#i think we see soubi's past and can kind of understand where he's coming from and why he thinks the way he does | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lovelesswiki · 7 years

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i've really respected your creative and analytical work with loveless for years (i actually remember reading your house crossover fanfic in like 2011 maybe?) so i've always wanted to know your general take on soubi's character? if you have time and haven't already written about it before, id love to see a general character analysis!

first of all, thank you so much! it’s fantastic to know that you like my analytical work and that i have partially redeemed myself from those weird fanfics i used to write. you know how we all look back on our past fanfics and other creative work and laugh at ourselves? well that’s what it’s like with me except i wrote about a crossover between an american medical drama and a gay catboy manga and i can’t look back on it without crying in shame.

BUT I DIGRESS. thank you for sticking with me!

NOW. youve asked me about my favorite topic (i’d make a ‘my favorite topic: myself! agatsuma soubi’ joke here but i think i already made that joke in this post and also on deviantart and probably in a couple other places) but holy shit do i love talking about soubi. hes kinda my favorite character analytically. SO, LET’S TALK ABOUT SOUBI (and i apologize if this jumps from one topic to the next bc i have many thoughts on this tall child)

soubi is a very peculiar character because more than any other character in the series, he changes. beginning-series soubi is this incredibly creepy, weird, myseterious guy who constantly says the worst and most creepiest things possible and seems to prey on children and constantly asks about killing children and frustrates the reader to no end with his whole insistence that he can’t say shit about anything. see, the thing is that you’re not supposed to like beginning-series soubi. he’s a fucking predatory asshole who is creepy and weird to no end. however, people fell in love with him because this manga was marketed as a yaoi/BL manga, which made soubi fall into the bishie trope where it is completely acceptable for the ‘dominant’ character to act in a way that is very creepy towards the other characters.

so, this really, really divided people’s opinions on soubi’s character. some people hated soubi or strongly disliked him, which was close to the correct response you’re supposed to have to soubi in the first few volumes. others fell in love with him and the bishie trope and either fell off the series or were confused when soubi’s real characterization came to be. regardless, though, i strongly dislike beginning series soubi, but now that we have an understanding of his character, i know why he acted the way he did.

let me put this into perspective. agatsuma soubi was raised in a violent society. for twelve years he was completely isolated in a small town in the mountains in a school where he was taught how to violently battle other teams. this is literally all he knows. soubi himself says that he does not remember his parents well and he was six when his parents died. developmentally, six is a huge age because it’s when a child actually begins forming long-lasting long-term memories. not a lot of people remember much before they were six years old. i like to believe that this age was chosen for soubi to lose his parents because of this, but with yun i can never be sure. just let me try to believe that this was done on purpose pls.

so soubi does not remember not being in this world. this is all he knows. on top of all this, there’s ritsu. ill get to ritsu more in a bit because i fucking love talking about the horrible dynamic between these two (and i mean that in the best way possible), but ritsu completely destroyed soubi. he took a child and destroyed him so thoroughly that soubi has no fucking idea how to function without him. ritsu filled soubi’s head with the idea that soubi would lead a subservient life where he’d be nothing more than a tool. he beat soubi constantly and used him as a way to get back at akio. even then, soubi was nothing more than a replacement for something missing. and this was how soubi came to identify. as nothing. as a fighter. as someone who would never lead and who would never have any sort of power, as someone who would lead a life of pain and fear of failing. and soubi accepted this, because he was a child and knew nothing else.

on top of this, there’s soubi’s idea of love. i have no doubt that soubi wanted to believe that ritsu loved him, and the only proof of this he could come up with was physical affection that was given to him, affection that went way too far until it resulted in soubi’s rape. however, soubi doesn’t seem to think of this as ‘wrong’ because of the simple fact that he was never exposed to anything else. you can probably guess where im going with this by now.

now we have beginning series soubi. by the time we first meet him (and we don’t learn this until later), soubi has become incredibly depressed and doesn’t seem to see the point in living anymore. other units are telling him to his face that he should’ve already killed himself, and the thing is–soubi doesn’t actually seem to disagree with this. his entire argument is that he has an order to carry out, but he seems to have wanted to go with seimei. soubi is depressed and on top of this, he no longer has seimei. by this point, soubi is twenty years old and for his entire life, he has never not had someone telling him what to do. for twelve years, he was isolated in the mountains and for the past three, soubi has lived in the real world, but under seimei’s rule, where he was still heavily isolated and controlled. and in the few times he doesn’t have seimei, such as at his university, he fails miserably at interacting in a real, meaningful way with his peers and environment. to put it simple, agatsuma soubi has no fucking idea how to function in life.

we have a guy who’s never functioned without someone heavily controlling him like a puppet and who has been extremely isolated his entire life, someone who is so fucking depressed that according to kio, he hardly functioned for months after seimei’s death, and someone who’s only reason that he didn’t commit suicide was because he had an order from a dead guy to carry out. and that order was to love a twelve year-old boy.

what’s more is that, as i explained above, soubi has an extremely warped idea of love. he does not associate it with a feeling. he associates it with physical actions. so when seimei tells soubi to go become ritsuka’s fighter and to love him, soubi’s idea of this ‘love him’ thing is a lot different from a normal person’s. soubi still seems to hold onto this idea of physical affection=love even in the later volumes, but he’s definitely less insistent with the inappropriate touching and actions than he was before.

but this doesn’t fully explain his annoying behavior in the first few volumes. he was irritating, constantly speaking in riddles and withholding information and teasing and just generally being terrible. and i think one point of information is very important in examining this behavior–that soubi got worse after ritsuka repeatedly told him that he wouldn’t punish him.

basically, soubi’s behavior is like a toddler acting out when they’re told they can’t have something. except, it’s a little different. it’s not that soubi wanted it, persay, it’s that punishment is all he knows and that it’s a main mean of controlling him. this is when, i think, it dawned on soubi that ritsuka and seimei are different people. even from the first fucking chapter, soubi looks more than a little confused when ritsuka grabs his hand and asks him to take pictures with him. to him, this is absolutely not the way people (his masters) are supposed to act around him. the look on soubi’s face when ritsuka starts talking to him so casually is actually kind of hilarious.

‘this is absolutely not what i rehearsed’

to put it simply, the first few volumes of loveless are actually soubi falling apart and trying to figure out what the hell to do. he’s in an entirely new situation with himself–he’s making decisions for the first time in his life. he’s suddenly faced with the realization that he’s a goddamn adult and an adult in the relationship he’s trying to peruse. he’s older than the kid he’s fighting for and this kid is an actual kid. he’s not like seimei. i’d say that the first three volumes of loveless are soubi trying to make ritsuka into seimei or force him to act like him, because in his mind, there must be some seimei in there somewhere.

the turning point, i’d say, for soubi, is somewhere in volume 3. i usually tell people that loveless doesn’t get good until volume 4 or 5, but soubi’s turning point where he realizes that ritsuka is ritsuka is actually somewhere in volume 3. i’d actually wager to say that it might be this scene:

for anyone who doesn’t remember a whole lot of volume 3, there’s a lot of remembering of seimei on both soubi and ritsuka’s parts. this is the volume where we get soubi fully remembering the day seimei told him to go to ritsuka if and when he died. soubi seems to spend a lot of this volume thinking about his past, since it’s also the first appearance of the zeroes and thus, the first appearance of soubi’s past with ritsu, which he also flashes back to in the beginning of the volume. this particular scene with the panel that i posted above is after ritsuka finally deciphers the message he’s been given and enters the wisdom resurrection game. when he does, soubi sort of freaks out and goes over to ritsuka’s house to find him asleep on the desk. the panel above is his immediate reaction and one of the first times we actually get to see soubi’s thoughts.

when i was young, i like many others interpreted this scene as sexual, but looking at it now, it gives off a completely different feeling of soubi finally coming to the realization that ritsuka is an innocent child and cannot be and will never be seimei. and for a while, it does seem to bother soubi a little, to the point that he actually allows himself to be defeated by the zero girls soon after this scene. after this scene, there’s not a whole lot of creepiness on soubi’s part, though it does take a bit of time to taper off.

then we get volume 5 soubi, which is where soubi becomes likable. this is where you are intended, writing-wise, to begin actually liking him. prior to this, he’s creepy, but during volume five and onwards, he becomes… human. and this is because this is when soubi actually begins to develop an identity. he starts showing a personality. he becomes an actual person because at this point, soubi has begun to accept that ritsuka isn’t and will never be seimei and he begins to think that maybe–he might be free of seimei. and maybe with ritsuka, even though things are still confusing and weird, it might be okay to develop some sense of a personality. things take their natural course, and soubi does, and he becomes likable to the reader not just because we’re finding out more about him and we’re getting into his head, thoughts, and motivations, but because this version of soubi is actually written as very likable because he’s developing a personality and is not being a meaningless creep anymore whose only personality is being a creep. this is the part of the story that soubi moves into a primary protagonist spot, whereas earlier, he was working against ritsuka, who was our primary protagonist. it’s here that you, as a reader, start to want things for soubi, and it’s because he becomes a ‘good guy’ protagonist.

god, there’s so much i want to talk about in this post. let me move on a little to soubi’s past, which i talked about a bit earlier. i think i may have said this in another post, but i think the primary reason that soubi doesn’t talk about his past with ritsuka isn’t because he was told not to by seimei, because we never actually see seimei telling soubi not to say those things. soubi’s only stipulation from seimei is not to talk about septimal moon or explain anything pertaining to them. however, ritsuka does find out about septimal moon and essentially, the cat is out of the bag after that and ritsuka makes the discovery of ritsu, and actually meets him in soubi’s presence during the WR game. i like this scene a lot because soubi instantly becomes extremely cold and goes against ritsuka’s orders by typing a fucking passive aggressive insult to ritsu by masquerading as ritsuka and that is very funny to me because it’s the most stupidly nefarious thing that we see soubi do in the manga at his own volition. the best part is that soubi was fully willing to keep going if he didn’t get his fucking yelled at when ritsuka immediately found out.

anyways, soubi completely shuts up or changes the subject at pretty much any time ritsuka or someone else brings up his past with seimei or god forbid even the subject of ritsu. during the scene i talked about in the previous paragraph, soubi goes quiet and stiff when ritsu shows up, natsuo notices and is like “oh, your arm [hand] must still be hurting, so you can’t type, that’s why” and soubi’s fine to just let him think that and doesn’t correct him or anything

he constantly changes the subject when his past comes up and goes so far as to lie to ritsuka about how he lost his ears in an extra (special edition 3, i believe, there’s a link to it on the loveless drive i made). soubi hates talking about his past to the point where i am really getting the feeling that he isn’t doing it for ritsuka’s sake. let me start with this–seimei was weird. seimei knew everything without soubi even telling him. i have no doubt at all that seimei used his past with ritsu against soubi, even to passively taunt him. when soubi got to ritsuka and realized that he didn’t know anything about soubi’s past, it must have been… pretty freeing. because if a person doesn’t know, then they can’t judge you or use it against you, and soubi more likely than not thinks that it’s more painful to talk about it than it is to keep it bottled up, which is completely untrue. soubi doesn’t talk about it in an effort to protect himself from emotional pain.

and that’s the thing–soubi’s character is partially built around the concept of pain. soubi is shown to have a huge tolerance for pain, to the point where it’s just a part of his daily life. this is physical pain, though. i wholly believe that soubi’s entire character can be viewed as an argument to that ‘sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me’ rhyme, because soubi absolutely cannot take emotional pain at all, and he’s put through an enormous amount of it over and over again. the physical pain was a way for him to shut out emotions, and the ownership over him was a way for him to not have to make decisions about anything, including what to feel. but now that he’s lost both of those, there’s only the emotional pain, and a lot of it.

anyways, i’m gonna stop there for now and save some analysis for other posts i want to do, but let me know if theres anything in specific you want to know my thoughts or further thoughts on!

#jacknoir #loveless #Agatsuma Soubi #ritsuka aoyagi #aoyagi seimei #minami ritsu #theory #analysis #ask #my content

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