i hinted at it yesterday so now i'm making the post. i want to talk about prevalent "past and future" motifs used in mondo's character writing. GOD LETS HOPE I CAN WORD THIS WELL
i'm going to go into it, but long story short: mondo is a character who holds a lot of fear and grief in his past, but also comfort, because he is even more terrified of his future, if he even sees one for himself.
we know mondo's relationship with his past, i covered it in my post yesterday. he's haunted by it. there's very clear ptsd-coding involved in his writing (how well that ptsd is represented is a whole other can of worms), which means his past (namely, the accident involving daiya) is so integral to his character and what he does throughout the course of his time in the game. the only things we ever know about his past are directly related to daiya and the gang. he don't know shit about his life before that, other than his parents weren't in the picture and daiya was the only family he had. (fun fact: that line about mondo's mom was added in the localization of the game for no reason other than to make a joke. his mother was never mentioned in the original japanese, meaning we know NOTHING about mondo's parents). as far as mondo lets on, his life truly began once daiya started the gang. that's all his past is. it's all it revolves around. daiya started the gang, mondo joins the gang, mondo climbs the ranks, mondo becomes leader, daiya dies during his retirement party, mondo expands the gang to be bigger and better than it ever was under daiya.
(we have two minor exceptions. chuck, which still has that sense of grief that can be related to daiya. and mondo's ((lack of)) experience with girls, which can still be related to the machismo demanded of him by the gang and daiya).
the big thing is the accident and daiya's death. that, reasonably, had such an impact on mondo's life after that daiya is haunting mondo's narrative. the way mondo holds himself, the way he speaks, the way he gets dressed in the morning, the way he lashes out. its all because he's either trying to replicate daiya or he's responding out of fear that his secret involving daiya will be exposed. there's that theory that mondo changed the crazy diamond uniform from white to black to better hide blood stains after the crash and, while just a theory, i find that so compelling and it adds another layer of mondo making decisions influenced by his past. even his secret directly relates to his past, contrasting both chihiro and toko's secrets, which were currently taking place in the present. his constant focus on his past is what causes him to kill chihiro. it's what ruins his chances at a future.
a future that he was so fucking scared of that he chose to constantly focus on the past.
did you know that mondo's ultimate, what DEFINES him, has a time limit? yeah sure, so do others'. you can't exactly be a pro baseball player or a jpop idol for very long. but mondo maybe had like. a year, if even that. to still be a bosozoku after graduation before he had to move on. bosozoku culture is, by nature, only meant for youths. you can't be one when you're an adult. in fact, if you're still in a bosozoku gang at like, 19 or 20, you will lose a lot of the respect of your peers and subordinates. even if you're super well-regarded, like daiya or mondo. and mondo, being the ultimate bosozoku, knew this. he knew he only had a few more years in the crazy diamonds before he had to pass down his leadership and "join the real world." and he's so scared of what the real world holds for him. because, if you remember, his time in the gang is what he defines his entire being by. his life began when he joined that gang, so does that mean it'll end when he leaves it?
that's why his final fte focuses on how scared he is of growing up. adults aren't in gangs. they work real jobs, pay taxes,
are held accountable for their past actions...
plus, he feels so beholden to that promise he made to daiya, that doing anything outside of that feels like a waste to him, like he's failing his older brother.
and it's so sad to see how much he feels weighed down by his past because he does have a secret dream career. despite his fear of the future, he finds a single spark of hope in it. that spark being his silent wish of being a carpenter. something quiet and and meticulous, but still rewarding. so different from his past. because mondo WANTS to change, he WANTS to grow, he WANTS to succeed. but he doesn't let himself. because the fear of letting daiya down, of being found out, overpower those wants for himself. he already took daiya's future, why should he even consider one for himself?
but hope's peak changes him. being outside of the gang changes him. talking to other people changes him. they give him the hope needed to see a future for himself. one that doesn't involve failure or guilt or isolation.
but still, it wasn't enough to save him. because, at the end of the day, he couldn't let go of the past and move on. his overwhelming desire to emulate daiya, to honor daiya more than he does himself, because he sees nothing good himself, ultimately causes his life to end like daiya's: tragically young and on the back of a motorcycle.
getting away from the sad stuff: i truly do think that this is the reason why dr:s did not fumble his writing like it does other characters. because dr:s feel like it's supposed to be a game about the future and planning on what to do after high school. mondo has already left the gang by the time dr:s starts, so he has nothing to do but reminisce on his time at hope's peak while also focusing on his future for once. and it's so lovely, the direction it goes in. from him over enthusiastically promising to build everyone houses because he is so giddy that he finally sees a future for himself, to his interactions with the woh focusing on his desire to be seen as a safe and reliable adult to children since he's fully accepted that he himself is growing up, to addressing his fear of potentially losing all the progress he's made on himself in the future but trusting that his friends (like kiyotaka, the one he was talking to in this specific interaction) will always be there to help him, fully breaking himself out of that need to deal with things on his own. like yeah, that's mondo if the tragedy never happened, and he was allowed his chance at a happy life. (i also love that his plans for his future are so much more domestic and peaceful, compared to his past and other characters' ambitions. bro just wants to be normal and comfortable, at the end of the day.)
but yeah. those are really my main thoughts on the matter. mondo owada analysis is like candy to me. he deserves all of the video essays ever. i hate him. blegh.
