something i find SO interesting that never pops up in the conversation of ogatas character (especially about him being a psychopath) is the one moment he sympathizes with koito— objectively the only time we've seen him initiate any physical affection for another person, specifically voluntarily.
in chapter 199, ogata and tsukishima are undercover to stage a fake kidnapping; ogata in the white hat and tsukishima in the black.
what particularly stood out to me was his unprompted, very unnecessary pat on the back for koito when he hears, " i am truly sorry that i couldn't be the son to you that my brother was." and even led to a clearly dedicated panel to tsukishima's surprised reaction. given the circumstance that he's supposed to be playing a russian kidnapper, he uncharacteristically, in both personality AND role, goes out of his way to make this small, comforting action.
my favorite part about this backstory is that it's specifically shown after ogata calls him a spoiled little rich boy in the hospital, not only revealing koitos realization of what tsurumi was doing all along, but also an insight into ogatas character and his relationship with koito— he doesn't hate him for being a spoiled brat born into wealth, he hates him because he saw firsthand that he was privileged with a loving father. despite the profound love heiji koito had for his first son, heiji still comes to save koito and he proves he cares equally for both of his children.
i can even go out on a limb here and even claim that ogatas feels somewhat humiliated that he even felt sympathy for koito and he now actually despises him more, but that's a little harder to support.
i feel like many people bring up the panel of ogata not wanting to kill asirpa's grandmother as a proof of his humanity and empathy, but this scene speaks way louder. i believe the reason behind this unprompted voluntary action towards koito-- someone he didn't even know nor bored any resemblance to any person in his life--is he simply sympathized with him, as koito reminded Ogata of himself; the affectionate action essentially saying, " i get it."
now this plays into how ogata percieves himself and others and how i believe this moment was so close to letting him break out of his negative, harmful, literal paradoxical ideology, but instead, it reinforced it.
he's constantly looking for proof to make sense out of his situation, constantly lying to himself through finding support via actions(killing people, lying, etc.) or through people (usami and tsurumi).
noda also goes into depth about this exact phenomenon through kadokuras observation of sekiya, how someone grieves their circumstance by trying to make sense of what happened to them. while although ogata doesn't believe in the idea of "god's divine retribution", he's constantly trying to make sense of his position; everything is happening because of external factors and ogata is not at fault for anything, therefore not in the wrong for his choices.
"i was born defective, therefore i am a bad person, and because i am a bad person, i do bad things and all my bad actions are justified because of my circumstances."
but of course this automatically gets contradicted when he's also self-aware of his wants of being loved, meaning hes actually capable of caring and feeling guilt, thus leading to "everyone is bad, and everyone can do bad, no one's is no different from me" every single belief, it justifies his actions, avoiding the responsibility of what he's done, and this is clearly shown through hanazawa death, not only because he made him a martyr and now died pure, but also because hanazawa was the only person who loved him.
i wanna go more in depth of how i view his character, but i truly pity the cards that ogata was dealt with, no matter what, he genuinely had no one around him and its an annoying arguement when someone says he could've just stopped when he's never even had any proper guidance.
every possible chance he could've learned always turned out poorly; he was neglected because of his mother, both because of her actions and her status as a geisha, then gets groomed by tsurumi, where tsurumi himself manipulates him using his obvious insecurity against hanazawa and his father. and even thought he was aware of it, he still enjoyed the twisted affection because of his starvation.
(ill eventually write about usami and ogata relationship, because genuinely it just doesn't make sense that ogata "went" to him for help, just like every situations he's been in, usami had just happened to be there.) my thoughts arent as clear as id like them to be so ill probably be editing them more frequently and after ive finished reading the manga since im not done yet.
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