? Benson did not.

If the start of the movie is about what trauma did to Randy, the end is what trauma made Benson.

Bensons story about wanting to be a giraffe as a child is showing how much he wanted to disassociate from his trauma. He wanted to be a animal when he grew up. He was being traumatised by a grown man at school then coming home with the desire the play pretend in his head about his future. He wanted to disconnect.

Whereas Randy wanted to embrace what he did even if it guided him into complete passiveness. He let it consume him.

Benson disassociated from what happened to him so much that in the end when it comes time to tell Randy what happened to him, to tell the audience, he can’t accept it then either enough to say.