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Questions Of Love In Bucchigiri!?

Hiroko Utsumi is no stranger to distilling homoeroticism into their works, but Bucchigiri!? is able to take it a step further as it intertwines with the hypermasculine idea of fighting and gangs. Because of that, Bucchigiri!? poses two questions to the definition of love and how people experience it.

"What is love versus lust?"

Truthfully, it's a rather simple question to answer (at least to someone outside of high school). The point being the depth of feeling. Lust is strong but shallow, while love moves much deeper.

And the second episode in particular expresses this very strongly through the two gang leaders, Marito and Ken.

They don't feel any way in particular about Arajin until they feel their punch. After that, like Marito says, they just can't forget about it. That's all they know about this kid, "his" punch. And that's all they want from him as well.

The point is to express superficial lust towards Arajin because of something they only experience one single time. They believe that they want the strength behind the person no matter what because of a single moment.

And it's a great comparison to make against Matakara's feelings for Arajin.

Matakara doesn't need to feel "Arajin's" strength to know how he feels about him. On the contrary, he only ever needed to fight (really train) beside him to come to understand that emotion. Even more than that is Matakara's understanding of Arajin outside of fights, and he focuses in specifically on Arajin's passivity and carefulness.

Because of that, you can begin to draw the conclusion that "Lust" is represented by actions involving violence and action, while "Love" stems more from passivity and aversion in this context. Which I think is really really great. It's sort a sort of symbolic explanation of the whole point of violence being boorish and shallow while other communication is deeper and more valuable.

"How much is love worth if they don't love you for who you are?"

Super easy example here with this one. Just look at the Love Forever stone Arajin gives Mahoro vs the friendship one that he gave Matakara.

The whole point is that Arajin's love in the hands of someone who doesn't love him isn't valuable at all, nor is it valuable in the hands of someone that doesn't love him for who he is.

Marito and Ken can only feel something for Arajin because of the strength channeled through him by Senya. It's something entirely foreign to Arajin as a person, and represents both how shallow the gang leaders are, but also how shallow Arajin is.

Loving yourself is something that's tricky to do, and obviously especially so for high school kids. I think it's well understood at this point that Arajin struggles to love himself in a meaningful way, and that's expressed by his willingness to take on Senya.

Case and point being that he intentionally used Senya's strength to try and make himself look good in front of Mahoro, and in the same way used it against Ken to the same effect.

He's afraid of being and accepting himself, so he's allowed something else to speak for him. And while that catches the eye of many, including Matakara, Arajin himself already knows that it's nothing more than a farce to save face.

It's just... really great work in terms of narrative as it bundles so many different aspects of love together to create this complicated web that all stems from Arajin's inability to love himself. Matakara loves the current Arajin, but that Arajin is unable to face himself so he runs from the reflection that Matakara offers and buries himself in lust and unrequited romance.

And that all just comes from high school kids duking it out for fun alongside mystical fighting people that can merge with humans.

It's definitely a step up the symbolic ladder in comparison to Sk8 The Infinity, but I think it's allowed Utsumi to express much more in terms of romance through implicit narratives.

These first two episodes have been incredible, and I'm loving every moment and want to share every bit, but the overall production effort Mappa's been putting in leaves me in an awkward spot for sharing stuff like this.

I really love to, and I want to celebrate the efforts of the staff behind the series, but Mappa rains on that parade with its terrible scheduling and work ethic. The credits are a veritable mess that make episodes like this an incredible feat. And I'll celebrate that and share what I want to, but I do also want to call out Mappa for their terrible work as a studio.