From the beginning, Koko has clearly seen Spirit Circle as a kind of revenge narrative. She must get her revenge on Fuuta, and hopefully break the cycle in the process, but the revenge part at least is paramount. Of course, simply punishing this boy who doesn’t even know what he’s done wouldn’t be particularly satisfying – so first, she must make him understand the weight of all the suffering he’s caused her. It’s an instinct almost anyone can relate to; revenge is in large part about wanting someone else to understand and pay back the pain they inflicted on you, and if we could simply share our pain directly, then we might not lash out through other means.
Koko wants Fuuta to understand precisely how much he hurt her; but as he explores his past lives, the truths he is uncovering are far more ambiguous than “Koko was wronged.” Our lives are messy sequences of rambling, incoherent vignettes, and as I emphasized in my previous essay, we will all live through many cycles of happiness and sadness. We are an accumulation of our greatest and worst actions, and though our future selves won’t necessarily redeem our past selves, we must still live with their weight, and hope to be forgiven.
As the second volume begins, Fuuta and Koko each offer some greater context on their past lives, fitting the violence that defined their own meeting into a larger, more sympathetic frame. Fuuta sees the life of Vann as a redemption arc, and talks of how he found happiness in his later years, but Koko can gain no solace from that. How could she? For her, the only key moment of Vann’s life was when he permanently ended her own; knowing Vann ultimately “forgave” the woman he killed is no comfort to her. All of our tormentors are human beings, and all of them undoubtedly have their own feelings, but that doesn’t mitigate the harm they do.
The contrast of these violent lives tempers Spirit Circle’s empathy with an understanding of just how cruel humanity can be. After hearing Fuuta describe Vann’s later years, Koko responds with the brief and unhappy life of the priestess who had previously killed him. Fuuta learns that Koko herself was against the human sacrifices, and wished to end them, but was overruled for the sake of the village’s peace. And yet, in the end, she was butchered by those who agreed with Fuuta, only for the cycle of violence to start anew in Fuuta’s name. An inescapable element of the human cycle is that we will absolutely hurt each other – there is great weakness and pain and cruelty within us, and we carry the wrongs of our past wherever we go. Koko claims her actions are intended to break the cycle, but as she condemns Fuuta with righteous fire in her eyes, she is still acting as the cycle’s vessel.
Having emphasized this sharp contrast of vengeance and forgiveness, Spirit Circle dives into its next past life, as we explore the journey of the architect Flors. Tasked with designing and constructing a great sphinx, Flors journeys to a distant island, where he meets the town elder Arbol and his daughter Loca. Loca is one more incarnation of Koko, and as a seer, she’s able to actually recognize the bloody bond between them. As Flors works to erect his sphinx, he is consistently interrogated by Loca, who hopes to break their cycle. But ultimately, the statue is built without issue, and though Flors is unsatisfied with its catlike face, he returns home to marriage, retirement, and an altogether peaceful life.
Flors’ story is framed in a new way for Spirit Circle; we first meet an elderly Flors staring at the sea, who proceeds to tell his life story to a passing stranger. This device allows this story to emphasize healthy approaches for looking back on our lives, as well as naturally underlining the rambling, contiguous stretches of joy and sorrow that define any life. Working on the sphinx took up years of Flors’ life, but in the present moment, all that still glimmers are choice moments – sharing wine with Argol, reflecting on his past selves with Loca, the way the light shined off the dunes. The past and present exist at once, dancing in Flors’ head as he seeks to recall what it all was for.
What is revealed by Flors’ disjointed monologue is a life as truthfully experienced, not as celebrated in song. Just as Vann’s life seemed defined by tragedy, only to rise through strange circumstance into found families and even fatherhood, so is Flors’ life as messy and unfocused as it is dignified and sincere. Flors completed his work on the sphinx, but hated the face he chiseled – only to spend the rest of his life being known as “Mr. Sphinx.” Flors marries the woman Lihanela, but it’s clear she loves another, and their life together is more polite than passionate. When she dies of an illness, his son abandons him, and Flors ultimately spends his days wandering the town, reflecting on what was and could have been. His life is defined by regrets and mistakes and missed chances, winding with his footsteps all the way back across that glittering sea.
The seer Loca would likely point to Flors’ unhappiness as a destined tragedy, and precisely what she is trying to prevent. But ultimately, even her efforts to break the cycle end up perpetuating it; because her inquiries end up delaying Flors’ process of building the sphinx, he arrives home after the man who raised him has already passed away. Loca would probably see that as a destined irony as well, but the truth is more subtle and inescapable – that however we live, we will end up stirring up friction and creating resentment, grudges, and a desire for revenge in others.
To simply exist as a human being is to take up space and time and attention and resources that would otherwise be assigned differently, naturally provoking friction with the world around us. Happiness isn’t a zero-sum game, but resources both physical and mental are limited, and our desires are so diverse and multitudinous that they simply can’t all be simultaneously sated. To live is to incur grudges; even though Loca was only trying to help both herself and Flors, her presence in his life provoked a life-long grudge. The sheer impossibility of not desiring revenge could lead one to hopelessness, but there is still an escape – to let the past rest, and move forward without carrying its vengeful banner. To accept that the cycle will always be, and embrace it not as a curse, but as a source of comfort. To forgive.
Embracing forgiveness isn’t just a concession to the impossibility of revenge; it is only through embracing forgiveness that the true beauty of the world can emerge. At the end of a life defined by regrets and missed chances, having married a woman who loved someone else and raised a son who despised him, being known only for a sculpture he saw as his greatest shame, Flors kneels at his wife’s grave and can find nothing but profound, overwhelming gratitude. Thank you for sharing these days with me. Thank you for trying so hard, thank you for caring. I’m sorry for all the wrong I caused. I wish I could do better. I love you, and miss you, and promise to love you as you deserved the next time around.
None of us lead storybook lives. All of us are burdened with heavy regrets, with chances we know we should have taken, with moments we hurt the people we love, with times the world seemed personally invested in our ruin. We must forgive the world for being so fractured, and forgive ourselves for rarely measuring up to the people we want to be. But if you can forgive those cracks, and accept that our lives are a messy canvas, there is so much beauty in this world. So much joy we can bring to one another.
Crouched at his wife’s grave, Flors is at last able to accept the wrongs of the past, and embrace the life he has led willingly, with pride. But Flors has the benefit of hindsight; to the young Fuuta, such a heavy truth as “forgive the world” is hard to accept. Attempting to reconstruct Flors’ sphinx one last time, he sculpts clay into the night, drawing on all the love and loss that made Flors who he is. But having finished his creation, he breaks down in tears, and asks the question all of these stories have been asking: “why are we alive?”
Rune, surprisingly, has the answer. “We’re alive… because something good will happen.” No state is permanent. The cycle never ends. There will be good times and bad times, and our stories will generally lack narrative polish, but we can find meaning and beauty in them all the same. All it takes is learning to forgive ourselves, and our lives – and Mizukami understands the difficulty of that task. He couldn’t write these brutally honest stories if he didn’t. His prescription, as always, is a variation on Planet With’s “it is a far greater thing to see the unfairness of the world and remain kind, than to be strong.” We must acknowledge the cruel failings of this world, and forgive it all the same. After all, tomorrow is another day, and perhaps something good will happen.
This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.