Rika the Breeder (Spoilers)

Hiro's past: Hiro's mother was raped while her sons watched. She later killed herself. Both boys have developed an obsession with saving helpless people, and both feel in their heart of hearts that they can't. Hiro's brother Tetsu also hanged himself after being bullied at the school. The doctors said he'd have died anyway, he was so badly abused. His diary is full of the same line: Hiro save me. Hiro now has a psychosomatic reaction to those words. His body moves by itself to help the person who says it, but he himself has a racking coughing fit and doesn't really know what's happening to him. In his diary Tetsu also wrote 'He's going to kill me.' We don't know who he is, but when Hiro comes to the school to find out how his brother died, several people are out to get him simply because he's Tetsu's brother. One of these is Gil, another is Miyamae the librarian. Rika seems determined to have him, for the same reason. The oddity in all this is that the top members of the Salon now were only powerless first years when Tetsu died.

The Salon setup: the Salon consists of the Aces, the executive, at the top; the Kings, the regular members, below them; and the Queens, the new entrants/ catamites under them (literally.) Queens in time grow up to be Kings. The rest of the school are called Jacks. Salon members can be raped and bullied by other members if the head ace gives his permission, but apparently are safe from rape by Jacks. The Jacks go white and run whenever threatened with Salon retribution. But Rika is always on the point of being raped by any number of Jacks, and no-one seems to be able to do a thing about it. Whether this is part of being the breeder no-one knows.

Rika: One of the big questions of 'Rika' is to what extent Rika is a victim and to what extent a manipulator in his own right. Like everyone else, his position is completely dependent on Gil's approval, and Gil at one point pimps him out to the school's principal to demonstrate that fact. Rika still has a veto on Salon rapes and so on. He put his veto on anyone bullying Hiro even before Hiro knew who he was, which is why the Salon members bullying Hotaru at the very start of the story ran when he appeared. At the same time Rika is the universal and apparently natural object of sexual attack by everyone in the school. The graffiti all do variations on 'Rape Rika.' It's possible to see Rika as being in the classic female position in the male world. Powerful because of his sexuality, but at risk from that same sexuality; and using it as a way of surviving in the male jungle. Near the end of vol 1 we have, as a demonstration of this, a flashback to Tetsu telling him 'You'll never be a K(ing); you can only be a Q(ueen). You'll be a Q as long as you live. If you don't want to be destroyed, become the best Q there is. All men have mother complexes. Rika, become a Mama.' Naturally this raises a few questions about whether Rika is suppposed to be a symbol of Tetsu and Hiro's own mother. Suppose Rika took the mother role with Tetsu as he does with Gil and Hotaru, what might have happened then?

He also has a psychosomatic symptom: he becomes unable to move when someone points a finger at his eye. Rika is blind in his left eye. He says it was taken out when he was in first year, by someone in the Salon. Hiro says Tetsu was never in the Salon - if he had been, he wouldn't have been raped. But we learn at the end of vol 1 that Tetsu not only was in the Salon, he was its head. There's a flashback to when Rika lost his eye, which happens at a point where Hiro is holding Rika down on the bed and paralyzing him with a finger pointed at his eye. We hear what may be Tetsu's voice speaking, we see from Rika's viewpoint as he lies on his back screwing with a guy, we see the guy poised to plunge a screwdriver into Rika's eye, but we don't know who the boy is. The obvious conclusion is that it's Tetsu. But there's Anji, Gil's assistant, who had a thing for Tetsu and who goes on about what a wonderful guy he was. He says that Rika abused Tetsu, not the other way around. All this puts a strange slant on Rika's attachment to Hiro. Does he want Hiro on his side because he's strong, the way everyone says Tetsu was? Does he want to revenge himself on Hiro for what Hiro's brother did to him? Was it Hiro's brother who did it? And so on.

We do know that Rika uses people. At the very beginning of the book, Hiro interrupts what he thinks is a case of rape and abuse. It's not. It's the initiation of a boy called Hotaru into the salon. Because Hiro interrupts the ceremony Hotaru isn't admitted and becomes a lawful prey for the non-Salon members who were jealous of his acceptance. But we're told that Rika knew Hiro always came to that place at the same time every day, and that he scheduled Hotaru's initiation for that time precisely so that Hiro would interrupt it. 'Rika never had any intention of letting Hotaru into the salon.' Later Hotaru is abducted and imprisoned by some nonSalon members. It's supposed to look like a simple Jack rape. But it turns out these guys are 'pets'- Salon wannabes who show promise and who thus are given a quasi-protected relationship with certain salon members. It was one of the Salon who arranged for Hotaru to be abducted and tortured: probably Miyamae, probably with Gil behind him. (And why? Nothing to do with Hotaru himself. The idea is to scare the bejasus out of Hiro so he won't mess with the Salon aces. Whatever Hiro's brother did, it sure made everyone leery of Hiro.) Rika screws (literally) Hotaru's whereabouts out of Gil and shows up to save him. Maybe. Or maybe he showed up to save Hiro, who was about to be put through the same treatment? We still don't know. Rika persuades Hotaru to leave the school; but he also arranges the perfect revenge on Hotrau's tormentors. They're to be allowed into the Salon: and their initiation will be a reprise of all the tortures they inflicted on Hotaru. Feet cut up by razors, imprisoned in the cellar, raped by four or five Kings... Is Rika an arch-manipulator or is he being as human as he can be in the circumstances? Who knows?

And that's the way it goes. Endlessly, for another two volumes, if and when. Enjoy, she says grimly.

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