Having barely spoken throughout the manga, he suddenly pledges his love to Mie. Afterwards, he is entirely transformed and reborn for the first time as a man who is able to think for himself. This time can be considered a kind of symbolic death and resurrection for the character. And at the depths of his moral and spiritual corruption, his body gives in and he falls into a coma. The narrator describes his heart as “festering”. Sasahara cries “he’s just a child!” and something seems to click in Fujiki’s head. This comes to a head both spiritually and physically when he challenges and mutilates a young student on Sasahara’s estate. He, like Irako, has been completely corrupted by the world around him. In the final chapters, Fujiki undergoes an extraordinary change. Even with Iku, he acts depraved, demonstrated most vividly by the point at which he makes love to her on a desecrated statue in a Buddhist shrine. He takes many lovers, despite Iku’s devotion to him, and ends up murdering several, seemingly for pleasure. His behaviour worsens as the story continues. While this is Irako at the beginning, very slowly, the balance shifts to Fujiki.īy the time he murders Kogan, Irako has become a monster. Mie remains true to her desire to love whichever man is not a puppet, whichever can rise above the corruption. And Fujiki, the samurai who cannot act, loses his arm. Hence Irako, the samurai who cannot see, is blinded. In contrast, Fujiki may be able to see the corruption but, crippled by duty, he cannot act. Irako, who is successful in his ambitions, is unable to see that those same ambitions have turned him into the one thing he was fighting against.
She is, in the end, the only one of the three monsters who is whole, and perhaps the only one who sees the truth. “Mie” comes from the Japanese verb “to see” or be “visible”. Both are products of this terrible world and neither will offer her redemption. His ambition to overturn the system has corrupted him just as much as the system itself has corrupted Fujiki. Initially, she hangs her star on Irako, the man who is “not a puppet,” the one who, at that time, has the potential to save her from the life she is living.īut, and this is an important "but”, about halfway through the story and, at the point where the three “monsters” are born, Mie makes a terrifying realisation: Irako is just as bad as Fujiki. Being a woman, she has no recourse to position and social power, so she turns to the two men whom she has the potential to wed. Mie is no different from Irako and Fujiki inasmuch as she, like them and, indeed, like Iku, needs to escape the horrors of the world around her. The author is fairly open and explicit with her thoughts, and it is clear she has feelings for both men, which change over time. I don’t think there is any reason to consider her emotions to be so black and white. Some even go so far as to say that she never loved Fujiki and only uses him for vengeance. There is much debate over whom Mie loves. Their decisions lead them both to commit terrible atrocities and become little more than instruments for death, Irako for himself and Fujiki for those around him. Meanwhile, the world continues to corrupt both men. He endeavours to rise up in the world through duty and loyalty to the clan that adopted him. The difference is that, while Irako fights against the system, murdering his way up through the ranks to prove that there is no truth in the hierarchy, Fujiki buys into the samurai ideology. Both are horribly bullied by the samurai classes and both derive their motivation from this abuse. Both are poor and of a lowly social class. Irako and Fujiki come from the same background. The world is a cruel and corrupt place and the heroes (a rather oblique use of the term, I admit) are set on escaping from it in one way or another. If not, they are soon corrupted by those around them. And, as the story continues, we see many peripheral characters who are simply sadistic or evil for the sake of it. He, like Kogan, is cruel, abusive and depraved. But already, we have been introduced to Lord Tadanaga at Sunpu Castle, the insane and selfish lord who sets in motion the final duel. When the manga starts you could be forgiven for thinking the source of all evil is Kogan and that his disciples, once set on his path, are trapped in a destructive cycle. The story’s theme from the outset is the effect of a cruel world on the people within it. I completely disagree, and the key to understanding the end is there throughout the manga and is even made explicit in the final scene. The ending of Shigurui is derided by many reviewers as being far too abrupt and dissatisfying.