#sekiya

* I would like to note that my ideas do not come from a vacuum;  I would like to thank everyone for the discussions on discord.  We do not always agree, but I love hearing your opinions and input on the manga.  Hearing different viewpoints helps me to approach things from different angles.  I also want to send a major thank you to @goldenkamuyhunting for chatting about Yuusaku related things.  He really confuses me -_-.*

So Asirpa figures out that Ogata has lied to her about Sugimoto.  She then makes the blanket statement that she can’t trust anything that he as said.  She pulls herself away from him and aims one of her arrows with poison at him.

Likely unknown to her, she repeats a line which he likely was told when he was in the 27th and bullied.  We see her blushing and sweating as she declares this to him.  I think this line pushes him over the edge.  He lied to her, she figured it out and instead of asking “Why did you lie to me?  Who were you talking about?”  She physically separates herself from him and decides that he’s untrustworthy.

At that point, Ogata’s mindset shifts.  I’d say this is the point where he begins to lose it, he loses control of himself and he’s lost control of the situation.  He is now going to react at his most basal level, which unfortunately will be very childish and petty.  He’s feeling likely raw emotions that he’s never learned to deal with or accept so he beings what is almost a conversation with himself as his personal philosophy (which has likely been his coping mechanism all these years) is challenged by her own belief system.

The wind howls as he calmly states that he’s out of time.  He lifts his hand to his head to fix his hair under his hat, likely this is him doing it out of habit when he’s stressed/uncomfortable (think back to his showdown with Tsukishima at Edogai’s).  He has such a look of resignation - he couldn’t pull this off, things do not go the way he wants. 

He’s looking down with such a look of heaviness about him.  He’s got stress lines under his eyes, his gaze is a bit unfocused and he’s got this odd smile of resignation.  I feel so much sadness and disappointment in this panel, is he disappointed in himself? in the universe? life in general that he can’t have something that he wants?  Does he see this as denying him “happiness” or does he simply desire to get what he wants?  Does this imply that he really wants the gold?  Or that him getting the gold leads to something else that he wants?  Whether it is him getting the gold or using the gold for another goal, at this point in time he has come to the conclusion that he will not get that goal.

The next page shows Asirpa aiming her bow at Ogata drawn back and her hands are shaking as there is a close up of the poison on the arrowhead.  This implies at this moment she has an intent to kill.  If you stop and think about it, she’s aiming the arrow at him with the poison.  Now, I want to take a time out to look at the times that Asirpa has used her bow against humans before getting back to Ogata.  This chapter is about Ogata, yes, but this chapter is also about Asirpa.

So let’s look at some other instances when we’ve seen Asirpa’s arrows not used against bears, horses etc.

The first time that Asirpa aimed her poison arrows at human was Shirashi.  This was when she tracked him down via Sugimoto’s sock and she needs him to help her.  At this point in time he’s not been very nice to her, he’s insulted her, made racist comments to her and even then he’s not sympathetic to Sugimoto abandoning her.  So without hesitation she aims a poison arrow at him point blank.

She demands Shirashi take her to Sugimoto at that moment.  She flat out tells him if she shoots him he dies in less than one step.  When she pulls back the arrow her face is deadpan.  What is scarier is her close up, the light normally shown in her eyes is gone.  Her eyes are dark.  This is an expression that we do not normally see from her.  She has screen tone on her face that makes it looks partially shaded.  She is threatening to kill Shirashi if he does not cooperate with her.  Is she sweating? No.  Does she look nervous? No.  She looks stone cold.

The second time she uses an arrow against a human is with Henmi.  Realizing that Sugimoto is in danger she takes the time and effort to remove the poison from the arrowhead.

She then is able to shoot him in the arm as he lunges after Sugimoto while his back is turned to him and he is defenseless.  This means that she has saved Sugimoto but she has doomed Henmi to death.  He doesn’t die directly from her arrow, but he will die indirectly from her actions.

Why do I say she results in him dying as a result of her indirect actions?  The next panel shows it.  He stops mid swing with the arrow in his left arm.  This gives Sugimoto enough time to block his strike.  Sugimoto then quickly is able to pull out his bayonet and stab Heimei several times.  At this point, Henmi’s fate is sealed,  granted there is some orca action in there . . .

But he dies as a result of his fight with Sugimoto.

The last example of Asirpa shooting an arrow at a human is when they have rescued Shirashi and Koito is pursuing them.  Sugimoto is injured, Ogata isn’t too keen on fighting Koito  as he hangs back and Shirashi isn’t useful in direct combat situations. Sugimoto is struggling in his fight with Koito, and she provides a distraction.

So while riding a horse, she is able to shoot the airship’s wooden frame directly below Koito as he lifts up his sabre to strike at Sugimoto again.  This allows Shirashi to jump in and knock Koito off into the trees.  While she’s riding the horse, we do not get a scene to see if she removed the poison from the arrowhead or not.  I’ve waffled on this point, if she shot a poison arrow at him, it would be a repeat of with Shirashi with an intent to kill.  If she cut the poison out, based on her aim, she was very risky, that arrow was close to hitting a lethal part of Koito, he’s moving around, she is etc.  Either way, she is very lucky that it only created a distraction and did not result in bodily harm to Koito.

All three of these situations demonstrate that Asirpa gets very close to breaking her vow to not kill anyone.  All of these situations were to save Sugimoto.  One of the situations lead Sugimoto to kill someone.  How does she rationalize the death of Henmi by Sugimoto’s hands?  She gave Sugimoto the advantage to kill him.

So going back to the panel.  She’s aiming directly at Ogata.  He then asks her about something that has been bothering him for a long time.

He states he clearly remembers when they first met over the sniped convict.  Asirpa prevented Sugimoto from killing Ogata.  His face is shaded while he ask re-iterates that she swore to not kill anyone for the gold.  He then labels her as a “pure” person.  But he questions her reasoning - now that he knows the full background of Wilk, he knows that Wilk could kill and he could to it repeatedly and with no remorse.  So he finds it odd that with a father like that, did he teach her to not kill people?  By not teaching her about killing she would remain “pure”?  She’s sweating as she is still aiming at him.  This implies that Ogata believes that Asirpa’s vow to not kill was an “order” from her father.

If she is following her father’s wishes, she is being groomed to be an icon for the Ainu.  Even more so, he asks if Asirpa must be pure like Yuusaku a flag bearer [icon] for the imperial army.  Asirpa doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.  She doesn’t fully understand the position that Wilk put her in.  At Abashiri, Sugimoto asked Wilk why he wanted her to be an Ainu Joan of Arc.  Did Ogata see that conversation through his binoculars?  Or has he come to this conclusion on his own with their travels to Karafuto with Kiro?  Either way, he provokes her to kill him.  She should be able to kill him since he says “pure” people do not exist, therefore, she should not exist unless she were regular.  What is interesting is that he then states that if there is a reason to kill, you will not be impacted by a guilty conscience.  This then implies that when he killed Yuusaku, he had a reason.  What that reason him following Tsurumi’s orders?  He was ordered to kill Yuusaku, so with that reason he accomplished his mission.

That only other person who was unwilling to kill was Yuusaku.  And this was because he was following his father’s instructions/wishes for him.  He was an icon to inspire the men but also to help to alleviate their guilt.  He’s leading men into battle to kill others but he himself does not kill.  He indirectly results in death.  Does this actually keep him “pure”?  I would say no, Yuusaku is denying that his entire job is to inspire men to kill other men.

Yuusaku is sweating the entire time he says that people feel guilt.  Does he feel guilt for not participating?  For indirectly resulting in the death of enemy men?  This then leads to Ogata telling him that people do not feel guilt from killing and perhaps the are acting.

Ogata interestingly can only explain his own experience to Yuusaku.  Since Yuusaku is avoiding getting his hands dirty, Ogata feels that his experience is more truthful since if what he experiences must be closer to what the other men killing feel that what Yuusaku knows.

Asirpa is hesitating and sweating this entire time Ogata is talking to her.  He sees her hesitation so he decides to push her further.  He goes all in with his dare.  He states what was always obvious, he is the sniper who killed Wilk as the wind dramatically blows his hat off.  I can’t help but think that Asirpa knew this on some level.  She knows he’s a skilled sniper.  Who else would Kiro signal to?

Asirpa has such a look of shock, she’s shaded and she’s still frozen in position.  He continues to pressure her,  that she can do it, that she like everyone else (Sugimoto, Tanigaki, Kiro, Sofia, Wilk, Ogata etc) can kill another person.  He then tells her that she is likely the same as him (and implied like the rest of those mentioned).  The next panel shows her pull the bowstring back while he smiles back at her.  It shows her sweating, stress lines under her eyes, she’s breathing heavily as she keeps aim at him.

His smile looks mighty similar to the one here, when the 7th comes to Edogai’s house to destroy the evidence.  Even though he bayoneted the unnamed man, he’s taking quite a beating.

He knows he betrayed members of the 27th and he’s killed some of them - he oddly seems happy getting the wrath of the revenge he likely deserves.  This is the same as admitting he shot Wilk to Asirpa.  He betrayed her trust and she has the right to kill him, he won’t resist at this point.

Asirpa then de-escalates the situation, as the sound effect indicates, she loosens the hold on the bowstring and lowers her aim.  She then tells him that she will not kill him.  This is not the answer he wanted from her. 

Like with the unnamed man from the 27th, it is apparent that Ogata in part thinks that he deserves to die.  He believes that “pure” people don’t exist and he doesn’t want to admit that killing fills people with guilt and that they have feelings and their emotions are tied to these feelings.  His philosophy is that he does not feel b/c he has forced himself to not feel.  He is acting like a child here, he cannot lose this argument. If she kills him, he wins the argument and he dies.  If she does not kill him, it proves his argument is incorrect and he will have to deal with his poorly developed and deeply buried emotions.

How dedicated his he to his philosophy?  Very, with the fact that he uses Yuusaku’s own words to turn them back on Asirpa [and Yuusaku].  “It’s simply not right that people like you should exist“ is a direct reference to what Yuusaku told Ogata.  He told Ogata that “it’s simply not right for there be people in this world who don’t feel guilt . . . over killing.”

Ogata believes his experience is real b/c it is based in his own experiences.  He has killed while Yuusaku has not.  It indicates that he literally interpreted Yuusaku’s statement to imply that he [Yuusaku] means that Ogata shouldn’t exist.  This is to a man who was unwanted, who already thinks that he is broken and missing something and when he talks to Hanazawa, he will tell Ogata that he is broken and missing something.  So for Asirpa to reject him, and then to stick to her belief to kill when she is facilitating the death of many people in the quest for the gold, he can’t help but question how she can exist with such a contradiction.  He wants his philosophy, as broken and flawed as, it is to remain his philosophy since that is how he has survived this long.  He is not losing this argument even if it kills him.

Based on his fake flashback being a possible childhood dream of how he wanted his father to think of his mother when he was dying, his reason to not feel guilt of killing likely goes back to when he killed his mother.  She was the first person he killed and he coped with this event by shutting himself down and pushing all of his emotions and feelings away.  Those emotions have never matured and are tied to the boy who made this terrible mistake.  So now that Asirpa is making him admit he betrayed her, his easiest option is for her to kill him.  That is how little value Ogata holds for his own life and how immature and childish his emotions are.

Now, I’m not saying that Ogata is an immature adult, in many aspects he’s a perfectly functional and fine adult.  He does his job with extreme skill and diligence.  He’s intelligent and performs and meets expectations.  But his emotional maturity never had a chance to mature with the rest of him.  Ogata can pay his taxes, balance his cheque book, do all those boring adult things. . .

This idea of “my philosophy or death” now makes the convict of Sekiya fit in the overall story.  He was a man who questioned his faith and the existence of God in the face of senseless tragedy.  He wanted to know if there was a blessed path and used language very similar to Ogata when he talked to Hanazawa in the tankoban version of chapter 103.  Ogata wanted to know if there was a place in his father’s family - there wasn’t.

When Hijikata kills Sekiya, he lays on the ground staring at the sky as he bleeds out to death.  He has concluded that God does exist and he is being punished.  His hypothesis was proven by his death.  He dies happy that has has been punished by God and all of his doubts are answered.

So now Ogata has put himself in the exact same type of situation as Sekiya.  He wants to prove his own hypothesis by it resulting in his death.

The chapter then ends with him blankly staring at Asirpa with his rifle raised.

Sugimoto now has the same white eyes that he just had, but now Ogata stares blankly while holding his rifle.  What will happen with Ogata’s apparent “permission” for Asirpa to kill him being denied?  It could mean that he does feel guilt since no matter what he did, she could not be convinced to kill him.  This may also make his definition of “pure” people incorrect, which he would not want.  He said that “pure”people do not exist when he refers back to Yuusaku.  Did Yuusaku do something we are not yet aware of that makes him not pure?  Or does it not exist b/c Ogata killed him?  But Ogata cannot go around killing all the “pure” people, that isn’t a logical outcome.  Does he want her to state that even though she hasn’t directly killed anyone, she cannot be “pure” b/c she is guilty by association?  Does he want her to admit that by becoming involved in the hunt for the gold she has resulted in the death of many people?  Just making the decision to go to Abashiri to meet Wilk (information that was leaked to Tsurumi via Inkarmat) to confirm if he was her father resulted in the massacre of 700 inmates at the prison.

Ogata is a very damaged and broken man, but he has pointed out the hypocrisy in Asirpa’s actions in the hunt for the gold.  He has set up his showdown with Sugimoto.  Asirpa will be forced to face the decisions that she has made up to this point.  She has wielded her arrows 3x to save Sugimoto and threatened to kill or resulted in the death of those unwilling to help or who could harm Sugimoto. 

Sugimoto is approaching with the intent to kill Ogata again. 

She always wants to save Sugimoto. 

She wants to save Ogata again, just like in chapter 5. 

Sugimoto has no problem with killing other men for her.  That is what he wants to do to Ogata.  What does this showdown mean?  I think it means that Ogata will live and he will have to face that his own belief system is flawed and he must recognize his guilt likely goes back to his mother’s death. 

This likely means that Sugimoto will not be able to kill Ogata even though he has reasons to, Ogata tried to kill him and facilitated the shifting of Asirpa to Kiro’s own agenda. 

Most importantly, Asirpa will have to face that her own personal belief system has allowed her to keep her hands clean but at the cost of all of the others involved in the hunt for the gold.  But “pure” people (as defined by Ogata) do not exist and she should face her involvement in the deadly race to find the gold.  That is how she is linked to Yuusaku.  Both of them are leading men into “battle” and leading them to kill one another while they do not dirty themselves.