A Canon-Analysis Break: Akito's Relationship With Yuki

A Canon-Analysis Break: Akito’s Relationship with Yuki

In light of the upcoming episode of the anime, I recently had many racing thoughts about why Akito has such a “special” relationship with Yuki. Here are those thoughts:

[SPOILERS for the entire manga, not just the upcoming episode] Considering the understanding that Akito’s cruelty and abuse towards the zodiacs is a result of her feeling they are a threat towards the Bond, I’d like to examine how and why Yuki is perceived as such a big threat to Akito. Why is it?

Why has Akito always been so cruel towards Yuki from a young age? Why does she focus so much on him in particular during the current story timeline? To understand it, we have to look carefully at the timeline and context of Akito’s relationship with Yuki when they were kids.

Fistly, Yuki himself says Akito was NOT cruel when they were first together as children, just that she had a bit of a temper sometimes. Even that time was already after Akira had passed away, and Akira’s death and Akito’s relationship with Ren are really the “source” of her trauma, so it’s almost impressive that Akito wasn’t cruel already when Yuki first became her playmate.

What was really holding Akito together was the Bond, and in particular the Bond she had with the four oldest zodiacs who were there before she was born and who knew her true gender. So that’s why Yuki says Akito “snapped” one day and we know that snapping was after Kureno’s curse broke.Yuki then becomes the unfortunate collateral damage of that trauma, because he is the closest zodiac to Akito at all times who she can project a “threat” towards the Bond onto. And the reasons she can project that threat onto Yuki are pretty interesting.

I think it is especially interesting that Yuki is the first zodiac younger than Akito that she has the closet relationship with. Yuki and Kyo are the first “younger than Akito” zodiacs and Yuki in particular gets put in the most special position in that regard. Kagura is the same age and a girl (while all the older zodiacs are male notably) and Isuzu is only a year younger and also a girl, one that Akito also has particularly reasons to dismiss. Kyo is the Cat so he’s already out by default. That just leaves Yuki as the first “playmate” zodiac who is younger that Akito.

I think in the beginning, Akito is simply really confused about her relationship with Yuki. Because Akito holds onto this concept of the “Bond” as a bandage over the trauma of her parents abandonment (through death and rejection). For the first several years of her life, the people she had a “Bond” with were older males. They played a notably parental role towards her. And this is what the “Bond” meant to Akito because these zodiac members were extensions upon the affection and love she did/was supposed to have with her father. All of them being men also helped to reinforce the dislike and distrust Akito has towards women due to her mother. She had several “fathers”, in Shigure, Hatori, and Kureno in particular

Perhaps when an adult is told they are special and everyone is supposed to adore them they might think that adoration is meant to come in the sense of them having power over others, like a child adoring a parent and the parent feeling “above” the child. But when a kid (as Akito was) is told they are special and everyone is supposed to adore them, they are most likely going to think of that in the sense of the way a child receives the love and adoration of their parent. They are smaller than them and meant to be taken care of with unconditional love.

Yuki is the first zodiac Akito “has” who can’t play out that role with her. Yuki doesn’t act parental or like a father figure towards Akito because, well, of course not. He’s a few years younger than her.

Akito has to figure out how the Bond she has with Yuki is supposed to manifest in a different way. Adding to that, it is a particularly pressing thing to figure out, because she is told by the family that Yuki is the Rat, so he’s supposed to be even closer to her than any of the rest of the zodiacs.

Yet, Yuki doesn’t act “bonded” to Akito the way the older zodiacs do, and when Akito snaps after Kureno’s curse breaks, Yuki is the closet one there to project her terror of the Bond being threatened onto, because she’s been a bit unsure about their relationship anyway.

Yuki is more like an “equal” with her, as opposed to a parent. He doesn’t give her love and affection and take care of her. He’s even sickly, so he’s actually weaker than her. He’s a quiet and thoughtful boy who seems to be caught up in his own head, figuring himself out and not prioritizing taking care of her, the way a parent is supposed to. He wants to do his own things, like take martial arts classes, not spend his time giving her flowers or letting her sit in his lap when she has a bad dream or hugging her when she cries. He is just a kid around the same age as her, and he doesn’t always seem like he even wants to be her friend.

Akito then starts being cruel to Yuki and keeping him on a tight leash the only way she knows how as a kid towards a kid younger than her - to act like he is lesser than her. She finally has to contort that sense of power over someone because the way she’s expected it (being the child in the situation) hasn’t played out. She tells Yuki that his only reason for existing is her and the Bond, that being his own person doesn’t matter, and she even projects the cruelty she receives from Ren (and had implied from her father) onto him: that his parents abandoned him because he isn’t really needed/wanted.

That biggest wound for Akito was assuaged by her relationship with the older zodiacs, because they acted as her replacement parents. But Akito now has an uncertain relationship with Yuki, one of her zodiacs, who is even supposed to be the Rat and the closest to God. She snaps because she is experiencing the threat through Yuki of the curse maybe breaking (like Kureno’s) or not being real in the first place (like Ren says). And more and more younger zodiacs are being born who seem like they want to be their own people more than they want to be her replacement parents.

Yuki actually does defy Akito and threaten the Bond in quite a lot of ways, that Akito is obviously going to perceive as huge threats to her. He makes his own friends at school, who he seems to like better than her. Not only does he make his own friends, but they are outsiders, and he even sneaks them into the main estate. As mentioned above, he is quiet and distant with her, he expresses more interest in wanting to learn martial arts than spend all his time with her, and he gets sick frequently and ends up being the one who is taken care of by the other adults. He wanders off on his own during the New Year banquet (which is the quintessential ritual of reinforcing the Bond), and one day he even runs away from the estate all together!!! Yuki is messing with Akito and her concept of the Bond left and right.

So that’s why she is particularly cruel to him. He represents in all these above ways a severe threat towards the Bond: the threat of losing parental affection that she’s previously used the Bond to replace; the threat of questioning her own self-worth (Yuki not knowing her true gender is also a factor in this); the threat of being the zodiac who is supposed to be closet to her and actually being so far one of the farthest - all compounded by the fact that he was there in the room after Kureno’s curse broke and her psyche took a turn for the worst.

You can actually see the moment Akito “snaps”. She goes from almost in a companionable way telling Yuki that her world is all black and so she has to make her room match, and Yuki should be black too, to her eyes widening and saying “… no”, turning around and for the first time actively abusing him, telling him that HE is the one who is acting out of order, HE is part of the problem because HE hasn’t been bonding with her the way he is supposed to, and HE needs to remember his place.

So she starts telling him the same thing over and over again to reinforce the message, to try to salvage the Bond, and she keeps him on a short leash always at the estate and always by her side in order to ensure it.

Then when things get even worse, and Shigure sleeps with Ren, and Hatori wants to get married, and everything is falling apart … when Ren makes the bet with Akito, that is when she decides that Yuki is the key pawn in the game of proving the Bond, just like he has always been. If she can let Yuki go, and then get him back, then once and for all she has ensured that the Bond is real, hasn’t she? Because it was Yuki who took the brunt of all that fear when it appeared after Kureno’s curse broke. Yuki was the best candidate in little Akito’s mind of one of her zodiacs whose curse might break and unlike Kureno might actually then choose to leave her. And so she focuses so much of her energy in winning the bet against Ren on getting Yuki to come back to the estate after letting him go. This has been my big analysis of why Akito has the particular “special” relationship that she does with Yuki. [this is the first time I have posted an analysis like this on the blog, please let me know if you are interested in more content like this!]

#Fruits Basket #Furuba #Fruits Basket spoilers #Yuki Sohma #Akito Sohma #furubanalysis