hey there wyrvel, so idk how to start this off but… could you… maybe… explain to me why exactly yamamoto, the good, friendly guy™, is a natural born hitman that’s a-okay with murder (according to one of your metas)? like… i really don’t get it, which is embarrassing to say because he’s my favorite character, but then again i’m only a casual fan. however i adore your meta, so yeah… so if it’d be no problem to youcould you explain how takeshi is cool with murder? bc i really don’t get it

micronecro:

Sure!

I feel like people assume he’s happy-go-lucky, but in the early chapters, Yamamoto has a really sedate, reserved personality. When he interacts with friends, he’s pretty chipper, but if you look at his panels when he’s just observing, he’s pretty…aloof, I guess? He’s usually smiling, but he’s just taking it in. A very “hmmmmmmm B^)” attitude. Even when he’s talking to people, he has a pretty cool, laid-back look.

Yamamoto’s acclimatization to violence is also notable, in that he never had one. He got attacked by yakuza and beach slobs alike, and he’s like “okay! I just have to wreck them with my baseball bat!” with zero transitional logic between that. It just made sense to him? Which is natural for a gag manga, so let’s give that a pass for a second

But in the Kokuyou arc, in his fight with Ken, he had his big revelation…that this is a life-and-death all-or-nothing gang warfare situation, and he, who was already trying to kick Ken’s ass, was like “oh! okay! yeah I’ll get into it now, my bad”. He was informed he needed to change his entire worldview and inflict levels of abuse he’s never performed before and his response is “makes sense”. All the other characters are already Like That – Ryouhei, for example, specifically joined the boxing club because he wanted to get violent in a controlled environment, and that’s still not enough for him – but he’s a regular civilian that just rolled with it.

Yamamoto’s “natural-born hitman” nature is that he easily changes his logic and plans on the fly, is willing to jump to extremes if they’re necessary, has zero problem with accelerating levels of violence, and is innately observant of his surroundings. It’s an indication of his adaptability in the context of the underworld. He’s the character that innovated the most out of all of them – what did he make, like, 6 special moves on top of his existing moveset? That’s pretty advanced, even if you’ve been specifically trained by Reborn.

The ‘Yamamoto is probably super down with murder’ comes from a link from the Future arc, where he cut someone so badly they almost died, seeing them actually get murdered he was like “Yikes! Even I didn’t press that envelope” like Yamamoto…were you willing to?? In just the Varia arc alone you felt bad about letting an assassin badman trying to kill your friends die?? Yamamoto???????

And he was totally willing! Because when he faced off against Daemon, it was specifically with the objective of making Daemon dead. He was angry and frustrated and Daemon not only manipulated his close friends, but victimized his new friends too. And his first response to this is “death is the perfect resolution for this”. This was not his answer for any other situation. He doesn’t think it’s necessary to kill people, and it’s even “not really his thing”, but he was always fully capable of going into murdermode. Accelerating levels of violence is already completely natural to him.

A few links of this are fanon, though, like the [YAMAMOTO INTENSIFIES] where he’s on the edge of the knife eager to receive more information, or that he’s even actively aware of how ready he is to eviscerate people at any one given moment and how odd that is in comparison to the other Guardian’s view of violence. I don’t think Yamamoto even understands that everyone else needs a long process to move their mindset as far as he does in 0.5 seconds, but it’s just more interesting and fun to pretend he does?