Café Leningrad

Another human being, particularly one with whom you are physically and/or emotionally involved, has many uses. These should not, however, include the following. Confirming your worth as a person / Taking away your feelings of inadequacy and shame / Making you feel intelligent, sexy, and worthy of a high-powered job / Making you happy every minute of the day. While she may assist in these matters, the task of fully achieving them essentially belongs to you. Should you expect her, or anyone like her with whom you come into contact either naked or partially clothed, to fulfill these essential duties, you are not only certain to be disappointed but you will over-burden any relationship you attempt to engage in until it crashes through several floors of the building, disintegrating into rubble. You are not entirely to blame for being startled that these skills are not meant to be provided by others, but rather ones you must supply your very own self. Our entire culture is set up to reinforce the notion that other people exist to give you the worth you are lacking. Everything from music (except when written by Courtney Love) to books and films (except when involving Anne Rice or Isabelle Adjani, whose oeuvres function as purely cautionary tales) conspires to prove that you may not have found someone to make you complete, but everybody else has, so there's clearly something wrong with you. Happily, once you recognize that by expecting another person to fulfill all these needs for you, you are dooming yourself to a life of continual disappointment, you will do quite nicely living with your lowered expectations. And since you're already quite skilled at blaming yourself (at least those of you traditionally reared on the fun-loving girl program that has proven so rewarding for the psychiatric and pharmaceutical professions), the handy recipient of the blame for your inevitable failure—that is, you—will be already at hand to enjoy the punishments and shame you have devised. On the brighter side, there are things you may expect from another human being, even a significant other human. A person, even your girlfriend, may not unreasonably be expected to do the following: Share your enjoyment of life / Make you look at things from a different perspective / Give you support, comfort, or at least advice / Surprise you / Make you laugh / Make you want to have sex / Make you dinner / Give you the occasional massage, though not nearly as often as when you were first going out. It may seem to you that these options are not dissimilar from the list of Don'ts shown earlier. Wrong. They are so different as to be virtually in another category, which is why in one they're Don'ts and in the other Do's. Supporting, nurturing, aiding, abetting, and helping can certainly be part of your interaction as two seperate humans, but they feel completely different when practiced with the intent of rendering whole one seemingly complete but actually radically insecure and needy person. No one can make you whole, not even—particularly not even—the person whose job you believe this is by virtue of the fact that she's your girlfriend. Losing yourself in someone whom you allow to provide your sense of self-worth is not only addictive but dangerous, unless the person providing the sense of self-worth is you. You are less likely to beat yourself black and blue and put yourself in the hospital, cheat on yourself, or scream out insulting things about your body or personality you never realized you didn't like.

eva only ever wanted to be with tenma because he had a promising career and we all know that BUT the relationship was transactional for tenma as well. ofc he had every right to throw her away because of how she treated him after he went against her fathers wishes, but that doesnt mean he wasnt in the relationship for the sake of status as well. pls look at the show. why would urasawa introduce martin if he couldve made a point about the strength the love thats romantic can also hold with a couple we had already seen? we assume that since tenma is a good man she wouldve had a comfortable and "happy" life, but in later episodes we get to see a couple of flashbacks and see that theyve both always felt lonely in their relationship.

and imo thats legit the point of that relationship and why martins sacrifice mattered so much in evas story. she got to see that a man can truly just love her without wanting anything from her. even if its not explicitly stated we can see that her father wanted her to be a daughter who suited him. no man in her life had ever given her anything without wanting smt in return. so its obvious that she held a grudge against tenma and wouldve ruined her life over it if she hadnt met someone like martin who just adored her for her and didnt want anything in return. just like with johan, someone needed to break her misguided worldview and martin was the one to do that for her just like how tenma did it for johan.

we see in the last episode that the possibility that she can be loved helps her move on and have a productive life. ofc this is not a v progressive character arc, but I believe that the point of the story is that negation of love creates monsters and urasawa used eva and martin as an example of how romantic love as well can triumph darkness.

So I think post-rurenheim johan whose body language just SCREAMS "don't look at me, don't blink at me, don't even breathe at me right now." would translate in real life and make people less enchanted with him compared to before. Also, I think since he's not trying to charm every single person he meets before with his carefully crafted persona, this comes out in his physical looks too: less silky and slightly uncombed hair, subtle eye bags, slightly less upright posture, you can actually find a few wrinkles on his blazer coat now.

Before the scene he meets 3 girls, one of them asks for pills and another sits there with a bunch of balloons. After the scene, he has some peculiar interactions with them. I was wondering what you make of those

Hello anon,

I reread the whole scene and here are some thoughts.

Generally speaking, I think that Johan’s interaction with the two women (he does not interact with the woman with the trumpet) is a very minor detail and I do not think it has far reaching implications.

That said, we can try to give an interpretation of it :)

Blue Sophie is in the red-light district and the manga spends some panels to convey its atmosphere. In particular, the more Johan approaches the “Red Hindenburg”, the more shabby the whole atmosphere becomes. In the beginning the boy is in a street full of lights, which is made to tempt people into sex. Even the first girl he meets is a prostitute, who immediately tries to seize him. She is outgoing and direct and her personality seems extrovert.

However,  the street full of lights is nothing, but a facade that hides people like the three girls Johan meets in the backstreets. The first one is a drug addict, the second one plays a trumptet and laughs. Finally the third one sits with her balloons, without speaking. They are al less functional than the first girl Johan meets. They are people, who are desperate and who have been hurt by the world they live in. They are the truth behind the inviting appearance of the district.

Now, in a sense, this is true also about Johan. Johan appears beautiful and fascinating, but  he is a ruthless individual, with a tragic past. Because of this, I like to see the two women as two different parts of Johan.

All in all, Johan is both “the devil” and a “child” and the interactions with the two girls convey this duality. On one hand Johan asks for a balloon. Balloons are objects associated with children and it is peculiar that he wants one. The fact that the girl sits there with a bunch of balloons in the first place conveys vulnerability and childishness. On the other hand Johan gives the drug addict money to fall deeper into her addiction. This can be read as him enabling her and it is what a devil would do.

In conclusion, the whole district and the two women can be read as a physical representation of who Johan is. He is a mess behind an inviting facade and he is both the devil and a traumatized child.

@nachocity asked: Favourite antagonist?