#father garai

from what i understand MW is a reflection of the political instability of post-war japan and the rise of youth lead political movements/groups in the 70s. the late 60s/70s is probably my favorite era of art, whether that's literature, film, visual art, or music, i love it all. in the west we had a similar rise in youth movements and surreal/transgressive art.

yuki reminded me a lot of eddie from funeral parade of roses (1969), they both had similar slow-burn/long-game plans filled with manipulation in order to get back at whatever/whoever is the source of their trauma. MW also has a lot in common with giallo films of the time.

*Also cw mentions but not detailed talk of some heavy stuff like SA. I’m not gonna talk about either book as a whole bc that is far too much for me, also there’s a lot of awful shit in MW, especially concerning Yuki, the shit he does, how he’s portrayed and all that, which I’m not gonna delve into rn.

Anyways: Yuki and Urabe are so similar? Same for the fucking titular Osanai and Father Garai. Like one of my favorite things in Tezuka’s work (which I think was criticized as lazy at one point or another) is that he re uses a lot of his work. He used the whole Star System Model to have characters work more like actors in a play and in that same sense he has these pairs of characters that play a similar role in the narrative.

Like by no means am I saying Tezuka was lazy and just outright recycled Ode to Kirihito for MW, I’m saying it’s interesting that both Yuki/Urabe are extremely close (in one way or another) to Garai/Osanai. They both describe how they need to be with either Garai or Osanai, and feel as if they can’t live without them. Urabe explicitly states at least once after Kirihito leaves Japan that he isn’t functioning as normal without him, and Yuki does everything in his power to ensure Garai stays with him (ofc, Garai is being manipulated hard core but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t engage with Yuki by choice at times). Yuki/Urabe have an arc where they go sort of crazy as they deal with their own actions. Both of them are a bit mentally unstable but of course, Yuki takes the cake for being actually fucking horrible in the book. Another parallel is that unfortunately both of them end up raping Garai/Osanai’s girlfriend/love interest early on in the story and end up coming back to them, and often times proclaim their love. Also they look pretty physically similar, especially when Yuki is at work with his glasses and side burns, he begins to resemble Urabe.

Father Garai also has his fair share of crimes and moral flaws but I don’t think it’s as close to Yuki’s. That being said, I haven’t finished Ode to Kirihito so I can’t speak on him throughout the whole book but he reminds me of Garai in the first half or so of the book; both are upstanding and pious men, they both seem to play the role of upstanding man who just wants to help the world until they get attached to some crazy conspiracy, either by circumstance (Osanai’s case) or by connection to the mastermind (Garai’s case with Yuki). I think he and Garai are not as similar but I think they differ most in their ideas of justice and right and wrong, bc Garai has a sense of justice but regularly makes allowances for Yuki.