Disability in Soul Eater, part 2: OCD Goth Cowboy Jesus For Great Justice

[terajk]

Part 2 of an ongoing series. Part 1 is here.

(Contains: discussion of obsessive-compulsive disorder, lots of pictures, and spoilers GALORE, including a huge one in chapter 70-something of the manga that doesn't appear in the anime at all but became essential to my argument, as I am me.)


While Asura is the most dangerous madness god in Soul Eater, he's not the only one. The Grim Reaper himself, protector of humans and undeniable force of good, is one of the Great Old Ones (no, really) "whose existence drives men to madness." As Asura is the Madness of Fear, Shinigami-sama is the Madness of Order, according to the Index of the Book of Eibon (no, really.) As such, he's one of "the absolute existences which maintain order."

The other is Shinigami-sama's teenage son...or however old a "teenage" god of death would be. Still, Junior personifies the Madness of Order a little differently than his father.

Internet, meet the OCD Goth Cowboy Jesus Future Overlord/for Great Justice:



Named for his father, Death the Kid is not your typical eldritch abomination. He keeps a rocket-powered skateboard in his body and goes to school with humans instead of watching them in secret. Friends call him "Kid"; he invites them to parties at his mansion and doesn't eat them. (Remember that party for Crona? Kid threw it. There he told Crona to "join our circle at your own pace," and also apologized for his loudmouth friends.) He also has an obsession with symmetry:



[My favorite thing about this picture is how Soul, Maka and their cat Blair are lined up at the bottom. They look like they aren't as well-trained as the ladies in the cowboy hats want in on this posing action, but aren't sure if they're doing it right.]

A panic-filled, depression-laden obsession with symmetry:



The trigger for this crisis was someone referring to the three white lines in Kid's hair, which throw his own body's symmetry off. He eventually calms down enough to check in with his father, who tells him apropos of nothing that the white lines are cute. (Dammit, Dad!)

If everything is not perfectly symmetrical at all times, Kid panics, falls into depressions (literally; he spends a lot of time lying on the ground, as above) or spits up blood and passes out. His favorite number is 8, "because of its perfect symmetry." When someone refers to his "parent's seven lights"--which in this context means,"So you're the son of the supreme god in the universe. We're still kicking your ass"--Kid gets really upset because 7 is not symmetrical at all and begs the guy to say 8...while crying and on his hands and knees.

Unlike most meisters, Kid weilds two weapons: twin pistols. (As a shinigami he doesn't need to train them himself, but he'd like to create his weapons to his own specifications, thank you very much Dad.) Doing so requires three souls to be in harmony, is impressive as hell to pull off...and if he has only one of them he gets so anxious he can’t use it. When his friend Maka was injured; he organized all the medication bottles in her room symmetrically so she didn't have to worry about it. ("Only you would worry about that," she said.)  

For Kid, panic, crying, begging in wiggly text, cognitive Blue Screens of Death and wanting to die are significant parts of being a madness god. But although Kid is his own mental illness in physical form, it's just a part of him. As such, his disability interacts with his superpowers without causing them. Kid's need to do everything symmetrically extends to asskicking, and his beatdowns are especially beautiful. But rather than being "a gift and a curse," his symmetry obsession just is. It blends into his superpowers now and then, since both are just parts of who he is, but doesn't lead to them in a simplistic way. 

What superpowers, you ask? As a shinigami, Kid's body rejects all natural poisons (that's why he can't dye the white lines out of his hair--he's tried), and he can go places that are too dangerous for humans. His dad trusts him with missions he wouldn’t give to other meisters of Kid’s rank. He’s an excellent strategic fighter, and his friends respect him--even if some of them show it by breaking cones off the school building to "ask" him for a duel. (My favorite of his superpowers is Lying About Shinigami Biology So Nobody Asks About the Magical Doodad in Your Back Pocket.) Oh, and did I mention he shoots his pistols upside-down? With his pinkies?



Nevertheless, the series touches on things about disability-as-experience that run deeper than a simple superpower--what Harriet McBryde Johnson calls "those pleasures that are peculiarly our own, that are so bound up with our disabilities that we wouldn’t experience them, or wouldn’t experience them the same way, without our disabilities." Symmetry gives Kid a lot of joy. He considers it his art and often waxes poetic about the "true beauty" of symmetrical things. He even took time out to admire the way the sun and clouds were arranged in the sky once. (Okay, he was fighting Crona and let zir get away, but still.) This joy isn't useful to other people--the other characters don't even understand it--but it's special to Kid. It doesn't negate the anxieties and suicidal depressions, but it's also a significant part of being a madness god.

When things are sufficiently in order, Kid's the most level-headed of all his friends and prone to deadpan snarkery. When two of Kid's classmates decided to break up their bromance in the middle of their fight with him, amidst all the hugging and crying Kid asked, "Can I shoot them now?" In his quest to bring balance to the universe--which is what a shinigami is supposed to do, even if Kid's mental illness affects the form it takes now and then--he always stands up for what he thinks is right. While he definitely respects his dad, he’ll challenge him if he thinks the old man’s doing something wrong. Why does Kid even attend Shibusen? Because Shinigami-sama sent some kids on what Junior felt was a suicide mission and wouldn’t let him rescue them, as it was “for students only.” So Kid demanded to be enrolled right then LIKE A BOSS.

Kid's able to do so many awesome things in part because even gods need support systems:




(Kid with his pistols, Liz and Patty. It bothers him that they're not identical in human form, but only a little.)



(Everyone breaks a pyramid now and then!)

Those ladies in the cowboy hats--Liz and Patty Thompson--are Kid's guns in human form. They admire his soul, trust his judgement...and reassure him that he's not useless garbage, remind him to focus on specific things when he's anxious (butterflies! the number 8!) and once, helped him leave a room full of poorly-arranged bombs by growling at him to haul ass. He still exploited the Rule of Cool with EXPLOSIONS while screaming and bawling his eyes out. (Seriously, it was awesome--as awesome as the time when Ranma 1/2's Ryoga Hibiki, who has no sense of direction whatever, won a three-legged race by busting through the goal from the opposite direction and asking where he was.) Kid returns the favor by doing everything from offering to help them study to saving their lives.

Still, while these partnerships are deep, they're not perfect. Patty responds to Kid's panics by laughing--more because she's a ditz than out of malice--while Liz gets annoyed, sometimes to the point of telling him to just die already. His disability is used for laughs, especially early on when you don't know anybody that well. In particular, I was bothered by how Saving the Kids from their Special Lesson of Doom plays out. Terrified she's going to die, Maka falls to her hands and knees. Cut to Kid in the same pose, wanting to die because he might not have folded the end of his toilet paper into a triangle. While this isn't the last time Kid's disability threatens a fight/rescue mission, the juxtaposition between his crisis and Maka's comes off like: "Look at this serious problem over here! Isn't this other one silly?"

But even when Kid's disability is handled the most problematically, it's always clear that while it's just annoying for other people, it can be a serious problem for him. There are occasional missions he doesn't get to go on because he loses all his spoons. And in a moment of realism that I wasn't expecting in a shounen series about witches and vampires, Kid once spent almost an hour trying to write his name on his exam and my heart broke (contains screaming and spitting up blood):

But pitying him? Yeah, no. Do you want to feel sorry for a DEATH GOD?:







For all these acts of badass, one of my favorite times Kid saved somebody is when he and his classmate Black Star went looking for the Holy Sword Excalibur. (Yes, that one.) Excalibur is the greatest weapon in the universe, and its meisters are destined for victory and glory. It's also a supernaturally obnoxious bastard, enraging everyone it meets. King Arthur was a hero because he could tolerate the damned thing enough to wield it.

Black Star is more susceptible to Excalibur's effects than Kid is. While Kid is stoic through all the rambling stories, interruptions ("FOOL!") and cane-pokings-in-the-face, Black Star gets more and more agitated. Kid tries to talk him down--while actually being calm throughout, something not even Liz and Patty can do. I love that Kid's not always the one having emotional overloads and that he tries to help someone else through his. See?



(This awesomeness was framed by Black Star carrying Kid piggyback in and out of that cave, so Kid wouldn't get his pants wet. That somehow makes this even more awesome.)

Black Star and Kid have a rivalry because Black Star wants to surpass God and Kid is one. Nonetheless, Kid is the only one who never laughs at Black Star's dream--something he respects Kid for a lot. Why didn't Kid laugh? Possibly because most people refused to compete with him at all, as he is the son of God. Although Black Star challenges Kid's symmetry obsession just by existing (who am I kidding? Black Star challenges everyone just by existing) he's less annoyed with it than most of the other characters are. When Kid has a Face Heel Turn and decides to achieve "the ultimate symmetry" (i.e. nothingness, i.e. proper Other God behavior, i.e. OH FUCK NO), Black Star tells him that, while he doesn't mind all the symmetry business, this nothingness crap has to stop. (It does.)

I don't know how to finish this, so have some more pictures of Kid being awesome:



(That purple blob is his skateboard. He's sucking it into his hand.)





Because not even disabled gods are perfect (thank goodness) here's him being a dick:



(His human shield/hostage is a villain, but still.)

And being awesome while being a dick:



(He did this--while Patty is trying like hell not to fall--for no reason other than "it would be an insult to this desert" not to do a trick on this hill. Then he does it AGAIN, because dick.)

Next time: the resident Professor Snape mad scientist and the only disabled weapon so far.

Comments

[lunabee34]

You are making me want to watch this show. LOL

Thanks for putting together such a detailed and image-heavy post; it really helps for people who aren't familiar with the fandom. :)

[terajk]

You are making me want to watch this show. LOL

I don't know where you live, but Netflix has it streaming! Also, Funimation has it on YouTube, their website, etc. /just FYI

Thanks for putting together such a detailed and image-heavy post; it really helps for people who aren't familiar with the fandom. :)

I'm so glad; it was a lot of fun to put together :D Although if you do watch/read it OH NO, I SPOILED IT PRETTY BAD FOR YOU! *hangs head in shame* ("Shinigami are madness gods" is only in the manga and is actually a pretty big spoiler. But it became ESSENTIAL TO MY ARGUMENT, I AM SORRY. It's Lovecraft's fault.)

[lunabee34]

No worries. :)

We are huge Lovecraft fans around here. My husband wrote his master's thesis on Lovecraft. You had me at Cthulhu. :)

We have Netflix, so I will add this to the queue. Right now we are mainlining Inuyasha and Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple. :)

To further tempt you..

[terajk]

Icon ♥

My husband wrote his master's thesis on Lovecraft. You had me at Cthulhu. :)

I love all the ways Ohkubo plays with Lovecraft/the Cthulhu mythos. (Though the madness-gods-whose-disabilities-are-taken-seriously may be my favorite.) Speaking of Cthulhu, here's what Death, Sr. looks like:



I really need to watch/read Inuyasha. :D

[sistermagpie]

Wow, this is so cool! I'm not familiar with this at all, but it's fascinating. I'm going to read it through again!

[terajk]

Thank you! I had a TON of fun putting it together :D

[kriadydragon]

I wuvs you Death the Kid! This was brilliant. For all of the portrayal of Kid's obsession as a thing to chuckle at there is something rather tragic about it. My heart actually broke for him a little when he failed to get his name perfect on the test, and then the much bleeding followed. And Crona. Oh, poor Crona. I think Crona's story (in the anime, I'm afraid I haven't read the Manga) was my favorite because of his/her redemption later on, and I am the biggest, sappiest sucker for abused characters finally getting support and comfort... and hugs!

[dancing_moon]

I was really turned off from the Soul Eater anime due to the super-hysterical start that a lot of shonen series have, but perhaps I'll give the manga an attempt. You certainly make the characters sound interesting!

[terajk]

I was really turned off from the Soul Eater anime due to the super-hysterical start that a lot of shonen series have

*nods* It throws Blair the sexy catgirl a bunch of over-the-top things at you while you're still trying to figure out the weird universe. (People who turn into weapons? WHUT?). But it got easier/better for me after the prequel chapters/episodes, when the plot starts in earnest. Also, I wasn't sure what to think of Blair and Black Star at first, but they've both grown on me. (In the manga, particularly, Blair gets a couple Crowning Moments of Awesome.)

[inner_v0ice]

This is a fantastic piece of meta! Your writing style, image choice, and of course the awesome character analysis! I love how you connected the character's experience of OCD as a source of personal anxiety/depression, a source of personal pleasure in symmetry, and a part of his madness-god-liness.

(Also, I love his taste in group poses. I've scrolled back up at least three times just to look at the posing picture again.)

I haven't watched or read Soul Eater but I may give it a try after reading your meta. (I see you said to lunabee34 above that your meta is spoilery, but that's okay with me!)

[terajk]

I love how you connected the character's experience of OCD as a source of personal anxiety/depression, a source of personal pleasure in symmetry, and a part of his madness-god-liness.

Thank you! I LOVE that all that stuff was in the source--I especially don't see "good things about disability that non-disabled people wouldn't understand and which don't do them tangible good [like a disability superpoewr]" very much in fiction. (Kid tries to tell Liz and Patty how beautiful the symmetrical sky is; they tell him he's an idiot XD). And I REALLY love the "madness god whose disability is taken seriously" stuff. (There are many references to the Cthulhu Mythos in Soul Eater.)

Also, I love his taste in group poses.

Me, too! And he poses A LOT--one of the first things he does is yell at someone for being a little off on the group pose he choreographed.

I've scrolled back up at least three times just to look at the posing picture again.

I didn't want to take that volume back to the library, the cover was so pretty.

[0jack]

Oh, the OCD stuff. Am slain. I am so like that. My non-NT stuff really adds to my life when it's not making me (literally) crazy. *flaps hands* I now need to read/watch this.

[terajk]

AND KID IS FABULOUS. He came in 1st in the official popularity poll.

The series never mentions OCD by name or makes a big deal about it--nobody gets out their DSM-IV or anything. On the one hand, Kid is very clearly disabled and all his friends know he's this way; on the other, it's just part of how Kid is. And I love that, while it can be a big deal for him it's not a big deal in the story, if that makes sense. Of course, on the third hand (hey, we're in Lovecraft territory), he is an AWESOME ACTION HERO.

(These are all the things I love about Ryoga Hibiki in Ranma 1/2, too--and, bonus, he has the most accurate fictional portrayal of my navigational impairment I have ever seen.

[nenena]

YES YES YES THIS ALL OF THIS SO MUCH THIS

I think you absolutely nailed what makes Kid such a fabulous character - he has a severe disability that sometimes completely incapacitates him, yet it's depicted in such a way that manages to almost completely avoid ALL of the obnoxious tropes about disability in fiction that annoy me so much. He has super powers, but they don't come from his disability! He's not a Supercrip! He has storylines that don't revolve around his disability yet it's still shown to be a constant part of his life to a surprisingly realistic degree! The series shows both how his disability impacts his life in a negative way and how it allows him to take joy in things in a way that characters without his disability don't understand! He doesn't exist solely to teach a Very Special Lesson to characters without a disability! His friends sometimes get annoyed with him and his sole family member often doesn't understand how his head works and yes, I can relate to that so, so, SO freaking much. I have OCD and growing up my symptons manifested almost exactly the way that Kid's did - I was obsessed with bodily symmetry to the point of self-harm, I failed assignments at school because I could never get them "perfect" enough to turn in, I had embarrassing freakouts about things in my surrounding environment being "contaminated"/broken/unacceptable according to my brain's many irrational rubrics - and asdfghjkl; I love this character to a ridiculous degree because his weird, cartoonish life reflects my normal, boring life to a degree that is utterly ridiculous. A series like Soul Eater is the absolute last place I would ever expect to find a "realistic" depiction of OCD and yet there it is, adjusted somewhat to fit the situations and the fictional setting but still lightyears ahead of the way that OCD is depicted on more supposedly grounded-in-reality shows like Monk or Glee.

And yes his disability is often cartoonishly exaggerated (as is EVERY ASPECT of the Soul Eater universe) and yes it's frequently milked as a source of humor, but I don't have a problem with either of these things because a) the jokes about Kid's disability are done in such a way that it's obvious that the author has been there, done that himself - if Ohkubo himself doesn't have some form of OCD I'll be very surprised if he doesn't have a close friend or family member that does, and b) Kid's disability is treated as just another aspect of his person that makes us laugh sometimes, it's a part of him but certainly not the sole defining aspect of his character, and it's not the only reason that he sometimes becomes the butt of jokes in the series either.

TL;DR I agree with everything that you wrote and to be completely honest I still have yet to find a better depiction of a character with OCD in any media. Any at all. Ohkubo can show everybody how it's done.

[terajk]

YOU CAME BY! YAY!

(You wrote an awesome comment that helped me crystalize my thoughts about Kid--I should have cited it, dammit! And plus, you are cool!)

I love this character to a ridiculous degree because his weird, cartoonish life reflects my normal, boring life to a degree that is utterly ridiculous.

♥ I had this EXACT experience when I found Ryoga Hibiki in Ranma 1/2. He has the most accurate representation of my navigational impairment I have ever seen--and he lives in a world full of tentacle-ox-monsters and martial arts tea ceremonies. The portrayal of Kid's disability reminds me of his A LOT--which is funny, since Ms. Marie actually has his impairment. :D

But Ryoga is another character who a) has a severe impairment that affects him a lot but there are no special storylines focusing on it, b) that's just a part of his character, c) EVERYONE knows he's this way, even if they don't know what to do about it, d) he does many, many awesome things anyway, sometimes while being disabled in public and e) he sometimes does stupid or obnoxious things that don't have to do with his disability at all. (Many of these stupid things are girl-he-likes-related.)

I also really love that OCD isn't really mentioned by name in Soul Eater--like, nobody breaks out their DSM-IV and gives a whole bunch of exposition about it or anything. (Ryoga's that way, too--everyone just says he has "no sense of direction" and leaves it at that.) And I wonder if that's part of why Soul Eater can capture the experience of OCD so well. It's not an "issue" that anybody feels they need to educate people about--it's just part of Kid's character. Or...it's not pathologized, so it gets to be just a part of Kid's character.

[Writerly silliness]

Which reminds me: now that the Soul Eater crew is hanging out in my head, we've run into a problem. Because Maka-in-my-head would like things about OCD to read (liking books as she does), but [all the stuff written by NT experts that I made Kid vet with me, because I am mean] I find is horribly irrelevant and not helpful at all. A lot of it's like: "Think of the OCD as separate from the person!" When it's just a part of him, one that influences thinking and perception in ways you can't just take out/pretend are separate. I love when Kid tries to process the room that Free the Werewolf is in ("I like puzzles too!"--oh, Free, how I love you), with all the broken pillars and such.

[/Writerly silliness]

He doesn't exist solely to teach a Very Special Lesson to characters without a disability!

Yes! I wonder if there was a meta-joke about Very Special Lessons for Non-Disabled People in the series: the time when Liz wondered if a horribly asymmetrical room was as scary to Kid as a room full of ghosts was to her, and Patty says, basically, "Could be, but this room is full of bombs. And those would scare anybody." XD

His friends sometimes get annoyed with him and his sole family member often doesn't understand how his head works

YES! And this family member is THE SUPREME GOD IN THE UNIVERSE, which is kind of (really) hilarious. I love the bits where Shinigami-sama is totally clueless (see: supreme god in the universe, BWAHAHAHA). Seriously, there should be more. I want all the fic where he and Kid are together and he's like, "Buh?" I really like how the "Your stripes are so cute!" thing played out in the manga, because it's KID who's like: "No, Dad, you really don't have to say that."

Eee! ♥Death the Kid♥

[nenena]

lol I don't know in what kind of universe I could be cool but thank you! ^__^

I also really love that OCD isn't really mentioned by name in Soul Eater--like, nobody breaks out their DSM-IV and gives a whole bunch of exposition about it or anything.

YES THANK YOU that's another thing that I love about the series.

I find is horribly irrelevant and not helpful at all. A lot of it's like: "Think of the OCD as separate from the person!" When it's just a part of him, one that influences thinking and perception in ways you can't just take out/pretend are separate.

Exactly this, exactly this, and that's a reason why I really don't like a lot of the literature about OCD out there. TMI time: I never got a formal diagnosis for my OCD or meds until I had moved away from my family, and to this day 2/3 of my immediate family members still don't know that I was diagnosed or ever on meds for it, and they don't know about the SI stuff or the worst of my old rituals either, and frankly I don't intend for them ever to know because of reasons. But last year I did finally confess everything to my dad, and he immediately went through a kind of adorable clueless-but-trying-really-hard-to-understand phase, and for a while all of our weekly phone conversations revolved around These Books About OCD that he was reading and This Therapy That He Heard About and none of it was very helpful from my perspective but it seemed to be helping him wrap his head around the concept that somebody that he loved had a mental illness, even if none of the "insights" from these books that he ran past me seemed very insightful at all. And "think of the OCD as separate from the person!" is an attitude that I'm kind of ambivalent about because on a certain level I think it helps people without OCD to not lose sight of the good qualities and the capabilities of the people that they love who have OCD, but on the other hand it's kind of toxic because you're right, it's not something that you can really separate from a person's attitude/behavior/perspective/way of experiencing the world, even though we can still recognize that it sucks and that it's something that it's usually a good idea to try to treat and minimize. I think that's what a lot of people without disabilities - especially those who try to be allies of people with disabilities - have trouble wrapping their heads around. "This disability is a fundamental part of who I am" and "this disability impairs me in such a way that I want/need for it to be treated" are both true at the same time for a lot of people with disabilities, especially mental disorders like OCD. And I think that Kid is a really good example of that, in that his disability is a fundamental part of who he is, but it's also something that impairs his ability to do the superheroic shit that he needs to do, that causes him a great deal of misery, and that is an obstacle that he has to overcome.

Sorry, this is getting rambly.

I love when Kid tries to process the room that Free the Werewolf

AH HA HA HA YES that is one of my favorite Kid scenes, and also the scene that I always refer to when I'm trying to explain to people why Soul Eater has a more realistic depiction of OCD than Monk. Adrian Monk will walk into a room and immediately be aware of every single detail around him; which I find utterly unbelievable because in my experience having OCD makes me much less aware of my surroundings with the notable exception that I am more likely to notice details related to my own obsessions/compulsions that people without OCD would. And it's because I'm hyper-focusing on that stupid shit that I'm less aware of my surroundings. Kid does the same thing in that scene: he walks into a room, immediately focuses on the broken pillars (something that other characters would have ignored because THERE IS A WEREWOLF IN THE ROOM), and is completely unable to think about anything else but the broken pillars.

[chagrined]

This was a cool read. I knew the title of "Soul Eater" but basically nothing else about it, aside from maybe having seen an AMV or two. Saw character with OCD and was intrigued! Argh that clip of writing name on test was so perfect/painful, I can ttly empathize with that, poor kid. I may look into trying this anime now. :D (I don't mind being spoiled, so don't worry about that, haha.)

[slippy]

But although Kid is his own mental illness in physical form, it's just a part of him. As such, his disability interacts with his superpowers without causing them. Kid's need to do everything symmetrically extends to asskicking--his beatdowns are especially beautiful. But rather than being "a gift and a curse," his symmetry obsession just is. It blends into his superpowers now and then, since both are just parts of who he is, but doesn't lead to them in a simplistic way.

It's good to see this formulated. While reading on through Soul Eater I kept being strangely surprised and gratified by how Kid was portrayed, but I never quite put it to the right words. And here they are!

[terajk]

Thank you very much! I REALLY struggled with how to put the relationship between Kid's superpowers and his disability in words. For a while I was stuck on the idea that he did have disability superpowers, but they were just very, very different from what a "disability superpower" usually is. But then I read this comment by nenena, which showed me how I was looking at it from the wrong direction (very typical of me):

The character himself is a FUCKING SUPER-POWERED ACTION HERO who doesn't have his superpowers derive from his disability in any way shape or form. I love the way that his character completely subverts the Supercrip trope because yes, he has a disability and yes, he has superpowers, but one has nothing to do with the other. He truly is a character with superpowers who happens to have a disability, as opposed to a character with superpowers because of his disability. And if you ask me, the former is the type of character that I would much rather see on TV, rather than the latter.

So it was really hard for ME to put it into words, too!