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rutilation · 6 years

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another day, another stressful chapter.

Okay, first of all, I fucking called it.

Which also means that Phos’s very first interaction with Cairngorm was them respecting Cairn’s wishes even when Ghost was willing to cajole them into their partnership. Oh boy, do I ever love being hurt!

But before I dive more into my favorite disaster gem, I’d like to talk about a few of my observations of the first half of the chapter. Y’know, I was looking forward to a chapter focused solely on the earth gems, so that I could finally figure out how I feel about Euclase, and not be stressed out by Cairn for one (1) month. But it seems Ichikawa does not want me to have a god-damned break.

Well at least I figured out how I feel about Euclase. Turns out they only said those kind words to Phos in order to manipulate them, and they completely misinterpreted what amounts to Phos’s acknowledgment of their own mortality as mere insecurity about their low-hardness status. I’m not sure if they’re going to have this same mindset by the end of the story, but for now it seems they are firmly in camp stasis-and-conformity-at-all-costs.

At this point I think it’s been enough of a reoccurring element that we can add sleeping vs restlessness to the list of thematic through-lines of this work, be it Phos’s restlessness, Kongo’s frequent naps, the gems’ hibernation, etc. Furthermore, the opening of the anime played a lot with this imagery. If you think about it, the opening is essentially a series of images of Phos breaking apart and being put back together, and Phos waking up three times in a row. The director of the anime has stated in an interview that he had a chat with Ichikawa about the overall themes of the work, so I think it’s safe to say that the use of awakening imagery in the opening is very deliberate. My first instinct is to see awakening as a metaphor for enlightenment, and sleeping as a metaphor for ignorance and stasis, but I’m not super sure of my reading.

I’d also like to talk a little about robodad. There are a couple of contradictions in his character that have been bugging me for a while, and I might as well talk about them here. Going back to the early chapters, he got pretty mad whenever the gems acted recklessly behind his back. Like in chapter one towards Morga and Goshe, and then again towards Phos in chapter eleven. But despite the fact that Phos has made a much, much bigger mess than either of those incidents, Kongo has made no effort to stop Phos. Sure, he stonewalls Phos when they try to ask him directly about what he’s hiding, but ever since volume four, wherein he realized that Phos was suspicious of him (they weren’t exactly subtle about it,) he pretty much gave Phos free reign to chase whatever subversive, rebellious whim they desired. I keep getting the impression that he wants Phos to defeat him, and that’s why he stopped getting on their case for insubordination the moment he realized that they had more ambitious aims than mere trouble-making. In fact, the way he simply shuts Phos down when they try to get answers out of him, instead of doing his best to explain what he can, like he is with the earth gems right now...it almost seems like he’s trying to goad Phos into antagonizing him.

Which is why I’m really curious about why he refuses to release the Lunarians--and his words in this chapter do seem to confirm that he’s intentionally not releasing their souls, and isn’t just broken. He holds the Lunarians and humanity in contempt, but I find it hard to believe that he hates them more than he loves the gems, so whatever’s stopping him from praying must be pretty significant. That would lead one to the conclusion that there’s some terrible consequence that would come from him releasing the Lunarians, and I’ve seen people float the idea of a seventh meteor coming and wiping out the remaining life on earth as soon as the last human souls leave. The little moment in chapter one in which Phos mistakenly thinks that seven meteors had already hit the earth would seem to foreshadow that. But the thing is, if the consequence of praying for the Lunarians is that dire, then why hasn’t he lifted a finger to stop Phos? Why hasn’t he tried to find some way to impart to Phos the peril of what they’re doing, even if he can’t directly tell them what’s going on?

It’s all quite mysterious.

Okay, back to my wayward child.

First of all, this reeaally hurt. I had been afraid that this might happen since chapter 67, but since it hadn’t been brought up, I thought that they weren’t going to reject the name Phos got for them. Turns out, I just needed to be more patient! They haven’t mentioned what they’re going by, so for now I’m gonna keep calling them Cairngorm.

Regarding their explanation for why they stabbed Phos...

I mean, I know that the tone Cairn is going for here is disdainful indifference, but isn’t this just a roundabout way of saying that they don’t have the guts to talk to Phos? This has been on my mind ever since chapter 68, but Cairn seems awfully skittish about actually confronting Phos, don’t they? The fact that they were willing to allude--albeit vaguely--to what happened in chapter 67 in front of Yellow and Padpa, but were completely unwilling to even tell Phos directly that they were breaking up with them, much less explain why, seems rather telling to me. The fact that they apparently couldn’t stand the thought of an awkward ride back to the moon and had to make sure Phos was unconscious for the duration just compounds this. (This is all assuming they weren’t secretly trying to destroy the pearl eye.)

Honestly, when Cairn decided they needed to involve themselves in a mission they told Phos they wouldn’t go on, and behind Aechmea’s back no less, they forfeited any chance of convincing me that they actually don’t care, and no amount of shit talking is going to outweigh their actions when said actions tell a very different story. While it’s still too soon to say what exactly those portentous lines about Cairn being a good actor really mean, they’re definitely relevant. The only question on my mind is whether or not they believe their own bullshit.

To sum it up, it seems that Cairn is once again in need of some Antarc advice:

But instead, the only advice they get nowadays is from their controlling boyfriend who pays lip service to valuing their autonomy but then throws a temper tantrum the second they stop acting like his personal dress-up doll.*

Something I found really unnerving was Cairn’s reaction to Aechmea’s little fit of pique. They looked uncomfortable with being screamed at, but they didn’t seem the least bit shocked, despite the fact that Aechmea looked Like That, which raises the possibility that this isn’t the first time Aechmea has lashed out at Cairn like this. Yikes.

Furthermore, once they start talking to Aechmea, the confidence with which they held themselves the past chapter-and-a-half completely dies, and they’re back to being drawn in that vaguely off-putting moe style, and they’re back to expressing themselves in a way that seems more juvenile than how they were acting moments before. So, the cutesiness is definitely an affectation, though I doubt that anyone is surprised to have that confirmed.

A few months ago, I assumed that Aechmea was manipulating Cairngorm to a specific end, but it’s looking more and more like he sees Cairn as, like, a shiny new toy that he doesn’t want getting dented.

And finally, that glove that Cairn is wearing. I didn’t notice it the first time I read chapter seventy so I didn’t bring it up in that essay, but they sure are covering up the symbol of their weakness and reluctance to change, aren’t they? Embracing one’s weaknesses and failings has been a major theme of the series, and there are several visual metaphors that allude to this. Phos’s kintsugi arms and Dia using their octahedral cleavage to their advantage to defeat Shiro are the examples that initially spring to my mind. While the plot of the series is twisty, and the characters are often duplicitous, I find that the imagery and visual metaphors are pretty consistently trustworthy--albeit up for interpretation. So, while there are many things in the series that I’m not sure about, I’m pretty sure that Cairngorm’s left arm is getting replaced sooner or later.

*hey guys, remember how there was an entire omake in which the joke was “Cairngorm sure does dislike all the frilly, impractical pajamas that Red Beryl is forcing them to wear.” That was a thing.

#the price of sincere engagement with art is that sometimes an author endeavors to give you ulcers #houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #i'm gonna go rewatch some more pt to soothe my soul

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