Bad Friends, Better Family: Sanzo and Gojyo

[lady_ganesh]

So this is what happens when I have four three stories to write, I start doing essays in a fandom I don't have anything due for. Long possibly rambly meta about Gojyo and Sanzo follows. Pictures, including terrible MS paint illustrations. Y'all been warned

Comments

[indelicateink]

Wow, this is very interesting! I certainly hadn't thought of all these parallels before. (Also you are a genius to make the hurt-arm connection!)

Awww, you are right: they do okay as siblings. ♥

(I always forget Gojyo had three years with his parents. I will never stop wanting KM to tell us the stories of Hakkai's and Sanzo's and Gojyo's parents...)

[lady_ganesh]

It's LONG anyway, lol. (It was RIGHT THERE, I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before.)

I just love every conceivable ikkou pairing, I think. (And hey, incest is canon, so for the shippers....)

Yes. Even just their faces!

[viridian5]

I felt that the first series gave Sanzo an emotional development arc, only to have Reload spend most of the time ignoring it.

[lady_ganesh]

I don't really look at it that way. He had to accept at the end of Saiyuki that he was part of a team; in Reload he had to face the fact that it was more than just 'having the team around,' it was the emotional connections to the others that keep him grounded.

[viridian5]

Aside from some moments in "Snowdrop" and "Even a Worm," I felt that he'd re-distanced himself from the others.

[lawless523]

I felt the same way when I read Reload, but after thinking about it, I realized that it's consistent with Sanzo's repression and denial. With him, it's two steps forward, one step back, until he reaches a new stage of enlightenment something like what lady_ganesh describes.

[wordsofastory]

Excellent post! I really like your analysis.

I need to get caught up with the latest chapters; I've been out of the loop.

[lady_ganesh]

Do you have saiyuki_manga friended? They are lifesavers, you can catch up fast.

It's nice to have you around more again. :D

[theemdash]

YES.

[lady_ganesh]

::bows::

[red_squared]

This meta is good and you should feel good.

Another point of comparison for these two is that both of them leave the ikkou -- 5 at the end of Saiyuki, and 3 at the end of Reload.

...

But that's as far as I get! What it actually might mean will need on wait or another day... (or another person >:D)

[lady_ganesh]

Yeah, that...could be a book, lol. Because they left for such different reasons, and Gojyo's the only one who really can leave, what with Sanzo being technically responsible for Hakkai and Goku (not that that stopped him, lol).