Fruits Basket, chapter 101 (Vol.17)
Jun. 2nd, 2008 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockIs Shigure actually Kureno's older brother? Kureno calls him nii-san but that might just be an informality. ETA: Yes, it is an informality, they aren't directly related.
This conversation stood out to me as one of the most important speeches from Shigure the whole series:
Kureno: "I think I understand... how you feel about this. And I know that you hate me. But--"
Shigure: "I do hate you. I hate you very much. And you should be grateful I'm being so honest with you. Now you can pretend to be disappointed to your heart's content. Isn't that nice?"
Kureno: "Nii-san. I hope...you won't abandon Akito. I want you to stop treating him so coldly. Akito doesn't keep me by his side because he likes me. I mean...it's always been the same thing. Even now. The one he really wants is..."
**transitions/flash-forwards**
**flash-back to Shigure on the phone with Kureno**
Shigure: "I love Akito. Then and now, I love her. I love her so much...I want to spoil her rotten. I want to trample her to a pulp."
I had forgotten the immense amount we learned in this chapter, when I read the scanlations. I remember who slept with who, but I either forgot or misunderstood the phone conversation quoted above when I read the scanlations, because I don't remember it at all. It clarifies a lot, actually.
A timeline breakdown, for my own thoughts: (yes this is a series you need to take notes for)
If I'm following all this correctly, then Kureno's curse broke when he was a teenager, and Akito was a child. Akito made him promise to stay anyway because of her fear of abandonment, and so Kureno stayed. Shigure, who only just found out about Kureno's broken curse this volume, now thinks this is a mistake that only adds to Akito's dependency issues, and thinks that Akito would be better off if Kureno did leave. Of course, Shigure also is jealous of Kureno.
Fast forwarding a little, when Akito is a child and Shigure a teenager, presumably around the same age (give or take a few years) as Kureno's curse broke, Akito has already started to lean on Shigure more than the others, and Shigure promises that he loves her and will never, ever leave her.
Fast forward again, to a little bit before the start of the manga timeline, Akito is a teenager and Shigure is in his 20s (nine years older) and they are apparently having a sexual relationship, presumably an exclusive one. Akito for whatever reason, sleeps with Kureno (to keep Kureno from leaving with the curse broken? on whim?), and justifies it by saying that as their god, Akito can do whatever she wants and the zodiac--all the zodiac not just Shigure--are hers to use or play with. Shigure, who apparently is genuinely in love with Akito, is jealous and sleeps with Akito's mother Ren as revenge. When Akito finds out (as Shigure no doubt intended her to know or he wouldn't have done it), Akito is furious and kicks Shigure out of the Sohma main estate. Shigure buys a house of his own and later both Yuki and Kyo join him. I'm not sure how much time passed between Shigure and Akito breaking up and the beginning of the manga with Tohru's arrival, but I'm going to assume it wasn't that long, possibly only a year or so. Which would make it two and a half to three and a half years from the present timeline as of chapter 101. It was probably during those years that Shigure tried going out wiht the woman who is now Tohru's teacher.
After the telephone conversation with Kureno, when Kureno tells Shigure that Akito is only using Kureno and isn't in love wiht him, Shigure goes to see her. They fight, then Akito kisses Shigure and convinces him to stay. Although he's seen her before several times over the course of the manga, based on their fight I'm hazarding a guess that this is the first time Akito and Shigure have slept together since Akito kicked him out and started shacking up with Kureno full-time. Shigure watches Akito sleep and thinks that he is and always will be "waiting" for Akito. End of chapter.
Did I track those events correctly? While it's a lot clearer in the official translation, sometimes I still find it difficult to track events in FB because the scenes jump back and forth in time so often, with characters remembering scenes or conversations from several chapters before while in the middle of current conversations. I also sometimes have difficulty following which speech/thought bubble belongs to whom, though that's been a problem since I started the manga.
I liked this chapter a lot-- I have a weak spot for Shigure's character, and I find this whole twisted love triangle thing they've got to be fascinating. Akito's decision to seduce Kureno must have really pissed Shigure off if he'd go so far as to sleep with Akito's mother, the person Akito hates the most in the world. And wow, how incestuous all the Sohma are... It's so twisted. I noticed in this volume that Shigure of the manga is more sinister than his anime counterpart; that makes sense since the anime stopped long before we get to Shigure and Akito's storylines, and Shigure in the beginning was much lighter as a character.
I noticed too how Shigure, Kureno, and Hatori refer to Akito. They all treat Akito as male in front of outsiders, but in private Shigure frequently refers to Akito as "she" while Kureno and Hatori mostly call Akito "he". In this entire volume the only time that Kureno referred to Akito as a female was when he was confessing to Tohru. I wonder if this is just another way to make a distinction between Kureno and Shigure? To what purpose? I suppose it doesn't matter, given how fucked up Akito is anyway, and gender confusion is only part of it.
I remember when we first found out that Akito was female. It was pretty funny to imagine all those Shigure/Akito yaoi shippers had, overnight, become het shippers. :g: That must mess with you if you're predetermined to like one type of pairing over the other.
I remember that after chapter 97 I did a short, dark ficlet called The Line about Akito and Shigure's first time together. I hadn't [yet] read that Shigure loved Akito the whole time as we find out two chapters later, so I characterized the encounter in a negative, almost threatening light, with Shigure almost as a victim. It was jossed by chapter 101, though.
ETA: I've rapidly fallen in fan-love with the idea of Akito/Shigure as the never ending cycle of miserable love. It's my BadLoveOTP. I almost want them to be happy, but I don't see how they possibly could be without all of them being free from the curse including Akito, and at this point I think Akito will die before being set free. And they can't even be happy now, because Akito is crazy and additionally she'll never truly forgive Shigure for sleeping with Ren and Shigure will never forgive Akito for choosing Kureno over him...and then keeping Kureno around for the next couple years and throwing it in Shigure's face. Which of course makes Shigure want to be nasty back. ::claps excitedly:: It's so terrible! I love it. I remember back in the golden early volumes of FB when I was wondering who I could ship Shigure with. Then the manga gifted us with this twisted little incestuous clusterfuck of hearts and loyalties, which is way better than trying to imagine shipping Shigure with his editor.
This conversation stood out to me as one of the most important speeches from Shigure the whole series:
Kureno: "I think I understand... how you feel about this. And I know that you hate me. But--"
Shigure: "I do hate you. I hate you very much. And you should be grateful I'm being so honest with you. Now you can pretend to be disappointed to your heart's content. Isn't that nice?"
Kureno: "Nii-san. I hope...you won't abandon Akito. I want you to stop treating him so coldly. Akito doesn't keep me by his side because he likes me. I mean...it's always been the same thing. Even now. The one he really wants is..."
**transitions/flash-forwards**
**flash-back to Shigure on the phone with Kureno**
Shigure: "I love Akito. Then and now, I love her. I love her so much...I want to spoil her rotten. I want to trample her to a pulp."
I had forgotten the immense amount we learned in this chapter, when I read the scanlations. I remember who slept with who, but I either forgot or misunderstood the phone conversation quoted above when I read the scanlations, because I don't remember it at all. It clarifies a lot, actually.
A timeline breakdown, for my own thoughts: (yes this is a series you need to take notes for)
If I'm following all this correctly, then Kureno's curse broke when he was a teenager, and Akito was a child. Akito made him promise to stay anyway because of her fear of abandonment, and so Kureno stayed. Shigure, who only just found out about Kureno's broken curse this volume, now thinks this is a mistake that only adds to Akito's dependency issues, and thinks that Akito would be better off if Kureno did leave. Of course, Shigure also is jealous of Kureno.
Fast forwarding a little, when Akito is a child and Shigure a teenager, presumably around the same age (give or take a few years) as Kureno's curse broke, Akito has already started to lean on Shigure more than the others, and Shigure promises that he loves her and will never, ever leave her.
Fast forward again, to a little bit before the start of the manga timeline, Akito is a teenager and Shigure is in his 20s (nine years older) and they are apparently having a sexual relationship, presumably an exclusive one. Akito for whatever reason, sleeps with Kureno (to keep Kureno from leaving with the curse broken? on whim?), and justifies it by saying that as their god, Akito can do whatever she wants and the zodiac--all the zodiac not just Shigure--are hers to use or play with. Shigure, who apparently is genuinely in love with Akito, is jealous and sleeps with Akito's mother Ren as revenge. When Akito finds out (as Shigure no doubt intended her to know or he wouldn't have done it), Akito is furious and kicks Shigure out of the Sohma main estate. Shigure buys a house of his own and later both Yuki and Kyo join him. I'm not sure how much time passed between Shigure and Akito breaking up and the beginning of the manga with Tohru's arrival, but I'm going to assume it wasn't that long, possibly only a year or so. Which would make it two and a half to three and a half years from the present timeline as of chapter 101. It was probably during those years that Shigure tried going out wiht the woman who is now Tohru's teacher.
After the telephone conversation with Kureno, when Kureno tells Shigure that Akito is only using Kureno and isn't in love wiht him, Shigure goes to see her. They fight, then Akito kisses Shigure and convinces him to stay. Although he's seen her before several times over the course of the manga, based on their fight I'm hazarding a guess that this is the first time Akito and Shigure have slept together since Akito kicked him out and started shacking up with Kureno full-time. Shigure watches Akito sleep and thinks that he is and always will be "waiting" for Akito. End of chapter.
Did I track those events correctly? While it's a lot clearer in the official translation, sometimes I still find it difficult to track events in FB because the scenes jump back and forth in time so often, with characters remembering scenes or conversations from several chapters before while in the middle of current conversations. I also sometimes have difficulty following which speech/thought bubble belongs to whom, though that's been a problem since I started the manga.
I liked this chapter a lot-- I have a weak spot for Shigure's character, and I find this whole twisted love triangle thing they've got to be fascinating. Akito's decision to seduce Kureno must have really pissed Shigure off if he'd go so far as to sleep with Akito's mother, the person Akito hates the most in the world. And wow, how incestuous all the Sohma are... It's so twisted. I noticed in this volume that Shigure of the manga is more sinister than his anime counterpart; that makes sense since the anime stopped long before we get to Shigure and Akito's storylines, and Shigure in the beginning was much lighter as a character.
I noticed too how Shigure, Kureno, and Hatori refer to Akito. They all treat Akito as male in front of outsiders, but in private Shigure frequently refers to Akito as "she" while Kureno and Hatori mostly call Akito "he". In this entire volume the only time that Kureno referred to Akito as a female was when he was confessing to Tohru. I wonder if this is just another way to make a distinction between Kureno and Shigure? To what purpose? I suppose it doesn't matter, given how fucked up Akito is anyway, and gender confusion is only part of it.
I remember when we first found out that Akito was female. It was pretty funny to imagine all those Shigure/Akito yaoi shippers had, overnight, become het shippers. :g: That must mess with you if you're predetermined to like one type of pairing over the other.
I remember that after chapter 97 I did a short, dark ficlet called The Line about Akito and Shigure's first time together. I hadn't [yet] read that Shigure loved Akito the whole time as we find out two chapters later, so I characterized the encounter in a negative, almost threatening light, with Shigure almost as a victim. It was jossed by chapter 101, though.
ETA: I've rapidly fallen in fan-love with the idea of Akito/Shigure as the never ending cycle of miserable love. It's my BadLoveOTP. I almost want them to be happy, but I don't see how they possibly could be without all of them being free from the curse including Akito, and at this point I think Akito will die before being set free. And they can't even be happy now, because Akito is crazy and additionally she'll never truly forgive Shigure for sleeping with Ren and Shigure will never forgive Akito for choosing Kureno over him...and then keeping Kureno around for the next couple years and throwing it in Shigure's face. Which of course makes Shigure want to be nasty back. ::claps excitedly:: It's so terrible! I love it. I remember back in the golden early volumes of FB when I was wondering who I could ship Shigure with. Then the manga gifted us with this twisted little incestuous clusterfuck of hearts and loyalties, which is way better than trying to imagine shipping Shigure with his editor.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 05:19 pm (UTC)I rather liked the *idea* though that Shigure focused on Akito's female gender, either despite or because Akito thinks of himself as male. Whether this would be a denial of Akito's self-professed "true" identity (male) and thus a bad thing, or an affirmation of Akito's "true" sexual identity (female) and thus a good thing, would depend upon interpretation.
I thought Shigure was an only child, but I wasn't sure if I had missed something somewhere. Good to know.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 07:18 pm (UTC)As for Akito's gender issues...can't talk about it. ^^
I'm pretty sure the only relationships that're ever specified between the 12shi are Yuki and Ayame being brothers, and Shigure and Kyo both being their cousins (although whether Shigure and Kyo are each other's cousins as well is up in the air, IIRC).