#ikutoh

This is going to get hideously long and I apologize in advance.

Ikutoh: A very short overlook.

We know so very little of what happened to Battler, after he escaped Rokkenjima with Sayo. There is the fact that she jumped into the ocean to commit suicide, unable to tell him the truth about her body, and that Battler jumped in after her as soon as he realized she was gone to try and save her life.

We know that Battler couldn’t save Sayo. That he was eventually forced to let go of her hand, and floated back to the surface of the ocean.

We don’t know what happens to him then, in the interim of floating back to the surface, or what happens when he did reach land.

However, we do know the eventual aftermath of getting to land. Battler made his way inland, to a road somewhere where he would be struck by a passing car.

Hachijo Ikuko, who was out driving that day, would find him laying in the rain there. Unable to move, unable to speak, injured and barely conscious.

He later wakes up, in her home, unable to remember anything except that he is eighteen years old. Ikuko, after introducing herself and speaking with him, then gives him the name Tohya, taken from alternative readings for the characters that make the number 18.

For several decades, the two lived together as writing partners - though they are not married - writing mystery novels, as well as forgeries revolving around the Rokkenjima incident that killed most of Tohya’s family, as well as leading to the ‘death’ of his previous self, the identity that was Battler.

Ikutoh: A Deeper Look At The Roots - Battler Gets Hit by A Car And Dies. Kind-of.

There’s a few things alarming about Ikutoh’s relationship, and I’ll start with the most glaring one.

Battler was hit by a car.

We don’t whose car it was. We don’t know how fast the car that hit him was going. We don’t know far how he was thrown back by the force, or the full extent of his injuries.

Other than the fact that the impact was enough to knock him near unconscious and left him unable to move, getting struck by that car - if it wasn’t also caused by the near drowning and all the after effects that would have had on him - had a large hand in causing his later amnesia.

Effectively, the impact was the moment of Battler’s ‘death’ by removing his memories, while also giving rise for Tohya to be ‘born’ in Battler’s place. The accident would result in the necessary development of a new self, as the old one had ‘died’ without the memories which had initially formulated it.

That’s just about all the information we get.

We don’t know anything l about how long he was unconscious, or anything more about his injuries, at least in the VN. There’s some implication of muscular atrophy, as he’s described by the doctor as ‘almost completely wasted away, but there’s nothing more to indicate the passage of time.

In the interlude of the manga where we first see Tohya’s point of view (Twilight, Volume 5), ‘Battler’ is depicted as laying flat on his stomach in the road. (I say ‘Battler’ because, at this point, he’s been struck by the car and is on the verge of losing consciousness. He’s not quite Tohya yet, but he has lost the memories which let him perceive himself as Battler).

As it wasn’t confirmed that Tohya had been Battler at that time, only implied, we can’t really get a good look at his head - it’s either covered by text boxes, out of frame, or depicted as very…dark, for lack of a better way. The outline of a head, but completely filled in with black ink.

His hands are scraped, and his shirt and pants stained with splotches of blood. Looking closely at where he lays on the asphalt, you can even see where his blood has smeared on the road, especially around the hip waist area.

When he tries to lift his head and speak to Ikuko, there are scrapes and blood all over Battler’s face (though, you can’t make out much other than his nose and mouth, most of it covered in shadow or hair - the goal, again, was to obscure who Tohya had been). His blood is also on the ground below his face.

At the very least, Tohya had a pretty bad case of road rash.

When he wakes up, his head was likely shaved so that his head could have been bandaged - his right cheek had the little square piece of gauze, while the majority of the left side of his face, with except to his eye, was wrapped up. The worst of the trauma was probably on the left of his skull, taking a guess.

On the next few pages or so, while he’s recovering at Ikuko’s home and in the wheelchair (the first time), we do see Tohya’s right leg all bandaged up. It looks like his pant-leg is rolled up to make way for them, meaning the bandages are bulky or on-top of something bulky.

So, it may actually be a cast of some sort - which implies his leg was either broken by the impact, or pretty badly sprained. He’s also later seen recovering with crutches and keeping his weight on one leg, so I’m inclined to think it was broken.

As far as I can tell, when she found Battler, covered in blood and laying nearly dead in the middle of the road, Ikuko didn’t bring him to a hospital. Or notify the police.

Which is actually the next concerning thing.

Ikuko picked this bloodcovered, unconscious young man up, put him in her car, and presumably drove him straight to her house.

This person, a young man who has at the very least suffered severe enough blunt trauma as to cause amnesia - and she brings him not to a hospital, but to her house.

Without context, the most likely assumption to make was that he was either hit while walking alongside the the road, or jumped or thrown out of a passing car. Either way, on a road with literally no one and nothing else, she’s passing by and finds this young man laying - for all purposes - dead in the street.

Ikuko, seemingly with no hesitation for however shady the situation seems, still brings him to her house instead of thinking that it seems strange to literally find a kid dying in the middle of the road, and that hey, he needs immediate treatment, maybe I should bring him to a hospital.

Now, this was 1986. Cell phones weren’t really a thing at the time. Its easy to assume he’d at least been brought to a clinic of some sort beforehand, or if one wasn’t nearby but her house was, she would have gone there so she could call and notify some sort of authority, and get him some help there while waiting.

Technically, Ikuko did do that - a doctor did come to examine Tohya’s injuries. The man even suggested bringing him to a larger hospital, which would have the equipment to better examine his head, and look into the possibility of brain damage and its severity.

However, Ikuko paid the doctor extra to keep his examination of Tohya secret - off the record. Why she would do that, when really he should have been brought to the hospital to maybe be identified, I have only one idea - and it’s not exactly a good one, but I’ll get to that.

Over the next few pages, there are panels where we watch Tohya slowly recuperate, but…we don’t see him get brought to a hospital. He might have been brought to one in those early days, but we do not see it, and it isn’t mentioned.

I find it more likely that Tohya would have been brought to a hospital once he was more recovered from his initial injuries at that time, if at all, back in 1986. A broken leg doesn’t allow for a person to have much easy maneuverability, especially if they’re already struggling to move their body.

The fact that the doctor suggests visiting a hospital, made a house call to check on Tohya, and that Ikuko paid for his silence implies that Tohya was brought immediately to her house from that road.

In other words, he wasn’t brought to whatever local clinic or hospital that was in the area.

Ikuko’s house - mansion, really - is located at the top of a hill. She owns that land, the hill that she lives on - and arguably, she doesn’t have any close neighbors because of that. Otherwise, unless she wasn’t interested in speaking with them, her cat Bernkastel wouldn’t have been her only companion. Ikuko would have had some other acquaintances.

We don’t know how far her home was, from where Ikuko found Tohya on the road. How long it would have taken to reach her home, while being Tohya there.

The road had to have been somewhat close to the ocean, for Battler to drag himself to it, but other than that, the location of the road - its distance from Ikuko’s house on the hill, or the fishing village/town nearby, and Ikuko’s distance from the town - is unknown. It’s surrounded by trees, hence why Ikuko first asks him if the area was his garden (rhetorically I think, but it’s hard for me to tell).

So we don’t know how long it took for Tohya to be put into Ikuko’s car, brought to her home, and treated for his injuries, three of which that can be inferred manga-wise, with varying levels of severity.

Firstly, the blunt trauma to the left side of his head could have lead to swelling of the brain (mentioned by the doctor). Considering how much blood his face was covered with, it wouldn’t be a far cry to say that it had started to bleed either.

Then, the large amount of scraping over the entirety of his body would be very painful, a potential root for nerve damage depending on how deep they were, and that’s not considering the potential blood loss. It’s likely they weren’t deep scrapes considering the doctor’s statements, but that’s still something to consider.

The third injury is his broken right leg. Likely, it was a closed fracture, as an open fracture would have needed surgery to have been corrected. Still, it’s something would would need to be correctly set and splinted, as wrong movements could lead to further damage - not to mention the risk of causing the bone to jut out his skin depending on the actual type of break in the bone.

Additionally, if Battler dragged himself through wooded area to reach the beach, assuming he walked up a slope from the beach area of whichever island he reached, there would probably be a myriad of other scratches and maybe bug bites or something else.

Now that I’m thinking on it, we don’t even know if Ikuko called the doctor immediately. She found Battler in the road while it was raining, so there’s no way of telling if it was nighttime or if another storm had rolled in - obscuring the actual time.

All I know is that it had to be some point after noon - as Sayo and Battler had been at sea, and Sayo had jumped off of the boat, sometime during either the early morning or afternoon of October 6th.

When Tohya wakes up in Ikuko’s house, it’s daytime, so at the very least - maybe a night has passed. Maybe more. If it was nighttime when she found him, maybe that was why he wasn’t brought to a clinic - it might have been closed.

The scene of Ikuko finding Battler in the road and him waking up without memories at her house are right next to each other, which the illusion that maybe it’s been only a day or two. However, the passage of time is never confirmed, so… we don’t actually know how much time has passed.

Ikuko, or her staff, could have bandaged him up that first night, and then called for the doctor the following morning or, depending on how you interpret her, even after that, the longer it took for him to wake up.

The doctor mentions before leaving that he wouldn’t have lasted long, if he’d been left out in the road and Ikuko just drove past (or right over) him. If not from his injuries, my best guess is that hypothermia could have done him it - it was early October, and raining after all.

Considering Battler’s injuries when Ikuko found him, she would have had to move very quickly to save his life -> and she didn’t seem very panicked at all, stooped over him and asking if he was still alive. She would have had to make a decision very closely, and he would have had to have been hit very recently - and yet, no other cars were nearby.

This probably sounds cruel, but I think Ikuko (unintentionally) hit him with her car.

Ikutoh: Ikuko’s Potential Hit & Kidnap

This is one of the reasons why I think Ikuko didn’t want Tohya’s examination to be on record.

If she hit Tohya with her car, there’d be damage which would need to be repaired (unless she chose to hide the car or replace it), and if it went on record that a physician paid a visit to an injured young man at her house, around the same time her car would be sent in for repairs or replaced - well, that’s shady, to say the least.

There tends to be a stigma on hitting people with your car.

Of course, her staff would be paid for their silence, as would whoever worked to repair the car…but things can slip.

In the VN, Tohya later remembers two bright lights coming at him, and being aware that he was in danger while being unable to move, despite someone honking their horn at him.

He heard a sound, and then a car door opened.

He doesn’t say that he heard the car door open. He says that he heard a sound, which makes it distinct from the squealing of the brakes, and then the car door opened. The phrases are separate.

If Ikuko really did hit him, I think the sound he heard was his own body getting struck by the car bumper. However, this can also just be liked to the head trauma of having already been struck, and struggling to comprehend his surroundings and stay conscious.

In the manga, her car doesn’t seem to be damaged. This can either throw the theory that she hit him out the window, or I can apply the same logic as above - that Tohya is incorrectly remembering the car as undamaged, as Ikuko would later show it to him as proof she didn’t hit him.

For one, it was dark and rainy when he was hit by the car. Then, he also had the headlights of the car directly on him, which would have made it difficult to see the front of the car properly from his perspective on the ground, if he could see it at all.

Tohya wasn’t likely to get a good look at the car, whether it was a different one that hit him and Ikuko had found him, or she had been the one to hit him.

Lastly, people’s memory is not infallible - it can be altered by things you learn after some sort of event, or manipulated by others to make you think something happened one way or another - and that’s what we call gaslighting, folks.

Either he had already been hit by a car when Ikuko had just managed to avoid running him over entirely - the reason he hadn’t been able to move maybe the exhaustion of near drowning and trying to move inland - or Tohya incorrectly recalls how the car stopped before hitting him due to the trauma, and the information he’s given later on.

Considering the head trauma he suffered as well, It makes sense to me that Tohya would misremember things, especially that event, and later interpret those memories differently. Especially so, when Ikuko - who saved his life, took care of him, whom he trusted, who gave him a new identity to live under - told him or implied something else had happened.

With head trauma like that, discounting his other injuries, Tohya would have needed immediate care. The closest person would probably be the person who hit him with the car. If they didn’t flee the scene of the crime.

In this case, I think that’s Ikuko.

The notion of Hit&Run Ikuko does already come up in Umineko, but only so far as to deny her culpability in the matter.

As I mentioned earlier, Tohya did think for a time that Ikuko had been the one to hit him. She later showed him her car - and it was undamaged. That implies it wasn’t her, and essentially exonerates her in causing Tohya’s injuries + amnesia.

However, Tohya was wheelchair-bound for some time while he was recovering. He relied on Ikuko, or the maids working for her, to move around.

We don’t know how long he was unconscious, or how long it was until he was recovered enough to sit in a wheelchair and move around. Then, there’s the question of what state he was in while recovering - how much he slept, how much he could move, and so on.

When did he move into the wheelchair, how long he was in a wheelchair afterwards, and then when had he graduated to crutches to walk around himself?

In that unknown span of time, Ikuko could have had her car repaired. She could have replaced it - gotten a new car - or already had another car of some sort stored away, choosing to show Tohya the undamaged one.

When Tohya was brought to the car would have been entirely reliant on when Ikuko wanted to show him the car, and what his health was at the time.

Besides that, considering how badly Tohya had been injured, the interior would have needed to be deep-cleaned. There would have been mud, if not Tohya’s blood, all over the inside of Ikuko’s car. Why not get the car repaired or just get rid of it at the same time, as well?

It’s never outright said that Ikuko didn’t hit Tohya with her car.

She never says she didn’t hit him either. Ikuko mentions that Tohya had originally thought she did. He mentions to Yukari decades down the line that he eventually came to believe she hadn’t, due to the evidence he’d been shown.

Ikuko's innocence is something that we infer from what we are shown.

I say she kidnapped him too, because again - Ikuko didn’t bring Tohya to a hospital.

She paid the doctor to keep his visit a secret, and Tohya’s examination off-record. She didn’t contact police about finding someone badly injured in the middle of the road, even after getting him help. Presumably not even after confirming he was 18, still a minor.

He could have had his teeth examined and they would be able to find his dental records, police or hospitals or someone, and then he could have been positively identified. That was how Maria’s jawbone was identified when recovered from Rokkenjima.

Through her dental records.

That’s not touching on the fact that, considering the close proximity whatever island she lives on to Rokkenjima, the incident would have been on the news for at least a little bit, on the Internet and television and newspapers -> including faces of the victims, their ages, but I’ll go into that a little bit later.

There were avenues Ikuko could have taken to get Tohya identified after she saved him - even if she was panicked in the moment she found him (and she didn’t seem like it) eventually the idea would have come to her - and for whatever reason, she didn’t.

Ikutoh: Ikuko’s character

Before continuing, I want to look at what we know of Ikuko’s character. All things speaking, we don’t…really know much in concrete fact.

Ikuko was older than eighteen when she found Tohya, but described as not to old to get married - even if he personally thought she’d given up on it.

So, in 1986, my personal belief is that Ikuko was somewhere in her mid-twenties (24-25). At the most, she’d probably be somewhere in her early thirties - maybe around Rosa’s age or a bit younger.

We know very little about her background.

Ikuko belongs to a rich family of landowners. She has several brothers, and out of all her siblings, she was considered a bit eccentric. Due to a series of choices she made, her family nearly disinherited her - pushing her out of the public eye, and telling her to live quietly in her mansion atop the hill.

She was effectively disowned, but….softly? A more accurate term would probably be exiled or excommunicated.

Ikuko still had access to quite a bit of money and so on, a large staff to care for her, but… otherwise, Ikuko was left completely alone. It didn’t seem to be something she minded, as Ikuko is described as not being very social, but still - her home is a very isolated area.

Though she lived in luxury, with a full staff to care for her, Ikuko reads to me as being a person who was very lonely. Ikuko really only had her cat, Bernkastel, as her companion up until finding Tohya.

She presumably told him this herself, which I find interesting considering that she does have people working for her, and around her.

Though Ikuko is in no way close to the Ushiromiya Family in regards to how her servants are treated, the fact that she was lonely does imply distance between them and her. They are there for work. She essentially takes the staff’s presence as her due, not as companionship.

Similarly to Tohya, who wasn’t introduced as a separate character until Twilight and whose’s name originated as Ikuko’s pseudonym while writing, what else is known of Ikuko’s characterization is only something inferred because she doesn’t appear that often (although more than Tohya).

In her case, much of Ikuko’s character ties in to the nature of the fantasy witch, Featherine Augustus Aurora. On a fantasy level, Featherine is a Creator witch who can effectively rewrite reality as she wishes - to name just one of her abilities. We see it in Twilight when she quarters Lamdadelta's body.

Looking from a reality perspective, Featherine is the meta-verse fusion of two people - Ikuko and Tohya - who wrote the most populr forgeries that perpetuated the occult mystery of Rokkenjima. Her abilities stem from the fact that they are writers, creating and erasing multiple realities on the pages of the forgeries they write - which, in turn, is what the meta-world is built atop of...it gets confusing.

When she’s introduced in Dawn, Ikuko and Featherine are very much implied to be one and the same -> linked, at the very least (I’m fairly certain that Featherine is actually composed of both Tohya and Ikuko?). At that point, it's assumed to be (roughly, not accounting for being separate entities and a person's perspective on the meta) 1:1, since I don't think anyone knew Tohya was separate from Ikuko until Twilight.

The same thing occurs in Twilight, during the ‘reveal’ of Eva’s diary -> Featherine essentially being a witch-persona of Ikuko’s to some degree. They are almost but not quite the same, slipping in and out of what's reality and what's meta.

Meta and it’s ties to reality are very fluid, as is how intertwined Featherine is with Ikuko.

If we read into her influences on Featherine, who predominantly seems to be in personality and appearance most like Ikuko over Tohya, as if his influence is swallowed up by her own - as well as the scenes in reality, she views most people as below her, their actions as something entertaining - it’s very reminiscent of viewing herself as above others, above human.

Ikuko has a bit of a god-complex. Although she has a way of speaking that makes people slow to irritation when she speaks with them, she’s generally condescending towards others.

One of her first lines when she is introduced in Dawb is to refer to the fans of her and Tohya’s written works as ‘trash’, because in her eyes they read the books for the prestige of it - to seem intelligent for indulging in mystery, especially mystery written by a renowned author.

Other people are…distant, from Ikuko. She can view them as children who argue with one another, things to watch for entertainment, but they are below her.

However, this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t get lonely, or that she is entirely divorced from being a person. When Tohya lives with her and begins reading her manuscripts, Ikuko eventually admits to him that once it was fun writing for herself, but she enjoyed when he read and discussed her manuscripts with her.

Just like anyone else, Ikuko needs someone or something around.

For example, We don’t see her act as expressively condescending with Tohya as with others, she greets him somewhat as an equal, but - then again, Ikuko essentially molded who Tohya was.

Put roughly, Ikuko holds all the power in their relationship. If there was anyone she’d treat as someone close to her, if not an equal than as something she cared for, it would be the young man who she saved, and named, and created a new identity for. The person she let stay in her home, because they had nowhere else to go.

Tohya is her caged bird, with clipped wings that do not allow him to fly. Her condescension manifests in different ways towards him.

They didn’t have any sort of connection when she first found him in the road, but they built one later - and it’s a somewhat one-sided dependency at that. Ikuko does depend on Tohya, but in an emotional manner (companionship), rather than the emotional-material dependency on Tohya’s end.

Additionally, she saved his life and was incredibly lonely by that point, and there’s that to consider when looking at the way she interacted with Tohya…

There’s just - so much to her character and their relationship that’s just barely touched on, but what we do get is something interesting to pick at.

This is me cutting her character into some of the roughest blocks possible at the moment, since I’m not really accustomed to it - or much of the answer arcs, really.

@batbeato’s depiction of Ikuko has greatly formed my own understanding of the character, and she’s made a few posts on Ikuko and Tohya’s relationship already - as well as fleshing it out in her fic, ‘A fate outside the catbox’. I recommend checking out both the post and the fic.

Ikutoh: Ikuko + Tohya’s identity + Why she kept him secret

So. Ikuko finds a young man (Battler) in the road. She sees he’s still alive, but grievously injured. Ikuko saves him, and maybe she thinks - oh, someone to keep her company. That would be nice.

Though she might not mind being alone, Ikuko is still a lonely person.

By saving the young man, he would likely stick around at least to thank her, and that would bridge the gap between a relationship and non-relationship.

We don’t have a canon answer for how she made the jump from finding this kid in the road to bringing him straight to her house, it’s never really touched on… There’s no way to know exactly what went on inside her head when she picked Battler up. That’s the roughest, sketchiest idea of her line of thought in my head.

Pretty sure most people would assume foul play after finding a person laying in the road like roadkill with no one else, not even a wrecked car, around - contact the police or the ambulance after getting said person to the nearest safe place to do so - but Ikuko just…doesn’t.

Or she doesn’t care. Ikuko brings him to her home.

Then. The young man wakes up.

This I find really interesting, because even before he speaks, you can see now in Ikuko’s lines her eagerness at having someone to talk to, as soon as he (Tohya, but not yet named) woke up.

She introduces herself, and she’s dropped the distant way of speaking from when she found him, that she uses speaks to others (Ange, the Witch Hunters, etc). Ikuko speaks like they are equals, wanting to get off on the right foot. She seems so eager too, especially in the manga (which really makes me feel like Tohya was knocked out for a while).

She asks for his name, and he can’t give her one. He doesn’t remember his name, and after watching him struggle with that for a moment, Ikuko asks what he does remember, which is only his age -> eighteen years old, or around there.

Ikuko gives him the name Tohya - an alternative reading to the numeral characters that make the number eighteen. She also immediately adds her own surname, Hachijo, a link between the two of them.

She asks him if that works, but directly afterwards states she’s chosen well - which, while cute (the manga panel has flowed floating behind her little chibi figure with a cat smile), also makes it seem that name is already concrete in her mind for him. Like a claim.

Ikuko looks at this amnesiac kid, and she has to have decided on the spot - hey, he can live with me. I’ll give him my last name for the time being, then.

Considering the initial plan with her relationship with Tohya which was scrapped, this makes me Feel a very certain way (I go into this a little further down).

Its reasonable to assume Tohya hadn’t woken up prior to this, so Ikuko wouldn’t have planned for this - she wouldn’t have known about his lack of memory, even if the doctor believed it likely.

It’s interesting to look at, because with his memory, Battler would have likely had a motive to leave the mansion, but without it…Tohya doesn’t.

Doesn’t have a name, or paperwork, a place to stay…

Ikuko would know that, even if she didn’t know who Tohya had originally been outside of being a teenager she found dying in the middle of the road. Because if Tohya himself doesn’t know…what does he have to look for other than his memories, and where would he stay while recovering?

Quite the issue.

Keep in mind, Ikuko seemed to have no thought of contacting the police about this teenager she found in the road, and no indication of bringing him to the hospital. Which could probably manage to pair his dental records with Battler’s and identify him.

Tohya stays with Ikuko, and she doesn’t seem to make a move to directly try and find out who he is. It could start with a simple offer to stay with her while he recovers, she’ll foot the medical expenses, but then staying for a while grows longer and longer…

Not exactly great.

While saving his life and letting him stay with her seems benevolent on papers, and she likely had benevolent intentions…there are issues with the ethics of Ikuko’s actions.

We know later on that Tohya did go to several hospitals for his migraines in his life, but not when. At the very least, when Ikuko had first found him…she didn’t bring him. As far as we know, she didn’t contact anyone but the doctor who she paid off to keep Tohya’s case secret.

She specifically didn’t want other people to know about Tohya, who she had saved and who was staying with her. Which makes it feel like she wanted Tohya isolated, wanted Tohya to herself.

Ikuko lives on an island somewhere in the area near Rokkenjima. Her house has a view of the sea, and there’s no other way for Battler to have ended up in the middle of the road that night otherwise.

News stations would be reporting the incident, and soon enough, pictures of the servants and the Ushiromiya family would also be televised.

Regardless of how long Tohya was unconscious, sooner or later, Ikuko should have known that Tohya had been Ushiromiya Battler.

In the manga, his face is completely bandaged up - but this can be a design choice, due to the fact that during the interlude it’s only meant to be implied that he was Battler who survived. However, Ikuko had already seen his face. Besides that, bandages need to be regularly changed - others would have seen his face eventually too.

When Tohya and Yukari meet decades later, she can identify him right away. Which implies that his facial structure wasn’t horribly altered by the accident.

Which makes the fact that Ikuko didn’t contact the police, or bring Tohya to the hospital right away, or even tell him who he had been, extremely strange. An eighteen year old, in the middle of nowhere? Even if she didn’t tie him to the Rokkenjima Incident, it’s still weird she didn’t contact anyone.

Tohya also had at least two family members left, which makes it worse if Ikuko did know who he was before Tohya remembered. Eva and Ange were alive.

Ikuko watched him grapple with struggling to remember who he was - and later, once he remembered, with trying to either accept or coexist with his memories as Battler. To the point that he ended up in a wheelchair.

It could have been out of concern for his safety that she didn’t contact anyone, considering the mysterious deaths of everyone else in his family -> but, only if she really only knew after he had remembered. It’s pointedly mentioned that Eva wasn’t seen by public as a culprit until a forgery was published declaring her, the sole survivor, as the culprit.

Banquet. Which Ikuko and Tohya had written.

Up until the message bottles were found and made public, I can’t even remember if it was treated as a mass murder or not. Rokkenjima wasn’t truly known about until the message bottles had been found and information about them released to the public.

Ikuko might not have had a television, preferring to read over watching shows or a movie, but she did leave her house. She wouldn’t have found Tohya that night, otherwise. There would be newspapers, magazines, something around the town depicting the incident for at least some time after the island exploded.

Ikuko should have seen Battler’s face in them at some point, known that it looked like Tohya’s and connected the dots, especially as forgery after forgery began coming out on the Internet and interest in the accident as an occult matter began to rise.

Maybe she did.

But it’s never brought up if she knew who he was, and if she did know beforehand, even before people starting pointing fingers at the family and servants for mass murder, especially at Eva who had survived…she didn’t tell Tohya.

She didn’t tell anyone.

I think that, had he been told that Ikuko thought she knew who he had been, it would have saved Tohya a lot of the pain and fear he later went through, in regards to his relationship to Ushiromiya Battler, and the clash of the original identity against his existence as Tohya.

On top of all this, as though the implications of Ikuko not looking into Tohya’s identity weren’t pretty bad, or already knowing who he was while he wanted to remember, Tohya literally can not leave Ikuko.

As I mentioned, He was physically incapable of doing so. He has no memory of where else he could go. As he has no idea who he is, he has no paperwork, no legal identity, no money, and so on.

If he’d been brought to a hospital or police at some point, they could have identified him via dental records - but Ikuko did not bring him, and considering how long he struggled to regain his memories, likely didn’t bring the option up to him if he didn’t take it.

Actually the fact that he did eventually go to hospitals for medication makes me wonder if she had paperwork forged for him. Otherwise he wouldn't have a medical record to hand in, which would be strange.

Essentially, in regards to material security, he’d be screwed. Additionally, Ikuko saved his life and gave him a name - let him stay with her at her house, maybe even encouraged it. He is indebted to her.

He cares for her.

In a way, Ikuko groomed Tohya for obedience to her. At least when she first saved him, he was literally dependent on her goodwill for everything, even when suspicious of if Ikuko had struck him with her car (which had to have been an uneasy feeling at the least).

We don’t have a lot in canon regarding their dynamics, unless it is stuff we can infer about their characters from Banquet through Twilight (which were confirmed, at least on a gameboard level outside of meta, to be written by the two) but there is something just very much Not Good about the way she found Tohya, and then kept him secret.

Ikuko is control of the information Tohya receives about the outside world, able to influence the decisions he made about his health to a great deal, and persuaded him to stay with her, somehow. Ikuko is the one who likely brings him to the hospital, gets the medication he takes, was the one to introduce Tohya to forgeries and likely urged him to start writing them -

This is the start of their relationship. This is the foundation for how they live together for decades, and originally, Ryukishi was going to have Tohya married to Ikuko. In canon, all we know is that they lived together, it remains unconfirmed whether it was romantic or not, but still.

Just -

There is Ikuko, somewhere in her twenties (24-25, maybe) at the youngest, finding an eighteen year old kid laying nearly dead in the middle of the street one night. An amnesiac kid who she takes in (possibly hit with her car), arguably tells no one about for some time, and gives the name Hachijo Tohya.

Despite his injuries, and a doctor's recommendation, there's no indication he was brought to a hospital for treatment. As a matter of fact, when she first found Tohya, her first instinct was to bring her to her house - and when she did call said doctor, she paid him to keep the visit unrecorded.

Ikuko lives on an island somewhere near Rokkenjima. An island belonging to the wealthy Ushiromiya Family which, coincidentally around the time she found Tohya in the road, had mysteriously exploded and killed nearly the entire family and staff on it - with exception to one Ushiromiya Eva.

It's initially written off as an accident, the island having once been an old military base back in the second world war. The television, the newspapers, publish pictures of the people who didn't make it off the island - and interestingly enough, one of them is a dead ringer for Tohya.

Ushiromiya Battler...would be just about the same age as him, too,

Eighteen years old.

Ikuko doesn't bring Tohya to the hospital...and she doesn't tell him about the papers, either.