#radicles sechrist does not deserve our respect for dragging s3 back to his edgy game of thrones pipedream he initially envisioned it as

[fruitytrollroll]

kipo s3 was cowardly and here’s why

i just saw someone say "it's good they didn't cure the demutagen'd mutes in the finale because it shows they're brave enough not to undo emotional moments" and i was going to reblog it but i didn't want to be negative on op's post. op if you're reading this i respect you, but you deserve better than rad sechrist. rad sechrist does not understand us.

kipo s3 criticism ahead!

tl;dr: kipo s1 and s2 espouse themes of compassion and equality for all sentient creatures, but season 3 fails to treat the ego death of mutes with the same gravity as the ego death of humans -- nor is a comparable effort made to restore mutes to their former states. this demonstrates that on a narrative level, the writers do not consider the good of mutekind to be as important as the good of humankind, which is fundamentally a betrayal of the themes established in s1 and s2.

so, in response to "it's good they didn't restore sentience to the demutagen'd mutes because it shows they’re brave enough not to undo the emotional moments": i completely disagree

they did "undo" the emotional moment. yumyan's predicament was ultimately unearned. why did he come with them? to be cannon fodder? it would have made more sense to bring scarlemagne -- he has a personal grudge against emilia, and the stakes would have been higher, and maybe kipo could have taken a demutagen dart for him and it would have been a good sibling bonding moment

but back to what actually happened.

yumyan's transformation is quickly treated like a joke so the village can hunt him down and radicles sechrist can shoehorn in an ad-libbed bug joke by dave's VA (which is an unfortunately apt example of the overall narrative planning devoted to season 3) and while Bill got that dramatic line about dying stars, the emotional sincerity is immediately undercut for laughs so Leon can vainly try to bully his dead brother into a sweater. like he doesn't understand what just happened, for some reason. as if wolf mutes who pride themselves on being EVOLVED don't understand what it would mean, philosophically, for one of them to be UNEVOLVED

this take chills me to the bone because season 3 is actually terrified of emotional sincerity. every "emotional" moment is a cheap, unearned "gotcha" moment -- song and lio crying by scarlemagne's side as he dies in an exhaustingly overdone "death = redemption" moment we all thought was subverted in the season 2 finale? when scarlemagne has been imprisoned in a convenient glass cage for months (and don't even get me STARTED on how badly that must be retraumatizing him, but dont worry about that), and outright tells kipo that she is the only one who visits him? (read: SONG AND LIO DON'T VISIT HIM)

"oh our family is back together" WHAT family!! what are you talking about, song!! scarlemagne acted as your monkey interpreter and then you ghosted him as soon as you didn't need him any more! how is this "emotional moment" satisfying, or sincere? it's a cheap attempt to invoke our pathos that they didn't even bother setting up. yea i did cry but it wasnt because radicles sechrist SUCCEEDED here, it was because he failed his characters so utterly and i was so angry that i wanted to kill him!!!

brave??? season 3 was so rife with predictably bad writing and tropey nonsense that the task of calling a more cowardly narrative to mind escapes me!

as for NOT curing the mutes, we have evidence that lio and song ARE capable of creating mutes from old world animals (exhibit A: scarlemagne). for SOME reason rad sechrist said on instagram that "a cure for the demutagen was never possible" which makes me absolutely crazy, scarlemagne is RIGHT THERE. they could only make the demutagen in the first place because they reverse engineered it after their work on scarlemagne.

i would be slightly less annoyed by this if rad gave a sensible reason that it couldn't be done, but it seems like he literally just forgot? the fact that they didn't even consider HOW it might be done demonstrates they didnt even consider DOING IT, which is ridiculous, because mutes and humans are supposed to be equally worthwhile and valuable forms of life, right? WHY CANT WE ALL RULE, asks kipo of kipo s1.

yet in s3 it is IMPERATIVE to cure emilia from her self-inflicted mega mute mistake, even though a new consciousness has formed? an innocent, scared, giant walrus thing? doesn't that thing deserve to live?? no, and one might make the case that emilia was there first so she is the one who deserves to be restored. but that's not the reason kipo gives -- it's that "no one deserves to lose themselves like that"

but the SHOW doesn't even believe this! because curing the mutes was patently possible, but they didn't even CONSIDER it! oh my god!!

like, the issue is a complex one -- ego death usually is! for example: would the re-mutagen'd mutes remember their former lives, after having their lived experiences squished down to fit in an animal brain? i think their memories might be hazy, kind of like memories of early childhood, but still a little bit there. they'd still be different people, but isn't that worth something?

take it this way: if a mad scientist turned me into a Capuchin monkey, and my friend's parents were reformed mad scientists who knew how to turn Capuchin monkeys into people -- i HOPE that they would go to the effort of turning me back into a human person, even if it's an amnesiac one! instead of... you know... keeping me around as a pet??? that's ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING.

in conclusion, kipo s1 and s2 espouse themes of compassion and equality for all sentient creatures, but season 3 betrays that completely by failing to treat the ego death of mutes with the same gravity as the potential ego death of humans. this demonstrates that on a narrative level, the writers do not consider the good of mutekind to be as important as the good of humankind.

also there are no character arcs???

also mutes have been eating each other and doing gang wars for 200 years, in WHAT world is anyone demanding an apology from scarlemagne for doing the same as the rest of them? absolutely demented. take it back.