got blisters on mah fingers
May. 22nd, 2009 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138The RKDreams forum is glitching again; cut'n'paste storage of non-posting reply.
Original post from moeru:
IIRC, the most common interpretation is that it's a nested flashback of sorts-- Kenshin is thinking back to the early stages of his training with Hiko, when he hoped that he could eventually protect others in the future in the same way that he'd been unable to protect the three girls who tried to protect him from the bandits. Although they weren't actually his older sisters, "nee-san" or "nee-chan" is a respectful way for kids to address or refer to girls who are older than them. It's also an ironic narrative parallel to Enishi, who later became obsessed with avenging his own actual "nee-chan" (Tomoe) as a direct result of Kenshin's actions.
My own semi-crackpot addition is that this seems to be one of the first times that his face resumes bleeding by itself after the initial wound from Kiyosato, which Iizuka implied was Kenshin's first battle wound-- and so the combination of blood and adrenaline reminds Kenshin that his body hadn't inflicted that sort of semi-spontaneous injury onto itself since the very start of his training; in the flashback, young Kenshin is still building up the sword calluses on his soft hands by smacking the wooden practice sword onto the tree. And Iizuka's other comment about "hate" suggests that Kenshin really is inflicting the bleediness onto himself via self-loathing.
Also, the immediate framework around the flashback is that he's just carried out another assassination, knocking over some barrels of water in the process-- again, this is an ironic juxtaposition of his inital wish to defend and protect people and his present task of attacking and killing them-- and iirc the bleeding is first shown in his reflection on the water's surface. However, this way lies further crackpottery from me about the symbolic correspondence of Kenshin, Kiyosato, and Tomoe to the Shinto triad of sword, mirror, and jewel, as well as the middle ground between the traditional identifications that a man's soul is his sword and a woman's soul is her mirror, and blah blah mizugori waterfall purification rituals blah blah blah.
Original post from moeru:
I don't know if this has been asked before... but after watching TsuiokuHen yet again, there's this scene that really bothered me.
It's the part in the first ep between Iizuka telling Kenshin about swords inflicted out of hate and Kenshin washing his hands while Iizuka tells him about the meeting Katsura just had.
The scene is a flashback.. Young Kenshin is sort of practicing swings with a thin wooden stick.. then his hands got all blistered... he went to the river nearby to wash his "bloody" sands.. and then softly whispers "neechan".
What is this scene all about.. I don't it's in the manga. T_T
IIRC, the most common interpretation is that it's a nested flashback of sorts-- Kenshin is thinking back to the early stages of his training with Hiko, when he hoped that he could eventually protect others in the future in the same way that he'd been unable to protect the three girls who tried to protect him from the bandits. Although they weren't actually his older sisters, "nee-san" or "nee-chan" is a respectful way for kids to address or refer to girls who are older than them. It's also an ironic narrative parallel to Enishi, who later became obsessed with avenging his own actual "nee-chan" (Tomoe) as a direct result of Kenshin's actions.
My own semi-crackpot addition is that this seems to be one of the first times that his face resumes bleeding by itself after the initial wound from Kiyosato, which Iizuka implied was Kenshin's first battle wound-- and so the combination of blood and adrenaline reminds Kenshin that his body hadn't inflicted that sort of semi-spontaneous injury onto itself since the very start of his training; in the flashback, young Kenshin is still building up the sword calluses on his soft hands by smacking the wooden practice sword onto the tree. And Iizuka's other comment about "hate" suggests that Kenshin really is inflicting the bleediness onto himself via self-loathing.
Also, the immediate framework around the flashback is that he's just carried out another assassination, knocking over some barrels of water in the process-- again, this is an ironic juxtaposition of his inital wish to defend and protect people and his present task of attacking and killing them-- and iirc the bleeding is first shown in his reflection on the water's surface. However, this way lies further crackpottery from me about the symbolic correspondence of Kenshin, Kiyosato, and Tomoe to the Shinto triad of sword, mirror, and jewel, as well as the middle ground between the traditional identifications that a man's soul is his sword and a woman's soul is her mirror, and blah blah mizugori waterfall purification rituals blah blah blah.