Liberating lowlifelyness – Chapter 9, Act 2, Strip 59

Well, time to deal with the fallout from the most shocking defeat in history. And, fortunately, Snuka gets on that quickly enough to prevent the most tragic consequences from happening.

Given his cultural background, it was somewhat to be expected that Maru-maru might harbor suicidal thoughts. Renowned samurai have taken their own lives to atone for defeats that were far less humiliating than losing a cricket match to a tin loaf…not that there even was a defeat that humiliating during the age of the samurai.

Fortunately, Snuka arrives to remind him that he isn’t a samurai, let alone a renowned one. He’s a ronin without honor and family, he can screw up as badly as wants without that being any kind of issue for anyone but him – and with his reputation stuck permanently hovering around the zero-mark, he shouldn’t have any issue with it, either. Restoring your honor by killing yourself, the only person that could potentially care about your honor, just makes no sense – especially if you couldn’t restore it to much higher than zero, anyway. Kind of a liberating thought.

And Snuka would know – after all, his grandfather, Admiral Watanabe, also eschewed honor-restoring ritual suicide in favor of virtual immortality and an unlimited number of “try again” cards. While Snuka himself has eschewed honor and reputation in general from a very early age – and meeting his crazy grampa did absolutely nothing to make him question the wisdom of that decision.

More on Thursday.

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