Four Hundred Years of Angst: Takaya and Naoe - Mirage of Blaze
Title: Four Hundred Years of Angst: Takaya and Naoe - Mirage of Blaze
Author: snaphappy_fma
E-mail: snaphappy[underscore]fma[at]yahoo[dot]com
Fandom: Mirage of Blaze
Pairing: Takaya and Naoe
Disclaimer: Mirage of Blaze was written by Mizuna Kuwabara; I am not making any money from this.
Warnings: Spoilers for the entire anime series and OVA
Notes: This essay only covers the anime, not the novels or the manga. I think of the anime series along with the OVA as being its own canon universe, in a sense, since most non-Japanese-fluent fans aren’t able to read the 40 or so novels-which haven’t been licensed in the U.S. yet (and they unfortunately may never be). That said-I’ve read some of the novel translations and highly recommend them if you want to get deeper into the Mirage of Blaze universe.
All dialogue is taken from the English subs to the Japanese audio track in the DVDs.
Sorry for any weird formatting - I’m not the most format-savvy person ;)
Mirage of Blaze is a 13-episode anime series and 3-episode OVA with a canon yaoi relationship at its heart.
The pairing may be easy to spot, but nothing else about it is easy or obvious.
The pairing is between Takaya Ougi and Nobutsuna Naoe-but it is also between Lord Kagetora Uesugi and Nobutsuna Naoe.
Takaya Ougi
At the start of the series, Takaya Ougi believes himself to be just another 17-year-old high school student in present-day Matsumoto, Japan. He has a tough, juvenile-delinquent exterior; is quick to anger and is generally anti-social. Both parents are for some reason absent, leaving Takaya to look after his younger sister Miya on his own.
With his lean, angular face, and unruly black hair frequently falling into his eyes, Takaya is a fairly attractive late-teenage boy. Slender in physique, he rides a motorcycle and moves with easy physical self-confidence.
Nobutsuna Naoe
Naoe is a handsome man in his late twenties. Tall, lanky but with a powerful build, his courteous manner masks an inner storm of contradicting emotions-and one overriding obsession: Kagetora Uesugi… who is now in possession of the body of… Takaya Ougi.
The Story Begins…
Takaya and Naoe first meet when Naoe comes to Matsumoto to prevent Takaya’s friend Yuzuru from being possessed by the spirit of feudal warlord Shingen Takeda. Naoe tells Takaya that ancient warlords and their samurai soldiers are alive as vengeful spirits in the “Feudal Underworld,” a spirit realm which co-exists alongside and within modern-day Japan. These are the Possessors: warriors who originally lived four hundred years ago, who now take possession of the bodies of modern-day people in order to continue their mission. Naoe further informs Takaya that he (Takaya) is actually Lord Kagetora Uesugi, the adopted son of warlord Kenshin Uesugi and the leader of Kenshin’s team of exorcists who send spirits to the other side.
Naoe himself is one of Kenshin Uesugi’s vassals, commanded by Kenshin-kou to protect whomever Kagetora Uesugi possesses. He and Takaya-as Kagetora-have been exorcising vengeful spirits together for the past four hundred years.
Naturally Takaya doesn’t believe any of this-until he sees Naoe exorcise the spirit of a long-dead samurai before his eyes.
By the end of the first storyline we see Takaya using his powers as Kagetora for the first time: he forms a protective energy shield and, with Naoe, removes the spirit of Takeda from Yuzuru’s body. But he still denies that he is Kagetora: “I’m Takaya Ougi-I’m nobody else.”
The Beginnings of the Ship
At first, Takaya’s continuing disavowal that he is Kagetora understandably dominates the relationship between he and Naoe. It’s just too much for Takaya to wrap his head around, even after he demonstrates that he can use Kagetora’s powers.
We see Takaya slowly beginning to accept that he is Kagetora-followed by his guilt over possessing a body that doesn’t belong to him. Later, he tells Yuzuru of his guilt over robbing Miya of her actual, real brother.
Takaya has a conscience-he can feel compassion for others, and he can feel guilt. For these and other reasons I’ll explain below, I think the best chance for these two men to succeed in a relationship is if Kagetora allows the part of himself that is Takaya to survive: for it is that part of him that is the most human and vulnerable.
But it is also the part that Naoe can so easily destroy.
“I Am Not Just a Convenient Protector”
At first, it’s like a honeymoon period for Naoe with Kagetora. Naoe has been in the power position in the relationship from the moment he and Takaya met: he’s been the one with knowledge of the past-their past-and the still-amnesiac younger man has had to look to him for everything with regard to his newly-found, or newly-remembered identity.
Naoe actually has the opportunity of his life with this version of Kagetora. Takaya may be a punk, but he’s also a vulnerable 17-year-old who is hurting from the lack of a solid male role model in his life. By treating Takaya with consideration and care, Naoe has established the beginnings of a true friendship with this new vessel for Kagetora, unfettered by the hostilities of the past.
For Takaya, Naoe must seem like an ideal older brother: mature, confident, self-assured, attentive to him and always, always protective. Takaya is slow to trust; but the start of episode 7 finds him relaxing with Naoe as they drive around Japan exorcising vengeful spirits together.
In episode 7, however, everything blows apart.
Naoe’s behavior becomes strangely distant. Instead of his usual near-obsessive attentiveness to Takaya, Naoe stares out to sea, seemingly in his own world, only listening to Takaya with one ear and responding to Takaya’s rambling chatter with unexpectedly personal statements.
Takaya himself is changing-he is beginning to get flash-memories of Kagetora’s life. As they stop to look at the ocean, Naoe muses on life as a Possessor:
Naoe: If you think about it, Possessors are like mirages… We nestle up against other beings… An existence that’s uncertain, unstable and easily altered.
That night Takaya dreams of a woman named Minako who commits suicide. He asks Naoe who “Minako” is upon awakening, and gets a response he didn’t expect:
Naoe: You cannot blame me… You’re misunderstanding… I am not just a convenient protector! Nor am I your mentor!
He stalks a shocked Takaya, attempts to kiss him and is rebuffed. Naoe shoves Takaya against the wall, easily overpowering him and holding him there. He narrows his eyes and brings his face close to Takaya’s. It is unclear what he sees in Takaya’s eyes-his vulnerability as Takaya perhaps, instead of Kagetora’s rejection-but Naoe releases the younger man, who then hits him and runs out of the room.
Takaya’s only reaction is sheer dumbfounded shock. As the episode concludes, Takaya gazes at the ocean and wonders, What happened between Naoe and I?
The answer to that began four hundred years ago; but more specifically it relates to an incident from thirty years before.
Thirty Years Before
Why has Takaya repressed his memories of Kagetora; or more accurately, why has Kagetora repressed his own memories of himself?
Thirty years before, in a battle with warlord Nobunaga Oda, Kagetora had entrusted his lover Minako to Naoe’s care, to keep her safe. Naoe instead-out of jealousy and anger-raped Minako, because Minako had the love of the one whose love he desired. When Oda destroyed Kagetora’s body, Naoe exorcised Minako’s soul (basically killing her) and placed Kagetora’s soul inside her body. Once there, Kagetora discovered Naoe’s rape of his lover and vowed to never forgive him. He then-in Minako’s body-committed suicide.
So Kagetora’s possession of Takaya Ougi’s body, while suppressing his memories as Kagetora, can be seen as a survival mechanism undertaken by Kagetora in order to keep reincarnating to fulfill his mission. But it was at the expense of not only the real Takaya Ougi-who got ousted out of existence-but also of the Takaya we know as an actual independently-existing person… who is left to wonder who the hell he really is.
“I’m Only a Substitute to Him”
Episode 8 begins the final storyline of the original series, a complicated story involving several of the warring clans and numerous characters.
Basically-in a nutshell-Kagetora was originally born into the Hojo clan, but was sent as a hostage to first the Takeda clan and then to the Uesugi clan, which later adopted him as their own. In the final storyline Ujimasa Hojo, the eldest Hojo son, schemes to make the Hojo the most powerful clan in the Feudal Underworld by duping kind middle brother Ujiteru into trapping their youngest brother Kagetora inside the Tsutsuga Mirror, a soul-holding instrument. Ujimasa’s ultimate plan is to sacrifice Kagetora’s soul and turn it into an enormous energy weapon to use against the other clans.
At the start of episode 8, Takaya and Naoe are still separated. Naoe begins investigating a mystery which initially seems unrelated to his work with the Uesugi clan; Takaya wanders through his summer days as if in a trance.
It is at this point when one of Kagetora’s other vassals, Nagahide, loses his temper with Takaya after Takaya’s anger puts an innocent person in danger; knowing the real cause of Takaya’s acting-out (the incident with Naoe), Nagahide lets loose on him:
Nagahide: It was only a matter of time that this would happen… You’re the one who made Naoe go insane, over the past four hundred years!…You think you didn’t do anything? If you actually let him do what he wants to do… you’ll know exactly how sinful and selfish you are!
His last statement seems unnecessarily harsh, even outlandishly so, but consider the source. To this point in the story we’ve seen Nagahide be rude and we’ve seen him play with people’s heads, but we’ve never known him to tell an actual untruth before. The fact that Takaya runs out of the room after this last statement implies that the part of him that is Kagetora knows this to be true.
Kagetora hasn’t been a saint towards Naoe, either.
Takaya confesses his feelings about Naoe in a rambling, broken monologue to brother Ujiteru:
Takaya: I was just happy that he was looking out for me… He’s like wings on a big bird, wrapping them around me to protect me… He’s seeing Kagetora in me, and I’m only a substitute to him! He doesn’t understand my emptiness… I’m so scared about him abandoning me. I don’t understand him at all….
For the first time, we see Takaya’s desire to have Naoe see and relate to him, not Kagetora, but Takaya, the vulnerable teen. His attraction to Naoe is strong but so far platonic in nature: although the other man disavowed it, Takaya did indeed think of Naoe as his protector and his mentor, and his sense of loss at the older man’s betrayal has completely thrown him off-balance.
Kagetora Emerges
Naoe discovers that Kagetora has been trapped inside the Tsutsuga Mirror and hurries to where Ujiteru Hojo is holding Takaya’s soulless body.
As Naoe gazes at Takaya’s lifeless form, Kagetora’s spirit (or possibly only a figment of Naoe’s desperate mind) emerges and rises in ghostly form to confront Naoe.
(This picture perfectly illustrates their relationship: Lord Kagetora is above Naoe, unreachable, ephemeral, almost more of a concept than a person; Naoe is the vassal below, forever looking up at what he desires but cannot possess.)
Naoe expresses regret over what he did to Minako. Kagetora-or Naoe’s vision of same-is having none of it:
Kagetora: Did you love Minako?
Naoe: No, the one I loved was… The one who I truly wanted was…
Kagetora: Do you loathe me? You want me to submit to you, don’t you?
Naoe: You…
Kagetora: I’ll never forgive you for the rest of eternity.
Naoe: Yes, that’s your favorite trick… You’ll never let me have you, yet you won’t let go of these chains!
Kagetora: But it was you who wanted these chains…
Naoe: This isn’t love… You just want me to submit to you after I’ve served you for the past 400 years…
This is Kagetora in full, without a hint of Takaya about him: his voice is light and cruel, and he wields his control over Naoe like a knife to the throat.
Lord Kagetora, if we are to believe this is really him, has been quite the bastard to Naoe. Clearly Naoe hasn’t been a saint either, but we see in this scene how powerless he has felt for four hundred years.
The two men both use the term “submit” to each other, accusingly. This is the heart of it: why they cannot fully connect and yet cannot let go of one another. Neither can bend enough to give, to allow in the ways that a true relationship requires. For them, it’s war: one loses (“submits”), the other wins. And thus, stalemate-for 400 years.
The Ship: Any Hope?
Imagine a really, really bad relationship - now imagine one stretched out over four hundred years. A few hundred years of violence, anger, guilt, remorse, recriminations and despair, and seppuku begins to look like an attractive alternative.
Can these two men ever really get together?
Actually, there aren’t two men involved here-there are three: Kagetora, Naoe, and Takaya. Lord Kagetora Uesugi, powerful exorcist and apparent player of head games with his vassal Naoe. Naoe the desperate retainer with centuries of built-up longing and resentment. And finally Takaya, the vulnerable modern teenager.
The scary thing is that, from one point of view, it can be said that Takaya doesn’t even exist. He is arguably just a psychological construct, a created identity of Kagetora’s, only real to the extent that Kagetora needed him for survival in his latest incarnation. Whether Takaya actually has a separate existence apart from Kagetora depends on whether one believes that the soul and the persona are two different entities.
In other words… If Kagetora’s soul and persona are one and the same, then Takaya can’t exist. Once Takaya regains his Kagetora memories from being trapped in the Tsutsuga Mirror, his sense of himself as “Takaya” will have to be let go of, as he has now remembered his “true” self.
On the other hand… If soul and persona-or personal identity, personality for lack of a better term-are seen as being two separate things, then Takaya does exist as a separate personality and his thoughts, actions, and memories as Takaya Ougi are as valid as mine are of being me, and yours are of being you.
A third possible interpretation is that the persona known as Takaya Ougi is a refinement of Kagetora’s personality, a stage of development in Kagetora’s long life. We all change as we go through life-so who is the “we” or the “I” who changes? Is it our soul that is being refined? Or is it just our personality changing?
One thing is clear: whoever or whatever Takaya is, it is Kagetora whom Naoe is and has been obsessed with, and not Takaya.
Can Naoe and Takaya have a relationship?
If Naoe can see beyond Takaya as being merely Kagetora’s vessel… and if Takaya can acknowledge that his feelings for Naoe are sexual as well as platonic…
Then maybe… just maybe… they may be able to join with each other in this lifetime.
Because Takaya is open to Naoe in a way that Kagetora has never been, and could never be (due to the difference in their ranks). Because Naoe is intelligent enough to recognize Takaya as being some part of Kagetora who, due to the amnesia, he can get a fresh start with. Takaya is rough around the edges, but he has the capacity to care and is willing to see Naoe as an equal, not as an inferior he can control and torture emotionally.
But Naoe also must change. He has to do one of the hardest things in life one can ever do-let go of his bitterness over the past… and open himself to a new beginning.
If I Become Kagetora…
The final scene of the last episode is the most romantic TakayaxNaoe scene in the whole series.
After his release from the Tsutsuga Mirror, Kagetora has held sway over Takaya: issuing orders, fighting the final fight against Ujimasa Hojo. But in the last scene, standing with Naoe at the end of a dock with a shimmering orange sunset over Lake Hakone in the background, a subdued and emotional Takaya finally re-emerges.
Naoe gives his report, then turns to leave. Takaya calls him back, and asks why Naoe released him from the Tsutsuga Mirror.
Naoe replies that he’s not really sure-but that he knows one thing: he couldn’t bring himself to let Takaya die.
Naoe protectively puts his jacket over Takaya’s t-shirted shoulders, tells him that he loves him, then finally takes his leave.
Takaya holds Naoe’s jacket collar to his face, breathing in Naoe’s skin scent; a sure sign of infatuation-and sexual attraction-and thinks:
“If I become Kagetora completely… will I earn the right to think about him?”
For the first time, Takaya acknowledges his attraction to Naoe as a physical and sexual thing, a desire to be with Naoe in a deeper way. But-as an uncertain seventeen-year-old boy-he’s not even sure he has the right to think about Naoe in that way.
The series thus ends with the two men poised on the edge of a possible new beginning together.
(If only it had ended that way…)
Mirage of Blaze: Rebels of the River’s Edge
Mirage of Blaze: Rebels of the River’s Edge is the three-episode OVA to the original series.
The storyline involves Haruie, another of Kagetora’s retainers, and her quest to find her lover from the past. The real focus remains, of course, on Takaya/Kagetora and Naoe and the continuing twists and turns of their relationship.
The beginning of the OVA sees Naoe acting on his own and coming across Takaya unexpectedly in Kyoto. This leads to what is universally known in the fandom as “the hotel scene,” the most explicit scene in the animeverse.
After provoking Takaya into a physical confrontation, Naoe manhandles the teen into his hotel room. He removes his tie and casually tells Takaya that he wants to “make it” with him. Takaya resists but as before, is easily overpowered by Naoe:
Though he dominates Takaya/Kagetora physically, Naoe is losing it emotionally:
Naoe: Why did it have to be me? If it was someone other than me, that person wouldn’t have felt this much pain in loving you… I detest you. I want to break it off. I want to win over you. I don’t want to lose you…
Takaya/Kagetora sees tears on Naoe’s face. Then whispers, “Naoe…” For one moment, it all hangs in the balance: Naoe is vulnerable, and Takaya, despite how he’s been treated by Naoe up to this point, is open to him. Unfortunately, Naoe then chooses to throw Takaya down on the bed and begin his rape attempt in earnest. As Takaya struggles, he (or rather Kagetora) recalls being gang-raped by soldiers, a chilling memory that causes him to scream, which stops Naoe cold.
The final scene takes place in the hotel parking lot. Under a cold Kyoto night sky, Takaya (in full Kagetora mode) tells Naoe that:
… If you don’t want to be called a loser, then try to beat me. If you can beat me, then that is the day you can have me.
Earlier, Takaya had told Naoe that their relationship wasn’t about “winners or losers”; to which Naoe then replied, “That’s the only relationship we can have.”
So the OVA ends with another stalemate, or what might even be considered an ending between the men, at least as far as the animeverse is concerned.
But in a relationship that has already lasted for four hundred years of angst-who’s to say?
Fan Fiction - Personal Favorites
The Echo of Memories Unforgotten by Sakurazukamori 6 http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2966649/1/The_Echo_of_Memories_Unforgotten
Also on AFF, known there as “Dreamscape.”
Long multi-chapter story with lots of clashes and passion between Takaya and Naoe.
The Resurrection of Naoe Nobutsuna by Roo
http://bastmoon.spyderrealm.com//Resurrection1.html
Takaya bonds with Naoe, when Naoe is gravely injured.
Correspondence by Tammaiya
http://insaneidiot.livejournal.com/38665.html#cutid1
It all began when they ran out of butter. Very funny… and hot.
Other Resources
Live Journal Communities:
mirageofblaze
mirage_trans
Fanfic Lists:
http://del.icio.us/Lady_Nara
http://www.fanfiction.net/anime/Mirage_of_Blaze
Translation Sites:
http://www.asphodelshaven.com
http://www.petronia.net
Mirage of Blaze’s unforgettable theme music by Koichiro Kameyama, “Sengoku Zan’ei Yori,” can be heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qqNKjsV5BM