More Saiyuki: We got angst by the bucketload. And not all of it Hakkai's
Got back from a lovely weekend in NYC (pictures forthcoming). Friend who I was visiting and I went to the amazing Egyptian exhibit at the Met (Hatshepsut related).
Also watched more Saiyuki which continues to be excellent. The multi-parter where Goku reverted to his crazy, berserker self to save Sanzo was really good. But what really struck me was ( Read more... )
Also watched more Saiyuki which continues to be excellent. The multi-parter where Goku reverted to his crazy, berserker self to save Sanzo was really good. But what really struck me was ( Read more... )
That is partially why he doesn't want anyone to care about him. He doesn't think he can protect them.
That is his trigger, actually, just as Hakkai's is Kanan (and interestingly, Goku's trigger is Sanzo, though arguably, his trigger is always on and only the diadem is keeping it suppressed). That is why he goes so psycho on the demon chick: it's because she tells him he is a weak human, and because it's in the context of her killing a Sanzo. In a way, just as Hakkai is doomed to relive Kanan's death and his failure to save her, over and over, Sanzo is forced to relive the night when his father figure died at the hands of a demon and he couldn't save him. He is haunted by failure.
Sanzo is the opposite of Gojyo, who tries to protect everyone because he thinks he should.
That is a really great observation! I think the difference stems from their childhoods: Gojyo had a nasty one with an abusive mother and he probably wanted someone to protect him (his brother did it to the best of his ability, but there isn't much kids can do against a grown-up). So now he is highly motivated by that (e.g. that ep where he helped a little girl looking for her parents). His life had been ruined by non-interference, so now he MUST interfere.
But that is not so for Sanzo. Sanzo had loved and lost (a parent figure). If he didn't love Sanzo Sr (yeah, I know not his name) so much, it wouldn't have hurt so badly when he died. And he thinks he is incapable of protecting, so it's not just to protect others he keeps them at a distance, it's to protect himself as well. So he operates from that standpoint. Of course, it's futile, as even Sanzo, shut down as he is, has to feel something (he is a good person who is incredibly fucked up, not a sociopath), and he loves Goku (I think in many ways Goku reminds him of himself as a child, but also it's because Sanzo, underneath all the coating he tries to put on it, has a good heart and it was touched by Goku). Goku's yelling at him is the one who pulls him back from killing the demon woman, e.g.
Hakkai isn't the slightest bit intimidated by Sanzo and doesn't worry about offending him by saying what he sees as really going on with Sanzo
I think Hakkai acts so gentle and mature, but is in a different way, equally detached from the world, so Sanzo feels an odd kinship, or if not kinship, than understanding with him. After all, even when his Kanan-trigger kicks in, he is irrational but not unreasoning. Plus, Hakkai is hard to ruffle (he's had the freak out of the century already, after all).
Hakkai and Sanzo probably the most. Neither of them can be helped. Both are fairly irrepairably broken and always will be.
I wonder what it says about me, that they re my favorites of the four.
And you wonder what will happen to Sanzo if he does find the scripture and gets the demons back to normal, since the majority of his life and all of his life after his Master died has been spent killing
Yes, he'll be obsolete. And once demons get back to normal, he'll be faced anew with the fact that he's killed the relatives of these normal people, who are now grieving for them. I think Hakkai and Sanzo are better off reincarnating...
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I think that's part of why Hakkai and Sanzo get along. Their issues run similar. With Gojyo and Goku, their issues are not being loved. Hakkai and Sanzo's are loving and losing. No love has made Goku and Gojyo immature while losing has made Hakkai and Sanzo far more mature and world weary than they have to be (they're only 22 and 23 after all).
I think the difference stems from their childhoods
They both know the opposite ends of things. Gojyo knows about the pain of not being loved and Sanzo knows about the pain of someone loving you enough to die for you. There isn't a happy medium for the two of them. That's why Gojyo is still desperately searching for love while Sanzo is trying to get as far away from it as possible.
I think Hakkai and Sanzo are better off reincarnating...
But the funny thing is that Sanzo stubbornly does NOT want to die. The Merciful Goddess likes him so much simply because he IS such a tough SOB to kill. I think it's the fact that he's been so screwed over by life he'll be damned if he rolls over and takes it. Hakkai isn't quite that determined. Sanzo isn't going to die easy. Funny how that is.
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Saiyuki seems to disprove the old adage of 'better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.' Because Goku and Gojyo, who suffer from lack of love, are a lot more functional than Sanzo and Hakkai, who've had a great love and lost it. Because a lack of love can be remedied by finding love (which is why Goku sticks so desperately to Sanzo), but Sanzo and Hakkai aren't really healable.
And of course, Gojyo and Sanzo are at the extremes, but in some ways, these extremes are forced on them by the times. Gojyo's relationships are in some ways, most mundane. His issues are not dependent on the demon shift. Unfortunately, in any society, no matter how well-regulated and peaceful, some children will be abused. But it's different for Hakkai and Sanzo. If a society was peaceful and law-obiding, Kanan wouldn't have been given to Maio and Sanzo's father wouldn't have been killed by demons. Though of course, even in a society that doesn't suffer from demons losing it, there is still no guarantee for either of these. Not all demons are good, even in their normal state, not more than all people are good, so Kanan could have still been given to Maio. And even with Sanzo's father, there are some nasty beings out there, and he still could have gotten killed. But of course, if it wasn't for the demons going crazy, the chances of either of these events might have been smaller.
There is a certain mundaneness about evil in the show, one of the many reasons I really like Saiyuki. It's not a show I am marathonning (for one, it's too bloody long and for another it's not arced enough), but it's a show I really like watching.
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They might have been had their issues and situations not gone so spectacularly wrong. Hakkai already had issues to begin with (being raised in an orphanage, anger issues) and so did Sanzo (abandonment, bullying). And it wasn't just like Kanan was accidentally shot in a drive by or something, she killed herself in the most disturbing way possible in front of Hakkai. The Kamiya Sanzo didn't just die in his sleep, he died in Sanzo's arms after being impaled. Had what happened been toned down for either of them, they might have turned out more normal. Sad, but at least fixable.
And maybe the point is not to invest all of your love into one person. After Kanan and the Kamiya Sanzo are killed, Hakkai and Sanzo have no one else. They invested everything in one person and when that person died, they were irrepairably damaged. Even Goku, who has so much invested in Sanzo, at least still has Hakkai and Gojyo if something happens. Gojyo still has Dokugakuji, the other guys and all the strays he's saved.
I'm still going to warn you that the Himura arc makes me want to pull my hair out. It's not so much Himura himself, since I actually like Himura as a character, just the way the whole thing is done. You can skip that arc and go to Reload too without missing anything if you get desperate.
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And maybe the point is not to invest all of your love into one person. After Kanan and the Kamiya Sanzo are killed, Hakkai and Sanzo have no one else. They invested everything in one person and when that person died, they were irrepairably damaged.
But then of course, neither of them had much of a choice. It's not as if they had a smorgarbord of potential people to love and turned up their noses. They are both orphans who have no one, so have no one to fall back on. If Kanan and Hakkai had kids by the time they died, or if Sanzo was older when Kamia died and so branched out more into being with other people, it might have been different (though I think, due to the 'nobody wants you' feeling associated with being an orphan, it must have been hard for them to connect, especially for someone like Sanzo who is really looked down on and who was young and prickly). But they never had a chance. And of course, the horrific nature of the deaths also has a lot to do with it.
I don't think finding other people to love (having more than one person) would have necessarily saved them, though. After all, Sanzo now loves Goku and I think Hakkai cares for the other three. But the loss of someone so important to them scarred them forever,
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