Sasaki Isaburo's penance and misanthropy (a thread).

Sasaki isaburo has an extremely interesting introduction. With his introduction we are introduced to the arch-rivals and polar opposites of the shinsengumi, in colour, status and bureaucratic ladder.

The mimawarigumi is the brainchild of Sasaki Isaburo, a very effective organisation run by the prodigy of the powerful Sasaki family of Edo. Even the headquarter of the mimawarigumi is massive, evident of the trust, the power and influence Sasaki Isaburo holds over the bakufu.

While the shinsengumi started from rags, the mimawarigumi was concieved with a silver spoon. The contrast is made evident to the point where Isaburo uses a pistol it could be seen as his way of refusing to associate with the samurai world and condemning it.

Now this could be argued as looking too deep on my part but sorachi has been known to imbed character work into his character designs. Such details and his emotionless and monotone voice, using a mails as his main communication tool set him apart from every other character.....

...and make him interesting to the viewer/reader. Isaburo was a man with great heart and compassion within him, he worried about giving his yet to be born daughter a great name, afraid society won't let him raise her properly, flirted with his wife on mail and...

was a very precious person. His moral compass would not allow the higher-ups to use the yet infant shinsengumi, formed due to his masterplan, to be used as a sacrificial pawn to cover up assasinations for political gain.

Seeing kondo talk about "being your own samurai" Isaburo had tried to act on his heart and soul and lost everything, everything dear to him.

His interactions with kondo had made Isaburo sympathetic to their cause. However his intervention would come at a huge cost. The yatagarasu had taken taken notice of Isaburo's meddling, and they intended to punish him for that. And punished he was!

The punishment meted out was the murder of his new-born daughter and beloved wife in cold blood. On that day, Sasaki Isaburo swore vengeance upon everything and anything, including himself for not being able to protect what was important in this cruel world.

He saw everything as his enemy, an agent that caused his suffering, to that end he placed himself deep into bakufu lines, used methods and strategies that would cause the maximum amount of mayhem and result in the weakening of the state itself so he could once and for-all finish

the samurai world itself that had caused him so much anguish. He made the shinsengumi and joi rebels allies to cause a revolt, used his own men to fight the shinsengumi and then the naraku to fight everyone else, no one would escape Isaburo's thirst for violence and vengeance.

In this lonely journey he had kept only one person on his side to finish him when the time was ripe. The very girl that had taken everything away from her was to be the one to finish him at the end. Nobume in a sense of atonement, for she had failed to finish off Isaburo....

after taking everything from him, had accepted to do. In the tragedy that Isaburo had lost everything, he had been able forage something, someone who could be purpose and mail-buddy. The girl who was to be his end was still the only thing he had, since everything else...

..was just another target for his rage. They both had nothing, so it did not matter if the one next to them was an enemy, as long as it was someone. Nobume, the name he spend ages coming up with for her daughter, he gave it to his "enemy" without telling her it

was the one he was supposed to give his own daughter, out of fear she would not want it. Fearing his "mail would not be delivered". In his heart Isaburo was not able to forgive himself for letting his family die, the thing that enraged him with himself further was...

that he used nobume as firewood to keep his vengeance going. He had condemned himself for falling for kondo's way of the samurai, but once again found himself fighting with him with all his might subconsciously only wanting to see nobume again, and was reminded this by kondo.

Nobume was not the one that had killed Isaburo's family, it was the naraku, nobume had tried to defend the carriage. Yet Nobume was unaware that Isaburo knew this and was still was not fazed by the revelation that he knew, as she only wanted to be by his side regardless.

In this conflict of wanting to tell nobume that he thought of her as a daughter, wanting to just see her, falling for kondo's ideals again and thinking of himself unworthy for making nobume suffer for something she did not do only to keep her by his side, Sasaki's will rekindled.

When they do meet once again after Isaburo's struggle, Nobume declares she will fight for staying by his side, not for revenge or atonement. She will swing her sword of her own volition, for the man who saved her, for the man who gave her a name, for her father.

Isaburo's mail to nobume was delivered, there is no room for doubt, she is his daughter, the person she saved and the person that saved and named her. Unlike last time Sasaki Isaburo was able to save his everything at the cost of his life and he could not be more overjoyed.