parisiansulfur:

lola1b:

parisiansulfur:

I’m with you 100%, and I’d add that we should keep in one that Togashi writes a lot of fucked up relationships. Had he been able to continue, maybe we would have seen more.

Recent I’ve come to a conclusion that Mukuro was never meant to be Hiei’s love interest, but an opportunity for family, based on framing.

Yuusuke left Keiko to go to Raizen. He went from family to family. He went from someone who knew him better than anyone else, to someone who knew him in a way no one else could. Yuusuke’s choice to return to Keiko (not gonna talk about what the fuck that was) was him choosing one family, one mode of being very another

Kurama went from family to family as well. He left Shiori, his mother who knew him in facet only, to Yomi, who knew him in facet only. He had to choose which Kurama he wanted to be by the end: son or… whatever Yomi wanted him to be. 🐐🗯 There’s other, smaller parallels as well, of hiding, of sons, of choices made in the past coming to relevance in the present. I wish we could have seen Togashi at his best here.

The we get to Hiei. It’s weird to layer Hiei’s leaving Yukina with Mukuro being a love interest in this contextualization. Hiei told Yukina to stop looking for him, that he was dead, to move on with her life without him. Then he goes to Mukuro and tries to die. Hiei doesn’t want Yukina to know him, because she will see what a monster he is and turn from him like the rest of the koorime (I guess). Hiei doesn’t have a choice with Mukuro: she takes everything anyway. Yukina has wanted Hiei to come to her; Mukuro drags him, dying and tired. Both women hold hi mother’s stone. Both women need him to be something, a little more than what he is, but unlike Yukina, content to wait, Mukuro takes it by force.

Which them to me is the great tragedy of the Three Kings. It’s like the Gift of the Magi, but worse.

Yuusuke is offered family and belonging and dynasty, a place he genuinely belongs that cannot be taken from him, by Raizen, who dies.

Kurama is offered a chance to reconcile his past self with his current self, absolution and moving forward, but at the cost of his human mother, in the arms of someone who has no qualms in hurting the most important thing in Kurama’s life.

And Hiei is offered family and the rare gift of being seen and known and still loved, but it’s without consent, AGAIN. There’s a parallel to the fact that Mukuro stole Hiei’s memories, just as she withheld the stone, and the koorime who gave the stone and threw him away.

In the end, Hiei serves Mukuro as yet another abstract-in-flesh. Does Yukina know Hiei? She was at the Tournament. She saw. She’s heard shit, from the koorime and other demons at the Tournament, but she was also around the others, who undoubtedly spoke in Hiei’s defense. We know Yukina wants her brother. But does she want Hiei?

And Mukuro wants Hiei, her twin in other ways. She doesn’t want Hiei healed or recovered. She doesn’t want him to have the peace of the stone in his early years. She literally tortures him, to put him in a confused mental state, then offers him a choice: me or death. He chooses death, and she refused him again.

Perhaps my reading is off or it’s been too long, but I agree with this about 90%. Yes, Mukuro did break him and mentally manipulate him. And that’s fucked. But being they are all evil little gremlin demons, I think we can give leeway’s here and there to more evil acts.

For me, it always felt like Mukuro, in some weird and twisted way, helped Hiei face himself. She stripped him to the core with torture, pushed him to the very breaking point, and when he wouldn’t break, reached in to get more.

And the end result? Hiei seemed… more stable. Happier, even. He ends the series casually chilling with Mukuro. I don’t think, or at least I’ve never read it to be, a victim staying in their captor’s clutches, as much as Hiei realizing that Mukuro has helped him.

I know it’s weird and twisted. But bear with me while I give this over the top example. Someone wanting to die, and another person, instead of coddling or defending, something the person is used to, comes in and shows them pain and suffering, the first person realizes, shit, this isn’t what I wanted, this isn’t what I need! I want to go back, I want to do better!

I don’t know. For me, it always felt like it was an insanely tough love sort of situation. Break him, to show him his most vulnerable state, so he can be finally faced with what his life is and decide what to do next. She forces him to look at himself.

In their fight, Hiei repays that by helping her overcome some of her issues with the manacles around her wrists. Again through violence. Again through pain. They both drag each other out from pain through a different pain. I like that. Don’t know why, but that speaks to me in a different way.

Granted, I haven’t seen the show in nearly a year, but I had seen it about …. dozen? 15? enough times, and without fandom interpretation or influence, so the interpretation of what I was seeing and hearing was wholly mine and that’s how I always viewed it.

As for the romance… I 100% agree that I don’t think she was really meant to be a love interest so much as Togashi maybe was somehow pressured and decided to just add a woman in there to pair with Hiei even though he didn’t feel it’ll work. Because let’s be real, there is zero sexual and romantic chemistry there. To me, they’re more like friends or… to continue Paris’ line of reasoning which I Fucking love yes parrarells are my fucking weakness siblings.

If people pair them together, I honestly do think it’s only because she is a woman… that said, for this kurahi trash, if I had to choose an unpaired character other than Kurama, Mukuro could possibly work.

Great commentary, @lola1b, as usual LOL

I think I would only add that Hiei being happy with Mukuro, staying by her side and getting her a birthday present in the manga, only kind of reinforces for me the idea that Hiei doesn’t believe he deserves better. He thinks this is the family he deserves, rightfully or not. He thinks Mukuro is the only person who can understand him, rightfully or not. He believes he belongs with someone like her, rightfully or not.

I would compare this scene to scenes of earlier in the series: Kurama inviting Hiei to play cards with them at the Tournament, Kurama advising Hiei to be careful of Mukuro, Yukina feeling Hiei her brother would probably say what he just had said. The people around Hiei offer him something more peaceful, more loving and gentle, yet Hiei choose to stay with Mukuro.

Make of that what your will. For me, it means that Hiei still believes himself worthless, even after all else.