Aaaaaaand I’m done! Now to put in my final timeline:
August 4
- We are shown the world of the lights again
- Yukito wakes up in the afternoon. Hijiri treated Kano all through the night
- Yukito realizes something after using Houjutsu and brings Hijiri and Kano to the shrine
- The padlock can’t be open because of Yukito’s messing around, so Hijiri just destroys it
- Yukito feels something upon getting the feather and lays it on Kano’s chest
- Lights burst into the room, and memories start pouring in from the feather
- A voice called “Shiraho” tells them a story, about her husband and her child Yakumo
- Yakumo had a birthmark on her wrist, and that it was a bad omen
- Yakumo got a feather that fell down, and it started glowing, and Shiraho wished for her child to grow healthy
- A war came along and her husband was forced to leave, but suddenly a large wind sunk all the enemy’s ships
- Sometime later, a government official was looking for anybody had touched a glowing feather, so the next day they left the village
- They eventually found and lived in the shrine in the village
- The priest in the shrine says the villagers see her child as a bad omen, and Shiraho decides cut her own wrist as an offering to save her child
- They are suddenly shown the festival, seeing Kano and her mom, and Kano telling her she wants to go home to Hijiri, Potato and Yukito
- Her mom asks Kano to come with her but Kano declines, and she tells Kano to be happy there
August 13
- Yukito falls in the stream again, and Kano reminds him they are going to the festival
- She still wears the bandana to hide the scar from August 3
- The festival is still empty, but they see Hijiri there
- Yukito tells Hijiri that his power hasn’t come back since that day, and he was asleep for 3 days
- The feather also disappeared and was replaced by a fake
- Hijiri buys Kano a balloon before leaving
Now first and foremost, how do I feel about this route? I feel exactly the same way about how I felt during Minagi’s Normal End. It felt so bad because Yukito so easily gives up his quest, and yet I feel soooo good because of how he ends up staying.
The last thing Kano says that makes him do that is “dame ka na? (That’s okay, isn’t it?)” which she says the first time Yukito decides to skip having flowing soumen with her and enter the Minagi route instead. This is like her final way of asking for something that she really wants. Yes Kano is selfish, Kano is spoiled, but in the end, she’s also innocent and lets Yukito have the burden of making those decisions for her. So when he does, it makes me feel guilty. It’s not what should be done but it is what Yukito wants to be done, or rather, by the end, it’s the only thing he feels that can be done. I can understand why many people would dislike her for it, but I don’t feel anything against it.
We can see towards the end how guilty she feels after realizing that she was the cause of both Yukito and Hijiri’s distress and tries to run away from it (which is kind of a very Japanese thing to do, pardon the stereotyping). So I can’t see her as someone bad just somebody very, very childish. Again, I don’t want to blame anybody for that, but Hijiri doesn’t really give her the opportunity to stand for herself…
It is a stark contrast to Minagi’s route, where Michiru drives Yukito to continue his search, Kano’s route drives him into the ground to stay with him. She even uses her “magic” to force Yukito to stay. Unlike Minagi’s Normal End, Yukito doesn’t give up his quest because he needs to. This time, he does it because he wants to; because he loves the village and loves Kano and treats them (incl. Hijiri and Potato) as his new family. That kind of signifies the two major outcomes of every generation of Yukito’s family: Either continuing their quest and dying in vain, or succumbing to human desires and pushing that responsibility onto the next generation. Which reminds meeee… @Takafumi you owe as a continuation on your theory about AIR being a warning about Japanese work ethic! XP
That being said, I don’t have much to respond to the other people in this topic about the route. A lot of people say that Kano’s character was uninteresting, which I feel is a bit subjective. I personally noticed many cues that make her interesting. Another point is that her route was badly written and, well… Yeah it kind of was xP So I guess I’ll skip on the arguing part that I love doing hahaha
My next comment is regarding the sex scene. I feel that it was an excuse for Yukito to remove her bandana. We know that she can remove it “once she becomes an adult” and sex is often seen as a stepping stone towards adulthood. It’s kind of something I could see a mile away even in the common route. But the whole point is that, after removing the bandana, Yukito sees that Kano is pretty normal. There isn’t any magic, there isn’t any scars, but Kano is just who she is, and what happens to her is just an unfortunate turn of events that Kano has become a victim of.
Now then! Onto the meat of the story, which was never explained! What in tarnation is the whole possession thing about? Yeah they never explained it. At all. So now we are left to figure out what the hell happened and how it happened. The way I see it is this: Kano, as a kid, wanted to reach the sky to reach her mother because she felt guilty about having left Hijiri to take care of her. This desire coincided with the desire of the feather. The feather, I believe, comes from one of the wings of the girl. I think it is natural, then, to think that the feather desires to return to the sky, to its rightful place, and Kano’s desire is the reason why it glows for her and not for Hijiri or any of the other priests.
But now, how does Shiraho fit into all this? I think this also coincides with her desires. Shiraho only desired a place where she and her child could be accepted without faults. I feel that the field of pampas grass was an abstract representation of that place that Shiraho wanted to reach. All these desires piled up and caused that possession. Her cutting of her wrists signifies Shiraho’s sacrificing of herself. Her strangling of Yukito represents Shiraho’s strangling of her child, because both Yukito and the child have this connection to the girl in the sky.
Long story short, the whole possession thing happened because all the entities were desperately trying to reach the sky, and after Kano realizes that she wishes to stay with her present family, the magic disappeared. She probably realized it early on, like @Misuzu said, but Yukito had to make that path for her. Kind of like how you need magic to counteract magic.
That is only my opinion on how the possession works, so I am excited to hear you guys discussing it, since @EisenKoubu did put it in as one of his keypoints. To be more specific on that keypoint. What do you guys think is the main driving force behind Kano’s possession, and why did it stop after Yukito made a path for her?
Lastly, time to go on to my keypoints! My first keypoint is this: Yukito doesn’t understand his own Houjutsu, but once he touches the feather, he is able to do something that he never seemed to be aware he was capable of doing. Does Yukito use his houjutsu with the feather, despite not knowing how it works? Is his connection with the feather unconscious? This might only contribute to, like, 5 minutes of discussion on the podcast, but I do want to hear some other thoughts about it!
Second keypoint is, as I stated before, How does Hijiri’s upbringing affect Kano’s personality? Could Hijiri could have done something different to have avoided this near-catastrophe? I think this might be another keypoint that would be worth bringing up again once we go on to the next part of the story.
I guess that’s enough for now. All in all, I didn’t dislike Kano’s route. It gave me some memorable emotions, which is the whole point of Nakige (points to Nakige thread), and while it could have been written better, it gives us a contrasting opinion on Yukito’s whole mission. Sure, it wasn’t all about Kano, but that’s okay, too.
