In vol. 1 of the manga Yamamoto seems to have depressing thoughts about his baseball career and later almost jumps off the school roof after breaking his arm. What are your thoughts on this?
I wrote an essay on this actually! Over here. (http://lolmafialol.livejournal.com/2346.html) but to quote the part that's the most relevant:
When we meet Yamamoto, he's hot in an ugly style, popular, and a baseball star beloved by the whole school - but on a personal level, he's in a slump. After he gets a half-hearted "hard work fixes everything" pep talk from Tsuna, he works too hard and snaps his arm - and the answer to this possible end of his baseball career IS CLEARLY SUICIDE, so he climbs up on the roof and freaks out the whole school. (...) ONE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE LATER, Tsuna's saved Yamamoto's life, and Yamamoto instantly becomes gay for him and tells him he's amazing - that he's right, he should live with a dying will, and he doesn't know what he was thinking. The student body decides it was all a joke and brushes it off (it was a BIG DROP, SURELY SMOKE AND MIRRORS WERE INVOLVED), and we never see Yamamoto depressed again! :D :D :D Except 11 years later
What we DON'T KNOW at this point, is that alongside the goofy upbeat retardedness, Yamamoto is a very focused type of character who prioritizes himself based on major goals he revolves himself around. Gokudera and Yamamoto are set up to be parallels from the start: Tsuna's TWO MOST LOYAL FRIENDS/MEN, whose lives are both saved when they meet him and they're won over permanently by The Way Tsuna Is. While it's PRETTY OBVIOUS Gokudera needs to be someone's mafia bitch to have a fulfilling life, Yamamoto's needs in life are a lot more nebulous because we never actually get to see his inner thoughts. So, we rely on what he says and does! Luckily, Yamamoto wears himself on his sleeve, so understanding his opinion on things is basically a non-issue.
He's pretty much a mix on the same thing as Gokudera: he operates on being DEVOTED TO SOMETHING, and he needs to have a sense that he's achieving something in what he's devoted to. He told Tsuna he was in danger of losing his position on the team, but that's total bullshit seeing as he's clearly Namimori's star player! He's brilliant! The guy at the baseball nets says he's incredible and Yamamoto just brushes it off because he can't meet his own insanely high personal standard. Which means it actually had nothing to do with outside-world payoff or appearances. What Yamamoto needed was a sense of personal achievement, that he was accomplishing something. So "not improving anymore" was a slump bad enough to freak him out and decide there was nothing to live for. How important "something he can DO" is continues to crop up every once and a while! In the Kokuyo arc, when he had the choice to protect his body (for an upcoming baseball game) or get badly injured during a mafia event, he actively sacrifices his arm to protect Tsuna. Brushing off Tsuna's concern for the injury, and saying that he's not a person who puts anything in front of his friends anymore, is PRETTY TELLING that Yamamoto's made Tsuna/the mafia his new true priority, though he still prioritizes baseball if he can. Later, when he's fighting against Squalo and creates a new sword technique with a baseball stance, he says something else that crops up a lot for him: "Unfortunately, I'm not good at anything else other than baseball." So! EARLIER, he was under the impression that there was NOTHING ELSE HE WAS GOOD FOR. Also, he was thirteen years old. There was a very healthy dose of good old basic stupidity involved. Deciding to kill himself over baseball, because he thinks it's the only thing he'll ever be good at and he has no purpose otherwise, is a VERY TUNNEL-VISIONED THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD THING TO DO.
Initially Yamamoto being suicidal is a really awkward way to introduce such a cheerful character - I didn't even mention it in his canon when I wrote his application, because it had NOTHING TO DO with his current character or state of being. Because, REALLY, IT IS SORT OF WEIRD AND AWKWARD compared to his existence in the rest of the day-in-the-life arc! The fact that the character who is the most cheerful of all of them, the source of HILARIOUS OBLIVIOUS RETARDATION, was suicidal when he entered the picture . . . what! BUT. It's much, much easier to understand (...) looking at it retrospectively. Amano has this THING where a lot of what she does is only interesting in retrospect. In the end, the most defining thing about Yamamoto isn't that he's happy or oblivious (though that's definitely the most obvious thing!) - it's that he's steady and reliable. So the attempted suicide WASN'T ACTUALLY OUT OF LEFT FIELD AND TOTALLY WRONG FOR HIS CHARACTER AFTER ALL \o/ and is in fact helpful (OR EVEN PIVOTAL? maybe not :\) in understanding how he ticks. He wasn't depressed in the extended, miserable sense (though he was certainly being extremely fatalistic), and nothing about his cheer is remotely fake or overcompensating, as he is naturally cheerful. He just.... didn't think there was any point in someone who can't even do the one, single thing he's good at.
Now he has Tsuna, and the mafia, so there's no need to worry about him slipping back into that mindset.
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(Anonymous) 2008-09-18 02:42 am (UTC)(link)no subject
When we meet Yamamoto, he's hot
in an ugly style, popular, and a baseball star beloved by the whole school - but on a personal level, he's in a slump. After he gets a half-hearted "hard work fixes everything" pep talk from Tsuna, he works too hard and snaps his arm - and the answer to this possible end of his baseball career IS CLEARLY SUICIDE, so he climbs up on the roof and freaks out the whole school. (...) ONE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE LATER, Tsuna's saved Yamamoto's life, and Yamamoto instantly becomes gay for him and tells him he's amazing - that he's right, he should live with a dying will, and he doesn't know what he was thinking. The student body decides it was all a joke and brushes it off (it was a BIG DROP, SURELY SMOKE AND MIRRORS WERE INVOLVED), and we never see Yamamoto depressed again! :D :D :DExcept 11 years laterWhat we DON'T KNOW at this point, is that alongside the goofy upbeat retardedness, Yamamoto is a very focused type of character who prioritizes himself based on major goals he revolves himself around. Gokudera and Yamamoto are set up to be parallels from the start: Tsuna's TWO MOST LOYAL FRIENDS/MEN, whose lives are both saved when they meet him and they're won over permanently by The Way Tsuna Is. While it's PRETTY OBVIOUS Gokudera needs to be someone's mafia bitch to have a fulfilling life, Yamamoto's needs in life are a lot more nebulous because we never actually get to see his inner thoughts. So, we rely on what he says and does! Luckily, Yamamoto wears himself on his sleeve, so understanding his opinion on things is basically a non-issue.
He's pretty much a mix on the same thing as Gokudera: he operates on being DEVOTED TO SOMETHING, and he needs to have a sense that he's achieving something in what he's devoted to. He told Tsuna he was in danger of losing his position on the team, but that's total bullshit seeing as he's clearly Namimori's star player! He's brilliant! The guy at the baseball nets says he's incredible and Yamamoto just brushes it off because he can't meet his own insanely high personal standard. Which means it actually had nothing to do with outside-world payoff or appearances. What Yamamoto needed was a sense of personal achievement, that he was accomplishing something. So "not improving anymore" was a slump bad enough to freak him out and decide there was nothing to live for. How important "something he can DO" is continues to crop up every once and a while! In the Kokuyo arc, when he had the choice to protect his body (for an upcoming baseball game) or get badly injured during a mafia event, he actively sacrifices his arm to protect Tsuna. Brushing off Tsuna's concern for the injury, and saying that he's not a person who puts anything in front of his friends anymore, is PRETTY TELLING that Yamamoto's made Tsuna/the mafia his new true priority, though he still prioritizes baseball if he can. Later, when he's fighting against Squalo and creates a new sword technique with a baseball stance, he says something else that crops up a lot for him: "Unfortunately, I'm not good at anything else other than baseball." So! EARLIER, he was under the impression that there was NOTHING ELSE HE WAS GOOD FOR. Also, he was thirteen years old. There was a very healthy dose of good old basic stupidity involved. Deciding to kill himself over baseball, because he thinks it's the only thing he'll ever be good at and he has no purpose otherwise, is a VERY TUNNEL-VISIONED THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD THING TO DO.
no subject
Initially Yamamoto being suicidal is a really awkward way to introduce such a cheerful character - I didn't even mention it in his canon when I wrote his application, because it had NOTHING TO DO with his current character or state of being. Because, REALLY, IT IS SORT OF WEIRD AND AWKWARD compared to his existence in the rest of the day-in-the-life arc! The fact that the character who is the most cheerful of all of them, the source of HILARIOUS OBLIVIOUS RETARDATION, was suicidal when he entered the picture . . . what! BUT. It's much, much easier to understand (...) looking at it retrospectively. Amano has this THING where a lot of what she does is only interesting in retrospect. In the end, the most defining thing about Yamamoto isn't that he's happy or oblivious (though that's definitely the most obvious thing!) - it's that he's steady and reliable. So the attempted suicide WASN'T ACTUALLY OUT OF LEFT FIELD AND TOTALLY WRONG FOR HIS CHARACTER AFTER ALL \o/ and is in fact helpful (OR EVEN PIVOTAL? maybe not :\) in understanding how he ticks. He wasn't depressed in the extended, miserable sense (though he was certainly being extremely fatalistic), and nothing about his cheer is remotely fake or overcompensating, as he is naturally cheerful. He just.... didn't think there was any point in someone who can't even do the one, single thing he's good at.
Now he has Tsuna, and the mafia, so there's no need to worry about him slipping back into that mindset.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2008-09-19 01:33 am (UTC)(link)Sorry, I didn't know there was already an essay orz.