While no one will ever confuse it with The Lord of the Rings, by British author J.R.R. Tolkien, Nabari is starting to show some similarities to the classic epic fantasy novel. The first similarity is the green-haired loli ninja nurse. Everyone remembers the green-haired loli ninja nurse from The Lord of the Rings.
The first thought I had upon seeing Juuji Minami (Juuji-kun) was “That had better not be a boy.” Why? Well, most of the Japanese names I’ve heard that end in “ji” are boy’s names: Yuji (Sakai), Kenji (Ninomiya), Seiji (Mido), and so on. And most of the anime characters who are called “kun” are also boys. (Although Kotaro calls Raimei “Raimei-kun” and Raimei is definitely a girl.) And her last name is Minami, which to readers of Jason’s blog is associated with trap. (She even has a hairclip like Mako-cakes!) It doesn’t help that Nabari has some of the prettiest boys this side of Loveless. But Juuji is a girl, so don’t worry.
Anyway, back to The Lord of the Rings. The main premise of Nabari is that Miharu Rokujo carries the Shinrabansho (a ninja technique that has power over all things in nature) inside him, and he is being hunted by ninjas who want to extract this power from him. In my first post about Nabari, the first parallel that came to mind was Yuji Sakai and the Midnight Lost Child, from Shakugan no Shana. And there are definitely similarities between Miharu and Yuji: they both carry an immense power that the bad guys want to extract from them, and if the bearer is killed, the power is reborn inside a different person.
While the Midnight Lost Child does have the ability to cause immense harm, as shown when the Ball Masque used it to flood Misaki City with the power of existence, it isn’t dangerous by nature. The Midnight Lost Child was created by a Crimson Denizen to give immortality to the man she loved, and now, residing within Yuji, it keeps him from fading from existence like other Torches. Wirhelmina once considered killing Yuji to force his power to relocate to a random person, but the outright destruction of the Midnight Lost Child was never considered.
The Shinrabansho, on the other hand, is an “object of fear that would cause immense harm towards the world”. The Shinrabansho is inherently dangerous to whoever bears it (it destroyed the minds of anyone in the past who tried to unleash its power). The Shinrabansho isn’t the Midnight Lost Child, it’s the One Ring. Remember what the Ring did to Gollum, and to a lesser extent, Bilbo? The five ninja villages, back when they were still on friendly terms with each other, made a conscious effort to seal and destroy it. It’s the one technique to rule them all, and it will cause wars and grief as long as it exists.
There’s another thing the Shinrabansho does that makes it more like the One Ring than the Midnight Lost Child. While anyone who bears a treasure of such power will be hunted, the Midnight Lost Child did not make any of Yuji’s allies desire it. But the Shinrabansho? As Mr. Yamase (a Kairoshu agent posing as one of Miharu’s schoolteachers) said, “Even your friends will want to exploit your power.” Frodo’s allies were all tempted to take the Ring for themselves, and one of them, Boromir, gave in to that temptation and died as a result.
Kotaro would use the Shinrabansho to exact vengeance on the Kairoshu, and he would also use it to build a harem. No, really. Yamase begs Miharu to overwrite his past to put him back in the favor of the Kairoshu. Raimei uses Miharu because his power draws the Kairoshu, and Raimei knows that one day it will draw Raikou, the legendary Pokemon… I mean the rival Kairoshu samurai she has a vendetta against. Kouichi claims not to want anything more than to get rid of the Shinrabansho, but reading spoilers (you were warned!) reveals that he does indeed have a goal which involves it.
The final, and most important, similarity between the One Ring and the Shinrabansho is the special insignificance of the bearer. Bilbo, who had owned the Ring for a really long time before Gandalf discovered its true nature, was neither consumed by its evil (although it did leave a mark) nor compelled to unleash its power because he had no ambitions beyond a stocked pantry and a peaceful life. The only thing Bilbo ever used it for was to become invisible. Bilbo’s nephew, Frodo, was chosen to take the Ring to where it could be destroyed, because of his similar lack of ambition. The last human to bear the Ring, Isildur, refused to destroy it, and chose to use its power, which led to his destruction in short order. In the same way, Miharu’s indifference has, to quote Dio and Zippermouth, become a defense mechanism against the Shinrabansho. The Shinrabansho destroys all those who attempt to control its power, so the best way to not be destroyed by it is to not have any ambitions worth using its power for.
Durandal and Kotaro both suggest to Miharu to become stronger, to become the King of Nabari, so that he can defend himself from those that would desire his power, and learn to wield power responsibly. But one does not become a king without ambition - the very thing that would destroy the bearer of the Shinrabansho. And even a seemingly harmless ambition to serve a friend could lead to an abuse of power. The only good solution is to destroy the Shinrabansho itself. At the end of The Lord of the Rings, there is no Lord, and there is no Ring.
And just like in The Lord of the Rings, once Miharu is in position to destroy the Shinrabansho, he will see for himself how loyal his allies are, and how much ambition he himself has. Already it has been revealed that his allies and his enemies are more similar than he thought… so who can he trust at the end?
