#wb

when i was looking into autumn symbolism i kept seeing change as a big one, which makes sense since autumn prepares for winter. so i tried to make sense of it with the new arc. and what i want to talk about is how bofurin will start changing this arc.

my first thought about the red chanpuru was that it would be a dark version of bofurin. i thought that's where it was going when endo revealed they're similar.

we only have one chapter with them so far, so i don't know if that will be the case or not (and in that chapter we spent more time with the population of bankoku-gai than the red chanpuru), but i now think it's likely this won't be a completely "evil" group.

i think it will be a group we'll have something to teach, and also something to learn from.

the most important aspect of bankoku-gai so far is the multi-cultural one, and that's in direct opposition to makochi, the town that doesn't accept outsiders.

not only that, but bankoku-gai is a place people come from the outside to abandon their kids there. which makes me think of the alternate universe where sakura was abandoned there, and was accepted like he was in makochi.

is that what happened with suo? i think so. two boys abandoned and how where they ended up affected how they grew and the person they became. what would have happened if they had exchanged paths?

hilarious moment from this arc. suo spent 200 chapter translating sakura to others and others to sakura, only for that to be the tip of suo's translation iceberg.

just like suo understood sakura deeply, i think sakura will be the same. it will be his time to interpret suo's actions and feelings to others. since they can relate to each other.

bankoku-gai is an island, which will naturally make them isolated - we just don't know to what level yet. i've kinda jokingly made a post about there being no bridge to kasai, but i can see it really happening. they're so isolated it's hard to get there and hard to get out.

but even if not literally, i think sakura will become a bridge between bofurin and red chanpuru. this will be something umemiya can't do himself, which means slowly bofurin will need sakura more than umemiya.

just like sakura observed roppo-ichiza to learn from them and decided what's admirable and what he wants to do differently, sakura will observe bankoku-gai and red chanpuru and learn from them.

when i started watching wind breaker and saw the teenagers where acting like the police the show basically became an utopian fantasy in my mind. but bankoku-gai woke me up:

if this place is an utopia, it needs to be a place where everyone from everywhere can be accepted.

i think bankoku-gai will inspire sakura to make makochi into a place that accepts outsiders. that's already the type of leader sakura is. because sakura is an outsider he can see past the borders and unite everyone.

umemiya became the bridge between the students and the population. suo was the bridge between sakura and the first years. sakura will be the bridge between the population and outsiders.