Admin Dark Princess: Like I promised here is the translation for the Shū manifesto enjoy Source: sakamakishuu.co.vu/post/96231167586/impossible-boy-a-sakamaki-shuu-manifesto The teller told an unusual tale With spider words and webs To capture all the ears they fell upon The story of an impossible boy Who never even knew that he was real DISCLAIMER: I am not a native Japanese speaker and many of my translations were either approved by Lore or any other of my friends who know more of the language than I, so please don’t take the translations extremely accurately, as they can be worded differently. Diabolik Lovers is a game not available in English, therefore it should be mentioned that any screencaps from more,blood or HDB with English captions were translated and edited in Photoshop. The same goes for Prequel and Sequel manga caps, as they were translated by their respectful scanlators/translators and will be credited in the writing later on. That being said, let’s begin. please enjoy! Introduction: One of the most common misconceptions that is given to Shuu’s character is that his laziness is often passed off as him being, for lack of a better term, ‘nice’. With him constantly shrugging Yui off and ignoring her, he’s labeled as a merciful person. Though merciful is a bit of an understatement, when in truth ‘dismissive’ would be a better way to put it. From the get go, he tells Yui that it doesn’t matter what happens to her—as long as he isn’t involved. In Haunted Dark Bridal when she makes her arrival, he does tell his brothers that they mustn’t kill her, though it’s apparent in his tone that he doesn’t actually care what happens to her. Though that attitude seems to not only shift unto that situation, but almost every other situation as well. Shuu and the causes of his mannerisms/attitude: The causes of this attitude are hard to understand, mostly because Shuu is one of the most human of the 5 other brothers, Subaru coming in second. (This is also part of the accusation that the two are seen as ‘angels’—which will be negated later.) I like to compare the cause of Shuu’s mannerisms to something like a bird in a cage type of life, or perhaps the mentality of a bird who cannot fly. For most of his childhood he had lived in the confinements of the mansion, providing him a bored and unsatisfying lifestyle as stated in his monologue from the Dark Prologue in More, Blood: The happiness that all people covet came to me all too easily. As for the reason why, because I am a vampire descended from Karlheinz, as the firstborn son I am to succeed the family. Social status and prestige. At the same time I was given life, it seems that I also obtained those things. I did not acquire those things personally. Even so, those things seemed to become mine. Things that I could not obtain could not exist. With the luxuries given to him in his life as a pampered heir, he did not receive the choice to do what he wanted with his life. His fate was written for him at the moment of his birth, and the task he had been given to fulfill included becoming the Sakamaki heir, and taking excessive classes for the sake of studying and becoming intelligent. This particular situation can be extremely relatable to children with strict parents that keep them inside all the time (The main reason I write this is because I sympathize greatly with Shuu’s situation, which is hard to recognize by many of my age group). It’s made clear in his thoughts that he feels trapped—hence the bird in the cage metaphor. What good is a bird when it can’t do the thing it was created to do—to fly? To Shuu, breaking the cage meant freedom, and that was when he found Edgar/Yuuma in the woods. They say that restricting someone (especially children) only causes them to rebel more, and that was exactly what drove Shuu to run away from his responsibilities. Bound by a harsh set of rules and discipline, the words ‘do as you were told’ were told so often to him, that they soon had no meaning and he broke his mother’s rules without any hesitation. To Shuu, Edgar was an outlet for stress and a way to ‘breathe’ in comparison to the suffocated life of the mansion that he was so used to, but not satisfied with. If you look further into his route, you can see that Yui is also somewhat of an outlet, once you take a look at ED 01. Though the two of them are happy living together in Transylvania, Shuu used her to run away from his problems, and the tension of the atmosphere at his home, rather than handling it himself. As a child, Shuu remained ambitious and positive, but after the effects of seeing Edgar ‘die’ in the fire, his ‘flame’ burnt out. In other words, he dropped everything—given the circumstances, and Reiji’s constant badgering, he developed the idea that all of this was because of him—because he escaped the mansion that one day, because he decided to associate with humans despite his mother’s words. This was one of the major causes that leads to the development of his slump. Shuu and Edgar/Yuuma: I’ll assume that the most of you that are reading this have an idea of Yuuma’s true identity, we’re going to start there. He was Shuu’s childhood friend that supposedly perished in the fire, though now he goes by a new name—Mukami Yuuma. I didn’t notice this from before until a friend of mine pointed it out to me—but in the anime and the game screenshots, ‘Edgar’ is wearing the exact same clothes as Yuuma’s child sprites: I didn’t realize this while watching the anime since it came out before the actual game did, so I just thought the producers were giving Edgar a random design, rather than following the actual planned canon. It could have been possible foreshadowing there. The relationship between Edgar/Yuuma and Shuu is one of reliance and escape. This situation is hard to grasp, mostly because to completely understand you may have to place yourself in Shuu’s shoes. In modern day, middle class society you don’t quite meet a sheltered aristocrat, but theoretically it’s possible for Shuu and Reiji to be born ages ago, where aristocracy was common. Imagine that you are trapped. Though your limbs may not be bound or there are no weights shackled to your ankles, the world seems to be passing you by, and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Each day you watch as the people around you are doing as they please, going places or doing things for themselves and making themeselves happy. You wish you can get a taste of that. You want a taste of that freedom you’ve watched from a distance for so long, that you can’t bear it. But you can’t. The invisible bindings seem like they are there to stay, and no matter how much you struggle, pull, or twist them, they’re impossible to remove. But then one day, it becomes too much. You can’t take it. The scolding, the harsh regulations, the rules—so you decide to leave it all one day. In Shuu’s case, he is trapped by the high expectations of his mother, whom had been tormented and taunted by Cordelia for bearing the first son, even though Karl Heinz had wed Cordelia first. Remember that Cordelia wanted to bear the heir first and when Beatrix had done so, she became infuriated, thus causing Beatrix to put extra stress and pressure on her son, despite his age. Sneaking out into the woods, Shuu senses a person—a human nearby, and it turns out to be Edgar. Imagine that after being inside for a majority of your life, you run into someone that you have never been used to seeing every day for years. It’s obvious from his appearance that he’s nothing of your status, of your honor, but he’s one of the common folk, someone you’ve almost wanted to be your whole life. Edgar and Shuu both left huge impressions on each other from the get go—they were able to tell that they were different. Though Edgar had no idea that Shuu was a vampire, he was able to befriend him from the start. From then on, meeting with him in the woods had become a leeway to freedom for Shuu. Life at the mansion was unfulfilling— I preferred spending time with Edgar. I felt alive when I was with him. Behind everyone’s back, I would leave the mansion and go to the forest. When monitoring grew more severe, I worked to study harder. But I showed carelessness, in order to go to the forest again. My scoldings grew more frequent, but I didn’t care since I was having fun. With Edgar becoming Shuu’s first friend, it gave him more of a reason to despise being at home in the mansion—despite the responsibilities he held there. He claims he was living lethargically before he met Edgar—but it was also possible that during his escapades outside of the mansion, he became even more lethargic, since he was abandoning his responsibilities. Even as his punishments became more severe and he was presented with hard work, he states that he gave half the effort, in order to finish for the sake of a sweet escape once again. During their first meeting, Edgar gives Shuu an apple—and when looked at a little more closely, it can represent something forbidden—in this case, the choice to live and act freely, which wouldn’t be tolerated under the rule of Beatrix. To Shuu, not only was Edgar someone he can enjoy himself with, but he was someone that provided a door for him to go through when he felt strangled. In other terms, he can represent a key to unlock the invisible shackles that he was bound with back at the manor. Though as they say, nothing lasts forever, and that became clear as soon as the ‘accidental’ fire had been set to Edgar’s village. After witnessing something he’d only seen in its small form inside a fireplace, upon seeing an entire village become devoured by a fire, Shuu was speechless. He knew that a human like Edgar would die upon entering that fire. Even as he tried to stop him, Edgar insisted that he had to help his family—and promised that he and Shuu would play together another day. (scan/translation here) Shuu did not see Edgar again after that, and in a later scenario, confirmed his death. Afterwards, the guilt and apathy came into full effect, and Shuu had been tossed into a slump (this could also be argued as PTSD or depression, or both). Though it was such a short period of time, Edgar/Yuuma had left a large impact on Shuu, who had been sheltered all his life. After experiencing the loss of the only person he could consider his friend, he withdrew himself from not only leaving the house, but from all interactions with humans. He blamed himself for being naive, and decided that humans died all too easily. Edgar’s impact on Shuu doesn’t end there. When he makes an appearance in More Blood’s introduction, the reaction Shuu has upon seeing Yuuma shocks him a little. From the start he looks familiar to Shuu, but he convinces himself that he’s got the wrong person and moves on. Throughout his entire route in More, Blood, he seems conflicted with the fact that Edgar looks familiar to him—he even appears familiar to Reiji, who states that things have gotten much more interesting once he started showing up to their school. He even gives up Yui to Edgar at one point—simply because he knew he was Edgar. In the end, Yuuma became frustrated with the inability to become Adam, therefore he did something which was both risky but also an only solution to bring Shuu to his senses—which was setting the Mukami mansion on fire. Realizing that his priority, Yui, was at stake, Shuu had to force himself to overcome—or at least face his fear to save the one thing he hadn’t quite lost yet. In other words, Yuuma, something Shuu had apparently lost—had the purposes of teaching Shuu a valuable lesson. If you don’t fight for what belongs to you, or something you long for, you can’t achieve anything at all. Shuu and Yui: Shuu’s relationship to Yui is something similar to Yuuma’s though for different reasons. While Yuuma freed Shuu from the bindings he was facing at home, Yui was somewhat of an escape from his long-term depression. Being a lethargic person with a careless attitude, he won’t do anything if there isn’t anyone there to push him. Reiji’s cruel insults and words (such as the threat of tossing him into the incinerator) don’t help at all when it comes to getting up and doing things for himself—instead, he had to be pushed positively, and Yui proved to be someone who was able to do that for him. Upon playing his route she’s usually, in his words, ‘pestering’ him, whether it’s encouraging him to go to class, get up and do something for himself, or just go stop sleeping on the floor like usual. Though it never usually ends well on Yui’s part, with each time she encounters him, she leaves a very small imprint on him which would soon turn into something bigger, with time. Though the primary reason Shuu pushed himself away from Yui was for the sole reason of humans dying too easily—just as Edgar did. In a way, he feared human-vampire connection. He now knew that nothing good would come from it, thanks to Reiji’s taunting in their younger days. (scan/translation here) Naturally, Shuu would react apathetically. However, when someone was kind to him after numerous encounters over a long period of time, despite his flaws,it’s unavoidable that he would very slowly, open himself up. Since Shuu was a child, after the Edgar incident, an idea in his head had been implanted that he didn’t deserve anything—that everything he touched went bad. This is partly because of, again, Reiji’s taunting after the event had taken place, but also because Shuu felt helpless and inferior, unable to stop Edgar from entering the fire and thus feeling a wave of ‘survivor’s guilt’ wash over him. Over the course of his route he has many doubts of his involving with Yui. He even warns her countless times to leave him alone, but it mainly wasn’t because he wasn’t interested in her—he was afraid of losing her just as he lost Edgar/Yuuma. This was one of the steps that Shuu had taken in his attachment to Yui. Not to mention that he even exposes his vulnerable self to her—at the moment where he had seen fire. That alone shows that he was involved with her enough to show that pathetic, scared side of him that still remained as a child from before. (scan/translation here) At that moment, Yui realizes how much of a lost child Shuu is—he doesn’t know how to handle his fears of his problems. And he needs her guidance to get himself out of his rut that he had been tossed into years ago. It can’t be argued that his character develops very well over the course of Haunted Dark Bridal and MB, though the ‘learning to love/care for someone other than himself’ is a big step on it’s own. It all depends upon personal interpretation. But besides from learning to love and treasure Yui, he doesn’t do much else for himself. Shuu and Reiji: The two brothers are known for being polar opposites—Shuu is older, a ‘deadbeat’, and doesn’t accomplish anything, whereas Reiji is younger and well-rounded in terms of being knowledgeable, productive, and well mannered—Ironic, considering that Shuu is the eldest of the Sakamaki brothers. Reiji and Shuu have a long past of not being able to cooperate with one another. Their differing personalities clash together, and they have a poor relationship due to many miscommunications and misunderstandings of each other. Their relationship is commonly misinterpreted as one as “Reiji hates/is jealous of Shuu”, but it is much more complicated than that. Since Shuu was the born heir, he lived a privileged life, but was also pushed to be the very best by his mother, Beatrix, whom, mentioned earlier, also felt pressured to bear and raise the heir as Karl Heinz’ successor. As a result, Reiji faced being neglected by her, because no matter how many things he learned or achieved, he couldn’t change the fact that he wasn’t born first—he couldn’t share the same value that Shuu had to his mother, even though he could have probably surpassed him with enough work. But, hard work alone wouldn’t get Reiji the praise and attention he had been yearning for. It’s been argued that what Reiji went through wasn’t “as bad” as Shuu, creating a bad image of him, but to truly understand him, the situation would have to be viewed from his perspective. The idea of suffering from neglect and not having recognition is something you’d have to experience to fully grasp the understanding of the feeling. It could be possible that Shuu was unaware of Reiji’s feelings, and vice versa. Since the two were born under very different situations, it’s almost impossibly hard for any of them to step into each other’s places and completely analyze the situation. In Shuu’s perspective, he probably just co-existed with Reiji as they were children and didn’t think much about his feelings, since he was so bombarded with his own pressures as the rising heir. Whereas Reiji thought of Shuu as someone who didn’t try enough, or someone that neglected his responsibilities for his own personal desires—a grudge that Reiji holds even after all these years. While he resents Shuu for not stepping up and taking charge of his position, it could be argued that he doesn’t hate him enough to the point of wanting him to die—if Reiji so much wanted him dead, he would have already killed Shuu at this point. (He had threatened throwing him into an incinerator at one point, but if he truly meant it he would have acted upon his words already.) The relationship they hold in the present is one of which Reiji is always insulting Shuu, and in response, Shuu shrugs it off with his normally distant attitude. But once in a while, after enough pursuing, Shuu gets up and off of his feet and shows his brothers who is the dominant one—take the dart game in HDB, for example. In the tournament, the brothers compete over Yui—the one who wins takes ownership of her. When Reiji learns that Shuu is unwilling to participate, he pushes a huge onslaught of insults to Shuu, calling him a good for nothing and that he was the definition of useless. This could have prompted Shuu to join the game at the last minute. Since Reiji had instigated and underestimated him, Shuu wanted to prove that he wasn’t just a ‘deadbeat’ as he said. He saw the opportunity as a challenge. He proves that by winning the dart game and claiming Yui as his prize, but even as he sucks her blood in front of his brothers, he’s still uninterested in her. His motive was clearly not because he wanted Yui, but perhaps he wanted to prove a point to his siblings—particularly Reiji, that he wasn’t as useless as he seemed. But on a general note, he doesn’t really care what Reiji or any of his other siblings think of him. Another example could be the sword fight in Vol. 2 of Reiji and Shuu’s versus. Reiji: “Don’t try to avoid the question, just answer.” Shu: “…what?” Reiji: “Are you planning to hand her down to me? Your feelings for her are only to that extent. Can I interpret it that way?” Shu: “…” Reiji: “No answer. That means…” Shu: “I’ve told you. I’m not obliged and have no intentions of handing her to you. As for which one of us she belongs to, she should know the answer better than anyone else right?” Reiji: “Fine. I understand what you mean. I’m satisfied after hearing how you truly feel, because that’s what I’ve been seeking for all this time.” *drops sword* Shu: “What’s wrong? The match isn’t over yet.” Reiji: “I forfeit.” Shu: “…huh? Are you kidding?” Rather than talking out their feelings normally, the two take it out on a duel between each other. Towards the end, Reiji forfeits because he doesn’t care about winning, but because he already got what he wanted—Shuu’s honesty—therefore the match doesn’t matter to him anymore. To these two, actions definitely speak louder than words. If they were to use words, it would probably become ugly in an instant. Towards the end of the CD, Shuu says something a bit too honest for his character, probably under the effects of the lunar eclipse. Reiji: “Listen, you. And Shu too. The words I say are influenced by the moon, and thus should not be taken seriously.” Shu: “Do you want to leave it at that?” Reiji: “Well, what about you? If—just in case—my words reflect my true feelings, can you forgive me?” Shu: “What do you mean?” Reiji: “You should know it well. The meaning of forgiving me.” Shu: “What do you want to do?” Reiji: “I’m asking you. Don’t put it back in my hands. I want to hear your answer.” Shu: “Tsk. In that case, I can’t forgive you.” Reiji: “Hmph. Figures.” Shu: “Yeah, but it’s not just you. I can’t forgive myself either.” Reiji: “What do you mean by that?” Shu: “It means me and you, both of us, are wrong.” Deep down it could be hinted that the both of them really want to reconcile, but thanks to their lack of proper communication and understandings, it proves as difficult and the problem doesn’t get resolved in the end. It’s possible for the two, however, to coexist without causing too much of a stir between themselves. (Shuu vs Reiji Stella Tokenworth Tokuten): here Even though the two of them are stuck together in a limousine, they could communicate without crossing a line. Though as Shuu and Reiji stated afterward, “The mood is already sour, so why make it worse?” The situation is bad to start with, but they could carry themselves in such a way that it wouldn’t ruin things any further (if it were possible.) All misunderstandings aside, Shuu and Reiji are capable of living quietly beside each other without too much of a ruckus. In fact, had they not shared such an ill fate, they even could get along regularly as brothers and possibly share a strong bond. It’s also already clear that they both somewhat hold a sort of respect for one another. The root of the issue resides in the mother, not the siblings. In that case, though Shuu and Reiji are both partly responsible for the way the other had turned out, it was Beatrix who pushed Shuu, who ignored Reiji for her own personal reasons. Only time can tell if the two will ever resolve this issue. Final thoughts & closing: On the outside, Shuu does generally seem to be a tasteless and bland looking guy. But, people shouldn’t be judged based on appearances—the same thing goes for characters, who can be in depth and well written just as Shuu was. His humanity, intelligence and childishness can all be hidden away by that thick layer of lethargy. He’s one of those characters that you really really have to look at for a long time to completely understand. (I’ve actually been observing his character for two years before I even thought about writing this, so there’s that, too.) I really believe he’s one of the most interesting characters that Rejet has written—though out of the Sakamaki brothers he places behind Reiji at 2nd, and Laito at 1st. Though the main issue is that he’s mostly looked over as a “poor pitiful baby with a sad past, and he lost his friend thanks to his piece of trash brother.” I believe that his actions and choices are very much ignored in order to defend him. In fact, each brother can be pitied in some form, but their actions in the present can’t be justified because of something that happened in the past, that they need to pull themselves out of. I hope that after this read, you all will at least have a better idea of Shuu’s character. Thank you for reading!
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 03:57:49 +0000
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