[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Well, I guess it's due to Sachika and Koji having big dreams about making everybody happy, which also make themselves happy. Seems like Lakia sees Comel more in those two, rather than the overly selfless Shouma who often speaks in terms of moral obligation, which Lakia clearly hates.

I thought moral obligation generally goes hand-in-hand with wanting to make everyone happy (if they aren't dark characters who'd use dubious methods to achieve that), where they'd routinely call out people who do wrong things because they're making others unhappy that way. And ofc, most of the main Riders also have a goal of making everyone happy, and one needs to be a paragon of virtue to live up to that. This is probably more of my projection, but I can feel that talking about what one personally wants to convince others can be less convincing because it can be not objective, others won't care about what they want, and one seems more vulnerable to more verbal attack/abuse about their goal. Like, perhaps a fan talking about wanting to relieve their childhood nostalgia, when complaining about the toys in more recent shows and criticizing those who like them, rather than explaining why a toy focus can be detrimental. About Comel, I was more hoping that the episode directly highlights him in Rakia bringing him up and his ideals in this episode, rather than just a fan observation in the discussions here.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

True, like, maybe some of them were good once, but they went too far to turn back. Vram even gave his own version of the "dousuru?" to Le Beet, just in case. Stomach may have got them hooked on the Dark Snacks, but Comel walked away and tried to take responsibility for his actions, so the others can't use their addiction to justify their evil deeds. They're the real cowards here. Reminds me of how Shocker would just abduct people and brainwash them in to evil monsters.

Your example rather sounds like the opposite, as brainwashing often means that they're not in-control of their actions, and that they're not themselves due to being controlled by an outside factor through their body, unless you think that brainwash is different from mind-control, but this definition of brainwashing is also used to deflect blames from them to the "true villain" manipulators as well. What I'm thinking is also about how Dente, who genuinely reformed, stated that Dark Treats' addictions are impossible to be get rid of, and would stay forever in one's entire life, which means reforming Dark Treats addicts are impossible, as shown in Rojoe, of which Comel contradicts it (though unknown how good the part timers were once).

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I get similar vibes from everything happening with Lakia in these ones too. It's not making any immediate massive change to his character, but I see stuff like that scene of him clearly being a little taken aback by Sachika pointing out that he's also one of the people she wants to be happy, and I can already imagine Koumura running with that, and building it into something even more touching later down the line. And if she does end up doing that, it'll be because these two episodes were here to establish that relationship in the first place.

Dunno about Rakia here not being an immediate massive change, or probably you feel it this way because it's done in middle part of the series. Characters like Rakia (at least those who start in his earlier Shoma side part where he doesn't commit evil deeds but doesn't care about others) often start to care about humanity due to the positive influences around them at late of the series, but I felt that change is still similar to Rakia here, even though it's not done in climatic part of the series. It's not only the primary/secondary conflict, Gavv also has the sympathetic villain redeem faster than most others of Rakia's kind too, where he quickly joined Shoma's side and stopped his crimes in ep. 19, where this too, is usually done in the later part of a series. It's unknown how'd Rakia demonstrate his new change later, but his main problem of being in good guy's side is his apathy for humans, but it's solved now and dunno if he needs further development now for now caring about them. Unless perhaps how evil Suga is would shook all the 3 main Riders (not only Rakia), who don't really experience cruelty from humans so far (except perhaps Hanto being betrayed by his desperate friend).