This sorta goes back to the discussion of whether or not Suzaku is a hypocrite. It's easy for us to label him as such, but if we try to put ourselves in his shoes, it's not hard to see how he ended up taking the path he took between ages 10 and 17. He simply wanted to preserve himself somehow--hold onto some semblance of his worth as a decent human being, even if he doesn't place much value on his life himself. We can say "man up and face it", but it's not as easy as that. Anyone who has taken any abnormal psychology or mental health class can tell you as much. And I think we can all agree that the boy has a few screws up in his head loose.
Basically, I think to call him little more than a hypocrite slaps mental health patients across the face. "Why can't you just be happy? Why can't you just will yourself to change?" No. Doesn't work like that. And given the little emotional support that he has received between the ages of 10 and 17, I'm not surprised that he has shown no improvement.
In our idealized anime worlds, I think we're all a bit too affected by the standard shounen I-can-do-anything-so-long-as-I-put-my-heart-to-it archetype. And we may be disappointed when we see a weak character, although humans are pretty darn weak. We're fragile and emotional, and we don't recover from our hurts in the span of one or two episodes.
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Re: Some mighty big claims you got there
This sorta goes back to the discussion of whether or not Suzaku is a hypocrite. It's easy for us to label him as such, but if we try to put ourselves in his shoes, it's not hard to see how he ended up taking the path he took between ages 10 and 17. He simply wanted to preserve himself somehow--hold onto some semblance of his worth as a decent human being, even if he doesn't place much value on his life himself. We can say "man up and face it", but it's not as easy as that. Anyone who has taken any abnormal psychology or mental health class can tell you as much. And I think we can all agree that the boy has a few screws up in his head loose.
Basically, I think to call him little more than a hypocrite slaps mental health patients across the face. "Why can't you just be happy? Why can't you just will yourself to change?" No. Doesn't work like that. And given the little emotional support that he has received between the ages of 10 and 17, I'm not surprised that he has shown no improvement.
In our idealized anime worlds, I think we're all a bit too affected by the standard shounen I-can-do-anything-so-long-as-I-put-my-heart-to-it archetype. And we may be disappointed when we see a weak character, although humans are pretty darn weak. We're fragile and emotional, and we don't recover from our hurts in the span of one or two episodes.