midnight-in-town:

silyabeeodess:

wondrouswatchdog:

[I’ll be discussing these ideas under the assumption that Shinigamis working for their “forgiveness” means that they’re working to gain access into heaven, though this hasn’t been explicitly stated. Some of this is just theories on top of theories, I fully admit it, so I’m not stating any of this as a solid idea.]

I was talking about Undertaker being a deserter with @midnight-in-town and she pointed out how in chapter 105, Sascha said there are others who have seceded too:

But the fact that Sascha says “every once in awhile” makes it seem not so common – especially considering the whole world would have Shinigamis, it could be centuries in between a single country having a “seceder.” Still, this got me thinking whether or not that’s a giant flaw within in whole Grim Reaper system considering they’re dealing with people’s souls. It seems risky right? And where are the limits on these faults?

This is all just speculation, and some of this is really a shot in the dark, so if anybody else has an idea, feel free to say…

The General Purpose of the Shinigami Dispatch

Let’s first look at why the system is set up as it is in the first place for the Shinigamis’ sake – not for the souls.

Individual Meaning

The fact that there are deserters shows that there is free will. The Shinigamis have kept this component of human nature even after death. The Dispatch is not some sort of collective mindset, though as a whole they seem to generally agree on what matters (the souls).

From what they’ve said and how I’ve taken it, being a Shinigami is basically a second chance for a person to not go to hell under the belief that suicide a mortal sin. The only difference between them and regular people, besides their new supernatural abilities, is that their “second life” is set up to basically force them to have to appreciate life. In our life, one learns that through friendships, helping others, supporting others…for a Shinigami, they’re left to learn this through witnessing other people. It’s hard for them – it’s a punishment, after all. It’s not our traditional sense of improving as a person. But presumably it’s effective. 

In my opinion, it’s basically an alternative to hell or traditional purgatory – it’s like a very specific purgatory for these people who took their own lives.

However, because it requires individual thought, they can’t rely on others to pull them through. Back to my initial statement, they still have to have free will so that they can individually make decisions and come to their personal enlightenment by their own terms. The horrible thing is that with free will, there are bound to be deserters. I’ll get to that in a bit though.

Collectively

Despite the individuality, I think they can help each other some, though. Just the next in the chapter, Sascha calls being a Shinigami a vocation:

 This is seen as odd for a lot of reasons. A vocation is, by definition:

In other words, it’s your calling. It’s your purpose. And that’s a pretty grim purpose. The only reason I can think as a vocation – which would give it more reason than individual contemplation – is that they can at least be there to help motivate the others towards forgiveness.

So, if one does fail, that can’t settle well for any of them who knew that Shinigami. It might even make it more of a personal offense. 

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The “Seceders” – So are they a Risk?

If people were perfect, the Dispatch as a pathway for redemption would work and they’d learn their lesson with no problem and presumably get to heaven (if that’s the purpose of the Shinigami Dispatch in the first place). Well, if people were perfect, they wouldn’t need this as a path in the first place. But the point is there: with having human qualities such as free will, there is room for mistake. Mild mistakes aren’t a big deal, but what about the big ones? Can these “deserters” be forgiven?

Grell was forgiven. There was a punishment of course, but it wasn’t too long afterwards (especially for an immortal being) that they were back to their regular Shinigami post. Grell’s not a complete deserter, though.

This leaves the question if Shinigamis have it easier than humans though on their path to salvation, because if they’re supposedly immortal and can have second chances until they reach “enlightenment” (we assume), then that means they can’t ever be sent to hell. This seems to give them an advantage over people in their “first life.” Is this fair? I don’t know.

…or certain offenses are considered unforgivable and Undertaker crossed that line. But what could be worse than murder, like Grell? Is it worse to just desert than to murder but not consider yourself different?

Grell may have murdered the physical body, but murder does not equate to ruining the soul.

So is it that Undertaker messes with souls? Some say he wants to revive those on the lockets, others argue that the bizarre doll soul-tampering in general is bad enough…but Undertaker had already quit before he started doing this. At least, he must have because he says he hasn’t been an active Shinigami in 50+ years and we don’t know enough to say if he started tampering with souls earlier. Nothing says iirc.

That means the other option is that he thought his past actions couldn’t be forgiven, even if he could have, so he figured nothing mattered and went a step further to steal the souls and then it became unforgivable for real. Or maybe he didn’t care or want forgiveness, but now he doesn’t want to die and go to hell either so he hides out and works on his more taboo stuff because he’s got nothing to lose so long as he’s not caught.

In short: When UT deserted originally, maybe it wasn’t a “risk” but just regular personal rebellion from free will. Now he’s messing with souls and like the impending WW1 plot, everything suddenly becomes a bigger deal for Shinigamis.

Sascha mentioned deserters, but never said that a deserter was somebody who messed with souls. Every Shinigami we’ve seen except Undertaker have seen the souls as something not to mess with. 

So is this Dispatch Association actually a risky, flawed system?

In my opinion, as a whole, flaws are not necessarily a risk. “Seceder” can mean a lot of things, and it could just mean Shinigamis trying to escape in general. Undertaker may be special (in a negative way), and that’s what makes the plot more interesting. Regular Shinigamis aren’t a threat, and deserters aren’t a threat necessarily if they live as people without trouble. Maybe Undertaker stands out as the first real threat to people. It could have been tried before, but the new technology of the 1800′s is actually making it worrisome because it could be possible.

I really like a lot of what’s mentioned here since there’s so much speculation going around about the Shinigami and their punishment.  I’d like to add Eric as an example from the musical though, since he was also tampering with souls–or rather capturing them in attempts to use them for Alan’s recovery from the Thorns of Death.  Furthermore, even though Shinigami are technically immortals, they can still be killed as proven by Eric’s and Alan’s deaths, at which their second chance ended.  For all their strengths the Shinigami have their own perils to face, such a fighting against demons over souls.

 Even more than that, they’re not immune to their own Death Scythes, so it’s actually possible for them to attempt commit suicide a second time if they tried.  (This, I personally believe, is the main reason Death Scythes have to be registered and are kept under such rigid control by Dispatch. In the OVA, “The Tale of Will the Shinigami,” we even see that Death Scythes basically have to be checked out of General Affairs before they can be used by the agents in Collections.)     

We’ve seen Shinigami die, but we’ve never seen one we knew had been “forgiven.“  That leads to the question of what happens when they are forgiven?  Do they simply disappear and move on?  And what about someone like Alan, who contracted the Thorns of Death and perhaps possibly never learned before the disease took his life?  What happens for those who are made to face their death a second time?  What if it’s only after their second death that they are judged for Heaven or Hell?     

In a video I watched a few months ago about suicide victims that had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, it said that out of the 1% of survivors, every one of them said they regretted their decision instantly.  The victim they were interviewing, Kevin Hines, (who is now an author btw) said that, "The millisecond my hands left the rail, it was an instant regret” and that he remembered thinking, “No one’s gonna know that I didn’t want to die."  Taking that information and putting it into perspective for the Shinigami, I see many of them holding that same regret and seceders stemming more so from a loss of hope in the endlessness of their situation or a case of desperation. 

Thoughts, @midnight-in-town and @wondrouswatchdog?

@wondrouswatchdog and @silyabeeodess

I like both your thoughts a lot and I just wanted to contribute on a few things 🙂

• About the Undertaker

Here comes the rambling part but UT is an extremely interesting character to analyze. To sum up: I think that when he went back to the human world after deserting because “he got curious” it wasn’t a crime in itself since, as wondrouswatchdog pointed out with Grell, I’m pretty sure he would have been forgiven at that time (because deserters are a thing).

No one expects the Shinigami job to be easy, except maybe for Sascha because it’s their “vocation”, since it’s to be taken as a long punishment in the first place, until the Shinigamis learn their lessons about giving up on their own life. 

So back to UT, I agree that he probably became a threat from the moment he started messing with souls and death but, and that’s where it becomes interesting for me, you were wondering whether he cared or not and I actually don’t think he gives a single care about his actions.

Whoever those seven guys were and no matter how they got along with him, they’re the reason he probably “forgot” he wasn’t really a living human until death came by for them and he found himself all alone once again.
UT is a character made of contradictions but the main thing is that, while every reader surely thought he was just funny in the head with probable sociopathic tendencies for a long time, ch105 was the first proof that he’s in reality becoming totally desperate, hence the impossible BD project and many other crazy things (like sacrificing a big amount of people on the Campania for his experiments).

(You can see it pretty well actually: UT in the Campania arc with Ryan is just beyond ruthless with his words even though he’s also responsible for all the dead people, while he became very emotional after just seeing a picture of Vincent in his younger days. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that he might be losing it for real)

I think seceders/deserters in general are just guys who can’t put up with the job anymore and it’s understandable because redemption after a sin like suicide would certainly never be so easy to reach (so they probably have to work for a looong time), but while UT probably started as a “normal seceder” (he had enough of his job + curiosity), things escalated when those seven guys died.

We have no idea about his previous life and how long he worked as a Shinigami, but we can guess he might have forgotten there was a time limit to his enjoyment with a few humans he found particularly interesting and that’s probably what started it all: if he found a new interest in “living” at the side of those seven guys, the fact death took them away from him is something he probably couldn’t accept. 
…And it’s even worse in case he actually had a family with one of them as some theories propose. 

So I really think UT stands out as “the first real threat” from the Shinigami world (if anything because BDs were probably never a thing before, according to Will + Grell + Ronald) and if he’s caught… I don’t think redemption or forgiveness will be considered at all.

• About the Death Scythes

Really good point on death scythes being able to inflict major damages even to Shinigamis and this is just a headcanon of mine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of UT’s scars were actually done by a death scythe.
… To be entirely honest, at one point I even considered the idea that maybe he indeed tried to attempt suicide a second time at the beginning of his time as a Shinigami by stabbing himself through the heart or by trying to cut his own head.

Time will tell what these scars really are about but I just… wouldn’t be surprised.

• As for Redemption…

The whole point of the Shinigami job is to…

1. give a chance to people who committed suicide not to go to Hell directly by having them watch countless records of people with probably happier lives than them (not always, but still)
2. have a way to collect human souls

So I think that if/when a Shinigami was punished enough (= worked nicely for a really really long time), then redemption can be reached because they learnt their lesson and in that case, they don’t necessarily have to go to Hell but instead their tortured soul can rest in peace.

Technically I’m thinking that in Kuro, even though suicide is a major sin, the “rules” take into account that people who committed such an act were probably extremely sad and desperate, and even though they have to be punished and to learn what exactly they gave up on, mercy and forgiveness can still be upon them if they repent enough.

As you said silyabeeodess though, suicide can also be a decision taken “out of the blue” in a real moment of desperation so maybe the Shinigami job is also a way to “give them a chance” at gaining peace in the afterlife, because humans make mistakes and suicide can definitely be one of them (as through my own experience of talking with people who committed suicide and who were saved, I always heard that they regretted trying, not necessarily just for them but also for the people they would have left behind).

Thanks for tagging me you two. 🙂