Believable, human characters can add immense impact to a story. Few actions are more human than feeling ashamed about who you are, making selfish decisions that hurt others, or offering up yourself to someone you care about, only to be rejected. Volume 5 of Wandering Son contains examples of characters engaging in all three of these flawed, relatable behaviors. After the hopefulness and potential shown at the end of the previous volume, Volume 5 serves up some painful panels and pages, putting perspective on our core cast while they prepare for their play.
Volume 6 covers issues 42 to 49 of “Wandering Son”. They are primarily centered around summer vacation and build-up to upcoming cultural festival at our core cast’s school, where most of our main characters will be putting on a gender-swapped version of “Romeo and Juliet” written by Saori and Shuichi.
It is during the summer vacation that we see the first major instance of a character being ashamed at who they are – when Makoto tries on one of his mother’s old swimsuits during a sleepover at Shuichi’s house. Makoto is driven by a desire to see how he would look, and yet is soon crippled by guilt. While Makoto has been fairly confident in women’s clothing up until this point, he sees his donning of a more intimate item of clothing that was once worn by his mother as a perversion. This forms a neat parallel with the end of the volume, where Shuichi tries on Maho’s underwear and feels burning shamefulness at his actions. While Maho never definitively finds out that Shuichi has worn her underwear, she is highly suspicious of him, even decrying Shuichi as a pervert when he does not deny her accusations emphatically enough. This combination of both internal and external shame in doing an action that they believe to be an integral part of their still-forming identity paints a painful picture of the forces and pressures that Makoto, Shuichi, and Yoshino will have to fight against throughout their lives.
These moments of shame are inextricably tied to the idea of committing selfish acts, regardless of their effects of others. Both Makoto and Shuichi show incredible selfishness by wearing clothing previously worn by members of their respective families. In the moments where they choose wear the clothes, they consider their own feelings over those of others. However, once they are actually wearing the clothes, they are both filled with guilt, and hurry to remove them and, in Shuichi’s case, wash the underwear to rid them of any evidence that he had worn them. There are moments in this volume where there aren’t similar reparations. The most prominent of these is when Makoto is given the part of Juliet during the casting lottery, opposite Saori’s Romeo. He knows that Shuichi was the intended recipient of the part, and yet refuses to give it up, despite Saori constantly calling him spineless. Shuichi lies to his sister about wearing her underwear (however unconvincingly). He also wanders off at the beach, looking to ‘play at being a girl’, not concerned that it would send Riku and Maho into a panic when they fear that he has been abducted. This selfishness subverts what I would have expected to happen with the story, exploring new dynamics between the characters and adding new layers of depth to them.
Shuichi and Saori further added to their depth of character by sharing themselves with another, only to be romantically rejected. Shuichi’s is the far less impactful overall. After sharing ice creams with Yoshino, he hints at the fact that his wish would be for he and Yoshino to share a home together, living their truths under one roof. Yoshino is frazzled by this, being uncharacteristically respectful and awkward before promptly leaving. Saori’s is mar more piercing and painful. When she and Shuichi are practicing lines for the play together, she suggests that Shuichi take her name when he fully transitions. Shuichi then devastates her by saying that Yoshino had already made the same offer to him, with the clear implication being that he would take Yoshino up on that offer. Saori snaps, breaking down Shuichi’s dreams of being a woman, saying that he simply can’t – even if Shuichi gets gender reassignment surgery, he will never truly be a woman. I felt for Saori when she offered up her name, and her cutting reaction clearly comes from a place of great personal pain. Sometimes, I lose sight of the fact that these are still young kids, but moments like this one help bring some perspective, reminding me that they still have an enormous amount of growing to do.
We will see a sizeable chunk of this growing in the coming week, as next week’s post will cover Volumes 7 and 8, encompassing Chapters 50 to 65. In this volume, several of the core characters showed both ashamed and selfish sides, and experienced the hurt that comes with being rejected. I am sure that there will be more pain, growth, and self-discovery in the chapters ahead. See you next Sunday!
