FILL OUT MY POLL.

[timepiececlock]

[Poll #498872]


Personally, I think Dilandau is the nuttiest villain I've seen yet in anime. Closely matched by the villain in Perfect Blue, which I won't give away for those who haven't seen it. Unfortunately, I don't think enough people on my flist have seen Escaflowne, so Dilandau might not win the "most crazy" spot. Still... Dilandau is nuttier than a fruitcake, and I mean fruitcake in multiple ways.

Comments

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Heh. Why do so many people interpret Kenshin as having multiple personality disorder? It's never something I bought into.

[mswyrr]

Heh. Why do so many people interpret Kenshin as having multiple personality disorder?

I guess "split personality" is more what I mean. I think he resolves the two halves of himself by the end of the Kyoto arc, but there's definitely a MPD-ish element to the whole Kenshin/Battousai split. I mean, put under specific pressures, his personality changes drastically. He speaks and carries himself differently. "Battousai" seems to have a different moral perspective, too. The text makes the delineation of the two personalities even more decisive by having Kenshin's eye color change. He experienced trauma during the Revolution, and he split off and repressed part of himself to deal with it. At least, that's how I've always read it.

It's never something I bought into.

Hm. What's your take on it, then?

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Hm. What's your take on it, then?

I always thought it was a lot more complicated than a personality split. Not that MPD isn't complicated, it certainly is for those in the real world who suffer from it, I'm sure. But, to me, it's an entirely different thing, and kind of too easy to use as an explanation for Kenshin. When Kenshin goes Battousai the first time, it's his own conscious choice. He does it because he thinks it's the only way to save Kaoru's life. As I understand it, in MPD, alters come out invouluntarily, and usually to protect the main personality from a trauma (I could be completely wrong about this, I'm not a psych major). When she broke Jinei's technique herself he quickly lost all intent to kill.

When he was fighting Saitou, they BOTH lost control. They got caught up in their rivalry and in the past and forgot where and when they were. It wasn't just Kenshin. Saitou wasn't supposed to kill him, he was supposed to test him, but Saitou got just as lost in that fight as Kenshin did.

So, I guess you could say I always thought of it as part of Kenshin being a veteran of a long and ugly war. A war he fought in when he was extremely young, at that. He's a veteran. And like many veterans he has trouble functioning normally sometimes. He falls back into old habits when he's desperate. So, I always saw Kenshin's "going battousai" as him letting out his willingness and intent to kill his opponent, just as he had in the revolution.

Once Hiko taught him that final move, he fully matured as a swordsman, and that's why he no longer needed to fall back on killing intent. He was confident in himself as a rurouni who doesn't kill to do what he needed to do. He wasn't fully confident in himself before that.

As for the change in speech patterns. That was just...throwing away pretense, I think. There's no reason for him to be excessively polite and humble to someone he's about to kill (or he believes he's about to kill). When he is in thought he also uses "ore" just like when he's talking when in "battousai mode." At least, I noticed him doing it in the anime. I've never read the manga in Japanese (nor could I), so if it's different in that I wouldn't know.

And the changing of the eye color...I always saw that as symbolic for the change in his ki that takes place when he decides to kill. A similar thing happened in a recent episode of the anime Bleach, when the main character's eyes turned from brown to blue to symbolize the change in his spiritual energy when he became truly determined to defeat his opponent. Also, Saitou's eyes change from gold to blue when he's fighting Kenshin. So, yeah, I always saw that kind of the thing as symbolic.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

One last thing.

I went back and listened to a couple of scenes when he was in thought, to make sure I wasn't crazy. And he does use "sessha" when thinking to himself. At least, sometimes he does. But I definitely heard him use "ore," as well. It might have to do with his level of confidence in what he's thinking about. Or maybe the anime writers fucked up.