[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

On the other side of the scenes involving Ark, a huge amount of time is spent on Fuwa's very charmingly petty emotional distress. While events are happening that could plunge the entire world into melodramatic, action-paced chaos, Zero-One decided it was at least as important to show its resident edgy rival Rider pondering his life path and ultimately finding comfort in the knowledge that he's still allowed to be an ordinary mundane person if he ever wants to be.

Actually yeah, other than Fuwa here too, the appeal of KR can be beyond the suits or fighting in colorful costumes, but about the people, the characters, the stories. And I'm more invested in that too, but I'd appreciate Ark's debut as something so flashy, horrific, and haunting. Tbf, it's at ep. 36, of which Fuwa has grown out from the edgy rival phase. Previously he had only focused his AIMS on Gai and ZAIA, after learning the truth, and not long after he'd discard his anger to be driven by something more noble, the Rider sensibility. For sure, he's still outwardly serious and straight-laced, and still had some temper issues, but he's already softened up greatly before reaching out to his family.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Yeah sure, the structure is repetitive to the point both parts have basically the same ending,

Unfortunately, competition arcs (like tournament) are often inherently more formulaic because the fights and outcomes (the main characters winning) are often telegraphed due to the existing competition schedules. CMIIW though. But it's also true that stories shouldn't only be viewed based on the ending, predictable or not, and have everything else before ignored. Only taking into account and evaluating the ending alone would technically mean you're not following much of the series, if only for the shock factor (and making endings different merely for shock factor without taking into account of the quality isn't a good move).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The stories are constructed in a way that tends to actively avoid making things totally black and white. Humagears and humans alike have hearts that contain the capacity for both good and evil, and that thematic exploration is deeply relevant to the overall series.

Perhaps would mean that individuals aren't group and entire species shouldn't be blamed if there are bad apples. The MetsubouJinrai.net is a disaster with their misantrophic belief on humans, and to a lesser extent Fuwa was also edgy and dubious with his burning hatred on all Humagears.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

But here it makes perfect sense. You've got a beautiful final storyline where the hero is his own final boss, and his ultimate triumph is in realizing that him and the villain need each other to save themselves from their own worst impulses.

In the opposite vein of Fuwa above, he's the 'final boss' because Aruto quite betrayed his principles there due to grief and vengeance (albeit still has restrains), in that phase he's no straight hero but was a fallen hero instead. Heroic final boss would be perhaps if they battle another character to test them, as their wake up call or something. Other than that, Horobi's still quite worrying IMO after that battle even if he'd be better than before, yeah he'd now lead MetsubouJinrai.net to fight evil, but his method to fight evil is the concern, like previously in how he views all humans (or Humagears who sided with them) as inherent evil and must be exterminated, overall he's defined by severe inculpability, and by that he can be potentially someone who'd give death sentence on anyone he perceives as bad, even if not extending that to entire species.

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

Another frustrating part of the job competition arc for me was that, objectively speaking, Gai was right. Humagears were potentially dangerous. If you need a haircut and there's a decent percentage chance of your barber turning into an insane casteroides robot that wanted to kill you, then that is a massive fucking problem. I don't care if Humagears are the manifest form of humanity's dream or whatever pseudoscience-y bullcrap Aruto kept spouting, so long as Ark was around they were innately dangerous.

The worst part of that is, Gai is full-blown hypocrite. He degrades Humagears due to being potentially dangerous, but his ZAIASpec product is similar, it can make the user go berserk as well courtesy of Naki. So while Gai is technically right, he's only doing that to destroy a business competitor, but he didn't give a damn if it's his own product. It's karmic that he'd be also put on a situation where he had to make an announcement about ZAIASpec's safety (as well as Naki turning against him). And Gai is the major reason why many Humagears can go berserk, he's the one that made Ark this way in the first place by feeding it human malice and setting off Daybreak, so Gai's points should never be considered at the first place.

Humagears having capacity of good and evil mirrored humans', as per Humagears being the same as humans theme, so if only Humagears should be restricted but not humans are still quite discriminating, even though there's Magia danger, as there are many Humagears who live normally and never involved in the war too. Albeit I agree that denying Humagear issues is annoying instead of acting upon it, it's again, similar to the blind idealism and faith in human goodness, without acknowledging the fact that humanity can be pretty shitty at times. But that doesn't mean that humans should be constantly detained, except the ones who are deemed guilty (at prison or such).