[Trauma: the creator of a hero or villain.]

As usual, I am at my most thoughtful at work, and it got me thinking about trauma.

First off, this rant is gonna gonna be full of spoilers, so either you already watched them or you're in for a rude awakening so don't day I didn't warn ya or just skip to the end. Also most of the cases I will talk about either border on good or morally debatable, usually as the result of revenge being the drive.

As I had said in the last rant, I had been binging danmachi and season 4 was a cluster fuck of developement. For the hestia clan and for Ryu, the elf girl.

For the most part it overlaps with character development, and the grieving process. It's a mix of bells case but more so Ryu that undergoes the developement.

Digging straight in and getting past the majority of the conflict in the first half. Everyone had gotten stronger and bell and the clan with some help from others go on the expedition into the middle floors. Partly to gather resources for the guild but also to (later) investigate suspicions that Ryu is a murderer. While she goes on a revenge spree you learn more about her motives, that she's out for the reminents of a rival familia.

It picks up heavily when you learn that the dungeons send out special monsters in the case of threats that must be eliminated. You could say it's one form of trauma, reactionary but the focus is on the elf. As rhe story goes on we learn more about Ryus Ex-familia and get flashback segments after she and Bell have to deal with the juggernaut.

Plenty of times the trauma hits her and she caves to it as rhe memories flood her as she fears of what it will do to bell. For most of the second half they struggle Traversing the lower levels and each time you usually see a flashback of younger Ryu.

You already know her familia is dead and she breaks the news that it was the juggernaut. It isn't until episode 20 you see how badly it was. Where as it's understandable that she would lose her cool the first time they have no idea how to fight the juggernaut, her rushing forward without thinking slowly leads to the impossible. She watches each one of her familia die before her eyes (and the anime doesn't hold back on making it hard). You learn how she carried the trauma and the return of a juggernaut brought it all to the forefront again, this time trying to make sure her and bell survive or at least him.

She slowly comes to terms and eventually comes to rely on bell for more than just the survival, even telling him about what happened.

She manages to get past it and moves on from the trauma, using it as a stepping stone for her to get back into moment and staying reflective of the past.

Next is keyaru from our favorite revenge series, Redo of healer. As you remember, he heal bitches, but with the healing comes the pain and the trauma that he has to deal with. Episode 1 establishes the past timeline and that he's out for Revenge and episode 2 shows the start of said revenge.

He does some pre-planning after he gets his gift with eating some herbs to help with poison and drug resistances.

Flare being the first of his victims, he plans out his escape and manipulates plenty, even altering his appearance to get into flares chambers. I don't even need to go into detail because you already know what he does to her. But it continues on with him planning his revenge not only on the kingdom, but with flare beside him and indirectly killing the blade bitch and on the hunt for bullet.

Morally and logically, keyaru would probably be a villain, but when everyone else is leagues worse than you, you're probably looking very much like a hero by comparison.

Next is arifureta. Nagumo being one of the kids summoned to the new world with his classmates is pretty much put into the shitter like with Ryu in both instances with the juggernaut. He's pretty much left for dead after he falls to the deeper levels when one of his classmates sent a stray shot his way, trying to kill him. He does his best the entire time after his arm gets ripped off just to survive. As I posted the clip before of how his classmates saw the memory of his survival and just about all the girls found it hard to watch, homeboy pretty much did what he could as a cripple, just to survive, using the trauma of losing an arm and being left for dead as inspiration to live on as well as using his transmitting skill to create weapons to survive.

He could have easily gone on the revenge path but I'd like to say yue and what would be the harem he created partly helped to set him at ease, remembering he actually has support and that it's a struggle he didn't have to deal with alone, especially when it came to the self reflection trial.

And finally light from backstabbed in a backwater dungeon (insert rest of paragraph title here). This one pretty much being a mix of betrayal with a little bit of trauma that drive light on his revenge path. His gacha ability, allowing him to summon cards is pretty much seen as a useless ability to his party members, which are diverse among the species of fantasy, dwarves lizard men, cobalds, elves. And they try to kill him near the middle of the first episode. After he is teleported into the Abyss where the area is high level it also affects his gacha pulls. He gets his SUR lv 9999 Maid who saves him from what would be death at some higher level Abyss hounds. With her and the pulls of of higher grade items and also characters he embarks on his revenge towards his previous party.

In most cases, the trauma still hits. Those that aren't able to get past it, usually repress it until it resurfaces and they're forced to confront it. The loss or betrayal, depending on it usually sets the MC on a self reflective quest, one out for Revenge or one that cripples them at the thought, and more often the road of revenge as it may be sweet is bitter and they find out, doesn't help solve the trauma, just the problem that created it.

I guess you can also look at how PTSD is reflective on brothers in the armed forces. It cripples and breaks them and very few people can understand, and it's trauma they have to live with. But depending on it, having a support network or people to belittle you is a surefire way to either keep yourself in the good, or watch your descent into madness and usually the darkness that follows.