Hi! I've been a longtime lurker who just recently came back to the tokyo revengers fandom and found your blog and I've been loving reading everything you write, so thank you very much for sharing it!
Now, I've read one of your post mentioning how you don't think Tenjiku is a found family at all and honestly that's such an interesting take (dare i say, a hot take even) because almost everyone keep mentioning how Tenjiku members are found family and such, so you mentioning otherwise got me very interested in the topic. If it's alright with you I'd love to hear more about it please? 🙏🥺
Hello anon!! Thanku for reaching out, and I would love to elaborate and answer ur question!! I have a feeling that this will be a longer answer since I have a lot of thoughts but I will try to keep my reasoning concise. That, and all of my analyses always come with the preface that people can play in fandom however they want and these are my own personal takeaways from the story, so hopefully I don't get jumped for this one(/hj) but so far everyone on tumblr has been quite respectful, so! I will share what I mean by this.
The main reason why I don't believe that Tenjiku was meant to be a found family is because they are ultimately plot devices that are used as extensions of Izana to tell Izana's story. As actual characters, most of them (except for Muchou and Kakuchou) are barely elaborated upon within story outside of basic characteristics due to character bloat. However, their actual personalities are not as important as the role they play within the plot, that being: how Izana functions as a personal antagonist and character foil to Mikey.
Izana was specifically written to contrast Mikey and challenge him in a very personal way, whether it's their leadership styles, the way they connect with the people around them, etc. Thus, since Toman is a found family kind of group that has established itself upon a foundation of friendship, love, trust, and genuine bonds (because that's the way that Mikey runs it), Tenjiku is notably not.
Izana's relationships with the other members of Tenjiku (which are primarily defined by fear, domination, and control) are reflective on how he generally approaches interpersonal relationships with mistrust due to severe trauma and fear of abandonment. Since he suffered that loss of control with his family when he was very young, he can't trust other people not to leave him, and thus, he overcompensates by crushing his followers under his foot.
Essentially, because he established himself to be the biggest, baddest guy in the whole prison yard, they have to defer to him as their leader (which is very patriarchal in some respect? though I cannot currently find the words. Smth smth "the patriarchy runs off of competition and establishing dominance, and submission is ostensibly treated the same as respect" smth smth). Anyways. Point is, in the end he has to make them bend to his will and make them stay.
And in a way? He proves his own warped worldview to be right!, at least considering the people he actively surrounds himself with, which are people, btw, that literally refer to themselves canonically as the "Vicious Generation" due to their sadism, and various heinous crimes like manslaughter, battery and assault, drug trafficking, etc. It's very self-fulfilling prophecy in that way. Very Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon (which is the frequency illusion / cognitive distortion where things, objects, and patterns stick out more once ur brain takes note of them).
The way that they're only really loyal to Izana out of respect and fear rather than care and connection is reflected by the fact that until he calls them together again, they generally don't hang out with each other all that much. Arguably, if they really were the found family archetype then u would think that they would at least try to stay together(?) the first time around after Izana exited the picture due to his grief over Shinichirou's death, but after the 9th generation of Black Dragon fell they just all ended up doing their own thing instead.
If anything the members of Tenjiku more or less treat each other as coworkers that have to tolerate each other as opposed to actual friends; and based on how they interact with each other I think the case can be made that they don't even like each other all that much.
Also to me, a huge part of the tragedy of Izana's character comes from the fact that when he got shot, nobody — and I really do mean nobody — cared enough about him on a personal level to try and save him. This is of course with exception to Kakuchou!, who was also shot, bleeding out, and fully believed that he was going to die with him (and ngl the fact that he doesn't die with Izana here is one of the cruelest things that could have ever happened to him as a character).
Other than him, Izana genuinely was alone because of the way he dominated every single one of his relationships with fear out of a desperate need for control; which is shown by how — again, outside of Kakuchou — Izana’s legacy ends up more or less fading into obscurity, (which is smth btw that Mikey actively references in a manipulative way later down in the Kantou Manji arc to motivate Kakuchou into fighting).
Of course, that doesn't mean that the members of Tenjiku don't also respect Izana, because they do. After all, Ran has the whole line where he talks about how they admired how he and Kakuchou lived before closing their eyes. However! When Izana himself was bleeding out, they still all just stood back and watched him die.
Not only that, but you would think that if they cared more about each other then there would have been more effort dedicated towards finding Izana during his mourning period, but they all kinda wait(…?) until he comes back; and from then on they're at his beck and call due to the fact that Izana had already established dominance over them.
Essentially, the reason why I don't view them to be found family is because they are never really shown to be caring about one another on a personal level; and as individual characters they never really cross my mind because in the end (through my own personal POV of the story) the whole point of the other members of Tenjiku was to show how Izana runs his relationships based off of fear and control.
Anyways, I hope this answered ur question! (Me asf btw):
—and I'm really honored that people ask for my opinions because they find my analyses interesting. I love elaborating on my thoughts on things and Izana in particular is quite interesting to think about.
