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| It's hard to write about the relationship
between Ai's several aspects without retelling the plot, but
some context is necessary. He is a truly extraordinary creature,
in body and mind. As a whole, he is both the protagonist and the
antagonist of the story. |
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Ai Coleman was a quiet and withdrawn
boy. He was raised by his grandfather, and was neglected
by him. As far as we know, nothing particularly
traumatic happened to Ai, and nothing particularly
spectacular, either. His life was just... empty. Ai was
a very intelligent kid, and the absence of stimulation
in his life left him quite bored and depressed.
He spent his time reading books. Or at least one about
sorcerers written by Dr. Kasukabe (Haze). He hated living in Hole,
and he hated
that sorcerers came there to experiment on humans, but
he was also fascinated by them.
He might have felt that living
in their world and wielding
their exotic powers would
give his life some meaning. |
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And so, Ai decided he'd find a way to become
a magic user.
Haze told him this was impossible, and brilliant a scientist
though he
was, Ai was more clever. He did find a way. It required dunking
his
human body into a lake of deadly toxic sludge, but he had
nothing to
lose, and took the chance when he saw it.
Thinking Ai was about to die from his injuries anyway, Haze
agreed
to perform the experimental surgery that Ai devised. |
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| It saved his life, but he was never quite the
same... |
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After the operation, Ai developed a
cross-shaped birthmark around his eyes. We don't really know
why. However, the crosses are an important indicator of one of
Ai's personality aspects: Kai. Ai having the crosses right away
begs the questions: did the original Ai personality survive the
surgery, or did the surgery fundamentally alter Ai's core
personality to become Kai?
Haze said that "there were times" that he was scared of the
recovering Ai. That could imply that there were times when he
was not. And, indeed, we see post-operation Ai acting like he
did before, even genuinely happy. Perhaps that Ai did survive.
But he spent an awful lot of time staring at his reflection in
the window, and when he turned around, the reflection didn't
match the angle of his face. Maybe it's more likely this was the
point when he internally developed the Kai aspect. And maybe the
crosses weren't there all the time either, only when the Kai
aspect reared its head.
Neither the "Splosh" Ai who stayed in the internal dimension
nor the "melted-face" Ai who was found dead in the gutter after
leaving the hospital had crosses around their eyes. But, even
assuming Ai isn't identified with crosses, the link between the
two is still very strong. The heads bearing crosses never tried
to act against Ai's wishes. They had his medical skill and did
his bidding. Ai's control over them was much more direct than
over a head without crosses. |
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Kai is the personality
that dominates the heads with crosses around their eyes.
He was Ai's badass alter ego.
If not being psychotic, Kai had his moments of lucidity
when he spoke, but only when absolutely necessary, and
his words were always brief and to the point. I haven't
seen him show any emotion except murderous excitement,
but he inherited Ai's methodical intellect, which made
him very efficient at anything he did. And he really
only did two things: eating and killing.
Kai was Ai's active hand in the world. He accumulated
powers by hunting sorcerers, cutting the devils out of
their head, and stuffing them into his own. He
obsessively counted them, as if he has a quota in
mind. Just as Ai's surgery threatened his sanity, Kai
seemed to become more psychotic the more devils he
added. |
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Despite his standoffish nature, Kai had a
surprising amount of charisma and attracted a huge following
among the common folk of the sorcerer world. They got tattoos
matching Kai's crosses and called themselves the CrossEyes. Kai
used the CrossEyes network to collect more and more sorcerer
body parts for himself. The system worked like a well-oiled machine:
CrossEyes would be sent to kill targeted magic users, then the
heads would
be
sent to Kai's apartment and the bodies to his laboratory.
Kai himself started going after the elite members of the En
Family. After he decimated most of them, En himself intervened,
and Kai would've defeated him too if he didn't inexplicably
start to switch heads in the middle of the fight. This cost him
the kill, but he escaped unharmed. With En on high alert, Kai to
switched to more secretive tactics that attracted less
attention. Shortly thereafter students began disappearing from
the Zagan School of Magic. |
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Enter Aikawa: one of the few heads
without crosses. It's unclear when the Aikawa aspect was
created. He could've existed before, he may have been
the head who interfered in Kai's battle with En, but we
only know of his activities from now on.
His defining characteristic was the coal mask that he
wore in public. If he didn't, CrossEyes who have seen
Kai's face would recognize him. And Aikawa himself was
very aware of Kai's existence. He hated him, and was
very hostile to the CrossEyes as a result. Because
Aikawa was a wholly different creature from Kai. He was
friendly, caring, and kind. He defended victims of
bullying out of pure niceness. About the only thing he
had in common with Kai was their mutual love of food.
Yet he was also one of Ai's pawns. He was Ai's passive
hand in the world. The low-profile personality who could
get close to sorcerers without raising suspicions and
have them reveal things they normally wouldn't. In this
way he was used to scout out potential magic users for
Kai to kill. Aikawa caught onto this, but he couldn't
help being an observer, and attending the Zagan School
of Magic opened up a whole buffet of possible targets. |
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Given the sharp contrast between the Kai and
Aikawa personalities, one has to wonder what they really are.
Surely Ai can't randomly fabricate personalities out of nothing,
so it's reasonable to think that they are aspects of his own. If
Ai isolated the qualities that make up the Kai aspects while
staring out that rainy window back at the hospital, would Aikawa
be everything that's left over? Did he consist of all the
qualities of Ai that could get in the way of his desires? If Kai
was designed to be a remorseless killer, driven by an
unadulterated lust for power that drew no line between friend
and foe, then perhaps Aikawa contained all the human feelings
and complexities that would question a fixed, single-minded
goal.
Unlike Kai, Aikawa genuinely desired company. He had several
acquaintances, but his best friend and partner was a fellow
student named Risu. Since he couldn't emit any magic smoke, and
going to school wasn't improving his ability, Risu assumed he
was born without magic and joined the CrossEyes. Aikawa kept
telling him to
stay away from them, and called him a fool for
believing
that the CrossEyes' Boss wanted to help the magically-impaired,
but Risu dismissed his warnings. Of course, he had no idea he
was talking to Kai's own doppelganger, and Aikawa always took
off whenever he felt a head-switching
migraine.
Aikawa probably got so close to Risu because be believed Risu
had no magic whatsoever and was therefore safe from Kai. He was
wrong. One day Risu greeted him with a huge smile, confiding
that he tested positive for the rare kind of Curse magic. Aikawa
was
horrified, but his expression was probably hidden by his
mask, and he agonized privately how he had sealed his best
friend's doom. What's worse, he knew it would be done with his
own body's hands, by a man bearing his face. |
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Aikawa and Kai shared memories, and
everything Aikawa saw or heard Kai did too. The CrossEyes sent
Risu on a solo mission to a deserted park where he was jumped by
Kai and bled to death from his jugular. But Kai misjudged Risu's
magic. His Curse only activated after his death, and it
immediately locked onto Kai to avenge Risu's murder. Kai tried
evacuating to Hole, but Curse followed, and chased him through
the back alleys.
All of Kai's skills and weapons were useless against Curse [who
steals everything (tm)]. I guess I should add another emotion to
Kai's personality: when it comes to Curse, Kai is terrified.
Curse ripped out his sorcerer organs and tore off his head. Even
headless, Kai still managed to paw around for bottles of smoke,
and released Ebisu's reptile transformation magic. |
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This saved him from being devoured, but had
two unexpected side-effects: it rendered him resistant to magic
and erased his memories. The head that emerged in place of the
one discarded by Curse had crosses, but was reptilian.
The magic resistance was
the result of
two layers of magic piled on top of each other:
Ebisu's and Risu's.
The memory loss resulted from
changes in Ebisu's magic due to the fact that she
had been taking black powder for a very long time. In
addition to reptile transformation, it now had the added
effect of random memory loss or gain. When Noi was
exposed to Ebisu's smoke, she lost all memory of her
time as a reptile. When Ebisu used smoke on herself, she
gained memory of a past experience. And when Kai
cast her smoke on himself, he lost memory of his past. |
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He was given the name Caiman (or Kai-man) by Nikaido.
Just because he looked like that species, though he
remarked how it sounded familiar.
Caiman was quite depressed at first, as Ai would be if
he found himself back in Hole, but he was also very
irritable, reminiscent of Kai's antisocial habits.
Of course, both of these can be explained by his
identity crisis from having lost his memories. He warmed
up to Nikaido pretty quickly, though this probably had a
lot to do with her cooking talents.
So who exactly was Caiman? He loved food, and especially
gyoza, but this was an interest shared by both Aikawa
and Kai. He was fun to be around and very protective of
his friends, both Aikawa qualities. Yet mercilessly
slaughtering sorcerers also came naturally to him and,
unlike Aikawa, he did this out of routine, without
passion or remorse.
He only felt pity
once, and that was when a bagged sorcerer cut up by
Shin begged to be put out of his misery. Sometimes the
coldness of his attitude disturbed him, and he wondered
if it was an
effect of becoming a reptile.
But he had good reason to be angry at sorcerers.
Sorcerers were hated in Hole since they used humans as
test subjects, and Caiman took this personally since he
thought he was one of their victims. He was searching
for the sorcerer who enchanted him so that he could get
his real face back. He knew that he had Curse living
inside him, and he bit the heads of sorcerers so that
Curse could determine if they were the culprit.
But there was no winning this game. Caiman butchered
them whether Curse recognized them or not. And he hacked
through countless numbers of them! So many that
sorcerers started avoiding Hole. His magic resistance
certainly came in handy. He did nothing with the bodies,
though, and had he remembered his Kai self, he probably
would've grieved over so many devil tumors going to
waste.
Caiman's head was one normally ruled by the Kai
personality. Despite the old Kai's head being torn off,
it wasn't bound to a single one, and manifested in any
head bearing crosses. He was filled with foreboding
whenever he passed by the alley where he was chased by
Curse, and he had nightmares and flashes of memory about
how Kai stumbled upon Curse. He also had Aikawa's
memories of meeting Risu at the school. Confusing, but
not surprising, since the two shared memories. |
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The Kai personality also expressed
itself in other, more direct ways. Caiman subconsciously
retained Kai's medical expertise and intimate knowledge
of sorcerer anatomy. For someone without prior training,
he was frighteningly good at
stitching wounds - a skill he honed as Kai,
performing various surgeries on himself. There was even
a time when Caiman blacked out and briefly switched
directly to the Kai personality long enough to stab
Nikaido. The wound was suspiciously nonlethal, and cut
in a way that expelled the contract with En embedded
deep in her body. Such a combination was too
convenient to have happened by accident.
However, after visiting the Zagan School of Magic and
getting more of Aikawa's memories back, Caiman started
spouting blood and sludge from his orifices and actually
switched from Kai's head to Aikawa's crossless head.
It's interesting to note that, despite switching between
such antagonistic heads, his personality as Caiman
remained essentially constant. There was a slight shift:
he became humbler, softer, and much less carefree, but
this can also be explained by his remembrance of life as
a sorcerer. This came as a huge shock since Caiman hated
sorcerers and every medical test confirmed that he was
anatomically human. He also began to feel as though
there was something
sick and
horrible growing inside him, and could no longer
even
look at a knife without
worrying that he might hurt his closest friends.
The smooth continuity of his personality between heads,
and the mish-mash of Kai and Aikawa qualities and
memories that he exhibited makes one wonder: what if
Caiman was simply Ai in his most natural form? Whole Ai,
incorporating the full spectrum of his personality, but
free of his crappy childhood and magical ambitions. What
if this is what Ai would've been like if he was exposed
to warmth and meaningful friendships? What if he
could've been happy in Hole? |
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Well, then there'd be no plot. And
the plot must move on.
Ebisu's death dispelled the reptile magic on Caiman,
Curse was liberated, and everything went back to the way
it was before. Aikawa was Aikawa, Kai was Kai, and Ai
was the creepy topless guy that lived inside their
heads. All the past memories returned, and the memories
of their life as Caiman were retained.
It was the great tragedy of Aikawa's existence that
anyone he got close to dropped dead (though he was happy
to see Risu alive again). He realized that Kai got wind
of Nikaido's rare time manipulation magic through
Caiman, so he acted like he didn't know her and
avoided contact. It came off quite cold, but he did
it for her own good, because he still very much cared
about her. But he couldn't save everybody. He stumbled
upon Natsuki, a young girl he befriended as Caiman, and
learned that she had strong defense magic. Kai was quick
to act on this knowledge.
Aikawa kept trying to do all he could to resist Kai and
Ai, but it was no use. Ai told him he shouldn't struggle
so hard since he never existed in the first place, but
what did that even mean? Perhaps Ai meant that Aikawa
never existed as his own person. Both him and Kai were
created to be tools used by Ai to further his plans. But
Aikawa was able to think independently of Ai. He was, in
many ways, Ai's
tortured conscience whom he severed to
keep from being a hindrance.
He was forced to
hurt more and more of his friends, and he
despaired over his utter helplessness through it
all. But he finally found a purpose for himself. If he
couldn't resist Ai with his mind, he would strike a
devastating blow to the whole by
destroying his own body. |
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| It was a cute idea, but it didn't work. Ai
had the foresight to account for such foolishness. He watched
Aikawa's drama with a cool sense of detachment. He sometimes
played a
pseudo-therapeutic role, checking in on Aikawa from time to
time, making sure he was up to date on internal happenings, and
even trying to teach him about his past. It's unclear whether he
was simply preparing him for what is to come, managing his
behavior, or if he actually wanted something from him. The only
sounds Ai made were the "splosh" of gurgling blood, but Aikawa
was able to understand him. And Ai was a lot more talkative than
Kai. |
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| This "Splosh" Ai was a ghostly presence who
stayed inside the body's inner dimension. His appearance (when
whole), was that of Ai frozen in the time when he was still
fully human. He looked just like he did 15 years ago when he
died in Hole's gutter, and was missing the top half of his torso
to match the parts of his body exposed overnight to rain water.
Therefore, he was likely the manifestation of that original Ai.
He is the core self who puppeteers the others, and dispenses the
various heads and body parts he has stored up in the dimension.
He is calm, calculating, and scientifically-minded. |
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But he could also be a very frightening
person, with a
scowl
that rivaled Kai's own. Though Ai was never exactly a ray of
sunshine, he still had human sentiments and was relatively
reasonable. This Ai was not. He had bouts of murderous intent
that didn't spare even his old friend Haze. Haze, who didn't
judge Ai's methods and, even now, sincerely offered to help him
with his research. It seems that something very fundamental
about the original Ai died - if not during the initial surgery,
then after he was pronounced dead. The head of this reborn Ai
was the face melted by rain water.
(The melted head was literally a zombie, and was just acting on
its zombie impulses, but Splosh Ai looked pretty pissed too.) |
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Neither Splosh Ai nor Aikawa had crosses
around their eyes, and they both were able to think for
themselves. However, during Ai's transformation into a super
being that transcended both humans and sorcerers, every one of
his heads got crosses.
A fair question to ask is whether Kai
was gradually gaining control over Ai all this time, and
whether Ai's change was the result of Kai's "grim
and sick" influence growing inside him ever since
that reflection in the hospital window. After all, Ai was a
dreamer, but Kai was ruthless ambition. Kai may have been a new
force, born of sludge, and filled with an insatiable desire for
power. Could "Kai" be the bizarre pulpy mass of crosseyes
featured in the
insert of Volume 10? It's hard to tell. Both Kai and Ai wanted this, but
they all lost control in the end. |
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Despite being marked with Kai's signature crosses, a new
being was born:
"Darth Kai." It could be significant that the
only sound it made was Ai's own "splosh" noises.
However, crosses and gurgling are where its similarities
to either Kai or Ai end. The creature appears to be a
blank slate, acting on instinct and showing basic
emotions. It was designed to be perfect: four pairs of
eyes to see in every direction, huge claws to defend
itself with, smoke emission amplified by highly
concentrated black powder... yet for now it was just a
cumbersome baby.
But there are other players in this game. The Devils
were quite curious about Ai's tinkering, and Chidaruma
himself became excited for the first time in centuries.
He saw Darth Kai's crosses and made a vague comment that
they signified his seal of approval. Chidaruma also has
a dark marking around his eyes - could the two be
related? From what we know of the habits of Devils -
their detachment from sentimentality and their sadistic
sense of humor - Kai was acting a lot like a Devil.
Indeed, the new being Ai created was meant to be an
artificial Devil. |
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| It may be that the crosses which
spontaneously appeared on Ai after his operation are a powerful
and ancient symbol. In distant antiquity, the Devils made coins
depicting the symbols of the three known worlds: Hell, Magic
User World, and Hole. One of these coins bore a circle and cross
very similar to Darth Kai's eye markings. |
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| This very symbol was likewise painted on
Hole's Central Department Store, which was built atop the pit of
sludge that Ai dove into long ago. His infernal baptism in its
mixture of pollution, water, smoke, and corpses filled him with
the essence of Hole. It gave him the power of its corrosive rain
and placed a replica of the whole city inside him. The crosses
which appeared around his eyes may be the the outward
manifestation of this absorption. |
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What is the significance of Hole's
name? Could it be linked to the bubbling sludge pit -
nay, the hole - featured so prominently in the
insert of Volume 17? The same one in which Ai was
reborn?
It transformed him into a sorcerer and, later, he
returned to it to be transformed into a Devil.
Is this the primordial power of Hole carved into the
Devil coins? The alchemy of science and magic. A sludge
which induces mutation and drives evolution - the
primordial ooze which gave birth to both Devils and
sorcerers?
Well, given the ingredients list needed for Ai's
rebirth, it is a "chicken or the egg" paradox at this
point. But maybe there's something to it. |
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