embarrassing that im projecting onto a fictional character but anyway. as someone with treatment-resistant depression i can relate too much to the horrible little racist man. here is my "he's just like me for real" treatise.

when you are That Depressed you have no desires. no wants or ambitions beside a longing for death that u sublimate into some kind of reason to live, even if that "reason" is spite or hatred or revenge. no real capacity to feel pleasure; you've forgotten what it feels like to enjoy things. so much brain fog that you can't really be independent any more, you need to be prodded into eating and taking care of yourself because you're so out of touch with your body you can't hear the messages it's sending you - and, as a matter of fact, you don't care about your body anyway. you don't care about anything. you throw yourself into your job and let it consume you, even when you're burning out, because work justifies your continued existence, even though you know deep down you have no right to be here. you stumble blank-eyed around the world even though you no longer know where you're going. you used to be a person with potential, you used to have a future - but you were arrogant and you were weak, you destroyed yourself, and now you're just a vegetable scrap :(

that was me at my worst. i'm a lot better now :) but that ending... mithrun completely losing the will to live and because the demon's been defeated and he can admit that the real reason he was hunting it was because he wanted to be fully eaten, obliterated and destroyed instead of being an empty shell... kabru's little therapy session about finding reasons to live, discovering new desires through living, making meaning out of meaningless existence, and starting with a good meal and some rest... the canaries telling mithrun to get a dog or a hobby (LMAO) and senshi pointing out that EVEN VEGETABLE SCRAPS CAN STILL BE USEFUL... mithrun remembering how to cry! i cried :') i read the manga just after being discharged from hospital, and it was the first time since i was a kid that i could cry over a story. that's recovery baby!

i'm not sure if ryoko kui intended for mithrun to be a portrayal of depression, though that ending definitely implies she did (to me, at least.) either way, it really touched my heart. ngl this manga is so fucking good it motivated me to fix my disordered eating too. they should prescribe it in the psych ward. and i'm so glad that the manga ended with five pages of mithrun and kabru making out and then sailing away into the sunset <3 thank u ryoko kui for saving my life! & to my fellow vegetable scraps... we are cooking and we are going to be such a delicious stock when we're done mwah mwah love u