shinya come back

(i want to say that i don't think guremahi's plan is going to work out given some statements regarding mika/yuu/shinoa's future in world-saving, shinya's tendency to interfere with mahiru's ideals and the fact that there's no way kagami would sacrifice mikayuu - but the writing has been so incredibly inconsistent and characters have gotten so reduced to cardboard cutouts that my trust is near zero. i've never been this upset by a story for this long in my life.)

inconsistency, regarding mahiru. catastrophe paints the image that she is incredibly ambitious, that her one goal in life is to break free from the shackles shikama placed on her, and that she will do anything to achieve this, even give up on/cause harm to her loved ones, shinoa and guren. she has also mentioned that she wishes to be reborn as a normal girl, which could be possible considering it's now confirmed reincarnation is a thing in this universe. so why is she suddenly completely fine with staying a demon, being trapped without agency for all eternity? (wifey @esquefae also pointed out that a few chapters ago, when they were fighting krul, guren mentioned that they could just die and it'd be fine, in response to which mahiru gets upset saying "no!! we've come this far!!!!" - now it's mahiru who suggests dying and guren who tells her no, it's already decided. what? huh?)

shinya losing his role entirely. from ca16 to the prison scene after the anime to chapter 83, shinya was always understandably suspicious of mahiru. he was her counterpart in the novels after all, always telling guren to go right when mahiru told him to take a left. he got extremely upset when he realised she was manipulating guren, even telling her "get away from him or i'll kill you" (which is quite embarrassing for him honestly but. not the point.) when he saw her for the first time. but now? he treats her like anyone else. he just goes along with their plans, not questioning anything, still smiling like there's no worry to be had here. even if the documents they found in the love hotel were convincing, i refuse to believe all that distrust and conflict could just evaporate so instantly. it's jarring.

the fucking disrespect towards the guren squad girls. this is a gigantic slap in the face in the form of confirming that mito, sayuri and shigure are in fact only 'convenient' fleshy sex dolls for guren to reject. can't even really describe the visceral feeling of horror that went through my chest when i saw it. everyone involved in the making of this should be ashamed of themselves i'm not even kidding.

the complete erasure of the events of catastrophe at sixteen?? now, i've said this before. many times. that it's extremely weird that the manga shoves dead shinya flashback after dead shinya flashback down your throat and yet never mentions who actually caused his & the other's deaths. that it's always guren blaming himself for the end of the world, and mahiru just stands off to the side looking at him sympathetically like she wasn't the one that murdered his friends and thus pretty much forced him to shoulder that sin. that it just seems like she's helping him, supporting him and even willing to be punished for eternity by his side, out of love for him. in the novels she was a terrifying 'monster' that killed and abused and manipulated and was very likely the one that came up with the idea of having guren's father executed. in vampire reign, she's simply supporting him. and i thought it was incredibly weird when guren told her "we should have died together with everyone, eight years ago", even though none of them would have had to die had it not been for mahiru. but i was convinced that this dissonance would be adressed eventually. that there would perhaps be some grand reveal, because if not, why keep it a secret in the first place?

inconsistency regarding guren. he used to seem more aware of all of the above. he acknowledged that mahiru caused his "life problems", always accepted her touchiness but never initiated it. but in this chapter, he's holding his hand out to her, smiling, and they walk off into the distance arm in arm. it doesn't feel like a resigned acceptance of his punishment, stuck with the person that terrorised him for the rest of time - what it feels like is a bittersweet happy end between equals.

gureshin conflict may just stay forever unresolved. for me, probably the most interesting thing about guren and shinya's dynamic after the apocalypse, and also shinya's character as a whole, was the prospect of him eventually finding out what happened and the internal conflict that would follow (of course this would include guren's other friends, but there is the topic of shinya potentially being able to find out without exploding due to him being resurrected by ferid, not the experiment itself). because shinya in the novels expressed adoring guren because he was selfless, because he was good, which is such a stark contrast to everything he's ever known. to find out that that person that you've been holding to those high moral standards was actually the cause for so much misery? it's such an intriguing concept to me. and that's not even all! there's the added layer of guren doing all of it because he just couldn't live without his friends! he's actually an awful person, but he did it for you! i can't even begin to imagine how someone would react to that. there's been so much build-up too - their fight in the prison, in the car and later the scene where guren avoids kureto's questions because shinya is right there and "something disadvantageous would happen" to him if he answered. so much tension that shows such a high level of thought and complexity put into these characters. it's what got me so invested in this duo in the first place. and now you're telling me guren and shinya will never see each other again? guren just plans to run off to immortality, no realisation, no confrontation, nothing? excuse me while i go search for a clown nose big enough to convey how big of a buffoon i am.

the complete lack of emotion. guren doesn't take one last look at his friends, doesn't bat an eye at parting with shinya for what's meant to be the last time. these are his friends, his reason to live, his "precious things", as mahiru put it, and he doesn't express any sort of hesitation or sadness at the thought of never seeing them again. it seems like he doesn't care anymore, happen to them what will, it doesn't matter to him because he's going to leave them anyway. you've taken my traumatised scaredy-cat and turned him into an apathetic piece of ass.

you know, ideally shinya is just smiling to cover up his actual thoughts as usual, and he's not planning to go along with guren and mahiru at all. ideally, someone tells him trying to take him out of the equation and he remembers dying, remembers the sight of everyone else's decapitated bodies. ideally he stops guren and beats sense into him.

maybe "that idiot is trying to save the whole damn world by himself again" means something.

maybe "i will never give up on guren" means something.

maybe "maybe there are other special heroes out there who'll do something about the world" means something.

maybe "all the same, when guren looked at shinya's smiling face, he felt like he might yet be forgiven" means something.

or maybe it doesn't. just like mahiru's actions have meant nothing.

and yes, i will be talking about guren. a lot. because whether you like it or not, guren is the main character, and shinya's role to an extent revolves around him. yes, i also wish we knew more about him outside of that, but it is what it is. i'll work with what i've got.

i actually recently saw someone who was wondering why people shipped gureshin, or why they believe shinya is in love with him - and since this chapter was my personal 'awh fuck i guess this is what i'll be constantly thinking about for the next 6+ years'-moment, perhaps when you see someone wondering the same, you can send them this.

let's start with the basics! in case you forgot it all starts off with shinya asking byakkomaru for more power to try and save guren.

yay for character exposition!

normal people's personality traits aside, shinya largely turned out the way he did because of childhood trauma. if your friends are constantly taken away from you, eventually, you're gonna stop caring about others. if emotions like sadness or fear of death will make you more vulnerable to attacks, you're gonna stop being afraid out of pure necessity. the training facility required shinya to care about no one but himself and go through there with an absolute calmness and rationality that protected him but also turned him into an empty unfeeling husk that doesn't really know why it's even alive.

also, lovely touch that it's just always raining inside his heart. i'm sensing he might have experienced sadness of some sort.

don't really appreciate the "yet you still hold burning desires" without any indication of what they might be, although you can guess looking at the following pages.

i'll talk about this topic some more a few pages down, but it's quite interesting how shinya believes reaching for impossible goals is meaningless, pretty much says 'no one cares that you tried if you don't succeed', while simultaneously admiring guren so much for never giving up.

"Though you never managed to make mahiru yours, you still feel nothing." shinya expressed some jealousy in catastrophe about having his government assigned fiancée constantly talking about another kid, but he seems to acknowledge that such a feeling is useless, and eventually drops it. which is also probably how he could talk about it so freely to guren instead of letting it fester and turn into bitterness.

"It is believing that way which fulfills your desires." he knows it's not the only way to think, but it acts as a sort of defence mechanism which spares him a lot of the pain people that experience emotions normally go through. i imagine it feels quite relieving, to be able to save yourself from it.

and oh! byakkomaru asks him a question about himself and shinya grins and tells him he doesn't need to ask these things, because he's his demon, he already knows everything about him! how interesting. let's call back to that later.

interesting comparison here. i think what it really comes down to in the end is passion.

to be quite frank, shinya's entire existence is downright miserable. he was entirely on his own for most of his life, having no one to depend on, being constantly reminded of his worthlessness and stuck in that horrible place he knows he can't get out of. but that's just it. he knows there's no way out, and he doesn't question it anymore. he's accepted it. he doesn't outwardly want or strive for anything. (although of course, byakkomaru needs to draw power from somewhere. so we can assume those other 'burning desires' are sitting somewhere very, very deep inside to the point where he can't even put them into words - considering that when asked about his biggest wish in the official fanbook, he can't think of anything, and instead chooses something that might make guren happy. whatever he wants himself is probably so impossible to him he wouldn't dare reach for, or even dream of it. if you can't get it, 'the effort is meaningless'.)

meanwhile guren, despite the general degradation of the ichinose clan, starts out with much more, a clan that supports him fully, a parent that loves him, devoted followers and a beautiful home - which is all violently ripped away from him one after the other. he suffers so so much within the story, and yet he never stops trying, never falls into that sad routine, never accepts defeat, always burning 'like the sun' in a way shinya can't. and because he knows he can't, never could, he tries to help. he bases his entire self worth on supporting someone he believes to be good.

i do appreciate a good Guren Roast. guren acts strictly on his feelings, which is confusing but incredibly endearing to shinya, who would be long dead if he'd acted the same. which i suppose is why he's looking at him like... that™. a little reminiscent of shinoa longingly staring at yuuichirou and thinking "teach me more", except shinya is a guy, so he's not allowed to blush about it.

he then very casually mentions that he hates idiots, so therefore he hates guren. note this down.

and here we have it. the fucking "person who is a stone cold rationalist but suddenly throws all logic out of the window when it comes to love" trope. in MY shounen manga. fucking wow. all that talk about shinya not feeling anything and only ever acting logically but when it comes to guren he starts contradicting himself. that's certainly not suspicious at all.

alright here we go fuck you fuck you fuck you.

i've yapped on an on about this page way too much, but just for completion's sake:

byakkomaru uses the word "恋" (koi). and i'm not japanese, i don't speak japanese, but my embarrassingly extensive research has concluded that as opposed to "愛" (ai), which is the stable, general and intentional feeling of love you hold for family members or your actual romantic partner, koi is an exclusively romantic term for when you've fallen in love with someone without meaning to, and whom you're not in a relationship with. or - oh dear! - "It can also have a meaning of longing for something or someone." sounds oddly familiar, maybe?

because what shinya actually responds here in the japanese original is "it's just 憧れ". and while this little fucker of a word can be translated to 'deep admiration' (which, of course, fits quite well), it can also be translated to 'longing' or 'yearning' - which is a word that has also been used to describe guren and mahiru's feelings for each other, in which case it has always been translated as longing. huh. funny that.

other than that, let's look at it in relation to what else has happened in this scene!

first off - "you're my demon, you know that!" byakkomaru doesn't need to make assumptions about him. he knows shinya better than anyone else, probably even shinya himself. knowing that, it seems more like he's trying to make shinya acknowledge it, perhaps to pull out more of that desire that he needs out of him, rather than an actual 'well MAYBE you're in love just saying. it's entirely irrelevant but it kinda popped into my mind right now'.

secondly, shortly before byakkomaru's statement, shinya does that cheerful intentionally-lying-through-his-teeth, stating that he hates guren because he hates idiots. which is obviously fucking bullshit, and everyone knows it. he knows it. byakkomaru knows it. guren knows it. hell, my fucking grandmother that i haven't seen since i was seven years old knows it.

but seriously - he spouts obvious lies in a sing-songy voice and laughs off everything byakkomaru throws at him. and we know smiling is shinya's way to deal with stress. (it's quite obvious, but was also explicitly mentioned in catastrophe). acknowledging something like this outright, that you might be in love with your best friend who's also your ex-fiancée's ex boyfriend, that'd be incredibly stressful, perhaps even scary, wouldn't it? especially for someone like him who we just established has survived by not growing attached to people and locking away all strong feelings for most of their life. who's to say that his "it's just 憧れ" isn't also just a lie meant to avoid a direct confronation about his own feelings that is obvious to byakkomaru but not to the reader?

once again we're talking about guren's passion and the fact that shinya really, really wants to help him. awesome.

what's also interesting to note is the part where he says "i completely understand why mahiru chose him over me". something similar is said multiple times in catastrophe, where he goes on about finally understanding what mahiru sees in him and why she loves him. could be 'girls love this guy that's so much better than me i wish i could be like him'. could also be kagami trying to sneak "SHINYA'S FEELINGS FOR GUREN = MAHIRU'S FEELINGS FOR GUREN" past censorship. who knows. not me. i'm just cleaning personell. anyone seen the broom closet?

"Do you intend to die here?" - "Good question." Thank you Shinya very cool.

he really just doesn't give a shit does he. insert another paragraph about how he doesn't have anything to wish for or look forward to. guren come get your passively suicidal emotional support animal.

the statement of never having had a reason to live despite him outright telling guren that his life had meaning because he got to meet him implies that this realisation only came as he was dying. he had to die to be able to see any meaning to life. which is really fucking sad if you ask me, but it lines up with his development in the novels - as soon as you accept weakness you accept that it will kill you. as soon as it all makes sense, it's over. can't have shit in owari no seraph.

despite everything, shinya hates losing to guren. this is something that's always been difficult for me to understand because i can't relate at all and it just seemed kind of childish, but we can actually explain it pretty easily by looking at the circumstances of his upbringing once again. shinya grew up in an environment where not being the smartest, fastest and most talented, where losing meant immediate death. if he's the best, he gets to survive. if there's someone better than him, he'll be disposed of. of course someone close to him that's a better person, is easily loved by so many different people (especially mahiru, who from shinya's point of view was the only reason he was even allowed to exist), can feel like a threat. it's what makes his characterisation so fun to me, because if i just look closely enough, i can explain most of what he does and says. i am nowhere near as good at understand whatever is going on in guren's mind.

aaand this actually concludes my little essay! thank you very much for coming everyone. it was a blast. feel free to leave some marzipan in the tip jar by the door. toodles!

anyway. do i think shinya is in love with guren? yes. i don't think any author would put this much thought into something that in the end is just there for shits and giggles. there's the drama cd too, where shinya uses a phrase that is commonly used in writing to subtly confess to another person (i actually only recently realised it was used in The Stranger by the Shore as well, which is straight up queer literature). his fanbook entry states that he is not interested in women. he can neither sit nor stand up fucking straight. there are so, so many hints if you just look for them. now, do i think it will lead anywhere? although i wish it would, nope. everything that nods to romantic feelings is from shinya's side exclusively, and he's far from the only one that fell for guren. but what i am certain of is that he is meant to be read this way.