an average analysis
2: THE GREAT CRABRANTE!
The start... The start... I think I'm starting to get it! I'm getting slapped in the face with targets, that I just have to hit! Pretty simple, every little bit is just another pimple , another morning's zit. |Wrong side of the bed. Ah! The back of my neck! The crack of the joints! Purple circles under the specs 3 magnifying mirrors 6 pivot points Resumé with bullet points: Delineated one (1) Bald Spot- Scaled three (3) nose hairs- Incorporated uncountable (?) scaly skin- Internationalized as Dandruff LTD- Patented dry leather skin- God forbid something's written on the back. The pain, the crane, day after day, And... is that... THE GREAT CRABRANTE?!?!
Face to face with a bunch of crabs in the shape of a crabby man, and you might think:
“Certainly I could have done something better, eat better and brush my teeth right after, set up a base to shower and deodor, but there’s a lot of stinky things, and nowadays a flower costs twelve dollars! Well, what can I do? I’m like chewed up gum on a shoe… Stick it to the big guy! (A shoe walks by.) Oh, hey! Can I get a dime? Just for a bite that’ll stick to my insides…”
Get it together! Take a good hard look at you in your mirror render! Don't like what you see, when your beady eyes tenderize that pristine shell torn asunder? It's the truth! You're a red hunk of meat of everything you eat and almost nothing you do now matters. Cuz A crab's gotta bolt just before it molts and run right out of its suspenders. So... Who are you... without your presentation platter? Wake up late for an interview rejected with a handshake, and take a look at the view of THAT loser's face. Where once there was cute, now is weird... creepily misplaced. Run! Run! It's The Great Crabrante!
What happens if I don’t run? Am I the chubby hamster disinvited to tea in the garden? Can I just clock out and give in?
Well… when you don’t move, nothing can stop you. And an object at rest… gets pranked!
A cold, dead hand dunked in warm water, or a panicked awakening to a pane of cellophane faking a doorway, or, if you sit too still, you may find yourself trapped in a canvas: a dick drawn on your forehead, nipples on the dimples, the clarity of the mirror starts to lose its ripples. Such is one’s fate at the global sleepover.
But what is this sleep? A deep sleep without dreams, a sleep so tired it hasn’t got the energy to imagine, a sleep so dark it’s a creepy ten-legged shell at the bottom of the ocean. Its hands are the claws of rigor mortis. The eyes, long periscopes, only see to savor longer what it has trapped between its claws. It’s life is a determined calculation. A bird in the hand tastes like bird; two in the bush taste like bush. But who among us has considered which is sweeter to the ear?
Oh, that old villain? Coulda laughed more at my jokes. Reminds me of me...
So your past has pranked you, and you really feel the butt. You look up from a tattered bucket hat to see the ball rolling into your net when you realize you haven’t caught a single fish. You’re Nemo Nobody on a monochrome screen, down at the bottom of the dropoff. You weren’t hand-picked. This old clownfish hasn’t got any new tricks! Oh haha hihi, the irony’s dramatic!
Last sight torn oot
by a tie and suit
we’re just aboot
through the prude
that condemns
the dream
with the toot.
ILB
I really wanted to emphasize the importance of appearances in this battle. Crablante is obsessed with how people see him. The child, who is the entire stake in the battle now that Saitama truly has nothing left to lose, has a cleft chin, he’s alone in a world of fleeing “grown ups” and declining birth rates with only his soccer ball for company. Whether or not the kid is worth anything comes back to Saitama as the battle between a suited cabal which seems to drag him by the tie by an eye that is increasingly not his own, and those “core memories” as a child (and even as an adult) which seem, in some cases, to grant supernatural powers. From friction with the most dogged efforts which melt a person’s wax right from their dusty pedestal in a museum, to tales of heroism, martyrdom, knightood, and outstanding honor, a person who believes in themself can overcome ridiculous odds, and brush off even the scathing and insightful ridicule of tots. From Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. So I saw in this fight a discussion of someone with their mirror when they realize those memories of that awkward prepubescent face, not just one’s own face but also one’s immature understanding of the world, it’s infant face also, do not match up with what we see standing there. The world, and I, are ugly. I’ve been present in many conversations that denounce one’s young activities that they used to first grasp the world, play and laugh with the world, as “slacking off”. Something could have been done better, they might say about bouncing on a trampoline, rolling with a puppy, laughing with family, pizza partying, or chasing a ball into a creeping Crablante. But, I assure you, when you were there, you were better looking. One by one the bullies… Inside jokes, your happy eccentricities, one by one grew nipples and shelling. It went so far you learned you could bully yourself and that way you could do anything. At what cost? Black and white lighting…
I guess you could say what I meant was to follow your dreams. Of course it seems, what an impossible thing for anyone in the waking world. How naive. Childish dreams come with childlike nightmares, and I’ve never seen anything as scary. Growing up and adulthood are no simple matters, but surely us grown up adults know what matters… Bullies. Goalies. Unhappies. All with a death grip and a little bit crabby. One day what matters is strength, the next it’s dexterity. That’s how it seems when you haven’t got dreams.
Sorry. I’m playing up the playing. It’s not like the world doesn’t need some saving. Because how else could we take ourselves, caped as heroes, seriously?
Citations
OPM Japanese
アルバムメーカー - FC2ホームページ, galaxyheavyblow.web.fc2.com/fc2-imageviewer/?aid=1&iid=2.