[Kurona]

Zero-One was also extremely explicit about treating humagears as actual people — Fuwa, Yaiba and supposedly Gai had arcs about coming round to that; as well as many minor characters and the public in general. There’s multiple scenes since Gai’s ownership of AIMs showing Humagears getting attacked by them for going outside their designated roles, all of which is franed as a bad thing. And while a pathetic joke of a scene that went absolutely nowhere, there was a friggin’ rights protest right at the end!

We’re not talking about advanced self checkouts here. The moment you show advanced robots as close to or even equivalent to humans, which Zero One constantly does through Singularity, Soreo flashbacks, MBJR etc., you invoke themes however minor or major of inequality and slavery and oppression. This is ultimately why the season failed for me because it all but abandoned these themes in every aspect but token scenes in the last third to focus on Aruto and the Ark being, like, angry or something; but this stuff was hardly subtext. In just about every episode of the week the show was practically screaming at you that Humagears were essentially people and they deserved to be treated as such, or at least that their current standing should be heavily questioned.