So far at least for me Tadashi has been the most intriguing character in the entirety of Sk8, and I’m quite surprised so little people are talking about the developments we got from the most recent episode, especially what’s happening in the preview.
It’s pretty obvious that Tadashi is being abused, be it from a relationship dynamic or between boss and secretary. Adam consistently threats violence, refers to him as a dog, and cares very little for Tadashi’s well being considering that he plans to have him take the blame for Adam’s own wrongdoings.
It’s obviously had a huge impact on Tadashi’s psychology as we’ve seen in Episode ten, where he calls himself and his previous passions “the worst” and projects that onto others as well. I speculate that it’s because he associates everything regarding skating with Adam and thus hurt, yet fails to blame the inflictor himself. He also considers himself the reason that Adam is inflicting so much pain onto others, the skaters he’s hospitalized and Reki and Langa.
It wasn’t always like this. We got a glimpse of that in episode eight, but actually an animated scene of it in episode ten. It’s up to the interpreter, but to me it seems like the two were romantically involved. I judge this based off of that scene where he touches the two hearts embossed on where Tadashi taught Adam how to skate and Adam’s interest in Tadashi despite them not being allowed to interact with one another on friendly terms. There’s this one scene where Adam is peaking at Tadashi from behind the bushes all shy, almost like he has a crush he’s too afraid to talk to, and smiles when Tadashi invites him over.
So it’s more like what the fuck happened to corrupt Adam so bad? There was obviously the abuse from his aunts and most likely his father that distorted his sense of love, but I don’t suspect that’s all there is to the story.
I suspect we’ll find out more from next episode, probably the climax of it in the season finale, just judging from how concerned Tadashi looks in the episode preview with whatever Adam’s doing, most likely planning to inflict more harm on Reki who in the most recent episode reminded Tadashi of why he previously loved skateboarding until Adam ruined it for him.
Episode ten honestly surprised me with the narrative turns it took just coming from a background in writing, but if I were to guess, Tadashi is definitely going to do something big in order to prevent Adam from hurting Reki. I don’t know what, but my guess is taking Reki’s place in racing Adam instead of Shadow and beating him, which I legitimately think he will do.
Out of all the screenshots I shared, the one that stuck out the most to me was Tadashi isolated where he and Adam used to skate while being called a sacrificial lamb. I’m always a sucker for biblical imagery, but what stuck out to me the most is how isolated he looks. He’s really been left in the mud by Adam, and his mind is so fucked up because of it.
Anyway, point of this post is that Tadashi deserves better and next episode he’s gonna come full circle and beat the shit out of Adam, thank god.