#ulriscreams

Idatsal thoughts that degenerated into a fic thread of sorts on twt. Don't question it.

Warnings for non-eplicit mentions of: Exhibitionism, Public Indecency, Murder, Cannibalism (kind of).

If you like Kisaki, I automatically like you, just so you know.

I wanted to make a point about how, to me, it is obvious that his thinking isn't actually healthy, that there is something we are forced to overlook because of the narrative that makes Kisaki's reasoning about Hina make sense in his own head. By this I mean that there is no way someone as smart as Kisaki would pursue the plan he concocted if not for the need to desperately fight against something, which, I argue, would be loneliness, and the feeling of worthlessness that comes when you realize that your efforts mean nothing if there is nobody to acknowledge them.

Kisaki liked Hina, she was his childhood crush, but also so much more than that, because she was the first kid to ever treat him nicely and not like he was some subhuman weirdo because of his aptitude in school. She was the only one who showed the willingness to accept and welcome an outcast like him, not in spite of his perceived weirdness, but because of it- and this is where I argue that Kisaki is most likely neurodivergent, whether one agrees or not. She's a lovely person, she is everything that is good (I love her very much).

It feels to me like Kisaki is a number of things: - a "gifted child"/"genius", the type that adults love and kids despise, the type that has no friends because of it, the type that decides their own worth based on their successes or failures because their talent is all they are and ever will be to anybody who meets them; - plagued by the need to fit in, be accepted and recognized without actually changing himself in ways that betray his core values/what he thinks makes Kisaki Tetta Kisaki Tetta (which is something that is, I think, shaky and hazy to himself also. He's his brain and his smarts, but what else...?); - convinced that he's inherently unlovable and worthless unless he has tangible proof of his own successes (which is why he confesses to Hina only after realizing his 10 year plan) while also thinking, constantly, somewhere in his brain, that he's above everyone, that he just needs to show them just what he can do, that he's so much more than any normal person could hope to be; - unable to see others' affection as anything but transactional (something he can earn like a medal, something he has to trade for); - unknowingly (to a degree) desperate for genuine human connection (which he finds in Hanma despite not realizing it, because he's 13-14, they are both too young and neither really realizes that death can happen to them, too, and that they probably never could make it clear that they genuinely did care for one another); - deeply lonely and envious of everyone who isn't and is naturally a people magnet (Takemichi, Mikey, for instance).

To me, he was simply a boy who wanted to prove that he could do something great just by himself and on his own terms, that he was enough as a person for others to look up to and acknowledge, that he was worthy of the same love Takemichi could effortlessly get, just by being his naively heroic self. But he got caught up in the idea that Kisaki Tetta was what everyone else told him he was: a weirdo one should stay away from. He made that his strength, he became exactly what they said he was, because his admiration for Takemichi turned sour when it became clear that his charisma meant there would be nothing left for him. He mentions that a gang leader needs to have the looks to be successful in the part. He has resigned himself to the spot of those who lack every quality he values (outside of his own smarts), but he never stopped hoping that he could stand where the others, the "good" ones, like Takemichi himself, stood. He wanted to be like him, and be liked like him. But he couldn't, because he wasn't Hanagaki Takemichi, he was only Kisaki Tetta.

The end of the manga proves that simply having a friend who understood him from the start would have allowed him to become the fulfilled person he was always meant to be, that he was never inherently evil. He was just suffering through what Takemichi describes as the most painful thing. He was alone.

He was alone and he died alone. At 14, on a February night, on the asphalt, alone, under the horrified gaze of someone who had just had the thought that he would have deserved to die, someone whom he looked up to, despite everything, who had just told him that now everyone knew what he was up to and that nobody would ever listen to him again. He died alone and the only friend he had was too far away, and came too late. He died alone and the only one who could truly miss Kisaki Tetta was Hanma himself, while Takemichi belatedly realized that it shouldn't have ended that way and that it still wasn't right, that Kisaki was just like him: weak and only powering through by sheer force of will. He died alone, and he was the only one who died thinking and saying that he didn't want to.

He never got to be graced with forgiveness like Kazutora and Izana. Nobody even tried to understand him, save for Hanma and Takemichi.

Tokyo Revengers

Not Rated

Major Character Death

Hanma Shuji/Kisaki Tetta

4,858 words