The idea of a suicide as a present seems weird and obscene, and yeah, really not the best way to help someone heal -- and this kind of a reading where Thomas is almost a Christ figure sacrificing himself so that another's sins can be forgiven -- it doesn't really make it better, but it makes it make some kind of sense. (Though definitely reducing him to a symbol rather than a person.)

It also works with the way his mother is apparently more devastated than his father -- there's some Virgin Mary mythology in there, maybe. Although we probably don't need to turn to outside sources to explain why a mother would be devastated by her child's death.

And I do think this is one of the factors that made shounen ai manga so powerful to me especially when I was younger, because I related to it so much more than the dominant narratives I was seeing ("everyone wants to have as much sex as possible" and "don't let boys have sex with you because BABIES"), which didn't really take into account the power and the fear and the overwhelmingness.

Yeah, I also had an overlay of "AIDS!" terror because it was the late eighties. I like Thomas a lot now, but I am pretty sure I would have been completely in love with it if I'd read it as a teenager.

I think I read the first few volumes of Song of Wind and Trees in scanlation a while ago, but don't remember what I thought about the humor at all.