Eren the Southpaw - Vol. 4 Ch. 26

[MangaDex]

 

[es_kan]

oh yeah we gonna need Eren to get over here and slap some sense into our boy

 

[RitoTheLittle]

noooo, my boyyyy

 

[Doomroar]

oh yeah we gonna need Eren to get over here and slap some sense into our boy

First Why?

This is the first time in his life things are actually working out for him and he is experiencing success, genuine success and recognition, not deluded self praise like in school, and that lasted him for a very short time

Before this chapter he was always found lacking by everyone in the creative space, he was seen as a mediocre painter in high school by Eren and his tutors, in fact it was his mediocrity is a huge factor behind Koichi inspiring Eren to get back into art, because the shock factor of seeing a kid so utterly lacking in talent, just refusing to give up and insisting on drawing despite being just average at best, told her that she herself who actually has talent should do better

So she made a promise to herself to crush Koichi for as long as he tried to do art with all his being and do it seriously, just to see how far a regular guy giving it his all could go

And Koichi did gave it his all, however he was seen as a mediocre designer in uni, someone who managed to just scrap by, and barely managing to get into art school

When he got a job everyone on his team saw him as incompetent and cuddled, as a slacker in need of getting his shit together, talentless but with the potential to do more than what he was giving

It got so bad, to the point that back to back he developed an inferiority complex, and when he meet an old friend from school he almost had mid life crisis despite being on his early twenties thinking that he wasted his life

Then his team disbands, and he ended on the worst unit because he was seem as both the weakest asset on the team, and the guy that took him did it only to probe a point, that he could make something out of what was been seen as wasted company resources

And despite being an abusive boss, it worked, it actually worked, Koichi went from a half broken man who everyone keep looking down, to a fully broken man who finally is breaking into the scene

Second How?

How is Eren out of all people, supposed to talk any sense into him, when she is infamously known for being an individualistic genius who makes her craft on her own? what is she supposed to tell him? she is the one that gave him his inferiority complex in the first place, and just now he is getting over it by grinding and hustling

And third, to what effect?

Hyper-focusing on his own work is actually paying off for his first time in his life, he is not a second fiddle, nor a background character, nor nameless unaccredited support member blamed for the shortcomings of a work, for once he is not looked down as a talent-ess hack

Plus this is exactly what Eren wanted out of Koichi, she wants to see just how far he can make it if he pushes himself to the limit, and then keeps going, despite the fact that he is just a talent-less regular guy bashing his head into the art world, she wants to see someone with no talent actually managing to survive in the art work with just sheer effort, and he is doing just that, in fact he is not just surviving, he is actually thriving

 

[es_kan]

?

...

Woah, consider me corrected. I thought no further than rebuking his "we don't live in a manga" with the fact that he does, in fact.

Thanks for taking the time to post all that, i enjoyed reading your response.

 

[Goyal99Raj]

First Why?

This is the first time in his life things are actually working out for him and he is experiencing success, genuine success and recognition, not deluded self praise like in school, and that lasted him for a very short time

Before this chapter he was always found lacking by everyone in the creative space, he was seen as a mediocre painter in high school by Eren and his tutors, in fact it was his mediocrity is a huge factor behind Koichi inspiring Eren to get back into art, because the shock factor of seeing a kid so utterly lacking in talent, just refusing to give up and insisting on drawing despite being just average at best, told her that she herself who actually has talent should do better

So she made a promise to herself to crush Koichi for as long as he tried to do art with all his being and do it seriously, just to see how far a regular guy giving it his all could go

And Koichi did gave it his all, however he was seen as a mediocre designer in uni, someone who managed to just scrap by, and barely managing to get into art school

When he got a job everyone on his team saw him as incompetent and cuddled, as a slacker in need of getting his shit together, talentless but with the potential to do more than what he was giving

It got so bad, to the point that back to back he developed an inferiority complex, and when he meet an old friend from school he almost had mid life crisis despite being on his early twenties thinking that he wasted his life

Then his team disbands, and he ended on the worst unit because he was seem as both the weakest asset on the team, and the guy that took him did it only to probe a point, that he could make something out of what was been seen as wasted company resources

And despite being an abusive boss, it worked, it actually worked, Koichi went from a half broken man who everyone keep looking down, to a fully broken man who finally is breaking into the scene

Second How?

How is Eren out of all people, supposed to talk any sense into him, when she is infamously known for being an individualistic genius who makes her craft on her own? what is she supposed to tell him? she is the one that gave him his inferiority complex in the first place, and just now he is getting over it by grinding and hustling

And third, to what effect?

Hyper-focusing on his own work is actually paying off for his first time in his life, he is not a second fiddle, nor a background character, nor nameless unaccredited support member blamed for the shortcomings of a work, for once he is not looked down as a talent-ess hack

Plus this is exactly what Eren wanted out of Koichi, she wants to see just how far he can make it if he pushes himself to the limit, and then keeps going, despite the fact that he is just a talent-less regular guy bashing his head into the art world, she wants to see someone with no talent actually managing to survive in the art work with just sheer effort, and he is doing just that, in fact he is not just surviving, he is actually thriving

Great points. One small issue though, do you create art just for public recognition? What exactly are you doing with your life if you spend 100+ hours a week working for an abusive bosss, on projects you've started to hate, with all of your friends walking away, and awards that bring no change to your mood?

What I'm trying to say is, Koichi looks incredibly stressed and unhappy. A far cry from what he looked like when he got into art. Eren was infuriated by his smiling face as he put out mediocre art, but she only came back when she felt the freedom of individual expression (sunrise, that mentor, etc.). Koichi looks haunted and about as far from freedom as you can get.

To take it to an extreme for a second, if Koichi committed s**cide tomorrow, would this still be a rightful path? Cause the man looks miserable.

 

[Doomroar]

Great points. One small issue though, do you create art just for public recognition? What exactly are you doing with your life if you spend 100+ hours a week working for an abusive bosss, on projects you've started to hate, with all of your friends walking away, and awards that bring no change to your mood?

What I'm trying to say is, Koichi looks incredibly stressed and unhappy. A far cry from what he looked like when he got into art. Eren was infuriated by his smiling face as he put out mediocre art, but she only came back when she felt the freedom of individual expression (sunrise, that mentor, etc.). Koichi looks haunted and about as far from freedom as you can get.

To take it to an extreme for a second, if Koichi committed s**cide tomorrow, would this still be a rightful path? Cause the man looks miserable.

He has grown jaded and spiteful of how the art world works, and of the things he has to do, but if you remember last chapter for all the grievances he had with Yanagi, his abusive boss, what hurt him the most was to admit that at the end of the day the guy had the talent and drive to back up his harshness with results, it is why his senpai was unable to talk back to him, because he also had to begrudgingly admit that their boss who is an asshole had a good eye for design, it is a Gordon Ramsay kind of deal, he is total dick but... he is right

And is not like he was happy with his life before he got to this point, he was about to quit already, his life has been rolling downhill for a while, being a summation of failures, and he had nothing to show for it, he has been in a bad place for a while and no one really cared until now, Micchan has always looked down and pitied him, she never really cared about him, and always saw him as an unreliable man, so wathever opinion she may have formed now out of his outward mental state is to be taken with a truck of salt

Also lets talk about his previous boss Kamiya, the previous superstar of the company, before this current arc Koichi had a small story arc from chapters 7 to 12, it technically starts at the end of chapter 6, it is about Koichi adjusting to the fact that more than an artist he is a salaryman, and that before pursuing dreams and ideals he should just fall in line and do his job, it is his dreamer attitude that has he enter conflict with other departments, his bosses, and colleges, and it is why his peers and other female staff members Micchan included look down on him

So how does that arc end? it ends with Kamiya admonishing Koichi infront of everyone, i a very very Gordon Ramsay manner at that, he starts with singling him out, saying that he contributed minimal next to nothing to their project, practically calls him a parasite, humilliates him in front of everyone, dismisses his ideals as childish, and then tries to save it all up by saying that what is holding him back is that he doesn't believes in himself and that his mediocrity is due to a lack of effort and self confidence

Kamiya out of all people would be happy to see this current version of Koichi, because... lets now go a bit forward to chapter 22, we learned that deep down both Yanagi and Kamiya are the same kind of creatives, the only thing that change is how they handle people, but deep down they share the same core believes about how to make art, which is why in the first place Kamiya left his team and pursued a succesful global solo career

The dream of an era of teams died when Kamiya left Koichi, and he could have ended up a nobody, but Yanagi pushed him around to where he is now

And he looks jaded, but he his dreams have been getting killed when he was a kid, his dream of being an artistic genius died, when he was a young adult his dream of being more than a worker but a creative died, and then his dream of being a teamplayer died when Kamiya left him with Yanagi, however this is the first time that he is getting something in return, because he never really got to hear Eren giving him any praise or validation, she keep those words for herself

But more importantly than any of that, we don't know if he hates the art that he is making with his hard work, for all we know the only thing that could have faded is the ideals he had around how to make art, and the value of team works, not the art that is being made itself

 

[Felkin]

...

That's a nice challenge to the natural expectation of how this arc should now progress.

I think a point worth noting is that Eren was shown from the start as a very introverted person who doesn't really like being near others & working with them. It's her natural state of being to be solo.

Koichi has been shown as the polar opposite - he is quite outgoing and communicative. To him this current state of affairs is against his nature.

There is something poignant about having a path which is true to you but you just cannot make it work and a path which goes against your nature, but it works so you keep going. End of the day, the former eventually either adjusts their expectations and finds happiness in the little things or finds an alternative other. The later, however, is doomed to depression going down this path. It's a 'hollow victory'. I don't think Eren is in a similar state of mind. She enjoys the process. I don't think Koichi does, since this is just not 'him'.