[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I mean, Toujou's way of thinking, okay, maybe. He's someone who wants to feel like a tortured hero so much that he tortures himself.

But Asakura?! His way of thinking is that he needs to be fighting people all the time! Don't think that way!

Kagawa also taught him that "a hero is someone who suffers", and that gives an idea for Toujou to torture himself. And yeah for Asakura he's made to have no redeeming qualities at all... don't make a hero out of him (just because he's cool)... seriously.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I don't know about the Japanese legal system circa the early 2000s, but in America you can 100% get a retrial if your lawyer refuses to give you an adequate defense. If you can show bias or negligence, you can get a do-over. Morimoto absolutely needs to try to get the best outcome possible for his client.

Just saying, the thing I explained above, it comes from me asking a friend who takes a law degree. A good lawyer shouldn't completely free the guilty, just clear up the injustice treatment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

A lot here! Let's see if I can unpack it all.

-Saying one writer's style "clashes too much" with another's, that's super subjective. If you dislike the tone of non-Kobayashi episodes, I can't disagree that there's a difference, but I like both takes.

-I don't know that Inoue ignores that much character development for Shinji in this one? He's got a slightly different read on Shinji, maybe, but Shinji wanting to believe that he caused a dude to have a change of heart and then that dude took advantage of Shinji's trust... I think we've seen that move more often on this show than Ryuki's Final Vent? It's a pretty ingrained part of Shinji's character.

-My complaints about the endless status quo of certain episodes, I tried to emphasize when talking about this episode that there are core characteristics that you can't change about a character, and Shinji's gullibility is one of those. I wasn't trying to say that the show shouldn't change anything about the characters.

I hope this made some sense? I'm not totally clear on some of that paragraph. Sorry!

I probably just think that you just don't seem to notice much from the clashing writings, I will post the review I talk about to clear up as I don't want to copy the contents from it. But one of those is that Inoue tends to ignore character developments as a way to derail characters (sometimes even coming from nowhere to add negative traits to them like episode 7 of Ryuki) for more drama. I already said it before for the Shinji's character development... episode 38?? There you go for skeptical Shinji, guarded Shinji, he has matured! Doesn't mean his core characteristic changes (like you said for Ren and Kitaoka) like his take on the war and how he cares about people, but also doesn't mean he's still the same self seen in episode 6 to Scissors!! I think you have to notice the episode 38 part about Shinji deducing SSSS' plan in form of Toujou and act according to it to stop it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I think what I found most interesting is that, it's not that Toujou corrupted his message and misunderstood his teachings, it's that his lesson was inherently flawed. It felt like the show was trying to deconstruct that sort of stoic heroism, the myth of the noble sacrifice. In reality, choosing to kill someone "for the greater good" is just killing someone. A person can choose to sacrifice themselves, but you can't choose to sacrifice them. The end result of Professor's ideology is a justification for murder, and that's going to allow murderers to feel justified.

While Kagawa's lesson is flawed, Toujou did make it worse. Kagawa's already trying to keep Toujou in check, to reduce unecessary killing like stopping Tiger killing Ryuki or pointing out the flaws in his take like the fact that a hero should care about humans when he calls out Kagawa for caring about his family who he wants to sacrifice earlier.