Dream with Our Eyes Open

Mild Spoilers for Saiyuki, vol. 5 and thereafter

This regards info you will find all over the WWW if you look up "Cho Hakkai" ... but you have been warned.

It's been mentioned that Hakkai could be just as subject to the Minus Wave as any other youkai if he took off his power limiters. So every time he makes a choice to do this, in addition to the emotional distaste he feels about his yukai form (it reminds him of the whole horrible sequence with Kanan's kidnapping, rape, and death, and his own transformation; it's violent and unlike him, etc.), he's risking the permanent loss of his human self.

There's a beautiful story-song piece that was performed (and I guess written) by Tommy Makem, called "Peter Kagan and the Wind" (lyrics and script here), about a fisherman who marries a selkie (a/k/a "silkie" - basically, a were-seal). Selkies can take human form, but in one version of the traditional legends about them, once they resume their seal form, they can never again become human.

In "Peter Kagan," the fisherman goes out one day, and an unexpected storm puts his life in danger. His selkie wife can always "see" him magically when he's at sea, so she knows he's going to die if nothing intervenes. She's faced with the choice of losing her husband/lover to death if she does nothing - or losing him as his wife if she resumes her seal form, goes after him, and saves his life, because she will never again live as a human woman.

Fortunately Hakkai's choice each time isn't quite as automatically devastating as the seal-wife's - there's always a pretty good chance that he will be able to come back and be sweet, rational Hakkai again. But I think the parallel is still there.

Hmmm ... .