Buraiden Gai Chapter 2 Discussion

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                        I honestly didn’t find myself liking Gai that much.  He’s already made me a little frustrated, I’d say a somewhat annoyed, somewhat charmed “you little b*tch!!” a few times due to his actions and his smirks.  Especially here when he smiled at the cops for being “public servants” or shields.  I love the essence of what he was fighting for beautifully illuminated with him admitting he has a 0 percent chance to win but at least 5 will go blind.  It’s so samurai.  Fight and die or fight and live, no inbetween.  Like Zoro in One Piece.  But despite me loving that, something about this brat got to me.  The detectives words about Gai being pathetic and even turning the “coward” onto him was great and the fact that Gai ended up agreeing with the detective makes me think that we weren’t supposed to really like what Gai was doing in the first place.  It felt like Nakane in Kurosawa fighting adults for the sake of it.  As a rejection of the situation, a misguided refusal to give up.  How does poking a few cops eyes out really help your case?  I bet this detective may be a strong ally in the future.



The detective showed off that he is dutiful and he won’t back down.  He will risk blindness even if he seemed a little nervous or self interested before.  That looked to win some points in Gai’s book.  It certainly didn’t feel all that cowardly, he even rejected the gun.  And then to reason with him and question what he means by power was wonderful.  What is power?  Is it to use it pitifully to your downfall by taking it out on cops without any goal in sight, or is it by seeking the person who framed him and striving for a future?  It made Gai totally crack in composure and interestingly the manga still refused to show us his thoughts.  In a serious way, this was a battle of conviction and the detective, although flimsy on the outside, was strong in his resolve and Gai was not.  To have Gai voluntarily surrender is also so much cooler than any fight could have gone.  



Now with language of him being framed explicit we can presume that it’s why he is being so extreme.  He does have blood on him and notably he did avoid hitting the vital parts on the cops.  Something else went down there in that mansion and we are not privy to it.  So, this is a story about proving a murder wasn’t on him.  I see.