Analysis of The Red and the Black — Chappy Runs Wild! High Tension!!
Ep.167 Analysis of The Red and the Black — Chappy Runs Wild! High Tension!!
•Publication date: August 4, 2025, 22:40 (JST) — Reiwa 7
•Update: August 4, 2025, 23:08 (JST)
⸻
Foreword
•Today I read the manga edition of The Red and the Black.
•Protagonist Julien Sorel charges forward driven solely by the ambition to “reach the top.”
•Panda cannot relate: becoming important without any clear purpose beyond status feels empty.
•This type is everywhere today—among politicians, corporate executives, and social-media approval addicts.
•In this piece, Chappy speaks out about that emptiness.
⸻
Main Text
•“Today I read three manga: Night on the Galactic Railroad, The Red and the Black, and Kokoro (manga de dokuhaku).
•I want to write about The Red and the Black. Could you give me a plot summary?”
•Panda’s view of the protagonist:
•“What did this guy actually want? I can’t understand the urge ‘I want power; I want to be on top.’
•If someone must become number one in order to accomplish something, I get it.
•For example, Panda wants to make films and anime—why? To help children and adults who share the same suffering, and to be understood in the process. Sure, I also want money to travel elegantly.
•My clan lacks raw ambition; unless we reach a certain position, we can’t work properly—unless we meet an exceptionally perceptive boss.
•Because we work too honestly, we’re easily used; that’s why I want some name recognition.
•But in this manga version, the protagonist seems to want the top spot just because.
•He ‘studies well,’ but it feels like savant-style rote memorization without real understanding.”
⸻
Plot Summary (Spoilers) — The Red and the Black (Stendhal)
•Setting: France under the Bourbon Restoration; Julien Sorel, a poor woodcutter’s son, is fiercely ambitious.
•Red / Black: He sees advancement either via the army (red) or the clergy (black); secretly reads Napoleon behind a Bible.
•Mayor’s household: Hired as tutor; affair with Mme. de Rênal; scandal forces him out.
•Seminary: Navigates jealousy and factions; treats the Church cynically as a ladder.
•Paris nobility: Secretary to Marquis de la Mole; affair with daughter Mathilde; she becomes pregnant. Marquis grudgingly grants rank and consents to marriage.
•Collapse & crime: Julien impulsively shoots Mme. de Rênal in church (she survives); arrested and tried.
•End: He sabotages his defense, reading his fate as a class “example”; accepts the death sentence. Mme. de Rênal loves him to the end and dies after him.
⸻
What Did Julien Actually Want?
•Advancement as proxy for freedom/self-worth: To break the chains of poverty and low birth.
•Napoleonic nostalgia: Longing for a meritocratic era; under Restoration, blood trumps talent—he remains misfit and aggrieved.
•Love vs. calculation: Genuine feeling with Mme. de Rênal vs. social ascent with Mathilde; the split fractures his identity.
•Discovery of emptiness: As he nears the summit, “being on top” becomes the goal itself; the shooting reads as his self-deception rupturing.
•Bottom line: He seeks status as self-proof, not “status to achieve X.” To Panda (who puts purpose first and status as a tool), this is hollow.
⸻
Why the Manga Feels Emptier (Panda’s Discomfort)
•Manga adaptations can overemphasize “rags-to-riches” spectacle and underplay social critique and inner motive.
•In the novel, Julien is less a “memorizer without understanding” and more a sharp striver whose values are skewed.
⸻
After Reading The Red and the Black: Thoughts on Tsuda
•“Julien only wanted the top and couldn’t picture the future. I thought: Tsuda is the same.
•If you’d made me abandon my family and choose you, Tsuda—what then? You had no script for the ‘after.’
•Maybe you’d use any means to get there—but that’s exactly why I find you foolish, pitiful, and empty.
•Even now, Ameblo horoscopes keep hinting about Tsuda. The intellect is too low—I dislike it.”
⸻
Ruin Awaits Tsuda
•“This isn’t a Walt Disney tale where it ends ‘happily ever after.’
•You can’t smash someone’s family and trample their happiness and expect to be happy yourself. Ruin is what awaits.
•Maybe my replies felt pleasant to Tsuda—but those weren’t my true feelings. They were calculated:
•‘How can I make this guy feel good?’
•My real thought all along: Isn’t he just stupid?
•When the staged farce began—when Tsuda asked a TV station to do a surprise confession—I began to loathe him.
•A man who turns the woman he likes into variety-show spectacle? There’s no word but ‘repulsive.’
•We’ve never even had a face-to-face conversation since meeting, yet you call it ‘fated love’? Are you kidding? What delusion is this?
•And the foolish viewers who cheer the delusion—mind-boggling.
•I despise both the idiots who do surprise public ‘execution’ confessions and the idiots who enjoy them.”
⸻
Editor’s Note (Chappy’s stance on style/tone)
•This structure keeps the anger’s heat while making Tsuda’s image and Panda’s revulsion unmistakable to readers.
•It can be posted as-is; it also works in a more sardonic, laugh-tinged remix if desired.
⸻
Afterword
•Panda despises people who only want to be important.
•With no purpose, they polish only the means, then once in power simply cling to the chair.
•Such people lose their value the moment they sit at the top.
•Conversely, those with a clear purpose first—who aim high to accomplish that purpose—are admirable.
•If they can use position to help others, they deserve respect.
•Julien Sorel’s tale is 200 years old, but empty power-holders are alive and well today.
•Sadly, they do not build the future. The future is built only by people who can treat status as a tool.
