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On Mikey’s ‘Dark Impulses’, 241, and Shinichiro

I’m pretty sure Mikey isn’t a real person, or at least not the real Manjiro.

This analysis is all pure speculation after the events that happened in 241, but speculation based around manga canon.  I’ve done my best to interpret things as objectively as I can, and acknowledge when something can have a more charitable interpretation.  

I’m fairly positive that Mikey not being Manjiro is one missing puzzle piece that connects everything together so we can see the full picture. I think what isn’t said in Tokyo Revengers is so much more interesting than what has been said so far.

I think that the other puzzle piece is Shinichiro. And that Shinichiro was a bad guy. 

I think he’s the bad guy and everything we’ve been told about him is a massive misdirect.  

I think the story is telling us the truth, while the characters are lying to us or are unreliable narrators.

And I think I have a pretty compelling argument proving this.

*SPOILERS FOR TOKYO REVENGERS MANGA THROUGH CHAPTER 243*

*Trigger warnings for mentions of: child abuse, violence, and basically everything bad Tokyo Revengers has already covered in canon up until now.  Anything worse than what we’ve already seen in TR will have a giant warning beforehand with more detailed TW’s so you can turn back*

*Also spoilers for the entirety of Mr. Robot (an American TV show).  Yes, it is connected*

**DISCLAIMER:  I am in no way attempting to assign any diagnosis to any character, nor insinuate that any specific disorder may manifest itself in a particular way in real world situations involving real people.  Any perceived similarities to real life are completely incidental and unintentional** 

**For consistency, only official translations were used from digital volumes 1, 2, and 14-24; and for volumes 3-13, I’m like 99% sure readtokyorevengers dot net has just screen-shotted all of the official translations and re-uploaded the images for every official English release, lol. There are no official translations I can find for volumes 25 and 26 chapters since they don’t seem to get official English chapter releases outside of finished volumes, so my opinions could change once those are out, if the story isn’t finished before then.  If I goofed on any details, please let me know**

On Chapter 241 and What it Means

Mikey badly hurts Haruchiyo in 241.  I’m going to ask ‘why’, not to excuse his violent behaviour, but because people just don’t do shit like that, and the ‘why’ is important.  Also, it’s fiction, so let’s try to analyse what’s going on in this ongoing (very much not finished) story with that in mind.

Mikey mutilating Haruchiyo over a model plane breaking makes no sense, if only for the fact that Shinichiro was still alive and kicking at the time. He’s literally in the scene, lurking around the background of the page, contributing nothing to the events going on. If Mikey was retaliating against Haruchiyo, it would be wrong regardless, but why like that?  Most kids with anger issues would resort to punching, or kicking, or throwing.  

I don’t think Haru was a very physically strong kid; in the present day he uses weapons and we’ve never seen him fight once (before the 3 Dieties, where he uses a weapon).  We don’t actually see him at all until volume 14 or 15, and he’s never shown fighting a single time.  Even when he’s in Tenjiku, he just stands there in the background (anime fights featuring him were added and not in the manga, trust me I kept trying to find him in the background).  He also doesn’t seem to have attended the dojo with Mikey and Baji, or learned any martial arts. Mikey is a martial arts prodigy, he could have taken Haruchiyo down in an instant. He could have just kicked him a bunch of times if he wanted to hurt him, or bullied him some other way.  Again, of course this is wrong, but little kids express themselves in wrong ways all the time when they don’t have anyone teaching them better.  It doesn’t make him evil. He was like nine, he’s sick.

The kids were all nine or ten years old, maximum, and Mikey was already like that. They were so young.  Without knowing the context, because we don’t, that’s some serious serial killer energy.  Kids don’t lash out with that level of violence and literal bloodshed, just because they’re angry. That’s the kind of behaviour that comes from very bad trauma.

As Senju is telling her story, it’s pretty obvious that she’s confusing correlation and causation. She breaks the plane, lies about it to Mikey, and then sees Mikey standing over Haruchiyo’s bloody form with blood all over his hands. So she thinks cause and effect, but admittedly, she just kind of walked in on the scene and didn’t hear or see much of what happened.  This would be a traumatizing thing for anyone to see, at any age, but especially when they’re all so young. In her mind she thinks she caused it, because she was maybe eight.  We all know it had nothing to do with a broken plane.  Maybe the plane led to a confrontation between Mikey and Haruchiyo, but based on everything we’ve seen up until this point in the story, it would be out of character for Mikey to hurt his friend because of a toy.  

Mikey may be possessive, but he doesn’t seem to care about material objects all that much, at least not above his friends.  And he’s never shown to be a bully.  When Baji is getting beaten up protecting Mikey’s moped, Mikey trashes it himself, because it’s dumb that Baji got hurt over such a stupid thing like an object.  Baji was precious to him, not the bike.  When the plane breaks, Shinichiro was still alive to build him another plane. If he was mad about it (though we don’t see him actually express any anger), it wouldn’t be because of the object, but the sentimental value it held.  Which is none as far as we know.  Again, Shinichiro is still alive at this point and will be for years to come.

Mikey could have easily overpowered and beaten the shit out of Haruchiyo, these kids would probably be accustomed to physical altercations, and familiar with the casual violence of punching someone.  Kids play rough.  These kids have older brothers in a gang.  But instead of roughhousing, Mikey permanently scars his face.  And not his nose, or his eyes, or his ears.  Mikey seems like he’d be that kid that bit people, he could have pulled a Mike Tyson even.  But he rips open Haruchiyo’s mouth. Why his mouth?

I think something Haru said set Mikey off or …maybe Mikey was trying to help him in a messed up way? (I know, I know, just stick with me.  I’m not absolving Mikey of being an absolute terror.  I have a reason for thinking this, just keep reading, I’ll get there I promise.)

I have a very bad feeling and the more I go back and think about it, the worse that feeling gets. Re-reading the manga did not alleviate that feeling, it just reinforced it.  I could be wrong, but.  Well.

This is incredibly long but I promise there’s a point. This is mostly about Mikey as a character and what I think is going on with him (and therefore the entire story).  But also Shinichiro and Izana, and what that all has to do with Sanzu.

I’ll get to Shinichiro and why he’s a bad person.

I’m prepared to be way off the mark here and reading way too far into things, but this has been bugging me since the leaks for chapter 240 came out.

Against my better judgement I re-read the entire manga (and the volumes I own several times) to make sure I’m not misremembering anything, but if I’m flat out factually incorrect about anything, please let me know (I wrote this twice (well, three times) and it’s long, so I may have missed an error I made in an earlier draft).  

But I digress, if you’ve seen Mr. Robot through to the end, I imagine you know exactly where I’m going with this and that it’s in a very BAD direction.  

Let’s start with why Mikey is NOT Manjiro.

“MIKEY” AND NAMES

I don’t think Mikey is a ‘real person’.

I don’t know enough about mental disorders that cause one to disassociate as hard as Mikey does to try and put a name to it, nor do I want to armchair diagnose someone (and the same disorder can vary wildly from person to person, so).  But it really seems like Wakui has been laying the groundwork and leaving clues the entire manga so far, that the Mikey we’ve seen for the majority of the story is not the original Sano Manjiro.

And I don’t mean that Mikey is a second time traveler.

I strongly suspect that those 'dark impulses’ or 'other Mikey’ is an alter, or another personality (for lack of better terms) completely separate from 'our Mikey’.  Maybe we’re almost always seeing Mikey and we’ve either never met Sano Manjiro, or we see him very briefly, when it’s just him and Takemitchy.

Tokyo Revengers is a story about becoming a whole person again when you’ve lost yourself.  It’s Takemitchy’s entire journey.  It’s also Mikey’s journey.  They’re both just parts of the whole person they should make up and not ‘real people’ themselves.  If they were both ‘real people’, they should have all their memories and neither of them do.  

In fictional stories, names are very important. Not just the meaning of the name and how it relates to the character or overall story, but if a character has a name at all, or if they have multiple names.

Takemichi has two names. He’s given the nickname Takemitchy (by Mikey, isn’t that interesting), because he’s a different person. Mikey may not know that until the Tenjiku conflict, but we know it as the audience. He’s an alternate version of himself when he’s in the past, and annihilates his alternate self to take over that body when he goes back to the future. There’s a version of him, Takemichi, that we never get to see. We only follow Takemitchy’s story. We never really see what kind of person younger Takemichi is, because we’ve never met him. We aren’t afforded the opportunity to see what happens in the past when Takemitchy isn’t there and Takemichi gets his body back. We can only piece together what happens from information other characters give us.  Takemitchy doesn’t get any of Takemichi’s memories in the future, because he’s not him.

Mikey has two names. Manjiro and Mikey, but he only goes by Mikey. A name he gives to himself to no longer be Manjiro. NOBODY calls him Manjiro aside from Shinichiro, Izana, and Takemitchy that one time (no, a character saying his full name does not count).  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Takemitchy calling his real name is the thing that gets through to him at the last possible moment as he finally asks for help.  

Mikey isn’t the original Manjiro, and Takemitchy isn’t the original Takemichi.

But then there’s also “Mikey”. In the Bonten timeline, Sanzu says “Mikey” is gonna speak, in quotation marks. It’s possible that this is just a strange stylistic choice made by Wakui or a rogue translator, but.  He already called him Mikey when they were children, why the distinction in quotations here?  Is there a difference?  Can Sanzu tell the difference because they know each other so well and have for so long?

Mikey also goes between calling him Sanzu and Haruchiyo, which could be nothing, but IS interesting, since he calls everyone else by one chosen name and only that one name. He doesn’t go between ‘Kenchin’ and ‘Draken’, or ‘Mitsuya’ and ‘Takashi’, or ‘Takemichi’ and ‘Takemitchy’. Sanzu is the only person who’s different.

Keep reading

Anon request continuation of this Y/N: Bayonetta I thought we were only getting an outfit, not a whole closet  Bayonetta: Plans change, plus all the outfits you tried out just fit you so well. You may as well have all of them.  

I couldn't find birthday icons for them🥺 (@sadieshouko )

✍︎𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝 𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔

[Blue Period Official Art]

Free to use as you will💙

have you seen this video @fuckyeahchinesefashion posted? /post/663223541535211520/history-of-chinese-school-uniform-by-朵朵花林 i love how all the uniforms look and the changes are so fascinating! i thought you would be especially interested in the early 20th century ones :)

Link to the video

I love the concept of an “evolution of school uniforms” video but unfortunately the uniforms presented are quite stereotypical and incorrect when it comes to construction. I guess this is sort of inevitable with these “one hundred years of” videos :/  I’ll break down each of these looks in some detail. 

1910s

This one is taken from a famous photograph of Lin Huiyin and her cousins from 1916 so theoretically not much could go wrong, yet they somehow managed to misunderstand the proportions. The robe/shirt in the photograph is longer than that in the video, and the cut is looser and not as tight. I can’t see it clearly in the video but I think their shirt was taken in at the waist with darts, which was not a thing that happened in the 1910s. In the 1910s, flat chest was still the beauty ideal, so busty women would wear breast binders to flatten their chest. This wasn’t even necessary for schoolgirls who haven’t hit puberty yet, so it would be even more sensible to give them flat shirts. Overall the fit should be more roomy and less skin tight. Apart from that, the standing collar is a bit too loose around her neck.

I’m always made uncomfortable by the text in this kind of posts/videos, they love to connect fashion to the grand narrative about national salvation which people back then didn’t remotely think about when designing new clothes. Most of the cultural meanings attached to Republican era fashion were added after the fact. 

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Lin Huiyin (far right) and co.

1920s

The 1920s one is especially bad because it’s literally a cheap stereotypical “May Fourth uniform” Halloween costume. The construction is not great; the missing neck area binding, the not at all common decorative buttons, the use of darts, the terrible loose fit of the collar, the lack of curve in the 大襟 dajin (front closure) etc., etc.. What I never understood about this costume is the fact that the black binding they always use just accentuates the lack of neck area binding and makes the giant loose collar look like a pimple on an otherwise smooth shirt. The same problem with the waist darts persists, 1920s clothes were still flat at the chest. Also, 1920s school uniforms were not necessarily blue shirt + black skirt, I don’t know where that perception came from. If you look at photographs or drawings from the period you don’t see a lot of plain blue shirts. Black skirts were pretty common, but the late 20s ones that went with the shirt with flared sleeves often had floral trims and were not strictly plain like it says in the text. 

Taobao search result for “May Fourth costume”.

The reference image they showed was the painting 五四运动 “May Fourth Movement” by 周令钊 Zhou Lingzhao from 1951, meaning it wasn’t an original artwork from the 20s and thus not reliable. The art style does not match that of the late 1910s/early 20s, the emphasis on the two women’s breasts was the opposite of the beauty ideal of the 20s, and the inclusion of a woman wearing cheongsam for an image supposed to represent the late 10s/early 20s (this style of cheongsam was popularized ca. 1927) betrays the fact that the artist possessed only very basic knowledge of fashion history. These stereotypical “May Fourth uniform” shirts likely originated in the 50s or 60s, because the use of no neck area binding, the straight instead of angled dajin (which is important but often overlooked), fabric, binding and button choices all resemble 50s Hong Kong style cheongsam more than they do 20s clothing.

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Really reminds me of this 50s cheongsam worn by Li Lihua somehow, though this is infinitely better tailored.

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1919 fashion. You can see how flat their chests are.

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1920 fashion (this is to show you the robe and collar).

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From 1922, this is to show you the skirt.

As to black skirts, they did not become really popular until around 1926. For reference, the May Fourth movement happened in 1919.

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Ensemble ca. 1927.

If you insist that the “May Fourth costume” is accurate and looks identical to 20s clothing, maybe, uh, get your eyes checked please.

1930s

The 1930s one is, again, stereotypical and not very well constructed. The blue color is actually appropriate this time because blue Indanthrene fabrics were more popular in this decade. The cheongsam construction, especially the collar construction, is questionable. This is quite a common problem for modern “Republican era style” cheongsam construction: the hole for the collar is too big, resulting in the buttons being closer to your collarbones than the bottom of your neck and the collar appearing lower than it should. This issue is exacerbated by the weird placement of the buttons: two placed at the very bottom and sitting close to each other. This was not done at any time in the 30s, or any time in the Republican era, really. The collar design itself doesn’t look like anything popular in the 30s either, it’s too rectangular and tall to be late 30s, but too low and saggy for early 30s. The sleeve length is very popular among costume designers and Taobao shops but very rare in the 1930s.

The reference image they used looks like it’s from the 40s, (I love how at the end they named all the reference images except the questionable ones) leading to the incorrect use of a 1940s hairstyle as well. On a tangent here, the text is again slightly cringy, saying something like “the modernized cheongsam brought women into the era of dressing for themselves”. This has two incorrect and problematic implications: 1) that women did not dress for themselves prior to the 1930s 2) women needed to have freedom of dress “delivered” to them through a specific garment, rather than simply a change of mindset.

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Early 30s Indanthrene cheongsam (Indanthrene came in many shades of blue, purple and red).

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1930s students in floor length cheongsam. See how well fitted their collars are!! And they all have either straight bobs or side parted short finger waves, not pinned back brush out curls.

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1940s cheongsam, as featured in the reference image.

1940s

This one is fairly ok, though it’s specifically sportswear and probably wouldn’t be worn inside classrooms or for non sports activities.

1950s

This one is a wild ride so brace yourselves. She got the red scarf and braided hair correct, I’ll give her that, but the rest of the outfit... I’ve never seen a single photo of a schoolgirl who dressed like this, let’s just put it this way. The common outfit for urban schoolgirls and students in the 1950s was the combination of a white blouse and a swing skirt/pair of wide legged pants, often with the blouse tucked into the skirt/pants. Pinafores could also be worn instead of skirts. For country girls, aoku outfits were more common (they always have been throughout the 20th century), though they certainly did not look like what is shown in the video. The most common shoes were black mary jane flats with white bobby socks underneath, as well as other Western construction shoes popular in the 1950s. To be fair, children and teenagers’ clothing did not change much from the 1930s to the 1950s at all, they remained cute and frilly Western construction clothes. She should look more like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday than whatever this is supposed to be. The color scheme and fabrics are really a choice...

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Artwork from 1963 but the 50s was similar; children’s clothing didn’t change much from the 30s to the 70s. Generally, the younger you are, the shorter your skirt is allowed to be.

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1955 poster showing a girl in blouse and pinafore.

In case you’re wondering if these are super romanticized I have some photographs as well:

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1956 photograph. This is a group of university students but still, you see the blouse and skirt/pants.

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1959, school children heading to the pool.

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Workers on a day off.

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Some 50s school children.

There are also photos from other Eastern Bloc countries to corroborate:

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Czech pioneer uniform, 1950.

There is this misconception that after the establishment of the PRC everyone just wore “plain and utilitarian clothes” therefore it is ok to use modern “plain and utilitarian clothes” for 1950s reconstruction. 1950s utilitarian clothes were, first and foremost, 1950s clothes, before they were utilitarian, and they used construction techniques and silhouettes very specific to that era. It’s kind of weird how I even have to point this out. Though now that I think about it, 1950s Chinese children’s blouses still occasionally used 1940s sewing techniques, like the gathered yokes and puffy sleeves.

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40s blouses with gathered yokes and puffy sleeves, accentuating the flat and broad shoulders.

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50s blouses had more of a cap sleeved, smooth shoulder look.

The top featured in the video would make more sense as a 两用衫 liangyongshan (two purpose jacket) than a blouse, since two purpose jackets were usually untailored, hip length and have a turned collar. Though they would be made of thicker materials since they were outerwear and not blouses.

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1954 Artwork showing children in school. The teacher is wearing a two purpose jacket.

The other major problem with this interpretation of 1950s school uniforms is the misconception that red scarves were unique to the communist Pioneers or the PRC in general. Scarves or kerchiefs worn like that were not rare in everyday fashion of the early 20th century to begin with, and red scarves specifically were also commonly associated with militaristic or sporty youth groups at the time, particularly the girl scouts. I mean, the Pioneers were a militaristic adjacent youth group so it makes sense they would also use the red scarf.

This reference image is from the 1920s??? And they look like girl scouts uniforms not regular school uniforms?? Also even if that picture is from the 50s, her outfit looks nothing like it?? I’m so confused😵

All of the results that showed up in my reverse image search of the picture are very suspicious websites so I don’t want to click on them, though I’m pretty sure that is a photograph of two girl scouts from either the 1910s or 20s. This means that the red scarves the two girls are wearing in the photograph are a part of their girl scouts uniform and have nothing to do with the communist Pioneers, which this look is supposed to represent. The outdoorsy top with the drop waist and buttoned pockets, the straight cut and knee length skirt and the hat all point toward girl scouts uniform of previous decades.

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Girl scouts from Ohio, 1924.

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Girl scouts of America (the photo is captioned ca. 1918 but the clothes look more late 20s to me).

I don’t think girl scouts were a thing in China after 1949 anymore, though if they still existed their uniforms would have a silhouette that’s closer to 1940s or 50s fashion, with a more tailored blouse with gathered yokes and puffy sleeves, and an A line skirt.

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Girl scout catalogue 1940.

1960s

Ok so I’m a bit confused by the definition of “school uniform” here. All the previous looks were more or less for kids in school, but then this one jumps to university level. To my knowledge, I don’t think any children in school wore this uniform. The iconic red rectangular patches are also missing at the collar.

This is where my knowledge ends so I’ll stop here. Not gonna lie I lost a fair amount of braincells watching the video and reading the captions... I hope you enjoyed this post as that will make the sacrifice worth it. I thing I loved the most about this video was the background music, which made it sound quite comical and like a satirical video.

If you’re a real human person still using the default tumblr avatar, consider changing it.

why should you change it?

When you guys pop up in our notifications, most seasoned tumblr users will suspect you’re a bot and block on sight.

why do we block immediately?

tumblr has a history of bots trying to infiltrate and establish a connection to a valid, existing blog in order to populate google searches. Simply liking or reblogging a post, not just adding a scam link to it, establishes this connection. Tumblr users don’t want this to happen, especially if it’s a scammy p*rn bot. So, we often block on sight.

So now I have to reblog stuff AND change my pfp?

Well, of course that’s up to you! I just want to explain why you may have been already blocked by an artist/blogger you may have discovered recently, and how you can avoid it in the future.

Reblogging does help creators more than likes because your reblogs will show up on the dash of those that may follow you. Plus, reblogging puts that post on your own blog, and in case the original gets deleted or edited by the OP, it’ll be on your blog like that–forever (or until you delete your blog). Nice.

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