[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

"All women are motivated by hatred and thus cannot be allowed power."

Those were the exact words spoken by a friend of mine who watched Hibiki at the start of the year, when I asked him what his thoughts on the second half were.

I'd think that, I don't know if you should find Shuki to be rootable or someone audience should support, I think Shuki is an antagonistic villainous character (though probably an anti-villain cuz she's not 100% bad with sacrifice at the end or such)... y'know like, Go Kiryu from Blade. She's someone who doesn't care about civilians at all in her fight and vendetta against the Makamou, would let them get killed in crossfire, and takes pride in it as strength to be ruthless, while trying to corrupt others the same way. Just that the relation to Akira Shuki had is that in the past Shuki used to help others too like stopping a guy from snatching a bag on the street in the past. Though dunno if Shuki's sacrifice is treated as a moment that the audience should start being on her side, because, it's a wrong notion some people held as well, to conclude that self-sacrifice alone makes one 100% heroic, irrespective of any amoral or unheroic things that one also did. We need to consider all heroic and non-heroic acts that a character do.

Regardless, I find this post (not in Tokunation) to be a nice read and insight for "All women are motivated by hatred and thus cannot be allowed power.". Regarding Akira gaining traits like hatred and scorn is also a wrong notion that people take in their obsession to make characters 'flawed' (more like adding unpleasant character traits) so that they can be 'complex', 'relatable, 'complicated', 'realistic' etc. due to the hate for 'perfect' character as they can be 'boring'. First, flaws don't have to be only toxic stuff, and there's double standard in this as well like if characters have ordinary flaws like fearful or inflexibility, they can get hate instead for exactly same reason ("because they're relatable"). Second, not having toxic flaws (Akira had one before though for lashing out at Asumu but that's getting fixed) doesn't mean it's a perfect character.