Reading the letters from Achika to Tenchi gave an insight into her character we have never had a real chance to see in the series at large. We have only seen her active in
For another fanfic another time to be sure, but this is something I feel could be worth exploring. We see her take motherly duties to various degrees of incompetence (Dealing with Tenchi’s… cousin? Nephew? I forget), upholding a job for financial reasons (as seen in TMiL2, also her failings to keep a job in Okuda’s manga) and so on. She may love Tenchi, but how aware of the domestication of home life on earth is she really, and what sort of adjustments would she need to make for herself to
However, a dread hung in my mind as I read forward. My heart feared that the later letters might start referencing her growing ill and, therefore, apart from her son. Waiting for that other foot to fall had my heart in a bit of a knot, but this never did happen. While this might be a missed opportunity, having that well-known fact rise might detract from the story’s main thrust of telling of Achika’s mostly happy life with her husband and son.
This was something that I fought with myself over in the few days it took me to get back around to Act III. I had considered several factors over that time, mainly the extent of Washu’s brainwashing computer applied at the end of TMiL1 and how long, if at all, I was going to acknowledge her impending death. By the end of my internal deliberations I had decided that Achika’s memory was not only wiped of the events of the movie but of any hint of her Jurian blood. It would lead to the cleanest break for everyone and prevent her from having her life too distracted by the part of her that was aware the end was coming.
To that degree, I decided to stick with her death occurring very suddenly for all involved. In every canon, Tenchi’s mother dies without warning and in this case I felt like Washu’s brainwashing intervention may have aided in assuring she would be unaware of what was to come. The whole idea was to let them live their lives as happily as possible and even as death is about to knock on her door she remained blissfully unaware.
To put a personal spin on this reasoning, my best friend up through middle school’s mother died suddenly of a fatal aneurysm in our freshman year of high school. The days, weeks, months leading up to her death she never once seemed out of step to anyone who knew her. I suppose she’s not alive today to tell us otherwise but I would like to think she would have looked for help if she suspected something was wrong. I drew from this experience and the impact her death had on her friends and family and saw Achika’s death similarly.
However, I did decide to acknowledge this via the end of her final letter. As she states, the “cold” is slowing her hand and she is unable to write nearly as much. I felt this was subtle enough foreshadowing to her oncoming death while leaving her completely ignorant to it. Perhaps a bit too subtle, but I felt it the best. Strangely, I did not seem to acknowledge the date of her death in the fiction itself which dilutes the purpose of the dating scheme and some of the research I put into it as the only place you see her official date of death is in my authors notes. Whoops!
Still though, thank you (and all above as well!) for your compliments and i’m glad I could give you a quality read that dared to ask some questions that hadn’t been. kiyonesmile1
