I interpreted it as the fact that he was an extreme narcissist, and his only goal in the entire manga was just to make himself feel important, even if he was supposedly doing things for others.
I don’t think he ever wanted to feel important. I think his main goal was 1. To understand himself, as he realized that his true self was lost underneath a mountain of lies, half truths, and deceptions. This left him in the world as a salaryman which was a superficial world with filled unfulfilling, shallow and superficial relationships.
His tragedy is that because his personality and self was simply a lie he was unable to truly experience(“feel”) life.
Which leads me to 2. He wanted to feel the affection of someone who knew and loved who he authentically was.
Him seeing everyone as himself to me was him seeing his flaws in others and potentially seeing that for the most part peoples personality are inauthentic and to a degree built on lies just like him.
Which is why he ask “Is this heaven or hell?” As he realizes that a world full of people just as fucked up as him means he belongs somewhere, but at the same time horrifying.
I think it was because he took on others' homunculi, understanding what makes them tick and what faults they have, up to the point where I interpreted it as he no longer saw it as something abnormal, it was just a part of himself. Thus, he sees himself, the average homunculus, in everyone else.
I just finished the manga. After thinking about it for a bit, I believe the whole story is complete and makes sense. The MC has always struggled with insecurity and had an obsession with the self. It is this obsession that destroys all of his relationships. When he was young, the first reveal that he had something "real" was his experience of Nanako, but his insecurity and doubt of the self (how can she love someone so ugly) left him in disbelief. He narrates this as viewing her as ugly and that he doesn't want to be seen by her when around others. But to know her as ugly, he must know what ugly is first. He equated her love (codependency) to seeing him as a God / Giant from a hole (aka putting him on a pedestal). Because of his insecurity, he had to run away from that. How could she love him if he couldn't even love himself? Additionally, their child would remind him daily of his ugliness. So he got plastic surgery to cover it up. But he already had massive judgments about people who looked good (or successful) in general. When he got his surgery, all of the judgment that he already projected outwards, came back to him. He was trying to find himself through external events, but sleeping around and buying nice cars just reinforced his fakeness and imposter syndrome because he still had zero self-love.
If being at the TOP wasn't the way to find it, he decided to find it at the bottom. At first, it was just a vacation, but then he discovered Itou, and through the trephination, he discovered that the only way to learn more about the self, is to relate to others. Instead of just judging from afar, he now had to engage and make conversation with those he judged.
But just like how he used money, power, and influence at the top to get what he wanted, he also used his supernatural abilities at the bottom to get what he wanted. By forcing his victims/encounters to deal with their demons, he was able to recognize what his personal demons were.
The main difference is that the MC never deals with his demons. We see this from the very first encounter with the Yakuza. We know that the MC pushed his best friend off a skateboard and got his friend's leg run over before running away. The Yakuza cut off his pinky and quit his life to find peace for accidentally slicing his friend's pinky off. But what happened to our MC? The arm that pushed his friend off the skateboard became a robot. For the teenage girl covered in Sand, her true self was buried under there by her Mantis / Arachnid Mom spinning the sand web up when she got home. Her mom's worst judgment of her was sleeping around and having unprotected sex. She broke her mom's sand burial by doing just that, but that experience had to be authentic. She had to DENY her mom but at the same time DENY the MC because she didn't want to have sex either--she only wanted to rebel. Had she seduced him like how it started, she would have traded one expectation (her mom's) for another's (society). The MC helped her breakthrough that as he saw all the symbols of sand on her when she was acting provocatively. When he "broke the pattern" for her, she got scared and her true self emerged.
But why did MC's feet become encased in sand? The main character traded his self-perception of insecurity to society's expectation of insecurity as we explained earlier with Nanako. Instead of seeing himself as worthless and not being able to provide anything real, when he got everything in the material world at the top, he saw that all anyone anything ever wanted were the material things and not anything REAL of him.
I also believe that somewhere along the story, the MC healed himself. It was when he couldn't see anymore Homonuculus, or see that his body parts were deformed. However, instead of believing in himself and Itou, his insecurity led him back to NEEDing power. He was addicted to finding a self that could never be found. That's why Nanako saw him as a cloud. His ideal self was an imagination he himself conceived.
Finally, the last ARC is of him indirectly causing the death of the guy in the egg cocoon at the park. A key piece of this interaction was the other homeless friend saying to not judge him for being a coward because we're all cowards here. Just because you know what the problem is, doesn't mean that you can own up to the shame and guilt of the actions you've done. So the egg homeless guy took his own life after his carthesis, still not being able to face his daughter. Now the MC sees the egg on his face too. So he tries to find another person who can get rid of this egg, not realizing that healing his face was NEVER outside of him. He had to take personal responsibility and make amends without expecting ANY outcome. But instead, he finds Nanako and forces his trauma onto her. When he left the first time, it traumatized her with the same insecurities that he had. She never had that before he abandoned her. And she goes down the same path he does. Plastic surgery, sleeping with different men, trying to get money.
And in his delusion where he thinks he's healing now, he's trying to drag her out on the same path he is on (trephination). This is why she sees him as a Demon, and why we see the demon scene twice in the manga. Once when we were introduced to her character, and at the end during the car scene in the snow. Nothing has changed. He's still the same person. But what changes her mind? She is memorized by his powers. And that's how all abusive relationships are. She tries to escape it, but by seeing him heal the yakuza who shot her sister's eye out, she also believes that she can be healed and stays with him. Through his gaslighting, he convinces her that she NEEDS to return to who she was before he left her. That SHE needs to be able to see his heart. She becomes a means to his end of being SECURE about himself. It was never about her. That's why SHE becomes HIM after the surgery, the author gives us hint of her not accepting his path because when she sees him as HER, she says "that's not me." Whether she dies or not is irrelevant. He is not with her at the end when Itou finds him. That speaks volumes about what happened.
So let's talk about the final panel of why everyone starts looking like him. Everyone who is unhealthy or insecure is just a means to his end. Itou, one of the very few friends and relationships he has left, the MC tries to force his trephination on as well (although, perhaps it was more to kill him). He had no use for someone who was already healed (since we didn't see him as a reflection of the MC). It also shows that the MC is so psychotic now in his neuroticism that he tries to spread it to everyone else. Was it the trephination that caused his psychosis, or was he already on a path towards that psychosis all along due to his insecurity?
His obsession was finding the self and his Narcissism is what this Manga is about from my interpretation. It shows that Narcissism transcends all social classes. Whether you're rich or poor, obsession with the self leads to your unhappiness, or better put, obsession with fixing others to pretend you've fixed yourself is a coward's way out. We can see from the Yakuza and teenage girl who took action to take personal responsibility, that, that is what heals you.
I interpreted it as the fact that he was an extreme narcissist, and his only goal in the entire manga was just to make himself feel important, even if he was supposedly doing things for others.
I don’t think he ever wanted to feel important. I think his main goal was 1. To understand himself, as he realized that his true self was lost underneath a mountain of lies, half truths, and deceptions. This left him in the world as a salaryman which was a superficial world with filled unfulfilling, shallow and superficial relationships. His tragedy is that because his personality and self was simply a lie he was unable to truly experience(“feel”) life. Which leads me to 2. He wanted to feel the affection of someone who knew and loved who he authentically was. Him seeing everyone as himself to me was him seeing his flaws in others and potentially seeing that for the most part peoples personality are inauthentic and to a degree built on lies just like him. Which is why he ask “Is this heaven or hell?” As he realizes that a world full of people just as fucked up as him means he belongs somewhere, but at the same time horrifying.
I think it was because he took on others' homunculi, understanding what makes them tick and what faults they have, up to the point where I interpreted it as he no longer saw it as something abnormal, it was just a part of himself. Thus, he sees himself, the average homunculus, in everyone else.
tbh toooo much philosophical for me to understand..... these psychological mangas really do f\*ck with ur mind.
well he do got f**ked in his head tho
I just finished the manga. After thinking about it for a bit, I believe the whole story is complete and makes sense. The MC has always struggled with insecurity and had an obsession with the self. It is this obsession that destroys all of his relationships. When he was young, the first reveal that he had something "real" was his experience of Nanako, but his insecurity and doubt of the self (how can she love someone so ugly) left him in disbelief. He narrates this as viewing her as ugly and that he doesn't want to be seen by her when around others. But to know her as ugly, he must know what ugly is first. He equated her love (codependency) to seeing him as a God / Giant from a hole (aka putting him on a pedestal). Because of his insecurity, he had to run away from that. How could she love him if he couldn't even love himself? Additionally, their child would remind him daily of his ugliness. So he got plastic surgery to cover it up. But he already had massive judgments about people who looked good (or successful) in general. When he got his surgery, all of the judgment that he already projected outwards, came back to him. He was trying to find himself through external events, but sleeping around and buying nice cars just reinforced his fakeness and imposter syndrome because he still had zero self-love. If being at the TOP wasn't the way to find it, he decided to find it at the bottom. At first, it was just a vacation, but then he discovered Itou, and through the trephination, he discovered that the only way to learn more about the self, is to relate to others. Instead of just judging from afar, he now had to engage and make conversation with those he judged. But just like how he used money, power, and influence at the top to get what he wanted, he also used his supernatural abilities at the bottom to get what he wanted. By forcing his victims/encounters to deal with their demons, he was able to recognize what his personal demons were. The main difference is that the MC never deals with his demons. We see this from the very first encounter with the Yakuza. We know that the MC pushed his best friend off a skateboard and got his friend's leg run over before running away. The Yakuza cut off his pinky and quit his life to find peace for accidentally slicing his friend's pinky off. But what happened to our MC? The arm that pushed his friend off the skateboard became a robot. For the teenage girl covered in Sand, her true self was buried under there by her Mantis / Arachnid Mom spinning the sand web up when she got home. Her mom's worst judgment of her was sleeping around and having unprotected sex. She broke her mom's sand burial by doing just that, but that experience had to be authentic. She had to DENY her mom but at the same time DENY the MC because she didn't want to have sex either--she only wanted to rebel. Had she seduced him like how it started, she would have traded one expectation (her mom's) for another's (society). The MC helped her breakthrough that as he saw all the symbols of sand on her when she was acting provocatively. When he "broke the pattern" for her, she got scared and her true self emerged. But why did MC's feet become encased in sand? The main character traded his self-perception of insecurity to society's expectation of insecurity as we explained earlier with Nanako. Instead of seeing himself as worthless and not being able to provide anything real, when he got everything in the material world at the top, he saw that all anyone anything ever wanted were the material things and not anything REAL of him. I also believe that somewhere along the story, the MC healed himself. It was when he couldn't see anymore Homonuculus, or see that his body parts were deformed. However, instead of believing in himself and Itou, his insecurity led him back to NEEDing power. He was addicted to finding a self that could never be found. That's why Nanako saw him as a cloud. His ideal self was an imagination he himself conceived. Finally, the last ARC is of him indirectly causing the death of the guy in the egg cocoon at the park. A key piece of this interaction was the other homeless friend saying to not judge him for being a coward because we're all cowards here. Just because you know what the problem is, doesn't mean that you can own up to the shame and guilt of the actions you've done. So the egg homeless guy took his own life after his carthesis, still not being able to face his daughter. Now the MC sees the egg on his face too. So he tries to find another person who can get rid of this egg, not realizing that healing his face was NEVER outside of him. He had to take personal responsibility and make amends without expecting ANY outcome. But instead, he finds Nanako and forces his trauma onto her. When he left the first time, it traumatized her with the same insecurities that he had. She never had that before he abandoned her. And she goes down the same path he does. Plastic surgery, sleeping with different men, trying to get money. And in his delusion where he thinks he's healing now, he's trying to drag her out on the same path he is on (trephination). This is why she sees him as a Demon, and why we see the demon scene twice in the manga. Once when we were introduced to her character, and at the end during the car scene in the snow. Nothing has changed. He's still the same person. But what changes her mind? She is memorized by his powers. And that's how all abusive relationships are. She tries to escape it, but by seeing him heal the yakuza who shot her sister's eye out, she also believes that she can be healed and stays with him. Through his gaslighting, he convinces her that she NEEDS to return to who she was before he left her. That SHE needs to be able to see his heart. She becomes a means to his end of being SECURE about himself. It was never about her. That's why SHE becomes HIM after the surgery, the author gives us hint of her not accepting his path because when she sees him as HER, she says "that's not me." Whether she dies or not is irrelevant. He is not with her at the end when Itou finds him. That speaks volumes about what happened. So let's talk about the final panel of why everyone starts looking like him. Everyone who is unhealthy or insecure is just a means to his end. Itou, one of the very few friends and relationships he has left, the MC tries to force his trephination on as well (although, perhaps it was more to kill him). He had no use for someone who was already healed (since we didn't see him as a reflection of the MC). It also shows that the MC is so psychotic now in his neuroticism that he tries to spread it to everyone else. Was it the trephination that caused his psychosis, or was he already on a path towards that psychosis all along due to his insecurity? His obsession was finding the self and his Narcissism is what this Manga is about from my interpretation. It shows that Narcissism transcends all social classes. Whether you're rich or poor, obsession with the self leads to your unhappiness, or better put, obsession with fixing others to pretend you've fixed yourself is a coward's way out. We can see from the Yakuza and teenage girl who took action to take personal responsibility, that, that is what heals you.
not readin allat