October 4, 2007
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Freeloader-san
Abarai Renji.
In the anime called Bleach there is a point where the character named Renji who is a shinigami warrior of some renown comes to stay in the human world to help defend it from the evil ‘Hollows’. Apparently the shinigami are too cheap to provide lodgings for their agents in the human world so Renji has to find a place to stay. After a while he ends up staying at Urameshi’s shop.
While there he is teased mercilessly for his status as a “freeloader”. The characters don’t call him by his name. Instead they address him as Freeloader-san.
So for example there is this exchange:
The characters who live in Urahara’s shop are all gathered to eat and Renji who has a huge appetite is gobbeling down food as a fast rate. Here is the exchange just as he finishes one bowl of food:
Tessai: “Do you want seconds? Just because you are a freeloader doesn’t mean you should hold back. Now, now. How about another bowl, Freeloader-dono?”
Renji: “Ah, in that case…”
Ururu: “Seconds are best. Please don’t hold back. Have some seconds, Freeloader-san.”
Tessai: “What’s wrong?”
Renji: “Ah, then…” He holds his hand out with the bowl.
Jinta: “Well, even freeloaders deserve seconds. Eat. eat.”
Urahara: “There’s no need to say that the freeloader is free loading. Isn’t it hard for him to ask for seconds? Right, Freeloader-san?”
Renji freezes and we hear his inner voice say: “I can’t ask for seconds.”
Jinta: “Please take care of cleaning up the front of the store tomorrow morning.”
Renji: “What!?”
Jinta: “It’s natural for a freeloader to do at least that much.You’re having seconds, aren’t you?”
Tessai: “Now, how about those seconds, Freeloader-dono?”
Ururu: “Go ahead.”
Everyone is silent and stares at Renji. Poor Renji mortified and trembling says: “Thank you for the meal.” stands and then leaves, presumably to clean up the front of the store. After he walks out everybody starts laughing at him. Poor poor Freeloader-san.
There are a lot of similar situations in the series and as I was watching them I thought they were extremely funny. At the same time though I felt a little bad for Renji. I mean to have to struggle so hard and so earnestly to try and make up for his presence must be a pain. It’s particularly hard for him since he has no particular skills upon which to call upon. Like most shonnen anime characters his only skill seems to be the ability to fight. You’d think that’d be pretty good in a world where hollows attack randomly trying to steal people’s souls. You’d think he could leverage that ability to help defend Urahara’s shop and thus earn his keep.
However, in this case it is rather a useless skill to have. Jinta, Tessai, and Ururu can all fight already and Urahara is waaaay more powerful than him. Heck, even the family cat is waaay more powerful than him. Thus his fighting abiliy is largely irrelevant to the defense of the store. So what can he do? Just run around trying to do chores to make himself feel better about imposing upon their hospitality and trying to minimize his impact on their daily living by doing things like not asking for seconds.
I can relate to Renji. How does one figure out how to earn one’s keep? What is appropriate and what isn’t? How can one minimize their impact while at the same time contributing significantly to the daily efficient running of their place of residence?
I’m not just talking about where you live too. We are all part of a society, several communities, a state and/or a nation, and even a planet. Many of us are a part of a family and a business and one or more social groups as well. How do we earn our keep with respect to each of these? What do we do to justify our presence? All of these groups are good to us. All of them support us. And yet how often do we ask ourselves what are we doing to make ourselves valuable to them?
Take being a member of the planet for example. We are all such wasteful creatures. We pollute. We waste resources. We destroy the environment and contribute to global warming. And yet the Earth just keeps supporting us, helping us out, no questions asked, no qualms about it. What can we do to make the Earth’s life easier rather than destroying its ability to support life with our every waking moment and every single act of consumption? That’s the challenge.
That’s the heart of it, nobody likes to be the cause of harm to any system. The thought that one’s presence or actions might cause harm being it emotional harm, physical harm, temporal harm, or organizational harm is a miserable feeling. We all, like Renji would be willing to go out of our way to try and prevent or make up for or undo any harm we may fear we might have caused, be causing, or may yet cause in the future. But often we don’t know what to do or how to go about it .And we often feel we don’t have any skills or abilities to leverage in order to contribute or how to go about applying those few skills we have. We often feel lost and ineffectual as a result.
And we’re left being a drain on each of the systems that we are apart of feeling bad about it and engaging in pointless gestures that mean nothing to try and make up for it. We strive not to be freeloaders, but we know that nobody would be making a mistake if they were to start to call us Freeloader-san.
