Not long after the arrival of Sagiri, Yuzuriha, Senta and Hoko in Horai, they find themselves fighting for their lives in a battle against the Tensen Mu Dan. Several characters have just barely managed to survive encounters with the so-calledapex beings of Kotaku, the Tensen which may have made it seem like there’s always a fighting chance.
For two Asaemon; however, the match-up was simply too unbalanced, and in episode 12 ofHell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku, Yamada Asaemon Senta experiences a fatal wound. Like Tenza before him, Senta’s situation also came with a little bit of insight into the various circumstances that brought him to his current position – including feelings of affection for Yuzuriha that led to his voluntary sacrifice to save her life.
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Tanuki and Fox
Like Sagiri, Senta has been questioning his position asa member of the Yamada Clanand as an executioner, and as we come to find out, the path of the samurai was not Senta’s first choice in a career. His relationship with Yuzuriha is not overtly romantic and at first we are given the impression that Senta has not fallen victim to Yuzuriha’s seduction like his fellow samurai, the deceased Genji. However, like Sagiri’s growing trust in Gabimaru, it appears that Senta and Yuzuriha developed a mutual understanding based on something else. From her perspective, Senta felt like kin because he was clearly hiding his true intentions and feelings, and she was able to determine that he didn’t really care much for the Yamada Clan or his duties. Yuzuriha, whose entire business is deception and betrayal, found something about Senta that was relatable.
For Senta, who badly wanted to be himself but couldn’t, Yuzuriha’s ruthleness looked like honesty and being grounded in her truth, something he believed was a foreign concept to him. Another layer connecting Senta and Yuzuriha is the animal metaphors used to refer to both: Yuzuriha is constantly referred to as “megitsune” (vixen) by Gabimaru, while in their journey to the island, Yuzuriha referred to Senta as a tanuki (often referred to as a “raccoon dog”, an attempt at connecting its appearance to its position on the Canid family tree, but it has no relation to raccoons),animals that are often invoked together with foxesbecause of their similar attributes of playfulness, and in folklore, both are shapeshifting creatures of mischief but not necessarily malice. As magical creatures, it is understood that the fox is more powerful, but the tanuki is better at transformations, which is interesting to keep in mind regarding Senta’s admiration of Yuzuriha’s unapologetic character.
The First Half
In the battle against Mu Dan, the Vanguard Party combatants were gaining the upper hand, with Senta doing his best in combat and playing an important, but reckless role as he physically held the Tensen fast for Sagiri’s attacks to be able to connect effectively. As a result of Senta’s contribution, Sagiri successfully inflicts a critical blow on the enemy, ending the conflict. They tend to their wounds, happy that none of them were lost in the encounter, and Sagiri even gets to learn more about Senta, who accidentally reveals his romantic (or as he’d put it, “great admiration”) for Yuzuriha.
He describes her unapologetic expression of self as something he wishes he could have for himself, opening up about his childhood dream of becoming an artist but gave it up to do what was expected of him as a male member of the Yamada Clan. This forfeit of personal ambition and desire in favour of just doing what he’s told persisted in his life, and only on the island does he really begin questioning his existence – after meeting a certain kunoichi. Not long after his feelings are revealed, Yuzuriha notices flowers blooming on what was thought to be Mu Dan’s corpse, and almost immediately, a barbed vine lunges at her. Senta pushes Yuzuriha out of the way just in time, but the barb hits him in the chest. Having been left alone for a while, Mu Dan is able to revealtheir trump card, the Kishikai State. Neither Yuzuriha nor Sagiri have the time to react to Senta’s swift death before their own lives are in peril; however, Shion arrives just in time to prevent their immediate doom.
La Muse
Senta’s guilt and the restrictions of duty are visualized as a mound of severed heads, and Yuzuriha’s presence was a gust of wind introduced into his life that made this guilt unimportant. The Yuzuriha in Senta’s vision as his life drains away kicks up the heads in laughter, and deploys a traditional Japanese umbrella while dancing under a rain of severed heads while the lighting cycles through different colours. Senta is seen admiring this graceful, dancing Yuzuriha from a distance, proclaiming that he’s fine with just being able to keep watching her as he draws the scene. This statement indicates a level of romantic feeling for her as despite the desire to get closer to her, he knows he can’t. As he completes the drawing, we are able to see what he’s been seeing: Yuzuriha standing gracefully under an umbrella with the heads replaced with beautiful peonies, which are representative of Mu Dan (literally, “peony”).
The connection to peonies in this sequence begins with the flashing colours as Yuzuriha dances under the severed heads, as in one story,the Chinese immortal that Mu Dan is based on, Han Xiangzi, could change the colour of peony flowers. As a visual depiction of Senta’s feelings for Yuzuriha, the image of Yuzuriha standing gracefully under a rain of severed heads is morbid but expressive of the intensity of these emotions that he’s experiencing literally as his life flashes before his eyes. Interestingly, peonies are flowers that have been thought to mean “bashfulness” or “shame” in the language of flowers, which fits Senta’s death as someone who never lived the life he wanted out of a fear and kept lying to himself, and also as someone who developed these intense feelings of admiration for a criminal.
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