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You know, I don’t think it will never not bother me how easy people find to cast aside all the depths Kagura has, only because she’s a cheerful girl most of the time and her traumas are more quiet and subtle.
How people will close their eyes at repeated parallels that are drawn between her and Gintoki (even if, admittedly, Gintoki’s traumas are significantly deeper and more spectacular).
Kagura has spent most of her life as an incredibly lonely person, on a planet that was actively hostile to her and her family; one of the first flashbacks we see of her is a tiny child, sitting among the bodies of people she’s beaten up because they tried to harrass her.
(Now parallel it to Gintoki as a child, sitting on top of a pile of corpses, treating it as exactly as natural as she does). She and her brother were beaten up and had to fight back all the time; her mother was slowly dying, her brother left, and her father was never there.
Even after her mother died we know that her father was still never there, and she was left all alone, in a place full of people who hated her and feared her.
When asked why she came to Earth she says that she wanted to eat something better than just rice with a bit of spice on top, and it’s obviously part of the truth, but we know it’s not all true.
but no one would volunteer this kind of information to people they’ve just met, wouldn’t they.
As Gintoki has found light in his life again with Shinpachi and Kagura appearing, it was very similar for her as well.
As Gintoki has found light in his life again with Shinpachi and Kagura appearing, it was very similar for her as well.
And the way she views the relationships with people has also been skewed: think about her mother, saying to her, again, a tiny child, that as long as Kagura is here their family will be okay.
It’s a pretty sentiment, but it also put an immense burden on her shoulders and we can see over and over again that she never stopped believing that it’s her duty to be the glue and savior of her families. The way she tries to save Kamui every time.
The way she stays in a broken Yorozuya when Gintoki loses his memories, because no matter what happens she will be hold the strands of her broken families with her bare hands without any rest.
The way that even when Gintoki disappears in Be Forever Yorozuya she still stays put, because she can’t run away if he might need someone to cover him with a blanket when he comes back. How she tries to leave alone to save her blood family to not endanger her found one.
Or what about the fact that her father told her that people either fear Yato or use them (or both), probably more than once? How she indeed got used when she arrived on Earth?
How quiet and closed off her despair was when Gintoki told her to leave with Umibozu, that this planet is to small for her? How she didn’t dispute her father that her loved ones must have not love as much as she loved them?
How she pretended to have gone back with Umibozu to check if they would really, truly miss her?
And that even if she was proven wrong, the doubt seems to still sometimes arrive there, with her testing their affection while pretending to be sick, with her seeking confirmation that Shinpachi, Gintoki and her father love her from prince Dai.
And then you have the part of her being a part of a ‘monstrous’ race and even more ‘monstrous’ family.
The trauma of not only her mother slowly dying, which is a horrible, but mundane sort of trauma that a lot of people she encountered would understand, but also her brother and father trying to kill each other and having to stop them, again, as a tiny, tiny child.
Of being repeatedly called a monster and, unlike Gintoki for example, having factual proof that it’s true, because she did kill her pet because of inability to control her strength.
Because Yato blood is both a blessing and a curse and she knows she has a beast within that her overtake her and make her hurt her loved ones. The trauma of having the beast take control once and knowing how scary and real it is.
Of knowing that if that happens a second time she might not be brought back.
It’s easy to brush it all off because most of the time she’s loud and cheerful and childish, but it isn’t all that she is. Her sadness, her traumas, it’s all very withdrawn and quiet and easily hidden.
It’s easy to brush it all off because most of the time she’s loud and cheerful and childish, but it isn’t all that she is. Her sadness, her traumas, it’s all very withdrawn and quiet and easily hidden.
She’s both more childish than her age suggests and at the same time more mature (again, something that could be also said about Gintoki); both parts of her are to certain extent performative and to another true;
they’re both who she really is and also coping and masking mechanisms (like when she goes to save Kamui with Kihetai and shovels food into herself as if everything was great, to suddenly allow the facade to drop entirely).
It speaks true to someone whose childhood wasn’t exactly great, who had to grow up too early and because of that didn’t do that properly.
And also why she indulges her childishness as much as she does when she is around people she trusts and loves (and also when it suits her goal more).
I could probably talk even more about it, but this thread is already incredibly long.
I could probably talk even more about it, but this thread is already incredibly long.
I don’t know, I just really love Kagura and I think the fandom often does her disservice by just shrugging her off as a funny child with badass moments, and she’s so much more than that
