The primary focus of Shamo is about a sixteen-year-old Ryu Narushima a genius from a well off family his father an elite bank clerk
about to join the elite of Japan’s society after being accepted to go to Todai (The University of Tokyo) considered to be the most selective and prestigious university in Japan
Before he actually goes on to attend the university he begins to crack mentally from the strain and goes on a rampage killing his parents with a switchblade knife slashing their bodies brutally.
He gets sent to a juvenile reformatory and this is where the story begins as we see him shift over the course of the story into a destructive and aggressive and twisted person in order to protect himself from the people out to get him in the world.
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American Psycho and the Shadow Self
If you’ve ever seen the 2000 cult classic American Psycho which was a satirical depiction of 1980’s yuppie culture and moral and inner personal decay the characters in the film the businessmen who all contained an egocentric narcissism to their personas every yuppie businessman in the film acts exactly the same, talks exactly the same, and are as shallow as everyone else.
The main character Patrick Bateman blends into this community of people morphing himself into one of them in appearance, form, and mannerisms but the result of this is that his inner self becomes suffocated in his attempt to as he puts it “fit in” we see this demonstrated in the earlier portion of the film as he literally applies conditioners and different beauty products which he eventually peels off symbolizing the persona or social mask he puts on.
The desire to please others around us can lead to other parts of ourselves feeling suppressed with only the acceptable aspects being focused on while the other aspects we believe to be negative.
A negative aspect of this is that when we suppress these characteristics they still are present and we also feel the need to express these aspects of ourselves.
In the movie, this is seen through Bateman’s killings.
“Where there is much light, the shadow is deep”.
How the f does this relate to Shamo well Ryu has essentially been shaped and molded by his parents his natural traits are critiqued and chastised even to the point where he wasn’t allowed to write with his dominant hand but rather was forced to write with his right.
The negative feedback from his family and the fact that he had to adapt to an environment which slowly chipped away his real personality suffocating it and as Ryu puts it
“I didn’t have a choice. I was MollyCoddled, Chocked, and Mom & Dad were destroying my personality”
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a particular theme we see presented in Shamo is the theme of doing whatever it takes to survive and we see this shown in the fighting style he adopts in series as he uses moves that most would call dishonorable which Ryu uses these actions as a way to defend himself or acquire what he wants.
he provokes his opponents into rage or blackmails them and takes advantage in his own words he tells himself to be "pitiless that way he won't ever come against you again"
one of the aspects of Shamo is being able to see how Ryu's style of fighting and in life affects and destroys other people's lives he touches as it's his destructive need to win that poisons and ruins other people.
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Shamo’s story is of delinquency falling more and more into despicable and vile acts pushes the story forward and while Ryu inevitably does more and more reprehensible and evil acts it manages to keep you hooked we've seen how Ryu got to the place he is and while it doesn't condone his actions it makes desperate to see how far he falls
