As Kouko drives him forward and Rune cheers him on, it’s becoming more and more clear that our young Fuuta is beginning to come apart at the seams.

This is not really Fuuta’s fault. At this point, he’s carrying the regrets of three past lives with him, all of whom lived longer lives than Fuuta himself. The vast majority of Fuuta’s memories are now inherited, and as he goes through his daily life, old selves float like intrusive thoughts to the surface. Sometimes, even Fuuta himself doesn’t notice the change; Spirit Circle frequently employs sequences of panels where Fuuta slips between selves without warning, with only the audience truly understanding his flickering selfhood. At other times, his past lives trudge behind him like a sad caravan, a burden he must carry wherever he goes.

Like everything in this series, that caravan serves as a tidy metaphor for circumstances we must all endure in some way. Not everyone remembers a bunch of past lives they’re supposed to feel responsible for, but we all remember our own lives – the failures and misunderstandings and acts of cruelty we have accumulated, and must carry with us as we move forward. Our individual caravans grow heavier as we gain age and experience, each new failure piled on the last – which makes one of the great tasks of life the process of gaining the strength to shoulder these burdens, without also becoming callous to the suffering of others.

In order to grow as a person, we must neither ignore our past failures, nor grow so hardened by them that nothing touches us. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but as Spirit Circle has consistently demonstrated, the key to enduring hardship while retaining kindness is learning to forgive ourselves. Both of Fuuta’s long lives were filled with misdeeds and regrets, but both of them also ended in displays of gratitude, and gestures of thanks towards the people who helped them love themselves. If we hope to live as considerate beings who have accepted the burden of our various caravans, it is essential we learn to both acknowledge our failings and forgive ourselves – not deny our past, but accept it as something to learn from, and pledge to do better on the next wheel.

Unfortunately, while Flors and Vann lived long enough to internalize this lesson, Fone died in his moment of greatest agony, resentment, and regret. It is thus unsurprising that Fone is the most urgent voice in Fuuta’s head, urging him to destroy his hated killer, and gain vengeance for his death. You could say Flors and Vann’s sense of perspective came about because they were eventually taught the right lessons, but in truth, it is time, more than anything else, that teaches us perspective and forgiveness. Tempers cool, grudges ebb, and eventually we find more to concern ourselves with than the anger of the past.

Only Kouko, driven by a grudge so strong she can barely describe it, seems capable of holding on to her anger through these cycles – and her “success” in maintaining that grudge has brought her nothing but bitterness, and Fuuta nothing but grief. As the winding intersections of Fuuta and his friends have demonstrated, and as life stories like Vann’s have revealed, there are many potential versions of all of us, and most us live through a variety of them, enduring regrets and reincarnations all along the way. The positive takeaway from this would be to judge others lightly, and not purely as representatives of their current station – but for Kouko, our ability to evolve is just a challenge to surpass, in order to return Fuuta to the self she despised, the proper vehicle for her anger.

Fortunately for Kouko, Fuuta actually seems to be enjoying his accumulation of karmic debt. Thus, ignoring East’s warnings, he slips back into another life, and emerges as a feudal-era sword polisher named Houtarou. Houtarou is actually the first son of the local Lord Furan, but as a bastard, he must live as a commoner – however, his half-sister Rihama visits him frequently. Additionally, his younger brother Kajirou fears a potential succession battle – thus he sends kidnappers and assassins after his brother, who are foiled by the ninja Jinkurou, hired by Rihama.

It’s a complicated web of connections, but the warmth of Houtarou’s humble life speaks to the closeness of his bonds, no matter how their stations in life separate them. The lovers that Flors felt such guilt for dividing are here united, in the forms of Jinkurou and Rihama. The cheerful nights that both Flors and Vann spent drinking with friends are recaptured with Jinkurou as well, their fondness preserved through centuries untold. These moments of warmth cast retaining the past in a much brighter light; rather than simply a set of regrets to shoulder and lessons to learn, here we see that the past is also littered with shimmering gems, precious, isolated memories of connection and hope. Flors and “Jinkurou” only drank together a single time, but their fondness remains – Flors’ pledge to do better next time is thus fulfilled, even though he never lives to see it.

As always, though, the past can be a source of both positive lessons and absolute damnation. Like Kouko, Kajirou is unable to forgive Houtarou for the circumstances of his birth. Fearing displacement as the local lord, Kajirou is trapped chasing the ghost of his older brother, while Houtarou has actually found contentment in forgiving the past and living as a sword polisher. And ultimately, Kajirou’s inability to overcome the past ends up poisoning his current life, when his constant assassination attempts stir up unrest among his people, and eventually an intervention by the Tokugawa government (led by this world’s own resilient Kouko).

What follows is a sequence of tragedy unlike anything seen before in Spirit Circle. Volume three’s articulation of violence is evocative and brutal, using the fluid, almost anthropomorphic intensity of ink strokes to convey fire, gore, and seething anger. The long-awaited collision of Fuuta and Kouko, where they seem almost joyous in their mutual destruction, is a frenzy of splashing ink, conveying both calamitous violence and emotional intensity. They are genuinely glad to see each other, and glad to kill each other; just as Fuuta’s friendships have carried through time, so has his bond with this violent girl, this woman he knows to be his destined end.

Wild, impressionistic inkwork rears its head throughout this volume, like in the loosely dancing blaze of the Furan estate. At other times, Satoshi Mizukami’s masterful paneling amplifies the effect of his inking – like early on, when a tiny panel of Fuuta’s foot slipping helps the reader visually slide backwards with him, and into a sea of blood. Great comic artists are unafraid to use negative space within their page compositions, which lets the eye be drawn through the drama as energetically as the characters themselves. Here in volume three, Mizukami’s skills are put to brutal effect, as he illustrates the most violent of Fuuta’s past lives so far.

And yet, even in the midst of this violence, Spirit Circle never forgets the value of a single human life. Though there is plenty of death in this arc, the moment that struck me most painfully was the separation of Princess Rihama and her wet nurse Matsu. Matsu understands that she is too slow to escape with Rihama, and thus gives her life freely – an act conveyed without words, simply through an exchange of looks between the two of them. In a story where life is cheap and human bonds frail, a single human life cannot mean much – but in Spirit Circle, where we’ve learned the infinite potential for rebirth across a single human life, the idea of one human giving their life to protect another feels an unimaginable act of charity and love. Wiping away her tears, Rihama tells her brother “let’s live” – the ultimate thing you can promise those who love you, that you will live on, and carry their love with you.

Perhaps it is Rihama’s influence that leads Houtarou’s life to a positive end – but to be honest, it is more likely the fact that he and Kouko are simply stuck together as invalids, unable to either kill each other or leave. Having lost far too much in defense of the Tokugawa, this Kouko is at last able to admit something: that she is tired of fighting, tired of losing, and tired of regrets. If forgiveness or understanding can’t bring us together, perhaps once in a while we can rely on simple fatigue. It’s hard to carry your anger all the time, and harder still when you see your hated foe is as tired as you are. Houtarou’s life is thus the first story where Fuuta and Kouko actually manage to forgive each other – a brief life, but one well-lived, free of resentment and full of joy.

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