and how much I appreciate Adachitoka for their depiction of this type of relationship, even though it breaks my heart. This is pretty much just extremely long-winded rambling for myself; my inner-social worker is massively unsettled by this manga.



Spoilers through chapter 60, so watch out.

Yato’s father is a child abuser, plain and simple, and to me, at its heart, Noragami is a manga about child abuse and its resounding impacts on the individuals and communities it affects. Yes, it has the trappings of a rom-com and the trappings of a fantasy shounen, but beyond that, it tackles serious material in an extensive and thoughtful way that very few other manga do–abuse in many forms is common as backstory fodder in manga, but few series present characters who respond to that abuse in realistic and long-lasting ways, nor do many series focus on the ways in which abuse can deeply affect a person’s ability to function. Take away the gods and ayakashi from Noragami and you literally have the story of an abuse survivor who is desperately attempting to gain autonomy from his abuser and repeatedly failing due to a painfully realistic lack of resources and healthy coping mechanisms.



While child abuse is an extremely serious subject and I don’t in any way promote it being used as entertainment, I believe that manga is profound in its ability to express the stories of all kinds of characters, and I am greatly thankful to Adachitoka for giving voice to the experiences of a group of people who are intensely disenfranchised. Child abuse is one of the most under-reported but most common crimes in the world, and each year, hundreds of thousands of children suffer neglect and maltreatment silently, unable to seek help on their own.



Even more than this, the artists’ decision to portray a male abuse survivor feels extremely important to me. Here’s a horrifying game: google “child emotional abuse” and “male victims” and then try to find any substantial results. You won’t find many (if any), because society is conditioned to view men as aggressors, not as victims. Despite evidence suggesting that children of both genders are abused in roughly equal amounts, and that male children are more likely to be killed by their abusers than female children, an overwhelming amount of research on child abuse–and, correspondingly, an overwhelming number of the resources available for child abuse victims–focus on female victims. Few studies have been conducted analyzing the impacts of emotional abuse and neglect on male children, and there are no major medical or psychological websites dedicated to providing help for young male victims of physical and emotional abuse. Virtually all resources available for male victims of child abuse address sexual abuse only–because even among scholars, social workers, psychologists, and so on, the social construction of masculinity as non-submissive and non-emotional remains a heavy set of blinders; still today, the prevailing sense is that boys cannot be victims of emotional or traditional physical abuse because they are “tougher than that” and can simply “shake off” insults and bruises. Young male victims of emotional abuse and neglect are, in a sense, invisible.



It’s not too much of a stretch to read Yato and Yukine’s ability to blend into any crowd as a metaphor for the average person’s inability to notice children who are desperately in need. Some reports estimate that nearly 60% of child abuse is never reported. Until direct attention is called to the issue, it goes overlooked, even by those who are otherwise dedicated to helping vulnerable people. This is one of the reasons I find Noragami to be so significant–it not only portrays a male abuse survivor in a popular medium, but does so with fondness and care. Readers are supposed to sympathize with Yato’s plight and understand the difficulties he is facing when it comes to standing on his own two feet, free of his father’s influence. In any other manga, both characters and readers alike might be urging Yato to just man up and fight his father head-on, but with Noragami, it seems (to me at least) that Adachitoka are asking readers to approach Yato differently from typical shounen protagonists, calling awareness to a type of person who goes categorically overlooked, and reminding us that the futures of “heroes” (and real people) are defined by their resilience, not by the past actions of others. Normalizing the narratives of those who traditionally have no voice of their own does more for making them part of public discourse than a hundred scientific studies can. We need more stories like Noragami. Way more.



Careful attention to detail and realism is what sells it, of course, and I think the artists must have done their homework to end up including so many elements. This isn’t even an exhaustive list of the parallels, but here you go:

The overall goal of abusers is to control their victims is by limiting their ability to function independently. This is a two-pronged attack: first, they undermine their victims’ opportunities to gain vital life skills, and second, they undermine their victims’ sense of self-efficacy with insults and sabotage. Yato’s father cruelly and intentionally, from day one, limited Yato’s contact with the outside world and focused his behaviors on killing humans. As such, Yato missed out on a huge number of skills necessary for functioning autonomously in life. He has no experience negotiating with others when conflicts arise, poor understanding of social cues, zero healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with emotional trauma, few to no positive examples of how to appropriately express his feelings, and painfully crippled social support networks on which to rely. Strong parental support in early development shapes a child’s entire life course, and lacking a strong base on which to develop as a child results in children who have difficulty forming lasting relationships

difficulty expressing themselves and sharing important information



and who exhibit “strange” or socially unacceptable behavior



There’s also this:

Yato is initially portrayed (or at least supposedly portrayed, I don’t see it that much myself, but whatevs) as narcissistic, and he focuses only on himself and his own problems. Essentially, he doesn’t help people to help them; he helps people to gain at least momentary followers to keep himself alive. Personally, life or death situations are kind of a good excuse to be self-focused if you ask me, but in any case, the manga comes down on him for this and official art like the one above note that he (at least at first) loves himself more than anything in the world. While many people stereotype abuse victims as cowering and not wanting to call attention to themselves, one of the most common traits of abused children is actually narcissism. In order to hide deep-seated insecurities and fears, the children exhibit an inflated sense of self and insist on their own superiority and perfection, sometimes in an effort to fight back against the belittlement they experience at the hands of their parents. Because they have little resilience and few coping methods, they may also become fixated on the problems they are personally facing, causing them to become self-centered and have difficulty empathizing with others. It’s also possible, of course, that Yato “loves himself more than anything in the world” because he originally has no one else to love.



Even Yato’s chronic homelessness, unemployment, and inability to manage money are all textbook symptoms of abuse. Some studies indicate that child abuse victims are 25 times more likely to become homeless and 2.5 times more likely to be unemployed than non-abused children. Neglected and abused children often lack the skills necessary to properly control their finances, and as such, face challenges when it comes to saving, spending, and avoiding financial scams. Ding-ding, we have a winner.



The worst part of this, however, is the truth in television response of others to Yato. Despite the fact that he is shown actively working in many scenes, doing things that most gods would deem far below them (scrubbing bathrooms and dog houses, anyone?), and doing them with an extremely tenacious work ethic–even going above and beyond the call to clean mold from tiles–the other characters repeatedly tell Yato that he is a lazy, useless bum, a freeloader, and good for nothing. Especially in the beginning, Yato is only very rarely praised for his everyday actions, and he is more often insulted for the small jobs he does than congratulated for his willingness to put significant effort into essentially demeaning work.

Most of the characters are technically his friends, and yet their limited understanding of Yato’s situation takes their teasing out of the realm of funny and into really uncomfortable, especially in hindsight, for readers. Unbeknownst to the characters, this type of teasing reiterates Father’s negative words and reinforces Yato’s perception of himself as good for nothing but killing, further undermining Yato’s ability to become self-reliant and give up his past behaviors. This is a sad truth for many victims of abuse, who, even after leaving their abusers, suffer serious stigma (including from those closest to them) due to homelessness, unemployment, and the mental illness that frequently follows from abuse. (Side note: Of all the things that I like about Kazuma, what I like best is that he has never done this to Yato, and that he genuinely tried to help Yato over and over, no matter what silly endeavors Yato was pursuing at the time.)



Another realistic (but upsetting) moment is the chapter after Yato has been literally kidnapped by his father, when no one but Hiyori shows any concern over his complete disappearance.

Even Yukine, who strongly suspects that Yato is with the blatantly malicious Hiiro, doesn’t decide at any point in time that any effort should be made to actually find Yato. No one ever even suggests that Yato might need to be rescued from trouble. Ignoring the double standard for a moment (if a female character went missing, she would be immediately searched for, without question), the complacency displayed by the other characters is tragic because of how often it happens in real life. Thousands of child abuse cases go unreported–or worse, ignored even after they have been reported–every year because others are unwilling to speak up or oblivious to obvious signs of something being wrong. Even when there is significant evidence that something is off, such as in this case, with Yato’s sudden radio silence and failure to show up at the meeting of the gods, no one takes any action to find out if he needs help. Most people have a natural aversion to becoming involved in potentially upsetting situations, leading to characters in the manga–and people in real life–who write off common indications of abuse (like temporary disappearances, btw) as normal and not worth investigating/reporting. Globally, a “culture of complacency” permits abuse to continue, as friends, families, and communities consistently miss opportunities to prevent or stop child abuse.



Father, who is seen time and again counting on the worst behavior from both gods and humans, can pretty much bank on Yato receiving minimal support from the others, allowing him to continue to perpetrate psychological attacks against his son that shatter Yato’s sense of self-worth and leave him continually at his father’s mercy. I think it’s important that, yes, although physical abuse does occur (mostly by setting the ayakashi wolves on Yato), the worst abuse we’re shown on screen is Father’s constant belittlement of Yato’s capabilities.

Despite the fact that he is incredibly talented in many different areas, Yato actually believes for some time that the only thing he is good at is cutting things.



Due to lack of any substantial outside support (until he meets Hiyori and Yukine), Yato has no one who will validate his desire to bring happiness to human beings instead of being a murderer, and has no one to counteract his father’s insistence that Yato will never be good for anything but killing because that was the nature he was born with. Yato downplays and ignores his own skills (with weaving, art, and even math) because he can’t assign a sense of worth to these things when he thinks that everything he does beyond killing is worthless. Yato has to remain with or at least continuously return to his father because he feels like he has no one else and no other alternatives. He can’t find work. He can’t find a place to call home. His shinki keep leaving him. No one notices. But don’t worry, Yaboku, Daddy will still love you if you come back right now…This learned helplessness is the number one tactic of domestic abusers. Victims who believe they have no one else to turn to and lack the skills or value necessary to make it on their own cannot leave their abusers, for fear of failing without the “support” of those who are harming them.



This is also part of the feast and famine method of domination. Abuse is more effective when it is inconsistent, and abusers frequently swing from aggressive attacks to overwhelming kindness, confusing their victims. (A lot of commenters on Noragami scan pages state they want to hate Fujisaki but they can’t because of how hilarious he is sometimes–this is also truth in television for real life abusers, who can appear completely gentle and sweet in one moment or to one person, and unbelievably cruel to others later on.) Father switches constantly between praise, which Yato desperately craves, and insults, which are what has made Yato so desperate for praise in the first place, producing a vicious cycle in which he buys Yato’s “good behavior” with attention, and then eliminates his ability to leave by crushing Yato’s sense of self-esteem with verbal abuse.

Perhaps the worst is the context surrounding the issue of shrines. Yato recognizes shrines as symbols of affection and signs of being wanted by others, which he desperately desires:



When his father tells him that he “does not need a shrine,” he is intentionally devaluing Yato’s hope of ever being desired or important to others, telling Yato in a single sentence that he should give up any dream of ever having others who will care for him.



That’s because Father is also the master of the number two tactic, isolation. Enforcing a sense of helplessness on a victim requires that the victim has no one to turn to. He could originally do this simply by ordering Yato not to speak to anyone outside their family and making a game out of killing anyone they came across, but when Yato came into contact with Sakura, who started to teach him about the world and increase his ability to do things separate from his father, Father had to immediately and brutally shut down the relationship in a way that would unquestionably reinforce his power over Yato, aka revealing Sakura’s name and forcing Yato to kill her. Although it hasn’t been shown yet, it’s implied from that point on that Yato had “poor luck” with shinki, and that he spent relatively little time with others aside from Hiiro for at least a good while (at least we see him alone with Hiiro when Kazuma requests his help, years later).



It’s unclear when Yato started to actively try to break away from his father, but it is made apparent in the manga that he had no great degree of success until meeting Hiyori and Yukine, both of whom quickly come under attack by Fujisaki. Hiyori is a direct threat, as she represents a positive figure who is actively responsible for building up Yato’s sense of self-worth. She makes a shrine for him, which means, plainly and irrevocably, that she values his existence, that his life has meaning to her, that he is, in effect, meaningful. When it becomes obvious that Yato believes the things Hiyori says and won’t ignore them, Fujisaki even changes up his insult game–now he insults Yato’s inability to function on his own without the help of Hiyori.

With Yukine, it’s the same straightforward threat of going for the shinki’s name to try and corrupt him, but with Hiyori, Father attempts a more malicious plot, because he has already learned he can’t force Yato to give her up with his normal methods; instead, he has to force her to want to give Yato up, destroying her family, home life, friendships, and future as a doctor by sinking her family’s hospital. It’s vaguely implied that she’s supposed to either hate Yato, as a god of calamity, for bringing this misfortune on her, or fear Fujisaki enough that she’ll bow to his whims.



Unfortunately, this backfires spectacularly when she is not only embraced by her friends following the disaster, but the hospital does not collapse because her estranged brother returns, and the family is reunited and made stronger by moving in their grandmother as well. Hiyori also gains personal resolve and motivation to pursue a human career, which she previously lacked, making her, ultimately, an overall winner in this situation and supporting the idea that Yato is not a god a calamity for Hiyori, but her honest to goodness god of fortune.

However, Father did momentarily succeed in his goal because, once again, his emotional abuse works on Yato, convincing Yato that he is harming Hiyori and causing the god to avoid her, isolating himself once more.

Importantly, Hiyori only learns about Yato’s reason for avoiding her from Yukine, not from Yato himself.



Because that’s the very worst and most resounding impact of Father’s abuse: Yato’s complete and utter inability to communicate with others. The number one driving force of Noragami’s plot is communication failure. Hiyori continues to rant about Yato not fulfilling her job because Yato can’t bring himself to explain that fulfilling her wish will mean severing their ties (possibly because he’s terrified that she would choose that option, despite telling him plainly several times that she doesn’t want to end their connection).



Yato doesn’t speak to anyone about his past, and it’s implied that he may, in some cases, use humor or insincere replies to wriggle out of sharing any details about his past with anyone.



Literally the entire plot of the Bishamon arc is fueled by Yato’s inability to tell Bishamon the truth (that he was hired by Kazuma to kill the “ma” clan) and to call her on the selfishness of her resentment.

Hell, the whole Kugaha betrayal and deaths of her other shinki might have been averted if Yato had told Kazuma that Suzuha had been murdered by a shinki.



His fight with Bishamon in Takamagahara could have been avoided if he had made actual attempts to talk things out with her and find out what had really happened to Hiyori, rather than coming in swinging with Sekki.



And, of course, the piece de resistance: the entire situation with his father, Tsuguha’s death, and with the heavens battling each other could have been entirely averted if he had sat down and told everyone the truth in advance, warned them about what his father was capable of, and made some logical plans to work together to defeat him in a way that would not cut Yato’s lifeline. With the might of Bishamon, Ebisu, Tenjin, Kofuku, Yukine, and Hiyori, not to mention any other motivated gods, they could certainly have come up with something better than the current situation.

But it isn’t that Yato doesn’t want to talk, it’s that he literally can’t. One of his father’s very first acts was to silence him, to demand he not use his voice to speak to others. When Yato breaks this rule, to reassert his control over Yato, Father manipulates Yato into using that same voice–speaking Sakura’s name–to destroy her, and then immediately berates Yato for saying the name out loud, reinforcing the idea that Yato’s pain is a product of trying to communicate with others when he shouldn’t have.

And of course, it’s Yato’s decision to continue to talk to Hiyori that puts her in Fujisaki’s crosshairs and leads to the attack on the hospital. Again and again, Father echoes back to Yato that connecting to others, communicating with others, is dangerous–largely for the other party–as he continually insists Yato is a god of calamity who will only bring misfortune to others. Furthermore, Yato lives purely on the power of his father’s wish. If at any time Father wished for Yato to cease existing, it’s quite possible that he would, which means that Yato’s life, his entire existence, hinges on his silence regarding his father’s actions. This is, again, classic abuser behavior–victims are threatened and manipulated into silence, forced away from seeking help through direct threats to the victims and to others who are important to them (notably, Father’s punishing Hiiro when she and Yato were children constitutes using one sibling against another, another extremely common child abuse tactic). As always, phrases that strike at the victims’ self-worth to encourage their silence by making them think others will not understand or will hate them are pervasive:



Yato cannot protect everyone at once, and he frantically fluctuates between attempting to protect Hiyori by obeying his father and attempting to defy his father in hopes of finally gaining his freedom. However, because he doesn’t have the ability to communicate his situation to the others on whom he relies, he lacks the strong support network which is necessary to escape prolonged abuse. Yato technically has the means to escape via his many powerful friends, but Father keeps him a prisoner by blocking access to those means.



One of the most significant scenes in recent chapters is the scene in which Hiyori sits down with Yato and asks for advice about her career choices. Yato is overjoyed at being consulted for advice (someone cares about what he has to say?!) but even more telling is Hiyori’s reaction when Yato answers her question thoughtfully and genuinely. She’s shocked and touched to get a serious response from Yato, demonstrating how much he has grown in his ability to connect to and communicate with others in a meaningful way.

The house where Yato is kept while doing jobs with Hiiro is almost a symbol for his enforced silence. Until he remembers that Hiyori might be forgetting him, he lies complacently in his room, barely speaking. It’s only after he realizes he might be losing a connection that he reacts violently and speaks up for himself for the very first time.

Just let that sink in for a moment, please. Not once, in hundreds of years, has he even dared to ask his father to let him go. Maybe because he thought it would be futile. Or maybe because he had no one else to go to.



Ultimately, so long as Yato remains silent, he will never be completely free of his father, and the manga is going to continue making this brutally apparent until something, or someone, caves in.



Even with all that downer material, what is most beautiful about Noragami is the ways in which is demonstrates that victimhood does not define any of its characters, from Bishamon’s ability to overcome loss to Ebisu’s enduring love for the world. Yato has suffered for centuries at the hands of his father; in fact, Yato was supposedly born from his father’s vengeance-driven desire for endless slaughter, and yet he remains a largely good person, a character motivated by his own wish to genuinely make other people happy. His abuse has distinctly shaped his ability (or lack thereof) to function in the world, but it has not made him into bad person. He is more than a product of his father’s cruel upbringing, and this is nowhere more apparent than in his visit to Capyper Land with Hiyori and Yukine in chapter 41.



Most of the early part of that chapter pokes fond fun at Yato’s naivete with the capypers (by the way, not to be a downer, but naivete and child-like behavior is another common mark of abuse victims who are prohibited from appropriately developing socially, especially at a young age), as well as his inability to “read the atmosphere” and figure that something is going on Hiyori (Yukine comments on it, but Yato obliviously states that her horrified face must be a face of pure excitement).



The parallels between her “date” with Fujisaki and with Yato and Yukine run all day, from riding similar rides, taking photos with the capypers, and buying souvenirs, and at each opportunity, the authors take the chance to highlight the differences between Yato and his father. While Fujisaki pretty much dragged Hiyori to the capyper and she spent the entire photo shot confused and upset because she wanted to be there taking the photo with someone else, the capyper magically senses Yato (his sheer force of will made him visible to capypers? XD) and comes over to them, allowing for a sweet, non-forced moment in which Hiyori fulfills her wish of taking a picture with Yato and Yukine at last.



In the souvenir shop with Fujisaki, Hiyori struggled with her memories, desperately trying to recall Yato and Yukine and seeming grievously unhappy (which Fujisaki liked way too much, blech); with Yato and Yukine, she laughs over the silliness of all the things they’re trying to buy, and they reach out and drag her into their fun, demonstrating again that they care for her in a close, connected way, not in the distant and disturbing way that Fujisaki seems to at least be pretending to be attracted to her. Yato even states a panel or two later that the day was supposed to be all about Hiyori.



And then, of course, the parade. Whereas Fujisaki responded to Hiyori’s tears completely inappropriately, by kissing her totally without permission, Yato’s scene with Hiyori goes way differently. When Hiyori tries to flee (due to the terrible memories), Yato panics, immediately assuming she doesn’t want to watch it with him because she doesn’t like him:

Which devolves into another funny aneurysm moment in which Yato states that watching the parade alone would be lonely and social suicide and Hiyori tells him he has no social life anyway (ouch, too honest honey) and denies him again, leading Yato to cross the line by ignoring her refusal and demanding she come anyway, resulting in a miserable Hiyori beside him during the show:

Hiyori is crying at the parade again. Last time, Fujisaki kissed her without consent when this happened. What does Yato do? Immediately admits he messed up and went overboard and asks her if she wants to leave.

This light-hearted chapter has a lot of hidden depth to it, not the least in that it reveals Yato and his father are completely different people, and that Yato is infinitely kinder and more caring about other people’s feelings than his father. This chapter is also one of the rare times when Yato opens up about his own thoughts/feelings, telling Hiyori flat out that he is confused by her words and doesn’t know what to believe when she acts like she doesn’t want to be with him, then states that she does. (This is kind of a nice, small rebuke to the typical tsundere trope of the female character giving intensely mixed signals but never being called on it.)



All of this serves to subtly but effectively demonstrate that Yato is changing, becoming a better person and more independent from his father with each passing day that he spends with Hiyori and Yukine. He is resilient, not only surviving his terrible situation, but slowly, with the help of others, managing to overcome it.

Although, of course, not if Fujisaki has his say. The recent chapter, which revealed a little bit about Father’s motivation, has made him both more and less disturbing to me. On the one hand, he instantly became less “pure evil” following chapter 60, as it seems like we might have a woobie, destroyer of worlds incoming, if the audience is reading the hints correctly and Father bears a grudge against the gods for killing someone important to him (his wife?) and against humans for endlessly forgiving the gods, despite the gods continually failing humanity. If this is the case, it certainly doesn’t excuse his actions, but it could give him a fairly typical, sort of plausible (if still not likable) justification for his villainy. It doesn’t really let him off the hook in any way, but viewers have a penchant for forgiving vengeance seekers, maybe because we all have or can at least imagine having something important enough to burn the whole world for. Audiences love devotion (particularly in situations where the devotion involves love), even when (maybe especially when) that devotion scales past acceptable into insanity. I’m a bit hesitant to accept the hints at face value though–Father’s cruelty to others who clearly have done nothing wrong and his powers (particularly with Chiki) are so strange that I feel there must be something more than simple revenge at work here. We’ll see.

At the same time that Father became less disturbing, he also became more horrifying to me, because the same chapter that revealed this small tidbit of his backstory also revealed that he views humans and gods with equal contempt, and that he sees all gods as pathetic abused children who continue to return to their abusers again and again.

The looming implication of chapter 60 is that Father did not create Yato solely to murder for him–he likely created Yato so that he could also have a pet god to torture forever. Yato’s entire existence could basically be a means to exact Father’s revenge against gods, and Father has probably been getting sadistic kicks out of subjugating, terrorizing, and punishing a god for centuries. Even when/if he didn’t have the power to face the heavens directly, he always had at least one god he could grind into the dust and laugh while the kid just kept coming back to take it again and again. If it’s true that Father despises the gods, what a power trip it must be to literally hold the life of a god in his hands, dangling Yato’s continued existence over his head and telling this “lowly” creature that he has to obey his father’s every command if he even wants to see another day.



Hint: The answer is no.



(Just random thoughts: The whole possible “Father” and “the Holy Father” thing is not lost on me either; Father is, in a sense, Yato’s god.)



Even the father-son relationship in the first place is made intensely disturbing by this. It’s not implied by the manga that gods who are born from human wishes have any real familial connection to the humans who create them; even if they’re beholden to the wishes of humans, it’s not stated anywhere that they automatically become the children of the humans whose wishes gave them life. Which means that there’s a 99% chance Father intentionally built this whole sham “family” structure to further twist and damage Yato’s understanding of love, play on the virtue of filial piety, and make Yato feel even more unwanted and helpless. He could have just made Yato a slave; instead, he made Yato a slave but called him a son.



That is some sick shit, man.



Beyond that, I think it’s a bit too early to speculate more about Father (and whether or not he is even remotely redeemable or should be redeemable for that matter!!), but I do think, based on the hints so far, he is going to turn out to be at least a slightly grey-morality character, rather than a cut and dry villain. More than any other character in the series, he causes me to throw out long strings of wild mass guesses.



In particular, I wonder if Yato really was born from a wish to eliminate humanity. All the gods seem to align more fully with their primary purpose than Yato does: Tenjin is indeed a scholar, Bishamon remains focused on combat, Kofuku fakes being a different god to get business, but she remains unfortunate without fail, while Ebisu keeps his eye on commerce. Yato is the only god in the series who seems to be working contrary to his supposed nature–he is supposed to be a god of calamity, yet from the very start, the only thing we have seen him do is try to please others. His sole motivation as a child was earning his father’s praise; while he does have “fun” killing people with Hiiro, this is because he doesn’t initially understand the act as a bad thing and has no other outlet to entertain himself as a child. The moment he comes into contact with Sakura, he loses all enjoyment from killing and immediately begins to seek praise by doing “good” things for people, like saving them and making them shoes. There really isn’t a single malicious bone in this kid’s body, and his only driving force, from the beginning of the series to the present, is making others happy.

So is possible that (either intentionally or not), Yato was born from a very different wish than the one Father is saying out loud? Maybe Yato was simply born from a scumbaggy wish of Father’s to have a completely subservient god at the beck and call of him, a human. Or maybeeeee, really really deep down, Father’s wish isn’t to watch the world burn, but to live in a world where there is no violence between gods and men, and the heavens are as dedicated to the peace and well-being of humanity as they pretend to be? Maybe the fact that Yato took the form of a god who cares for humanity, instead of Father’s superficial desire for revenge, deeply infuriates Father and fuels his need to control every one of Yato’s actions, so he can corrupt Yato into actually becoming the vengeful god Father wanted him to be. In that case, Yato would literally be a manifestation of everything Father hates and loathes–both a god and symbol of the important relationship between gods and humans, of the constant hope and deep faith that continues to spring up between them, no matter how many times it is crushed by reality.



Most importantly, for my heart: Is any of the affection Father shows to Yato even remotely real? I don’t know if I could take either answer.