I know we like to make fun of him, but can I speak for a minute about Mamoru, seriously? He’s probably the most important male character to me in any literature, for so many reasons I’ll never be able to encapsulate here.
He’s important to me as a fuck-you to this device of wronged orphaned men who validate (read: compensate) a sad existence through this fixation on aggression, revenge, deification and misogyny. His builds a life that takes takes color by virtue of of love, healing, partnership, and always working harder than anyone. And he gets it. He gets everything he wants and nothing he could have ever dreamed conceiving of (King of the Earth?)(a family?)(this nobody with nothing to his name?)(you bet). And you can bet he never forgets for a second how lucky he is because he’ll be the first to remind you in his own sometimes eloquent, sometimes choked, always physical way.
I see a lot of strange talk about Mamoru as this normal dude that gets dragged unwillingly into someone else’s mess and hijinks. For sure he’s collected, he’s measured, he can work a situation (arguably), but no way in hell should that trick anyone into thinking he’s normal. He’d been living up to this point in a state of amnesia since childhood, with no soul alive to confide in, dreaming for years about an alien girl from the moon, and deciding one day he’s going to put on a tuxedo and become a criminal that shoot roses- of all things- in her name. Normal never had a chance. His life is weird and he accepts it in grace. He wouldn’t know or want it any other way.
This guy has been such an abiding male figure in my life, in the back of my head since I was six. Sometimes silly, sometimes too dashing to make sense of, always reaffirming. He’s trumpeted always by representatives of the realm of basic and fandumb alike as this knight in shining armor figure, swooping in to save the day. My hero. Well, yes. But not because of that. He’s my hero because SHE’S his hero.
(via idesofnovember)
