Disability in Soul Eater: Asura and Crona
Mar. 2nd, 2012 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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month_of_meta I wanted to write something about disability in Atsushi Ohkubo's manga Soul Eater--how it's used to play with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, how it fits into overarching themes of interdependence and friendship, and just how many disabled characters there are.
The problem--and it is a lovely problem--is that I count five disabled characters and could make an argument for a sixth. It would be easier to break the meta up into parts and give everyone their own in-depth analysis.
Let's begin with the (disabled) antagonists.
Actually, let's start by talking a bit about what Soul Eater is. In Death City, a madness god called a Kishin sleeps--and the Grim Reaper wants to keep it that way. The Reaper runs a school for people who turn into weapons and their wielders ("meisters"). Weapons and meisters have a deep partnership; aside from depending on each other so as not to die, they must match soul wavelengths in order to work together. In fact, during an "extra lesson," a team of students passed when a weapon offered to die for his meister.
It's no accident that both disabled antagonists have a really unbalanced relationship with their weapons.
The Kishin himself, named Asura, used to work as the Grim Reaper's guard--and he was the best. But he was deeply paranoid and would cover his face and body in scarves and layers of clothing. His weapon was specially chosen for him to help him not be so afraid of people; in terror, Asura swallowed this weapon whole.
Of all the things the Kishin is capable of---mass murder, spreading madness wavelengths throughout the world--rejecting his own weapon like this holds a special horror for the characters. It's also the point where he actually turns evil. Not only can he eat (innocent) souls with the weapon inside him--unnatural for a meister--but his partnership is destroyed, which is a type of imbalance, a terrifying thing in itself. (There's also a weapon who trained without a meister--he's a villain, too.)
While Asura is an Other God played pretty straight (he's the personification of the Madness of Fear), he has more depth than Lovecraft would've given him. He makes snarky comments, banters with the Grim Reaper ("Why [are you wearing] such a ridiculous mask?") and has emotions. When he [SPOILER] wakes up, he screams upon seeing the witch who woke him. In the anime, the witch Arachne tries to ally with Asura by promising to protect him--to give him the partnership he and his weapon should've had. He becomes emotionally attached to her...which terrifies him further, so he kills her.
This is Crona. Like the Kishin, Crona (who's given no gender label) is terrified of people--all new things, actually--and has a mostly-broken partnership with zir weapon. This is by design: zir mother is a witch who's trying to turn zir into another Kishin.
Crona's weapon is a Demon Sword called Ragnarok that rips out of zir back. It gives zir noogies, plays with zir face and lifts up zir robe. Even when Crona wields it as a sword, it pulls zir along.
So Crona's grown up without any bodily autonomy whatever and is unable to take control in most situations. "I don't know how to deal with this," zie says when encountering everything from "a man with a screw in his head" to a girl. If zie does make a decision that zir mother doesn't like--hesitates to kill someone, let's say--she infects zir with madness using her magic. A lot of the horror in Crona's situation comes from zir inability to control zir own body, including zir mind, which says a lot about fear of disability. (For the characters, a lot of it comes from being both meister and weapon at the same time, similar to the Kishin.) But there is a type of power Crona has, which is tied up in how zir body works.
Ragnarok is born of Crona's black blood, which hardens to protect zir from injury and can also form into needles. This blood is Crona's weapon in more ways than one. Zie often tells people that "my blood is black" to frighten them (fear is a power Crona is very familiar with), because zie knows exactly what zie is and why zie's special. In fact, Crona's name comes from kuro, meaning "black." The black blood really is Crona's identity.
However, unlike the Kishin, zie isn't evil. When one of the heroes shows zir kindness, zie rejects zir mother and goes to the Grim Reaper's school. Although zie spends a lot of time alone in "Mr. Corner" where zie feels safest, zie also spends time with zir new friends and even attends a party in zir honor. ("I don't know how to deal with this, but it doesn't bother me.")
[As someone who's anxious about new things and awkward around people I know well, I love Crona kind of a lot, actually; I want all the fic where zie goes on missions and makes friends and is badass enough to tell them sometimes that "I like you better over there today."]
All of the other characters with disabilities are in equal partnerships with their weapons, and none of them are evil. That includes another eldritch abomination who's the personification of madness in the universe. (I'll get to him next time, I think.)
month_of_meta I wanted to write something about disability in Atsushi Ohkubo's manga Soul Eater--how it's used to play with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, how it fits into overarching themes of interdependence and friendship, and just how many disabled characters there are. The problem--and it is a lovely problem--is that I count five disabled characters and could make an argument for a sixth. It would be easier to break the meta up into parts and give everyone their own in-depth analysis.
Let's begin with the (disabled) antagonists.
Actually, let's start by talking a bit about what Soul Eater is. In Death City, a madness god called a Kishin sleeps--and the Grim Reaper wants to keep it that way. The Reaper runs a school for people who turn into weapons and their wielders ("meisters"). Weapons and meisters have a deep partnership; aside from depending on each other so as not to die, they must match soul wavelengths in order to work together. In fact, during an "extra lesson," a team of students passed when a weapon offered to die for his meister.
It's no accident that both disabled antagonists have a really unbalanced relationship with their weapons.
The Kishin himself, named Asura, used to work as the Grim Reaper's guard--and he was the best. But he was deeply paranoid and would cover his face and body in scarves and layers of clothing. His weapon was specially chosen for him to help him not be so afraid of people; in terror, Asura swallowed this weapon whole.
Of all the things the Kishin is capable of---mass murder, spreading madness wavelengths throughout the world--rejecting his own weapon like this holds a special horror for the characters. It's also the point where he actually turns evil. Not only can he eat (innocent) souls with the weapon inside him--unnatural for a meister--but his partnership is destroyed, which is a type of imbalance, a terrifying thing in itself. (There's also a weapon who trained without a meister--he's a villain, too.)
While Asura is an Other God played pretty straight (he's the personification of the Madness of Fear), he has more depth than Lovecraft would've given him. He makes snarky comments, banters with the Grim Reaper ("Why [are you wearing] such a ridiculous mask?") and has emotions. When he [SPOILER] wakes up, he screams upon seeing the witch who woke him. In the anime, the witch Arachne tries to ally with Asura by promising to protect him--to give him the partnership he and his weapon should've had. He becomes emotionally attached to her...which terrifies him further, so he kills her.
This is Crona. Like the Kishin, Crona (who's given no gender label) is terrified of people--all new things, actually--and has a mostly-broken partnership with zir weapon. This is by design: zir mother is a witch who's trying to turn zir into another Kishin.
Crona's weapon is a Demon Sword called Ragnarok that rips out of zir back. It gives zir noogies, plays with zir face and lifts up zir robe. Even when Crona wields it as a sword, it pulls zir along.
So Crona's grown up without any bodily autonomy whatever and is unable to take control in most situations. "I don't know how to deal with this," zie says when encountering everything from "a man with a screw in his head" to a girl. If zie does make a decision that zir mother doesn't like--hesitates to kill someone, let's say--she infects zir with madness using her magic. A lot of the horror in Crona's situation comes from zir inability to control zir own body, including zir mind, which says a lot about fear of disability. (For the characters, a lot of it comes from being both meister and weapon at the same time, similar to the Kishin.) But there is a type of power Crona has, which is tied up in how zir body works.
Ragnarok is born of Crona's black blood, which hardens to protect zir from injury and can also form into needles. This blood is Crona's weapon in more ways than one. Zie often tells people that "my blood is black" to frighten them (fear is a power Crona is very familiar with), because zie knows exactly what zie is and why zie's special. In fact, Crona's name comes from kuro, meaning "black." The black blood really is Crona's identity.
However, unlike the Kishin, zie isn't evil. When one of the heroes shows zir kindness, zie rejects zir mother and goes to the Grim Reaper's school. Although zie spends a lot of time alone in "Mr. Corner" where zie feels safest, zie also spends time with zir new friends and even attends a party in zir honor. ("I don't know how to deal with this, but it doesn't bother me.")
[As someone who's anxious about new things and awkward around people I know well, I love Crona kind of a lot, actually; I want all the fic where zie goes on missions and makes friends and is badass enough to tell them sometimes that "I like you better over there today."]
All of the other characters with disabilities are in equal partnerships with their weapons, and none of them are evil. That includes another eldritch abomination who's the personification of madness in the universe. (I'll get to him next time, I think.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 01:56 am (UTC)Not backwards at all! I...had a lot of fun with part 2.
also a genderqueer character???
Unfortunately, all the English translations I've seen (including the English dub) assign Crona a gender label, even though sie doesn't have one in the original Japanese. With the scanlations it's kind of hilarious: different translators will use different genders, simply because "I think Crona's a girl/boy" on no evidence whatever.
Crona's mother, who could give Princess Azula some lessons in Magnificent Bastard, says "My child" all the time.