-AKECHI WAS PRESENT DURING HIS MOTHER’S SUICIDE. -AKECHI GORO SUFFERS WITH SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND MAY HAVE ATTEMPTED PRE-GAME.

I’ve always imagined that Akechi would have been very close to his mother, almost inseparable as they had no one else in their lives. They were both lonely people, literally relying on one another for company. Akechi was around 5/6/7 years old when his mother killed herself.

Whenever his mother wanted to relax, she would run a nice hot bath and allow Akechi to join her in the bathroom but not the bath itself, so there’s always been a stack of toys and books that the boy could occupy himself with whilst she’d unwind and chill in the bath. 

It’s been a particularly long and stressful day for his mother, but Goro is too young to understand why. All he knows is that his mother always comes out of the bath in a better mood, and so he suggests a bath and playtime. Sometimes his mother would be so relaxed in the bath that she’d fall asleep! There’s a little timer in the bathroom that either herself or Akechi sets before her bath, that way the boy would know when to wake up his mother is she did fall asleep.

The alarm goes off and Akechi is feeling rather content with his playtime session, so he calls out to his mother who is slouched in the tub. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary when she’s asleep… But the water is red, and Akechi wonders how it even became such a colour. He doesn’t notice her lacerated arms nor the torn skin on her legs. The water is such a deep, dark red.

“Silly Mummy! You fell asleep again!” There’s no answer. He starts to think that this is all a game. Akechi pokes her sunken cheeks, never noticing just how dark the bags under his mother’s eyes really were. He knows his mother is ticklish, so he pulls up his sleeves and reaches into the warm water, fingers scratching at her side as he tries again to wake her up.

But she doesn’t.

She just lies there, and he begins to panic. Why isn’t she waking up? He grabs at her wrist to pull her up and that’s when he notices the long slits running down her arms and legs. It explains the red that now stains his hands, his fingers, his skin.

It is a memory that never leaves him. It haunts him constantly. The worst part is that he was there, he didn’t see it happen, but his mother killed herself whilst he was in the same room, and he never knew until it was too late. He never realised the pain his mother went through until it was too late. It is the idea that Goro could have saved her, that he should have saved her that still haunts him to this very day.

“She must have thought of me as a hero, but I am so far from it.”

Failure- that’s how Akechi feels about himself in this situation. His mother viewed him as her hero; despite everything she had been through. Akechi Goro was the only light in her life and she was proud of him. However, he couldn’t become the hero she needed most in her time of struggle. It is not the boy’s fault, yet he simply can’t help but believe that it is.

For the longest time he would sit in his room at night, away from the abusive foster parents, away from a shunning society and think, ‘I want my mother back.’ The only way he’d ever get her back would be to join her. It is not so much a voice that degrades him to the point of feeling unworthy of living, it is more so the longing of missing the only person who ever meant anything to him.

His desire to ‘dethrone’ Shido is a way to seek revenge and justice for his mother’s death and his own torments in life. It is Shido who made her a single mother and him a bastard child, he was the one that put them through this trauma.

To an extent however, Akechi does not care about what Shido has done to him, but more so what he did to his mother.

A SHORT PASSAGE ON AKIRA & AKECHI IN RELATION TO THE PRIOR PASSAGE.

From the moment he could understand why his mother killed herself, and linking that back to his father, Akechi Goro has wanted to destroy Shido. THIS IS HIS JUSTICE; he wants to show his criminal of a father exactly what his mother went through, regardless of the consequences for himself. He wants to send that man to the hell of which he belongs, and Akechi never cared if it caused his demise too. Goro wanted him to suffer so that he could finally be at peace and join his mother. In the beginning, he wanted to do it all with his bare hands.

However, at the point of his death, it is as if Akechi realises the mess he has made. He re-evaluates everything and becomes a sacrifice. He never really wanted innocent people to die, and if he continued, he would not only have himself killed, but all the thieves too.

Akechi entrusts Akira with the task of defeating Shido, asking him to change the man’s heart before allowing himself to die before his ‘only purpose in life’ is even fulfilled, hanging on a new found trust and deal made with Akira and the thieves.

                                                     THERE’S STILL LIGHT IN HIM.