Jigoro cut his own belly open over Kaigaku and let the wound take its time, with no second to finish it, so that nobody would learn why the old Thunder Hashira died. That is the shame the story put on the ledger before it let him say this. Zenitsu arrives at the water with Kaigaku's head already taken, by a seventh form of his own making, from a swordsman who never mastered any but the first, and what he says across it is an apology: he wanted to make the old man proud and to become a Hashira while there was still someone alive to see it, and neither happened. Jigoro answers the apology, not the victory. The praise is addressed to a failure, which is the only way the scene can cancel a death by shame; a teacher who killed himself over the student who went wrong has to be shown, in tears, keeping the one who did not. Read it the other way, as a boy at the edge of the afterlife awarding himself the forgiveness he needs, and the water is just the inside of Zenitsu's head. The series puts tears on Jigoro's face while he says it, and that is the answer it wants: the verdict is shown coming from the judge, not the accused.
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Jigoro cut his own belly open over Kaigaku and let the wound take its time, with no second to finish it, so that nobody would learn why the old Thunder Hashira died. That is the shame the story put on the ledger before it let him say this. Zenitsu arrives at the water with Kaigaku's head already taken, by a seventh form of his own making, from a swordsman who never mastered any but the first, and what he says across it is an apology: he wanted to make the old man proud and to become a Hashira while there was still someone alive to see it, and neither happened. Jigoro answers the apology, not the victory. The praise is addressed to a failure, which is the only way the scene can cancel a death by shame; a teacher who killed himself over the student who went wrong has to be shown, in tears, keeping the one who did not. Read it the other way, as a boy at the edge of the afterlife awarding himself the forgiveness he needs, and the water is just the inside of Zenitsu's head. The series puts tears on Jigoro's face while he says it, and that is the answer it wants: the verdict is shown coming from the judge, not the accused.