Hi!

After more than a year writing analyses on anything that went on my mind regarding the fandoms of The Case Study of Vamitas and Bungou Stray Dogs, I've recently decided to try my hand with a new project, the Tentative Analyses.

It will be a series of analyses, chapter-by-chapter and episode-by-episode, trying to examine in detail a few series of choice amongst my favorites, to get a look to what makes them work - or conversely, what they have issues with, in terms of story structure, characters, and handling of thematics, along with analysis of symbolism and some occasional trivia.

The current subjects of analyses will be:

I hope to make something that will amuse and interest you.

If you liked my writing, I'd be immensely grateful if you considered supporting me on ko-fi, where I also have some of my old-style analyses on more general aspects of stories and characters.

Thank you for reading so far, I hope you find the contents of this page of your liking!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

We meet a new character: Nina Fortner. A smart, beautiful, strong girl living her best life between college, clubs, and family. Only problem: she can't remember anything before the age of ten and has panic attacks when she hears about murdered family. And she's starting to receive some weird emails somewhere between romantic and creepy. And her counselor thinkd her brightness might hide a 'great darkness' underneath.

But this chapter also has a little Tenma; namely, he is looking for another of Johan's identities, finding out that at the age of fourteen he was living as 'Michael' in another city.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

This is the first time the narration really leaves Tenma to focus on someone who has appearently nothing to do with him, without it being explained by the end of the chapter; this works in building interest and suspence for Nina.

CHARACTERS

Nina: a very bright young woman, cheerful and smiling, so energic she can keep up with college, sport and part-time job without breaking a sweat. She is nice and loving to her parents and peers. She also can't remember anything prior to when she was ten, something nobody appears to think as strange.

Tenma: he is conducting a personal investogation on Johan, even if he is doubtful about his actual possibility of succeeding and seriously tempted to drop everything.

THEMES

Identity is a big one once again, as seenwith both Nina and Johan.

For the former, there is all the speech her counselor does: if one loses sight of their dreams and anxieties about the future, they forget who they really are. Or maybe we never know it for our entire lives ... well, what's important is to face the future.

To this, Nina happily answers that she wants to become a prosecutor.

And then there is Johan, or Michael. Already the multiple names are a good start; then the people Tenma interview are all a chorus of 'nice kid, but didn't stand out. I don't remember anything about him'.

The identity of Johan wasn't only vague in matters of name; if what gives you an identity is how you are perceived by others, then Johan didn't have one.

SYMBOLISM

• Costumes: ties in to the theme of identity, dressing up as someone or something else. Nina mentions that she would have loved to do that as a child, and her parents rush to assure her that really, she did, here's a picture book to prove it. One where the customed girl's face is conveniently obscured. The amnesiac Nina has no way to know that the one in the costume is truly her.

TRIVIA

Nothing noteworthy this chapter.

Thank you for reading!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

This chapter is essentially a single long flashback of Noé', finally detailing part of hos origins and his actual relationship woth Louis.

Noé was a vampire orphan raised by a couple of elderly humans; when they died, he was picked up by some slavers, and ultinately sold to the one he calls 'Teacher'. He was brought to the latter's house, where his grandchildren either lived permanently (Louis) or visited frequently (Dominique). They becamehis friends and playmates, along with a bunch of other local children; but gradually, Louis drifted away.

Then, one of their friends was taken away as a cursebearer, Noé and Dominique wanted to go and save her, but Louis opposed them, with the famous taunt about not being able to do anything.

Turns out, he himself was a cursebearer; to save his friends from the other he ended up giving in and losing himself, about to kill Noé, and only Teacher's timely intervention prevented it. Problem is, the intervention consisted in decapitating Louis in front of his sister and friend.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

As said, this chapter is a huge flashback; one that dies a throughout reframing of another shown previously.

Before, the memory of Louis had seemed antagonistic, the voice of someone just putting Noé down; now it appears as it actually was, a cry of despair of someone who had been staring death in thebface for quite some time.

That 'there's nothing you can do' is no more a sneer; it is a representation of Noé's sense of guilt and the root of his desire to see that Vanitas dies his job.

CHARACTERS

• Noé: we learn a few more things on his personality, besides his past. One, that his being a cute ball of sunshine comes with a lot of denial. Just see the scene when he talks about his time with the slavers: Dominique reacts like a normal person, says that it must have been awful, and Noé is there happily denying this and talking about all the different places he saw. This while sporting a bandage on his left eye that clearly wasn't caused by Teacher or his grandparents. Besides this, his desire to save others is confirmed as stemming from guilt at saving Louis, either by healing him or by putting him out of his misery, and for daring to have the very normal feeling of relief at being alive - that came at the cost of his friend's life.

Louis: he is finally introduced properly, and he appears a lot more positively than he has been depicted so far. He teases Noé, even in a somewhat cruel way, but at the start, he's just a slightly mean kid. Then he finds out a painful secret about himself, that he is a cursebearer, and his outlook in life changes. He grows even more resentful of his family casting him far away; he grows detached from his friend group; he spends his time making weapons for Noé to kill him with, lyong about his purposes. He is a type of person who keeps his cool; the one time he loses it, is when he yells at Noé and Domi for their naive assumption that they can save a cursebearer. Ultimately, he succumbs to his curse partly to gain the power to save them, and ironically, these same out of control powers lead him to exterminate all the friend group and almost Noé himself. All in all,a downright tragic character.

Dominique: she is surprising for how starkly different she appears to be from her current self. She used to be extremely girly and shy, even if her crush on Noé was there all the time; the personality she exhibits in the present day looks remarkably like Louis'.

Teacher: he starts appearing as even more ambiguous than before. He is the one who adopts the enslaved Noé to treat him well, but he is also the one who treats his grandson as a case study, just for being a cursebearer, showing him indifference at best, abd beheading without a second thought once he gets out of control.

THEMES

The theme of 'killing the ones you love' makes its great entrance. In this case, is the would-be killed's request to be so, as a way to go decently instead of beheaded out of burocracy. A killing that is seen as a gesture of love, and so Noé's failing to comply appears, at least in his own eyes, as a terrible weakness he must atone for.

Another is the theme of 'salvation': Noé failed to do anything with Louis, be it killing him or healing him from his curse. Not that anyone expected he did, least of all Louis: kid is clearly terrified of his fate, and sees no exit. Noé sees tue healings Vanitas performs as a remedy to that, and also to his own sense of guilt.

SYMBOLISM

The Blue Moon: it's reiterated that Noé has never been bothered by it; something Louis notes as unique for a vampire. Again, his role of 'bridge' between the Red Moon vampires and the Blue Moon clan.

TRIVIA

• The pikes Louis makes are a clear reference to the traditional way of killing a vampire.

Thank you for reading!

SUMMARY

Nonno Neil ti racconta una fiaba.

Seriously though, the narrative frame of the tale of Nada is literally a story, told by an older man to a younger one. It takes the approach of a so-was story: 'so it was that this land was once a lush valley, and how it turned into a desert.

The tale does involve Morpheus: once the queen of the First People, Nada, fell in love with him, and underwent several hardships in order to find him and declare this love.

Only, here we learn that it's forbidden for the Endless to love mortals, and once Nada realized was she had done, she tried to escape from him with a series of trick. They fail, Morpheus catches up to them, the two make love, the sun gets pissed and decides to solve the situation by annihilating Nada's city with a huge fireball.

The woman, seeing this and realizing that nothing good could come out of this relationship, throws herself down a cliff. But not even death can stop an horny Morpheus: he chases her down, and threatens her with hell if she won't become his wife. The woman refused.

And here's how she came to be to where we first met her in Chapter 4: one of the tormented souls in hell, whom Morpheus still refuses to forgive or help.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

This chapter is told through a narrative frame: a story told to a young man who is undergoing a coming-of-age ceremony. It is a very self-aware story: we are told, from the start, that there is another version of it, the one the women of the tribe tell each other, in which things might have gone differently. A warning to the reader, too: it is not said that we have just read is the objective truth of Morpheus' tragic love story.

CHARACTERS

Morpheus: we have never seen our hero so unheroic.

Sure, so far we have seen him dish out terrible vengeances, but on people who deserved it. We have even seen him be merciful, on Rachel and John Dee. We have seen his interaction with the tortured soul of Nada, and it left readers wondering just what terrible thing this former lover had done to deserve such scorn.

And we learn that she had just refused to be his wife.

She hadn't even said that she didn't love him, just that she didn't want to be his wife, and clearly stated her reasons. Morpheus was sweet with her at first, but when she refused him, when she begged him to leave her be, he didn't respect her. He didn't care for her reasons, didn't care that she had just seen her kingdom destroyed and killed herself to avoid further disaster, all he could think of was his wounded pride.

Morpheus is proud, as we have already seen. But we hadn't seen yet these extremes, and this puts his character in a new, more sinister light.

Nada: the beautiful queen of a mythic land, she would have been a perfect fairytale princess if her love interest had been anyone else. She's brave, she went through a lit of trials to find her love; she's wise, she went through even worse hardships to evade said love when she realized it would have spelled only destruction. And she's still enduring, still suffering in hell, for her choice to put the world above herself.

THEMES

This chapter discusses two things: love, and stories.

This is the first time we see how Morpheus deals with love, and it isn't pretty. He was a complete bastard to Nada, prioritizing his pride above anything else. He says a very touching thing, that no one had loved him enough to look for him, which would have been heartbreaking on its own, but - dude, there's probably a reason for that.

Love for the first time receives an association with Desire. Even in the former chapter there had been a mention of them, with Death bringing them as a negative example. We know they're another one of the Endless. But here we see a very definite: 'Desire is always cruel'.

It doesn't bode well for the love stories in this series.

And then, there is the nature of stories. Stories that can be ambiguous, as underlined by how the different genders in the tribe have each its version. We can't know how the women's tales goes; maybe it says that Nada accepted, maybe it says that Morpheus accepted her decision and didn't condemn her to hell, maybe instead of a fairytale of sorts is an epic that if written would put The Lord of the Rings to shame, detailing a long and complex love story with Glass City lore. We can only wonder.

Still, I have called it a fairytale, but despite having similarities - the talking animals, the multiple trials the protagonist must endure to get what she desires - it is more like a just-so myth, a tale which serves the purpose of explaining a phenomenon (ex. The myth of Persephone to explain the alternance of seasons). It contrast an harsh present with an idealized past, and explains how humanity got to that point. It also includes other just-so stories, like the reason for the weaverbird's plumage being brown.

The tale of Nada contains multiple, perfectly aware references to real-life legends, furthering its metanarrative nature.

SYMBOLISM

The city of glass is a beautiful image, one that evokes excellent craftmanship and a powerful nation, but also a great fragility - and in fact, it will be destroyed at the end of the story.

When Nada turns into a gazelle to escape Morpheus, he stops her by slaining her; a neat representation of his unwillingness to relent from pursuing her even when this is making her suffer.

TRIVIA

The weaverbird myth seems to be a reference to the Rainbow Crow myth, a purported Lenape legend about a raven bringing fire to the world during the first winter, losing its multicolored plumage due to the burns. The Lenape nation denies that the story is theirs, and notice that it actually looks like a variation on the Cherokee legend of the first fire.

Thank you for reading!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

Misato brings Shinji and his friends to a UN fleet, where they meet the Second Children, Asuka Langley Soryu, and an old flame of Misato, Kaiji. An Angel attacks, and the Asuka decides to disolay the strenght of her EVA 02, bringing Shinji with her. The Angel is defeated with directives from Misato.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

To build some suspence, Asuka is first introduced obscured by the sun.

There is some building suspence over Kaiji's true role, and the final reveal of the Adam embryo.

CHARACTERS

Shinji: our main character takes a bit of a back seat here. He finds himself initially pushed around by Asuka's forceful personality, meekly trying to ask her to follow protocol, but once he's stuck with her fighting the Angel, he actually gets to the point of stealing itscommands from her. He ends up having to cooperate to truly defeat the creature, and at the end of the episode, finds out that he's now stuck with this new girl at school too.

Asuka: after much foreshadowing, she finally gets to debut in this episode. She wastes no time in showing off her personality: brash, aggressive, overconfident, forceful. Firmly believes that all guys are interested in her, or at least peeping on her, and she readily chastises them for this. All in all, so far, a textbook Tsundere.

Misato: just like last episode, she is the one taking matters in NERV's hands when everyone else is too incompetent to do anything. She has full extralegal protection, NERV's authority can bypass basically everyone, and she takes full advantage of it, creating the plan to defeat the Angel. Still, she's humorously offput by Kaji's presence, hinting at their shared history.

Kaiji: another new character making his entrance. He is presented as somewhat sleazy: Asuka adores him, but it's implied he has some history with Misato who has left her annoyed at his very presence. More importantly, he leaves the group in the middle of action and is the one to bring extremely classified material, Adam's embryo, to Gendo.

Toji & Kensuke: they function essentially as a Greek chorus, doing nothing but to comment on the ongoing action.

THEMES

There is some feminist theme in the way the situation is essentially resolved by Asuka's and Misato's overriding of the orders; however, at a certain point Shinji subtracts Asuka the commands of her own EVA, and the true resolution is brought by the two working together.

SYMBOLISM

Asuka first appears with the sun behind her; the sun will be a reoccurring motive for her.

The surprising synchronization rate the pilots experience while in the EVA. If we run with the mother-child symbolism, they essentially became twins?

TRIVIA

• The ships are named after Shakespearian tragedies: Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, Othello.

Thank you for reading!

Episode 8: I Heard a Rumor

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

Once again, the multiple protagonists allow to follow different plot lines.

• The boys: they deal with the fallout of the revelation of Reginald's true intention and go on after Allison, since Diego has escaped jail and Five is out of danger.

• Allison: the episode starts with a flashback of her abusing her powers to calm down her daughter's temper tantrum. She spends the rest of it investigating on what happened to Viktor without using the Rumor, and in the end, she has a confrontation with him, during which she reveals that she rumored him into forgetting his powers. At his furious, out of control reaction, she tries to use the Rumor to calm him down, but once again ends badly for her.

• Harold & Viktor: their trash dynamic is on full display here. Harold is revealed to have faked the 'casualty' of the attack, even if not its violent results, and uses them as leverage to push Viktor to master his powers. Viktor still believes everything he says, even when he lies to his face, and gets to the point that he ignores Allison's attempts to explain everything to defend him, ultimately lashing out against his sister.

• Hazel & Cha-Cha: the first realizes he can't enjoy these last days with Agnes with Cha-Cha breathing down their necks, the latter follows him in blind rage.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

The lead up to the reveal of what actually happened with Viktor's power is represented by gradual flashbacks to the time Reginald tried to train her, as she practices. The final trust is revealed in Allison's final explaination.

During Allison's own flashbacks, the characters are drawn in a very childish style, befitting the fairytale version of the events she is telling her daughters.

Also, as she recalls the times she abused her powers, there is a crescendo: from the innocent requests of a child to 'be her friend' to cheating her way into getting Hollywood jobs, to the final 'I heard a rumor that you loved me'.

CHARACTERS

• Luther: he wakes up naked in bed with a girl, confused as hell, and still very pissed with Reginald and Pogo, who knew everything and still let them run around like headless chickens. It's the first time we see him direct such a cold, reasoned anger at the chimpz, one of his parental figures.

• Diego: he manages to escape from jail with the help of Patch's partner, and somehow manages to keep the groupin check, leading them to Allison.

• Allison: here her struggles with her power is fully revealed. She used to abuse ot for everything growing up, and this behaviour was never corrected; it reached to a point where she abused her daughter with it, and this finally made her realize the error of her ways. As a result, she has sworn it off, and goes all the episode using only her wits to fond out what happened to Viktor. But when she finds him, she realizes something related to his powers, and choses the worst time to tell him, causing him to fly into a rage. And while Viktor's tantrum is scary, Allison isn't really used to deal with emotional problems: her response is to fall back on the Rumor, and Viktor slashes her throat as a result.

• Klaus: he reveals the crucial information on Reg's suicide, and amicably helps Luther in the aftermath of his first transgression.

• Five: he is the one concerned with the little plot detail 'how did Reginald know about the impending apocalypse?'

• Ben: he glares at Klaus. That's all his role.

• Viktor: he falls hook, line, and sinker for everything Harold tells him. The last days and discovery of powers have fully nurtured his grudge against his siblings, and he immediately goes on the offensive against Allison, first assuming that she is jealous and then, after learning what Reginald made her do, accused her of doing it on purpose to ruin his life, despkte the evidence of them being about four years old at the time. In the end, his unability to handle his emotions, after having them dampened by years of medicines, turns critical: he ends up slashing his sister's throat, to his immediate regret.

• Harold: he is further revealed as violent and manipulative, only caring about what Viktor can do for him with no regard to their well being; curiously, they end up being a far more efficient teacher than Reginald was, finding a way to actually channel Viktor's powers instead of giving up immediately.

• Hazel & Cha-Cha: while Hazel has to deal with a difficult choice and does so maturely, deciding that he can't ignore the problem Cha-Cha poses, the latter pursues him in blind rage and jealousy, ignoring whatever further directions the Commission could have for her.

THEMES

There is something very interesting here, and that's that in this episode, multiple people manipulate reality.

Allison's way is the most explicit: her powers literally allow her to control other people's thoughts, emotions, and states of being. Ironically, she does her darnest to avoid rely on her power after her abuses of it in the past hurt people she loved; instead of Rumoring the cop into helping her, she first comes up with a semi-believable story and then, when it fails, she appeals to his empathy, ending up quite successful. She only concedes in the ebd when Viktor scares her, and things go badly for her.

Meanwhile, Harold has his own ways to manipulate reality. Turns out, he hired these people to attack him, even if things got out of hand. Viktor believes the attack to have been genuine, and the fear for his life mollifies him enough to try practicing his powers as Harold desires. He is quite good at keeping on a mask of understanding boyfriend, despite occasional little slip-ups, and is a better trainer than Reginald was.

As for Reginald himself, he manipulated Viktor for his entire life, only because his powers presented some difficulties in handling. His plan of having Viktor believe he was powerless only resulted in the guy becoming insecure and vulnerable.

SYMBOLISM

None in particular this episode.

TRIVIA

• 'Stormy Weather (Keep Rainin' all the Time)', the song that plays as Allison drives in the rainy night, was performed by her actress, Emmy Raver-Lampman

• The Eiffel Tower story Claire asks of Allison is a reference to the first comic, where the sibling fought the Eiffel Tower itself.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 8: Kill a Man and Die Thee Too

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

We pick up roght from where we had left: Atsushi facing the little girl. She introduces herself as Kyouka, lists her likes and dislikes, and declares that she has killed thirty-five people up to that point. She proceeds to thoroughly trash Atsushi.

Meanwhile, Yosano talks philosophy with the mafia bomber, who muses on the essence of 'death'. He answers by locking her with a bunch of bombs and leaving her to die.

Back to Atsushi, who takes a moment of reprieve by hiding, and observing the scared passengers, he thinks that if he will be able to 'prove' himself by saving them, he will demonstrate that he has a right to live, contrarily to what the orphanage headmaster told him. So, he returns to the fight, summoning the strenght and speed of the tiger.

Kaiji returns to see if Yosano is properly cooked, and he gets decked in the face as an answer. Yosano reveals how she survived by explaining her Ability: a healing power that allows her to cure any wound, but only activates when the vict ... the patient is near death.

She promptly tortures informations about the bomb out of Kaiji by this very method, and communicates them to an Atsushi who has just 1) defeated Kyouka and 2) realized that the girl looks so unfeeling and prompted her to express herself more. The bomb is activated at a distance, and Atsushi realizes that this is true for the Ability of the girl, too, that obeyed the voice from the phone instead of orders from Kyouka. The voice now orders her immolation in the bombing, but she rebels, jumping out of the train to avoid exploding onboard. Atsushi jumps after her, and manages to get the explosive off her and protect her from the impact.

The voice is revealed as Akutagawa's, who nows closes transmissions and comments on the event to a chained-up Dazai.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

During the fight between Yosano and Kaiji, we (and the latter) are baited into thinking that Yosano is dead, because she's half dangling from the window and we don't see her face. Then she springs into action.

In the last page, there is a cliffhanger of Dazai in the mafia's clutches: he says nothing, and we have no clue on what is going to happen to him.

CHARACTERS

Yosano: in the first chapter, she was introduced as a generic 'hot sadistic lady'; here, we get to see more of her depths in her conversation with Kaiji. When he muses a preposterous reflection on death which he wants to investigate by killing people, Yosano bluntly answers that death is the loss of life, despite a doctor's efforts. Here it becomes clear that she values life, and what she does to preserve it, very much. Her hurting people is actually a necessity to save them, not something she does for the fun of it; the questions stays why acting like she enjoys it, but this will have an answer in another chapter.

Atsushi: here he shows himself as very shaped and controlled by the environment he grew up in. The headmaster's abuse instilled in him the idea that he was worthless unless he was 'useful', and he sees saving lives as a mean to prove that he is worth something, that he is worth to keep on living. Once again, he is a fascinating mix of selfless and selfish: he risks his life to protect a bunch of strangers, putting himself in the line of fire despite having had a taste of how dangerous Demon Snow can be; but he also is saving those lives as a way to prove that he himself is important.

Kaiji: he tries very deep to be profound about death, noticing that the medical conditions that cause it can be easily reversed in a lab, so why is death so final? He wants to find it out by bombing things. As I said, he tries to be deep, and is very arrogant about it (he is very condescending to Yosano until he realizes who she is) and gets promptly trashed by the superior philosopher as a result.

Kyouka: the mysterious little girl from the previous chapter finally receives a name. And the 'mystery aura' takes some heavy hits: it's revealed that her Abilityis controlled by someone else through a phone, and the girl that seemed so terrifying is actually unable to even control what happens with her own powers. She still takes the responsibility of the people killed by the Ability, but she's far from remorseless: a tiny hint of sympathy from Atsushi is enough to prompt her to make it known that she doesb't want to kill anymore, and tries to off herself to save the people on the train.

Akutagawa: a new side to his ferocity is revealed: he was quite willing to use a little girl as a 'pawn' to further his plans, forcong her to become a killer and then pushing her to her death.

THEMES

The 'importance of life' makes its great return in both fights. With Yosano and Kaiji, it is discussed indirectly, through its cessation: Kaiji focus on 'death' in itself, Yosano instead focuses on life and the fundamental importance of it, to the point of defining death as simply its cessation. She has seen much more death than Kaiji has, and still, her focus stays firmly on life.

With Atsushi, the value of life is put into discussion and seen as depending on other factors; in this case, the 'usefulness' of the person. How much a person can be useful to a child abuser is no great parametre for the importance of lufe, but go tell this to the abused child: Atsushi, while hating the Headmaster, still embraces his worldview, trying to prove not that his life is essentially important, but that he is worthy of it.

SYMBOLISM

• The tiger: once again, Atsushi's Ability comes to represent his will to live and self-affirm. Although it is through wanting to defend other people, his core motivation here is wanting to prove himself as worthy of living, and this gives him better access to the tiger's strenght and speed.

• Demon snow: Kyouka's Ability is powerful, deadly, and controlled by someone else. A good representation of the state of Kyouka herself: a kid who is controlled by a large organization of stronger people, using her and forcing her to do something she doesn't want to.

REFERENCES

• Kyouka Izumi comes from the pseudonym of a male writer, Kyotaro Izumi (1873 - 1939). Active in the prewar period, he is known for the richness of his prose and for the reoccurrence of supernatural themes in his writing.

• Demon Snow comes from Izumi's play Demon Pond, in which the character Shirayuki (...'snow white') is offered as a human sacrifice to a demon pond of which she becomes the princess instead, but with a clause of being unable to leave it, lest the village be submerged by floodwaters.

Thank you for reading!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

A shorter chapter, and entirely dedicated to Tenma's confrontation with Johan, with intervals of Junkers screaming terrified. It was Johan who commissioned Junkers and his gang the serial murders of all those couples; when a shocked Tenma tells Johan that all lives are equal, it was Johan himself who indirectly taught this to him and changed his life, the young man's reaction is only to laugh, and reveal Tenma that he was the one who murdered Heinemann and cronies, and did so as a way to thank Tenma. After all, didn't he wish for them to die?

After this, he shoots Junkers to death, and gets away walking past a Tenma petrified by shock.

We cut to Tenma at the police's office, telling Lunge all that has happened. They don't believe him, but let him go for the moment; he ends up collapsing screaming in the streets.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Johan's face stays in the shadows until the end of his confrontation with Tenma, and Junkers warns the doctor against looking him in the face, as this means he will be killed. This creates around Johan the aura of a monster, as if he was a Medusa or basilisk that can kill anyone who meet his gaze. So his appearence at the end, as that of a normal if pleasant looking guy, is all the more jarring.

At the end of the episode, there is use of the 'pathetic fallacy': the weather reflects the emotions of the characters, with a downpour on Tenma's crisis at the realization that he did indirectly cause the death of the former director and that of many other people by saving their killer.

CHARACTERS

Tenma: his quiet Mary Poppins/Jedi life really couldn't last. Here, he is hit with the realization that his life-changing act of goodness, saving the life of that child, actually caused a lot of sufference, and that the child doesn't have the same views about life he has, the opposite actually. Oh, and he finds out that that wish he made in a fit of anger actually caused the death of people. He does try to do the right thing and tell the police everything, but he doesn't realize how absurd his story seems to external ears (in fictionland, I have an interest for true crime podcasts and I know of real people who tried to make excuses far more outlandish than what Tenma is claiming here), or rather he is too shocked to really reflect on it.

Johan: here he is fully introduced in his adult self, and he is terrifying. He commissions murders and then offs the perpetrators, he teases Tenma with the reveal that he was the one to murder his former boss to make him a favor. But he also seems to have some level of gratitude and affection for Tenma: he calls him 'like a father', just like Junkers had done the previous chapter, for saving his life. Wheter he is sincere or not remains to be seen.

Junkers: he is there to plead in terror, provide a bit of exposition, and fail to be saved by Tenma.

Lunge: here he receives further 'proof' of Tenma being involved in the murders ... but doesn't do anything. At least for now.

THEMES

The 'importance of life' theme comes back to be openly discussed, even if just by Tenma. He loudly reaffirms his belief in the importance and equality of all lives, and the inherent wrongness of killing anyone. To answer this, Johan merely chuckles, without offering an antithesis of his own (yet).

SYMBOLISM

• None this chapter

REFERENCES

None this chapter.

And this was all for chapter 8. Thank you for reading!

TENTATIVE ANALYSES: THE CASE STUDY OF VANITAS

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

We start from where we have left: with Vanitas who has just given a big dramatic declaration, but is not given the grace of a cutscene and so is left to scramble for a conclusion to his speech, making a fool of himself in the process. In steps Veronica De Sade, Dominique's older sister, revealing her racism towards humans and hatred towards men, and declares a 'human hunt' against the kin of the Blue Moon everyone thinks is causing the Malnomens. This is by the fact that a few moments later, curses actually begin to spread around the dance hall. Noé and Luca find out the actual cause: a bunch of shadowy figures calling themselves 'Charlatan'.

Meanwhile Vanitas, who has been saved by Jeanne, finds out she has an irresistible thirst for blood and essentially forces her to drink his own, despite having been warned of potential dangers. The chapter concludes with Noé facing a demon from his past: the curse that overtook his childhood friend Louis, the child insofar seen only in flashbacks to mock him for being unable to save everyone, and finally reveals that he himself died as a cursebearer.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Louis comes as quite the plot twist: we have seen flashbacks of him, but they were framed in a negative light, with him being a nasty voice in Noé's head telling him that he can't save anyone. Here is instead revealed as a very positive figure, Noé's friend, whose brutal death was a severe trauma for him.

CHARACTERS

Noé: once again, he is called to display his powerful combat abilities to protect Luca (whom he immediately forgives for how the forner meeting went as soon as the kid apologizes). But here we learn more of his tragic backstory: not only he was sold as a slave as a child, but he saw a friend murdered in front of him, something that seems to wound him even more than the first experience.

Vanitas: his behaviour here is again different from the earlier chapters. Sure, he still harasses Jeanne with unwanted affections, and once again forces intimate contact; but there is an undercurrent of melanchily to it all. As he himself states,, he doesn't care much if he lives or die at the moment, with flashbacks to Dominique's words and his own declaration of revenge. So, this revenge doesn't motivate him to live? And he doesn't mind having his blood drunk by Jeanne and even pretends he likes it, even when we clearly see him writhing in pain. Here it becomes clear: most of what we have seen insofar is a mask for a much more messed up person.

Jeanne: here it's expanded a little upon her bloodthirst, but only to firther muddle waters: we don't know if it's due to her being a cursebearer or something else. Still, what we learn for sure is just how fond she is of Luca, feeding onto Vanitas to avoid hurting him.

Charlatan: in absence of personal names (so far), we'll use this word to refer to them all together. They don't seem to be humans or vampires; some have a physical body they fight with, but one is a shadowy figure and uses psychological attacks.

THEMES

This is mostly an action chapter, but there are a couple moments where the issues ofthe protagonists begin to shine through: Vanitas' suicidality and Noé's guilt complex. There will be more time to explore them better, through.

SYMBOLISM

• Masks: in this chapter, they become a stand-in for strenght and power. Jeanne has her mask on when she saves Vanitas from the crowd, but then he himself removes it; from then on things go downhill for Jeanne, once again put into a position of weakness and forced into intimacy with a man she hates.

REFERENCES

• None in particular in this chapter.

And this was all for chapter 8. Thank you for reading!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

We open with Dream che fa il pensionato in a random park tossing bread to the pigeons. A lady approaches him and starts talking him about Mary Poppins, before asking him what's on his mind - to which Dream surprisingly answers. It's implied the two know each other, but the woman's identity isn't clear until she flies into a rant over Dream being 'the most immature anthropomorphic personification'. She is another one of the Endless, and the following scene, where Dream accompanies her 'on the job', clarifies exactly who: Death.

The issue follows her and Morpheus through her job, collecting the souls of the people who are dying or just died, who she greets with kindness and friendliness. Ultimately, seeing her sister so diligent in her duties motivates Dream to go back to his own responsibilities, and the issue closes with him smiling listening to the sound of wings.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

We have a little suspence on the actual identity of Death: we are left stewing in the surprise of seeing Dream talking sincerely to someone, wonder who the hell is this woman, and then we get the realization that no, this isn't some random goth girl, this is Death.

Another interesting technique is the 'panel montage' that shows Death on the job: we see a lot of people dying, at various ages and in various ways, and she is the same with everyone. Good way to sell the image of Death as a truly ubiquitous force.

CHARACTERS

Death: this is her debut episode; she is going to be part of the recurring cast. She plays out as a subversion of the typical 'Grim Reaper' imagery: instead of a cold, dark figure, she is a kind and cheerful guide for everyone who has just died. She does have her moments of anger, through,  such as the magnificent rant she delivers to Morpheus about how immature he is about not contacting her after coming out of her prisony to instead mope around about feeling like he hasn't anything to do. And in retrospect, this might not have been the best move: while she mentions Mary Poppins, praising a movie where the title character relives the protagonist (Mr Banks) of his lifestyle of just job with no time for anything else (a clear parallel to Morpheus) but the result of her allowing Morpheus to follow her is that he is reminded of his own Responsibilities and runs to fulfill them.

Morpheus: here we see him following someone else's lead for the first time since the comic started. He clearly trusts his sister a lot, enough to open up to her and listen to her scolding without a word in edgewise; he clearly sees her as an example, someone to be admired and doesn't understand why mortals aren't happy to see her; he recalls a poem in her praise, and smiles when the sounds of wings reminds him of her. This would be rather cute, if not for the fact that ... he is basically saying that he would gladly welcome death. This, in one of the first issues, is our first hint that Morpheus is not exactly well.

THEMES

In the issue that introduces Death as a character, the main theme is death as a concept. Surprise!

So, we get to see Death on the job. She comes for everyone whose time is up, and we see a plethora of different ways of die in this chapter: at an old age, as a teenager, as a baby; alone in a small flat, alone in a hospital, electrocuted by a freak accident, on a job accident, of overdose ... and Death is the same for everyone. She is kind and comforting, taking the time to chat with lonely people, to reassure them of the talents they hadn't the time to express, allowing the devout to say their last prayers. Dream sees her as much more compassionate and less fearful than himself. A nice vision of death, something that is the door to a discovery, something as natural as being born; but at the same time, the poem Dream recalls paints it as something desirable, which should ring some alarm bell, but all the context of 'acceptation of death as a natural event' nearly masks.

Then there is the theme of responsibility: the Endless have jobs to do, responsibility over their domains. It's implied that Dream is far too absorbed in his own, that he should take care of actually living, but Death also takes her responsibilities seriously, and watching her, Dream is only encouraged to double down.

SYMBOLISM

• The ankh: this symbol comes straight from Ancient Egypt and it used to indicate eternal life. So it's put at the neck of the personification of Death, a way to indicate that death is natural, there is a finding out after, is not a definite end.

• The pigeons: Morpheus is feeding them at the start of the chapter, moping. He does it again at the end, but with the biggest smile we gave seen on him so far, as the sounds of wings makes him think of death. A subtle representation of his ultimate inability to change what he is doing, how this is a possible path to death, and hw isn't truly opposed to the idea.

REFERENCES

• The poem Morpheus quotes is from a papyrus of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, called 'Dispute between a man and his ba'. The papyrus arrived to us fragmented, without its beginning, but it can be made out thar the man is actually contemplating suicide, something his ba (a concept somehow similar to what we call a soul) strongly opposes because it would mess up the funeral rites, and suggests living a life of pleasures instead. The man refuses, because then everyone would speak ill of him and he thinks death is better than life anyway (this is the part the quote in the comic is from). The ba is appearently convinced. And I am reeling because we will have to wait until the very end of the story to properly discuss how significant this actually is.

And this is all for issue 8. Thank you for reading!

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

We open on Misato starting her day like an absolute slob, drinking beer as first thing in the morning. Shinji is all disdainful, even mocking his classmates' attraction to her, but he's a tad bummed out that she refers to attending parent-teacher conferences for him as 'work'. She, on the other hand, actually appreciates the sarcasm he's showing as a sign he is opening up.

Cue a NERV reunion about funds issues; next morning, Misato shocks Shinji by showing up very well dressed and composed, to go with Ritsuko to a conference. The presentator is from an organization that wants to supplant the EVA with their own mecha, and reserves an absolutely abysmal treatment to Ritsuko and Misato.

He is soon proved wrong, however: his faboluos technology gets out of control, destroying everything and threatening the civilian population; the situation is saved by Misato, who gets inside the mecha at a great personal danger and deactivates it.

She suspects that the accident was due to tampering, and the ending confirms it was actually Ritsuko, on Gendo's orders.

The episode concludes with the same footage as the start: an absolutely disastrous Misato and a disgusted Shinji. When he complains to his friends, though, they shut him up with a simple observation: if Misato is so relaxed around him, it means she sees him as family.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

The story is starting to create a halo of mystery around NERV: we see Gendo talking with a faceless person on the phone and then a foreign representative, we learn that they have extralegal protection, we find out they know a truth behind the Second Impact that no one else knows. And the ending reveals that they are not abpve sabotaging competitors. This is no standard Good Humanity Defenders Association.

CHARACTERS

Misato: she's this episode's protagonist. Here we have the contrast between her serious, determined persona and the slob act she puts on; and the interesting thing is that neither is her 'true' personality. She is genuinely determined to save people, she didn't know anything of the sabotage or how it could have been called off, she was sincerely sacrificial; but there is more to her, and in this episode, it was foreshadowed in small glances, in a focus on her while Ritsuko talks of the Second Impact.

Ritsuko: while her role seems to be subalterne to Misato in this episode, she's actually extremely important. She's the one who tried to protest the cause of NERV publicly, and was the prime target of Jet Alone Guy's misoginy; she acts calm and collected while Misato crashes a locker, but then she's burning a Jet Alone pamphlet. Most importantly, she's the one to carry off the sabotage, not even telling her friend amd calling it off at the last second to avoid killing her, without concern for the lives of the other civilians. One of the final scenes show her reporting to Gendo, confirming that she's a step up in his confidence than most at NERV.

Shinji: he is here tobe confused by the contrast between Misato's laziness at home and her stylish persona on the job. He desires to be close to her, or rather, he desires to have someone who looks after him like family and she happens to fill that role; see how downcast he is when he finds out that going to his PT meeting is 'part of her work'. By the end of the episode, he gets a chance to smile, because as his friends tell him, that very lazy attitude Misato has around him means that she isn't afraid to be herself when she's with him. The best part? This isn't true!

Gendo: the more things are revealed about him, the more mysterious he gets. We know he's in cahoots with world powers, we know he is directly sabotaging competitions, but his reasons to do so? We don't have a clue.

The Jet Alone Guy: the physical embodiment of mansplaining. Not much tosay about him: he's there to be an asshole, to mock Ritsuko and Misato as representatives of NERV and devoided of a penis to boot, but as soon as things get serious he is forced to do a merry-go-round off calls to abunch of superiors he's completely submissive to and who don't care abit about the situation. His only contribution is giving in and telling the password so that the 'hysterical woman' can save the day.

THEMES

The 'closeness to human heart' is something of a theme here. We see it embodied in the character of Misato: she's sloppy, loud, and her attitude disgusts Shinji, who doesn't understand how his peers just consider her hot; but this very person is also the woman who takes charfe of a dangerous, nearly suicidal mission to stop a rampaging robot from destroying a city.

Moreover, her direct human action, her manual work, plays into the theme of human capabilities being superior to technilogy alone, but this is further muddled by the reveal that not only the robot's program was tampered with, it was also reinstated just in time to save her life. Her direct action, as beautiful and noble as it was, didn't accomplish anything.

SYMBOLISM

The alcohol recurs in two occasions: the beer Misato drinks at breakfast and the bottles that are the only things the convention organizers bothered to put on the table of the NERV representatives, while everyone else has sumptous buffets. In both cases, it symbolizes a sort of 'degradation', applied by the person to themselves or by other (notice how even the usually enthusiastic drinker Misato doesn't touch the bottles on that table. If she is being low, she is being so on her own terms).

REFERENCES

• Jet Alone is a reference to Godzilla: it has a robot hero named Jet Jaguar, one of whose working names was Red Alone. They took and combined the names.

Thank you for reading!