I Think Alot About Serizawa.

I think alot about serizawa.

that he's so powerful and so sensitive, and how he's the very common Shonen anime trope of "villain with tragic backstory who just needed friends and is won over to the hero's side after the hero listens to them and shows them kindness" but like, his tragic backstory is so grounded in places others just aren't? like, he just didn't want to hurt anybody, so he hid himself away. that's so simple, yet so poignant and painful, so...normal. its such a common emotion, such a common solution. its not a healthy one or a "good" one, but its all he had...and then at some point, his self-imposed isolation became so hurtful to him that it caused him to become vulnerable to exploitation. to manipulation, and he became a weapon in a never ending cycle of violence, until someone was kind enough to listen to him, to want to help him.

and then i think about the fact that that person was just a child who had experienced the exact same struggle but was provided tools by people who loved him to help manage his problems....and it honestly makes me so emotional. because, like, it's a perfect allegory for how living with mental illness affects people.

serizawa is older than mob, so the society he grew up in didn't know how to handle his powers (mental illness/neurodivergency), but now, as times have changed and society has become increasingly more aware, it opens the pathway for people to find strength together, to have people in their lives that understand that they need kindess, they need love, that their mental illness isnt something bad or wrong.

but even more than that, they know that their differences do not make them bad people, they are not something to be shunned and hidden away, but just something to be worked through. just a unique aspect of how that person is, and it's neither good nor bad, just how they are.

and then i think about how serizawa didn't have anyone like that in his life until he was 30, and how those years of isolation and then manipulation (which caused him to do the very thing he was afraid of), how all of that could have broken him could have made him unloving, could have made him bitter. but instead, he overcame his fears, his guilt, his shame, and under all of that, he's just kind.

when i get really afraid, of myself, of the world, when i want to myself hide away and never leave my bed, my room, i think of him, and i feel so comforted, so much less alone.

what a wonderful man, written so gently, so lovingly. it's so rare to see a grown man with a stigmatized symptom of mental illness depicted in such a kind way, it makes me want to hug ONE through a phone screen.

anyway, uh. yeah katsuya. i think he's pretty neat.