THE LEGEND OF THE STRONGEST, KUROSAWA!
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| THIS IS A MANGA ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING BEYOND THIS CHAPTER. ---------------------------------------- Lol Miki's bribe failed. |
| I thought that he was going to pull out a gun for a second, but that would be sort of out of his character, the bribe was hilarious though, he was really trying to get out of that fight lol, good thing Nakane gave him the beat down he deserved. |
| Wow, I had a long conversation about this chapter. It was a very good one but since I want to mainly speak about one thing I'll try and get the other things I want off my chest first and fast. I thought that this arc was super exciting and satisfying. Seeing Kurosawa run in but collapse adding a touch of the Fukumoto anticlimax realism, and seeing the homeless whose morale was fighting to be human, fighting to live, compared to these goons whose morale was to beat up the weak and make money and the push from the homeless, it was all picturesque. Beautiful and exciting stuff and for after 5 minutes it to turn from fighting to fleeing was such a great conclusion. I also want to note that these chapters had some effective group fighting pages and panels. It made me realize how one benefit of manga that heavily outweighs anime is that one can draw a page of an entire group fighting. Our imagination will take over and the good still art becomes this constantly moving battle. In anime it's hard to do that, you either do close ups to avoid group movement or big shots with off model animation or no animation at all. In One Piece where I'm at there's hundreds of people on screen at once but because they have to animate them it suffers. The ability to draw groups in manga is not something to be overlooked, it allows stuff like this to read wonderfully. Okay, on to the meat of this post... The way Nakane stopped Miki. If you recall the start of this war had Kurosawa crying over the fact that he had to hurt other human beings, even though they were hobo hunting gang members, because they were simply struggling to live too. He could relate with them. Later, to continue this idea he said that the human heart is special because it has empathy, one can fight for their empathy and that is what makes one human. To ring this home Kurosawa cries when he has to hurt people, and even in the beginning he viewed the goons who gave him that goose bump as being like him. To contrast this idea of having empathy, and fighting with that in mind, Nakane didn't cry when he beat a defenseless Miki, he smiled ear to ear. He embodied the opposite of the empathetic, fighting out of necessity to live and survive Kurosawa, he reverted to the state in which he first fought Kurosawa. A sadistic state where he enjoys picking on those who refuse to fight, picking on those who don't have bravery. This act of Nakane's was overly cruel and he enjoyed it. He wasn't fighting for empathy, he was as good as those gangsters picking on the weak homeless. I would argue this could have gone like a similar scene in Shinjuku Swan where the person in Miki's place held up money to get away from the consequences of his actions and the person in Nakane's place swung back and bashed his face in. It was a symbolic moment and that symbolism stays true here. That your fake power that you value in money, blood, authority, reputation, none of that matters here, one can only take responsibility for their actions by facing the consequences. If for instance Nakane's goal was to teach that lesson then refusing the money, or even taking the money as he did brought that home. But, all he needed to do was hit him once or twice, he stomped him into the dirt. He cornered a fleeing enemy and kicked him while he was down. All while enjoying it. Don't you recall what Kurosawa said about the gangsters when they initially came to pick on the homeless? He told them the one unforgivable sin a human can do, that they should never commit, is stepping on another human being- especially when they're on the ground. And that is what Nakane did here, he trapped and stepped on Miki leaving him isolated and alone. Whether Nakane doing that ended in a good outcome I think it undeniably goes against Kurosawa's morality and view of what an admirable person is, how one ought to live. If they were superheroes fighting for each other and their life, then Nakane was a super villain picking on someone while they were down with a smile on his face. And, what he did was enjoyable to read as the people in this thread commented on. I was howling like a monkey as if I was one of the students watching Nakane fight Kurosawa in the beginning. But, the way he was drawn was as if he was a typical Fukumoto villain, he even had notable darkness drawn behind him. He was scary and sadistic, the opposite of empathetic, it was purely revenge for the sake of it. And my reading of Fukumoto is that often these are feelings everyone has and even the protagonist may fall into them, however, the protagonists fight against these impulses("I WILL NOT PUSH") and the antagonists embrace those impulses like Nakane is doing. Nakane who has the hypocrisy of fighting those who refuse to fight but running when his life's on the line. He who almost called the yakuza to fight the pro wrestlers. He who enjoys picking on such people as if he doesn't realize they are all struggling humans. So to play off of my spiteful, revengeful hype and make me nearly justify Nakane for what he did when it went far beyond teaching Miki a lesson, it made me face the cruelty of his action and question why I was okay with it, and it made me face a personal hypocrisy of mine of agreeing with Kurosawa but tolerating Nakane. It doesn't matter if Miki doesn't have the characterization of say Kazuya from Kaiji, he still deserves the respect to not step on him while he's down and to have our empathy, even if we disagree with his actions. At least that is what Kurosawa may say. I wonder if Fukumoto will touch on this topic going forward. As it stands now I think it's a harsh contrast to the heroic homeless and Kurosawa's ideals made for us to contemplate this. From my knowledge he is prone to making us feel as though we are the bystanders watching what's going on to simply and safely feel alive ourselves twice before, once in Kaiji and once in this. The example in this is the bystanders on both sides of the Nakane vs Kurosawa fight of course. |
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