Prince–Tomoyasu domination–victim relationship

The Prince–Tomoyasu domination–victim relationship is a defining example of how the Prince turns fear into obedience. He first orders Tomoyasu to serve as the subject of a dangerous test; when Tomoyasu pleads to be spared, the Prince makes the boy’s beloved dog Takeshi the substitute. The shift exposes the relationship’s central cruelty: the prototype defibrillator is a means to an end, while Tomoyasu’s distress and willingness to betray a bond are the Prince’s real instruments of control.

Power and the school’s climate of fear

The Prince’s authority over Tomoyasu is part of a wider system in which classmates have been trained to expect punishment and doubt their ability to resist. Kimura sees that the students have repeatedly witnessed suffering at the Prince’s hands and have come to believe they cannot defeat him. Electric shocks are part of this regime, though Kimura does not know precisely how they are administered or what orders accompany them. The important consequence is visible in the students’ response: they do not even consider trying to overthrow the Prince.

Kimura understands their paralysis through a memory of a captive he once guarded. The man was kept in a shabby apartment but was neither tied up nor locked in; still, he did not leave. A fellow guard explained the idea of learned helplessness through an experiment in which a dog, after being made to experience unavoidable shocks, stopped trying to escape even when escape became possible. Kimura recognizes a parallel in the school: repeated exposure to the Prince’s power has taught the students to anticipate helplessness. This context clarifies that Tomoyasu’s submission is not simply a single frightened choice. The Prince operates within a climate that has already made resistance seem futile.

The students’ fear also damages their solidarity. As Kimura observes, a group ruled through fear becomes suspicious of its own members: each person seeks to avoid punishment, and resentment is redirected toward potential allies. At the park, one student threatens to report another to the Prince for supposedly showing sympathy to Tomoyasu. Kimura compares this pattern with the mutual suspicion he had heard about in Terahara’s criminal organization, where members turned against one another to divert the leader’s anger. The school’s order thus helps the Prince maintain control without requiring every act of coercion to come directly from him.

Tomoyasu chosen as a test subject

The immediate conflict begins when the Prince orders the students to use the prototype defibrillator on Tomoyasu. The device could conceivably kill someone whose heart was still functioning, a danger the Prince understands but does not explain to the others. He gives them only the bare minimum of information. The order therefore places Tomoyasu at risk while leaving the group poorly informed about what the device may do.

Tomoyasu’s selection is linked to his vulnerability within the group. A classmate explains that he moves slowly and had fallen behind while they were stealing manga from a bookstore. When a clerk caught him, the others returned and attacked the clerk so Tomoyasu could get away. The incident shows how participation in the group’s misconduct and its violence does not protect Tomoyasu from becoming its target. The Prince can turn an existing imbalance of power among classmates into a test of obedience.

The Prince’s plan also has a strategic purpose beyond the device itself. He expects that if Tomoyasu dies, the others will panic and look to him for answers. The possibility of a death is thus useful to the Prince as an opportunity to reinforce his authority. The experiment makes the classmates’ dependence on him part of the design: he withholds crucial knowledge, creates a crisis, and positions himself to direct the group’s response.

Takeshi as an instrument of coercion

Tomoyasu resists the order. He cries and begs the Prince to spare him, and the Prince agrees on the condition that Tomoyasu bring his dog, Takeshi, instead. Tomoyasu has known Takeshi since they were both young, and the dog has been part of his life throughout. His attachment makes the substitution more than a change of test subject: the Prince forces Tomoyasu to choose between his own safety and the well-being of someone he loves.

The Prince’s interest changes once Takeshi is chosen. The planned test becomes secondary to watching what the sacrifice will do to Tomoyasu. The boy loves his dog yet is prepared to expose him to pain and suffering to save himself. The Prince is trying to make Tomoyasu experience that choice as evidence against his own character, further lowering his sense of self-worth. In this relationship, the Prince does not merely impose an external punishment; he engineers a situation in which Tomoyasu may feel responsible for betraying his own attachment.

The scene at the park gives this coercion a concrete form. The students bind Tomoyasu and Takeshi together, while Tomoyasu tries to reassure the dog. Takeshi is muzzled, and the students prepare the defibrillator pads. The boy’s care for his dog remains visible even as the group carries out the Prince’s order. Meanwhile, the students’ uncertainty and mutual accusations reveal that their participation is driven less by confidence in the experiment than by fear of being reported or punished. Tomoyasu is both the person directly threatened and the means through which the Prince tests the group’s obedience.

A wider method of breaking resistance

The Prince’s treatment of Tomoyasu fits a broader method of control. He works to undermine classmates’ self-worth and then pushes them to betray someone important to them, whether a friend or a family member. The Prince expects such betrayals to deepen their shame and make them easier to dominate. Tomoyasu’s forced choice about Takeshi is a particularly clear instance because the bond is longstanding and the cost of obedience is immediate.

Kimura recognizes that the Prince’s purpose is not exhausted by technical curiosity about the defibrillator. He understands the dog’s substitution as a way to break Tomoyasu’s spirit, even while remaining unsettled that the Prince may actually carry it out. This distinction matters: the threat is credible, and the students’ fear is grounded in the Prince’s willingness to make cruelty real. Their learned helplessness is reinforced not only by past punishment but by the present spectacle of a classmate being forced to surrender what matters to him.

Interruption and significance

Just as the students have tied Tomoyasu and Takeshi down and are preparing to administer the shock, Kimura appears. His arrival interrupts the scene at the point when the Prince’s plan is about to become action. The evidence establishes the interruption, but not the full outcome of the confrontation; the relation is therefore defined here by the coercive setup and its challenge, rather than by an account of what follows.

The episode condenses the Prince’s rule into one relationship. He exploits the students’ expectation that resistance is useless, withholds information, and turns Tomoyasu’s attachment to Takeshi into leverage. Tomoyasu’s distress becomes a test for his classmates as well as for himself: they must either act under the Prince’s authority or risk becoming its next targets. By making a beloved dog the price of reprieve, the Prince transforms obedience into self-reproach, showing how domination can persist not only through direct threats but through the bonds it forces its victims to compromise.