Afro's Psychology - Essay Example

?Afro’s Psychology Introduction “Afro Samurai” is a Japanese manga by Takashi Okazaki. The manga is about a character referred to as Afro Samurai whoduring his childhood witnessed the murder of his father who was the number 1 fighter. The number 1 elect is considered the most ferocious fighter in the world, possesses mystical powers, and can only be challenged by fighter number 2. Justice, the then number 2 fighter callously killed Afro’s father, Rokutaro, to win the title. This fierce and bloody happening becomes visually encoded in Afro’s memory to an extent that he decides to avenge his father’s death. This paper focuses on the character Afro in “Afro Samurai” and seeks to analyse the psychology behind his fantasies and thirst for revenge. In his adulthood, Afro is an accomplished swordsman and his vengeful nature is patent when he recalls his father’s assassination and vows to seek revenge. Justice was considered the number one fighter in the world and could only be challenged by the fighter number two who eventually turns out to be Afro. The encounter turns out to be jagged since he has to face bounty hunters, bar ruffians as well as dedicated monks. Being the only one with the mandate to challenge fighter number 1, he is confronted by several individuals seeking to acquire his title, which was the only way they could get their hands on the title number 1 (Okazaki 7-15). His arrogance and self-centredness is clearly spelt during his pursue for revenge when he hurts anyone who is brave enough to dare get into his way. He chooses to forget the acts of kindness showed by his childhood friends when he kills them. Afro lacks genuine personality. However, Afro’s sidekick, Ninja is a source of humour in the story full of bloodshed and terror. Afro continually tries to silence Ninja. He is chatty and light-hearted. Ninja is depicted as Afro’s inner voice that keeps conversing with him. Ninja’s talkative nature is used to bring out Afro’s emotions and narcissist personality. However, Afro keeps shutting him up which demonstrates Afro’s attempts to silence his inner voice from warning him against his own misdeeds. This becomes evident when Afro kills so many people and is shocked which is contrasting to his stance. He thus decides the best he can do is to silence his inner self thus, he repeatedly keeps saying, “Shut up” particularly when he has to disobey his conscience. Ninja reminds Afro of his choice of vengeance while Afro was fighting Jinno, which fully portrays him as Afro’s memory. However, just as Afro used to shut Ninja, he chooses to disobey his emotion. He pretends to forget the pain he suffered when his father was murdered when he kills Shichigoro while his son is watching, just as it had happened to him (Okazaki 20-33). In his quest for the title, he is challeged by his childhood friend Jinno whose master is the fighter number 2. Jinno begs Afro not to kill his master but Afro egoistically kills him, which makes Jinno throw himself down a cliff. He thus acquires the mandate to challege his childhood enemy, Justice whom he defeats and acquires the number 1 title. His superiority complex is evident when he acquires the title and chooses to spend his time carving his memories in wooden sculptures. He makes carves of the persons he had encoutered in his past. His vangeful nature is clear when he kills his own father after he had been resurrected. His father helps him defeat his enemies but instead of apprecciating his help, he decides to kill him for the selfish reason of regaining the fighter number 1 title (Okazaki 90-95). Afro is a character full of revenge and believes he is very superior such that no one can defeat him. I think that Afro has a psychological disorder referred to as arrogant narcissist personality disorder characterised by tendency to exaggerate his capability, and takes advantage of other people to achieve his goals. He also has unrealistic imaginations and fantasies, is always seeking positive fortification, is unemotional, does not want to be surpassed by anyone, has no empathy, obsessed with his fantasies, and pursues egocentric goals. He is exaggeratedly obsessed with power and vanity. The condition can be diagnosed by evaluating the inclination to grandiose sense, preoccupation with power and infinite success fantasies, exploitative personality, arrogance, and being envious of others. The above symptoms are evident in Afro who kills everyone for power, believes he is superior, is full of arrogance, and takes advantage of people and situations to achieve his selfish goals (Okazaki 100-105) The condition could have been caused by the severe emotional occurrence in his childhood when he witnessed his father being murdered. Therapy for this disorder should be integrative of several types of therapy. Such treatment is referred to as Schema Therapy, which helps narcissist increase empathy in their interrelationships with people and modifies their self-centredness. The therapy also encourages the individuals to use their energies and exceptional talents to help others or for gainful endeavours (Kellogg 94-97). As demonstrated in Afro’s case, several factors help in embedding of information deep in memory so that it can be retrieved when needed. These factors include primacy, recentness effect, levels of processing, cues-internal/external/environmental, repetition. For deeper processing of information it must encoded in a way that it can be retrieved (Kellogg 98-102). The ways for information encoding include acoustic, which entails encoding of sounds, visual coding that refers to encoding based on appearance while semantic code entails encoding information based on its meaningfulness. Encoded information can either be stored for short term or for long periods. Long-term memory is developed with repetition and practice. Encoded information can then be retrieved when required. Semantic information is easy to remember compare to visually coded or acoustic. In Afro’s case, he easily remembers his father’s murder and the circumstances that followed since all the three information encoding schemes were involved. His craving to earn the fighter number one title and aspiration to avenge his father’s death required him to recall the episode often. Thus, it was stored in the long-term memory. Storage of information in long-term memory requires paying attention, understanding concepts, organizing concepts depending on their relatedness, recitation, or verbalization of the information, visualization, associating the information with familiar objects or ideas, and consolidation, which entails review of information (Kellogg 94-98). Works Cited Okazaki, Takashi. Afro Samurai, Volume 2. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2009. Kellogg, Ronald. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology. New York: SAGE, 2011. Read More