[FreshToku]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FairyKing

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.

There's definitely a way to make it work, I think. I'm sure the bigger thematic point they were trying to do with Aruto vs Horobi in the end was how their conflict represented the bigger issues of humans vs humageas as a whole, and how them making peace is an optimistic sign for the world's future. But while I liked the final battle in of itself, it doesn't really work as a big thematic punctuation. I didn't really buy the other characters saying that Aruto and Horobi fighting will be the single match that sparks all-out war, this conflict is just too specifically personal for me to be into it like that.

I think the show honestly had all the elements already to have an endgame that was about driving home the point of humans coexisting with humagears. We had Thouser, a human villain who wanted to get rid of humagears, Horobi, a humagear villain who wanted to get rid of humans, and the Ark which was a nebulous being of evil that the above parties wanted to serve their own purpose.

In my opinion, the ideal endgame would have been all three of these forces making their plays for their agendas, but they're all stopped by heroes as the culmination of their character development. AIMs fighting Thouser because they now want to protect humagears. Jin fighting Horobi because unlike his father, he believes that they can coexist with humans now. And Aruto fighting the Ark because, uh... there's probably something to be had there. If the whole Aruto becoming Ark-One thing still happened, that it could have been an 'internal' battle represented by him regaining hope by seeing what the other heroic characters are doing, resulting in some sick imagery of Zero-Two beating up Ark-One or something.

That's just what I would have liked most though. I'm sure everyone has their own idea of how the series could go. Probably best left for the realm of fanfic, now.