shigure is a character who operates largely through obfuscation; obfuscation of his actions, his motivations, his true feelings, and beyond. he does this to build a persona for others’ consumption so he can better predict their reactions to him and make his moves accordingly. however, when you spend your whole life obscuring and burying your emotional truth, it has a resounding effect on your coping abilities and emotional intelligence. by obfuscating himself from others, shigure has also hidden away his most painful emotions from himself. in this essay i’d like to explore how shigure’s main coping mechanism of numbing himself manifests through the lens of his scenes in 3x5, particularly his monologue to hatori.
at this point in the story, shigure is pushing akito harder than ever before. he has definite confirmation that at least one zodiac’s curse is broken and the family life is continuously and dramatically falling apart. hatori berates shigure for setting akito off and asks him why shigure can’t be nicer, to which shigure replies,
you say that, but kindness from me is a hastily manufactured afterthought. it’s not as good as the real thing that you have.
this is a coping mechanism we’ve seen from shigure before: he instantly dismisses the prospect of any intrinsic kindness or goodness within himself. he believes himself hopeless, incapable of change, and so he breezily waves it away as an impossibility. this idea comes back at the end of the monologue, but directed outwards and pertaining to his own beliefs on the merit of kindness.
shigure then starts his monologue, musing out loud in a way that he is only comfortable doing in front of hatori.
for some reason i don’t find it sad, but i wonder why…
most of the time shigure is an emotionally intelligent character, but he uses that emotional intelligence as motivation and a tool to manipulate. when it comes to shigure’s most traumatic experiences that are outlined in this monologue (his relationship to his parents, his curse, and his isolation), he is unable to access the feelings he has about them. he has protected himself in a way that caused him to numb himself, and while he has used that numbness to his benefit to hurt people he loves without emotional repercussions, it is still a maladaptive coping mechanism of a man born into a chronically hopeless situation. shigure is intelligent and self-aware enough to recognize that something is wrong, but he is too traumatized to access what exactly that is.
like, i’ve never particularly wanted a parent’s love…
we don’t know much about shigure’s parents. based on the one interaction we see them have in 3x2, we can ascertain a few things: shigure’s parents care about their reputation and shigure’s standing in akito’s eyes (“stop, shigure! pay your respects to akito first.”), but they don’t have very much control over him (“i don’t want to. it’s bound to take forever.”). based on this interaction we can assume that shigure’s parents were the neglectful type as opposed to the overprotective type; shigure has no qualms at blowing them off in a very blunt way and his parents don’t try again to make him do what they want.
as an adult shigure may have been able to convince himself that he never wanted a parent’s love, but that is antithetical to human nature. shigure isn’t some unfeeling sociopath—he has emotions and cares about the people he loves very deeply, but as a result of his neglect he’s managed to numb the part of himself that craves parental love. i think that this may have been a driving factor behind shigure’s obsession with akito; shigure could love akito as an inferior (with regards to shigure and akito’s positions in the zodiac), receiving the unconditional love that wasn’t given to him by his parents, and also as someone he could dote over and be affectionate with the way he is with his other friends.
and frankly, it doesn’t really bother me that i’m possessed…
shigure has allowed his obsession with akito to consume him so completely that their relationship has become his entire identity. he is lying to himself about not being bothered, too—it bothers him that he and akito can never be equal because of the curse, which is why he’s trying so hard to break it. while other zodiacs have rejected the curse and coped by becoming hyper-individualistic (momiji, haru, rin) or letting their anguish consume them (yuki, kyo, hatori), shigure has coped with being cursed by fully dedicating himself to it, not allowing himself to imagine a life outside of it. he has no meaningful relationships outside of the sohmas, he doesn’t care about his career, and he has no goals outside of akito.
if this is what you call being “twisted,” then i must be twisted.
shigure is a product of his environment and he is aware of this. because the environment that made him is his entire identity, though, he has no desire to change. this is also another example of his self-satisfied self-deprecation.
and the fact is, i can’t even find that sad. maybe that makes me very alone. maybe a person like me really should have dreamed of…
here, shigure approaches awareness of the isolation that has been inflicted on him by the sohmas and that he inflicts on himself, then approaches the possibility that he could’ve been saved. shigure says he doesn’t care, but these are the words of a man so numb from trauma, a life of extremely maladaptive coping mechanisms, and never-ending hopelessness that he can’t let himself imagine an alternative; it’s too much. he cuts himself off before he can reach that conclusion—what if he had dreamed of freedom? what if he hadn’t chased a childish impulse rooted in his lack of free will? before he can reach these alternatives, he cuts himself off with,
but anyway, yeah! i’m not a nice person, so it’s a wash. you know?
he immediately falls back on his self-deprecating humor to protect the numbness that he has built within himself for decades.
with regards to shigure’s opinions on the merits of kindness, he continues,
a generous kindness like [hatori’s], or a detached kindness like kureno’s…even assuming akito wants that from me, it’s not going to happen. i’m not looking to become her father.
the implication here is that hatori and kureno’s kindness did as much damage on akito’s psyche as akira’s lovebomb-dependent brainwashing. shigure doesn’t want to coddle akito and treat her like a child the way kureno and hatori do because it enables akito’s abuse, and that enablement has turned akito into the worst possible version of herself. shigure is justifying his actions to hatori while also forcing hatori to face that his actions also have a negative effect on akito’s wellbeing, even if it’s in a different way that shigure’s.
now to move onto his exchange with tohru in the following scene:
maybe i really should have dreamed of you. maybe a person like me needs someone like you the most, the author finds himself thinking.
shigure?
i’m just playing what-ifs.
shigure has had a front-row seat to the positive effects of making deep emotional connections with non-sohmas. he’s watched yuki and kyo grow exponentially due to their relationship with tohru, watching as hope became an option for two boys who started off the series so hopeless. shigure has a very sweet relationship with tohru—he buys her gifts, she confides in him and he comforts her in return, and he admits early in the show that he likes her quite a lot. however, when it comes to the games he’s playing with tohru and the zodiac, he never included himself in the “genuine connection” part of the plan because his goal was to become closer to akito while driving the others away. he simply isolated himself further while everyone around him grew and changed.
but now shigure is second-guessing himself. he has this conversation with hatori, and then he returns home to see the tangible effects of friendship and openness, and shigure begins to ask himself if, had he allowed himself to, he also could have been saved by someone like tohru. it is a deeply sad moment of a man whose life has been ruined so completely by his oppressive, insular environment that the idea of change seems impossible, and even considering it at this point is extremely painful. the language he uses is also notable; he detaches his personhood from the thought with a glib joke (“the author finds himself thinking”). then, he once again changes the subject to something silly before he can seriously consider what he’s saying.
i think that shigure is a very misunderstood character. he is extremely skilled at hiding his emotions to the point where they are unrecognizable even to him. to add to the uncertainty around him, takaya purposefully doesn’t show us his backstory like the others. he is an enigma to the cast of fruits basket, the audience, and himself. at the end of the day, though, shigure is a member of the zodiac who was raised in an extremely toxic and abusive environment just like everyone else. he chose an unfortunate but effective coping mechanism, convincing himself that there is nothing else other than the sohmas and that the family and their values are an intrinsic, unchangeable facet of himself. shigure is a product of a long line of generational trauma, and for shigure it’s not something that he believes he will ever be able to escape.
