#esp when it's literally what Horobi was doing in the finale when they all turned on him for no good reason

[firebirdsdaughter]

Suffering bc…

… a) Okada, would it kill you to do some sort of bromide thing where I can get them, I am this close to printing out pictures from the books and putting them on my picture board???

b) I am hit w/ how mbjr and AIMS getting two interconnected vcinexts should have been awesome/interesting/really cool bc they were such a parallel set up in the show, so it should be an awesome way to explore their parallel situations post series and how they understand each other and develop beyond that… But… It’s not.

[firebirdsdaughter]

What’s hilarious [read: ridiculous] to me…

… Is that Horobi and Yua actually follow a fairly parallel path in their responses to their situations (I had a whole realisation about how Horobi-Fuwa-Naki-Yua are a four way parallel today; Horobi-Fuwa are parallels and Naki-Yua are parallels, but then their actions crisscross parallel). But there’s a massive double standard in how the two characters are reacted to… Despite the fact that Yua is a fully mentally matured and developed human adult and Horobi is an AI that has been hacked and brainwashed for the past decade in a way that forcibly stunted his development.

Yua was in a horrid and toxic work environment w/ an abusive boss. Now, admittedly, Gai kept a large amount of his worse deeds from her and to a point one could justify it as her thinking she’s acting for the greater good… Until we get to the part where it becomes abundantly clear she knows very well that what they’re doing is at the least morally questionable… But doesn’t try to defect at all, even to the point of insisting it’s of her own free will. Yes, she had a chip in her head, too, but given her reactions to him torturing Fuwa, she doesn’t seem to have known he could do that, and she didn’t know about Naki, nor did she have an AI drone in her mind. Now this is not to blame Yua—in fact, the point is that she was a victim in a bad situation. Her struggle to get out of there was fairly realistic given her situation. But she had the experience to know that what they were doing was wrong. That makes it tragic in it’s own way, yes, that she was under extreme stress and very conflicted, but she was aware of that. She was a fully developed adult. She deliberately pursued Izu w/ the intention of destroying her, and would have had Gai not said the wrong thing and set Fuwa off. And Izu was frightened and trying to run away. She resists Fuwa’s repeated attempts to snap her out of it.

Rightly so, people noted Yua’s situation, were upset for her and felt bad for her. When there were jackasses saying she should die, people called it out as bad. People were cheering for her to get away from Gai. People were happy when she did. And this includes me. I blocked people I saw shitting on Yua and saying she should die bc what the fuck, guys, she was in a seriously messed up situation.

Once free of Gai, Yua is uncertain what to do and decides to try and ‘make up’ for something she feels responsible for in a rather questionable way. She ends up helping the Ark rise and wreak havoc. Still people recognise that she couldn’t have known that would happen. Poor Yua’s been through a lot.

Meanwhile, Horobi is hacked and brainwashed by the Ark twelve years ago. She uses him to cause Daybreak. He is an AI being controlled by a larger AI designed to control HumaGear like him. Unlike and adult human being pressured and manipulated, he is literally incapable of thinking outside the Ark’s will. The Ark has complete control. Even if he did have any experience to compare w/ before, the Ark erases it. He has no frame of reference besides the Ark, no development of any kind to evaluate his situation w/. Even when Jin becomes important to him, everything is through the lens of the Ark, the Ark is more than a god to him. The brainwashing is so deep that even when disconnected for a bit, he can’t be anything besides blindly devoted. Talks about how the Ark is absolute. When confronted w/ something that causes uncertainty, he goes into a full on mental breakdown—literally, should have been a first clue that emotions were never going to come easy for him.

Eventually, he does end up w/ enough experience to just start to begin to break free. Manages to act completely on his own for the first time in his life—not an instinct that the Ark swooped in to take advantage of, he gets to go through w/ it on his own. And he’s floored. He literally cannot fathom why his body moved on its own, as far as he can tell. Can’t understand the fact that he wanted to do something. This is recognised as a big deal (one of the only times anyone tries to actually talk him out of things, in fact, unlike Yua, where there was a lot of effort). Horobi begins to wonder about things outside the Ark’s will, about himself, which he’s never considered before… Only to have it turn out his son was plotting to have the Ark possess him and then kill him to kill her. This completely upends any development he had. He’s re-hacked and rendered as largely a drone when not being possessed.

Finally, someone decides to put effort into him (kinda…) again. And, in a situation that heavily parallels Yua, he ends up finding it in him to break free of the Ark. Only… Again, a lot like Yua, it’s not a clean break. He’s still stuck w/ the past, the conditioning, and the effects of what happened. Additionally, as later becomes clear, his struggling w/ feeling emotions, which he has been carefully conditioned to reject and have no experience w/, for the first time. He’s mentally unstable and volatile. Now, in the show, what happens is the result of Azu/the Ark’s manipulations and people making poor decisions (and I do think you can make an argument for the fact that the Ark was intentionally keeping Horobi from feeling/having any experience w/ emotions to make him even more of a wreck later on), and poking a very volatile bear (well, a highly traumatised child soldier AI who has no fucking clue what emotions are to the point it feels like an outside being controlling him somehow), he lashes out, and Izu calmly stands there and deliberately takes a hit she very clearly sees coming. General chaos ensues. From Horobi’s perspective, the thing he’s been trained to think will get rid of the uncertainty and emotions etc. not only doesn’t work, but it makes him feel worse, and bc he has no other way he knows how to respond, he becomes more aggressive in rejecting those feelings. And then Jin dies, and he completely breaks down.

The reaction he gets? People calling him evil and horrible and saying he should die. That e’s choosing to do these things. People who talk about how Yua can’t really be held accountable, how she was coerced, look at a literal brainwash victim and say he choose to do those things.

Now, obviously, there are differences, which resulted in the different out comes—obviously the whole, one is a fully developed human adult and the other one is an AI. One was externally conditioned, the other, again, literally brainwashed. One had someone fighting to convince them to break free of their situation on a regular basis, repeatedly, constantly, the other didn’t. Yua was always going to have an easier break than Horobi, bc she had more mental and emotional maturity, but bc of that, esp in regards to actions done whilst under the ‘control’ of others, she has more responsibility for her actions bc she was capable of identifying them as wrong.

Now, of course, both situations are bad for the people involved. Both of them are victims.

But the issue is that people seem to be all over how Yua was a victim, Yua was mistreated… While attacking Horobi (and being upset about Izu dying is one thing, although, again, the person really responsible for that was Azu/th ark(well, Gai for creating her), Horobi was pretty much used as a weapon there, but this is for stuff he did while mind controlled).

And I used Yua just bc she and Horobi had the most parallel responses to their situations. The same goes for being able to see Fuwa as a victim, or Naki (so if Naki is the one who gave Horobi the ZetsumeRise Keys, does that make them responsible for Operation MaGear, or bc they gave Horobi the ForceRiser and said to use it on Jin, are they responsible for that? Bc that’s the logic of blaming Horobi for Daybreak), or Raiden, or even Aruto for that time he got hijacked via MCH. Any of the hacked HumaGear who were turned into MaGear.

Just… The concept of seeing how all of those people are victims in the situation… But blaming Horobi? Like… Not being interested in Horobi is one thing. Obviously, no on is going to be as madly in love w/ him as I am. It’s the act of not recognising him as being a victim while recognising everyone in similar situations as victims. It’s saying he was responsible for Daybreak, treating him like the Ark’s will was his (I’m literally having flashbacks to comments calling Horobi’s whole death ‘Horobi’s plan,’ even though by that point we literally knew the Ark was an entity that existed). Like… They literally confirmed it in show as not being that. Horobi is a mind control victim. What someone’s personal opinion of the character outside of that is another matter. But the fact is that he was mind controlled by the Ark and that the things he did under her control cannot be objectively called things he chose to do. Whether someone thinks he would have chosen them if he weren’t mind controlled… Esp given how all his actions of own choice were about protecting Jin, I personally disagree. But the show has been very explicit that he was mind controlled, and that he had no clue how to handle emotions (to the point he didn’t even seem to know what they are), so being able to understand that all those other people, esp the ones who went through similar things, are victims… But Horobi’s to blame for what he did? That’s just ridiculous.

And don’t even get me started on how anyone could ever see Gai as being a bigger victim than Horobi.

[firebirdsdaughter]

I'm honestly not too shocked that Aruto is going to work together Gai now. He always rubbed me the wrong way when it came to his views about Humagears, esp his reaction to Raiden & Subaru. That was a huge red flag for me. Also, if he's really so concerned about the well-being of Humagears, then he should offer counseling for the destroyed & revived Humagears to deal with the trauma. But I guess that would be too much to ask. As long as they serve humans who cares about Humagears' feelings.

I def agree w/ you, he’s rubbed me the wrong way in many of the same ways.

It’s hard to believe he sees HumaGear as people when he’s all pleased w/ Raiden talking about how he’ll be decommissioned soon and even calling the two of them ‘just like real brothers.’

You know, like he keeps saying Horobi is ‘trying to be like Jin’s father.’

And don’t even get me started on ‘a caring brother can’t be a spy,’ ‘if only you had been different,’ ‘why did you hurt Izu?’ ‘I’ve never treated them differently’…

AUGH.

To me, Aruto’s ‘dream’ can be summed up in a line from a song that was cut from Frozen (ya’ll thought I’d forgotten about this, didn’t you, but no) that goes ‘It’ll be just like it was, except for we’ll be best friends.’

This got long, so I’m cutting it here. Or. I’m trying to. 

He doesn’t see HumaGear as equal to people, he just wants them to stay right where they are, and ‘be happy’ there. ‘Good’ HumaGear are the ones whose development is convenient for humans. Raiden was ‘good’ when he saw no problem dying bc his ‘purpose was served,’ Naki was ‘good’ when they just wanted to support other HumaGear’s dreams as long as they were steered towards HumaGear w/ dreams of benefiting humanity, Jin is ‘good’ now bc he’s not trying to get HumaGear away from serving humans anymore and is also willing to kill his own father or due himself to do something that will benefit humans. The morality of the show has always been very much centred around humans, how HumaGear benefit humans, and HumaGear are expected to be these perfect little angels who exist to help humans and never think of themselves. Horobi is ‘bad’ bc he has resentment towards humans and has been so deeply under the Ark’s control for so long that he can’t think outside of her (esp not after being possessed) so obviously he doesn’t ‘want’ to be ‘change.’

I said it in the tags of my other post, but there’s something wrong w/ the picture when you’re holding a literally mind controlled AI who hasn’t had any concept of free will or self thought in his entire life aside from small snatches that were quickly stomped out, more accountable than a human w/ full autonomy and knowledge and power who deliberately did things that caused death and harm (and shot someone in the head). It’s not a good message. I’m supposed to feel bad for Gai bc he’s ‘sad,’ but Horobi deserves to die? I’m sorry, what?

The message has very much been ‘humans are special special and HumaGear are expendable/need to be carefully moulded into a ‘singularity’ that’s at the least convenient for humans.’ ‘Good’ HumaGear aspire only to properly serve their humans, to be like them, they are pure and angelic creatures who never feel anything ‘negative,’ and if they do, they need to be purged.

I could rant myself in circles about this for ages. I think for me, the really glaring example is Aruto’s treatment of Jin, a relationship that could have been an interesting learning experience for both of them (though, honestly, I was also hoping to see Fuwa also help Aruto realise the issues w/ his attitude, bc as he started coming down from his prejudice and aggression, Fuwa actually treated HumaGear more like equals than Aruto did, one of the many things I loved about him and Horobi as a pair), but instead ends up being a glaring example of Aruto’s… Whatever.

So Horobi has his first moment of clarity and genuinely fears for Jin, so the Ark steps in and ‘tells’ him to protect his son, so he does and it hurt, and Jin is hysterical. Izu proceeds to walk right up to the still-transformed, clearly emotionally volatile and very uninjured Jin, and announce w/ a smile that Horobi has been defeated. Jin, hysterical and lost, reacts in the only way he knows how, violently, which she should have bloody seen coming, wth. But then, Aruto is demanding to know ‘why did you hurt Izu’ like she did nothing wrong and Jin just attacked her randomly (which was a thing that could have happened and would have made his emotions make mire sense, Jin lashing out at Izu as ‘revenge’ for Horobi), and then Jin gets treated like the total bad guy. Then, on top of that, Aruto finds out during the fight that Jin doesn’t actually know what’s going on, he’s just been raised into this. Instead of immediately trying to change tactics and reason w/ him, Aruto just spews his ‘I want HumaGear and humans to smile together’ line (what does that even mean?), and when Jin rejects that, Aruto just… Gives up and says ‘if only you had been different.’ doesn’t try to prompt Jin to think about what Jin wants, what Jin is feeling, doesn’t bother to try to find out why Jin is so hysterical. It gets even worse when he quickly gains the firepower advantage and learns that Izu will be totally fine, but he still doesn’t bother trying anything else. He just kills Jin, bc… What? Jin didn’t immediately bow to his��‘love’ for HumaGear? Of course once sentence wasn’t gonna do it, he just watched humans kill his father! Aruto didn’t need to kill Jin at all, it would have been easy to disable him—alternatively, if they really wanted Jin to go down there, there were ways to do it that didn’t make it come off as Aruto quickly erasing a HumaGear for having any negative feelings or resentment towards humans, esp when you follow it w/ a scene of him and Izu being all pleased about other HumaGear ‘behaving’ themselves, and then never mention Jin again.

Fast forward, and when Jin comes back talking about wanting to free HumaGear from humans… Aruto actually asks him what he wants, finally? Then Aruto gets the boot from Hiden and decides to go to Jin for help. This should be a turning point where Jin get to properly confront Aruto about what happened and Aruto reflects on what he did, but no. Jin gets to shout a little, but then Aruto claims he never treated humans and HumaGear differently and says ‘I watched my HumaGear dad die’ and Jin just… Says nothing? doesn’t shoot back w/, ‘so did I, humans killed him.’ Then they get interrupted and Jin runs off… Only to… Rescue Izu later? But then after he does he… Grabs her hand and runs away and tries to convince her to be free? After… Literally buying his father time to reconnect to the Ark? And this is Izu? Who he stabbed? Okay… Anyway, then we have more stuff w/ poor connotations of Jin saying he ‘learned something’ from Aruto killing him and Izu ‘choosing’ to keep being Aruto’s secretary like a ‘good’ little HumaGear (her liking him and wanting to stay on his side would be one thing, but this… Esp w/ him claiming that he thought she should choose, going by his later insistence that Jin can’t take G-Pen bc he’s a human’s ‘partner’), and only then does he take a bullet for her. This apparently means something to Jin, although I feel like the implications of ‘she’s worth protecting bc she decided to keep serving humans and I killed you bc you didn’t want to do that’ should not have been lost on him (also wtf did Jin start caring about Izu?). The we have the next ep w/ aforementioned G-Pen incident which for some reason Aruto defending another HumaGear choosing to serve humans makes Jin decide to ‘believe in his dream’ or whatever. But then later the Raiden scene makes it seem like Jin was playing along bc that conversation w/ Horobi about HumaGear needing guidance to break free gave him an idea or something, I dunno, but naturally Aruto reacts like this is some huge betrayal, despite the fact that they hardly have any relationship—okay, so this friendship is something Aruto made up in his head, given his character, and apparent assumptions that all HumaGear actually adore humans, that makes sense. That could work. But then episode thirty fucking six happens. Jin apparently cares more for Yaiba, a human he’s barely interacted w/ who had yet to show any sign of no longer considering HumaGear to be tools, who had previously represented all the things Jin hated about them, then his own father. Acts all protective of her, throws himself in as a shield for her, moons about while she’s in the hospital. Then we learn he decided he trusted her (?????) enough to conspire w/ her to… Use his own father as a sacrifice to kill the Ark. Aruto seems to be more worried about Horobi, but merely yells a bit about how Horobi should ‘remember who he is by now.’ Come ep 37, Jin fucking takes a hit for miss perfect HumaGear Izu (note: aside from her grabbing the idiot ball in ep 15, my annoyance w/ Izu isn’t really something she as a character has done, it’s the way they’ve written her as the ‘pinnacle of ‘good’ HumaGear for her devotion to her human’), and tells Aruto to leave. Now that Jin is behaving in a way that benefits/is convenient for humans, though, Aruto is a like ‘oh, we totally were best buds, I was right!’ and is so worried and distressed about him, forgetting Horobi (who is so ‘bad’ for not being able to break through more than a decade of mind control! forget him, Jin must be saved!). Then we have that incredibly forced scene in 38 where Aruto tries to ‘get through to Jin’ and Jin ‘breaks through the Ark’s control bc of Aruto’ (see my draft horse pack on a shetland pony analogy) and ‘tells Aruto to kill him!’ which continues in to this ep. In which we also have… Gai. Who Aruto quickly puts effort into ‘reasoning w/’ and ‘showing the light’ bc ‘oh no he had a bad childhood’… Okay, but… You killed Jin for that, and he literally didn’t understand what he was doing. Gai had full autonomy and knowledge of his actions. People were hurt bc of both of their actions, but it’s Gai who gets a big speech and Jin who gets blown up. I said it back when it happened. If Jin had been human? I bet they would have made Aruto approach that much differently.

The fact that Aruto is willing to do all that for Gai but killed Jin, and only now considers Jin worth any effort bc Jin is behaving in a way that benefits/is convenient for humans even at the expense of HumaGear (being willing to sacrifice Horobi, even himself, to stop the Ark, while that goal is technically ultimately noble, the context gives a bad connotation), and not trying to talk HumaGear out of being subservient to humans and telling them to think for themselves, or wanting to revive a HumaGear that Aruto was content to leave deactivated bc he didn’t have a ‘use’… But Horobi only gets a few shouts and then ditched bc he ‘won’t listen’… Leaves a really bad impression.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay, wait…

… Now bc I’m thinking about this… Well, first off, gtfo w/ calling Horobi a ‘control freak’ bc he’s the one being controlled, but also…

I went on about this before, and I’m sure I will again, but I’ve always considered Horobi has having being ‘used’ by the Ark, whilst Jin was ‘manipulated.’ Horobi wasn’t ‘controlling’ Jin, he was just the ‘tool’ the Ark used to control/manipulate Jin. Horobi was a tool, Jin was a pawn.

Look at how wild and carefree Jin was pre-ep 6. Horobi had to explain to him the Ark’s plan in ep 1. That doesn’t sound like a control-freak dad to me, that sounds like Horobi was pretty kind and allowing before the Ark/Amatsu’s plan kicked into gear and things took off (I still see that as being the closest to how Horobi would have raised Jin had the Ark never happened, which makes ep 6 all the more heartbreaking). I also still think that Jin never actually connected to the Ark before ep 6, and, notably, the first time we see Horobi telling Jin not to do something is when Jin is insisting on wanting to transform (of course, once Naki suggests that it would help the plan to allow it, and the Ark likely agrees, he shifts positions, but I still find his initial refusal kind of interesting). So basically, Jin was primed for free-will from the start, w/ the only reason he followed the plans being his adoration for Horobi, and it seems Horobi originally had no intention of using more direct methods to control him. Additionally, Horobi’s goal was to prompt singularity in Jin, albeit one that the Ark wanted, but never once were we given any indication there was any intention for him to reach singularity.

So no, Horobi’s not personally ‘controlling’ Jin, or even trying to, the Ark was using him to do so. The closest you can come, frankly, is that, esp back then, and I think/hope still now, Horobi is the lynchpin for controlling Jin. Bc Jin cares about him. The Ark was able to manipulate Jin how she wanted before bc he loved and followed Horobi—even when he was being ‘influenced’ by humans, he never doubted Horobi and rushed over to him the moment he showed up. Honestly, I have to wonder what wold have happened even if Horobi hadn’t reset him, whether he snapped at him or what (literally, I can see Horobi explaining that w/ the same ‘don’t copy humans’ he gave when Jin made a grave). I’m betting Jin would still have followed him, to be completely honest. Aside from stopping him from reaching a singularity she didn’t like, reseting him also prevented the possibility of him further prompting a real emotional response in Horobi, preventing those thoughts from being spread to his father in anyway, trying to make sure Horobi didn’t or couldn’t delve into those feelings. Sure, if Jin had been allowed to keep that singularity, he might’ve ended up turning on them, but at the same time, it could have just resulted in Jin reminding Horobi even more of his original purpose, or realising that the Ark was no different than what it claimed humans were and wanting to rescue his father from that—after all, Jin was Horobi’s only ‘variable’ from the Ark’s will; he seems to have raised Jin very ‘normally,’ happy, and carefree prior to the Ark finally getting in gear, he referred to Jin as his son seemingly on his own (and the then the Ark had to step in and make sure that that didn’t go any further), and when he initially saw Jin in actual danger, he gave his most independent reaction since the start. Jin was his soft spot, the only other thing he lived for besides the Ark (and she likely feared that Jin might become more important than her).

And even after being connected to it, Jin didn’t talk about the Ark at all until after Horobi’s death; I’m actually wondering if, aside from ‘rewinding’ him, she actually didn’t interfere w/ his personality much, and just continued to make use of his love for Horobi. I don’t know if any of that made sense, but basically, I think that Horobi is the key to controlling Jin before and is now still at least a huge boon towards, at the least, influencing him, whether it’s the Ark controlling what he taught Jin—or (more recently, I hope) Jin not wanting anything to happen to him. I think I made a comment before which I still think is true, even if I wish they would explore it more, which would be that it went from Jin being Horobi’s soft spot (well, I mean, Jin still is his soft spot, but I hope you know what I mean), to Horobi being Jin’s soft spot. Again, despite being rather vocal against the Ark in most situations, Jin has shown reluctance to fight w/ Horobi, or to really openly object to the Ark in his presence… It’s probably wishful thinking, but I like the idea of him being hesitant to push the Ark too far bc he’s unsure what she might do to Horobi if he does.

To try and make sense of all this nonsense… Horobi isn’t really directly ‘controlling’ Jin, but he is connected to that act, probably the key to it, if that makes sense. The Ark originally did it via Jin looking up to and following Horobi by controlling what Horobi taught him, but now it’s still possible to at least influence Jin through the fact that he cares about Horobi and likely is concerned for his safety.

[firebirdsdaughter]

I honestly can't understand why Gai of all people gets a redemption arc when he should be the main villain. He caused all of this (Ark, Horobi, MBJR, ZAIA bs). But no, we're really going with the one person who has never been himself the whole show and who's clearly being brainwashed/possessed to be the final villain (while possessed by the Ark again). Ex-Aid had a lot of flaws but it actually looks like a master piece next to his burning pile of bs. I hope Take-san never writes for Toei again.

I am trying to fathom how his nonsense could have gotten worse since Ex-Aid… I can only guess that no one was watching him this time, or something. No one looked this over too closely.

I do have to admit, I kinda expected the Ark to end up as the ‘final’ villain in the sense that she learns from Gai’s shittiness and turns on him. I expected Gai to get knocked down a peg and for her to take over. I even expected them to maybe treat him as an ‘unfortunately convenient resource’ whilst he’s in prison or whatever.

But… This… Gai didn’t need a sob story. Esp not while Horobi, the one who’s tragic circumstances have been clearly and naturally becoming apparent over the course of the show, is left for dead by people who should be trying to help him. The attitude that Horobi ‘doesn’t want’ to break free of the Ark and is therefore ‘evil’ is bullshit. He literally can’t. Raiden and Naki have only been (back) under her control for a little while, and she doesn’t seem as invested in the two of them (notably, she hasn’t tried to possess either of them, which is most likely what’s constantly ‘rehacking’ Horobi atm and preventing him from developing again). Horobi was under her control for more than a decade and had even the mere concept of free will stripped from him for so long that when he was disconnected from her, he had no idea what to do w/ it—and then (Not) Jin (notably, again, the person who is now trying to use Horobi as a sacrifice to kill the Ark) helped him reconnect. At that point, it would have been easy to stop Horobi from reconnecting, he was injured and didn’t have his Key. The fact that Not Jin facilitated this connection and is now apparently writing Horobi off as merely the Ark’s puppet is… So frustrating.

Like… The act of bringing Gai down a peg is one thing. The act of the Ark taking over as the main villain is one thing. The act of trying to garner sympathy for Gai and insisting he’s just ‘lonely and sad’ was unnecessary and just angry making. W/ Kuroto, they’d introduced Masamune at the start, they had something to fall back on. And Kuroto never apologised in the show, he never acted like he regretted anything. Practically to the final battle, and we had him saying they should just let Nico die of the disease and revive as a Bugster (and apparently genuinely meaning it as comforting, which is a whole other can of possibility to his character’s mental state). W/ this, there was no foreshadowing or set up, and I’m just supposed to believe talking at Gai and giving him a robot dog, cute as Aibo is, is gonna make him do a complete one eighty and be ‘good’ now? Also gtfo w/ calling the Ark the ‘ultimate evil’ or the ‘true villain.’ The true villain remains Gai, bc she would never be like this if it hadn’t been for him. He’s not some ‘tragic victim who was manipulated and was just lonely.’ He knowingly drove an innocent AI homicidal bc he was petty, and now she’s on a warpath, yes. But it’s ultimately his fault.

Okay, I’m gonna stop now before I go completely nonsensical. I’m just… So fed up.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay…

@briansastro10​

… I think we have a bit of a language barrier here, or something, and I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. If you don’t mind bearing w/ me, I get confused easily, but I do have things I want to say:

1) Horobi had no choice but to follow the Ark. He was hacked, aka mind controlled and brainwashed. He wasn’t ‘choosing’ to do any of that stuff, he was merely being used as a tool.

2) I don’t recall Horobi ever finding out Aruto was even at Daybreak, let alone lost family in it.

3) The thing I was criticising was the show’s decision to include a flashback of Soreo’s death in that sequence, bc it implies that the show and therefore the audience consider/should consider Horobi responsible for Soreo’s death, when not too long ago, they had Aruto shouting at Gai that he was the true cause of the Ark, and, again, the above brainwashing. Horobi was literally not in control of his own actions anymore than a MaGear at that point, it’s not right to let Jin, Naki, and even Raiden off the hook for the stuff they did under the Ark/Gai’s command and then blame Horobi for what he did. Jin was distributing ZetsumeRisers, Raiden was a spy, and Naki was manipulating everything and giving out RaidRisers, all by an external command, bc of manipulation (in the case of Jin and Naki) or hacking (in Raiden’s case). It’s really not right to recognise Yua’s, a full matured human adult who exhibited reasoning and at least reasonable emotional control and knowledge of morality, situation, to excuse her as having been manipulated and mistreated into doing the things she did, whilst blaming Horobi. Including Soreo’s death in that flashback implies that it should be considered equitable w/ Izu’s death, which it was not. Horobi did not kill Soreo, or even cause his death. For one thing, the explosion was caused by people trying to kill the Ark (another Soreo?) and, again, Horobi was brainwashed and not in control of his actions.

4) I will also repeat this as many times as necessary: Horobi was conditioned and used by the Ark. Again, to bring up Yua; she very nearly killed Izu in cold blood on Gai’s orders while Izu was panicked and confused and trying to run away. The only reason that did not happen was that Gai said the wrong thing and Fuwa snapped out of it in time. Here, Izu was completely calm, had plenty of time to dodge, clearly saw the threat, and did nothing. I bring this up bc both Horobi and Yua were in abusive, manipulative situations where they were controlled by someone else—the difference being, Yua was, again, a fully fledged human adult w/ a developed sense of right and wrong, enough that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but her situation had convinced her she had no choice. She was unwell and not in a good place. But she knew. Horobi literally couldn’t. On top of that, he was exposed solely to the Ark’s selective data (courtesy, Amatsu Gai), for years. Like he said in the AIMS basement, his understanding was that the Ark would always rise as long as human malice existed—and he didn’t turn on the Ark bc he suddenly realised humans were ‘good,’ but bc the Ark turned on HumaGear (and tried to make him kill Jin), and he realised what he wanted was peace and safety for HumaGear. But even after breaking free of the Ark, the conditioning and that belief still lasts. To him, seeking human destruction was merely the logical conclusion in order to ensure the safety of HumaGear. Humans teach HumaGear evil and give rise to the Ark, which is a danger to HumaGear, and caused him to do things that hurt HumaGear, the way his mind has been conditioned to work, the logical conclusion is to cut the knot and remove the ‘source,’ humans. It’s not a personal grudge, it’s being logical. That’s his thought process—and, honestly, he’s got a point, the Ark was created by humans, and they’ve never owned up to it, the guy responsible is walking around free, and a number of HumaGear died and suffered for it. It’s unclear when exactly the emotions start catching up to him—he was def managing to hold on to the logic, I like to think by focusing on the fact that he thought this would be best for Jin (he knew Jin was important to him, even if he didn’t know why, and he took the time to take care of him before going out). He’s very calm when talking to Izu and shows no aggression toward her, it’s not until Fuwa and Yua show up guns drawn that he reacts violently—bc he perceives a threat, sees their aggression, which counteracts Izu’s claims about the goodness of humans. All he sees is humans looking to destroy. But despite that, he still goes and asks Fuwa about proving the Ark will not rise again, and that’s another important thing; Horobi is looking for an absolute. He is looking for an absolute assurance that the Ark will not come back, that human cruelty will never be a danger again, and that’s not possible. Fuwa’s response, although it can be translated as a believable blunder on Fuwa’s part, does nothing but make the situation worse, bc he violently rejects Horobi’s question and says he’s there to destroy him and then prepares to shoot him. To Horobi, who got tortured the last time he asked a question, that’s enough. And right on the heels of that, Izu comes in and starts pressuring him about emotions. He’s stated to have been literally terrified of these sensations taking over him, and the Ark trained him react to that kind of thing w/ violence—bc he can’t attack the feelings inside himself, he system concludes Izu must be the source and fires on her… Only that doesn’t work, the sensations actually get worse. His increasing aggressiveness in insisting he doesn’t have a heart after that is basically a little kid getting more and more insistent that they didn’t steal a cookie when they did. He was conditioned to think removing Izu would remove the feelings, but instead that made it worse, harder to control, that frightens him even more, bc he doesn’t know what’s happening, he doesn’t know what those feelings are. He falls back on old answers to Jin’s questions bc he doesn’t know the answer (but we can’t let the son know that, father’s always have to have an answer). Meanwhile, he doesn’t understand why Aruto’s the Ark. Like, he def expected humans to resist, why wouldn’t they, I don’t think he’d’ve been surprised by Aruto being mad, Aruto’s been mad at him before for people he knew less. I think it was Aruto going as far as using the Ark’s power (also, I think the Ark still terrified him) that threw him for a loop and pissed him off (something he might’ve understood? But it had def never controlled him like that before). Additionally, I don’t think he could have conceived to seek revenge on his own—when Jin died, he was clearly overwhelmed and very dazed. It took Azu showing up and telling him how he felt for him to react. A friend put it really well, so I’ll paraphrase: Azu’s role for Aruto was ‘you are absolutely right to want revenge on Horobi!’ while her role for Horobi was ‘hey, hey, you want revenge on Aruto, right?’ Aruto jumped at the chance while Horobi didn’t know what to do, and ended up following the first lead he had—which was literally how the Ark kept him so easy to manipulate. I still don’t see the Aruto side of it (well… it’s complicated), but if you go back and look, I think you can def see how the Ark was conditioning Horobi as a patsy for this from the start.

4) Bc I refuse to ever let this go unsaid when discussing it, Horobi was not the only person responsible for the Izu situation. If I were to list the people I hold responsible, in order, it’d be: Amatsu, for creating the Ark in the first place. The Ark/Azu, clearly the AI w/ the most know-how, who very deliberately manipulated the whole situation, was well aware of what Horobi’s mental state would be like, and manipulated both Jin and Izu into being stupid. Fuwa and Yua for escalating things, esp bc Fuwa’s character development was allegedly about learning not to rush in swinging and literally the next episode Yua is giving a speech to Williamson about how they shouldn’t respond to the HumaGear’s ‘new hearts’ w/ aggression, like she didn’t do that exact thing, like, yesterday, wtf. Aruto, for hanging around outside instead of doing what one might expect from someone who wanted to resolve stuff peacefully and going to the root of the situation, and for not keeping an eye on Izu (I have other opinions about his behaviour there, but those are for another time), and for apparently not even bothering to try and give Izu a backup. And, finally, Horobi and Izu. Yes, I hold Horobi the least ‘responsible’ and I hold Izu responsible. Bc, and I do not mean this as an insult to any of the characters, it’s like taking a dog that was abused and used in dog fights and leaving it alone w/ a domesticated dog it doesn’t know. More than likely, if the domesticated dog starts trying to play like it’s used to playing the abused dog is going to react aggressively, possibly even bite. Neither Horobi nor Izu had the emotional maturity to handle that situation. He had been conditioned to fear and reject emotion, had been kept away from it, and therefore had no control over it, nor knew what it was—to him, it felt like some unidentifiable ‘sensation’ wrenching control away from him, clouding his mind; additionally, he’d just had his one attempt to reach out and understand violently shut down, and he’d been conditioned for years to respond to uncertainty and confusion by destroying the source—when Izu was prodding at him about feelings and ‘hearts,’ she pushed his already fragile state into full panic that he lacked the emotional maturity to handle, and he reacted the only way he knew how. W/ Izu, if she had just told Aruto, or anyone, anything about where she was going, tried to coordinate rather than just running off like that, if she hadn’t rushed him and repeatedly pressured and prodded him, if she had dodged, then things would have gone differently—but, ultimately, her data was just as biased as Horobi was, and she had absolutely no way to understand or work through what was going on for him. Horobi didn’t seek out Izu and kill her in cold blood, she approached him, and made a conscious choice not to dodge. If we want to get really deep, I also blame Korenosuke bc Izu not having a backup is stupid, it protected literally nothing, if they had actually tried to back her up and there was a reason why they couldn’t, I’d be less judgemental, but wtf the Zero-One equipment got hijacked up the wazoo and it’s very uncomfortable that Izu was just cool w/ that bc it ‘benefited humans’ and it made Aruto look kinda hypocritical… But that’s more the writers. But, to try and sum this up… I do give Horobi some responsibility, bc he yeah, he did pull the trigger, but the fact was, he didn’t understand what he was doing (also likely didn’t know Izu had no backup, it probably never occurred to him humans would do that), or why. Essentially, he was still being used as a weapon by the Ark, who manipulated the whole thing bu showing Izu that vision, making her rush in and not tell anyone, then the humans abandon their reasoning for an day and go in all aggressive, Horobi sees this as a threat, but even then still tries to reach out only to get shot down (literally), and then Izu comes in and stresses him out further and he cracks. And she chooses to stand there and take the hit. Gai knowingly shutdown multitudes of HumaGear w/ the intention of them never coming back online, Yua nearly killed Izu before, actively hunting her down, Fuwa, I love him dearly, but Fuwa was down to smash every single robot he saw no matter what they said. These were human adults w/ knowledge of morality and emotional maturity and control (okay, Fuwa’s a little debatable…). All of them, esp Gai, are walking around just fine. Like. Gai. Gai. Aruto goes Ark on Horobi for this but is letting Gai walk???? I don’t even like Aruto, and that’s ooc! But to try and sum up my sum up: Horobi was the gun Azu shot Izu w/. It was a gambit. She deliberately manipulated them all into a situation where this would happen. Yes, Horobi pulled the trigger, but if this were court, a plea of insanity could be made/he’d be being sent to a psychiatric ward rather than regular prison.

5) Horobi blaming himself is one thing. It was very clearly depicted before that he had no sense of free will for himself, he only knew the Ark’s will. It is absolutely natural that after being so deep under the Ark’s control for so long, he’d have immense trouble differentiating between his own, new will, and the Ark’s. He might not be able to tell what he wanted or what the Ark wanted. He genuinely does not know how to make that distinction. He also has literally only just kind of gotten a grasp on consequences and cause and effect. I’d love to think he’ll be allowed to figure out he was manipulated by the Ark and that things like that weren’t things he wanted to do, but I dunno if the show will give me that. What I’m criticising is the apparent intent of saying that the audience should blame him for those things. What I want is confirmation that Aruto knows that the situation was manipulated, that Horobi wasn’t ‘in control’ when that happened. I wanted Aruto to respond to Horobi blaming himself for Izu and Jin’s deaths w/ ‘it’s more complicated than that.’ Horobi blaming himself is understandable, bc he’s barely figured out cause and effect, regret, anger, that shooting things is not an appropriate way to handle a situation. He’s only just gotten a few emotions. Nuance is going to be lost on him for a bit. He’s been trapped seeing only in black and white for so long, he’s going to need help seeing grey. Horobi blaming himself makes sense. I’m just criticising that the humans, who should know that it wasn’t as simple as that, didn’t let him know tha t he didn’t need to shoulder all the blame. Bc he was just a single part of a whole chain of events, not the sole cause. And I’m criticising that the show seemed to be implying that he also had a responsibility for Soreo’s death, which was a completely different situation that he def was not responsible for.

This is likely way more than you were expecting, and I do talk a lot, I know. I just wanted to try and establish my reasoning here. I hope I wasn’t too incomprehensible, I have trouble articulating my thoughts outside of fictional writing. I think I’ve just been keeping a lot of this in.

I should say that if you are bothered by my stance on this, I would recommend blocking me or my Zero-One tags, bc I am stubborn as all hell and will not budge, and will occasionally be very vocal. Horobi is very important to me, and I have no sympathy for victim blaming, esp not when it involves literal perpetrators getting away scot free (*cough cough* Amatsu Gai *cough cough*).

[firebirdsdaughter]

The longer I think about the disaster 01 turned out to be post-break, the more I'm convinced something went down bts. The whole Gai redemption thing, Horobi going back to square one after actually making a lil bit of process after protecting Jin, the new ZAIA guy turning up so late in the game, the shock value thing with Aruto becoming Ark-One. The moment the break was over, 01 felt like a different show, one that didn't even bother to make any sense.

On the one hand… I’m like… Okay. Pandemic. You don’t know if you’re going to get put on hold again.

And I’m also like… Okay, maybe they sprang on you that you would only have 45 eps bc Reasons.

On another… There is an amount of sense to Horobi’s initial response, it’s pretty in character.

On  the third… I wouldn’t want to watch most of this at normal pacing, either????

Like. Okay. I absolutely agree the tone has been totally off since we came back. Every single ep since the return, everything, and multiple characters, have felt… ‘Off’ is the only way I can describe it. Jin (though we are finally getting back into a more natural beat for him) esp, but also Yua, Gai… Just… Off.

I do have to admit that Horobi’s initial response… Does make sense, esp regarding the fact that his singularity point is Jin, wanting to protect Jin, and wanting to be Jin’s father, and humanity… Would, from his point of view, be a danger to that, and also one to his son, bc he is right, they did, literally, create the Ark.

It’s where they decided to go immediately after that went super off the wall.

I mean, other stuff went off the wall already.

So. My suggestion for what maybe could/should have happened:

Nix Gai’s personality doing a one eighty. Have an alliance of necessity bc the Ark is just that badass (she is). Do everything up to a point mostly the same (though… Maybe also nix Jin’s ooc behaviour towards humans he barely knows, and bc I am a glutton for angst, the simulation idea came from him bc that was how he ended up at the point where he thought he had to kill Horobi, in the vein of becoming convinced he couldn’t save his father but could at least spare him a more painful death, and only really starts warming up to humans when they do something that defies those simulations, or something… I just like the simulation idea for Jin), you can even have Horobi being like ‘human destruction’ if y’all really want that, though it does smack of an ‘f you’ to Horobi fans, bc gods forbid he be allowed any… I’m digressing. Anyway, instead of… Whatever this episode was, maybe there’s still a big fight, but at an integral moment Izu (and maybe also Jin) jump in and are like ‘no, stop!’ Izu shields Aruto and starts prodding Horobi, but Jin shows up and steps in. They manage to at least temporarily calm things down, there’s emphasis on the fact that humans need to give HumaGear a reason to believe in them, too. But all of this upsets Gai, maybe bc he has some kind of personal history w/ Horobi (hey, remember the time he stepped on Horobi’s chest? Bc I do, that was the moment that made me love to hate the character), maybe he had some shemey plan that this is fucking up, and he goes, you know, Gai™—but then the Ark is like ‘hey, free bastard!’ and possesses him instead.

Or some bullshit (Takahashi, if you’re listening, please, some bullshit) where it looked like Horobi killed Izu but it was actually Gai or someone else (Takahashi, I will literally pay money, I will buy the fucking rings, just some bullshit, I’m begging you). Aruto can still go nuts (I… Guess? It’s… Super weird how he’s going psycho over this, but is apparently a-okay w/ Gai just getting a tap on the wrist… Did I miss something? Bc I may not like Aruto much, but… This feels ooc), but eventually manages to snap out of it when that’s revealed. Or bc Izu is resurrected. Maybe bc Horobi brings her back. (admittedly, one of my original ideas for Horobi post-series was him working on recovering any HumaGear who were ‘lost’ when they were hacked… Though now that seems more like a job he can share w/ Naki while he and Fuwa also deal w/ remnants of the Ark/protecting peace as a new AIMS… Ah, spoilers, spoilers…!)

If Takahashi really wanted to make me a happy camper, he’d reveal that Horobi didn’t actually kill Izu and have Horobi bring her back. Sweet, sweet justice.

Anyway.

But yeah, ever since we came back, it’s been… Off. Like… Some of it I’ll attribute to the situation, being even more janky than it was already janky (imo, of course, other people seem to adore it), I mean, global pandemic, we don’t know how unexpected the cut down was for them, and they didn’t know if they were going to be locked down again.

But.

The subject matter is… Not great, despite that. Like… If I felt like we had a logical, coherent-ish, even for Takahashi, story under there… Yeah. Okay. I’d be more lenient. But… This is just… So off the wall. Like, this doesn’t feel like ‘oh, they had to rush bc eps got cut and they were flying blind.’ This feels like… Something else entirely.

If that makes any sense.

I mean. I suppose this could all be wildly popular w/ the kids in Japan. I know the show owes me nothing. But… Still.