[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 16

It’s Hiyori at a produce vendor, trying to buy fruit. But she can’t, y’know, communicate, so she’s just ineffectually pointing at an orange, while the frustrated vendor tries to get her to enunciate her request. And then Gon walks up, displays the orange, and Hiyori does the Daisuke thing of Yes Yes That That.

It killed me. It’s such a simple thing, but it’s simultaneously adorable (Hiyori!), heartwarming (Gon!), and 100% on-topic for one of this episode’s themes: we never really achieve anything alone.

Hiyori's communication problem is already established before this, where in her early scene the way of her communicating with her tone, eye contact, etc. And this part of her against vendor... never occured to me even once, if talking about necessary communicating such as asking for something you need such as buying things. The talk about Gon's name, her name comes as a short short for "nanashi no gonbei" (nameless person), which is said here that she is amnesiac and nameless, but given Gon as a name from that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

As a theme, it’s one that filters through this episode without really coming together until the end.

Again, this is another show of Tendou's superiority, which other than himself with his outright god complex of claiming himself as superior than 6 million human combined, is even addressed by Mishima that he's a first-rate human, he's a master in every single thing and will always accomplish anything without any problem. He can take any role that he wants, be a priest, Shadow leader, doctor, etc. And so far from what's shown, he partakes in various job fields to uncover Worm disguises (and he had uncanny detection of Worm). He's, uhh... embodies the dreaded term you'll get if you create a character, "gary stu" (means a character who is portrayed as perfect, unrealistically free of weaknesses, and sometimes without having to do much to gain it. It originates in fan fiction, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors). It's one of the highest tips to write fiction, don't make a character mary sue (female) or gary stu (male). And I think, while several number of people can't stand Tendou for that perfectness, he's one of those in fiction media that gets free from the universal hatred that those type of characters will receive.

At least, that Kagami is used as a bait, again, if Tendou's someone that berates Kageyama for doing the same and takes pride in it, and also had him in his mercy here by controlling him as his subordinate and forcing him to apologize for his misdeeds, he at least had to show that he's not a hypocrite, by at least giving Kagami credit to make him feel worthy to be alive, even if it's a fake one where it's actually Kabuto killing a Worm yet again. And about the theme, it's more that we never really achieve anything alone... except if you're Tendou.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The thing is, though, you can make use of organizational strength. (On a micro level, the team of Tendou, Kagami, Daisuke, and Misaki do a pretty great job this episode!) This isn’t a story about how you should never work with anyone. (It’s the opposite of that!) But it’s suggesting that a lot of the problems of Drunk Doctor and Kagami are that they put their faith in an organization, and the organization took advantage of that faith. Meanwhile, Tendou made sure that he was getting what he needed from ZECT without making himself vulnerable, so he couldn’t be taken advantage of. It’s a pretty nuanced take on work-for-hire, where it’s not cast as good or bad, just as something you should be careful with.

Isn't a story about how you should never work with anyone, but Tendou's a character that is an embodiment of it, which is why perfect characters like him are unrelatable. ZECT is just one of the organization Tendou uses to expose Worms, and while they can't be trusted, could the same be said for other organizations like the hospital, or the church dude?? It's the same as Tendou, he joins them temporarily to expose Worms, so that means those can be trusted either? Alternatively, probably Wakabayashi agrees with those Worm's deal to save his own life, that if Wakabayashi agrees with the Worms, the Worms will not kill him, albeit obviously, those are all lies as shown in this episode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

A QUESTION

One of my favorite beats in the episode is, unsurprisingly, from that scene of Hiyori and Gon hanging out on a playground. When Hiyori asks where Daisuke is, Gon says that they both needed some time apart, and the implication is that Daisuke Is Kind Of A Lot. It makes sense that Gon might need some time here and there to go have her own adventures, ones that aren’t built around putting women on pedestals or grudgingly fighting monsters. Assuming, like Gon, you lived in a world where you could actually go do things, what’s something you regularly do outside to have fun by yourself? I certainly hope one of them is to help socially-awkward strangers get the fruit they need!

Haven't go outside by myself much other than necessity ones...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Yeah, this one didn't work that well for me. I think the main issue was that it crossed the line with Tendou.

Tendou is a tricky character to work with. Being an arrogant prick is very much central to his nature and that's a hard trait to build your show's main character around. It's really easy to take it too far and make the character turn obnoxious. I think Kabuto generally does a good job of avoiding that, but I feel like this episode took Tendou too far. Strolling into ZECT and getting put in command of Shadow, waltzing into a hospital and get trusted to perform surgery, the whole "I'm the greatest human alive" bit. It went too far. I usually love Tendou when he's being a troll, but this episode just went overboard in a way that I found more annoying than amusing.

There's a bunch of actually controlling and manipulative main characters in media, and it even exists in, for example, one of the most popular anime in its home country. Protagonist just means a main character after all, it has nothing to do with alignments. And from something what I said before, sometimes people limits hero definition as just anyone that can actually save people in need and treating what they do it for (money, recognition, etc.) or any character flaws as something that doesn’t matter, as long as they can save people. So people can think that it doesn't matter if Tendou is being obnoxious, or "I'm the greatest human alive", or being controlling and manipulative, etc. because the only thing that matters is that Worms are killed and people are saved. By this also people can think that ideal heroes such as Eiji or anti-heroes such as Kaito as exactly similarly heroic (and potentially bash the type of former for not having "interesting" traits the latter have due to viewing them as the same).