Guts and Mukuro: The Examination of Existentialist Ideals

 As a writer you deal with numerous doubts about every word you have written and every characterization you use in your pieces, but what I love the most is the ideas that maybe expressed or the subjects, no matter how densely packed, come to mind.  The greatest difficulty of being a writer has nothing to do with finding the right words, characterizations, or even facts that you may have misinterpreted, but the idea of trying to better the pieces that preceded it.  Coming up with new ideas that may expand a topic or a new perspective on that topic.  That is what brings me to today's topic, and I promise I will get into the analysis of the characters of Guts and Mukuro and how they both relate to the idea of human existentialism, but I wanted to give a brief overview of the works presented prior to any analysis.  What Togashi and Miura are able to accomplish with 'Yu Yu Hakusho' and 'Berserk' is nothing short of remarkable.  Not one character is ill conceived but is carefully crafted in a way that gives each character a unique perspective, this allows the audience to greatly understand and appreciate each character without the author having to spoil the audience with their own biased interpretation but lets the audience come to their own conclusions.  This is no more evident in the characters of Guts, the headfirst struggling protagonist of the 'Berserk' series, and Mukuro, the ruthless tyrant bound and chained by her own hatred.  Together these characters represent the same form of existentialist thought, which is the idea of trauma.  While the Berserk series leans heavily on physical rather than the psychological and Mukuro's story leans more heavily in the psychological rather than the physical both stories contain the same philosophy. If Guts' journey shows us the physical manifestation of his very real psychological trauma, Mukuro's journey shows us the psychological manifestation of her physical trauma.

Guts' journey starts with him being born from a corpse hanging from a tree, from this, immediately the audience sees even the subject of his birth is a result from a traumatic event but also his ability to defy fate is an interesting conception.  He is then found by a "working woman" named Shisu, along with several mercenaries from a mercenary band, who took care of him until the tender age of three, Gambino, her lover and the leader of the mercenary band, recognized the boy still being alive after his mother's death to be a bad omen and that he would eventually cause disaster.  As Guts turned three, Shisu is then infected with the plague and dies as a result of it.  Guts is then left in the care of Gambino and his men, the following years for Guts are rife with abuse as his body is sold to other men by Gambino, as Guts reaches the age of eleven or twelve, he is then thrusted into combat always over the edge of a sword but narrowly escaping death.  In one of those instances Guts is pinned down by another mercenary as he and Gambino's band are invading a castle, he survives due to the actions of Gambino killing the mercenary before he had a chance to harm Guts.  As Guts believes this is an act of caring on Gambino's part, the circumstances of his stepping in to save Guts was just so they could use Guts in further battles.  In a later instance Gambino is injured in a battle due to Guts' inability to kill the enemy due to his resolve being weak.  Gambino, while drunk, attempts to kill Guts while he slept, Guts wakes up in the middle and as a very frightened and scared child kills Gambino with his own sword.  Gambino yells in agony and as he yells, Guts immediately leaves the tent, as Guts attempts to escape, Gambino's men enter the tent to investigate. As they find Gambino dead in the tent, they immediately suspect Guts and try to find the boy to punish him for killing Gambino.  Guts is continuously chased and eventually found and shot with an arrow, he then loses his footing and falls and finds himself in a deep ravine as his pursuers continue to look for him, but, as they can tell, he is nowhere to be found, so they start to search elsewhere.  The fall caused Guts to lose consciousness and as he regains it, what awaits him are wolves that surround him from every angle, here we get a glimpse of the forming of Guts' supremely existential nature.  The exhausted, injured and bruised Guts is not faced with many options as he is confronted with seemingly unwinnable odds, all he carries is a sword for his own protection.  He then kills every single wolf that surrounds him. Miura is showing us, the audience, very clearly that by Guts' own means, he is defying this fate, as to him, it is untenable.

Mukuro was dealt a similar hand as Guts before she was able to walk, talk, or even think clearly on her own, she was forced into slavery as a young girl by being abandoned by her mother. She spent most of her time in a cage and was only granted rare attention on her birthday by Chikou her supposed adoptive father.  But this attention was the greatest betrayal of her life, she was continuously raped on her birthday year after year by Chikou.  She eventually had enough and attempts to make herself look less desirable to him by pouring acid on her face, somewhat disfiguring it. Togashi is giving a slight nod to existential ideas, in which she takes things into her own hands because she can only be responsible for the things, she has control over, which in this case is her appearance.  Chikou later releases Mukuro because after disfiguring her face, he holds no desire for her.  This lights a fire in Mukuro and she expresses her anger out on the world.  She never took that anger out on the one that abused her, Chikou, because he implanted false memories for every interaction or encounter they might have had, so if she ever turned against him or thought of him in a negative light, false memories would be used to control her actions, as these memories included Chikou treating her very well instead of the horrific treatment she had endured from him.  But what Togashi does next is genius and how it is written and the symbolism of what is portrayed gives a clearer exploration of these existential ideas.  Mukuro is still bound and chained, still a slave, as is portrayed in the anime and the manga, both as a literal act, i.e. mind manipulation, and in a more figurative sense controlled by her emotions i.e. her anger.  This begins Mukuro's journey on the road to break those chains that bind to her.  This explores the complexities of fate as it inhibits her ability to live an authentic life as the violence she suffered carries her, while this story is a unique one in many ways, it is also familiar as the complexities of abuse and trauma can lead to variable outcomes that have to be overcome to grow.  That is why Mukuro's character arc is special because a core theme of existentialism is freedom, authenticity, and the search for meaning, which entails growth.  Both these characters, Mukuro and Guts, exemplify that growth through struggle is an effective way through dealing with your own personal traumas and setbacks as it is necessary to find true meaning of one's life.