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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lady_nara | |
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Okay, so I've been trying to get a handle on the characters of Mirage of Blaze for a while, now. They are all pretty difficult, but Kagetora is probably still the most mysterious to me. We see something of Takaya, but our perception of Takaya is nearly as confused as Takaya's view of himself. Takaya never really had a lot of self-knowledge to begin with, and adding a bunch of muddled memories and an identity crisis into the mix doesn't help any. Kagetora, in his full centuries-spanning warlord-ly glory is hinted at, but we just never get as clear an image of him as of the other characters.
Another problem is that Kagetora likes to keep his feelings bottled up and secret (sometimes even from himself) and he tries to maintain an outward image which doesn't always correspond to the reality. So we get a lot of bystanders carrying away radically different impressions of him. Even the ones who suspect how complicated Kagetora really is wind up formulating theories as to what is actually going on in there which conflict with each other.
So, we get all these outsiders having extreme reactions to him (and they are ALWAYS extreme), and we get some conflicting theories as to what is causing those reactions, and then we get a bit of Kagetora's take on things, which is generally clouded by the fact that he doesn't think much of himself and barely notices the impression he makes on people.
Others: Kagetora is COOL and SEXY and PURE and SCARY and GENTLE and INTENSE and MASTERFUL and CHILDLIKE and MANIPULATIVE and INNOCENT and COLDHEARTED and SENSITIVE and EMPATHETIC and SADISTIC and MASOCHISTIC and CAN'T STAND TO HURT OTHERS and TERRIFIED OF BEING HURT and....just perfect, really.
Kagetora: I actually kind of really suck. I hope no one notices. *largely oblivious to the extreme reactions*
Reader: ...whaaa?
Oi. And then, making it all even more confusing, there's all the fanon theories of what Kagetora is really like. Which would be all over the place just from what we see in canon (I would think), but the skewed anime makes it a complete mess. Because people get the wrong idea about who Naoe is, and then, seeing what Naoe has done and the way he blames a lot of it on Kagetora, they come up with a rather twisted idea of what sort of person Kagetora must be to make someone like Naoe behave in that way.
-_-;
So, basically, it is really hard to try to understand Kagetora. Making it both fascinating and frustrating to have him as your favorite character. Which he is. *pets* Tags: commentary, mirage
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I was thinking of that story when I wrote this, too! It fits.
That's a pretty interesting quote you picked out. I will have to meditate on it. Takaya really does seem so different from Kagetora, on the outside. But the personality he displays as Takaya seems pretty much to be modeled on the classic japanese teenage tough guy. He may no longer be as rough as he used to be, but he still relates to people like a delinquent. He's aggressive and snarly and loud; he takes offense easily, gets violent quickly, takes what he can get from people without really asking or thanking them, and orders everyone around. This is the way that he's learned to protect himself and the people he cares about. He openly confesses that he deliberately set out as a kid to become this sort of person in order to learn how to defend himself and his sister against his father.
Kagetora, on other hand, grew up in a very different time period and situation. The way he learned to protect himself was through hiding his emotions beneath courtesy and duty and honor (whereas Takaya the teenage delinquent learned to funnel everything into anger and to project that as forcefully as possible). I think you're right about the hostage situation causing him to conceal his true feelings, especially, and also about no longer being able to recognize their true feelings because of all the time spent sacrificing them for the good of others'.
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Kagetora the perfect samurai and Takaya the tough guy delinquent are in part facades to keep others at a distance since neither upbringing would encourage trust and communication.
Mm, good point. The hostile, "delinquent" attitude of Takaya particularly strikes me as a way to prevent any false or shallow kindness. He is so vulnerable to kindness, and he has been so betrayed, that putting people on a negative footing right off the bat seems like a protective measure. A good example would be his habit of glaring at people when he first meets them. As you say, his tone, expression, all his body language just screams "stay away."
This makes me wonder what it would have been like if Kagetora had ended up with a functional, supportive family like the Tachibanas.
Yes, I wonder. Such a family might have helped him to heal somewhat, as Yuzuru did, when he entered the picture. I don't think Takaya would have been an entirely happy, well-adjusted kid, even with the best family, though. It seems to be implied that, although he couldn't recall specific events, he retained, at the least, some emotional impressions from his past. Thus we have him commenting on having felt like he was missing someone all those years when he walked alone in the night, and suddenly realizing that it was Naoe he'd been missing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if his life, though seemingly untouched by his previous possessions before Naoe found him, had been affected in other ways that he hadn't been able to recognize.
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