What Are the Limits of Shin’s Mind-Reading Ability?

In the eleventh episode of SAKAMOTO DAYS, which was the final episode of the first cours of the anime, Lu Shaotang’s past has come to collect her as Lu Wutang, the consigliere of the Lu Mafia, comes to Japan to take her back home to be head of the clan. During the Old Maid tiebreaker card game, which would determine who gets to keep Shaotang between the Sakamotos and the Lu Clan, Shin thinks he has a leg up given his ability to read minds.

This psychic ability would enable him to look through even the best poker faces, but Wutang puts a huge wrench in this simple plan when he asks a question most haven’t even thought about yet: just how much of the human mind can Shin actually read?

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Shin’s Mind-Reading Ability Isn’t Foolproof

Lu Wutang Figures Out a Vital Weakness of Shin’s Mind-Reading

Up to SAKAMOTO DAYS episode 11, Shin’s mind-reading ability has been shown to be particularly effective in close range, but can be put under strain if exposed to the thoughts of way too many people at the same time yet forced to focus on a single stream of thought. Each time the ability has been depicted has involved Shin hearing the voice of the person in his own head the way one would hear their own thoughts, but what Wutang asks complicates this mechanic in a very interesting way.

He explains that the human mind is actually made up of three layers, of which the verbal layer where one’s thoughts as words and sentences are thought to exist is separate from the subconscious layers of the mind in which the unverbalized thoughts reside. Anticipating that Shin would read his mind, Wutang flooded his brain with all the information he could muster, putting it all on the verbal layer where he believed Shin would be forced to read it. As a result, Shin’s brain overheated from the sheer amount of information that poured into it, thus knocking him out of the game of Old Maid they were playing.

What this confirmed is that Shin reads mostly, if not, solely the verbal layer where one’s “spoken” thoughts reside. This is the voice in one’s head that many people have; thoughts that exist like an internal dialogue or a conversation with the self rather than abstractions or imagery. It’s most likely for the reasons that Wutang discovered that Shin struggles to read the mind of Heisuke Mashimo, who, to put it gently, isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, with his mind being littered with rudimentary, childlike thoughts that are actually endearing when it comes to what we come to learn about Heisuke.

The fact that Heisuke’s thoughts are so simple that Shin can’t stand to read them might actually be in support of Wutang’s discovery during the final episode of season 1, part 1. It is not yet clear if Shin can hone his ability to read deeper than the verbal layer; however, what we do know is that he’s more adept at using the ability than he was when he was a child, which means that it is possible (in general) for Shin to improve his mind-reading.

A Complication

The Explanation Makes Sense, But Not Really

While it is true that Wutang was able to brick Shin’s brain for the duration of their Old Maid battle by simply flooding his conscious mind with an endless stream of information, it doesn’t quite follow that the weakness that was exploited in this case was an inability to access deeper parts of the human psyche. There’s a single entity whose thoughts thwart Wutang’s idea that Shin can’t read deeper into people’s minds: Taro Sakamoto.

Throughout SAKAMOTO DAYS, the running gag in Shin’s interactions with the titular man is him overstepping a boundary and thus being “killed in Sakamoto’s mind” as punishment for his transgressions. However, even beyond Sakamoto is Shin’s brief meeting of the series antagonist, “Slur”, in episode 9, in which the killer killer emits such thick, fear-inducing killing intent that Shin briefly saw himself being ripped apart. The fact that Shin can be “killed in the mind” alludes to the fact that he doesn’t just read the superficial layer of the mind where thoughts are verbalized, but can perhaps also see the target’s “Mind’s Eye”.