
Man oh man am I excited to be making this proposal. I love Yozakura Family a lot and now that two weeks have passed since the manga ended, it’s time to finally talk about the manga's big bad. This is Asa, the man responsible for everything in the story. His actions are pretty horrific and I’m ready to finally propose him, so let’s not waste anymore time and dissect his character.
What’s The Work?[]
Yozakura Family is a shonen jump manga following the life of Taiyo who marries his childhood friend Mutsumi after his family died in a car accident and now has to deal with her older brother Kyoichirou who wants to kill him. He then becomes a spy and makes it his life mission to protect Mutsumi from any harm.
Who Is He? What Did He Do?[]
Asa is the main antagonist of the entire story, everything that happens in the story connects to him in some way shape or form. He’s the oldest ancestor of the Yozakura Family living for about 300 years across 10 generations of the family. He also created the Yozakura Family in the first place and is responsible for the cursed fate the family holds, which I will get into more throughout the proposal, since he’s done some… truly messed up things that I can’t fathom. He’s also a doctor.
Being the creator of the entire family, he is the one behind everything that happens throughout the story, at one point even Taiyo says to him that while he misunderstood the other people he’s faced, he understands they at least had beliefs and reasons for doing the stuff they did, this didn’t apply to Asa, and even when Asa told him why he does the things he did, it only made him even more mad and willing to kill him, something he wasn’t willing to do to other villains at first. Let's get started then with his first victim and the first head of the Yozakura Family, Tsubomi, his own daughter. He abused her so much and you might be asking, oh child abuse? That’s pretty standard for a villain, but you would be wrong because the way he abused her is really bad and goes far beyond generic abuse. He would dissect her body on a constant basis by cutting off her limbs just to make medicine to heal people, milking her ability dry to the point where she becomes suicidal. While Tsubomi can still regenerate her limbs due to her blooming, she’s still being milked by getting tortured regularly by her own father.
If you thought the abuse couldn’t get any worse, well I hate to tell you but it does, it got to a point where Asa was using her own blood and tears from his abuse to make the medicine for his clients. He also is the reason Tsubomi became a villain in the first place, because Asa’s actions made her wanna rebel against him and turn to Tanpopo. I also hesitated to mention that he stole a part of her heart and made it part of his as well as using her flesh and blood and drinking her blood and tears to keep himself immortal. Speaking of Tanpopo, he was the one who funded Kawashita’s research on the Yozakura Blood, he influenced the government to give him Tsubomi, who was already a prisoner, this also led to Tanpopo’s creation in the first place. So now you know how he treated his daughter, so how did he treat the other nine generations of the Yozakura Family? Not much better, since he tortured and killed every single member except for the tenth generation of the family, Ban, Keiko, and Tsubomi. However, Ban and Keiko are being hunted by Asa, and they have to go into hiding because of it, eliminating contact with their own family. Even Rei, the mother of the tenth generation and head of the ninth generation died to save her family in her and Momo’s plan to stop Asa. Kawashita may have killed Rei in the end, but it was still connected back to Asa. His reason for killing all of these people is because he didn’t want them to find out who he was, and stopped them from finding out by killing them, even though they also all tried rebelling from Asa’s plan to harvest them, he still harvested them anyway while they were dead. In the context of this harvesting means using them as science experiments which would torture them to use their blooming abilities. From then on he decided to stalk the Yozakura Family and watch their lives play out, even when Rei and Momo did rebel, he stopped their rebellion with ease all of this so he could manage the Yozakura Family himself to his liking.
To force his ideologies onto the current generation of the Yozakura Family, he had Hulang spy on them, especially Kengo whom she taught and helped discipline. Even then, Hulang was stalked by him as well, making sure she didn’t slip up, she was under a ton of pressure since her fate would be death if she did tell the Yozakura Family Asa’s secrets. This doesn’t extend to Hulang though and extends with the other Spy Association members that betrayed the Yozakura Family during the final battle, which we’ll talk about later. Ryu mentions to Shinzo that he was monitored along with everyone else on Asa’s side, and couldn’t talk about their betrayal toward Asa unless they weren’t being monitored, which was said to be a rare occurrence. Speaking of people on Asa’s side, let’s talk about his four children now. He birthed them using Rei’s heart (who was already dead) and Tsubomi’s limbs, further torturing his daughter in the process. Reminder that Rei is also a former head of the Yozakura Family, being the mother of the tenth generation, which makes her part of the ninth one alongside Momo. The only reason he even birthed them was to locate and bring the Yozakura Family to him. He doesn’t even care for his own kids anyway, since he only birthed them like I said to go after the Yozakura Family, but as well as so he can be immortal forever. He surgically implemented his brand of his heart inside each of the kids just to make him immortal forever, since for him being immortal to work, others also have to have his heart, or it’ll wear off, he also did this with Momo incase the Yozakuras tried stopping his plan to harvest them. His plan to make everyone immortal forever is only so he can be immortal forever, and it also has a creepy vibe to it, since anyone who has his heart can also be controlled by him on a whim, whenever he wants to, he can take anyone who has his heart’s body without a second thought.
He goes to Kosmos Akizakura for prophecies and believes them to be the truth all of the time only because one prophecy came true that Rei and Momo would rebel against him and seeing that Momo got a prophecy about his family, he found out about Alpha and Hifumi, who are twins that are also Taiyo and Mutsumi’s kids, they are four years old. He views them as dangerous because they could wipe out the Yozakura Family which isn’t true, he only believes this because of another prophecy that the twins would end the Yozakura Bloodline’s suffering and powers. However this is only cause he thinks that both of them aren’t fit to be the new family head, he only cares about the powers and he knows they’ll erase them, even though Alpha has the ability to turn into an adult, he only cares about the family’s powers and not his family on it’s own, even though he started it and should care about them. This is also because Alpha and Hifumi’s powers aren’t capable of birthing a new generation to continue his torture on his bloodline. His plan in all of this is to kill the twins to prevent the prophecy from becoming true, again two four year olds. Then once he’s done killing the twins, he’ll use Hifumi’s heart and Alpha’s brain to make a new family head from the best organ donors, to create a new human from scratch, one he believes will be the best fit for the head of the next generation of the family and he can continue the bloodline. Basically he doesn’t like that they have powers and wants to get rid of them so he can extend the suffering on future generations. Yozakura Family members with powers can’t birth future generations, and yeah you get the idea I’m pretty sure, but ask me if you don’t!
Now let’s move onto the present day, he starts his introduction to the current generation of the Yozakura Family mid-way through Taiyo and Momo’s fight by just coming in, freezing the room, and stealing his body right then and there. He also steals Rei’s heart as well from him and when Taiyo stops him from doing this, he paralyzes him briefly and makes his body turn completely white. When Kyoichirou stands up to him, he just removes his steel spider and then sets off an explosion which confuses the Yozakuras and sends them on a mission to figure out who he is and his connections to the family. Tsubomi soon escapes from his grasp and ends up at the Yozakura Mansion, he goes to the house uninvited to retrieve her, Kyoichirou once again calls him out and tells him that he stole their parents bodies and intends to harm the family further, Asa doesn’t even deny this is the truth. After this confrontation unfolds, Tsubomi straight up comes out and tells him that her powers and Asa’s treatment made her suicidal, and you’d think being her father he’d actually show some concern for this, but you’d be farther from the truth, he still takes her in and uses her during the final battle and his ultimate plan, which I will dive deeper into soon, but this just shows how much he actually cares about her, not at all, and again, it’s completely his fault she turned to villainy in the first place. Not to mention in the panel we see her in the final battle she looks distressed and looks like she’s been tortured even more, so that’s something to think about.
His grand plan however is to use the Yozakura Family as science experiments by harvesting them, when he believes they’ve ripened and are mature enough to do so. This is because he believes they need to give back to the world only because of power he’s held onto for centuries. This is all so they can bloom where he thinks they belong, all so he can be immortal and only benefit himself. He knows he’s torturing people and has tortured several generations of the Yozakura Family as well as the many victims he’s had, and he just doesn’t care about how he’s hurting others, as long as he’s immortal and stays in control of the Yozakura Bloodline. He’s even managed to turn the Spy Association against the family, who were allies of them. He does this by using resurrection of their dead loved ones as bait, but he’ll only bring them back to life if they help him first, which makes this pragmatic. Ryu wants Takemi back, Izumo wants his dead family back and his body to be healed, and Hulang wants her unborn son. Evidence of this being pragmatic is when he instructs Izumo to take down either Taiyo or Kyoichirou and he’ll bring his family back, if he doesn’t, he won’t. He also tells one of his kids, Nii, to kill Alpha and Hifumi on sight if she sees them, because he believes they are too dangerous to be kept alive because of his selfish desires, as I established before.
Nii is very hesitant to do this and doesn’t even come close to doing so because they are only four years old, which shows she still has morals unlike her father. He’ll go to very extreme lengths to get what he wants, he launched an attack on the Teiou Academy because the Yozakura Family was there, and does this attack to get them to surrender themselves to him. He states that once he kills Alpha and Hifumi, he’ll begin harvesting the family. Shion cuts the broadcast of his plans, which causes him to release a Legion onto the academy as well as several mini ones. The mini legions killed several innocent spies that were not a threat to him in any way initially (they became a threat right after he did this when Shion and Kengo called for all the spies to fight on the Yozakura Family side, rewarding them with prizes), he even acknowledges the fact he just killed several innocent people over a conflict he calls “senseless” and doesn’t care, seeing it as necessary for his goals. The only person related to the Yozakura Family inside the academy was Sosuke, who was Taiyo’s first high school friend ever since his parents died. To add insult to injury to him just admitting to killing several innocent people, he blames the feud between him and the Yozakura Family for his actions, even though it was clearly a choice he made because the Yozakura Family wouldn’t sacrifice themselves to his cruel experiments and because he wasn’t able to kill Alpha and Hifumi.
Now we get to the final battle, before it all begins he asks again for the twins, offering that he will kill less people if they comply. This also could mean multiple things, he would kill even more people until the twins were handed to him and would keep going until they were, and until the Yozakuras surrendered to him. Taiyo soon calls him out on his plans and calls out the fact that he’s made every generation of his family suffer and that he’s hurt so many people, and he only intends to extend the suffering to this generation and future ones, this angers him and he calls Taiyo selfish for not handing his kids to him. He doesn’t even decide to deny the fact he’s making people suffer, he knows it and owns it, and instead resorts to calling others selfish if they don’t comply. The battle soon begins and he sends his kids to capture the Yozakura Family or kill them, though he wants them unharmed so he can torture them further, but as long as he has a scrap of all of them, he’ll still be able to harvest them, so at the end of the day it doesn’t matter to Asa whether or not they die. This also contradicts anything he’s said about supposedly caring for the future of his family (the Yozakura Family). He also tells Izumo to take down Taiyo or Kyoichirou once Taiyo brings Asa’s base down from the sky, and anyone who enters his base is supposed to get trapped in the sway of illusion, and Taiyo is the only one who has escaped this fate.
When Taiyo and Asa meet, Asa offers to negotiate because he knows that if the two of them harm each other right then and now, it’ll destroy the Yozakura Family, and not because of anything genuine. He still is willing to hurt Taiyo if it comes down to that, but he only backs off because he still wants to harvest his family. This negotiation is mostly so he can convince him to kill his kids and harvest the family he’s trying to protect. During said negotiation he accuses both Taiyo and Mutsumi of birthing Alpha and Hifumi just so they would effectively stop or put a wrench into Asa’s plans, this angers Taiyo enough to wanna kill him without any regrets. Asa’s strategy during the fight is to use multiple bloomings that would block Taiyo’s attacks, only because he wants to wait until Taiyo gives up and surrenders. And if you thought he didn’t care about only his kids, he didn’t care about Hulang either because he had planned to kill her, he just waited to silence her and did so when she told Kengo more information about Asa, and didn’t care about her as a person when she was working with him, being constantly monitored by him, and when she died said that he was only grateful for what she for him. During her death she sold him out to Kengo, and Asa would’ve killed her regardless for selling out this information when she did. When Ryu also shares information about Asa to Shinzo, he quickly takes control of Kazu’s body without warning and asks him if he disregarded his feelings for Takemi. When Ryu answers, he kills him right then and there for selling him out, and would’ve succeeded at killing him if it weren’t for Shinzo’s regeneration blooming.
If you need more evidence Asa doesn’t care about his kids, hows this, he gives Shinzo an ultimatum when he tries freeing Kazu from Asa’s control, which his method of doing so is his own heart, he exclaims that his division can’t be undone unless the hearts are destroyed. Asa is perfectly willing to let Shinzo destroy Kazu and himself or he’ll kill Shinzo. Also when he tells Taiyo his ultimate plan to be immortal and create a new family head using his kids, this is an attempt to spook him into giving up, and yet it only makes Taiyo wanna kill him further. During the final battle between Taiyo and Asa, Asa decides to activate the void blooming, this blooming would destroy almost everything around him, it would kill Taiyo. It thankfully didn’t kill Taiyo but instead he takes complete control over his body to a point where Taiyo can’t control it anymore using the Conquest Blooming, and plans to start a new age of the Yozakura Family, using Taiyo as the foundation. When he confronts the Yozakura Family he tries dominating all of them, but instead this leads to a fight between him and Kyoichirou, and he still decides to try and harvest them and murder the twins because he deems them unnecessary to his plans.
While him and Kyoichirou are talking, Asa decides to use the binding blooming to forcefully harvest the Yozakura Family, Shinzo saves all of them luckily, but this shows how desperate he is to hold them in place. The binding blooming holds them together with crystal chains that can hardly ever be broken. He then goes inside of Teiou Academy to kill the twins before he begins the harvest so nothing goes wrong, saying he’ll only damage the Yozakuras more than necessary, which I’ve established is just so they are as ripe as possible for his experiments. Shion and Kengo soon reveal that they spread fake copies of the twins so he wouldn’t be able to find the real ones, and decides to try and harvest them first. When Alpha discovers a future that Taiyo would die and lose to Asa, he sees another future in which they intervene and his death is prevented, so they do so and they decide to provoke him. Asa without hesitation decides to use the void blooming against them to try and kill them until Hifumi deflects the attack using the infinity blooming. When Kyoichirou goes inside the ship to get Momo to pull Asa out of Taiyo using the dreams blooming, it was already too late as Asa has already put a part of his soul inside Momo so he can control his body whenever he wants as well, using the division blooming to achieve this.
Asa then decides to use the dreams blooming to trap Kyouichirou into a perfect dream before going back to fight the Yozakura Family, he uses the hardening blooming to kill Shion, Shinzo, Futaba, Nanao, and Kengo and also tries killing Kyoichirou while inside the dreams blooming, taunting him for his failure. Later on Momo is reawakened and helps drag Asa to Hell, meanwhile the other Yozakuras come back to life when Taiyo is being reawakened from Asa’s control. Right when the process is over Asa tries taking control of him once more because of his perfect body, holding onto him as he’s escaping Taiyo.
In Asa’s final moments Asa tells Taiyo that he placed a piece of his soul inside of him to keep himself alive. This was done so that if Taiyo dies, he would too, he does this in an attempt to save his life and start his great ambitions. Taiyo tells him that he’d rather sacrifice his life, if it’s the only way to protect his family when Asa says he knows the family wouldn’t approve of him killing himself to save them, and when Taiyo defies this he creates a meteor to kill the entire Yozakura Bloodline so he has no other reason to die. In his words, if he kills them, he has no reason to live, and while he does say he can use the Yozakuras powers to give eternal peace to the world, without the family themselves, he wouldn’t be able to enact his plan at all, so when I get into the mitigating factors, I’ll go in depth with how he’s not an extremist. Other than that he tries defeating Taiyo but even then, this is while everything is crumbling, and that’s everything Asa has done throughout the story.
Heinous Standard[]
I’m gonna go through every single villain in Yozakura Family, and I mean all of them so you can see how Asa puts every single one of them to great shame and how he stands out amongst all of them, despite the high heinous standard this story has.
Tamaya- He’s the first antagonist Taiyo faces in the story, he wants to capture Mutsumi and posts on social media and boasts about his every move online. He faces Taiyo and Kyoichirou and places a bomb on Taiyo trying to kill him for Mutsumi.
Hanawa- He’s a drug dealer who distributed several drugs and severely injures Taiyo, he works for Hatoda who wants Mutsumi unharmed, he also tries killing the Yozakura Family for trying to stop him.
Owl- He only threatened to kill Taiyo if Shinzo didn’t drop a weapon when they were on a mission together. There’s not much about him since he only appears in one chapter.
Asuka Hatoda- He is a deranged individual who lusts over Mutsumi, he wants to take her from Taiyo and will go to lengths of blackmail for her, all around a creep, but he also owns a toy company that sells lethal toys. He takes out black market organizations by provoking them into wars for several casualties all to make the children of the world happy, even threatening to rain missiles on the city just to have Mutsumi.
Kurogao/Kuroyuri- He killed several politicians out of vengeance toward his daughter because she was killed by them, politicians he previously worked with. He blew up a conference and staged accidents for the sake of terrorism, even going as far as trying to make the Prime Minister look bad and threatening to kill him if he doesn’t confess to Kuroyuri’s own crimes.
Red, Blue, and Yellow- These guys just help Kuroyuri in his crimes.
Makoto Kawashita- The man behind killing Taiyo’s family at the start of the manga and founded Tanpopo, a terrorist organization that regularly smuggled goods and does experiments that modify people’s bodies, the most egregious thing to his name however is when he accidentally killed 10,000 people and wasn’t concerned about it, only concerned about getting caught. He was the biggest rival of the Yozakura Family in the start of the story.
Happy- He’s just a clown who tried killing Mutsumi for her bounty, Taiyo and Golliath were in the way and so were other kids, but he only intended to go after Mutsumi, using a bomb inside a child’s balloon.
Shiro- A sadistic inmate who would casually kill several inmates and tried killing Taiyo and Hotokeyama, he’s a serial killer, works for Tanpopo.
Nohmen- He owns the Dandy Lion Hotel and works for Tanpopo, he is ordered to kill Taiyo and Shinzo and threatens to blow up the entire hotel knowing there’s several people inside.
Yama- He organized a mansion raid against the Yozakura Family and attacked Taiyo while he was in critical condition, he works for Tanpopo and killed a soldier for acting too violent.
Momo Yozakura- He’s the dad of the Yozakura Family, he works for Tanpopo and killed several people just to unite his family back, trying to revive his wife and will do anything to make sure his family is back to the way he wants it, he’s deranged, but he also works for Tanpopo (or worked rather), he’s also responsible for the mansion raid since he created a crisis for it to happen.
Yuki Shirai- She was one of Kawashita’s patients, she felt ashamed of herself and joined Tanpopo because of the way Kawashita treated her, she attacks Taiyo and that’s about it.
Mizuki- He was a big person working for Tanpopo, he killed Ai’s abusive mother and assisted Kawashita, nothing stands out about him though.
Akai, Aonuma, Cha-Cha, and Kurosawa- All of these guys helped Kawashita through Frontlines, the only noteworthy one here who did anything super atrocious before joining Tanpopo is Kurosawa who murdered several people. The others didn’t go as far as him during the battle and only did what was told, they were all recruited for Tanpopo.
Tsubomi Yozakura- She helped find Tanpopo and is Asa’s daughter. She has a desire to die because of the way she was treated by Asa, and possess previous Yozakura Family heads who have died as well as willing to use the Seed-Sowing Project Kawashita is working on to wipe out her family cause of her being suicidal.
Ninomae Yozakura- She possesses anyone who enters her manor.
Alexandryu- Attempted to force a wedding between his daughter and Shinzo, he also sexually assaulted Shinzo and tried blackmailing the rest of the Yozakura Family to stay out of the wedding, he also tried getting them suspended from the Spy Association, as well as worked for Asa until he betrayed him.
Hydra- A bounty hunter who attacked Alpha and Hifumi, and killed his friend. He also wanted to claim the bounty of the Yozakura Family, his body count would’ve been 11 thus far, it’s unknown how many other bounties he’s claimed, he’s also the only other villain who directly targeted the children, aside from Asa and his kids.
Asa’s Kids- They all follow Asa’s orders so they don’t stand out.
Hulang- Stalked the Yozakura Family for their whole lives to watch their every move, she attempts to kill Kengo during the final battle.
Kai Izumo- The leader of the Spy Association who betrays the Yozakura Family and tries taking down Kyoichirou.
Dr. Mozu- A doctor Asa allied with that is prideful and goes along with his plan to harvest the Yozakura Family, stole the heart of one of Asa’s kids so she can be immortal, and tried flooding the Academy.
So yeah, that’s all the villains in the story, Asa stands out amongst all of these guys for torturing his own family in horrific ways and many people suffered under him more than any other villain. Asa has the most victims of anybody else aside from maybe Kawashita who had over 10,000 though what he did was an accident, and at the very least it wasn’t his own family he was going after. His torture toward Tsubomi is nowhere near how Kawashita tortured and experimented on people. The only other villain to go after Alpha and Hifumi is Hydra, this was for the bounty, Asa went after them because of a status quo he wanted to keep to make sure the family still has their cursed fate, because he doesn’t believe one of them won’t be fit to be the head, and because whoever they birth next, won’t have powers, and Asa cares about his family having powers, claiming it would “spell the end of the Yozakura Family” (which it wouldn’t, it’s really only the powers that would end within the family, the kids CAN birth the next generation, they just can’t pass their powers onto them). It also makes it worse because they are 4 year olds.
He knows he’s torturing people and intends to extend his suffering toward other generations of the family, probably for all eternity, since he wants to be immortal. So in reality the only fair comparison I can give Asa is Kawashita, since he wipes the floor with everyone else’s actions in my opinion and makes them seem like small potatoes in comparison to Asa. Even with actions that are typically standard for villains, he goes above and beyond with how evil he truly is and goes far above standard with said actions like his child abuse for example, it goes football field lengths above average child abuse. Not to mention he’s the one who funded Kawashita’s research by giving Tsubomi to him, so in a sense he’s technically responsible for Tanpopos creation, the resource Kawashita had to be as awful as he was. Not to mention, while both Asa and Kawashita have killed innocent people, at the very least what Kawashita did was an accident and he was trying to heal people, even though he didn’t care and was more concerned about covering it up to continue his research by killing Taiyos family at the start of the story, Asa on the other hand killed innocent people just so he could kill even more people, his target were 2 4 year olds so that checks out and later on tries killing the rest of the family just so Taiyo has nothing else to die for.
For context on that, Asa placed a piece of his soul inside Taiyo, making it so that if one of them dies, the other will too shortly after. Since Taiyo said that if he’s the only price to pay to save his family, then he’ll die for them, which prompts Asa to try and kill the rest of the family, the family he initially wanted to keep as unharmed as possible for his experiments, it’s shown he doesn’t care and only cares about his needs by trying to kill his own family he created. He is the most evil character in the story and there’s no denying that.
Migitating Factors[]
Alright, while the story was ongoing, there was definitely a chance he wasn’t going to be Pure Evil, it constantly switched in my mind back and forth, but everything that was going against him before has been shattered, to me at least. The first one being the possibility of him being an extremist.
This one I had a lot of debate back and forth on and decided he ultimately wasn’t one. He claims he wants to help humanity by manufacturing medicine and making humanity immortal, but I’m about to debunk those claims. The family clearly doesn’t like what he’s doing, and he claims to care for his family, if this was true he wouldn’t continuously torture Tsubomi to the point of driving her to suicide. He also knows the 10th generation of the Yozakura Family intends to leave him for good, there are also better ways to improve healthcare without drugs and sacrificing your own family for the sake of this. He claims the twins are dangerous and could wipe out the Yozakura Family, but the only evidence of this is when he got a prophecy that he believed to be true because all of them were true, but he only wants to so none of them become the head and the Yozakura Family keeps their powers that they don’t want. It may be true the Yozakura Family would be no more, but he makes it clear it’s because of the powers and not the family itself he cares about, Taiyo even points out that he’s made so many people suffer, and him killing his kids is so Asa can extend the suffering further, Asa doesn’t even deny this and instead calls Taiyo selfish, further diminishing any form of extremism.
He just wants to profit off of the powers of the family, nothing more nothing less. At first it may have seemed like he had good intentions to help humanity, but more humans would suffer as a result so not much is getting accomplished here, and that’s to add the fact he’s only doing what he’s doing to make himself immortal, so he only has the intentions for himself, at the expense of his own family. All he wants is immortality, and will force that ideology onto anyone, and resorting to surgically placing a heart he made inside of his own kids, which he could use to possess them and take control of their bodies, which also means he would be able to control literally anyone who has the heart’s body, something he intends to do to the entirety of humanity, which is creepy in of itself, he’s willing to possess his own children with his heart and take control of their bodies, so I’m sure he’d do it to anyone if he’s willing to do it to people in his care, and I don’t know what’s worse, him doing it to his kids or his patients.
Back to him wanting to kill the kids however, his entire plan is so he can make a chimera between them so they can birth the next generation, so again, he only cared about their powers, and he’s only concerned about wanting to birth a new generation for him to torture, so it’s still not extremist territory. Also the fact he couldn’t help people in the past isn’t really explored and isn’t shown to be relevant to his goals in the present day or when he came in contact with the tenth generation, so this doesn’t make him tragic either as he makes it clear that everything he does is for his own selfish desires. He also makes no mention of his desire to help others during his negotiation with Taiyo, and instead mentions how granting immortality to humanity would benefit himself and not everyone else, the characters also don’t treat this as a justifiable reason for him to abuse Tsubomi the way he does, so he’s far past any sympathy.
If all of that doesn’t convince you he’s not an extremist, then this will, he said he wanted to expand the use of Yozakuras powers to expand the world and eliminate suffering, right before saying he will kill the Yozakura Family, the family he’s trying to harvest, and wanted to keep them alive so he can harvest them (again harvesting means using them for science experiments, not death), but since both his and Taiyo’s life are on the line, he make the choice to want to kill the family he wanted to harvest, and with the family dead, he wouldn’t be able to harvest them at all. His reasoning is to keep himself alive, so Taiyo would have no reason to sacrifice his life, since the reason he wanted to do it was to save his family. The dude goes over the edge and disregards what he wants just to keep himself alive, if that doesn’t scream selfish I don’t know what does. He for a while wanted them to remain alive and wanted them as untouched as possible so he could harvest them, but he drops that and is willing to kill them, and his goal won’t be fulfilled, it’s just to keep himself alive so in his words, “Taiyo has nothing else to die for”.
Sure, he has his death where he says he did all of this for the good of Yozakura, but this isn’t played sympathetically or anything cause he doesn’t apologize for anything he did, we also do see a flashback of him liking Tsubomi’s smile, but all care for her wellbeing went out the door as evidenced earlier, so I’m not buying him being sorry for anything he did, since he believes Taiyo’s death isn’t a victory, there’s not really much context surrounding that or how he meant it, and just like everything else he says it without emotion. His final words are “Family huh… then isn’t your death a defeat for the family you love so much? You probably couldn’t call this a victory no but at least it isn’t defeat.”
You could make the argument that he was misunderstood and thought that exploiting his family meant caring for them, but again, he doesn’t apologize and this isn’t played as a redemption for Asa either, everything else I mentioned prior also disproves he’s an extremist, which was the biggest thing going for him. It’s just him and Taiyo and talking and Taiyo explaining to Asa where he went wrong, he still doesn’t show remorse for what he did and doesn’t fix anything he did, well again cause he’s dying but you get my point. Also even if he believed he did all of this because he believed his dream could only be achieved by exploiting the Yozakura Family’s powers and it meant caring for them, any person with common sense, and someone as old as Asa is, AND A DOCTOR might I add would know that finding out your daughter is suicidal because of her powers and the experiments done on her, would get you to stop, but no, he’s persistent even then on his plans, so you have to ask, before his death how far was he actually going to go if Taiyo didn’t kill him? He’s too far off the deep end to be redeemed.
I hope that cleared it up, because I don’t think Asa realizes he was wrong, since there’s nothing that indicates that aside from when Taiyo explaining where he went wrong, Asa doesn't apologize or try to make things right, not like he had a chance to make things right since he died moments later, but there was still enough time for an apology, he just asks Taiyo if what he’s doing is also a defeat for his family, but he also can’t call it a victory, and then says it at least isn’t defeat, he asks this question, says Tsubomi’s name and dies, there’s no context to why he said her name either and it isn’t explored. Just figured I’d reiterate what was said.
The fact he may love his kids, since he was shown playing with them is a lie. This is because Ryu confirmed he didn’t love his kids and only birthed them in the first place using DNA so they could go after the Yozakura Family, and to keep himself immortal forever. Yo may have stated that she loves him and they are a happy family, but in flashbacks it’s shown Asa is completely disinterested in his kids, and only birthed them for his goals and as extra bodies to remain immortal. Other evidence is when he says he doesn’t believe in the bonds of relationships, friends, and even family, which shows he really doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
Before his death there is a flashback of when he was younger and Tsubomi was a young kid, and how he liked to see her smile, but during this it’s not clear whether or not it’s shown as him regretting what he did, since he just mentions it without elaborating further on why he said that, and given how he treated her in the present times from abusing her in brutal ways that go far above standard child abuse, not caring at all about her feeling suicidal, and is even shown to be exhausted while the final battle is ongoing. She feels relieved when her time comes to die, and happily accepts it, and it’s definitely due to Asa’s abuse. Maybe during those times he did care for Tsubomi but it definitely goes out the window with how he treats her in the present day.
His offers to bring people back to life to whoever joins his side is all pragmatic, evidence of this is shown with Hulang since he offered to bring her son back to life if she helps him, which she agrees to, he only will bring people back to life if they do something for him first. Izumo also had to take either Taiyo or Kyoichirou down first before he even decided to bring his family back to life.
While he does hold off on hurting Taiyo at first when he infiltrates his ship, this isn’t out of genuine standards, this is only so he can negotiate with him so he can kill his and Mutsumi’s kids and then torture the rest of the family, and he only negotiates at first since he knows the Yozakura Family will be destroyed if he doesn’t. Even then, it doesn’t matter if they die or not, all he needed was a scrap of each of the current generation and he can begin his experiments. He just wants them alive to torture them further, not because he genuineally cares about them. Sure, Yo may have said that he may have cooked and played with them, but even she acknowledges how broken the family is, and that Asa doesn’t care about her and the rest of his kids. Also worth noting that when Asa activates the void blooming he complements the Yozakura Family but this doesn’t make him have a sense of honor or standards because his only reason for his complements is for his experiments he intends to do on them, which is also why he says to Taiyo that he is worthy of being a Yozakura, this is while he’s trying to take over his body, so I don’t think this puts any good will toward him.
I would say he does compliment the family and honors them as they get stronger, some shown as mockery some aren’t, it’s very inconsistent, like he does mock Kyouichirou during one point, and also says Taiyo’s worthy of being a Yozakura before harming him. It’s very inconsistent and done with 0 emotion from him, every action he does is done apathetically and with no emotion. So I don’t believe this prevents him. Also worth noting that when he does feel impressed with his family and gives said compliments, it’s usually only because of their abilities and nothing more, and he does try to kill all of them later on after he mocks Kyouichirou, this doesn’t come up again, so it’s safe to say this got subverted.
The honor could’ve been genuine before and the praises but right after Kyoichirou gets mocked and it’s evident he’s upset because he tries killing Asa right then and there as a reaction toward what he said about this being a historical day for the family, but after this he doesn’t praise them again at all and flat out tries killing them with a meteor. He also may have wanted at first to resolve the situation peacefully but all of that goes down the drain with every chapter as he gets more and more deranged, while he wasn’t above killing innocents before this, he at one point endangers his whole family by launching a meteor at them so that checks out.
Even with all of that it doesn’t convince you because of what he says before his death about where he went wrong and Taiyo says he lost sight of what his family really is, he still knows what he’s doing is bad and is evil. When Taiyo calls him out at the beginning of the final battle on hurting so many people and wanting to continue to extend the suffering on many more people, he doesn’t deny hurting people at all and calls Taiyo selfish for not letting him kill his children so he can begin harvesting his own family (again, 2 four year olds). Taiyo also says to him that with everyone else he’s fought throughout the story that they never really understood one another but he can understand their beliefs and reasons for what they all did, but doesn’t understand why Asa is doing what he is doing, and he’s also the only villain Taiyo was willing to kill once he got his reasons for doing what he does.
All of this gets blasted by the end of the story and Asa is a really selfish person, the twins may have not been able to birth the next generation with their powers, and he does want more members of it, but as Taiyo said, this is so he can extend the suffering of the Yozakura Family further, and Asa did not deny this when pointed out and instead called Taiyo selfish which proves he knows he’s caused people to suffer with his torture methods, including his own daughter. Hopefully this convinces you more that Asa is a piece of shit and debunks any concerns I initially had about him counting.
Verdict[]
I say yes cause even with the high heinous standard and even though without him the Yozakura Family wouldn’t exist, he chose to torture several generations of the family and made them suffer instead of actually caring for them, while he does say he thought exploiting them meant he cared for them, there’s more evidence suggesting he’d put them in danger and would even discard his plans just to keep himself alive. He doesn’t care about anyone, only harvesting his family and milking their powers, he wants nothing more than to control his family and is willing to kill members of said family if they try to oppose him. Add that with every other horrific things this man has done and I think he’s a solid keeper. However, if he doesn’t make it on, it was worth a shot proposing him anyway.