* Spoiler alert: this post covers major events, from the basic setup to the ending. Better to watch the anime first!
In Sparks of Tomorrow, Kihachi loses his brother and starts to doubt dreams and people. Inako lacks confidence, yet never lets go of her trust in others.
✦ Three Characters, Three Types
The type calls are readings based on scenes
The two don't simply copy each other's way. Together, they learn when doubt is needed and when trust is.
A Time When 'Electricity' Was Still a Dream
The story is set in early 20th-century Kyoto, where steam engines have advanced. Smoke from the engines blankets the streets, and electricity is still a technology of the future that could change the world.
The boy Kihachi imagines electric inventions with his older brother Seiroku, and writes down what they want to build in the '20th Century Electrical Catalog.' The two promise to open the age of electricity.
But Seiroku takes the catalog to the battlefield and never comes back.
Having lost his brother and the proof of their dream at once, Kihachi loses the courage to keep inventing. He becomes someone who doesn't believe anything easily.
Then Inako, 'the daughter of a sake-brewing family,' appears in front of him. She wants to become someone who brews good sake like her late mother, but at home she's seen as a clumsy daughter with little confidence.
Because of the family's circumstances, she's even in a position where she has to go through with an arranged marriage to Yosuke, heir to a steam-industry conglomerate.
When Inako shows up with the electric catalog, Kihachi comes face to face with the dream he tried to forget.
The two recreate the inventions in the catalog and set out together to escape the engagement. As the story goes on, the truth comes out.
Yosuke was also someone who dreamed of an electric future with Seiroku, and after losing him, he's trying to turn back the past with electric technology.
Kihachi: ENTP 6w7
Kihachi reads as an ENTP 6w7. He isn't satisfied with just coming up with ideas. He wants to turn them into inventions he can hold, and check the result.
✦ Things Built With Electricity
Electric technology made real by Kihachi and Yosuke
Even when Yosuke's steam technology pushes him back, he stands up to it with his own inventions. After building the Electric Full Moon, he even goes up against the steam pipe organ with an electric performance.
When the usual way gets blocked, he finds a solution by combining different materials and principles. That's where Kihachi's change of perspective and experimental spirit show.
That doesn't make Kihachi a carefree thrill-seeker, though. After his brother and the catalog vanished, he was afraid of losing his dream again. Even when the catalog came back, he didn't jump straight to trust.
When Yosuke declares the catalog fake, saying the secret he's looking for isn't in it, Kihachi is crushed. Still, he tries to check whether it's real first. He weighs the risk he'd have to bear if he failed.
This wariness is closer to self-defense that came after losing something precious than to a cynicism that pushes everyone away.
✦ Kihachi's Change
From doubt as a shield to choosing trust
The change begins when Inako believes in Kihachi's talent. Yosuke insists the catalog is fake, but Inako sees Kihachi's dream and talent as real, whether or not the catalog is.
That means a failed invention doesn't erase the possibility he held. Later, Inako hears the story of a fabric shop owner who misses her late husband, and asks for help. Kihachi sets out to find a way for electricity to ease that sorrow.
Technology isn't only for changing the future. He learns it can also help the person right in front of you.
At the end, Kihachi tells Inako directly that he trusts her, then goes back with her to the collapsing underground facility to save Yosuke. The old Kihachi would probably have stopped right there, because he couldn't verify the danger.
He didn't become someone who trusts with no basis. He chose trust after watching Inako, who had failed and tried again alongside him. If doubt was the shield that protected him, he's now lowering that shield and moving forward.
Inako: ENFP 2w1
Inako can be read as an ENFP 2w1. She lacks confidence and makes plenty of mistakes, but she never hesitates to believe in other people's potential.
When Yosuke calls the catalog fake and tries to crush Kihachi's dream, Inako looks not at whether the catalog is perfect, but at what Kihachi wants to make.
Her trust is closer to spotting the possibility in the person in front of her first than to trusting without grounds.
Her empathy doesn't end in words, either. Having lost her mother, Inako carries regret. When she hears about the fabric shop owner who shut her heart after her husband died, she asks Kihachi for help.
She connects her own grief to someone else's, and tries to find together what that person needs. In her wish to help others and her will to act on what she thinks is right, you can see the 2w1 side.
✦ Inako's Trust, and Its Shadow
Consideration can tip into self-sacrifice
But Inako's trust doesn't always lead to a healthy choice. Wanting to protect the electric catalog and Kihachi's dream, she tries to accept the engagement to Yosuke without telling Kihachi.
It's a choice made for others, but she pushed her own dream and heart to the back. This scene shows the weakness too: her consideration can tip into self-sacrifice.
Of course, she doesn't stay stuck in self-sacrifice. As she grows, she gets a chance to act on her dream of brewing sake like her mother, and begins to choose the future she wants herself. Her ENFP side becomes clearer here.
Instead of following the set path of an arranged marriage, she believes in a possibility that hasn't happened yet and jumps onto a new road. First she believes in Kihachi's dream and gets him moving again.
In the end, she comes to believe she, too, can live her own dream, not a life someone else decided.
What Inako needed to change was to include 'herself' among the people she protects and looks after.
Another Choice, Shown by Yosuke
Yosuke isn't simply a villain hungry for power. He's skilled in technology, and he once dreamed of the age of electricity with Seiroku. But after losing Seiroku, he couldn't let him go, and tries to bring him back through the Electric Brain.
✦ The Same Loss, a Different Choice
Two people who lost Seiroku, at a fork in the road
Kihachi went through the same loss and still looks at the future again through Inako and his companions. Yosuke, on the other hand, bets everything on reviving the past.
That's why it matters that Kihachi and Inako choose to go back for Yosuke. It doesn't mean forgiving him and wiping every wrong away. Even if he walked a wrong road because of loss, it's the choice not to let him die in that state.
By saving Yosuke, the two don't justify his actions. They show that even someone trapped in the past still has another future left.
Doubt and trust look like opposites, but it's hard to move forward with only one of them.
Kihachi learned to trust someone without giving up his habit of doubting people. Inako learned how to keep her heart that believes in others without sacrificing her own dream.
The two helped each other so that each one's weakness wouldn't swallow that person's whole world.
That's all for this post. See you next time.
🌐 Korean version: 꿈을 잃은 소년과 믿음을 놓지 못하는 소녀 — 《20세기 전기 목록》 성격유형 분석
Returner's Magic S2 MBTI: How Far Should You Trust Allies?
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