Oh dear. That would be...less age difference, but more wrong. I doubt it will happen, but...noooo, I don't even want to think about it.

yeah, but it's been hinted at a bit. I think, though, that ity's just going to be her with him when he dies or something.

Oh yes. One day he's just gonna have to make his mind up between "Must get chopped up" and "Must survive getting chopped up".

very much so, though i think it's more "don't care if i get chopped up as long as i win" than "must get chopped up"

Yeah. I think Magatsu did the best he could in that particular situation (although the ideal would of course be that he wasn't there killing people in the first place ;).

yeah. though, he didn't kill her father, either. mostly he looked like he really didn't want to be there in that scene it always seemed to me that he thought it was more about "your granddad was mean to my granddad so my granddad beat me up when i was a kid"(which, you know, is what it was when you strip it down) than about anything else, and killing and raping people who were going about their business wasnt what he signed up for.

True. Rin doesn't know about Magatsu's story, does she? Would she forgive him in a heartbeat if she did?

I don't think she associates him with the rest of it that much, anyway. Even when he showed up to help Manji, it was "huh? he's with Manji?" as opposed to "ITTO RYU!!! DIEDIEDIE!!!" and then when she was kidnapped, she was confused that he was one of the kidnappers.

That's possible, but even before he met Manji, he seemed to have a relatively strong sense of ethics all on his own, like on the night Rin's parents were killed. His only real problem seems to be his blind hate for anything Bakufu and he seems to be losing his passion for even that. When getting ready for his fight with Giichi, his hate flared up in, like, one panel, and the rest of the time it was like "Hey, I know it's petty and all, but it's just a principle thing, you know?"

Magatsu has a more defined sense of morals and ethics than most BotI characters, which is one of the things that makes him about the most awesome thing ever. He's growing up, which means he's starting to figure out that hatred doesn't get you anywhere, but he's spent so much time being ruled by it that it's opening a big hole in him and he doesn't have anything to fill it up with yet. With Giichi, it was very much a case of what he thought he SHOULD do, as opposed to anything he wanted to do.

Interesting Idea about the brothers stuff.

Let's go with your version (*imagines Manji dropping Magatsu like a hot sack of potatoes when realizing they're being watched*).

Yes, because it's fun. And it fits the scene and characters.