GARO – Kaoru Mitsuki: when a pawn is the hinge of the game, and destiny plays the pieces.

ATTENTION: Remember, if you have not seen the series yet, reading this text could frustrate you.


At chess, a pawn is a simple piece, limited in movements, used to give support to greater strategies; there are many of them; it can be sacrificed. It is also which does to progress a game; the one that can give a big surprise elimitating a greater piece or to become one, excepting the king. But it is difficult that a single pawn happen to be the goal of the greater pieces of both sides, it does not have resources to be so feared or appraised, excepting if its race to get the oposite basis line, or to the enemy king, is quite clear. Here is Kaoru: a privileged pawn.

And, be damned if she has wishes to be it! She found in this game by the will of someone else, and by the will of someone else has continued towards its end; she has not neither voice nor vote; she can not even see the board and, moreover, until late she does not realize it.



Chap. 1. The picture book with the golden knight, its empty final: these far remembrances appear in Kaoru’s dreams announcing the irruption of somthing from the past into the present. Chap. 10. Her old teddy bear: another child symbol that also materializes because it was preserved by the publisher of the book. When the teddy bear becomes threatening and makes her to awake so upset, is telling that something is not what seems, and that there is a motives to fear it. It might be announcing her hidden self, the one known and fostered by Ryuzaki: the one that makes her the right host to Meshia, the greatest horror.

A simple girl with dreams of greatness, it is so, a very normal girl that, thanks to her dreams and some events marked within her subconscious mind when she was a little girl, will find tied herself to a mortal game. She was also the daughter of a man who, somehow, found himself to, but with a lot of lesser intensity.

So, Kaoru is a master piece in the framework of destiny, a coveted pawn by both conscious and subconscious selves from both sides. All they have come into the world to make their work, in order to give more hope to mankind. But to reach it, a lot of threats will have had to soar over them to make that those predestinaded pieces could get some resources from the depth of their souls.

Kaoru, as a good pawn, was used, and sustained in the ignorance of her role, which avoided her weakening. This purpose by fate has taken different aspects in the ones that would have been able to make a revelation to her.

Barago is the most evident case of deliberation with few ethical goals, sustained for many years. Sure, he wanted to preserve her whole integrity, and approached to her as the psychologist Karune Ryuzaki. She could vent before him, he always understood her, and never pressed her; he showed to have a professional but warm interest about her; offering her support and high spirits, welcoming her when she ran away from Kouga and felt the first effects of her next agony. Plus, he believed her story. In no moment he discovered the smallest evidence of his masquerade. Luckily, when he showed it, she had completely reinstated her trust on Kouga.

Chap. 24. Kaoru has been possessed by Meshia. But she did not want to share power with anybody else and ate Barago. Kouga and Rei will not find easy to free her, since they can not to attack her . If they had not been so disposed, she would have remained as a host of Meshia forever.

Kouga is the other major piece that has Korus’s life in his hands, quite literally, and who would have to tell her. It is humanly understandable that he found difficult to notice her which, indeed, was a death sentence; but it was a duty accepted when he decided to spare her life. It seems that he intended to postpone it exactly until before accomplishing a hundred days when, predictably, she would be bad enough to accept willingly the sacrifice. But as he is brought over the moment of making it, he is still unable; he clutches at her life as if it was his own. He even risks to obtain himself the Barancas fruit which he has so few possibilities to get. Thanks to his unability to accept her fatal fate, Kaoru survived.

Even if he did not it deliberately, it is true that Kouga took advantage of her power of attraction towards horrors to do his work. But she is still alive and, in spite of her initial resistance, she finished trusting him up.


Chap. 5. When Kouga told Kaoru (chap. 3) that he wanted her to remain near him –he already had given her the ring- she interpreted it as a covered marriage proposal, and became angry. Now, being homeless due to her disastrous economy that makes her changing work often, she takes advantage of that unawary proposal: an evidence of his ignorance about some social ways. He did not remember his offer -rather, a commandment- but asked her to do some works at the house in exchange. Kaoru will not complain about his respectability and will find him worthy of trust, but she also will get some sharp remarks by him.

But it was lucky to reach this point, because this pair remained chained each to other from the very first episode. It was a pitty that this confidence, already very clear and reinforced by other feelings, was betrayed. The chain broke. She ran away, without the ring that asured her survival, and she could not be located anymore. To Kaoru it was very difficult to overcome such a disappointment. Only her nearby death gives a chance to Kouga of showing his authentic feelings by facts. A new chain builded right then will be neither a monitoring ring nor any kind of Damocles’ sword, but will be forged of love and trustfulness, and even will allow them to share feelings being apart.

Chap. 22. Her conscious alliance to two “major pieces” makes Kaoru, from a pawn, to become the king. Her moves still goes on limited, and she is still the center of the game, but no one has her in the ignorance any more.


The other great piece that would have been able to talk to her about that stuff was Rei Suzumura. He wished to annoy Kouga so much that it is surprising that he did not do it. Perhaps the reason was that he accepted Kouga as the responsible person because it was his work to kill her. We also have some details showing that he believed them to be lovers, or so. It looks as Rei did not think to have any right to talk to her without Kouga’s permision. When at last he said something, already knew a part of the story and the tie with Kouga was virtually broken.

We have the right to ask if to use her as a bait was the only reason or the main one to leave her alive after her first encounter with Kouga at the art gallery.

Later we see that the famous picture of the landscape had impressed him more than seemed, specially when they turned up in situ and when realized that she had painted herself with her bouquet in her hand. A very special inspiration, this one. Perhaps Kouga believed she had the gift to shape a moment from the future. So, when they met at the magical world in chapter 24, he tried to use its amplified forces in behalf of the picture (still not drawn) of the winged Garo. Hardly these wings could appear in the world of the humans, so, if they had to appear, it had to be in this dimension. In any case, he trusted that Kaoru might put the magic in motion.



Chaps. 24 & 25. At the magical world, Kaoru and Kouga see the pictures she has painted, plus one still undrawn: a stylized winged golden knight. His look to her is revealing: first surprise/admitation, afterwards tenderness, and later a "let’s try!" Next, he takes the picture to be absorbed by his heart, which surprised her. While Kouga fights to Meshia, Kaoru is visited by her deceased father; he advises to paint, so someone will be able to take out strength from the image. Then the elements to paint appear and soon the winged knight is shaped. Just being finished, Kouga’s body, virtually buried under lots of horrors, generates an energetic burst that melts down all of them, that brings his armor, that has given him wings and, maybe, that has expanded his fighting skills or powers.

There is another evidence of this gift. Episode 14th, she painted Garo and Zero back to back, and soon visualizes them struggling, as indeed it will happen few chapters afterwards, and she runs out to try to block it, in spite of her former failure to appease Rei’s hostility.

Another possible one? The end: Kaoru has given to Kouga one of the picture books by her father, and she has painted the last. What will she have invoked from the future, cappable to make Kouga to cry! Imagination is free.

So light evidences? Maybe. But once a horror disguised as a bad sculptor gave her an answer to the enigma of the empty page, which she ended considering it up seriously: "it’s your future", he said with a very different goal.

Another time, an infuriated Kouga brands her drawings as "scribbles", even if he does not consider them like this; but at that moment such a word has a shocking effect on her. We know that she has forgotten why she wanted to be an artist; in thoughts, she complains can not draw like before: her finger do not obey. Then it is, too, when she strolls her hand, as being a caress, on the drawing of Kouga’s hand, which is the first signal we have on her feelings towards him. In short, it is a sensitive moment.

And the one that will help her to overcome the artistic crisis will be another horror. The serial murderer that steals fingers will tell her that the magic of painting is to shape the one thing being important at a moment. Kaoru understands it.

The part of the crisis depending on Koga will not be so easy to solve. He has noticed what is happening within him, so he is in full phase of selfnegation. He considers her to be butterfingers and that makes a great fuss of everything; but she only gnores everything about him and the Makai Knights, and is an expressive person, opposite to him.


Chaps. 1 & 2. To rush a girl, to immobilize her against a column, to take her neck, to put a lighter almost on her face, and to impose her a ring –which she can not take out- to be locable everytime, is not the best way to start a relationship. But Kouga does not mind; to pursue a horror until an operating theater or until the dressing room of a girls’ high school, either. No one but him is capable of giving such absurd orders as "do not approach to watches this evening ", or "since now I want you close to me", without any other explanation, and to expect that Kaoru obeys. No wonder that she finds him quite unkind and can not see his nobility and kindness easily, well hidden under his surly façade.

Hearing such things as "... and you weighed more I guessed," or "I don’t mind anything of someone else", or "you’re in the way, get out!", are not touching to a girl’s heart. Not easy to supose what joined Kaoru and Kouga, so different as they are. But, as everybody know, falling in love is a blind thing, and anything can activate it.

I do not know if it is truth, but I feel like, even though we are often allowed to listen Kaoru’s thoughts, we have very little information to know the evolution of her feelings towards Kouga. We know, indeed, that it implies trust, easily deductible since the end of chapter 4th. So Kouga goes out without problems in the episode 11th, after she is given back her soul, some residual sensation had to remain on her lips by his kiss. She asked him if he had not made her anything weird, and he could lie with impunity.

Chap. 14. With her best purpose, Kaoru has gone to meet Rei; she gave a cake to him -he has a sweet tooth- and has asked him to make peace with Kouga, wishing they to work together. Rei does not believe her or does not want to believe; he knocks her down on his bed; only the intervention of his madou pendant avoids her to be kissed. She will run away so taught a lesson that in arriving at home she will be not able to notice that Kouga is interested (it is the first time) about what happens to her. She will reject him with roughness, leaving him like “what have I made?”.

In spite of his selfnegation, Kaoru erodes Kouga’s protective shield, and it does not take long before to see some signals. She must notice that something had changed when he came back from his appointment with the Makai priest Amon. She herself seems to be thrilled to see him. To me, it looks as they both “know”.

Pity that he was not capable to talk to her, when already there was a Barancas fruit for her. I think that to listen the truth from the mouth of an almost dead horror was a lot worse that to hear it from him. Hardly she would have become so overwhelmed if such a disappointment had not had a strong component of romantic crisis.

If Ryuzaki received her at his home or if he went to look for her as soon as he knew she was rounding over there is not important. Because he offered to her the support she needed, and took care of. His offer of letting her remain at his home must not obey just to make her to feel safe, but to mantain her under his authority, because his big stroke was nearby. But Kaoru has terryfying visions derivative from her state of victim of blood of a horror reaching a hundred days, and she runs away frightened. Barago will endeavour it, but he will not be able to find her immediately.

They had said to her that she was left some few days of life, that her death would be agonic, that it did not have any way to run away from the horrors that besieged her since several months ago, and there was a group of mad Makai people that wanted to kill her. Moreover, the one person that she had trusted the most, the one that she had learned to love, and to whom also she had seemed to like, had used her to his demon hunting, such addict at work he is. No wonder that the poor girl did not wish to live anymore.

Chap. 19. Rei had found and brought Kaoru at the Makai settlement to coerce Kouga. This one achieved to free her thanks to a stratagem, so he had to fight to death with Rei. But she does not let herself to be impressed by it, neither seeing him strongly injured, nor when the Makai priestess Jabi, who arrived in time of saving him, denied that there was bad faith by him. Kaoru will not dare to believe anything. Her wound looks deep. It will be difficult to Gonza to retain her.

Only when she starts her last journey, hope will prick to her door, because Kouga, blind to any evidence of her rejection, has a will stronger than any prevention by her. Such a great faith shows that he expects Kaoru to trust him. And, it will be so since now. Did anybody doubt about Kouga’s mental power?

Then, psychologically speaking, we might guess another theory - complementing the others- about why Kaoru was left alive. He could have seen in her his own flight from his absorbent world of darkness -if this had been the goal of his soul-, in an absolutely unaware way, and, therefore, he was the apparently unintentional instigator of this relationship. Such a vision would explain why he is capable to let her entering within his life, and to develope passionate feelings: he was of so closed nature that he was going to need many years to reach it, even more than a single life.

Then, the chain that ties them since the beginning, although it is the same one, would have two aspects: "I leave to you alive and save you from the horrors that will come towards you", and "I kidnap you so you can save me from the horrors that have kidnapped my life ". The second aspect of the chain would be the one that would go on after the series finished, the one that would mark Kouga’s dependency. His faith and his love allows her to leave to achieve her dream, but we have already seen what happens when somebody puts between them, like Barago. Kouga would not incline towards the dark side again because he learned a terryfying lesson, but he seems capable to show violent jealousy, at least until he could manage his own humanity, and until it balances his ideals. There would be another possibility, however, if he would lose his hope: he would withdraw again to his world of darkness, now as a suicidal act, which would be coherent with his introverted nature.

But we are realistic and consistent with the trend of a series finishing well: Kouga’s will/faith -which is his own magic- would do impossibe the appearance of somebody or something trully capable of breaking the psychic chain joining Kaoru and him.

Fairly corresponding, Kaoru would also have an unconscious psychological reason to build her part of the chain. These chains are always a thing between two ones. How popopularment is said, two ones do not quarrel if one does not want. Kouga would never have been able to drag her if she was not the suitable person. In the same way, Barago would never have found Kaoru or, if having meet her, symbols would not have pointed her out as the best candidate to be Meshia’s host, and he would have gone on searching. By her alliance with Kouga, she might be seeking –unaware– the means of freeing from what is dark within herself. That dark self is made evident in her contact with horrors:

1. She decided to become a famous artist, and a horror that manages an art gallery offers her a chance that, otherwise, she would not have been able to obtain. A serious warning to be realistic: to work more, to dream less (chap.1)
2. She wants to make easy money, and falls down inside the paws of a swindler. Curiously, it is not so important if that woman was possessed. (chap. 2).
3. She realizes that her pictorial milestones are passed the deadline fixed while being a little girl, and a demoniac clock/watch leaves her without time: her thought materialised because it was strong. Being so dreamy, his energy/time is lost at the mental world. At the end, even Koga says her to value it more (chap. 3)
4. Even a temporary crisis -with its corresponding shadows- can be a target of a horror. She has forgotten why she paints, and a horror gives her an answer belonging to its possessed victim. She could have left then, but instead she plays the piano (?) to the horror and falls down before it (chap. 8)
5. Her obsession with the void page of the picture book by her father leads her into the den of a horror what, logically, has an useful answer (chap. 15).

Chap. 22 Like us, also Kouga has got some troubles to understand why Kaoru has been chosen as Meshia’s host. She looks perfect, but part of the series is devoted to showing us her dark self, which does she ended up putting on the path of some horrors. The attraction horrors-Kaoru is mutual. Kouga frees her once and again without noticing the evidence in front of him. He can not help it. They both need each to other. And destiny needs them with their virtues and faults, to unleash the facts that will bring some hope to mankind. Here Kouga has the answer Amon did not give to him in chapter 16: Makai Knights fight, precisely, to offer more hope that everything could change.


Beaten Barago, Meshia and Kiva, mankind will not have so much pressure of horrors and other possibilities can be opened. The question is not if there will continue existing horrors, but if mankind will be able to generate light enough, so they have less place. Light is created when we, humans, learn lessons by the fate or, how Asians say, when we burn karma. This is the traditional mean of spiritual evolution.

And they lived happily even after? Not so much. Poor Kouga does not know how to tell Kaoru he loves her, in spite of he has shown it widely. He only said, pressed by circumstances, he needs her, and he had opened his heart to her. Maybe she understood it. Badly if not.

Chap. 25 Kaoru remains shocked hearing from him that she has talent, and going beyond with a deep bow. Really, he values her work and perhaps she did not know. We want to suppose that he does not go with her to the airport because horrors do not give him a truce.


ESOTERICAL NOTE. In real life, horrors are egregors, shapes of imperfect thought, which attract similar thoughts from everywhere. So people having this sort of thoughts will be overwhelmed and, perhaps, surpassed: possessed. Also, there are equivalents to Makai Knights, but they are not an only group of people or a single person, but many of them, by all the world. Any person who puts his/her will on purification of the human species and their environment, might be considered a makai knight. Summarizing: pure thoughts drive away harmful shapes of thought. Heaven has hope in our victory agains evil; because of that, from time to time, It sends to incarnate superior/perfect people that make an extra contribution of light and teach others to use it. Hope is the only thing that we have.

Radix, many thanks again for your help.