Mega Analysis of Character: Beastars, Mob Psycho 100, and March Comes in Like a Lion

Posted at 11:00h in Uncategorized by Longhands in Analyses

I reread my favorite manga lately and thought any of them might make a good character study. Then I thought, why not mosh them together?

Welcome to the first MEGA ANALYSIS.

As always, this is not a review. There may be spoilers for those who haven’t read the story. If you would like to know why I take this stance, please see this post. Otherwise, away we go.

Intro to Intros

Beastars

Beastars, by Itagaki Paru, takes place in the anthropomorphic world of carnivores and herbivores. The story leaps forward with the violent murder of an alpaca by an unknown carnivore at the prestigious Cherryton boarding school, which pits the herbivore and carnivore students against each other. Species relations are already in the dumps because— hey there realism— carnivores still instinctively what to eat meat, despite society inventing meatless and edible food for them.

At the center of the hubbub is Legosi. He’s a young grey wolf who is a deep-thinker, awkward, but observant and kind. His principled stance on helping herbivores and his love for Haru, a white dwarf rabbit, powers the story. This stance runs counter to the deuteragonist, Louis, a red stag and fellow student. At first, Louis is contemptuous of carnivores, not just because of their instincts, but of how they hold themselves back so as to not hurt herbivores and how weak that makes him seem. Their clash embodies the heart of the story: the search for the murderer, the rejection of their instincts, and the struggle for power, self-definition, and meaning.

Mob Psycho 100

Mob Psycho 100 is a webcomic by ONE about a middle-school-aged esper named Kageyama Shigeo, aka ‘Mob’. Mob tries to live a normal high school life while working for 300-yen an hour as a spiritual consultant and picking up life-lessons from his master, Reigan Arataka, a con-man who pretends to be a high-power psychic. Mob originally meets Reigan when he goes to him for advice about his powers. Reigan advised him to never “point” his powers at another person. Thus, Mob keeps a lid on them by squashing his emotions. However, he is constantly in danger of blowing up thanks to the many other espers who challenge him. While he works, he runs into Dimple, a high-power spirit who aspires to be a god, Teruki (aka Teru), esper gang leader of Black Vinegar middle school, and a host of other psychics whose philosophies around their powers run oblique or even counter to Mob’s own.

March Comes in Like a Lion

March Comes in Like a Lion, by Umino Chica, is about teenage shogi player, Rei, who is disconnected from life. After he loses his entire family in a car wreck, he is taken in by a family friend and shogi master, who teaches him how to play the game. He quickly overtakes the master’s own children in skill, and the children’s jealousy and hatred towards him causes him to leave the family and live on his own as a professional shogi player.

One day Rei’s shogi upperclassmen take him drinking and then abandon him, drunk, on the sidewalk. He is found by Akari Kawamoto and taken to her house, where she and her two younger sisters, Hinata and Momo, help him sober up. He becomes a staple in their household, and his gradual reconnection to life through them and shogi is documented in gentle melancholy and light humor.

Mega Analysis

My favorite stories involve protagonists who can look at the world, think of their place in it, and how they want to be. These characters also have reasons to do what they do— their histories, hang-ups, dreams, and blind-spots. Through these reasons, they act out the stories’ themes and philosophies.

For instance, if I had to sum up the main message of Beastars, it would be, Don’t Be Yourself. I’ve heard it described as the anti-Disney story. In the first arc, we start with a murder. Then, life moves on. The story’s key scenes arise spontaneously. For example, how Legosi awkwardly gives an herbivore girl a love letter. The love letter is from the murdered alpaca, who was too shy to give it to her. Being the victim’s friend, Legosi decides to deliver it on his behalf— by asking her to come to a dark gymnasium by herself!

Readers are tricked into understanding. We totally get how scary it is to be cornered by a wolf when you’re an alpaca, especially just a few days after another alpaca was murdered, yet in hindsight, we feel embarrassed for ever thinking Legosi—that dork—would ever think of eating someone. Legosi shows us that we have to change the way we think about each other in order to uncover the truth.

The story makes clear that what Legosi thinks is right tortures him. How delicious a rabbit friend smells, how he resents a classmate for going to a black market in the city for meat, how self-conscious he is about the way he is. . . it eats at him that his thoughts don’t align with how he wants to think and be. Louis, too, hates himself. He hates carnivores for not being themselves, hiding their strength, and loathing himself for being their natural prey. Their philosophies are transformed and refined through interacting with each other. Legosi transforms his awkward unease into calm determination. He may not know how he will help herbivores, but he acts to change himself to help others. Likewise, Louis changes from the arrogant, self-hating character he was at the beginning to become more empathetic, even as he ruthlessly chases his goals.

Instincts and rejecting them drives Beastars. Herbivores can’t help but be scared of carnivores and want to flee; carnivores can’t help wanting to eat meat. Their instincts complicate their feelings towards each other. Yet, all of the characters push back against their instincts in order to live and study together, and they invent accomodations to overcome their differences. There’s a scene where the lights go out at a festival. The herbivores are unable to see, and the carnivores form a ring around them, protecting them. A doctor rehabilitates carnivores who give in and eat herbivores. The love letter. We see how the world in Beastars conspires to make everyone fall prey to their instincts, yet we also see how all characters push back in order to do what they believe is right. How the characters change and define themselves mirrors the other. Their struggle is the story’s message: we should change to be what we wish to see the world, because who we are is not enough.

In Beastars, the characters are at odds with each other. In Mob Psycho 100, the characters themselves are contradictions. Their philosophies towards their powers and their reality do not fit together. Every fight is a clash of ideals.

First, there’s Mob himself. He wants to be popular and knows that he could win admirers by using his powers. Yet, his powers frighten him. Every fight forces him to use them and confront questions about having them. Does having a rare ability make you special? If you are special, does that mean you’re better than everyone else? Take the fight with Teru. Teru is the gang leader of a rival school and became popular and powerful using his psychic abilities. Teru beats Mob down with his powers, mocking him, even as Mob protests that he doesn’t want to use his powers on humans. Teru would be nothing without his powers, and Mob is striving to be something despite his powers.

These fights tend to follow a pattern: the opposition has a philosophy that runs counter to the protagonist’s. They fight, the protag’s powers straining against his self-imposed restraints, then something happens and the bad guys gets a moral lesson according to the gospel of Mob or Legosi.

Rei, the protagonist of March Comes in Like a Lion, is a different protagonist than Mob and Legosi. His fight is with himself. While he shares Mob and Legosi’s deeply conflicted self-consciousness and anxiety, he is not nearly as proactive. His growth comes from the initial encouragement and support of the sisters, whose cheerful home provides a safe space from his dark ruminations on his self-worth. His shogi fights follow the “clash of philosophies” theme, but rather than imposing his ideals on his opponent, each encounter teaches him something. For example, his fight with Kiriyama. Rei goes into the fight believing that he would win and didn’t consider Kiriyama as a serious opponent, until Kiriyama forces him out of his head.

Shaken beliefs cause character growth. But, when confronted with situations outside their power, the characters react in surprising yet understandable ways. Why do they do what they do? What situations and internal conflict did they face before making their choices? What is their history? And, better, how do authors know to ask these questions?

The answer is that the authors empathize with their characters. I say empathy rather than understanding, because I think of understanding as a fixed measurement at any given time of how much you know about something. If I quantified all I know about fountain pens, that would be my understanding. Empathy is continuously imagining the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of someone or something else. Empathy is the tool that helps authors make character tick. Their beliefs. Their backstory.

The stories’ authors do not treat any of their characters as minor. The characters are all given love and attention which complicates and deepens them. We know their histories, their hang-ups, their dreams, their blind-spots. Because of that, we know that they will try to move forward.

Empathizing is a powerful tool for anyone who lives among people (that’s you and me, folks), but the stories show the limits of it when making characters. Understanding people includes accepting that there are individuals— precious few, luckily— whose depth stops in the shallows. Or, that there may be a deeper reason for their crimes, but understanding them is less important than stopping them.

See the end of March Comes in Like a Lion. (Spoiler alert) The sisters’ estranged father returns, wanting to worm his way into their home. He does not care about his daughters. He wants them to care for the half-sister they never met while he chases new tail. . . .

His asshole-ness runs deep, is what I’m saying.

The sisters’ aunt said it best.

Closing

So: these characters are extensions of the story’s themes and philosophies while still being fully developed people. I think the mark of a great character is when they do something surprising, but in hindsight, you realize that it was within their character to do it. (There’s a paradox: expecting a surprise!) That’s empathy at work. It’s fun to watch things happen to them, but it’s awe-inspiring to watch them make things happen.

They make stories a pleasure to read.

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