You Didn’t Think I Was Just Gonna Gloss Over This Did You???

okay so i just finished watching the recap episode (pretty standard, nothing fancy) and THE END CARD??? "group date" so like a mixer, then? which is when a bunch of single people get together to form bonds, have drinks or food, play games, or get set up with a blind date. "the sea" BEACH EPISODE??? MAYBE??? they can expand on the lore too bc the city's waters were made from a crater from by senya and ichiya's fight. or maybe the sea is relevant in some other way to some characters? explore different character's dynamics? i don't mind a more light-hearted episode but bucchigiri, at least to me, is the type of show that doesn't waste any of its episodes or runtime to tell a story, so even if the episode is more laid back i think it'll still have some of the overarching plot there. also, we know majority of the cast is guys (exception: mahoro) and like. most of the gangs dont have girls (exception: NG boys but they're the enemy and defeated for now) so…. hmmmmm. most mixers are not that big (i think) unless it's a school-wide thing for the celebration of the NG boys being defeated? if it just involves the main cast hanging out then i can %100 smell some of those homoerotic undertones from here. bonus points if it is a beach episode or something of that variety. just some food for thought. speaking of food, croquettes!! yummy!! wonder if we'll see some more of mama tomoshibi's homecooked food or something else... the food shots are one of the highlights of every ep for me lol i love it when characters just chow down on yummy food

i'm not a marito apologist btw i think everything he's doing is normal

bucchigiri ep 9 thoughts:

taken over huh... is that also what senya is doing to arajin maybe? like with the magic trampstamp (words i never expected to write...)

shindo is a bitch and pathetic but i enjoy his character unfortunately (in my defense, my interpretation of him threatening to do That to mahoro was just to make arajin pissed and get him to reveal senya. i think it was kind of narrative low-hanging fruit honestly.)

'is that a yes or no' take a wild fucking guess buddy

zabuuuuuu you are such a good friend

senya hitting people as a show of affection lol

matakara gathering money, presumably he was saving to get an apartment with his brother. what's he planning to use it for?

oh my godddd the cat boy drama 💀 this side gag is so stupid but so funny i love it. i imagine jasmine as as a pure white long hair cat and pu'er as a classic brown tabby. also cat boy getting way too invested in his personal life is *chefs kiss*

arajin is trying his absolute best to convince himself he doesn't care about matakara

the dynamic between komao, zabu, and ara is really funny. i think in other shows they might just sideline the friend characters but they really have an awkward 'friend of a friend' dynamic i like. komao isn't really socially aware enough to be mean to ara despite being him being mean to matakara, and zabu is more hostile but puts most of that aside for matakara's sake. it's like your friends scoping out your awful crush lmao

THE LIFE SIZED NAKED MARITO DOLL? EXCUSE ME??? there is so much wrong with mahoro oml

wait is the life sized naked marito doll marito's? that's somehow weirder.

mahoro, is that concern for a person who isn't your brother? wow

matakara :(

so is the 'monster' literal or metaphorical? interesting

ichiya you're hot as hell but stop telling matakara to draw away from his friends you bitch

'one person would've wanted it' stopppppp 😭 arajin is realizing he liked having matakara around while matakara is being turned against his friends by ichiya. the dramatic irony is killing me

the fact that this 'love forever stone' is a lake blue stone wrapped specifically in a blue cloth as well... that thing is definitely going to be given to matakara by the end, right? pretty gay if you ask me.

ohhhh my god mahoro character growth. plus her relating to him specifically through their shared brother idolization is a good touch. very sweet

mahoro's basically saying like "dude how are you only focused on yourself and me right now. how have you not noticed your childhood friend is depressed and crazy in love with you. like seriously he has not been subtle. at all." lmao i love herrrrrrr

mahoro deserves her own show

also relieved to have ara's interpretation of matakara and mahoro's relationship as romantic to be kind of trivialized again in this scene. i think their dynamic is more interesting as two very different personalities which share just enough to relate with each other. she only wants ara to get his shit together for matakara's sake. i want them to be besties please

arajin is The Worst with emotions huh. he can't read other's feelings and he's somehow worse at reading his own. he needs to stop being relatable right this second

yknow at this point i think i can say i truly and properly enjoy arajin as a character. he's mostly an asshole and deeply emotionally unintelligent but i like him regardless and because of it

ah senya ichiya and arajin matakara parallels as i expected

so does senya=matakara and ichiya=arajin kind of?

i really wasn't joking about them being exes huh

stoppppp ichiya gave him his name? senya was and continues to be so ridiculously down bad

'he meant absolutely everything to me.' dude.

senya is trying to get ara and matakara together bc he couldn't do that for him and ichiya

i am so gd curious what happened to drive them apart

matakara losing sight why he wanted to become a honki person in the first place (ara) and trying to destroy it

'what senya wants is your body' context needed.

i'm thinking maybe ichiya is willing to fully take over bodies and senya isn't, thus why he hasn't done it to arajin already. that or he was planning to in the beginning but got too attached

ohhh this is gonna make for a good dramatic fight

ughhhh another really good episode. i think the story's finally full found its stride. very hyped for the last 3 episodes. i think next episode will probably deal with betrayal between senya and ara, leading senya to explain exactly what happened between him and ichiya. matakara will trying to fight ara and ara will have to run away, frustrating matakara even more. mahoro might focus on trying to help matakara

Do you want to know what’s so truly sickening in this scene? The moment where Matakara removed the jacket + armband and then dumped it into the sea water you can tell by Kenichiro’s expression (even if it remained the same as it is) that he was disappointed in himself, that he failed to live up to Mitsukuni’s promise to him to look after Matakara.

Honestly, even if Ken was pretty forgettable (no thanks to certain story directions btw) as a character, I definitely feel sorry for him.

The most painful part? That jacket belonged to Mitsukuni. So to see Matakara throwing away the last reminder of his brother, the only family that he had left and doing it in front of his brother’s most trusted comrade and leader who did whatever he can to keep Matakara safe is just truly saddening.

The way I'm seeing Bucchigiri so far is that the Honki people feel coded as homosexual and as a kid Arajin was really into being like that. But he was never open with that to anyone but his one friend, who was supportive and bonded with him over it. And in trying to defend that, that friend got mercilessly attacked while Arajin just ran away. So the way that Arajin so desperately avoids even Matakara is that he feels like that lifestyle reminds him of both that danger and his own personal weakness. And so he finds it safer to overcompensate by trying to act 110% straight.

ooh this is an interesting reading! i've thought about how fighting=an act of love in this show, but honki people=homosexuality could fit quite well into ara's character arc and relationship with matakara.

given how arajin is the protagonist of a brawling show, and I think it would extremely strange for arajin to completely reject his childhood desire to become a honki person by the end. they've definitely played up his refusal of the call so far, so i think we're going to see ara stepping up into his fighting anime protagonist role. if we assume that fighting, in the language of bucchigiri, is an expression of true self/feelings, i think we're definitely in for some kind of reciprocity of matakara's feelings on ara's part. i will be very surprised if we don't get a arajin x matakara fight by the end.

arajin has obviously buried his feelings about his past very deep and has tried to pivot his life in a completely opposite direction. I wouldn't be surprised if it's revealed that his obsession with dating is due in part to his trauma surrounding fighting; possibly him trying to emulate what a normal teenager does instead of 'embracing his true self' (ie. becoming honki). if this is how the story goes, there will be a definite queer reading to be had.

allegorically, the story would read as: young matakara is beaten up for being queer, arajin sees this and knows being queer is dangerous, he runs away and tries to compensate for his queerness by acting 110% hetero, matakara meets back up with him years later and tries to bond with ara over queerness, ara soundly rejects him and tries to distance out of shame, and ara (assumingly) learns by the end that being queer isn't shameful and embraces that part of himself (i.e. becomes a honki person.)

this all makes me a bit curious how mahoro's character is going to be dealt with going forward. i think there's a few things they're likely to do with her:

get over her brocon stuff and get with arajin at the end as his 'prize' for finally accepting his role as a fighter

arajin's moved on from focusing on girls by the end, mahoro gets with matakara

remain brocon to the very end

get over brocon stuff, become friends with arajin

i'm not a fan of option 1, i find it boring and a disservice to ara's and her character. i think option 2 is plausible given the romantic trope-y type scenes we've been seeing between matakara and mohoro, plus them bonding a little over their brothers. however, neither of them seem really interested in each other during those scenes beyond caring that other knows arajin. these scenes seem superficially romantic to me. i'm not really a fan of this ship so i wouldn't enjoy this outcome and i find it a boring thing to do with mahoro. option 3 sucks, but it wouldn't do damage to any other character at least? option 4 is my ideal outcome. it would allow mahoro to finally function outside of being in love with her brother and be a 'look how he's matured' moment for arajin.

there are a few appealing other options (like giving her kickass majin) that i would personally love the show to pull off, but unfortunately i don't think bucchigiri is going to do them with their limited run of 6 eps left. i'll be super excited if it proves me wrong, though.

sorry for the rambling here, thanks for giving me something to think about anon!

bisexuality

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current bucchigiri fic ideas:

1. arajin helps zabu understand matakara better but zabu mostly ends up understanding arajin better and he hates this

2. zabu's (canon but unseen) older sister shows up and embarrasses him while flirting with her gf who is scarily similar to matakara

I think I like the more subtle acting in this show. Like right here I think Arajin is understanding that when he talked down about Honki people (as a result of his own trauma about events in the past), he was belittling the sentiment keeping Matakara afloat without his brother. Before this he had been too absorbed in his own imagined problems to think that Matakara was struggling with something himself.