Starry Lightning Cyclops Rat

First, let’s focus on how they were alive. What was their relationship like? Well, we know they were close, at least. There’s this one bit in the Tanabata arc where little Amane says that Tsukasa will get violent if interrupted.

However, in the official translations it says that he’ll throw a fit. Y’know, like an excitable little kid.

It also says that he’s playing katanuki, and he LOVES katanuki, so we can assume he wouldn’t want to be interrupted. (Also, Hanako loves katanuki too!)

But other than that, we don’t really see them being brothers in the past, do we. Right…?

WRONG! Something I completely overlooked before were the volume sleeve illustrations.

Also, in this (^) illustration, I’d like to point out that the Tsukasa’s radio and Hanako’s kokeshi doll are sitting on the chest of drawers!

Something to note in these illustrations (and also the Tanabata arc) is that Amane is happy and there are no signs of bruising anywhere either. So at least as little kids, no form of abuse is present.

Also, something else I noticed:

He says that “WE believe it’s real.” Tsuchigomori said that he doesn’t have friends, and he’s obviously not referring to Tsuchigomori here. Tsukasa is the only one left he could be referring to in this “we”. They both were enthusiastic about this rock that supposedly fell from the sky, ever since they were four.

I feel like I’m grasping at straws in this part, but why would Amane include a third party unless they were important? Especially when it comes to something so sentimental to him.

Next, we have the picture from the Kamome school orientation.

Nothing here either. Just the two holding hands, and Amane is still bright-eyed. Note that they are alone. We know the Minamoto siblings live alone, but Mitsuba and Nene both have parents with them. The Yugi twins don’t. Another theory was that Amane’s parents were abusing him and they just favored Tsukasa, but this can allow us to presumably scratch that.

So that means any harm to Amane happened somewhere between here and his death. So, let’s make a time frame, hmm? We know Amane died around age 13. What age is he here…? Well we know he just entered Middle school, the first level Kamome provides for. What age…

Wow. That lines up perfectly.

This leads into the next major part of the theory.

We all know that Kamome is incredibly “haunted.” Filled to the brim with supernaturals. So, what if these two got caught up in supernatural business and things went south?

Originally this was a theory on proving Tsukasa wasn’t the one abusing Amane, but now I’m possibly considering that it was him. However, he wasn’t fully there, or something caused him to go mad.

In this part, Hanako is reciting a part of Mori Ogai’s “Takasebune”. (Credit to  @nanabansama​ for finding that out!) In the story, a man is being exiled for a crime he committed. He seems kind so the police escort is wondering what he did. Turns out, he and his little brother were orphaned when they were young. At some point after growing up and working together, his brother fell ill. He came home one day to find out that his brother tried to kill himself so he wouldn’t be a burden. The man had finished the job for his brother, essentially putting him out of his misery.

We can draw some parallels to Hanako from this.

The man has a little brother that he killed

Absence of parents, this makes it likely that Hanako and Tsukasa’s parents are dead.

The man is being punished for what he’s done and is fully accepting of what has to happen to him as a consequence. In the man’s case, being exiled, and in Hanako’s case, being mediator for human and supernatural relations.

Perhaps from this we can draw that Hanako killed Tsukasa to put him out of his misery.

(Also, something really interesting, Ogai is spelled 鴎外. 鴎 is pronounced “Ou”, however alone it is pronounced “KAMOME”! While we’re on the subject, kamome means seagull. I had no idea why the school would be named that, but I would not be surprised if this were the reason!)

@daikon-senpai​ has pointed out that we can see a reoccurring “hole” in Hanako’s stomach. There’s a high likeliness that he killed himself after killing Tsukasa.

There’s a traditional method of suicide called seppuku, where one would slit their stomach to bleed out (though they would usually have someone cut their neck for efficiency and to minimize suffering). One of the reasons one would commit seppuku were if someone committed a crime or had brought shame on themselves. Both of which would be a likely reason Amane would have killed himself, and he even still carries intense guilt now as Hanako.

[UPDATE: I had made a post about how it appears that Hanako pulls his knife out from his stomach, something absent from the anime. Some of the earlier instances can look like he’s pulling out from his gakuran, so here’s a more obvious example:

@shweshishweh​ and @spades-queen​ have additionally pointed out that in some official art Hanako is depicted with a bandage over his stomach and Tsukasa with a bandage over his heart (or a heart that is damaged, as shown in the Valentine’s Day art).

With this information, not only can we assume Hanako died from wounds on his stomach, but also that Tsukasa likely died from an injury to his heart.

END OF UPDATE]

Speaking of guilt-

It’s believed that when Hanako cries while confronting Tsukasa, he’s afraid because he’s with his abuser again. I doubt this is true at all. He hasn’t cried since the Mitsuba Arc, though he still locks up briefly.

Obviously Hanako holds a ton of guilt from what he did to Tsukasa, so of course he would freeze up when the dude comes out of no where and is like, “Long time no see!!” He’s being confronted with what he did, front and center. No amount of jokes can distract him from it. There’s no avoiding it. After Tsukasa had entered the picture for a while, Hanako stops reacting so strongly, as he’s more prepared for it. (This was pointed out to me by @trish-chan​!)

It’s also possible that Tsukasa is acting the messed-up way he was before he died, and Hanako is realizing that death really didn’t free him from it. He’s mortified at what’s happened to his brother.

Another thing she’s pointed out was that currently, Tsukasa hasn’t hurt Hanako. Not physically, at least. If he was the one hurting him then, why not now? It’s not like he’s hiding being violent in front of people. Let’s see… he turned Mitsuba into a monstrosity, nearly killed Kou, ripped out No. 3’s heart, totally would have turned Nene into a bloody pulp, killed the pufferfish into a bloody mess, and he’s finger painted with blood (who knows where that came from) among various other psychotic things.

Last thing I have here is a kind of lose connection, but worth including, nonetheless.

Only Tsukasa and No. 6 are creepy black mokke. I can’t bring myself to believe that AidaIro would do that for no reason. I wouldn’t question it if it were only Tsukasa, but now No. 6 is in the mix.

This actually made me think of possible connections that Tsukasa has to No. 6. After all, who has a giant gaping hole to the far shore and has messed with someone’s head so hard they basically tried to murder their childhood friend? Is it possible that No. 6 did something to Tsukasa, for whatever reason?

We don’t know enough about No. 6 currently to really be conclusive about this, though. Could both of them been corrupted somehow?

UPDATE ON THIS PART: Since I’ve first posted this, more chapters with No. 6, or Shinigami, have been released. While I have even more doubts that he and Tsukasa have any direct connection than before, I still think there are some shared aspects. Sumire’s seal is probably the most major revelation, now that it’s pretty much confirmed that Tsukasa is a yorishiro. If we assume Tsukasa is Hanako’s yorishiro, then that’s something in common with Sumire and Shinigami. But then wouldn’t Hanako be a black mokke?

This makes me think that that particular connection isn’t the shared aspect Tsukasa and Shinigami have. Perhaps it’s just something that hasn’t been revealed yet (or I haven’t picked up on lol). Something else interesting of note is the fact that Tsukasa has been completely absent this entire arc. His only sort-of presence is through Natsuhiko, who we still don’t know the motives of. We also don’t know how the Tsukasa+Sakura+Natsuhiko+Mitsuba quartet have been dealing with the Severance.

So, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered so I’m not dismissing this idea yet.

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So, in a nutshell, this theory is: Hanako and Tsukasa were good brothers, until they got caught up with supernaturals after entering Kamome. This may have caused Tsukasa to go crazy, and hurt Amane at the same time. This leads to Amane killing Tsukasa. Possibly out of self-defense or putting him out his misery. Following this, Amane kills himself. ~50 years later, present Kamome Academy. Tsukasa makes his way to the near shore and either gets corrupted or was never freed from whatever ailed him when he was alive at the school.

I’m realizing now that this would also explain this:

The source for it being a racist term goes back to WWII, where Allies in WWII would call the Japanese nicknames like rat, however it also extended to calling them things like rabbits and ants. (Are all of the rabbit anime girls actually racist?! /s) Much of this was based on the condescending attitude against an enemy, as well as the fact the Japanese would build camouflaged tunnel bunkers to move around. An officer describing an instance of shooting them with automatic guns is quoted describing it as a “glorious slaughter of Japanese who ran screaming from their coverts only to be shot down in scores like a rat hunt.”

Terms like this spread into Anti-Japanese propaganda, especially after the Pearl Harbor bombing. This is an example, and I think this is the poster people have been referring to.

Found here.

This is usually as far as people source this discussion, and I understand why. However, using “rat” as a racist slur seems to have fallen out of use, or is at least not common today. (I wasn’t even aware of it). I can’t even find it on the Racial Slur Database! (At least relating to this in particular). This honestly reminds me of cancel culture around artists, where some random person would dig up something controversial the artist posted on Twitter 7 years ago or something they drew when they were 14 and then the whole community attacks at them for it.

Also, it doesn’t have to be used as a slur like other words (n****r, or chink, for example) and can be used as an affectionate nickname. Kinda hard to kindly call someone “chink”. And I’m 100% sure no one saw Tsukasa and thought, “That kid’s Japanese! Damn Japanese people, I’m going to call him a rat!”

Something else I found interesting is that rat wasn’t only used against Japanese people. Rat was a term used by German propaganda against an Allied Australian garrison, who actually took the term and claimed it as their own, and they’re now known as the “Rats of Tobruk”.

This whole situation is reminding me of some drama that was going on in the Kimetsu no Yaiba fandom over Tanjirou’s earrings. Basically, people started drawing them a different way because they resemble the old WWII Japanese flag and it was insensitive. In actuality, his earrings are supposed to resemble hanafuda cards, not a flag. And although they may look like sun rays (Breath of the Sun, hello?? It’s likely on purpose) no one in the Japanese community was kicking up a stink about it.