Okay so this might seem a bit wild and crazy but hear me out...
Hopefully everyone knows by now that Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is not a made up disorder or an internet meme. The concept is actually very simple, children does not have a coherent identity to begin with, this forms around the age of 9. When a trauma happens before that, to protect itself the child will disconnect the part of the consciousness holding the traumatic experience. This disconnected alter (emotional part/ep) will exist in parallel with the main alter (often referred to as the apparently normal personality, ANP, or "front"), but they will seldom or never meet. This is how DID develops. For a very wounded person, multiple alters and subsystems can be created in this way, with various roles/characteristics.
Spoilers ahead! I mean it, watch the series first, its fun and read this afterwards and see if you agree with this analysis.
Regarding the cast of Tsuritama, the following characters can be seen as alters belonging to the same DID-system:
Natsuki - he is the apparently normal personality, the front, and it is his physical family the story actually takes place. Natsuki has no connections with his emotions (as they are held by other members of the system) and is functioning on a strictly intellectual level, but he's managed to hold his life together by going fishing.
Yuki - he is the emerging alter who for various reasons has not been conscious more or less since the trauma occured, so everything in this world is foreign. This is why he talks so much in his head and has big anger issues. Notice how he doesn't have a background and has been looping the same thing (saying goodbye) over and over again, quite typical for this kind of alter who emerges to be reintegrated.
Haru - the inner child, the "alien" who doesn't feel he belongs in this world, for obvious reasons. He has a female "twin", Koko, who comes out sometimes (this phenomena is quite common with child alters). He's very childish but also very vulnerable, and he can cause the host to black out which is very problematic for them.
Akira - he is the system protector, they are in the background trying to make sure everything works smoothly in the system, but because their operatives were set during a trauma they are still trying to prevent, their strategies are usually very dysfunctional. Akira belongs to the subgroup Duck, which can be seen as polyfragmented alter, where Tapioca is the animal alter of this group. This is a great depiction of the fragility of the protector alter. This alter tries to affect the host to eat as much curry as possible, and identifies as having a past life in India.
Keito - she's the Inner Self Helper. This role has been a bit controversial, but has been documented in the science literature on DID. She has the role of taking care of Haru and Yuki, and its these two alters that needs the most support. Notice how they live in an unrealistically beautiful house, this is their inner world which is very common for people with DID to have.
Urarara - the self destructive (suicidal) alter, threatening their world. Its actually a shy child alter who after being recovered out of his self destructive loop is really timid and shy, this is also why the class doesn't "see" him.
Regarding the plot:
It's very typical for people with DID to get seemingly worse when the situation around them becomes more secure. This is because it is then the unstable alters starts to emerge and present themselves, as a way for the system to integrate these parts. Another common thing is that a new trauma can trigger alters to reemerge.
In Natsuki's situation, I would speculate that his mother's death could be the trigger, where she was actually the perpetrator and her death gave him the safety he needed, or that her death caused an instability that triggered the emergence. Children who has psychopathic parents often develop DID as a way of dealing with the constant tug of war between being afraid of a parent and needing this parents warmth and nurture. From this perspective its not weird that Natsuki cares for and misses his mom. His alters were created to take care of the fear he is carrying towards her. Its actually neither uncommon for mentally ill parents to pick one favorite child who doesn't receive the abuse, which can explain how Sakura can be so well adjusted. But anyway, this is a feel good show and there is no need to speculate further.
The symbolism in the show is quite clear though. Water = emotions. Haru isn't just an alien, he's also a fish, an emotional alter. In the depth of the water lies a catastrophe waiting to explode, who happens to be the same type of emotoonal inner child alter as Haru. For people with DID it is very common to have these kinds of alter bombs, as it is they who are carrying the largest burden of emotional trauma.
I think of it like this: the trauma happened to the child Natsuki, and while one part of Natsuki stayed Natsuki, Haru/Koko and Urara got dissociated, disconnected from Natsuki and got stuck in trauma time and didn't really evolve. One can even see Yuki as the adult aspect of these two, anger issues and all.
Haru has a level of self awareness as an alter. He knows he isn't fully human, and he believes that when he gets reintegrated he will disappear. I'd say this isn't really the case with child alters as everyone still has an inner child, but not every inner child is a loose cannon who suddenly pops out, causes the others to black out and starts dancing in front of the whole class.
In the end, Haru who is from the world of emotions, was the key to connect to Urara, and to disarm the suicidal tendencies through integrating him in the system. The problem is that to do this, one needs to reexperience the pain that he experienced, and this is very painful obviously. This is also why other alters will actively oppose contact with trauma holding alters, simply because they are deadly afraid of coming into contact with the trauma - for good reasons.
Ayumi (the captain) can be seen as their therapist. He takes them out on the sea of emotions and teaches them how to penetrate the depths. He also teaches them how much work it is, and even if he's the one handing out the paychecks, its really the payoff from their hard inner work.
In the end though, Natsuki and the system needs to go where no one can follow them; this is because no one can experience the pain for you, you need to feel that pain yourself. They were threatened by overwhelm many times, this invokes the freeze state where no inner work is possible, but they managed to pull through and eventually integrate Urara in their system. Notice how this triggers the DUCK defense system, and for good reasons; trying to connect to a suicidal alter at the wrong time can be catastrophic, but because the strategies DUCK carries comes from dealing with a completely different trauma they become very dysfunctional.
The ending scene in the classroom is actually very interesting, because it doesn't depict Natsuki. Why? Because Natsuki and Yuki has merged, as they both carried aspects that completed each other. Yuki had the emotional connection and Natsuki the intellect. This doesn't mean Natsuki is gone, but that the separation between Natsuki/Yuki is no longer needed, which is a good thing. Now the ANP (apparently normal personality) can focus on helping Urara heal the wounds he's carrying.
So... Uh... Yeah... That's it. If you're interested in reading more about DID there's quite a few good resources, much of what I draw from comes from the book The Haunted Self (2004) which is unfortunately very academically heavy and hard to read if you're not accustomed to the academic language. |
