No.6 Discussion Board

Knowledge is power

The Japanese educational system is one of the most efficient and successful among the industrialized countries. Ever since the Meiji period (1868-1912) education paved the way for security, influence and a top position. Otherwise there is the risk of developing an education-orientated mass society where even children are harshly competitive, despite the fact that Japanese children also experience an excellent character education in school. Even in kindergarten (“yōchien”) and elementary school (“shōgakkō”) they learn how to be in harmony, teamwork and obedience. They are respectful towards their teachers and classmates and learn how to work very disciplined.

Education is money

There is an elite educational system in Japan - elite universities, high schools, even elementary schools and kindergartens. Elite schools collect the academic crème de la crème and send the majority of its graduates to top national universities like Todai, Waseda or Keiō Daigaku. Those schools select their students through rigorous entrance examinations and cost a hilarious amount of money. So – if you want to be elite, you have to pay for it. And you have to learn. Not to mention the pressure for those children… There are a lot of tutoring schools (“juku”) and those are not mainly for those who are too stupid and need a little bit more attention. No, they are for those who are already good but want to be part of an elite school or another very good educational establishment. So the good ones become better and those who are weak fall by the wayside.

Especially when they are weak and poor… I’m not quite sure about this part – but I think I remember that there aren’t that many scholarships and stuff like that. Most of Japanese people I know work part time besides their studies so they can afford going to university.

No. 6’s elite system

The Japanese educational system really reminds me of No. 6’s. I guess the only big difference is the welfare program. They don’t have to pay and the kids enable their families to live in absolute security and prosperity. As a quid pro quo the city facilitates values or better to say it brainwashes even the smallest ones so that they grow into responsible, functioning adults with a ready-made way of thinking for the interest of No. 6’s society. No wonder those No. 6 genius children are so weird – they must be pretty pressured as well. Maybe even in the same way real Japanese children are… I guess they also have to perform brilliant scholastic achievements to earn welfare for their families. And it’s even hard enough if you don’t want to disappoint your parents, who spent their whole life to save enough money for your elite education like in Japan, it’s even worse. It’s their (and their families) basis of existence. Karan didn’t seem to work when they lived in Chronos and just was there to look after Shion when he wasn’t in school. She raised him like the city wanted it, like reminding him to read the message he got from the city. (The one about VC-Nezumi!) Well, I guess there are other families with working parents (in top positions) in Chronos, but we just have Safu’s and Shion’s example. Shion and his unemployed (and pretty bored) single mother (but she’s like a normal Japanese mother, staying home while her child is still young…) and Safu and her grandma who’s obviously too old to work and maybe just allowed to live so that she can babysit our cute little Safu while she’s not in school. So No. 6’s strange welfare system may be used as leverage. “Do as we please and we will give you and your family a secure existence. If you don’t you won’t get welfare anymore!” – like it happened to Shion and Karan. Well, pretty strange city. It’s just like: Oh, you’re homeless now? Well, though ****! There’s no welfare program for actual poor people. I really wonder where they stayed after they had to leave Chronos at a moment’s notice.

Okay. That’s another story. Just let’s go back to the education system once more. Like I said earlier there’s a risk of developing an education-orientated mass society where even children are harshly competitive is pretty high, even if they got a pretty good character education. Just look at those manga pages:

“Safu was often laughed at by classmates for them (her clothes). Even though they were in the same Elite curriculum, the kids would find any small difference and mock or put others down because of it. The hand-knitted scarves and sweaters she wore became a target of ridicule. […] No one understood what consideration for others was, or anything about people’s souls, or people’s dignity. It was because they had never learned about it. Everyone thought they were the chosen ones. The chosen ones were permitted to do anything. People belonged to classes: the chosen ones, and those who were not. Apart from an enormous amount of theoretical knowledge, in the classrooms which were outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, that was all they had learned.” – Volume 2, chapter 4

This is another thing you can compare to the Japanese school system. There’s this kind of bullying called “ijime”. Because of the pressure imposed by school, family and society some of the students search something like a compensating valve. So, like you know in many parts of the West, intelligent children are kind of nerds and get bullied, but Japan is filled with smart kids who think that due to their intellectual abilities or rich parents their lives are somehow more valuable. And they are going pretty far; it’s the primary cause for suicide amongst children in Japan, even really small children, like 10 years old or younger. I could write pages just about this topic… So it’s just a remark concerning “ijime” and No. 6, because it’s also there, even if it’s not that stark like in real Japan.

“But Shion was different. He knew to treat others with as much respect as he treated himself. He put himself neither above nor below others. He was an oddity. That was how Safu had felt about him.“ – Volume 2, chapter 4

Yes, Shion is different. But he’s not way too different. This kind of education system provokes selfishness and encourages unsocial behaviors. Shion’s also like this, even after losing his elite status.

“The other reason was that because his job dealt mostly with machines, he didn’t have to talk to people.” – Volume 1, chapter 2

So in my opinion Safu is putting Shion on a pedestrian, because she’s in love with him. Well, okay! He IS a good boy. He’s gentle, calm and nice to everybody. It’s just part of his personality, but he’s not particularly close to another human, expect for his mother and later Nezumi and Inukashi. But that’s another story.

Shion’s and Safu’s relationship

Recently I talked a lot about their relationship with Yuneyn, so following lines conclude a lot of points we’ve discussed about this topic.

Against the statement that Shion and Safu are close friends, it just doesn’t really seem like that. Or better to say, Safu is probably a better friend to Shion than he was to her, if he really saw her as a friend before he thought about it because of her awkward sperm-question. 

I suppose she fell in love when Shion complimented her sweater. In the manga it’s shortly after those kids bullied them because they were allowed to enter the gifted curriculum, in the novel Safu didn’t really remember when it was, but I guess they were also about 11 years old.

The question is: Where they already “friends” before Shion complemented Safu?

Safu always knew that he wasn’t like the other children, that he was special. But I guess they weren’t like normal friends – meeting after school and playing together, hanging out and stuff like that. I must admit that they seem closer in the anime, because there is Shion’s awkward birthday scene that never happened to be in the novel or manga.

Well it was pretty strange – Safu invited Shion to her home, baked a birthday cake for him and her grandma made him a pretty ugly sweater. Oh my god, I love the little sound he’s making when he holds this sweater in his hand and his face in this moment. XD It’s just like: “Oh my god, this thing is incredibly ugly! Helloooo? I’m a boy! Geez! Why is this purple, do you want to tell me I’m gay? And why do I have to celebrate with you and your grandma? Come on!” But he’s a pretty nice boy, so he’s good and gives thanks to them, although he’d rather run outside to enjoy the hurricane. Hey – which 12year old boy doesn’t dream of celebrating his birthday like that? X’D But at least Safu and Shion seem to be more like actual friends in this way. She’s even giving him a kiss on his cheek, showing her early maturity and that she’s in love with him and Shion’s like a normal boy, telling her that this is just like his mom’s kisses. (OMG, poor Safu! XD He’s so stupid, really!) But yes, it’s a part of the anime I really enjoyed, because I can understand their friendship way better than in the novel or manga. They are just pretty reserved there. I really don’t see their oh-so-close relationship.



Here! In the anime she even cleans his pants! So her love confession doesn’t come out of nowhere like in the manga or novel. But well, that’s maybe another point where the anime gets the novel wrong. So in the original series they aren’t like that. They aren’t that close. There’s no body contact between those two. (Although Shion says something about her shoulders when he’s comforting Inukashi, but well, nobody knows if he’s ever touched them…)

Their shyness concerning body contact is another thing you can compare to the Japanese society. In Japan, it’s pretty rare to see people touching each other in public. Some young couples are holding hands… well, yeah. When I visited Japan it was my friends little research theme, so we really paid attention to the behavior of Japanese couples in public. But apart from holding hands there was nothing, no guy stroking a girl’s back, no hugging and of course no kissing. It’s maybe okay for girls to hug each other, or grab each other’s arms and stuff like that and maybe there are exceptions, but mostly they don’t just do it. It’s like I experienced it back then. So if you consider them to be pretty Japanese in No. 6, they seem all right. It’s alright for Shion not to hug Safu before she’s leaving for 2 years and tell her good-bye properly. (Yeah, I also experienced this back then. We parted because we had to take another train and our Japanese friends just walked away without saying good bye…) But still I guess even Japanese people should say good bye to a “very close” friend properly when this friend is about to leave for 2 years. Same for No. 6’s children…

Safu and Shion didn’t seem to have that much contact after Shion and Karan had to leave Chronos. Maybe they called each other from time to time, because Shion mentioned in the novel that Safu once told him she also didn’t like to pledge allegiance towards the city in her institution. So I guess they talked from time to time, but they didn’t meet that often.

Yuneyn noticed something pretty strange: Safu asked after four years why Shion had to leave Chronos. Even Shion asks her why she’s asking that late, as if the author herself thinks that it’s a pretty odd question. Plus, it’s a bit one-sided, but maybe it’s not Shion’s fault. I suppose he’s not allowed to enter Chronos anymore, but at least Safu can visit him. But they just meet in a coffee shop; he doesn’t bring her home, although I’m pretty sure that Karan would love to spent time with Safu, especially when she’s lost her parents at a young age.

"It has. How many years has it been now? You’ve grown so beautiful. I was so surprised.” […] After Karan and Shion had been banished from Chronos, Safu was the one classmate that continued to treat Shion as she had before. She had also come to this store once.” – Volume 2, chapter 4

So she visited Shion’s new home once in four years. Yeah – they are pretty close. And she even knows it herself:

“But Shion for the most part, had not even been looking at Safu. His soul had been captured by something else, and he had forgotten about her. For the first time, she had seen this calm and serene boy of few words being ruffled right before her eyes.” – Volume 2, chapter 4

I really have the feeling that their relationship is one-sided, and that Safu has to try hard to keep in contact with this boy. And she never had a chance at all.

Young Shion’s and young Nezumi’s relationship

They’ve just met for one single night – a few hours and they slept most of them. And still they are closer than Safu and Shion after spending several years together.

Shion never met anyone before who was that direct and instantly within a touching distance.

So it was like a completely new world. Even if Nezumi’s a bit violent first, they ended up hugging each other the whole night. I guess Shion gave him what he needed most in this situation, even if Nezumi was the one who initiated their embrace. So Rou and Gran didn’t manage to kill every feeling within this child, even after enduring so much horror. God, he’s a child and he’s so hurt and confused and he nearly was about to die and give up just moments ago. But then he could calmly sleep in Shion’s arms, protected. It’s so heart-warming I want to start crying right now.

No wonder it was such a big deal for him, being treated like a valuable human being. It was like a miracle and he knew that Shion was fully aware of the consequences. Shion touched him very much and who knows what he thinks about how deep the dept is that he owes to Shion after that night.

They both fascinated each other and Shion was really in love with him after that night. I guess he said it himself in the book that Nezumi had stolen his heart… And he sighed and thought about him the whole time just like a normal child. XD

I think both of them fell in love with each other in this particular night. It’s a tiny love and it’s very vague in the beginning. It has to endure a lot of hard things. But it also wants to grow and it grows a lot in the whole series. Of course they have to figure things out… and of course it’s a million times harder for Nezumi to do so and it’s absolutely legit that he’s not done with it after the end of the series. He didn’t have that much time to think about it anyway – they just had way too many other things to do. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t change at all, I mean he is afraid of losing Shion, he even cries because of him, he cares for him so much and from the beginning he’s nearly always the one who’s touching Shion, like caressing his hair, tracing his scar, holding his hand, hugging him, even if it’s playfully, protecting him, teaching him, punishing him… He punishes him because he likes him, because he was afraid and deeply hurt! Ok, it’s not nice that he beat him up and that he used violence against him, but he’s also just scared and Shion’s able to fight back. He’s also hitting him. They’re boys after all. It’s not like they’re dying because of a little scuffle…^^°
I guess it’s even a nice experience for Shion. He lived in some kind of matriarchy and had a lack of male caregivers. So Nezumi is the first. He’s harsh but still caring. It’s really confusing but it’s also interesting. Although I never believed that Nezumi really would be able to kill Shion or he really thought of him as his enemy. He’s already way too protective…even in the novel. Right after the “nose biting scene”, even before Shion’s transformation they quarrel and after they crash against one of the bookshelves the first thing Nezumi does is to ask Shion if he’s alright. Oh yeah, I also ask my enemies if they’re alright after trying to hurt them. LOL! And he’s stroking his hair right after Shion nearly died… I don’t think normal guys would do something like that. XD So I guess he already likes him more than he thinks. I mean it happens pretty often that he is really lovingly when it comes to Shion.

And he doesn’t seem to realize it. I don’t think he’s like that to every other person as well. So he definitely likes to touch him, even when they barely know each other. So no way he’d be able to kill him, I just see growing love. XD He’s struggling a lot but the feeling is still growing. And even if he’s a bit violent once in a time, Shion seems to be okay with it… I guess Shion doesn’t want to be handled with kid gloves anyway. Apropos handle – I really like the way Shion is able to handle Nezumi. He’s just absolutely okay with the way Nezumi is, he doesn’t try to change him and he just confuses him from time to time. XD He’s a pretty tough and impressive character.

Now, let me get back to Safu. Like I said, she had no chance at all. She never had.

“Safu was dear to him. She was precious to him. But it was different from the amorous sense ― it was more serene, more deeply connected. He loved her like family, like a close friend. Whatever kind of love it was made no change to the fact that he cared about her.” – Volume 3, chapter 5

Well, too late, huh? I’m not really sure if she really was that precious to him. With the benefit of hindsight I just can see that he didn’t really care for her and that he must have a bad conscience because she’s gone. Or maybe he realized it too late that he should have valued her more. Those lines are more like an excuse to his own conscience, that he really loved her and that they were close friends. And that she was dear to him. I think he also would have gone to the Correctional Facility without Safu being captured in there, just to accompany Nezumi and to help No. 6. Fact is that he got over Safu’s death way too quickly. Okay, maybe he cried afterwards, it’s not that we had knowledge about everything in the novel…

I just hope he really cherished her and not just because he felt guilty.

With that I want to finish telling you my two cents concerning this topic. Gosh, I wrote way too much! I’m sorry if there are any mistakes in it, I’m no native English speaker and I’ve never tried to analyze something in English like that. Hehe!  

The quotes are from the amazing 9th ave translation, of course! ^^

Thanks for your detailed answers. It was very interesting to read everything and you pointed out a lot of good examples that Shion actually cared for her.

It was just that something about their relationship bothered me all the time. But now I think it’s what Elanra said – the fact that Shion took Safu for granted all the time. And he realized it too late.  Plus, he wasn’t very nice to her, especially after her awkward love confession. It’s the last time they met when Safu was still alive and he didn’t give her a proper good-bye. (Even though it’s quite understandable, Nezumi stole his heart after all…)  I just feel so sorry for Safu. Shion’s a nice boy, but he’s also pretty dumb concerning his feelings towards Safu, but not when it comes to Nezumi. In the end it’s a part of No. 6’s essence and charm… He’s a human after all, with a mind of his own. He makes mistakes, and he isn’t perfect. He’ll regret a lot of things; he’ll try but also fail. I’m just glad that Safu was somehow able to see thanks to Elyurias that Shion did care for her, and that he risked his life to help her in the end. At least a better good-bye for her than running away while chasing a certain mouse; knowingly that she’ll be abroad for 2 long years… ^^°