[FairyKing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

The true enemy in this show was always, ALWAYS how Humagears were not truly seen as people and what conflicts arose from that, but the last third seemingly wants to act like the true enemy was the Ark. And that, I think, is the worst possible direction the show could have taken.

The way I see it, that's Zero-One running into one of the common problems for superheroes as a genre: You can't just punch away injustice. Like, I absolutely agree with you Kurona, the true enemy was Humagears being seen as subhuman. But that's an enemy you can't beat in a climactic final boss fight. Beating that enemy would probably take a long process of advocating for Humagear rights, winning over peoples' hearts and minds until it shifts the views of society as a whole, pushing to change the laws governing A.I., and probably other things that don't make for an exciting kid's TV show. All Aruto and Horobi really accomplished by defeating the Ark was buying time to make that progress.

Personally I do think that final battle was a satisfying conclusion to their personal character arcs, but to the story of Humagears it's not even a conclusion at all. Since the Ark was hyped up as the personification of malice, defeating is supposed to symbolize overcoming malice, but we'd all know that the real struggle against human-Humagear hatred was still far from over, even without the movie teaser with Azu and Eden (side note, that scene didn't annoy me as much as I expected, probably because it mostly just confirms what we already knew about the fight not being over yet).

And I dare say it would've still had that effect regardless of who became the final villain or what their endgame plan was. It could've been Thouser with a plan to control everyone's mind through ZaiaSpec, Jin aiming to reduce Earth to a burned wasteland where only Humagears could survive, or any other villain you can imagine. It still would've had the disappointment of "great, the final boss is defeated, yay... but the society-level injustice that they represent still hasn't been solved..."

Which isn't to say Zero-One shouldn't have been about the injustice of Humagears being treated as subhuman! Superhero stories can absolutely tackle bigger issues like that, it's awesome when they do it well, and personally I think Zero-One did a pretty decent job of it most of the time. But by picking that as the central issue of the series, the writers put themselves in a hard position where the actual problem of the story would never be solved by just beating a final villain.