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pesky--dust · 11 months

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I love Chiyoh, but I feel like in a lot of fanfics she is portrayed as horribly cold, emotionless and she doesn't like Will and would do everything to protect Hannibal from him. We don't know much about her, practically as much as nothing, but I'll allow myself an amateur analysis of her person.

(I spent too much time to read scripts of episodes with her). In inverted commas I placed dialogues and italicized the descriptions from the script. I also added screenshots of scripts, if I felt the need to. In bold letters I wrote the titles of the episodes I discussed and the summary of the whole post, because it turned out to be much longer than I expected.

Secondo:

We meet Chiyoh in Secondo when Will went to Lithuania to better understand Hannibal. She is an excellent shooter and has a very good intuition — being watched by Will while hunting, she realizes that something has changed on the property (Something is off in this place she knows so well.).

When she finally meets Will, who tells her he's Hannibal's friend, Chiyoh dips [shotgun’s barrel] slightly, either in hesitation or relief., but when he tells, he is looking for him, she raises the barrel again. She is apparently surprised that Will knows about Mischa, which shows the fragment of the script:

Chiyoh also asks Will how he knows Hannibal and when she hears his answer, she comes to the right conclusion:

Then Chiyoh asks Will to tell his story. We don't know exactly what Will told her, but he must have said something that made her react that way:

Finally she comments his story with: “Hannibal took someone from you, are you here to take someone from him?”, so I guess it's safe to assume Will told her about Abigail, but probably without details about complicated relationship between him, Abigail and Hannibal.

She tells she can understand Hannibal, because he is doing what has been done to Mischa. So she rather knows about killing and cannibalism, however I guess she has no idea about the fact that Hannibal ate his own sister, but about that a little bit later. In my opinion she sees Hannibal's actions as a coping mechanism to deal with what has happened to Mischa (and it wouldn't be wrong, people deal with trauma in different ways).

As I mentioned before, Chiyoh has perfect intuition and realizes that Will is similar to Hannibal (“You're nakama. Aren't you alike?”) and that he thought about killing and eating her (“You've given that some thought.”). Here is a script of that moment:

Will tells her also infamous: “I've never known myself as well as I know myself when I'm with him.” and Chiyoh’s reaction is: She considers that, recognizing the feeling.

Choyoh tells Will her story — she didn’t let Hannibal take the life of Misha's killer, so he left the prisoner's life in her hands. There is a dialog:

Not only Hannibal is curious if Chiyoh would kill the prisoner — Will is also curious, so he frees the prisoner. Prisoner, overwhelmed by the freedom he regained after twenty-five years (Outside for the first time in twenty-five years, the man shivers with terror.), returns to his cell and attacks Chiyoh, when he gains an opportunity to do so. Feeling life slipping away, Chiyoh drives a pheasant bone into the man's neck, eventually killing him, which results with: She does what she has always resisted and deliberately kills the caged man. He slumps and falls off her. She lies still for a moment, then lets out a SCREAM.

She knows Will is responsible for that and tells him that, but the shock of what she did caused also dialogue, in which she begins to wonder if Hannibal lied to her about what happened to his sister:

She decides to help Will to find Hannibal, because she had no reason to stay in Lithuania after killing that man.

Contorno:

On the train, Chiyoh tells Will how she came to meet Hannibal, how they played together as children and Hannibal was, “charming the way a cub is charming, a small cub that grows up to be like one of the big cats.”, with Will commenting, “One you can't play with later.”.

Will talks to her about the prisoner she killed. He asks if she sees herself killing that man, to which Chiyoh responds she does not see herself, but him:

When they are getting ready to bed, they are also talking and the dialogue I'm pasting in the next paragraph, makes me think that Chiyoh, despite living twenty-five years in solitude, can read people like Hannibal like an open book. Will says that violence can be used to control behavior, and Chiyoh notices that Hannibal is affecting Will and wonders if Will is also affecting Hannibal. She also realizes that Will wants to kill Hannibal because he fears otherwise he will become like Hannibal, so she comments with the words, “There are means of influence other than violence.”.

Later she repeats words, “There are means of influence other than violence.”, followed by:

(I really wanted to use that fragment of the script)

Dolce:

In this episode, Chiyoh introduces herself to Bedelia as Hannibal's family. She also tells Bedelia that they are like birds and that Hannibal puts them in cages, wondering what they will do.

When Bedelia asks her what she wants, Chiyoh answers, “I want to cage him.”. Bedelia tells her that she thought that the biggest Hannibal's mistake was Will Graham but maybe it's Chiyoh.

The next time we see Chiyoh, she shoots Will. While treating Will's gunshot wound, Hannibal tells Will that Chiyoh has always been protective of him and is delighted that she, not Will, killed the prisoner.

Later Chiyoh gets into the elevator where Jack is. Realizing that Jack is going to the same floor as she and that the man is watching her suspiciously, Chiyoh tells him, she has mistook the floor and leaves.

Digestivo:

This is the last episode where Chiyoh appears. It is also the episode in which Chiyoh meets Jack Crawford. After Hannibal and Will got kidnapped and Jack is about to be killed, Chiyoh rescues him by killing corrupted police officers, because she thinks she should have done it (“I ought to. I should. Therefore, I must.”).

At the same time, she apparently realizes that Jack must know both Hannibal and Will. She understands that when she's talking about Hannibal, she apparently must also talk about Will (“You're sitting at Hannibal's table. You know him. You know Will.”).

Jack sees that Chiyoh can be violent, when the situation demands it and being asked, to where Hannibal and Will were taken, he tells her, he will tell her that information if she take his IV away, so she does so. He tells her where to find them and assures her he won't interfere.

To save Hannibal, Chiyoh travels to the United States, to Maryland. There, on the Muskrat Farm, when Hannibal carries Will half-conscious in his arms and is followed by Mason Verger's employees, Chiyoh kills them to keep Hannibal safe.

Next time when we see Chiyoh, she is on the porch of Will's house, where she finally meets Hannibal again. Hannibal asks, if she will go home, if she can go home, to which Chiyoh replies, “No more than you can.”, which is followed by the dialogue:

Much of this dialogue did not end in the episode, but despite everything, Chiyoh has changed her mind and does not want to see Hannibal in the cage anymore. The words “I see the best of you and the worst with steady hands and a slow heart.” I understand as the fact that Chiyoh knows Hannibal, she knows his good and bad traits; she's not afraid of him, but she knows she should be careful and not put her gun down.

I come back also to the topic of her knowledge about Hannibal's actions. As I wrote, she rather didn't know about the fact that Hannibal ate Mischa and it's pretty clear in that moment. She asks him about it and is actually relieved he only ate and didn't kill his sister.

Hannibal’s words “The most stable elements, Chiyoh, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.” mean to me that even though she killed a man, she's still the same Chiyoh he knew, since she is violent only when situation demands is and she's still going to protect him. Despite what she did, she didn't betray herself, as he did after Misha's death — she's better than him.

The last time we see her is when Hannibal surrenders. She's pointing a rifle at the officers and Hannibal, ready to fire if the FBI wants to kill Hannibal on the spot. Eventually she goes into the woods. It's the last moment we see her, the last moment we hear about her.

Summary (tl;dr)

All in all, Chiyoh is an excellent shooter. She also has great intuition, because — even though she barely met Will Graham — she practically immediately realizes how similar he is to Hannibal. She knows Will and Hannibal must be close if Will knows about Mischa. She also knows Hannibal took away someone close to Will. However, she says she accepts Hannibal because he does what has been done to Mischa, his sister, whom he loved above all else. She sees herself as Hannibal's family, but cries, realizing that maybe Will knows more about Hannibal than she does, because she asks him if Hannibal lied to her about what happened to Mischa.

She had a strict rule not to take a human life, but she's forced to do so in order not to die herself. She wants to protect Hannibal, because he's probably the only family she has.

Her words that there are other means of influence other than violence and her kissing Will, I understand that seeing how identical he and Hannibal are and that Hannibal influences Will's behavior and Will influences Hannibal's behavior, Chiyoh wants to convince Will that he doesn't have to kill Hannibal because violence is not the only means of influencing people's behavior — it can be also love. In my opinion, that's why Chiyoh doesn't kill Will when he pulls out a knife to hurt Hannibal. She shoots him to simply disable him, to give him a chance to reconsider his decision to take Hannibal's life.

She also realizes that apparently when talking about Hannibal, she must also be talking about Will, because in a conversation with Jack, she points out that Jack knows both Hannibal and Will.

At first, she wanted to put Hannibal in a cage, but: 1) after hearing from Bedelia that she thought Hannibal's biggest mistake was Will Graham, and yet maybe his biggest mistake was rather Chiyoh; 2) and after the massacre at the Verger farm; Chiyoh changed her mind.

I think it might have something to do with Jack's words, “I know them. They are identically different, Hannibal and Will.”, and with Bedelia's statement that she thought Will was Hannibal's the biggest mistake, and with the massacre at the Verger farm itself, as everyone Chiyoh has met tells her about closeness between Hannibal and Will; she also saw Hannibal rescuing and carrying Will, taking care of him at his home.

She realizes that all of this can't be the result of violence. I think she sees that both Hannibal and Will are beasts, but they can control each other to a certain extent. She promises Hannibal that she will continue to protect him, but not in a cage, as some beasts are better not be caged. However, seeing that Hannibal decides to let himself be locked in a cage, she allows it, because it’s his decision.

I believe that after these events, Chiyoh remained in the United States to keep her hand on the pulse in case Hannibal needed her. Given that Chiyoh herself said she can’t go back home for the same reason Hannibal can’t (bad memories) and that, according to Bryan Fuller, she was the one who took care of the house on the cliff, I think that theory makes sense.

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failedelectrocution · 4 months

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I know most people see Chiyoh and Hannibal as siblings but I have feelings n thoughts about em. m sad that there are p much no fics of em when there's so much potential.

Will is unpredictable and volatile, a wildfire that consumes and follows the wind. God does Hannibal love watching the wild creature lick flames wherever he goes.

But Chiyoh is stone. Cold, rough, solid stone that he can lean on, without fear of abandonment. She will always be there. Hannibal cannot return home, but he has her. Flashes of their silly little childhood games and made-up rituals, bright-eyed teenagers trying to find deeper meanings in the world. Holding hands in the dark of nights, time not a factor as they simply watched a candle melt away under a timid, flickering flame.

She was smaller than him, but fiercely protective. Not like a dog, blindly loyal and eager for praise, no, but a lioness taking care of her pride. He can always go to her for silent comfort, they need not words between them on hard days curled up in the castle that seemed frozen in history, every haunting moment left lingering down its halls.

Chiyoh was a handmaiden under the woman he yearned for. They both looked up to the lady with awe and respect. Chiyoh's eyes dulled in the moonlight when a young and brash Hannibal whispered his confessions to her, but she did not say anything.

After all that he had done, Lady Murasaki fled from him in an instant. But Chiyoh was still there. She comforted him, and he could see the pain in her eyes, too. The two comforted each other under sheets, tangled in desperation and inexperience. Even after that, Chiyoh did not change. Curiosity gnawed at him like a black hole, and the eager cub gave in without much thought.

Decades later, she is still home.

She knows him before he got his degrees, before Il Mostro.

She understands and accepts Hannibal as the beast that he is. She doesn't denounce him for what he does, as it would be denouncing a fox for killing and eating birds. What she does stop him from, is killing out of *emotion*, because that is human, not beast. This is why she stopped him from killing the man who supposedly killed and ate Mischa.

Here is her reaction to Will telling her everything, supposedly including Abigail, one that he killed out of human emotion and not out of instinct as a beast.