Spoilers ahead.

This post centres around Ajin, a completed Japanese manga series by Hiroshi Seko.

While I highly recommend whoever has the time to give Ajin a read (its a short 83 chapters), the sufficient context required for the uninitiated to understand this post can be summarised in a couple of sentence. In Ajin's universe, demi-humans are beings that look human, but can never truly die. They can experience pain, bleed and be concussed, but for all intents and purposes they are immortal. The protagonist is one Kei Nagai, a student who discovers his demi-human nature at the beginning of the story and is on the run ever since. At first, Kei aligns himself with the other big bad of the series, Sato. Quickly however, Kei realises the havoc Sato is both intent and very capable of creating, and ultimately this sets the two at odds with each other.

Bombastic plot, I know. That's not what I want to write about today.

What I would like to focus on is a small conversation that is shared between Kei Nagai and his mother, right after he suffers another devastating loss in a chain of bouts that he and Sato are involved in. Kei, dishevelled, defeated and above all tired, limps over to a payphone, blips in the number, and waits.

His mother, Ritsu Nagai picks up. This is the first time we've seen her in the entire series. Prior to this scene, there is little implication that Kei or his sister Eriko even have parents.

Anyway, Kei talks with his mother. If we thought Kei was cold and detached the past 43 chapters, we now see where he gets it from. Ristu Nagai is in every way colder, more calculated, and harsher than Kei. She lambasts him for his silly decisions thusfar, doesn't appear to show a shred of concern for her own son, nor does she ask him whether he needs help. I won't spoil their conversation (too much) here, I genuinely find it to be one of the best exchanges in the entire series. Here's the line that prompted me to write this post though.

"Kei... I'm always going to be your mother, but what you do is your own business now. Not that I have any idea what sort of stupid you're up to. Just go through it all, making your own choices."

That really got me thinking.

What do parents owe their children?

And what do children owe their parents?

I don't have the answers. I know religion and Christianity is quite clear what they think we owe our God and saviour, but their stance on parent-child relationships are a little less clear. In some ways, Christianity calls for that equal measure of objective detachment, asks its followers to find from within a divine rationality that looks past the emotional and temporal.

Ristu Nagai was an ER doctor. She saw how easy it was for a person's life to fade away in a moment. She knew better than anyone how fleeting and fragile human bodies were. Despite that, she chose to work in hospitals. To fight against the futility.

So what do children owe their parents? What do parents owe their children?

I'm still not sure. I can only really speak for myself as a child of my parents and not yet a parent of anyone. While values like filial piety, responsibility, patience and backbone are all sound things to have, we really only have the most lucidity to evaluate our choices in hindsight.

That's probably why Ajin resonated so much with me. Beyond even the conversation in chapter 44, deep-down, the real question Kei Nagai and every other member of the cast grapples with is not "What are the ethical quandaries of living alongside demi-humans?" or "How would I feel if I were a demi-human" or even "Is society broken at a fundamental level?". At its core, every character in Ajin is faced with the same question everyone of us have to answer, privately to ourselves.

For now, the best answer i can provide is that I wish to grow up with a sobered, clear, and right view of the world, myself and others. To love others as much as myself while not being a fool.

Something about that response still feels imperfect to me though.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll have the answers to this even 10, 25, or 50 years down the road.

I guess living through this uncertainty and acting with kindness is a good start though.

Godspeed.