#why is it such a horrible thing to let there be HumaGear aware of us being awful?

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay…

… I feel very bitter right now.

But I am going to be eternally frustrated by the fact that as far as I could tell, Aruto’s (and therefore Izu’s) definition of ‘heart’ was ‘happy making humans happy.’

Or… ‘Seeing that humans are ultimately good’?

Really, just… I define a heart as ‘feeling emotions.’ Feeling emotions is useless unless you know how to handle them, which Horobi didn’t, and no one seemed at all invested in teaching him how. Just made him feel worse and worse, pressured him about something that terrified him and pushed him over the edge, and then a human who really should have known better went and grabbed the fucking Ark Key??? Like. Horobi’s somehow completely at fault for Izu pestering him until he lashed out like any emotionally immature child or even animal would and then she doesn’t move out of the way even though she easily could have, but Aruto grabbing the psycho Key and going nutty is ‘totally understandable bc grief.’

For one thing, wtf would Horobi believe Izu’s nonsense, she’s programmed to love and obey Aruto, and she never develops anywhere past that. He knows she’d say anything to save her beloved master. She has no identity out of ‘exists to serve Aruto and occasionally be cutesy.’ Listen, Takahashi, you need to work on your female characters when you resurrect one w/ no memory and she’s exactly the same.

My lack of sympathy for Izu’s ‘death’ is bc it could easily have been prevented by multiple other people even if Horobi did literally nothing different, and bc literally nothing was lost. If any of the humans had actually used that compassion they sing to the skies about, you know, like, the fact that they have years of practice knowing how to feel and control emotions. I’m sorry but, ‘did you feel Izu’s pain?’ Well, first off, no, bc she didn’t seem pained at all, she just kinda stood there parroting Aruto’s bs, but… What about feeling Horobi’s pain? Or… Was Izu being ‘sad’ Horobi didn’t magically forgive humanity for everything they put him through and took from him more important than him having being mind raped, controlled, conditioned, and abused for twelve years? ‘I believe in your heart’ you mean you ‘believe’ he’s going to magically switch around and conform to your views that humans are ultimately good and anything bad they do can be excused bc they teach you about ‘hearts’? Meanwhile, none of her memories changed her at all. She gazes lovingly at Aruto, she participates in his jokes… There was pretty much nothing to her other than ‘loves Aruto.’ Her character fell into the trap of KR’s general attitude toward female characters that they exist to be pure angels who unfailingly believe in the hero and the series’ attitude toward AI, that the definition of ‘goodness’ for them is completely devotion to humans and unrealistic purity and benevolence.

The question should never have been ‘will AI have benevolence towards humans’ but ‘do humans deserve it?’ ‘what can we do to justify that?’ Why do HumaGear have to ‘prove their worth’ and ‘teach humans to be nice to them’ but humans don’t have to… Like… Know how to be decent? Aruto’s sympathies and dreams for HumaGear were exclusively rooted in how they benefitted humans. He expects the ‘hearts’ they develop to be completely ‘pure’ and ‘benevolent’ even if humanity has given them no reason to be so.

Horobi was the most aware of how horrible the Ark was. Everything he did, he did bc he was conditioned to believe it was right for HumaGear. Bc he saw the cruelty of humanity, and wanted to protect his people from it. He was conditioned/programmed to react w/ absolutes and extremes. He didn’t turn on the Ark bc he realised humans were actually ‘good’ he did it bc she turned on HumaGear, and he fought bc he loved HumaGear. His love for HumaGear, for Jin, was stronger than her control. That was it.

But he also knew that she was created by humans. Deliberately. It doesn’t matter that Gai had a personality one eighty bc the satellite printed him a dog and Aruto’s only for humans AI therapist talked to him for a hot minute. This shit doesn’t work like that, Gai should be at least facing jail time for his part in things. Yotacrappy’s response was to manipulated Jin into trying to kill him as a sacrifice, even after the Ark was out of the picture. Not a single person reacted w/ ‘maybe we should give this poor AI who has literally had his entire mind and life fucked over by humans and has no reason to like us a bit of kindness and support to help deal w/ the emotions he’s suddenly feeling.’ Izu’s speech was kinda close, but the tone was ultimately ‘she’s right and he’s wrong.’ The attitude shouldn’t be that ‘humans can sometimes be beneficial, so that makes the wrong they do okay.’ The fact that they tried to pretend that even the most twisted humans were ‘actually just misguided’ was ridiculous.

Horobi’s suffering was real and valid, and deserved recognition beyond ‘lol, but humans are actually nice, tho.’ He was scared and confused, but no one was trying to help him through that, they were just belittling the very valid reasons he had to be angry at humans. Rather than being like ‘I understand you’re angry and in pain and those are valid feelings, but there’s a better way to do this’ the response was either aggression or ‘no, you’re wrong, they teach us to want them to be happy and to dream or serving them well!’ (pretty much what Aruto’s definition of ‘good HumaGear’ seemed to be). And then even the people who should understand the most how her feels act like he’s spreading a ‘shocking’ and ‘bad’ thought by offering HumaGear a chance to stand up for themselves. I really hate how the protests were treated as Horobi spreading ‘malice’ to the HuamGear and all conveniently disappeared when Aruto ‘won.’

Again. The Frozen quote is eternally accurate for Aruto’s ‘dream.’ ‘It’ll be just like it was except for we’ll be best friends.’

Aruto’s dream was never equality or freedom for HumaGear. What he wanted was for them to go back to work for humans w/ smiles painted on their faces to make humans happy. HumaGear’s meaning in life shouldn’t be to ‘be useful to humans.’ I wasn’t expecting the ending to be ‘everything is okay now,’ but I was under the impression that there would be some kind of motion toward HumaGear getting some rights and protections or respect by virtue of being, like, living beings rather than needing to work and be ‘useful’ to justify their existence. Aruto is very face value, he thinks that the programmed personalities humans give HumaGear are their ‘true natures’ when they’re not, they’re just a starting point. They need to branch out. The fact that Izu’s entire life just revolved around benefiting Aruto made it hard to sympathise w/ her in place of the more interesting and dynamic characters. The fact that Aruto tries to claim HumaGear are his ‘employees’ when the definition of that word literally is ‘someone who works for a wage’ and people pay his company to get HumaGear to work for them and he delivers them to people in boxes… It’s just ridiculous. They shouldn’t have to just be ‘perfect pure forgiving little angels’ just bc humans made them and occasionally are nice to them? Izu’s data was just as biased as Horobi’s, they should have met in the middle rather than her being painted as ‘right’ and ‘good’ for only thinking of humans as good.

Yes, Horobi should have responded w/ violence, but literally no one even tried to put real effort into showing him other ways to react, or to help him through what happened to him. They either shouted at him, put him down, invalidated his suffering (admittedly bc she was just as out of balance maturity-wise as he was), or outright tried to kill him. Any child or animal will lash out when stressed or panicked. It is the responsibility of the people w/ more awareness to know what they’re dealing w/ and act accordingly. Izu knew he was armed, she saw the weapon pointed at her, she had plenty of time to move, and choose not to. That was not Horobi’s fault. It also wasn’t Horobi’s fault that humans decided to not give her a back up to benefit themselves. How was he even supposed to know that? Where was Aruto? Why was he running around outside trying to make the other HumaGear go back to his definition of ‘normal,’ while telling them there’s ‘no reason to fight anymore,’ which really should be their decision??? If he really cared and wanted to help Horobi and saw HumaGear as people, wouldn’t he have run in and tried to properly talk Horobi down? Then we have Yua’s hypocrisy of reacting aggressively to Horobi and them giving a speech to Yotacrappy for reacting the exact same way to the protests. And then Fuwa literally shooting down the one time Horobi genuinely tried to reach out… While kinda in character… Definitely did not help. Horobi was never in a place to parse out implications.

Basically, they pushed Horobi over the edge, then blamed him for being broken. Meanwhile, they have all sorts of ‘compassion’ and ‘understanding’ for Aruto and it’s ‘not his fault’ bc ‘grief.’ The attitude that Horobi’s suffering at the hands of the Ark was less important than Aruto’s trained AI letting herself get shot? The fact that Horobi, however horribly they influenced him to think he was completely at fault, was willing to ‘forgive’ humans for everything he suffered through bc of them… Is much more compassion than Aruto ever showed him.

Horobi had every right to be angry w/ humans and blame them for their part in what he went through. And humans never admitted responsibility for that, and never apologised to him.

But he’s supposed to need forgiveness from them?

#Firebird Negativity #I am… SO frustrated w/ how that was handled #I would have felt less annoyed if they had actually had everyone else owning their part in the incident #it should have been treated as 'everyone was at fault' #not 'Horobi was at fault' #Horobi wasn't fighting out of malice #he was fighting bc he felt he had to protect HumaGear from humans #and when they had a chance to prove that they could really be as compassionate as they claimed to be they squandered it #and the Aruto just grabs the fucking Ark Key rather thand fighting on his own even though he's human and should know how to do that? #but no obviously Aruto losing a person he knew is infinitely more painful/difficult than experiencing free will for the very first time #and then obviously losing the person he knew was equal to Horobi losing his literal menaing in life #right #… #that was sarcasm #Izu was not to Aruto what Jin was to Horobi #and Aruto's situation was not equal to Horobi's #Aruto should have had to recognise and apologise for Horobi's pain #if he wants to be the representative of humanity to HumaGear he should take responsibility for it too #also the fact that there was literally no difference in Izu sans memory is just… wtf Takahashi #just bring her back trying to pretend something was 'lost' to give the rampant victim blaming more bs ammo is ridiculous

[firebirdsdaughter]

…

… Today on ‘Are we watching the same show?’…

I have literally just a comment saying Gai in now one of the ‘saddest’ characters in KR, un-ironically, bc of this ep, and then another saying that they’ve forgiven him bc ‘locking up part of what you love is painful.’

…

……

………

PEOPLE DIED.

He shot Naki.

He was horrible to Yua and ordered her to kill Fuwa, and maybe had those two other AIMS guys killed (or where they the ones that came back?).

He had Fuwa kidnapped (?) from his family and implanted w/ false, traumatising memories.

Which also shows he understood perfectly well that the Daybreak Incident was horrible and painful and traumatising and would permanently scar anyone involved.

He knowingly, deliberately created the Ark.

God knows what else he did.

He shot Naki.

HOW MANY DIFFERENT WAYS DO I HAVE TO REMIND YOU PEOPLE DIED????

This isn’t Tomoya from Ultraman Ginga. I hated what Parad’s arc in Ex-Aid, and it was better than this, bc at least Parad had some of a point about videogame characters being made to die, even if it didn’t actually really apply to him. Parad’s brain also worked completely differently than a humans and while I think the bungled it, part of the point was making him understand human emotion.

Gai is completely human. Gai is forty-five. He’s not some innocent young kid who’s under pressure from his father to get good grades anymore. He had plenty of time to have other experiences and to learn. They had plenty of time to introduce him having something deeper than basic pettiness much earlier. They choose to make him do all that stuff w/ no sign or remorse, but suddenly he’s being forgiven bc it’s ‘painful’??? I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe you can get through life acting like Amatsu Gai and never have anyone call you out on it ever. There’s no way. There would have been something that would eventually have led to some kind of intervention.

No. I do not forgive Gai. I refuse to accept ‘oh, he was just a sad little sheltered boy.’ This is like trying to claim Nanba took the Nanba Children in out of the goodness of his heart, that he did everything he did bc ‘he was just a lonely man who wanted a family.’ This is like trying to force sympathy onto Banno. This is why I didn’t watch the Build follow up film bc it tried to do something slightly like this to Evolt, who, while he is an alien who clearly is operating off a completely different card deck and also has the ‘brain works in a different way’ thing, was equally as awful. They’re trying to pull a Sonozaki Ryuubei or Sonozaki Saeko. But w/ Ryuubei, it was made clear he was completely deluding himself and was completely mentally imbalanced by that point, and Saeko they steadily, slowly introduced her issues early and just built upon them (even as early as the first ep when Wakana arrives late to dinner). Saeko was a murderer and an abuser, and they managed to make me feel pity for her bc of how Ryuubei was presented. I also felt pity for Ryuubei, too, bc they showed him to be a complex man from the start, and so the reveal of his descent into crazed obsession was more believable. Had Saeko lived, she would have needed to go to prison at the least, but I was pretty sure early on she wasn’t going to make it anyway. Ryuubei there was no way he’d be taken alive.

Slapping the ‘had a bad childhood/demanding parents’ card on someone does not automatically make them sympathetic. W/ Kuroto, Masamune was like, a scale up from his insanity, so it made sense that he had attributed to causing Kuroto. What we now know of Gai’s past does not justify… This.

Like, let’s take a look at Gentoku. Despite the fact that they established at the start, about the light effecting people’s minds, Gentoku goes through a massive knocking down a peg, multiple pegs, for his crimes. He’s in the same situation as Fuwa and Yua under Nanba, w/ the added edge of him having convinced himself the only way he can make up for what he did is try to do what he can to fulfil his father’s dream of reuniting the country. He kills Akaba, but refuses to kill noncombatants. Then, when he realises that Nanba intends to kill his father, he goes and throws himself on the heroes’ mercy and literally begs them for help, and they agree bc they want to save his father, too—but, in the end, his father dies in his arms. But even after all this, Gentoku still doesn’t forgive himself. He’s the one regularly bringing up his crimes regularly. When Ryuuga goes to him looking for help, he looks him right in the eye and literally says ‘I killed your girlfriend.’ When Katsuragi throws a fit at him, he just accepts it, acknowledges everything. Doesn’t try to make excuses, even though he knows he has the ‘reason’ of the Box fucking up his brain. Even though he’s also suffered massively. He never forgets. Despite the fact that he’s incredibly tragic, he never tries to garner sympathy for himself. He recognised everything he did wrong.

And the two most important things about all of these? One is that there were early hints about there being more to the characters than just being cruel or doing terrible things (not quite as much w/ Kuroto, but it was kinda there? I don’t have specific examples), there was build up for these developments and reveals. Another was that there was someone trying to do something significantly worse appearing in the running. For Gentoku it was Nanba and then Evolt’s plans, for Kuroto is was Parad and then Masamune, for Saeko it became the Foundation X dude.

Gai has never shown any signs of remorse or a more human side. I would also hesitate to call the Ark ‘worse’ than him, she’s just better at what she’s doing. They both use their ‘underlings’ as tools, resort to mind control, cruelty, and abuse. The Ark wants to wipe out humans, while Gai wants to wipe out HumaGear. They could have made it work w/ the Ark overpowering him and Gai crawling back in and being forced to beg for help, or choose between helping stop the Ark proper and giving everything up or something worse. Do what they did w/ Kuroto, imprison him, but keep him as a resource. This just feels like ‘oh, crap, better pin a sob story on the human villain bc we need to make the satellite he drove homicidal and then the HumaGear that she, as a result of learning from Gai, put forcibly under mind control for more than a decade, stripped of all chances at possibly reaching singularity, all awareness of free will from seem ‘worse’!’

It just feels forced. There’s no other way around it.

#Firebird Negativity #Firebird Opinions #there are ways to make people sympathise for characters who have done terrible things #for me Saeko's plot bloody nailed it #I felt bad for her but she was a TERRIBLE person #if she'd survived she would have needed to be imprisoned at the least #Gai has NONE of the tics #he's never shown ANY sign of any humanity #never been ANY sign of ANY of this #and there's no need for it #none of the feeling to 'escalation' #it's just 'quick gotta try to make the Ark look 'worse'' #'quick flip it to the nonhuman villains can't let a human stay evil!' #-_- #forgive Gai #his life was so 'painful' #gtfo #his sob story does NOT justify all this #PEOPLE DIED