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wordsandrobots · 6 months

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I finished IBO recently, and I don't think I fully get why people call Mika and Orga's relationship one of "toxic codependence". That they depend on each other is obvious, but I feel like I'm missing out on why people think their relationship is unhealthy.

(Thank you for giving me a reason to procrastinate on the chapter I have nearly finished but my brain has gone 'nah' over.)

The way I look at it, there are two key levels on which it's unhealthy. These are related but I think it's worth distinguishing them, because one plays into wider problems within Tekkadan, while the other is a deeply personal matter between Orga and Mika.

But first of all, I think it's important to be clear: Orga and Mika's relationship is rooted in genuine care and affection. This is not apparent friendship built on a lie. These two really are together for life and there are many positive aspects to that. We see them joking about early on, Mika making sure Orga eats (whether he wants to or not), the ease with which they operate as a double-act -- and there's a real sense each would be dead before the series began if not for the other.

However, there is also a profound imbalance at the heart of their relationship. I've written before about how that imbalance is inverted compared to what it looks like at first glance; that is, Mika is the dominant personality, with Orga twisting to follow his wishes. At the same time, yes, Mika has absolutely outsourced his decision-making to Orga. No question. It might be Mika's desires and dreams that ultimately shape their path, but Orga is still the one making choices about where to go and who to shoot.

And it's the absolute degree of Mika's surrender that fucks Orga up. Because, to a very specific point, Mika will do exactly what Orga tells him without question. Period. Everybody else's opinions and orders are secondary to the man he's picked as his guiding star in life. I say 'man'; I mean 'boy'. This started when they were kids, after all, which is why Orga's sense of responsibility is quite so thoroughly warped.

As far as Orga is concerned, being in charge means working everything out on his own. Because Mika does not help him. Mika, at most, offers gut feelings for why something should be done; he never provides useful input on how to get from A to B. So Orga internalises that the buck stops with him, that he always has to be the decisive one, always has to have a plan.

It's masked to begin with because Biscuit is there as the angel on his other shoulder, offering useful advice and acting his second-in-command. However -- Orga never actually listens to what Biscuit has to say about the direction Tekkadan should go. That's the central tension in their relationship, in fact. Orga actively expects Biscuit to go along with what he chooses because that's what Mika does.

With Biscuit gone, there's nobody left to make even a token attempt at calling him on this tendency. Eugene utterly fails to, despite having a good set of instincts, because he's too committed to Tekkadan and too easily swayed by other people who seem to know better. Merribit gives it her best shot, but lacks the tools to approach the boys convincingly. Kudelia doesn't see it as her place. And the rest of Tekkadan fall in line over and over, reinforcing Orga's bad habits.

They trust him, is the thing. They trust him to deliver on the dreams he weaves, enough to offer up their lives on his say-so. None more than Mika himself, who literally gives an arm and a leg to make sure Orga's plans come through.

There is a point where this commitment slips out of Orga's control. I'm not sure where to pin it generally but the battle with the mobile armour is when Mikazuki makes it clear he isn't going to back down on the idea of becoming kings of Mars. He's seen Orga latch on to McGillis' offer as *the* destination, their place, where they can all be together and happy. And because he's always done whatever is necessary to see Orga's plans come through, he . . . does precisely that. Even knowing it's going to injure him further. Even with Orga literally telling him not to.

Making sure Orga gets his victory is more important.

I should stress how much this fucks Mikazuki up as well. I tend to focus a lot on Orga, but Mikazuki reduces himself down to a weapon for Orga's sake. To the point of breathing a sigh of relief once he's been sufficiently disabled he thinks he won't have a life outside Barbatos any more. Atra says at one point that Mikazuki is lazy over things that don't interest him -- that includes conceptualising an existence beyond fighting and following Orga. He does have his own dreams (being a farmer, seeing interesting sights) but actually working out how to achieve them after he's given away so much to Orga is beyond him. In the end, he simply gives them away too and chooses to keep following what he imagines Orga's orders would be.

Neither of these boys intended to do this to each other. That's the tragic part. Orga uses Mika as a weapon because it's the smart choice but it tears him up inside to see what that does to Mika as a person. Meanwhile, Mika insists what happens to him comes from his own choices and isn't something Orga should feel guilty over or see as a reason to give up.

And . . . here's where we move from the first level (Orga's no-middle-gear sense of responsibility coupled to Mika's unconditional loyalty) to the level on which Mika personally scares Orga into escalating over and over again.

It's that scene in the Montag Company ship. Or, no, it's not just that: Orga talks earlier about how he constantly feels Mika's eyes on him. Yet it's following Biscuit's death that this aspect of their relationship is laid bare.

I love this scene so much. It has the form of a triumphal rescue from grief, complete with swelling musical score, in much the way Mika often has the form of being the daring protagonist. But the content is Mika being the most blatantly scary he ever is in the entire show. The way he looks at Orga -- the way he always looks at Orga, his unblinking, uncompromising stare -- is at last framed as an overt threat. Mika is not going to let Orga give up because Orga promised to take him to the better place. What Orga wants is irrelevant.

Ah, screw it, I'm transcribing the dub script because it is so, so good.

"Tell me. What do you want me to do next, Orga?" "Hey give me a break. I'm just -" "Look I'm sorry. But I can't stop yet." "That's enough." "Now I wanna know -" "I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH -" Mika grabs Orga by the shirt, dragging him close. "Is this the place you told me about? 'Cos I won't stop. Not 'til we're there. I can't. On that day, Orga, I decided. So. How many should I kill? How many more until we get there? Because I need to know. Tell me, Orga Itsuka! You're gonna take me, aren't you? That's what you told me! What should I do next -?” "GET OFF ME! Orga throws Mika at the locker in the corner and stands up. "Yeah, alright, fine. I'll get you there. Can't turn around now anyway. That's what you want, RIGHT? No matter want kind of hell might be waiting for us. OK? Then I'll do it. And I'm bringing everyone with me." "Yeah. That's right. Take us there. So who do you need me to take out then? And what d'you want me to destroy? 'Cos if I finally get to reach that place someday, there's nothing that I won't do." SFX: lightning and thunder

This is not Mika pulling Orga out of the darkness. It's Mika driving Orga further into it, into a battle that kills dozens and very nearly ends with every single named character dead (in the real world, the commissioning of a second season saved them; in universe, it's stubbornness and pure fluke).

What would it be like to have someone so committed to what you've promised them, they would do anything for you, up to and including refusing to let you break your word? What would that be like if said person was the most dangerous individual you had ever met in your life, because there is a point past having no sense of self-preservation where no line is 'too far'?

That's Orga living with Mika as his shadow. That's not healthy. That's not sane. Orga comes loose at the seams attempting to be what Mika expects of him, and I think he's genuinely terrified of what might happen if he can't.

It goes the other way too. The scene in the ship is one of two times I'd say, yeah, that's what Mika looks like when he's scared. The other is immediately prior, when it seems Carta is going to kill Orga. 'That's what you told me' isn't just a reminder for Orga; it's the closest Mika gets to a crisis of faith. Seeing the one you believe in waver is its own form of terror and Mika has committed everything he's got to Orga. He can't conceive of stopping now.

[I should say, I primarily watched the dub and the vocal performances vary somewhat here even if the underlying intent doesn't. I love what Kyle McCarley does, injecting a note of increasing franticness into Mika's speech, but Kengo Kawanishi hits the volume rise hard on 'What should I do next?', hammering home just how much he needs an answer. Of course, they then both give Mika this deliciously bloodthirsty joy when he gets the one he's looking for.]

I don't know if there's anything Orga could do that would truly break Mika's faith or push Mika to turn that prodigious strength against him. I don't get the feeling Mika is the kind of person who'd ever hurt a friend for real. He isn't cruel and we see how much friendship matters to him (woe betide anyone who hurts the people close to him).

But what these two are actually capable of is beside the point. What matters is what they think of one another and they each think the other is the most amazing thing in existence. Orga sees Mika as near superhuman and Mika sees Orga as fantastically brilliant, and they're both afraid of being proved wrong, so they aim for an impossibility imposed by their mutual expectations.

The further they head down the shortest path to their goals, the more Mika crumbles physically and the more Orga crumbles emotionally. Like an engine shaking itself to pieces as it turns faster and faster. Love, hope, faith, determination -- and no brakes. A mad charge towards destruction.

I don't tend to describe things as 'toxic'. For whatever reason, it's not a word with much presence in my vocabulary. Still, I think it fits here. Mika and Orga's relationship might have been healthy, in a kinder world. It's undeniably the most important aspect of their lives. There's no intention on either on part to cause hurt. But the combination of who they are and the circumstances they are trapped in means they're ultimately toxic to each other.

No matter how much they care or want what's best, the very form of their relationship impedes their ability to grow, cuts them off from those who might be able to help with that, and eventually leads them to their deaths.

-----

Well, that's how I see it anyway. I hope this helped? I think Iron-Blooded Orphans does some pretty brilliant things in terms of presenting fucked-up relationships that have positive aspects while at the same time dooming the participants, so I'm always happy to ramble about that aspect of the show. Or indeed, any aspect of it at all!

#words in answer #more rambling #gundam iron blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #tekketsu no orphans #mikazuki augus #orga itsuka #character interpretation #spoilers

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lilenui · 3 months

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Some thoughts on Yamagi in the epilogue of Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.

Yamagi didn't get much in terms of the epilogue: a single still shot flashing on screen unceremoniously and being mentioned in a conversation. We get no insight into his feelings, but we can gather a few hints from said image.

I was unable to 100% confirm that Yamagi's new look was designed by the series' original character designer Itou Yu. From her comments I only got that she loved it and thought it's impressive how much of Yamagi's feelings were conveyed in a single still image. Which inspired me to try and look a bit deeper into it. It's possible that the instructions came directly from director Nagai, who, according to the series' composer, was pretty hands-on with Shino and Yamagi's relationship (including inviting an animator whose speciality is hands animation for the hand hold in ep 7, or personally overlooking all of their scenes). If there was supposed to be a deeper meaning to the epilogue Yamagi then Nagai would be the one behind it, because shinoyama is /his/ thing.

I know my shinoyama by heart, throughout the entire series Yamagi's left eye is ONLY ever visible in his scenes with Shino, or in scenes pertaining to Shino in some fashion (ex. Yamagi reacting to Shino brawling with Eugene in OP #1*). It was a conscious decision to show Yamagi from his left side, where *only* his left eye is visible, as he's looking at the blue skye above him. Just as he did right after the escape from the tunnel. He was also thinking of Shino in that scene, as suggested by the closeup on the bandages in his hand. I think that the suggestion is here as well by focusing on the eye which only Shino ever got to see clearly. The angle of his head, looking up and slightly back (direct symbolism of looking in the past), all of it just speaks to me that Yamagi's love for Shino is still present, he’s still thinking about him in this very moment. In my own personal delusion I like to think Yamagi showing his entire face to the world is also how he's trying to communicate with Shino: "Wherever you are, if you're watching over me like you promised (the ryusei letter), even for a briefest moment, you can see all of me clearly."

Next are Yamagi's pink overalls. I do not believe this is a standard issue uniform available to anyone else. I think this uniform was custom made for Yamagi exclusively. For a while I even held a belief he dyed the material himself. The color is an obvious yet subtle callback to Shino's signature magenta color scheme. There's more to it though, because according supplemental materials Shino doesn't just put that color on anything, but the objects he considers closest to him, his own. Why did Yamagi then decide to put the color on *himself* and not, say, his tools? To me personally Yamagi draping himself in the color Shino used to mark his closest belongings can only speak of his devotion, almost as if he wanted to communicate that he wants to belong to Shino, that he belongs with him. And why wouldn't he still want to be with Shino? Yamagi loved Shino more than life itself, if his words to Eugene in episode 46 are to be taken at their value. That kind of love wouldn't just go away just because the other person weren't there anymore (hell, IBO ended seven years ago and /I'm/ not over Shino.)

These are my general thoughts. The presence of Shino in Yamagi's heart is mant to be seen and felt, and his confident posture signifies that he carries that love with pride. The ryuseigo insignia speaks for itself, if there's any doubt left. It couldn't have been anyone else but Yamagi to suggest it to Yukinojo.

I wish sunrise would release an ova or a cd drama removing any and all plausible deniability left from Shino's intentions regarding Yamagi in episode 45. It's been years, and if we have to continue living in a world without Shino, it would be more bearable if we at least had that.

*This trend continued into the special OP for the abridged version of the series, which aired on TV in '22, wherein Shino dramatically pulls Yamagi close as the latter started to float away just as the boys were about to eat lunch together atop the Ryuseigo II:

#gundam ibo #yamagi gilmerton #norba shino #tekketsu no orphans #shinoyama #I've been misty-eyed over these boys for days now

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