[DreamSword]

I absolutely love Rento Makina/Kikai.

Sure, there's the face value stuff in that he embodies alot of tropes I love: Especially robot characters. Heck, his name can easily be read as "Rented Machine."

And yeah, the very premise of his show, dreamed up in the imagination of Sogo or otherwise, is totally something that I would watch, but really, the main thing that grabbed me was just how well he tied into everything.

To me, the biggest takeaway of this arc was about how no friendship is perfect. No matter how close or how well you jive with someone, there's going to be a disagreement, a conflict, or something that's going to cause some sort of rift in the relationship, and the true test of your friendship comes in how you handle it.

Kikai embodies that in his timeline with how his psychotic trigger causes him to lash out at those he cares about, which also provides a great way at mirroring Sogo's' own fear in how he might one day become Oma Zi-O and drive away those he loves: A way better way at exhibiting many of the ideas discussed in the Ryuki two-parter, in my opinion.

But in the end, those touched by Rento's' kindness still have faith in him and his better half, allowing the gap to be bridged, showing that Sogo has that same sort of faith in not only himself, but in Geiz and Tsukuyomi as well. It's really touching and is especially powerful to me specifically as someone who's currently in friendships with people that have mental health issues, or heck, just plain had fights with people over whatever reason.

Also, the implication that Rento is literally Sogo's' toy robot is just plain adorable.

I dunno 100% if Rento will end up being my favorite character in Zi-O, but man does he have a really strong case for it right now. Would be very surprised if anyone ended up surpassing him at this point.

Such a shame he didn't get a mini-series like Shinobi did, though an anime or a movie could've been cool. Maybe some douchebag on the internet, heck, this very website, could even review them! But alas.

Wonderful pair of episodes. My favorite in the show so far.