After Hong Lu's Canto having a downright happy ending, I wonder if all the excess edge will come in Ryoshu's story. Is her child confirmed death or will we get the scene of it burning to death after which Ryoshu distorts like Heath in his own Canto.
Maybe, the Cantos are based on the respective books of their Sinners, but also the on conversations Roland had with the Sephirah in Library of Runia, the virtues the Sephirah represent*, and the life of the authors. Yi Sang and Rodya both take quite heavily from their authors life, Don Quixote is based more on adaptations of the original work, while Heathcilff is that most adaptive of the works. I've also read miscellaneous speculation that since she makes a special not of how much she dislike having her memories messed with in Canto 4, and her having the passive Mutilated Memories when fighting Lei Heng, that her mind might have been messed with or her child was thrown into a concept incinerator. Concepts of truth, family, perspective, religon and criticism of feudalism also appear in Hell Screen so I think they are worth mentioning. Ryoshu's EGO does have her lying before a Buddhist alter and she is the first Sinner to get One Sin and a Hundred Good Deeds.
*Since Binah and Hokma are so different in feeling to Heathcliff and Don Quixote, it was a bit hard to tell with only them. But Hong Lu is such a good match for Chessed and his conversation with Roland, it does seem like a pattern. While the next ones in the line up, Ryoshu as the 'Courage to Protect,' and Meursault as the 'Expectation of the Meaning of Existence' also seem like really good matches.
Ryoshu is absolutely going on a rampage in her Canto, that's for sure, considering her portrait in the Archive. There's definitely going to be a moment where she finally starts fighting back/struggling and protecting something, with Gebura's "The Courage to Protect" and all. She would mirror Gebura/Kali pretty nicely.
I would agree, but I think there's also a chance that her chapter will deal with suicidal ideation. whenever she gets fucked Ryoshu is the first one to give up, both when Ricardo arrived and Don left the team she immediately lit up another cigarette, not doing anything else. I do think this characterization is important as we see the same thing with Lei Heng, the second he see Kong Qiu he gives up and begs for his life. So unlike Tanya, who discounts the death of the people close to her as unimportant, or Kali who lashed out in hatred, Ryoshu will end up giving up on life before she spurred into action.
Hell Screen does feature Yoshihide committing suicide, the monkey jumping into the flames with Yoshihide's daughter, and the author, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, committed suicide as well. In his suicide note he talks about how the fear of death was drained out of him, and now being unable to enjoy life has chosen death, with him clarifying that while he wished to be a god in the past, now he no longer desires to. To expand more of possible connections between Ryoshu and Akutagawa, he was known to feud with another author, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. Akutagawa was a structuralist, who believed the structure and presentation of a story was more important than the lyrics, i.e the content or plot of the story. Ryoshu is known to dislike the Ring so I think there's more than a little chance that this feud over story would be recast as a feud over styles of art here.
Another important story for Ryoshu seems to be Spider's Thread by the same author, as she has a lot of spider imagery due to being connected to Red Eyes. In it, a sinner who has only ever committed one good deed in their life has that good deed some back to help in the form of the thread of a spider he saved. But in both works the thread is severed when he Sinner tries to strike those who try to follow him down. it is also worth noting that Spider's Thread is a retelling of the Fable of the Onion from the Brother's Karamavoz.
Akutagawa did also write the first Japanese Dystopian novel, which is heavily autobiographical. Basically everyone in the story can be said to be him in some shape or form. The only question is whether it was intentional satire of the Japanese, or his it was his attempt to express his personal suffering.
And all of that isn't mentioning possible inspiration from Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction...
