Or they need a girlfriend that doesn’t mind listening and trying to help them work through their shit and defeat their fucking demons without asking them to pour out their soul to a stranger who is only listening because it’s their job. That’s the kind of shit you do for the people you love.
your partner is not your therapist. listening to your partner is one thing, but it is not their responsibility to help you work through your shit. that is on you.
one more time.
your partner is not your therapist.
also if I may hop onto this, I REALLY hate when people try to spin “therapists only listen because it’s their job” as a BAD thing. can you imagine if we tried to apply that to literally any other profession?
“why take your phone into the store to get it fixed? they don’t care about you, they’re only doing their job.”
“I don’t want to order a pizza. they’re not making it for me out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re only doing it because it’s their job.”
“why didn’t you just have your girlfriend do that surgery instead of going to a stranger who only saved your life because it’s their job?”
it’s their job because they are better equipped to do it than the other people in your life. jesus christ.
Now that I’ve finished Acid Tokyo there are so so many fascinating differences between this version of Kamui and Subaru and the ones that appear in X/1999. Kamui in particular reads as a completely different kind of person – but I think it’s an understandable difference, from a plot perspective. It feels ‘odd’ for sure, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’m finding that a lot of the cores of Kamui’s characterisation are still present, they’ve just been refocussed.
The biggest surprise to me was that they were brothers this time around, for a number of reasons. In X/1999 there was a deep and achingly sad parallel between Kamui and Subaru, in that they were both stuck in damaging relationships with people they couldn’t help but love. They wanted to try save them (and change them back to their “previous self”), but circumstances had rendered this option impossible in both cases, so both Kamui and Subaru were left in this painful in between state where they were guaranteed to suffer the most. Both boys were also the respective sweethearts of their pairings too, so when they grew closer and began to support each other emotionally there was always this underlying hint that, if things had been different, these two could have been happy together. In another world, or another universe, they could have been so good for each other.
So to see them as brothers is a bit of an unwanted twist from that angle. It’s not what I expected, but on the bright side it does cement the fact that (in a strictly platonic sense) these two characters will be there for each other. Especially since they’ve inherited their awful boyfriends, and are still set to suffer. At least they’ll have each other for support.
Another departure from X/1999 was their personality. In X Subaru was the one hardened by experience, and Kamui was (by the time he meets Subaru) the softer and more vulnerable one. Here their situations are reversed, and it’s where CLAMP really started to tweak their past and give them new personalities. (Spoilers) This Subaru never lost his twin to the man he loves, and so he’s still a gentler soul. This Kamui hasn’t lost his most important people (ie both Kotori and Fuuma) to the prophecy, so he hasn’t been forced to grow and open his heart. He’s still stuck in that dangerous violent stage he was at near the start of X/1999 – and since the object of his obsession (in this case, Subaru) hasn’t been lost to him (and his protectiveness has instead been encouraged for centuries), he has no reason to try and like anyone else. So while different, their cores are technically the same, just shaped through WILDLY different life experiences.
On a sidenote their role in Acid Tokyo is fascinating to me too. This is essentially the same Tokyo as X/1999, after all, but with a few very important things lacking. Namely Kamui, Subaru, Fuuma, and Seisirou, who are all from different worlds. Without them the world just ended, and there was no prophecy to come into effect. Which is, like, good for some characters, if bad for the world in general. I don’t think CLAMP mean to imply that these versions of the characters are actually better than the originals, just that they’re different, and fun to play with in a new setting.
TLDR, I think CLAMP put a lot of thought into how Kamui and Subaru’s different lives have affected their new personalities, and there’s enough in there that it makes sense to me in hindsight. Even if it still does feel odd.
lanablack 