Emero’s Chaos :3

if you dont know the play, here is a super quick rundown (suicide mention cw). in the play, two men (vladimir and estragon) meet by a tree. one of them has been assaulted. the two talk and find out they’re both waiting for a man named godot, someone neither of them clearly remembers ever having met. they wait and wait, and godot never comes. two people (lucky and pozzo, interesting characters for many reasons that would lead me to digress) pass them by, a boy tells them godot will arrive tomorrow. in act II, the tree has more leaves, and even tho the same two people pass them by, one of them is now blind and the other mute, and they dont recognize vladimir and estragon. when the boy comes by again (claiming to have never met them and that godot will arrive tomorrow), the two men despair. they both decide to hang themselves on the tree, but have no rope. they discuss about going to get rope and meet back in the same place and commit suicide together but eventually they stay on that bench, waiting.

by mentioning this play, rui (thespian & theatre buff) creates a direct comparison with the men in the play and him and mizuki. they spend afternoons on the school roof, “alone together”, waiting for something, anything, that will save them, without really hoping for it. a common interpretation of the play is that vladimir and estragon find themselves in a sort of purgatory or dimension between worlds – unreal, dreamlike, eternal. rui’s comparison highlights his and mizuki’s pessimism and their current state of depression. ms mizuki is suspended in time, especially after rui graduates: she uses anime and editing and her hobbies as a means of escape, as a way to dissociate herself from a reality in which she feels trapped. both mizuki and rui feel like vladimir and estragon at the end of the play: doomed, hopeless, alone together.

however, while valdimir and estragon stay in stasis on that bench, mizuki and rui move forward, albeit tentatively. vladimir and estragon wanted to leave each other’s side to go get rope, but neither of them did. on the other hand, mizuki and rui leave each other’s side, and instead of finding rope, they find a lifeline: mizuki finds ena’s art, rui is scouted by tsukasa and emu.

and here is where it gets interesting, why it makes so much sense for both rui and mizuki to place a special focus on tsukasa and ena respectively, and why rui was the one to talk to ena in ena5: it’s the conclusion of “waiting for godot” that never happened in the play (also because that wasnt the point og the original play but i digress). without ena, mizuki would have eventually and progressively ghosted niigo, chasing solitude and isolation. without tsukasa, rui would have stayed alone, staging one-man shows and losing all his connections.

it’s only through ena’s stubbornness, her patience, insistence, and devotion that mizuki stays, that mizuki finally feels part of niigo, fully and unconditionally. and it’s only through tsukasa’s authenticity, honesty, and insistence that rui joins wxs once again, discovering in tsukasa the actor that he has been dreaming of his whole life.

tsukasa and ena ARE godot. they found their vladimir and estragon and saved them. and that doesnt mean that the rest of wxs or niigo or other friends arent important to mizuki and rui. but without ena and tsukasa, they wouldn’t even have these connections, because they were looking for their rope (solitude). rui thought he and mizuki were like vladimir and estragon because he genuinely believed godot would never come, like in the play, and that the waiting was the only place where he would find any sort of connection with a kindred spirit, someone who is also giving up on waiting.

rui found his godot and recognized him for who he was before mizuki, and tried time and time again to stir mizuki in ena’s (and niigo’s) direction. in ena5, it’s because of his encouragement that ena finds her determination. rui and mizuki both like subverting narratives and playing with the fourth wall. rui recognized ena as mizuki’s godot and sent her mizuki’s way. he and mizuki directly compare ena and tsukasa to each other on the roof post ena5, because they know. without needing to say it out loud, they know.

the events in this wl3.4 perfectly encapsulates this comparison with the play as well and mizuki and rui’s penchant for playing around with metanarrative devices: rui puts on a play (just like tsukasa did for him) and mizuki acts out the emotions she felt in that alley with ena, once again on the rooftop where ena made her promise that changed mizuki’s life.