#i have a tendency to make my posts giant essays bc I can't explain my thoughts without going into overdrive im sorry

[shidoukanae]

didnt the director or w/e for vrains change at like ep 14? maybe they didnt coordinate well enough and made some mistakes w kusanagi knowing abt sol tech and then being surprised tht theyre involved

(In ref to this post: here)

The art director did indeed change for VRAINS during episode 14 (and it shows!). However, I think if it was a mistake, it would be either a coincidentally coordinated error on the part of both the art director and the scriptwriter or a purposeful intent on the parts of both aforementioned people.

An art director’s job is to manage how the show looks. They are in charge of organizing the visual aspects of the show itself like how the duels look or how the link circuit animations manifest. The scriptwriter is the one who plans out the textual basics of the show itself. They are responsible for the dialogue, the characters, the plot, the way the show “looks” in the mind’s eye.

Now, backing up to the question at hand. If the new art director created the mistake, then he would have been acting off-script. However, from my limited understanding of the industry itself, it seems like the screen-writers are the ones who determine what character says what and not the art director. Therefore, if what Kusanagi says is an error, it wouldn’t really be on the fault of the new person (whose job is to only provide the visual context for the script itself) but on the person who put that line of dialogue there in the first place. I’m pretty sure it’s highly unlikely that a new art director would purposely ignore the directions of a script given. Not to mention, but doing such a thing could potentially confuse any audience members who remember Kusanagi purposely talking about SOL earlier in the show.

Okay, alright, that said, I’m going to try to give my reasonings for the “other side” of this argument. Let’s say that the art director is not to blame nor the scriptwriter. This means it’s not an error but a purposeful tactic. What purposes would Kusanagi’s surprised statement have?

From the standpoint of having an audience look down upon him, it could be to add on to the audience the “surprise” of Akira’s announcement that SOL Technologies was involved in the incident. However, doing this was almost unnecessary considering everyone else who was watching (sans Playmaker) also showed surprise at such a statement. Kusanagi was not a needed shock factor - he knew or at least had to be aware that SOL was involved from what Revolver had told Playmaker some episodes earlier - and they already had plenty of other characters to enforce the visual representation of a startling discovery onto the viewers, why just not omit him from view? Why bother making him act surprised (and notice that Playmaker is not at all surprised which is odd because everything that Playmaker knows, so too does Kusanagi. Why is Kusanagi surprised and not Playmaker then?) when he’s already aware that SOL was involved in the incident beforehand? It’s rather bizarre, honestly. 

(and, for reference, this is also the order in which everyone reacts to the news of SOL being involved. Note that Playmaker’s expression doesn’t seem at all surprised. He’s learned nothing new in the time since he’s last seen Kusanagi nor has he shown that he’s fully 100% behind the idea that SOL was involved in his incident. Why does he not show surprise but all of a sudden Kusanagi does?)

From another standpoint, keep in mind that the art director and scriptwriter know more about Kusanagi than we do ourselves. Adding in a line like that wouldn’t normally stand out on it’s own. You can easily dismiss it as an error or you can scrutinize it as something that almost contradicts what he says in an earlier episode. 

For example, for those who don’t care to rewatch episodes or pay attention to certain aspects of a character, his words are the type that easily go “off-the-radar”. Kusanagi speaking that line would be something that blends in, that doesn’t really stand out because more people are thinking “wow, yeah, I guess it WAS SOL Tech who was behind this incident” as everyone reacts at once to Akira’s annoucement then “wait, Kusanagi, you already knew this already from episode 12 when Revolver told Yusaku how SOL was the one he should be after, not Hanoi”. It’s not something that easily catches the eye of casual watchers, of those who don’t nitpick every little detail and pin down every little hint of the things that scream wrong. 

And, in a way, that’s exactly what the art director and scriptwriter would want to do. They set it up so that, for the casual viewer, it’s a plain and reasonable comment to make during the time Akira reveals the information of SOL being behind the incident. However, on another level, it’s also possibly foreshadowing for Kusanagi’s character, a quote from him himself that doesn’t add up to what he has stated and what he has thought. Both of the aforementioned people are aware of who Kusanagi is, who he actually is, and if this was an actual error it would be an almost unfortunate and rather missed chance to create clever foreshadowing for his character when we look back throughout the show.