#gin posts knb

I love that we can get so much from all the subtle hints we got over the course of the series about how Kagami's life really was before he went to Serin.

Tiny Kagami saying how he doesn't have friends and finds it difficult to get new ones.The little hint we got that because his parent's jobs he always moved around a lot and didn't have a stable home at all.Yeah, for all he doesn't often show it, it seems that Kagami hadn't had that great of a life. It seems like he was relatively happy though, up until Himuro entered his emo teenager phase and started being jealous.

Also the way Kagami was really rough and closed off in the beginning of the manga. I think it really represents how lonely and hurt Kagami was at the time. It couldn't have been easy for him in that fist year back in japan, with all the customs he probably had to get used to again and the way others treated him as we saw in the beginning of the movie in the flashbacks. Kagami wanted to have fun playing basketball but what he came across was a bunch of defeated teenagers whos confidence and will to get better were crushed by Teiko and who didn't even try to be nice to Kagami and just let their opinions about him form even before they knew anything about him. And then he was either booted out or quit the middle school basketball club (as we saw in Teiko flashbacks in manga), which took from him the seemingly only positive thing in his life.

And he didn't even have his parents there with him, he was living alone even at the young age of 13/14. And then there was the fact that he was still probably very hurt by the fight he had with Himuro, his closest friend and somebody he thought of as a brother. Kagami is always so honest and motivated and mostly very positive so its very easy to miss that he really must have had a very crappy time in the first year he was back in japan. No friends, no parents, nobody there to support him, alone and isolated from everyone else.

I just have so many opinions about the shitty environment the GoM were in in Teiko and how badly it affected all of them.

The Teiko arc always makes me so sad. The way that GoM’s were failed by pretty much every single adult around them ever since they started to grow stronger was so tragic to see. Teiko school and everybody else in the middle school basketball community put so much pressure on those kids, that its really no surprise that it messed them up so bad. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM GOT SOME SORT OF TRAUMA FROM TEIKO I SWEAR THAT SCHOOL IS SO TOXIC.

The way all of them were pushed so far past their breaking point and everyone around them just ignored the situation and refused to do anything to help them correct their bad habits. On the contrary, coach and director created a team structure in which those bad habits would only get worse and more serious. And even when it became clearly noticeable how badly GoM’s were getting and how very negatively it affected mental health of both GoM's AND everyone else who played basketball against them, the adults around them STILL refused to do anything about it.

One thing that I don't think many people noticed was how awfully isolated the GoM must have been during their Teiko years from the rest of their peers. Those 6 were left alone in their own little bubble of misery for so long in their second and third years its no surprise their social skills are on such a low level. Even their own teammates kept distance from them and everyone else called them monsters and freaks or all the other, not very nice things. They were basically ostracized by whole community of people. Or, by everyone else who didn't do that, put on a very high pedestal. Like those media people in their third year, who talked about how they have an aura of professionals. From what we know nobody even TRIED to do anything about their situation since Shirogane had to quit. They were basically on their own, with whole lot of people either resenting them or idolizing them. Very bad environment for children who are in the crucial years of their character development.

Every single time nobody did anything when GoM's crossed the line, GoM’s crossed the next one and when nobody said anything again, they crossed one after that and so on and so on. They got colder and crueler, like children in their age tend to do when they are left with basically zero support system and no guidance from adults. Especially since there was nobody who even TRIED telling them "No, stop. What you’re doing is wrong."

Teiko exploited the shit out of all of them and it left them so jaded and lacking trust towards others when they left that place. It changed them in very negative ways and it shows in the every interaction they have with other people their age, especially right after their graduation. How different from normal teenagers they act, how "quirky" they are. How many times they just ignore societal norms in various ways. They all changed from the curious, relatively happy and well adjusted children they’ve been at the beginning of their first year to people who have no faith in others who have a little below average social skills at best, horrible at worst.

Midorima got colder, more distant and focused only on himself. He didn't find teamwork to be anything worth his time because he saw how it turned out with Teiko. He stopped respecting rest of the Go'M's because the way they were acting and it clearly had a impact on how he viewed his Shuutoku teammates at the beginning. He only saw them as accessories to his play and it didn't matter to him how they played, only how he played. Teiko taught him to distance himself from his teammates, to try doing everything alone. He stopped finding basketball fun, it started being just something he was good at.

For Murasakibara, they just nurtured all of his worst habits. Him being lazy, him being uncaring towards the feelings of others, him being so indifferent to how his actions affect other people. His thoughtless cruelty. And I think his social skills got affected the worst from all of the GoM's. He just straight up doesn't have them. He is very impulsive and lacks any regard for the feelings of other people. And Teiko only made all it worse.

Kise changed in subtler ways than others, but he changed still. He got more mean, more arrogant in the condensing way. He was the one who joined the latest and who, in line with his ability, copied and learned the behaviors from others. And what he learned from them is that basically teamwork and bonds with others don't matter, that it was okay to do anything you want, as long as you win. Teiko taught him that there were no consequences if he acts out as long as he is one of the strongest, as long he keeps on winning.

Kuroko didn't get out of there unscratched either. And I’ve got an opinion that Kuroko wasn’t just the victim in this whole scenario. He didn't agree with what GoM were doing, but I would argue that even he was the part of the problem. Because even through it wasn't his fault that others acted that way and it was in no way his responsibility to make others stop or even to help them, it doesn't change the fact that he was too, as the rest of them, responsible for the way they treated other teams. He still played with GoM, even after he saw what they were doing. He didn't quit, he continued playing with them and even though he just did what the rest of them did,  he knew it was wrong. He knew it was wrong, but continued to play on the team nevertheless. He was taking part in the games that were just as cruel to other players as that last game was to Ogiwara and from what we'd seen for the most part, he didn't often protest when they did that. And that made him part of the problem too and responsible for the damage to other players too. After Teiko, he closed off his emotions, became even better at masking his own emotions. He became more selfish, more focused on himself, rather than others. Even though he wanted to be a team player and wanted to prove GoM wrong, he still in the beginning wanted to USE others for his goal, even if that use aligned with what Serin wanted.

Akashi was also very much affected by Teiko. He already had a very unhealthy mentality planted in him by his father when he came to Teiko. That victory was everything in life and that he wasn’t allowed to lose in anything. That he had to be the best at all the times. That sort of thinking already put so much pressure on him and then coach added even more of it and made him vice-captain in his first year and a captain in second. He tried keeping the team together, tried doing whatever he could to keep the status quo in the team and that responsibility was what let to his eventual breakdown. They all put too much on Akashi and in the end he couldn’t deal with it all. And since his clear mental breakdown nobody said anything, nobody tried helping him, even though it was crystal clear he wasn’t doing okay and that he was changing and not for the better. They just kept doing nothing even thought he was becoming worse with every week. And from what we see in their third year all of the important team decisions have been left to Akashi. It was further proof of how much the management of Teiko didn’t care about mental health of those kids.

And there was Aomine, who basically developed depression because how badly he was managed by everyone who could have helped him and how badly everyone failed him. He felt so much pain that nobody was willing to help him with and those who were, left him alone with it. So he numbed himself, become jaded and tired, detached himself from feeling anything. Without anybody there to teach him healthy ways of managing his own mental health and pain, he started taking his suffering out on others, started getting unintentionally cruel. The scene in the rain, and his talk with the new coach  was heartbreaking. It was like a final nail in the coffin. When somebody that was meant to help him learn and grow told him he should stop trying, that as long as he won nothing else matters... It made his mentality even worse, made his worst fears and negative emotions take a front row seat for the way he acted since then.

Its just. There were SO MANY ways people around could have helped any of them. It didn't even have to be anything much! Especially in case of Aomine, who only wanted something to strive towards.

Hell, if they are so strong, coach should have organized a match against a collage team! It would humble them and show them that there is more to basketball other than middle school matches! But no, he did nothing. Just like the rest of the adults that surrounded them. They silently watched all of them spiral and didn’t say anything.

When I first re-watched knb, all the little ways they acted at the beginning of the series made so much more sense and because of that, they were so much sadder. And as series progresses its so nice to see all of GoM healing from the wounds Teiko left them with. I am so glad that Kuroko, Kise and Midorima and even Murasakibara got so lucky with the teams they choose and that those teams offered them so much support and much needed structure and healthy support systems.

Sadly, Akashi and Aomine didn’t get that lucky. They got teams that only unintentionally furthered the damage done by Teiko. At least after his loss, Aomine now has Kuroko and Kagami to be there for him, both in such different ways, and who give him the support he needs. And after Akashi lost and his original personality took over again, he started trying to re-forge the lost bonds between him and the GoM’s. He started to open himself up to others again.