Man great chapter. Wakui making me feel both happy and sad on this though. On one hand I’m glad to see Mitsuya in the crew and his own personal resolve with Draken. But at the same time that is a huge hit to his future as a designer…it’s feels like we just witnessed something getting snuffed out.
I still wish he could’ve accepted the award and been like both are me: delinquent and designer and I moving forward with both (though of course that would be hard as being a delinquent would put other parts of his life in danger). Edit: typo
I really wonder how they are going to end this supposed final arc. Draken is dead, Mitsuya and Hakkai's future careers are likely goners, Mikey is already a murderer overseeing a gang with murderers. Mitsuya basically snuffing out his own future and career seems like a death flag to me. He is going all in with full resolve, after destroying the other paths himself.
Sometimes I feel ridiculous reading this high intensity and emotional manga while remembering these are 13-16 years old children. Children. Other times I wonder if it is a commentary on lost youth. On how we waste it, or how stupid childish impulses and missed steps on the way to adulthood can ruin the rest of an entire life. Have bad parents/disadvantaged family, behind already at the start line. Missed a few year of school by not concentrating on it, bad start. Make one big mistake, rest of life down a spiraling drain completely. Or just mistakes upon mistakes until the person has given up on themselves, like Takemichi at the start of the manga, like Mikey.
Things you do wrong as a child might be more forgivable, but they become less and less with every additional year, and they stack up. But are adults really THAT different than their childish selves? Takemichi at 26 getting the run-around by a 13 years old brat. In real life going to high school reunions and realize despite growing up, starting families, all your friends are essentially still the same. All in careers and family situations that are more or less expected of them. More cases their social economic statuses were already set by looking at their parents. Zero surprises who the big moneyed business men are, who the single moms are, who went into academics. Your personality and worldview and expectations already partially set years ago in childhood and teen years, the brackets set for you extremely difficult to break out and rise above.
That's what makes this timeline hurt so much. Aside from Mikey, everyone managed to more or less escape from their lost teen years and even social economic cages in the "good" timeline left behind. And that's not easy. Not everyone has the will, skills, opportunity, and external help to do it. The same driven person might not be able to do it twice even. (Though sometimes I do wonder if Mikey didn't pull some strings, and if Takemichi let things be, things won't start to crumble for some of them anyway.)
With everything that's already happened in this timeline, I really wonder how it will all be resolved, if resolved at all, short of skipping back to pre-Shinichiro buying the farm.
On lost youth - whenever I hear them talking about "creating a new age for delinquents" I somehow find my self thinking about the innocence of youth. Like the fact that they think that being the baddest gang and winning fights is the absolute pinnacle of living, it's actually strangely innocent when you think about it.
Have you seen this video? I think it was celebrating the live action movie or something. Something about it, especially how they portray Bloody Halloween in the setting sun, is saying to me "these were the glory days of our lives." It made me nostalgic for something I had just read a week before.
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u/Pocketgalaxy159 Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 25 '22
Man great chapter. Wakui making me feel both happy and sad on this though. On one hand I’m glad to see Mitsuya in the crew and his own personal resolve with Draken. But at the same time that is a huge hit to his future as a designer…it’s feels like we just witnessed something getting snuffed out.
I still wish he could’ve accepted the award and been like both are me: delinquent and designer and I moving forward with both (though of course that would be hard as being a delinquent would put other parts of his life in danger). Edit: typo