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tokiro07 · 5 months

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Martial Master Asumi ch.25 thoughts

[Fighting Dreamers]

(Contents: slight Okiba analysis, thematic analysis - motivation)

At last, we finally get Okiba's backstory! And it's...surprisingly mundane, honestly. Okome shows up, talks smack, challenges Okiba to a sparring match, breaks her arm and...apparently feels bad about it? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Kawada's characters are generally pretty down-to-earth and believable, and with Okome being Kunisaki's kid, I imagine Kawada doesn't want to paint her as too bad of a person. Seeing that she actually went out of her way to help Okiba after the injury, even if it was in kind of a hurried and casual way, is a lot better than her walking off laughing because of how weak she was. It shows that Okome has a bit more depth to her than one might normally assume and gives the impression that she can become a friendly character down the road

Okiba was definitely being a bit...dramatic, eating the phone number that Okome gave her instead of, y'know, going to the hospital, but this is still a work of fiction, and unreasonable or unrealistic reactions are par for the course in pretty much any genre. Plus she's a teenager running high on adrenaline, they kind of have a habit of taking less-than-optimal paths

While explaining her backstory, Okiba revisits the ongoing theme of motivation, helping Asumi to contextualize his own stance as a competitor. It's been discussed a number of times now, but rather than harping on the same idea repeatedly as a lesser story might, Kawada has managed to introduce a consistent sense of escalation. Initially, Asumi was concerned that he was intruding at the Dropout, potentially robbing wins from people who regularly participate there, taking the fun out of people's hobbies; then, Asumi was concerned that he was robbing Amagaki of his chance at a professional debut, potentially killing a career before it even began; now, Asumi is concerned that he's robbing Kuronuma of his livelihood, potentially forcing him to quit entirely

In every scenario, Asumi's concern is that he's depriving people of their dreams and futures for the sake of a petty grudge match against his brother. It's common in any competitive story for people's motivations to clash, like in One Piece where Luffy crushes his enemies' dreams instead of killing them, or any given sports manga where only one team can win Nationals. Chainsaw Man delves into this topic sometimes, like with Denji fighting the Leech Devil and declaring that his shallow dream of touching boobs is stronger than her dream of living decadently with her lover. In all of those stories, though, the point is that everyone is self-assured that their dream is the one that's the most worthy of coming true, and that anyone who wants to prove them wrong is going to have to fight tooth and nail for it

In Asumi's case, though, he doesn't have that self-assurance at all. He not only discounts his own goal, he seems to have a sort of reverence for everyone else's. I mentioned it last week, but in the same way that he doesn't want to hurt people physically, he doesn't want to hurt them emotionally either - he treats their dreams like they're sacred, fragile things. However, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding on Asumi's part: while dreams may be sacred, they are anything but fragile

For one, if everyone was treating their dream as fragile, they wouldn't be able to fight for them in the first place. Everyone else has the guts to put their dreams on the line, to risk losing them for the chance of making them happen, because otherwise there'd be no sense in having a dream at all. Dreams, pride, effort; one can either bet them in the ring and risk watching them fall apart, or put them on a shelf and watch them collect dust because they were too afraid to take a chance. It's better to have loved and lost, and all that

Secondly, up to this point, has Asumi ever actually broken anyone's dreams? Everyone in the Dropout took their losses with dignity, even congratulating the people who beat them despite however embarassing or debilitating their defeats were. Even Amagaki is going to have another chance to debut later, he just needs to find another avenue first. The Dropout wasn't his only chance, it was just his best chance. We're still fairly early, but no one in the whole story has taken a defeat so hard that their life changed because of it, and I think that's a deliberate choice on Kawada's part

MMA, like any sport, is supposed to be fun. Sure, you can have a goal, and you will prevent others from achieving their goals because they're mutually exclusive, but this isn't a life-and-death battle, it's a game. Whether or not Kuronuma's career is ended by this fight, it won't kill him to lose. He'll have reasons to live, ways to make money, and a future ahead of him, and to act like his life to now will have been meaningless if he can't continue doing MMA is much more disrespectful than Asumi meeting him head-on in the ring and doing everything in his power to win. Plus, like I said, his showing in the fight might be so good that the outcome doesn't actually matter and he'll be able to keep fighting anyway, letting him have his cake and eat it too

There may come a time when the stakes are super high, like someone's livelihood actually does depend on the outcome of a match or a dream really will die based on one fight, but for right now, the whole point is to communicate to Asumi that things aren't as serious as he thinks they are, that he's allowed to enjoy the fight without having a grand goal waiting on the other side of it

Finally, the chapter ends with Okiba getting a fight scheduled with Hanagasaki for the same day as Asumi's fight with Kuronuma. This surprises me not because they're happening simultaneously, but because I would think that the Hanagasaki fight would have been at the same time as the Takanori fight. They're clearly a duo, so I would think that it would be more dramatic if it were treated as couple vs. couple. Oh well, I don't want to dwell on what could have been too much, instead I'll be excited to see Okiba vs. Hanagasaki so quickly. This might be the moment where my best girl is decided! At least until someone more interesting comes along

Until next time!

#martial master asumi #fouryearsandananime #4y1a reviews

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