Pondering Kiriya
Sep. 22nd, 2010 06:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseFor reasons that are a bit complicated to explain, I chose to challenge myself by writing a series of fics (most short/drabble sized) from the POV of Kiriya Kyousuke, probably the least favorite regular character in Hibiki. I'm still not through writing them, but they've given me a chance to ponder how to write fanfic for a series with such a radical change. For the discussion under the cut, I'm covering his entrance in 30 through his last scenes in 49, so there will be major spoilers.
When I first saw Hibiki, during the original airing, I scrupulously avoided Kiriya's scenes, except where Asumu shone over Kiriya. Kiriya annoyed the heck out of me; he was loud, he was rude, he didn't have any respect, and he didn't obey the rules. It probably didn't help that there were really screwy things done with continuity even as the storyline progressed, or that I share an awful lot in common with Asumu. And it really didn't help that Kiriya got to be an Oni, something that Asumu seemed destined for, plus what was done with Akira... I was not happy, needless to say.
Walking a mile in Kiriya's shoes has made him a bit more sympathetic, although a bit of a headache to write. He could seem cruel in one scene and nice in another. He thrives on being superior to others just as he needed Asumu (not in the romatic sense, though in an odd way, one could almost, almost ship Kiriya/Asumu by 48-49). In his first appearance, he seems to be great at everything, and it's not until later that we find out that he has almost no stamina and doesn't know how to swim. (A guy from his former school says he has poor coordination, but that seems to be untrue; his coordination is fine; his stamina is really really bad. He draws very well but can't do chin-ups!) He wants to outdo his dead father, but he's so desperate to prove he's better than everybody else that he isn't better than everybody else. It's not until he realizes that he can gain stamina more than Asumu can gain confidence that he begins to shine as a character; but by then we're so all disgusted by his cruelty and rudeness (to Asumu, to Akira even after she gets him in as a disciple) and all the general screwups that you don't notice this.
What I also found interesting is that the Kiriya and Asumu storyline is so seperated from the whole Todoroki injury/Zanki death storyline. Literally, Kiriya and Asumu have little to no connection to the other Oni once they start training. The most we get is Todoroki urging Hibiki to train them well (and being enthusiastic about them - as others have pointed out, what was Akira, chopped liver?). It's like they're in a whole different world because Kiriya's issues become almost as important as the more-sympathetic Todoroki's and Zanki's.
Something I'm having an interesting time with, apart from the fact that there's a whole rich storyline going on there that Asumu and Kiriya have nothing to do with (despite the fact that Asumu would have cared that Todoroki was injured, but that's a rant for another day), is that we don't find out exactly why Kiriya wants to pass his dead father until very late on, after Kiriya's trying to get Hibiki's attention (again) by chasing the hound Makamou that's after the kids that he was in a fight with. Kiriya's father was a fireman who died saving people. This left Kiriya with a view of his father both as a hero and as someone who abandoned him. He wants to be better because he can't live with being dependent on people; all the same, he wants to be a hero because his Dad was a hero and he wants to be alive and better than his father. Which kind of messily ties in with his continuing rudeness; he puts people down because he believes that he can't be a great person unless he convinces people that they're not as good as he is. Of course, for me, this gets kind of interesting because I was presuming that Kiriya looked down on his father for some reason. It turns out that this is slightly more complex. Kiriya doesn't want to be hurt, so he hurts others; he doesn't know how to express himself really well. As his mother notes, he's selfish and he's got to be the best at everything. He wants to be a hero like his Dad but he doesn't want to be hurt doing it. This includes being foolish.
And, oddly enough, Asumu-like or no, I understand this. It's very hard to be perceived as foolish. It's very hard to admit to mistakes, to be weak. I saw a title on my version of Google Fastflip that said "Are we addicted to being right?"
I know I am. And Kiriya is somewhat the same way. On my end, I don't want people upset; I don't want to be upset. I don't want to be hurt. I don't want to be ignorant. I don't want to be perceived as someone who's not "part of the team". Kiriya is the same base (avoiding pain), but he went about it in a radically different way. He hurts people before they can hurt him. He's rude, demanding, rulebreaking because that way, he can close off the vulnerable parts of himself. After all, if he doesn't care about rules, what pain does it cause him if he breaks them?
And, oddly enough, like me, he has really screwy communication skills, in a very different way. (Asumu has the same problem, but in the same way I do; he doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to hurt himself or another; Kiriya tends to care only about himself.) He knows that what he says causes pain, but he doesn't care because other people getting hurt is better than himself getting hurt.
Which brings me to his change. It happens when he starts realizing he doesn't have to be superior to everyone. That it's okay to be weak in front of someone, at least long enough to gain enough skills not to be weak in front of someone. He starts running, and swimming (with a kickboard, and then without), and doing pullups. This is not to say that he will ever be humble like Hibiki or Todoroki; even in 49, he was rude to Asumu (though that has other reasons, as I'll go into in a moment). He still wants to be superior. He's just slowly starting to learn that he doesn't have to pretend, he truly can be. And that making small errors doesn't make him less of a person.
(It's like. This guy has a form of social anxiety that manifests as a weird extroversion. And yes, I know people like that. Wanting to be perfect (superior in his case) is a major Social Anxiety thing. I've known people who you'd never, ever know suffer from depression or other mood disorders because they act the total opposite.)
Finally, I want to cover his association with Asumu. Initially, I think he viewed Asumu as kind of a flunky; someone to have around to feel superior to. Someone he could beat at races and otherwise prove that he was better. As things went along, Asumu developed a bit of a spine; and I think Kiriya started to realize that. In some ways, Kiriya may have viewed Asumu as growing into, as he puts it in 48, a "fair opponent". Becoming something that Kiriya would never admit he needed until the end. Which might be why Kiriya was so pissed off when Asumu left and Hibiki let him go. Asumu had been his companion of sorts throughout Kiriya's quests to become an Oni, he had gone through training with Kiriya, and if Kiriya was not permitted to end his discipleship with Hibiki, neither was Asumu. To Kiriya (and to the rest of us), Asumu's choices were a waste of a perfectly good trainee Oni. Plus, Asumu, in a way, abandoned him, just like Kiriya was abandoned by his father's death. So, Kiriya comes to Asumu's rescue in 49 (because that's what Oni do, of course), but he's still annoyed that Asumu left him behind, especially for something so... stupid. Which manifests as "you don't have anything to do with Onis anymore" (which might be his way of goading Asumu to come back to Oni training) as well as "I haven't forgiven you" and his continual treatment of Asumu as a hairbrained civilian (even as he admits that Asumu does know first aid and is in good shape) even though he knows that Asumu knows what he's doing. Part of him wants his friend back, and badly, and it comes back in his old ways of behaving because some part of him thinks if he is rude enough, Asumu will listen to reason. (Akira is not part of this equation in my interpretation of Kiriya's thought processes, because she's a girl and he didn't hang out with her like he did with Asumu, and she was Ibuki's disciple, not Hibiki's. Which is not to excuse the blatant sexism of the last part of Hibiki, but an in-universe reason why she didn't really count in his mind.)
So, throughout his storyline, Kiriya is a rude, thoughtless, selfish person that seems to get everything that Asumu deserves (because he does get everything Asumu deserves....). But he's not the simple rude, annoying yeller that I remember from my first watchings of Hibiki; while there's still not a huge amount to love about him, he's at least understandable in his motives, at least to me.
When I first saw Hibiki, during the original airing, I scrupulously avoided Kiriya's scenes, except where Asumu shone over Kiriya. Kiriya annoyed the heck out of me; he was loud, he was rude, he didn't have any respect, and he didn't obey the rules. It probably didn't help that there were really screwy things done with continuity even as the storyline progressed, or that I share an awful lot in common with Asumu. And it really didn't help that Kiriya got to be an Oni, something that Asumu seemed destined for, plus what was done with Akira... I was not happy, needless to say.
Walking a mile in Kiriya's shoes has made him a bit more sympathetic, although a bit of a headache to write. He could seem cruel in one scene and nice in another. He thrives on being superior to others just as he needed Asumu (not in the romatic sense, though in an odd way, one could almost, almost ship Kiriya/Asumu by 48-49). In his first appearance, he seems to be great at everything, and it's not until later that we find out that he has almost no stamina and doesn't know how to swim. (A guy from his former school says he has poor coordination, but that seems to be untrue; his coordination is fine; his stamina is really really bad. He draws very well but can't do chin-ups!) He wants to outdo his dead father, but he's so desperate to prove he's better than everybody else that he isn't better than everybody else. It's not until he realizes that he can gain stamina more than Asumu can gain confidence that he begins to shine as a character; but by then we're so all disgusted by his cruelty and rudeness (to Asumu, to Akira even after she gets him in as a disciple) and all the general screwups that you don't notice this.
What I also found interesting is that the Kiriya and Asumu storyline is so seperated from the whole Todoroki injury/Zanki death storyline. Literally, Kiriya and Asumu have little to no connection to the other Oni once they start training. The most we get is Todoroki urging Hibiki to train them well (and being enthusiastic about them - as others have pointed out, what was Akira, chopped liver?). It's like they're in a whole different world because Kiriya's issues become almost as important as the more-sympathetic Todoroki's and Zanki's.
Something I'm having an interesting time with, apart from the fact that there's a whole rich storyline going on there that Asumu and Kiriya have nothing to do with (despite the fact that Asumu would have cared that Todoroki was injured, but that's a rant for another day), is that we don't find out exactly why Kiriya wants to pass his dead father until very late on, after Kiriya's trying to get Hibiki's attention (again) by chasing the hound Makamou that's after the kids that he was in a fight with. Kiriya's father was a fireman who died saving people. This left Kiriya with a view of his father both as a hero and as someone who abandoned him. He wants to be better because he can't live with being dependent on people; all the same, he wants to be a hero because his Dad was a hero and he wants to be alive and better than his father. Which kind of messily ties in with his continuing rudeness; he puts people down because he believes that he can't be a great person unless he convinces people that they're not as good as he is. Of course, for me, this gets kind of interesting because I was presuming that Kiriya looked down on his father for some reason. It turns out that this is slightly more complex. Kiriya doesn't want to be hurt, so he hurts others; he doesn't know how to express himself really well. As his mother notes, he's selfish and he's got to be the best at everything. He wants to be a hero like his Dad but he doesn't want to be hurt doing it. This includes being foolish.
And, oddly enough, Asumu-like or no, I understand this. It's very hard to be perceived as foolish. It's very hard to admit to mistakes, to be weak. I saw a title on my version of Google Fastflip that said "Are we addicted to being right?"
I know I am. And Kiriya is somewhat the same way. On my end, I don't want people upset; I don't want to be upset. I don't want to be hurt. I don't want to be ignorant. I don't want to be perceived as someone who's not "part of the team". Kiriya is the same base (avoiding pain), but he went about it in a radically different way. He hurts people before they can hurt him. He's rude, demanding, rulebreaking because that way, he can close off the vulnerable parts of himself. After all, if he doesn't care about rules, what pain does it cause him if he breaks them?
And, oddly enough, like me, he has really screwy communication skills, in a very different way. (Asumu has the same problem, but in the same way I do; he doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to hurt himself or another; Kiriya tends to care only about himself.) He knows that what he says causes pain, but he doesn't care because other people getting hurt is better than himself getting hurt.
Which brings me to his change. It happens when he starts realizing he doesn't have to be superior to everyone. That it's okay to be weak in front of someone, at least long enough to gain enough skills not to be weak in front of someone. He starts running, and swimming (with a kickboard, and then without), and doing pullups. This is not to say that he will ever be humble like Hibiki or Todoroki; even in 49, he was rude to Asumu (though that has other reasons, as I'll go into in a moment). He still wants to be superior. He's just slowly starting to learn that he doesn't have to pretend, he truly can be. And that making small errors doesn't make him less of a person.
(It's like. This guy has a form of social anxiety that manifests as a weird extroversion. And yes, I know people like that. Wanting to be perfect (superior in his case) is a major Social Anxiety thing. I've known people who you'd never, ever know suffer from depression or other mood disorders because they act the total opposite.)
Finally, I want to cover his association with Asumu. Initially, I think he viewed Asumu as kind of a flunky; someone to have around to feel superior to. Someone he could beat at races and otherwise prove that he was better. As things went along, Asumu developed a bit of a spine; and I think Kiriya started to realize that. In some ways, Kiriya may have viewed Asumu as growing into, as he puts it in 48, a "fair opponent". Becoming something that Kiriya would never admit he needed until the end. Which might be why Kiriya was so pissed off when Asumu left and Hibiki let him go. Asumu had been his companion of sorts throughout Kiriya's quests to become an Oni, he had gone through training with Kiriya, and if Kiriya was not permitted to end his discipleship with Hibiki, neither was Asumu. To Kiriya (and to the rest of us), Asumu's choices were a waste of a perfectly good trainee Oni. Plus, Asumu, in a way, abandoned him, just like Kiriya was abandoned by his father's death. So, Kiriya comes to Asumu's rescue in 49 (because that's what Oni do, of course), but he's still annoyed that Asumu left him behind, especially for something so... stupid. Which manifests as "you don't have anything to do with Onis anymore" (which might be his way of goading Asumu to come back to Oni training) as well as "I haven't forgiven you" and his continual treatment of Asumu as a hairbrained civilian (even as he admits that Asumu does know first aid and is in good shape) even though he knows that Asumu knows what he's doing. Part of him wants his friend back, and badly, and it comes back in his old ways of behaving because some part of him thinks if he is rude enough, Asumu will listen to reason. (Akira is not part of this equation in my interpretation of Kiriya's thought processes, because she's a girl and he didn't hang out with her like he did with Asumu, and she was Ibuki's disciple, not Hibiki's. Which is not to excuse the blatant sexism of the last part of Hibiki, but an in-universe reason why she didn't really count in his mind.)
So, throughout his storyline, Kiriya is a rude, thoughtless, selfish person that seems to get everything that Asumu deserves (because he does get everything Asumu deserves....). But he's not the simple rude, annoying yeller that I remember from my first watchings of Hibiki; while there's still not a huge amount to love about him, he's at least understandable in his motives, at least to me.
