#(I wholeheartedly agree with Isaac’s response of ‘Not for the food’) but that’s not what I’m getting at here

[tonariofjananda]

Maybe it’s a little too soon for me to hate Anton but I agree, there’s not a lot of things he can do that would make me hate him at this stage. On the contrary, the more I see him the more I enjoy the direction of his character.

Anton’s young, arrogant, and a little too excited to be harming others. But then again, that’s to be expected from this society. Kids in this world don’t realize the extent to which people can be harmed because pain doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s a faraway concept, hence why Bon’s ability to feel pain was demonstrated so thoroughly to a group of children. These kids have never been hurt before, they have no concept of it, so they’re incapable of feeling sympathy or empathy for what they (almost) did to him. They don’t understand what they’re doing, and even if they did, they view Bon as sub-human. In their eyes torturing him was more akin to a child being excited to dissect a dead animal in class. Just an opportunity for hands-on learning.

Not only this but Anton is also just excited to finally be able to participate in society. He thinks he’s grown up now that he’s able to have stars (kind of like when a person celebrates puberty or entering their teens), and that belief is only exacerbated by the fact that he immediately maxed them out and can now be as physically big as he pleases. I don’t fully know what kind of media surrounds this society, but violence is probably pretty common in this world because it’s nigh impossible for someone to die from being hit now, let alone feel pain.

That said Anton does still have a sense of morality- he wants to be ‘helpful’ to Tonari, and he felt genuinely troubled when he accidentally killed the Captain of the team in the beginning. The problem is he’s easily swayed into doing reprehensible things because he fully trusts a society he doesn’t really understand yet. “Uncle Bunny says murder is OK, and he’s a grown up with five stars. That makes him trustworthy because he’s clearly doing something right.” Anton’s too young to have realized that things don’t work like that though. He hasn’t realized the system he operates in is flawed because it’s all he’s ever known and all he’s ever wanted to be a part of.

Side note, he’s also not gonna understand how difficult it is to be in and move up in this society either, especially not when he himself was rewarded with those five stars pretty much the second he was old enough to receive them. He’s especially arrogant right now because he thinks he got them through “his own hard work.” (Sumn sumn the American Dream being such an unreachable thing for those in poverty while people living in higher socioeconomic status just believe everyone else needs to “work harder” to reach it like them, when really all they did was inherit their wealth and/or use others as their stepping stones to achieve it).

So yeah it sucks how Anton is behaving, but given the information we’ve received thus far I find it really hard to view him as an inherently bad kid. I’m not saying he’s behaving particularly well (dude was touching Tonari’s thigh and playing with her hair last chapter, I feel a little sick just thinking about it), and Oima definitely emphasizes his shitty behavior by drawing him as unnaturally as possible (God a sentient Hulk-man with a child hear… stuff of nightmares). But even if he ends up doing some really messed up stuff in the near future, Anton is so well-written that it’ll be easy to understand where it falls into his character and motivations. He’s just really just an impulsive young boy with unchecked power doing what he thinks is right and ‘acceptable.’

A fascinating character, this Anton! I’m pretty excited to see where he goes from here p

I do not like Anton one bit

Honestly, the dude ain't high on my list too. Hearing chauvinistic/paternalistic pomp out of Huge Jacked Man (read: bræt) doesn't add points to his charisma stat. AT ALL.

I find it a little funny that we're now in an era where the Hayase rebirth is universally more well-received (Kahaku and Mizuha weren't universal back then) and well-loved than a dude who isn't a rebirth or a suspected rebirth of any prior character. It's also kinda funny because this ended up being a curveball, in-story indictment against a eugenicist's worldview: if people are really hard-coded by their genes, such that manipulation and concentration of good genes (i.e designer babies) will produce good, superior people...

Then why is Anton's perfectly designed ass stuck with this unlikeable, slappable personality, aye?

CHECKMATE, NOKKERS

In all seriousness though, I can't really bring myself to hate Anton. I just can't look past how much his environment made him who he was. The brain-rotting Kaibarapaganda; the devotion to a measurement of merits (Star System) in their meritocratic society; the culture and norms he was shaped by... There are just too many causes to his effects that just don't fall under his responsibility. The causal determinist in me simply cannot look past these to judge someone, and so I'm just annoyed by Anton at worst but kinda okay with seeing him. His side-plot with Tonari will be life-changing for him, I bet.

I'm trying to imagine a scenario where I'll definitely hate the shit out of Anton, but honestly, I think even if he wounds his brother, it won't necessarily make me detest him yet. Unless he, say, does something to Abel that I can reasonably separate from the larger environmental factors he's raised in?

If he looks down on his brother or even sees Abel as a mark of shame because the latter is Lacking (I don't know if Anton knew; I lean on the side of "he's likely ignorant"), I'll definitely hate his ass slightly more. But then it'd be only slightly, because even his prejudice toward Lackings (if Anton had any to begin with) was conditioned by his society and what he learned from the adults around him.

Damn. You just made me realize something, π! Anton is just too emblematic of a well-to-do kid living in Kaibara society for me to not assess his crap as the fault of the system instead of him. A lot of things about him are simply a microcosm of the larger society he lives in.

So yea. If I don't like Anton, it's because I really don't like whatever part of their society that made him like this.