Thread by @PikkuProgram

Kagurabachi Chapter 58 review & analysis thread: 🧵

#Kagurabachi
#カグラバチ

Someone forgot to cancel their subscription for Twitter Blue, so here we are for one more month! I like having no text limit, but I also think its super fucking dense & exhausting for a reader to read.. So I'll try my best, to keep things as.. relatively short as possible.

Starting with a hot take: this chapter was absolutely, in every single panel, dialogue piece, and events unfolding wise PREDICTABLE. If you surmised the same context based on the last chapter as I did, we all saw this coming. Every. Diagloue. Piece..

Sub-text matters people!

What was ALSO incredibly easy to deduce is what you've probably come to find out is a Hokazono-writing pattern; Do X, show Y, and then go Z - 2 scenes ago to explain how we just got here. Takeru loves to play around with chronologicality, and this is one of his favorite moves. Funnily, its also one of the only (moves) that make Japanese people say and I quote:

"Kagurabachi is a hard-to-read manga more fit for the western audience.."

7 minutes is genuinely a lot: usually (in the examples provided above) we're talking 1-2 minutes AT MOST but since this chapter has SO much talking, and even a fucking 1v1, I love that he gives these events PROPER SPACE for all of it to happen naturally without fast-forwarding

I love this scene because Samura doesn't have powers to "knock out" people of consciousness; unless the Tobimune does, but I think this is something much more simpler, but relying on context.
Hatshaku says "he was too fast for the eyes to see", which would also imply that speed-diffing a bunch of non-Enchanted Blade sorcerers, lets just say love-tapping them on the back-area of the neck with the back of a blade hard enough to turn off their brain would be quite the easy task, no?
Or you can start to theorize a (2nd) or (3rd) Tobimune ability which is an AoE hypnosis / pheromone-created narcosis.. But I still think the former one is the correct answer here, esp. seeing as Samura still has crow feathers (implying its just Karasu again)..

Continuing with the AU-Chihiro delivery of Samura's character, he says the exact same thing Kunishige teaches in Ch 14: to stay calm, and flexible.. Calm, in this case (冷静) meaning both clear-headed, and doubling as a synonym for sanity..

And if THAT wasn't enough, how about Kunishige making Samura vow the exact same promise that Chihiro once did:

「弱者を救う、悪を滅し」
"To protect the weak, and vanquish the evil:

I do however want to ask you, and myself.. Does EVERY BLADE abide by this same rule? Is this Kunishige's morality, rather than just (The Enten & Tobimune's) ?

I knew it just from the last chapter, again surmisable sub-text fucking broken record don't make me start again

But man, saying this outloud is fucking wild, but it also makes you think.. Are the Hishaku THAT BAD? I mean, we haven't really seen anything THAT BAD yet.. Right?

I appreciate that we now have not just (The Seitei War), but a specific INCIDENT that occurred during said war; We still have no clue on how the war even lasted, but considering the Shinuchi "won them" the war, this 'win' might be the incident thats being talked about here.

Samura speaks of (the wielders) yet we are ONLY ever shown the Magatsumi wielder. Now, again intentional by design, the 'tsumi' part of the sword means sin; a crime. So its literally the sin, being (buried) in a Kamunabi HQ, what seems to be a basement.. So are the others really EQUALLY as responsible? Or does THAT WRONG of Japan fall solely on the shoulders of the Sword Saint?

Ever since Ch. 22 introduced "Deadlock", which is essentially a weight-scale, we've gotten plenty of re-occurring (weighing of options) in reference to that, which I find seriously thematically on brand, and it makes me smile every single time.

Uruha.. is a brat. But look at his emotional maturity in this chapter. Not once does he act shocked, not once does he "start to cry" and not once does he QUESTION where Samura is coming from. He is WELL aware of his own guilt, and so its more battling the "how" instead of "why"...

I love the disappearing trees, again this is a serious "trust your own reader" style thing. As Hatshaku iconically said in Chapter 1: "The tree will vanish in time.."

And of course it goes to argue, that no matter how big the tree.. It'll vanish in time, as it does here too.

What I also love about the tree, let's just call it a Kamikaze realistically; is that its the perfect "removal of evidence" tool... It does the job, it kills the necessary target, and it leaves NOTHING as traces that could then be tracked, say by the Kamunabi.

The reminder of Samura's swordsmanship, not just in its purest form physically, yet also mentally in that classic Bushido. Words spoken, philosophies exchanged; now all that's left to be done, is grab a sword, and duke it out. Equal in prospect, the Iai-White Purity Style.

Notice the super subtle detail of how he lays the Tobimune on the railing, and instead grabs his (regular) self-defense sword from earlier. Samura could JUST as easily chop off his head with Tobimune.. But he's a moral man. And this is his way of showing respect to Uruha.

While the western minds sees leaf fall and thinks about the connection of "dead leaf = dead person", Japanese bushido yet again takes it just that big higher, to the next level.

物の哀れ: "pathos of things"

The idea stays the same, the implications esp. in Samurai-culture do not. Just like how life repeats in cyclical, impermanent ways, a tree dies, its leaves fall out, a seed is planted and in due time, another one takes its place. 物の哀れ specifically focuses on the CYCLICALITY

Is it the cyclicality of the wielders meeting their fates? Or is this the karma of caused murder & death, coming back in abundance? Is it Uruha's last graceful stance, or a desperate attempt to cling onto life for the sake of those sacrifices..? Anyway you slice it, this feels not as if a tragedy, but an eventuality. Which can also give to reason Uruha's preparedness for ... his own fated demise.

Hakuri feeling the guilt out of Uruha's death stings me the most. You can argue that even through brief, through the train ride, the comedy had between the two, and even the Senkutsu-happenings that Hakuri made THAT MUCH of a stronger bond with Uruha, than Chihiro did..

And with the first Enchanted Blade wielder now assassinated (don't worry about Misaka and Sojou this is just for my agenda), comes yet another disgusting recontextualization; he went blind in order to not see flesh cross-sections sure; but this was the other reason. To not have to witness him committing such atrocities, to what we will essentially find out to be his closest friends, atleast back in the war days.

I don't think I'll ever get over how good this piece of dialogue is; this is said, with the utmost confidence, I'm talking an actual "I know what I'm doing.." mindset. And we, the viewer already know that (SOMEONE) has already entered that hell 3 years ago. Which leads to --

By far, without a doubt the most disgusting recontextualization in this series thus far. When Kyoura said "Atleast leave me the Enten as a souvenir", that was by far the best, just because of its comedic yet plot integral value... Until this chapter, because oh my fucking g-

Taking that whole "souvenir" aspect of Japan, Samura saying he doesn't want to greet him "empty-handed" which we first assume to mean (dead enemies), and I mean..

I guess HE DELIVERED AS PROMISED; BECAUSE THAT'S A DEAD ENEMY ALRIGHT

"Stench of blood", (血生臭い) is both the reek of blood, as in if you had an open wound or something, while also relating to a (bloody) encounter, something like a war, murder, battle, etc. So he's literally (drenched) in blood as the face can tell, but he's also BUILT of blood due to all the murder he's committed.

I'm not ready for next week GOD FUCKING DA-