tsutsumi-kaina: The Illusion of Choice and False Liberation: Tomura’s (Fake) Yellow Bric
tsutsumi-kaina: The Illusion of Choice and False Liberation: Tomura’s (Fake) Yellow Brick Road Let’s talk Tomura and agency– or rather, his lack of it. To preface: This is a case where a lack of agency is not necessarily a bad thing or an example of bad writing– Tomura’s lack of agency does not stem from a lack of care/consideration for his character and story. It’s a deliberate narrative choice, and something that is also clearly being set up for Tomura to overcome. Everything about chapter 270 in particular seems designed to make us question just how much agency Tomura actually has, how much of what he is doing is an actual choice– from there only being one path available, to that path having the same pattern as the concrete that AFO “found” Tenko lying on as a child, to Tomura being coded as a child multiple times (and continuing to be coded as a child compared to AFO even after he reverts back to his adult form), to the use of AFO’s stylized “glitchy” darkness during several key moments. The devil is in Hori’s painstaking, deliberate details– And that devil’s name is AFO. Dissecting the above images, we get the uncanny sense that AFO is an invader even before he reveals what his true intentions are. AFO’s pitch-black darkness is shown encroaching upon Tomura’s inner world– an inner world that is depicted as still being full of light and little reminders of the love that’s still in him, despite also being filled with the crumbling representation of his trauma. Tomura is depicted as small and frail in comparison to AFO’s massive frame. AFO holds his arms wide open in a supposedly all-accepting embrace, but the last panel just gives the impression that he is swallowing Tomura whole. And most tellingly– Tomura’s singular, crumbling path completely ends with AFO, rather than continuing onward. A dead end fate. Not to keep beating the “AFO totally gave Tomura Decay” theory over people’s heads but *gestures wildly* come onnnnnn If we view that stylized, glitchy darkness as evidence of AFO’s presence, the above panels become retroactively horrifying. AFO is present at both ends of Tomura’s existence, both at the end and the beginning. Everything– his origin and his ending– has been orchestrated from the get go. And not to open up a can of worms with age-old religious arguments (though Hori is very much inviting comparisons with all of Tomura’s explicit religious imagery lmao), but it brings the whole “free-will paradox” to mind– if god (read: AFO) grants free will, but god (read: AFO) is also all knowing and has a plan for everyone that they ultimately end up following no matter what they do, then free will is an illusion. Moving on– I also find it interesting how the way Kotaro splits apart in the second image makes it look like he’s been struck to pieces from behind, rather than from Tenko’s touch alone. The way the darkness/AFO’s presence in this scene intensifies (with it being noticeably absent during Tomura’s scenes with Hana and Nao) and its sharp angling gives the impression that it’s slicing right through him– and it almost resembles AFO’s use of the “rivet stab” quirk. This time with emphasis! AFO is the root of both Kotaro and Tomura’s suffering, even if AFO has never antagonized Kotaro directly– and we see that his dark presence looms over this father-son relationship and becomes synonymous with Kotaro at his absolute worst. Naturally this does not excuse Kotaro’s abuse of Tenko, but nevertheless, AFO’s influence is depicted as casting a literal shadow over all their interactions in Tomura’s inner world for a reason. My thoughts are more than a little messy, but ultimately what I’m trying to get at here is this: that the first “illusion of choice” was Tenko’s “choice” to kill his father. And it’s by far the most insidious of AFO’s illusions, because it firmly sets Tomura into a mindset and onto a path that he is ultimately unable to break free from on his own– the idea that he is inherently evil because he supposedly ““wanted”” to kill his father. Читать дальше -- source link