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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Daisuke and Ken’s dynamic, and what Ken does for Daisuke in return

Everyone in the main 02 cast can be said to be a little surface-deceptive in some way, and so, even with Daisuke and Ken as the relationship at the forefront of 02′s story, there’s still more going on behind it than first glance would initially make you suspect. It’s all too easy to just take the surface reading and decide that Daisuke is some kind of saint whom Ken is singularly dependent on for his happiness (which would really be quite the unhealthy relationship), or, worse, shove them into the stereotypical BL tropes just because they’re the two at the front, even though the story practically went out of its way to depict them as unusual characters who don’t fit into those kinds of boxes as easily.

Even though it wasn’t stated outright in words, Ken did a lot for Daisuke in return, and there’s a lot of layers to their relationship to each other both in the series and in going forward after it.

What Daisuke does for Ken

That Daisuke and Ken have very “complementary” personalities goes without saying, but this applies to both their surface demeanors and what lies beneath them. Daisuke has an abrasive surface demeanor and a tendency to get defensive, but isn’t actually very assertive at all; on the other hand, Ken is more polite and ostensibly “soft”, but is significantly more assertive than Daisuke is. This also means that, while it would of course be foolhardy to pretend that Ken could easily shrug off all of his trauma, it’s also conversely reductive to shove the two of them into boxes where Ken is a constant crybaby angsting over everything bad that’s happened to him while Daisuke’s the only ray of sunshine who can get him out of it. A lot of Ken’s strength in the series is self-supplied; he of course does end up needing the others’ support at times, but extreme readings like this really don’t give the kid enough credit for how good he is at gritting his teeth and pushing on without anyone prompting him.

The initial problem, however, is that Ken is too assertive about the wrong things at first. Like, say, in 02 episode 26, when he assertively says that he’s going to...recklessly chuck himself into an exploding reactor! For the third quarter of the series, Ken deliberately tries to keep his distance from others, and is very clear and open about his reasons why: in his mind, it’s his responsibility, and the others shouldn’t have to be involved. He doesn’t want their friendship, he doesn’t even think he deserves their friendship, and here’s Daisuke going “okay, yeah, but that’s stupid, shut up and let us help you.”

Adventure and 02 have a strong thread of driving it home that “doing things on sheer principle eventually becomes pointless when it gets in the way of being practical” -- and Daisuke, being a simple-minded and “straightforward” person who doesn’t overthink things, is basically there to keep Ken’s focus back on the proper picture. Because yeah, Ken can attempt to do things like frame things in terms of whether he “deserves” all of this, or “whose responsibility” this all is -- but the fact of the matter is that Daisuke and his friends want to do something and help instead of being sitting ducks about it, Ken’s practically not going to be able to do this alone, and, well, that’s the base of their first Jogress in 02 episode 26! Ken says outright that his goal is to do something to help, but then decides that “helping” should involve suicidally chucking himself into an exploding reactor, and Daisuke, hearing out Ken’s troubles, reminds him that him dying there won’t actually help the way Ken wants to help, because it won’t leave him alive to do all of the other things he wants to do and will hurt his family even more just when he was starting to repair things with them -- and as much as this extremely suicidal plan might temporarily spare the others from dying in an explosion, Daisuke would have to live with the guilt of letting Ken go off to die like that, so it won’t make him happy either.

So in other words, while Ken’s trying to sort out his complicated feelings of guilt, shame, and sense of responsibility, Daisuke’s there to keep his head on straight and remind him when he’s about to run himself in mental circles. Ken would have easily spent the rest of the series trying to make up for what he did even without Daisuke’s help, because he’s such a strong believer in “the right thing to do”, but his way of going on about it would have involved him staying in isolation out of a perceived sense of responsibility, endangering himself out of a sense of self-sacrifice, drowning himself in self-blame and feelings of regret, and, eventually, not addressing the very gaping hole in his life that he very much needs emotional support from others right now.

One thing particularly interesting about the Japanese version of 02 is that, for nearly the entirety of the second half of the series, Ken only refers to Daisuke as “Motomiya”, which is surprising given the fact that he employs given-name basis with the others quite quickly. Ken eventually does commit to “Daisuke” after the series in almost all post-02 material, and this image fits the two so well that pretty much every doujinshi artist has caught onto it despite it not being there all that much in the actual series, but it really took him a while; what gives? (Daisuke himself committed to “Ken” from surname basis “Ichijouji” starting in 02 episode 39.) Well, the important distinction is that Ken dropped the honorific with him from very early on -- meaning that he did want to approach Daisuke with a little bit of casual bluntness in a way beyond the distant respect he treated the others with, but at the time, going straight to buddy-buddy on given name with no honorific at all would have been a bit too much for him, and it comes off as him almost deliberately giving off a sense of distance. Why?

Ken didn’t have too much of an opinion on each individual kid in the group until 02 episode 8, when he developed a particular hatred for Daisuke for “ruining his pride” and decided to emotionally torture him a bit. Then, come 02 episode 25, this same kid approached him with no sense of grudge whatsoever, and presents him with a completely different way of seeing things: “whatever you did in the past, you’re clearly trying to help now, which means we’re now on the same side, so we should work together.” It’s pragmatic; it’s extremely pragmatic, and it’s not like Daisuke was working off of blind optimism and trust as much as he observed, very practically, that Ken was clearly trying to do better now and that therefore they should work together and make use of it. This kind of thought pattern is completely alien to Ken’s “I deserve/don’t deserve this” mentality at this point of this series, and by all standards of his own logic Daisuke should be one of the people who hates him the most, and yet -- nope!

By the time of their Jogress, Ken of course understands that Daisuke’s trying very hard to communicate with him, and thus they develop a sort of rapport -- but they’re not quite friends yet at the level of truly being “comfortable” with each other, because most of the second half of the series involved circumstances where Daisuke was helping Ken through a very emotionally hard time. It’s only at the point of the Christmas party in 02 episode 38 when Ken can really think about having these kids as real friends in terms of socializing and not just people who are willing to work with him in his penance journey. It’s enough that Ken’s able to admit that he wants the help of Daisuke in 02 episode 44, when beforehand he’d been trying to keep everyone out of what he’d perceived as his business. And, as Ken’s slowly more exposed to Daisuke’s way of life and its influence on the rest of the group around him, he comes to understand that maybe having a “close friend who can support him” isn’t that bad after all, since it’s not like these friends are just being “open-minded” towards him; they really are there to support him and his actual feelings and welfare, not just “cutting him slack” because he’s helping.

And so, with that, once the crisis is resolved and all is said and done, Ken finally truly accepts Daisuke as his friend and moves him up to given-name basis (no honorific!). This is most prominently shown in Diablomon Strikes Back, where their interactions are now removed from the question of Ken’s former actions and his emotional problems, and it turns out, they’re still good friends in the sense that friends are. As in, people who laugh together, hang out together, converse with each other casually; even if they are working together on the same thing for the duration of the movie, it’s not such an emotionally tense situation that you could chalk their interactions up to sheer necessity. With Daisuke’s help, Ken was able to move on from all of his past hangups, and the two of them became able to enjoy the moment of “now” like normal children.

What Ken does for Daisuke

Daisuke may be simple-minded enough to not have deep-seated concerns that eat at him every day, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a bit socially maladjusted during the early parts of the series. Namely, being really insecure and prone to getting defensive whenever he felt he was being made fun of. Those kinds of things were what was most likely to get Daisuke to “lash out” at others, because he slips into his worst bouts of these whenever he’s lacking in validation.

Daisuke was, undoubtedly, improving over the course of the series, with him slowly starting to become more assertive by the time of 02 episode 20. It’s incorrect to say that Ken was the only person who could truly help him with this; 02 is a series about a group dynamic after all (even if the Jogress pairs are the most instrumental in helping each other), and it would be a pretty unhealthy relationship if one person were so dependent on another to even remotely function. But starting in 02 episode 22, when the crisis is momentarily resolved and everyone’s not sure what to do, Daisuke’s feeling of being third wheeled by Takeru and Hikari shoots up right at the moment everyone’s feeling a bit lacking in purpose. Two episodes later, Miyako immediately stages an intervention to help keep his mind off of things, and she’s arguably even the most comfortable with him at this point in time.

It’s not that Daisuke isn’t improving, nor that his friends aren’t trying to help, but, well...emotionally sensitive as Miyako can be, she’s also a bit all over the place herself and sometimes needs restraining; Hikari may be assertive, but she’s pretty obviously apprehensive about shutting Daisuke down too bluntly, and Takeru being so hard to read and evasive about everything means that Daisuke can’t really tell what he’s thinking or understand his intentions; Iori is younger and is restraining himself, so he still won’t cross certain lines with Daisuke. So as you can see, they’re all doing their best, and they’re not doing a terrible job of it either; hell, the rest of the series involves them maturing into people who can better interact with and support each other, so their own relationships with Daisuke are likely to improve even well after the series ends. It’s just that, especially at this point in the series, there’s definitely room for an extra person to fill a certain niche that’s got a gaping void here, begging for someone who’s assertive and put-together enough to regularly keep Daisuke in check, yet also willing to be properly straightforward with him to the extent that he doesn’t have to feel insecure about their intentions. Hmm, who could that be?

Although “the priority of reaching out to Ken” eventually becomes enough of a distraction that it certainly takes Daisuke’s mind off potentially feeling insecure, as we start to see more “casual” interactions between Daisuke and Ken, we see that Ken actually fills in a lot of the gaps that had been so sorely missing in this group dynamic for a while. Forward-thinking as he is, Daisuke’s simple-minded way of going at things has its drawbacks in that he’s not very smart or good at thinking, but Ken is the opposite, being intellectually analytical and much more thoughtful overall, and since Daisuke is the kind of person who defers to others when they’re better than him at something, Ken being right next to him means that he can give him a hand in making important decisions he can’t by himself. This is especially so in Diablomon Strikes Back, when Ken’s role is largely keeping an eye on Daisuke and making sure he’s not a loose cannon -- something he’s very capable of doing -- but also simply being there as a springboard whom Daisuke can comfortably approach and talk to, since Ken is such a mild-mannered, straightforward person who won’t set off his overly defensive tendencies as easily.

That doesn’t mean that Ken is completely above teasing him, of course -- a lot of post-02 material in fact makes sure you understand that he’s not just some soft-hearted saint and can be quite the snarker when he wants, since his increased comfort level with Daisuke means he’s now able to poke at him here and there, even doing something as mean as dumping all of the Christmas shopping on him (the character songs and other related in-character material lie in questionably canonical territory, but that kind of punchline is not unreasonable to imagine given their respective personalities). But, overall, he sets the right tone for Daisuke to have a friend he’s able to be around regularly and receive support from, and to fill in that niche of his casual interactions so that Daisuke can have some more solid grounding in his life.

It’s also a testament to how much Ken himself had changed in terms of becoming the kind of person who could handle Daisuke like this. When the two of them first “met” in 02 episode 8, while Ken was still fully under the influence of the Dark Seed, even if we were to put the part about him being the Kaiser aside, this sort of person would never be able to become a good friend to Daisuke. This episode had Daisuke put him on a pedestal -- someone he’ll never be able to be as good as, whom he looks up to as an “idol”, much like the way Daisuke has a tendency to instinctively put himself down in uplifting others. Thus, it was a negative relationship for both of them; Ken being put on a pedestal that ultimately made him uncomfortable, and Daisuke contributing to putting him there in the first place, and taking it extra personally when that pedestal was shattered. But then, Daisuke himself (and, ultimately, the rest of the group) became able to treat Ken like the “normal person” he wanted to be, with no pedestals, simply considering him as a friend with his own feelings and needs; as a result, being this sort of “normal person” making friends through his true personality and desire to support others meant paved the way for him becoming the one person who was best equipped to deal with the very difficult-to-handle Daisuke.

Incidentally, in terms of Kizuna: considering how 02 was such a series about everyone becoming people who could fundamentally interact and communicate better with others, it stands to reason that everyone’s relationships with each other would uniformly improve even after the events of 02, and you can see better interactions between everyone that go beyond just the Jogress pairs. Ken’s clearly able to interact with more of the people in the group in a much more casual manner than he did in 02 itself, and it’s made an important point in the drama CD that Daisuke took everyone’s incidental advice to heart, not just Ken’s. However, advertising material still prominently features the two as a pair, and although part of this is of course due to marketing, Ken is also the one who gets the final words in extracting his “promise” from Daisuke in the drama CD; the official website also calls special attention to him being the one to accompany Daisuke on his ramen outings, even though the one depicted in the drama CD and movie was planned to involve everyone in the group. There are multiple indications that Daisuke himself has learned to become somewhat less defensive and prone to insecurity compared to himself in 02, and it seems that this was accomplished via Ken still actively putting himself in a role of checking on him and making sure he feels properly supported in all of this.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #motomiya daisuke #ichijouji ken #daisuke motomiya #ken ichijouji #shihameta

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yellowmagicalgirl · 3 years ago

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No Reason for Love

Krel wakes up to find Douxie sleeping on top of him.

So, what was that saying? Write while exhausted as the pills to make you tired kick in, edit the next morning? That was me with this fic because I wanted to get it done before RotT. This only has vague spoilers for the trailer.

CW: Body dysmorphia, self esteem issues, offscreen death, one gore reference, and one reference to sex (in terms of differences of Akiridion vs human reproduction; the gore reference is more graphic than the sex reference, and all characters depicted are adults)

AO3

FFN

Krel woke up to the feeling of pressure running along his body. He opened his eyes.

Oh. Right. Douxie and Krel had been watching a movie on Krel’s phone, and they had fallen asleep together. Or, more specifically, Douxie had fallen asleep on top of Krel, with his head directly on top of Krel’s core.

No.

On top of Krel’s cores.

That’s why they were here, after all. Krel was in (self-imposed, because his friends and family trusted him too much) exile in a quadrant of deep space, where he shouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. That had been the plan after Krel had stabbed himself with Gaylen’s core. Oh, he was strong enough to defeat the Arcane Order, but he was dangerous. He was too dangerous to be around people.

His boyfriend had decided that he was the exception to this rule, and Krel had been too selfish to say no, that they’d have to date at an even further distance than they had been for the six weeks they’d been dating.

And yes, Krel knew that Douxie had come with him for more reasons than Krel’s benefit, but Douxie could surely grieve Nari and Archie in a safer way than running off to live alone with the dangerous newly-made abomination of a god. Yes, Krel was an abomination, even if his friends, sister, and boyfriend all hated it when Krel used that word to describe himself. But what word was he supposed to use? He had two cores.

And with one of those cores, Krel could feel every minute exhale that came from Douxie’s sleeping form.

That was right. He was wearing one of Douxie’s shirts. His normal clothes didn’t quite fit him anymore given his wings and his second core, and so he’d taken to wearing human clothes that had been tailored to fit him and his arms and his wings.

Douxie had enchanted his own clothes to fit Krel, with holes opening up for Krel whenever he wore them. Douxie had offered to enchant Krel’s normal clothes, but as much as Krel liked how Akiridion magic and technology were compatible he…

Krel couldn’t remember what excuse he’d used, but he’d really wanted to just keep wearing Douxie’s shirt even though it exposed both of his cores with how low the neckline was. It shouldn’t have mattered, not with how Krel was rather indestructible now, but every time he caught sight of his double-cored reflection he was reminded of just how much he hated himself.

Douxie shifted in his sleep, inadvertently nuzzling his face against Krel’s cores.

Krel tried very hard not to cry. Douxie needed to sleep. He deserved to sleep. He was sleeping peacefully. Krel couldn’t wake him.

But Krel felt so loved and he didn’t deserve to be. This couldn’t last. One day, Douxie would realize that the man he’d fallen in love with had been sacrificed and an abomination was all that was left. He tried to keep still as tears began to slip out of his eyes, but he began to shake nonetheless.

Douxie lifted his head away from Krel’s cores. Krel found himself missing the point of contact, and feeling horrible for missing it, and began to cry harder. Douxie shifted his body, propping himself up with one arm and using the other hand to brush away some of the tears on Krel’s face.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” His voice was so soft and gentle despite how exhausted he looked.

“I love you,” Krel said. Douxie’s eyes widenend.

Oh.

Right.

Krel hadn’t told Douxie that he loved him, not when Krel was still himself instead of an abomination. Douxie probably wouldn’t want Krel’s love now. And even if Douxie loved Krel before the seals had been broken, surely he wouldn’t now.

Krel looked away. “I understand if you don’t –“

Douxie turned Krel’s face back to him. “I love you too.”

Krel didn’t think he could have cried any harder. He proved himself wrong.

Douxie inhaled sharply but his voice was still so soft. “What did I do wrong? How can I fix this?”

Krel didn’t know how the situation could be fixed without killing his relatives. It would be proper to have one heir to House Ventis and one heir to House Akraohm sacrifice themselves to power the cannon, but Aja might want to sacrifice herself so she wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of killing her brother.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But I still made you cry. Harder, anyways.”

“It’s… it doesn’t matter.”

Douxie frowned. “It does. You being happy matters to me. So, please tell me why you’re crying, and what I can do to make you feel better.”

Krel swallowed down tears. “Your head was on my core. Cores. Touching them is very intimate –“

Douxie’s face grew grave and flushed. “Krel, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that, er, I didn’t know where those parts of your body were and –“

Krel rolled his eyes. At least the shock made his tears slow their deluge. “Get your mind out of the gutter. Let’s just say that Akiridion and human reproduction are more similar than you’re thinking, at least in location.”

Douxie nodded. “Okay, so I didn’t cross that line, but I clearly crossed a line. Which one?”

“I don’t know if there’s a good comparison? It’d be like you holding my literal heart, I guess?” Douxie grimaced at the mental image. “But not exactly. It’s just, since you’re not immediate family or trying to save my life, you’d only be doing that if we were at a level of intimacy of being at the last stages of our engagement.”

Or maybe other Akiridions had that level of intimacy at sooner stages. Maybe it was an old-fashioned, stuffy royal way his parents had raised him and Aja. He knew at least one of his grandmothers believed that core-touching should have been reserved for marriage, but it was possible that she was simplifying it down for Aja and Krel.

“And I know our friends have made elopement jokes before, but…” Krel looked away, trying to will himself not to start crying harder again.

Even if Douxie loved Krel, surely Douxie wasn’t interested in marrying him.

“Would you want to?” Douxie asked. “This isn’t a proposal, but would you even be interested in marrying me?”

Gently, Krel pushed Douxie away so that Krel could sit up, half-facing his boyfriend. There was an urge to wrap his wings around Douxie, but no. That shouldn’t happen.

“Only if I was sure you understand the consequences.”

“Consequences? Like what? Having to get a second pair of arms grafted onto me?”

Krel tucked his wings closer to himself. Douxie sighed.

“I’m sorry, I’m tired and wasn’t thinking. But, what do you mean by consequences?”

“Why do you love me? And no, ‘you’re you’ isn’t an answer, because I’m not. Not anymore.”

“You are still you even with the wings and everything, but I’m too tired to have this argument again. If you won’t let me use that reason, then how about I just do?”

Unconditional love felt wrong. “That’s circular reasoning.”

“Well, do I need a reason to love you?”

Yes, because if Douxie knew his reason for loving Krel then he would be able to pinpoint when that reason wasn’t itself anymore.

No, because if Douxie knew the reason why he loved Krel, then Douxie would leave and Krel was too selfish to want to be exiled alone.

Krel started sobbing again.

Douxie drew Krel into his arms, gently stroking Krel’s back between his wings.

The next time Krel woke up, his head was directly on top of Douxie’s heart.

#krexie #krel tarron #hisirdoux casperan #tales of arcadia #3below #toawizards #rise of the titans #gaylen!krel #my writing

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mindmeltonabun-blog · 4 years ago

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Doom At Your Service: Analysis & Theories for EPs 7-8

Welcome back to another edition of analyses and theories time with me! I’m going to try and keep this post as short and as simple as possible. In case I don’t, I apologize in advance! Also, sorry if this post is filled with grammar mistakes and confusing syntax...I'm writing/editing this late at night and my ADHD meds have lost their effectiveness.

Anyways Eps 7-8 was pretty awesome and I’m glad that a bunch of my previous theories had come true! For those who wonder how I come up with some of these theories, I just look at everything whether it be big or small. I also try to look for connections and patterns. At the same time, I try to understand the motivations of characters and what is the big picture the writer is trying to paint. Once you're able to do all of that then you can predict where the story is going. This is how for the most part I was able to predict the events and endings of shows like TOTNT and TKEM. Anyhow, let’s get down to analyzing and theorizing! Turn on those thinking caps!

What the Rock Balancing Structure Represents

Rock balancing is a form of art that involves a person placing a combination of rocks in an arrangement. To achieve balance of the rocks, one must be very patient and compassionate. In its completion, the structure represents that while things may appear impossible, they are actually possible. So what seems impossible, but can actually be possible? Hmmm probably Myul Mang learning what it means to be human and ending up becoming human. Notice that both the rock art is next to the plant and the story of Pinocchio? It's saying saying that the impossible can be possible. It's possible for Myul Mang to be able to learn what it means to be a human so that the impossible can happen...he can "grow" up to becoming a real human.

The whole rock balancing structure could also signify that in order to grow, one must overcome one's deepest fears. I don't know about you all, but stacking rocks is a scary thing especially since at any moment the whole thing could fall over. Anyways, if you remembered, Myul Mang had been searching everywhere for Dong Kyung and feeling like one of his worst fears (Dong Kyung not existing) had came true. It's only when he goes to Dora's hospital room and sees both the Pinocchio book and rock structure that he got Dora's lesson. And that's why afterwards you didn't see Myul Mang going on another search for Dong Kyung somewhere else.

A brief digression. I’ve seen multiple people theorizing that the plant and the butterfly represent Dong Kyung and Myul Mang respectively. To them I say, did you just completely miss the part where Dora says the plant is Myul Mang? Myul Mang is both the butterfly and the plant. For those who still don’t see that, let me break it down.

First, what do butterflies symbolize? They symbolize metamorphosis, death, and rebirth. Myul Mang is not a literal butterfly, but he will eventually be one in a metaphorical sense. If anything, Myul Mang right now is like a caterpillar on the verge of entering the cocoon stage that is followed by a reemergence as a butterfly aka human. You can also look at it this way, Pinocchio is a butterfly too. Why? Well, look at what happens to Pinocchio. He is reborn as a real boy after having gone through metamorphosis (puppet -> real boy).

Now let’s examine the plant symbolism. What do plants represent in DAYS? They represent humans. What is Dora growing? A human Myul Mang..DUH!! Sorry, but I didn’t think it was that hard of a concept to grasp especially since Dora has already explicitly said what she is growing in that one scene. For Myul Mang to grow up to become a "good" human, he needs to learn to think about others, forgive himself, be compassionate (not only towards himself, but others as well), love others, etc. Other things Myul Mang would probably need to learn is how to love his fate or amor fati (loving your fate means loving it all, not just the good parts, but the bad parts too; loving it so much so that you would never want to change anything about it and would gladly relive your life the way it was over and over again for all of eternity).

I don’t think the "plant" will fully "blossom" until Myul Mang sacrifices himself to save Dong Kyung for the sole reason that he loves her (in contrast to sacrificing himself for his own personal gain). Therefore, that's probably the final lesson -- how to be completely selfless.

Dora just wants her son to grow up to be a "good" plant (human) so she doesn't have to end up pulling him out aka end him before he even becomes human! Okay???

Sorry if what I've just said was confusing. What I meant to say is that Myul Mang's personal growth is reflective in the plant's growth. The more he learns of what it means to be a "good" human, the more the plant will grow until it blossoms into a beautiful flower (a real human).

If we want to connect the idea of personal growth to the story of Pinocchio, we see that Pinocchio's growth occurs only after he experiences pain (physical and emotional) and love. From these experiences, he learns what it means to be a "good" boy and is rewarded by the Fairy transforming him into a real boy.

One Wish or Wishes?

In my previous post, I had briefly touched upon how I think Dong Kyung is going to wish for brain cancer to be cured. Though I still think this, I nevertheless want to explore some of the other possibilities of what her wish could be.

Potential Wishes:

1) Myul Mang to Become Human

2) More Wishes

3) Contract to be Voided

4) No One Remembering Her After She Dies

For #1, Dong Kyung wishes Myul Mang to become human, but then she still dies from her untreated brain cancer…so nope. For #2 and #3, are these wishes even allowed? I would like to point out some flaws of the writer. Maybe it’s not so much a flaw, but an annoyance I have with the writer of DAYS. What one can or cannot wish for is not explicitly stated. Due to this, it is somewhat difficult for me to accurately predict what Dong Kyung will wish for. It’s like trying to detect a substance without being given its upper and lower limits or range of detection (sorry for the science related analogy) ! For #4, I guess this one could be probable, but there is just too much evidence pointing to Myul Mang's death. After exploring each of the possibilities, I'm still left thinking that Dong Kyung's one wish will be to cure her cancer.

Anyways, even if Dong Kyung wishes for her brain cancer to be cured, it’s not really a happy ending since Myul Mang still dies. Is there any other way for Dong Kyung to make another wish so that she can save Myul Mang? I think there is and it comes in the form of the “gift” that Dora gave Dong Kyung. In my previous post, I had theorized that the marble may have a larger purpose than just being a symbol of how the fate of the world is Dong Kyung hands. I believe now that the marble’s larger purpose is that it is a type of wish fulfilling stone. Why? Because we know fantasy dramas typically make references to mythology. In this case, the writer of DAYS is probably referencing Hindu mythology.

In Hindu mythology there are 3 main gods:

1) Brahma: The Creator

2) Vishnu: The Preserver

3) Shiva: The Destroyer (Sounds like Myul Mang right? Also, the love story between Shiva and Parvati is somewhat similar to that of Myul Mang and Dong Kyung’s love story.)

Dora is the equivalent to the god Vishnu in Hindu mythology. Vishnu is often depicted wearing a “Cintamani”, a type of wish fulling stone analogous to the Philosopher’s Stone (hint hint…transforms something from one form into another…immortal -> human) in Western mythology. Given this, the marble/Cintamani in Dong Kyung's possession could be the key to Myul Mang’s rebirth.

Some might ask, “Well why can’t Dora just use it to wish for her son to be reborn as a human?”. Well, remember that both Dora and Myul Mang are slaves to the wishes of humans. They themselves cannot fulfil their own wishes or desires. Meaning, even though Dora and Myul Mang can wish for something to happen, they cannot carry it out unless humans wish it too. Also, as I mentioned previously, deities in kdramas never just give humans gift because they’re being nice. Rather, they give gifts to humans so that humans can help them accomplish their overall goals/wishes.

So putting it all together, do you see where I’m going with this? Dora has the same wish as Dong Kyung which is for Myul Mang to live, but Dora is unable to execute her goals/wishes unless Dong Kyung wishes it too. Dora knows that Dong Kyung will probably use her one wish to cure her brain cancer. At the same time, this leaves her son, Myul Mang, to die. Therefore, Dora gives Dong Kyung the wish fulfilling marble with the intention that Dong Kyung will use it to wish for her son, Myul Mang, to be reborn as a human. With Dora/Dong Kyung’s wish, Myul Mang will be free from his cursed life as an immortal and be reborn to be able to live happily with Dong Kyung.

Side note, the rebirth of Myul Mang into a human can either be dependent on Myul Mang's personal growth or it can be dependent on this wish fulfilling stone or both! I'm leaning more towards his personal growth as being the catalyst for his rebirth, but who knows! It very well could be that the marble has a role to play in his rebirth.

Is Dong Kyung Going To Be An Immortal?

No…no…and NO!!

Some might ask why don’t I think this? Well, for a bunch of reasons. I’ll admit I used to think that it would be very romantic for a human to become immortal so that they can be with their immortal lover forever. However, the more I thought about it, I came to the realization the notion of forever is not romantic nor beautiful. At its core, the concept of eternity is quite terrifying and ugly. And if you haven’t realized already, the writer of DAYS has been making multiple arguments against immortality. For anything to have meaning, it must have an end. In this sense, the end is beautiful.

To get my point across, I want you to try and think about some things. What keeps life meaningful? Experiences? People? Well, imagine doing something you love for a year. Now imagine doing it for trillions or zillions of years. Experiences no matter how good they are at first will eventually become tedious if you do it for long enough. For example, eating your favorite dish may be good for a while, but not for zillions of years. At one point or another, you ultimately lose your desire to want to eat it or eat entirely for that matter.

Now surely getting to know people and loving them can keep your life meaningful right? Well, how many times do you think you could handle knowing and loving people who eventually disappear? Eventually, you grow tired of crying and mourning over dead loved ones that you become numb. Now imagine being Dong Kyung. She would have to witness her family, their family, and so forth dying over and over again for all of eternity. Doesn’t that seem tortuous? Sure, one could argue that at least she has Myul Mang with her, but do you really think her love for him could sustain her forever? The relationship between Myul Mang and his mother, Dora, is a prime example of how a loving relationship could turn sour over a great deal of time. The gift of immorality Dora bestowed on Myul Mang became a curse instead of a blessing. So why would Myul Mang want to give Dong Kyung something that was basically a curse for him? As for Dora, she probably wouldn’t want to give Dong Kyung the same gift after seeing what it did to her son.

If you continue to think that Dong Kyung will become an immortal being, did you really smell what the writer of DAYS was cooking or did you just smell what you were cooking?

The Bad Case of the Riddles

From what I have been reading on multiple platforms now, it would seem that a lot of people are rather confused about a lot of things. It’s understandable! Throughout the show, the writer has presented some complex philosophical concepts that may be difficult for some viewers to grasp. To further add to the confusion, the characters at times do speak in what appears to be riddles. This I believe may be one of the major flaws of the writer. She has to consider that her audience are probably people who have never read any philosophical works before. Most viewers aren’t here to decipher cryptic messages or see how they’re connected to some major philosophical concepts such as eternal recurrence, existentialism, nihilism, amor fati, etc. Most are here to shut off their tired brain and enjoy some good fantasy romance! I know I’m totally one of those people!

Needless to say, I did find myself in a debate of whether I should discuss some philosophical concepts referenced in the show as to help you all gain a better sense of understanding. However, I concluded that it would take too much of my time to do so. Additionally, despite my best efforts to use the simplest of words, I found that whatever I had already written may have still been confusing to the everyday reader. Anyways, if there are any particular scenes or dialogue you all want to me go over, please feel free to use the ask button and I’ll do my best to try and answer them!

Whats Going to Happen Next?

Probably more filler type stuff aka more bs. It's common in kdramas for characters to go back and forth on their initial decision of whatever. Dong Kyung is going to break up with Myul Mang because she loves him and doesn't want him to die. And before the breakup, she's going to give him some good memories to remember her by. Following this, she's going to try and love herself so that she's the one that ends up dying and her wish is going to be for everyone to forget her? Okay......Zzzzzzz!! Idk... Dora is probably going to intervene somehow to get Dong Kyung and Myul Mang back together again.

Other Random Thoughts

What I think would be interesting to learn about is the connection between Dong Kyung's parents death and Dora past self's death. It wasn't just all a coincidence that they both died on the same day. Who knows... maybe Dong Kyung was meant to be in the car that day with her parents, but Dora's past self sacrificed herself to change Dong Kyung's fate.

Also, I still don't think Dong Kyung is going to die, I mean you got her brother praying to the deities that she lives!

Okay, I'm done. I wrote this in Microsoft Word and it was 5 pages long. My brain is dead. There's probably something I should've gone over or elaborated more about, but oh well. Thanks for reading this disjointed post!

#doom at your service #doomatyourservice #myulmang #myul mang #tak dong kyung #takdongkyung #park bo young #parkboyoung #seo in guk #seoinguk #pinocchio #DAYS #theories #my brain is melting

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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years ago

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Jet and Yue’s Deaths: Were They Necessary?

Two of the most common ideas I see for aus in this fandom are the Jet lives au, and the Yue lives au. I’ve written both of these myself, and I’ve seen many others write them. And while yes, fanfiction can be a great way to explore ideas that didn’t necessarily have to be explored in canon (I’m mad at bryke for a lot of things, but not including a Toph and Bumi I friendship is not one of them, even though I wrote a fic about it), it seems to me that people are mad that Yue and Jet are dead, to varying degrees. There’s a lot to talk about regarding their deaths from a sociopolitical perspective (the fact that two of the darker-skinned characters in the show are the ones that died, and all the light-skinned characters lived, is ah... an interesting choice), but I don’t want to look at it that way, at least for right now. I want to look at it as a writer, and discuss whether these deaths were a) necessary for the plot and themes of ATLA in any way whatsoever and b) whether it was necessary for them to unfold in the way that they did, or if they would have been more impactful had they occurred in a different way.

(meta under the cut, this got really, really, really long)

Death in Children’s Media

When I first started thinking about this meta, I had this idea to compare Jet and Yue’s deaths to deaths in an animated children’s show that I found satisfying. And in theory, that was a great idea. Problem is: there aren’t very many permanent deaths in children’s animation, and the ones that do exist aren’t especially well-written. This may be an odd thing to say in what is ostensibly a piece of atla crit, but Yue’s death is probably the best written death in a piece of children’s animation that I can think of. That’s not a compliment. Rather, it’s a condemnation of the way other pieces of children’s animation featuring permanent character death have handled their storylines.

I’ve talked about this before, but my favorite show growing up was Young Justice, and my favorite character on that show was far and away Mr. Wally West. So when he died at the end of season 2, it broke me emotionally. Shortly thereafter, Cartoon Network canceled the show, and I started getting on fan forums to mourn. Everybody on these fan forums was convinced that had Cartoon Network not canceled the show, Wally would have been brought back. And that is a narrative that I internalized for years. Eventually, the show was brought back via DC’s new streaming service, and I tuned in, waiting for Wally to also be brought back, only to discover that that wasn’t in the cards. Wally was dead. Permanently.

So now that I know that, I can talk about why killing him off was fucking stupid. Wally’s death occurs at the end of season 2, after the main s2 conflict, the Reach, has been defeated, save for these pods that they set up all over the world to destroy Earth. Our heroes split up in teams of two to destroy the pods, and they destroy all of them, except for a secret one in Antartica. It can only be neutralized by speedsters, so Wally, Bart, and Barry team up to destroy it. It’s established in canon that Wally is slower than Bart and Barry, and it’s been played for laughs earlier in the season, but for reasons unexplained, the pod is better able to target Wally because he’s slower than Bart and Barry, and it kills him. After the emotional arc of the season has wrapped up, a literal main character dies. There’s some indication at the end of that season that his death is going to cause Artemis to spiral and become a villain, but when season 3 picks up, she’s doing the right thing, with seemingly no qualms about her position in life as a hero. In the comics, something like this happens to Wally, but then he goes into the Speed Force and becomes faster and stronger even than Barry, in which case, yes, this would have advanced the plot, but that’s probably not in the cards either.

In summary, Wally’s death doesn’t work as a story beat, not because it made me mad, but because it doesn’t advance the plot, nor does it develop character. Only including things that advance plot or develop character is one of the golden rules of writing. Like most golden rules of writing, however, it’s not absolute. There is a lot of fun to be had in jokey little one off adventures (in atla, Sokka’s haiku competition) or in fun worldbuilding threads that add depth to your setting but don’t really come up (in atla, the existence of Whaletail Island, which is described in really juicy ways, even though the characters never go there.) But in general, when it comes to things like character death, events should happen to develop the plot or advance character. Avatar, for all of its flaws, is really well structured, and a lot of its story beats advance plot and develop character at the same time. However, the show also bears the burden of being a show directed at children, and thus needing to be appropriate for children. And as we know, Nickelodeon and bryke butted heads over this: the death scene that we see for Jet is a compromise, one that implicitly confirms his death without explicitly showing it. So bryke tasked themselves with creating a show about imperialism and war that would do those themes justice while also being appropriate for American children and palatable to their parents.

The Themes of Avatar vs. Its Audience

So, Avatar is a show about a lone survivor of genocide stopping an imperialist patriarchal society from decimating the rest of the world. It’s also a show about found family and staying true to yourself and doing your best to improve the world. These don’t necessarily conflict with each other, and it is possible for children to understand and enjoy shows about complex themes. And in a lot of cases, bryke doesn’t hold back in showing what the costs of war against an imperialist nation are: losing loved ones, losing yourself, prison, etc. But when it comes to death, the show is incredibly hesitant. None of the main characters that we’ve spent a lot of time getting to know die (not even Iroh, even though he was old and it would have made sense and his VA died before the show was over--but that’s a topic for another day.) This makes sense. I can totally imagine a seven year-old watching Avatar as it was coming out and feeling really sad or scared if a major character died. I was six years older than that when Wally died, and it’s still sad and terrifying to me to this day. However, in a show about war, it would be unrealistic to have no one die. Bryke’s stated reason for killing off Jet is to show the costs of war. I’ve seen a lot of posts about Jet’s death that reiterate some version of this same point--that the great tragedy of his character is that he spent his life fighting the Fire Nation, only to die at the hands of his own country. Similarly, I’ve seen people argue in favor of Yue’s death by saying that it was a great tragedy, but it showed the sacrifices that must be made in a war effort.

Yue

When we first meet Yue, she is a somewhat reserved, kind individual held back by the rigid social structures of the NWT*. She and Sokka have an immediate attraction to one another, but Yue reveals that she is engaged to Hahn. The Fire Nation invasion happens, Zhao kills Tui, and Yue gives up her life to save her people and the world, and to restore balance. Since we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know Yue, this is framed less as Yue’s sacrifice and more as Sokka’s loss. Sokka is the one who cares for Yue, Sokka is the only one of the gaang who really interacts a lot with Yue on screen, and Sokka is the one we’ve spent a whole season getting to know. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Yue a prop character (i.e. a character who could be replaced by an object with little change to the narrative), she is certainly underdeveloped. She exists to be unambiguously likable and good, so we can root for her and Sokka, and feel Sokka’s pain when she dies. In my opinion, this is probably also why a lot of fic that features Yue depicts her as a Mary Sue--because as she is depicted in the show, she kind of is. We don’t get to see her hidden depths because she is written to die.

In light of what we’ve established earlier in this meta, this makes sense. Killing off a fully-realized character whom the audience has really gotten to know and care about on their own terms, rather than through the eyes of another character, could be really sad and scary for the kids watching, but not killing anyone off would be an unrealistic depiction of war and imperialism. On the face of it, killing off an underdeveloped, unambiguously likable and good character, whom one of our MCs has a deep but short connection with, is the perfect compromise.

But let’s go back to the golden rule for a second. Does Yue’s death a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to the first is yes: Yue’s death prompts Aang to use the Avatar State to fight off the Fire navy, which has implications for his ability to control the Avatar State that form one of the major arcs of book 2. The answer to the second? A little more ambiguous. You would think that Yue’s death would have some lasting impact on Sokka that is explored as part of his character arc in book 2, that he may be more afraid to trust, more scared of losing the people he loves, but outside of a few episodes (really, just one I can think of, “The Swamp”) it doesn’t seem to affect him that much. He even asks about Suki in a way that is clearly romantically motivated in “Avatar Day.” I don’t know about you, but if someone I loved sacrificed herself to become the moon, I don’t think I would be seeking out another romantic entanglement a few weeks after her death. Of course, everybody processes grief differently, and one could argue that Sokka has already lost important people in his life, and thus would be accustomed to moving on from that loss and not letting himself dwell on it. But to that, I’d say that moving on by throwing himself into protecting others has already shown itself to be an unhealthy coping mechanism. Remember, Sokka’s misogyny at the beginning of b1 is in part motivated by the fact that his mother died at the hands of the Fire Nation and his father left shortly thereafter to fight the Fire Nation, and he responds to those things by throwing himself into the role of being the “man” of the village and protecting the people he loves who are still with him. Like with Yue, he doesn’t allow himself to dwell on his mother’s death. This could have been the beginning of a really interesting b2 arc for Sokka, in which he throws himself into being the Avatar’s companion to get away from the grief of losing Yue, but this time, through the events of the show, he’s forced to acknowledge that this is an unhealthy coping mechanism. And maybe this is what bryke was going for with “The Swamp”, but this confines his whole process of grief to one episode, where it could have been a season-long arc that really emphasized the effect Yue’s had on his life.

In the case of Yue, I do lean toward saying that her death was necessary for the story that they wanted to tell (although, I will never turn down a good old-fashioned Yue lives au that really gets into her dynamism as a character, those are awesome.) However, the way they wrote Sokka following Yue’s death reduced her significance. The fact that Yue seemed to have so little impact on Sokka is precisely what makes her death feel unnecessary, even if it isn’t.

Jet

Okay. Here we go.

If you know my blog, you know I love Jet. You know I love Jet lives aus. Perhaps you know that I’m in the process of writing a multichapter Jet fic in which he lives after Lake Laogai. So it’s reasonable to assume that, in a discussion of whether or not Jet’s death was necessary, I’m gonna be mega-biased. And yeah, that’s probably true. But up until recently, I wasn’t really all that mad about Jet dying, at least conceptually. As I said earlier, bryke says that in the case of Jet’s death, they wanted to kill a character off that people knew and would care about, so that they could further show the tragedies of war and imperialism. Okay. That is not, in and of itself, a bad idea.

My issue lies with the execution of said idea. First of all, the framing of Jet’s original episode is so bad. Jet is part of a long line of cartoon villains who resist imperialism and other forms of oppression through violence and are punished for it. This is actually a really common sort of villain for atla/lok, as we see this play out again with Hama, Amon, and the Red Lotus. To paraphrase hbomberguy’s description of this type of villain, basically liberal white creators are saying, “yeah, oppression is bad, but have you tried writing to your Congressman about it?” With Jet, since we have so little information about the village he’s trying to flood, there are a number of different angles that would explain his actions and give them more nuance. My preferred hc is that the citizens of Gaipan are a mix of Earth civilians, Fire citizens, and FN soldiers, and that the Earth citizens refused to feed or house Jet and the other Freedom Fighters because they were orphans and, as we see in the Kyoshi Novels, Earth families stick to their own. Thus, when Jet decides to flood Gaipan, he’s focused on ridding the valley of Fire Nation, but he doesn’t really care about what happens to the Earth citizens of Gaipan because they actively wronged him when he was a kid. That’s just one interpretation, and there have been others: Gaipan was fully Fire Nation, Gaipan was both Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation but Jet decided that the benefits of flooding the valley and getting rid of the Fire Nation outweighed the costs of losing the EK families, etc, etc. There are ways to rewrite that scenario so that Jet is not framed as an unambiguously bloodthirsty monster. In the context of Jet’s death, this initial framing reduces the possible impact that his death could have. Where Yue was unambiguously good, Jet is at the very least morally gray when we see him again in the ferry. And where we are connected to Yue through Sokka, the gaang’s active hatred of Jet hinders our ability to connect with him. This isn’t impossible to overcome--the gaang hates Zuko, and yet to an extent the audience roots for him--but Jet’s lack of screentime and nuanced framing (both of which Zuko gets in all three seasons) makes overcoming his initially flawed framing really difficult.

So how much can it really be said, that by the time we get to Jet’s death, he’s a character that we know and care about? So much about him is still unknown (what happened to the Freedom Fighters? what prompted Jet’s offscreen redemption? who knows, fam, who knows.) Moreover, most of what we see of him in Ba Sing Se is him actively opposing Zuko and Iroh. These are both characters that at the very least the show wants us to care about. At this point, we know almost everything there is to know about them, we’ve been following them and to an extent rooting for them for two seasons, and who have had nuanced and often sympathetic framing a number of times. So much of the argument I’ve seen regarding Jet centers around the fact that he was right to expose Zuko and Iroh as Firebenders, but the reason we have to have that argument in the first place is because it’s not framed in Jet’s favor. In terms of who the audience cares about more, who the audience has more of an emotional attachment towards, Zuko and Iroh win every time. Whether Jet’s actually in the right or not is irrelevant, because emotionally speaking, we’re primed to root for Zuko and Iroh. In terms of who the framing is biased towards, Jet may as well be Zhao. So when he’s taken by the Dai Li and brainwashed, the audience isn’t necessarily going to see this as a bad thing, because it means Zuko and Iroh are safe.

The only real bit of sympathetic framing Jet gets are those initial moments on the ferry, and the moments after he and the gaang meet again. So about five, ten minutes of the show, total. And then, he sacrifices himself for the gaang. And just like Yue, his death has little to no impact on the characters in the episodes following. Katara is shown crying for four frames immediately following his death, and they bring him up once in “The Southern Raiders” to call him a monster, and once in “The Ember Island Players”, a joke episode in which his death is a joke.

So, let’s ask again. Does this a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to both is no. It shows that the Dai Li is super evil and cruel, which we already knew and which basically becomes irrelevant in book 3, and that is really the only plot-significant thing I can think of. As far as character, well, it could have been a really interesting moment in Katara’s development in forgiving someone who hurt her in the past, which could have foreshadowed her forgiving Zuko in b3, but considering she calls Jet a monster in TSR, that doesn’t track. There could have been something with Sokka realizing that his snap judgment of Jet in b1 was wrong, but considering that he brings up Jet to criticize Katara in TSR, that also does not track. And honestly, neither of these possible character arcs require Jet to die. What requires Jet to die is the ~themes~.

Let’s look at this theme again, shall we? The cost of war. We already covered it with Yue, but it’s clearly something that bryke wants to return to and shed new light on. The obvious angle they’re going for is that sometimes, you don’t know who your real enemy is. Jet thought that his enemy was the Fire Nation, but in the end, he was taken down by his own countryman. Wow. So deep. Except, while it’s clear that Jet was always fighting against the Fire Nation, I never got the sense that Jet was fighting for the Earth Kingdom. After all, isn’t the whole bad thing about him in the beginning is that he wants to kill civilians, some of whom we assume to be Earth Kingdom? Why would it matter then that he got killed by an EK leader, when he didn’t seem to ever be too hot on those dudes? But okay, maybe the angle is not that he was killed by someone from the Earth Kingdom, but that he wasn’t killed by someone from the Fire Nation. Okay, but we’ve already seen him be diametrically opposed to the only living Air Nomad and people from the Water Tribes. Jet fighting with and losing to people who aren’t Fire Nation is not a new and exciting development for him. Jet has been enemies with non-FN characters for most of the show’s run at this point. There is no thematic level on which the execution of this holds any water.

The reason I got to thinking about this, really analyzing what Jet’s death means (and doesn’t mean) for the show, was this conversation I was having with @the-hot-zone in discord dms. We were talking about book 2 and ways it could have been better, and Zone said that they thought that Jet would have been a stronger character to parallel with Zuko’s redemption than Iroh and that seeing more of the narrative from Jet’s perspective could have strengthened the show’s themes. And when it came to the question of Jet’s death, they said, “And if we are going with Jet dying, then I want it to hurt. I want it to hurt just as much as if a main character like Sokka had died. I want the viewer to see Jet's struggles, his triumphs, the facets of Jet that make him compelling and important to the show.” And all of that just hit me. Because we don’t get that, do we? Jet’s death barely leaves a mark. Jet himself barely leaves a mark. His death isn’t plot-significant, doesn’t inspire character growth in any of our MCs, and doesn’t even accomplish the thematic relevance that it claims to. So what was the point?

Conclusion

Much as I dislike it, Yue’s death actually added something to atla. It could have added much, much more, in the hands of writers who gave more of a shit about their Brown female characters and were less intent on seeing them suffer and knocking them down a peg, but, in my opinion, it did work for what it was trying to do. Jet? Jet? Nah, fam. Jet never got the chance to really develop into a likable character because he was always put at odds with characters we already liked, and the framing skewed their way, not his. The dude never really had a chance.

*multiple people have spoken about how the NWT as depicted in atla is not reminiscent of real life Inuit and Yupik people and culture. I am not the person to go into detail about this, but I encourage you to check out Native-run blogs for more info!

#jet #yue #bold text #italics #death tw #murder tw

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hamliet · 4 years ago

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RWBY and Alchemy: The Birds

So remember when I wrote about the seven metals of alchemy? Well... there are also five birds, and like with the metals, RWBY seems to be associating a specific character with a specific bird.

Birds are important in alchemy because they were viewed as symbols of the spirit, as “mediat[ors] between the earthly realm and heaven world.” Adam MacLean states:

The alchemist in observing the flight of birds, recognised in them a picture of the human soul undergoing spiritual development. The soul, aspiring upwards, flying free of the restraints of the earth bound body seeking the heavenly light, only to have to return to the earthly consciousness again.

Black Stage: Raven/Crow (Raven and Qrow Branwen)

The raven/crow/jackdaw is a symbol of nigredo, the blackening. This stage corresponds to earth elementally and symbolize decay and death (obviously).

It’s no coincidence that Qrow and Raven are focused on in the first part of the story, and while they still are under their own arcs, Qrow has been largely separated from his nieces and others during the past few volumes. His nieces and the rest need to grow up rather than depend on Qrow. See Splendor Solis 20:

The children are portrayed as playing with a crow/raven among them, symbolizing their immaturity. However, the adults in the back of the image are in red, showing that they have grown up.

The theme of growing up and maturation is very present in Raven’s arc: namely, she never did. She fled from her adult responsibilities in abandoning her own daughter and ran back to her childhood home, her childhood promise. She also undergoes a putrefaction, a purification by fire in a sense, through her daughter. When Yang confronts her in the vault of the Spring Maiden, she shreds every excuse Raven has, pointing out that Raven is selfish, cowardly, and childish, happy to sacrifice others but never herself. The daughter, here, is the mature one, and thus Yang wins the lamp of knowledge: Yang gave Raven a dose of self-knowledge in the vault, and we see Raven making a small step afterwards via going to see Tai.

Qrow is better off than Raven in that he doesn’t entirely run from his responsibilities... except he does, just in a different way. He drinks to dull the pain, and as a result, Ruby ends up taking care of him on their journey instead of the other way around. Qrow himself acknowledges that he has childish beliefs; his semblance is a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than an actual power.

For the first time in a while I thought, maybe, maybe I could be around somebody -anybody- without my Semblance making it… complicated. And now, it just feels like a childish dream. Gone... like everybody else.

Just like his twin sister, he’s afraid of truly getting close to people, which RWBY seems to hold up as the pillar of maturity and development. I’m not saying Qrow is as negative a character as Raven (he isn’t at all), but he is still struggling to grow up aside his nieces and their companions. In fact, this will be A Thing for all the characters who relate to birds.

The crow is often depicted as dying inside a flask:

Which could be seen as alluded to by Qrow’s alcoholism. Through not facing the darker parts of himself and not growing up, Qrow is killing himself. Fortunately, he’s been making some steps in the right direction.

Rainbow Stage: Peacock (Cinder Fall)

Look the girl has feathers on her outfit that are very reminiscent of peacocks feathers... without the eyes. We’ll get there. The feathers are described by CRWBY as “iridescent” which is a term alchemists employed historically to refer to the rainbow stage.

Post-Blackening, the products of the great work are scattered in a variety of colors, colors that are all at war with each other. To quote Carl Jung,

It is commonly said of the peacock that it has an angel‘s feathers, a devil’s voice, and a thief’s walk.

NB: arrows are often used as symbols in part of this stage, and bows and arrows are weapons Cinder is, er, known for using too.

Jung also comments this, which fits with Cinder being both a Maiden, associated with the seasons, and with her being an agent for change in the story as a whole:

Just as the Queen Mother or the mother of the gods grants renewal, so the peacock annually renews his plumage, and therefore has a relation to all the changes in nature.

The peacock is actually a flightless bird: post death in the Blackening, it cannot fly, but in order to proceed through the rest of the stages, it has to gather the disparate colors (ie parts of itself) in order to renew itself (yes, they’re linked to renewal and rebirth).

However, Cinder is not doing this. She received many call-outs, and has severed every bridge people have attempted to build with her. If anything, post volume 8, she seems more lost than ever. So what could be an impetus for her to do this? Well...

Why are her peacock-esque feathers missing their eyes?

The ancient Greek legend of Argus (which is a place in RWBY’s world; the place where Ruby hears Maria’s story of her silver eyes and asks Maria to train her in using her silver eyes) is that there is an immortal monstrous woman with snakes for legs named Echidna who they keep hidden in a cave, but she keeps finding ways to kill humans, until Argus finally kills her. After this, Hera has Argus guard a goddess with his hundred eyes, but then Mercury/Hermes/Thoth kills Argus, and Hera casts his eyes into peacocks’ tails to remember him. I wouldn’t read toooo much into this, but I do think it would be very, very fitting for Cinder to receive a call-out from her “kids”: Emerald and Mercury, the latter of whom is an allusion to Hermes/Mercury and the former of whom might be an allusion to Thoth. Until Cinder has been confronted by Mercury and Emerald, she won’t truly be able to see.

I have said before that I think Ruby will use her silver eyes to save Cinder from being consumed by the worst parts of herself (as literally symbolized in the Grimm taking her over). The decay of the Blackening is washed away to reveal the color of the peacock’s iridescent tail, and so both a confrontation to get Cinder to face the worst of herself, and then pity shown to her by someone who has no reason to be kind to purify her (look, it’s a term in alchemy, and Ruby has been described as “the embodiment of purity”) of the Grimm will probably be the impetus for Cinder to change.

White Stage: Swan/Dove (Robyn Hill, maybe Winter Schnee?)

Robyn’s emblem is a white bird.

The swan symbolises the dissolving of impurity into ash. In Volume 8, when Robyn and Qrow are freed from prison, ash falls everywhere.

Like the peacock, a swan is a bird that does not fly. Robyn is grounded in Mantle, rather than Atlas. After the gathering of opposites in the Peacock’s Tail, the dove/swan “reconciles and unites opposite substances,” according to Lyndy Abraham. Swans swim along the surface of water, while the true colors are concealed beneath; swans dunk their heads underwater, which symbolizes a person diving deep into dissolution and purification. Robyn’s Semblance is also about this: it allows Robyn to sense their true colors and intentions, rather than what they attempt to protect at the surface.

I am also wondering if Winter is somehow connected to this as well, because of the appearance of white birds in her semblance.

The focus on transformation that is part of the life cycle of a swan (ugly ducking to beautiful bird) is also perhaps symbolic of Winter’s internal development; this volume, she learned to fly on her own, growing up and shedding the need for father figures completely. She’s now able to fly (literally) freely and to save her people. But we will see; the connection is less strong here.

Yellow Stage: Pelican (Hazel Rainart)

Due to the previous three all having links to a maiden, I wonder if the summer maiden will somehow be connected to pelican imagery, but for now, my inclination is to say that Hazel displays traits of the pelican as well, though there may be another person associated at some point.

The pelican’s notable accomplishment is to stab its own breast and nourish its young with its own blood. It is a symbol of sacrifice. Hazel sacrifices himself to save the children: Emerald, Oscar, Jaune, Yang, and Ren. He does so by stabbing himself in the chest with numerous dust types, combining all sorts of elements (key to alchemy).

Red Stage: Phoenix (?)

This one remains to be determined. It could well could be Cinder (I mean, look at her name), plus the bird characters have thus far been adults like she is and possibly have a maiden association.

But it could also be Mercury, because of his association with fire and specifically with burning his “nest” as the phoenix does. When Cinder and Emerald find him, he’s burned his home.

Plus, I think it’s pretty obvious Mercury will either get his semblance back or develop a new one, and it’s most likely going to be related to flying given his emblem and allusion. It would also fit with his having prosthetic legs: he doesn’t need them fixed, and his losses don’t make him any less human. It’s always been within his soul to fly.

Ooooor the phoenix could be connected to Oscar, because of its association with the sun. It’s really too soon to say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#rwby alchemy #rwby meta #rwby speculation #cinder fall #mercury black #oscar pine #qrow branwen #raven branwen #robyn hill #winter schnee #alchemy #hazel rainart #rwby theory #this meta is not perfect #but i was tired of wrestling with the birds

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asianhappinesss · 3 years ago

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The K2 (2016)

Summary

Kim Je Ha is a former mercenary soldier known as “K2” who suddenly turns into a fugitive when he is wrongfully accused of killing his girlfriend while he is serving in Iraq. He finds his way back to Korea and gets a job as a bodyguard for Choi Yoo Jin, the owner of JSS Security and the wife of Jang Se Joon, who is running for president.

Je Ha uses his new job to plan his revenge on Park Kwan Soo, the leader of the current ruling party and Se Joon’s rival, whom Je Ha believes ordered the murder of his girlfriend.

When Je Ha is assigned to guard Go An Na, the reclusive illegitimate daughter of Se Joon, they begin to develop feelings for each other. But what happens when the person who wants to harm An Na the most is Yoo Jin, Je Ha’s boss, and revenge ally? Where will Je Ha’s loyalty lay?

Review

An Action Hero but also establishes the fact that Strong Anti-Hero Females are a lasting trend

I saw some clips and action scenes of ‘The K2’ on YouTube and became interested in the show. I finished the show within a span of 1.5 days with ample sleep ofcourse. I have to say this is the most action packed K-drama I have seen thus far (DOTS, following second). I wanted to find out why the show is called K2, what is the significance. 15 mins into the drama and there is some punch packed action. My hopes rose, seeing how well it was choreographed. It’s safe to say the action didn’t disappoint and you find it packed around pretty much the whole drama. Although, the excessive pause made it unrealistic to some extent and fast pace of camera sometimes made it hard to follow through. I had to go back a few seconds sometimes to know what happened. The background music and ending credit song caught my attention from the first go. I searched out for it and found it was the main theme for the drama, furthermore the words that I wasn’t able to grasp (other than all of the dialogues in Korean) were in German. The words had a lot of meaning attached to the story and for a Kdrama having a ost composed in German was much surprising (my initial guess was spanish since that’s where the story began). To tell you the truth, it’s absolutely catchy and is still ringing in my ears. Most of the ost is instrumental and pretty good depicting the mood of the story. Soft for emotional scenes and thriller for suspense or action. Few episodes into it and you could guess with the main theme playing that you will witness some action or dynamic transition in plot. Coming to the story, it is not something entirely new to the universe. An agent (Kim Jeha) like no other, suffered a tradegy, gone rogue, fighting against the world but still being good and fair to the innocent. He fights for the right, wants revenge and along the way encounters love (Go Anna). However, the intricacies are what makes these stories and characters a bit more unique. It’s always interesting to watch these kinds of stories roll out every time. (Action with a purpose, as I call them are a favorite genre of mine). There are some things I absolutely loved about the drama. If there was a damsel in distress it wasn’t without a strong antagonist and that too a female (Choi Yoo Jin). Not often do we see this gender being given so much authority and control to move the story. I loved the character of Choi Yoo Jin even though she was evil, very evil but there was something about her that made her vulnerable and deserving of bit sympathy. Amazing acting by Song Yoon-ah, she ruled the show for me. She has so many layers and ultimately turns out to not so bad a character. Infact, she is better off than likes of Mr. Jang (father of Go Anna). I wanted to like this character, giving reasons for his shitty behavior of a playboy or towards his own daughter (he still loves her mother, he is trying to protect his own daughter) but even after his whole sacrifice at the end I haven’t been able to like him. I understand that his political career was the only thing he had left and it was to avenge his love. But you need to draw a line and not hurt and put the only thing you could possibly love through danger and much emotional turmoil again and again. The character of Go Anna played by Im Yoon-ah is much in controversy. Some say her acting isn’t as strong as her kpop gig, some say she doesn’t compliment well with Ji Chan Wook and there is no chemistry, others say she has improved a lot. Well I have nothing to compare her with, neither her past works nor many actresses. I honestly found her acting well according to the role given to her. I felt the role demanded of her to show less emotions, to act aloof. I felt the sparks between Go Anna and Kim Jeha but I wish they burnt like fire, I wish for more scenes where the chemistry could be explored more. Nevertheless, it was great. I also enjoyed the love traingle between Kim Jeha, Go Anna and Choi Yoo Jin. It touched upon a restricted topic of older woman loving a young guy. From the first go I felt that Choi Yoo Jin started liking Kim Jeha but

it wasn’t very clear, the show makers deliberately kept it that way I guess and I loved it. The way she should stood strong, caught hold of her feelings amidst her goals and also the way she unfolded and exposed herself to Jeha. Coming to the titular character, Ji Chang Wook, he has done some amazing work. It was my first drama of Ji Chang Wook. I am completely mesmerised by his ability to induce intensity and comedy equally well into the scene. He has performed some amazing action and was truly the wolf of show. Few of my favourite scenes include the inital fight scene (episode 1), the car chase with Kim Jeha and Yoo Jin (episode 2), bathroom fight (episode 3), taking Anna to infirmary (episode 7), euroem and ding (episode 8), how Kim Jeha looks at Anna through CCTV and then his eye shades episode, all the tiny details make your heart melt, the ending (episode 16) and choi yoo jin’s role in it, she was literally the queen of the forest! After finishing the show, it was difficult for me to imagine any korean actor that I famously know of other than Ji Chang Wook to play K2. He has done sweet justice to his role. The drama kept me engrossed throughout and due to the suspense attached I was constantly on my feet. The only disappointment I have from the show is not being able to K2’s real name. The whole soundtrack of the show is so so good it be enough to make you want to watch the show. I love the soundtrack of the show so much that I usually have it playing on repeat. All in all, I love the show a lot and I do keep coming back to it. Why Watch it? - If you are looking for an action packed Kdrama - If you are a Ji Chang Wook fan - If you are a Im Yoon-ah fan - If you are a Song Yoon-ah fan, trust me she’s too good in this - If you like action entangled with romance and suspense - Amazing Ost - If you like female anti-heros who move the story forward

#kdrama

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theonceandfutureking6481 · 3 years ago

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BBC's Merlin Season 1 Episode 3: The Mark of Nimue Analysis

*SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SHOW*

First off I always look fondly on this episode, mainly for Morgana being hilarious and epic, I mean she has the best line in the whole episode:

Arthur: You could get hurt

Morgana: So could you.... if you don't get out of my way

This episode is also fun and interesting from the perspectives of plot, characters and themes. Sorry, this is extremely long, I have a lot of opinions about Merlin.

Gwen and Merlin

This episode is in many ways about Gwen and Merlin's friendship, it is the driving force behind all of Merlin's actions within this episode and is the stepping stone for this show considering how to find a balance between acting for the greater good without suggesting that the ends justify the means.

Merlin and Gwen are first off just very sweet, their friendship is really characteristic of this show's representation of friendship overall, just genuine love and consideration for others. It is also self-sacrificing, that's one thing about the relationships in this show they are so self-sacrificing.

When Merlin says to Gwen "I didn't like to see you upset." It reveals a wonderful fact of Merlin's characterisation that I would argue stays consistent for the whole show. His motivation is always grounded in how much he cares for the people around him. He cares deeply about his friends and they are largely his reason for doing the things he does. This line is a wonderful parallel to in season 3 when Merlin decides to let Morgana die (after he accidentally trips her down the stairs), but then in the end he heals her because he couldn't watch everyone's grief. Merlin cannot separate his actions from the people he's doing them for, and he can't stand to see people hurt when he has the power to fix it because the people he loves are his motivation, they are the reason he wants a better world. This show does establish (as I'll discuss further down) that what seems immediately right (healing Gwen's father etc) isn't necessarily the right decision to make for the greater good. This is some ways always questions the validity of Merlin's motivations and his actions, but I'd argue it more seeks to find a balance. Besides a Merlin who didn't act motivated by his love for others is not a Merlin that could have helped Arthur build Camelot.

Medievalism: duty and social obligation

Quick disclaimer cause I'm touching on a more scholarly issue here that I have limited knowledge of, so I will undoubtedly make mistakes and this is my opinion. Everything I write is my opinion, but that's more obvious when I'm commenting on the themes of a fictional world rather than making a comment on actual fields of study which is what I'm doing here.

BBC's Merlin is an example of medievalism, it is an engagement with the medieval era (or ideas/images associated with it) for modern times. I honestly don't know that much about medievalism, or the medieval era, certainly not enough to make an extensive commentary on its representation in Merlin. One thing I would argue is that Merlin's representation of friendship has its roots in idealised views of the virtues of the medieval era. For many people the Middle Ages represents a time of duty and social obligation, this on one hand does lead to a stringent class divide but it also finds its idealisation in the sort of friendship represented by Merlin. The premise in most societies that place great value on social obligation is that the needs of the community outweigh the needs of the individual, that people should sacrifice themselves for the community as a whole. Every society places emphasis on this in different ways and to greater or lesser extents and our view of it as being prevalent in the medieval era is largely an idealisation based in some historical reality but also our own desires about what this era represents. There is a kind of social responsibility in the relationships in Merlin, there is a great emphasis on loyalty which is part of this idealisation. However, Merlin makes it more personal than is often depicted. We idealise social responsibility and obligation, it is often tied into the social roles of people such as loyalty to a king, or paying back debts of honour which is a form of social obligation. Merlin is more about friendship, it takes our idealisation of medieval social obligation and makes it the obligation and loyalty we owe to people who love us and who we love. I will always say that fundamentally Merlin as a show is about love, and it emphasises what we owe to people in our lives in a way I believe echoes idealisation of medieval loyalty.

This idea can also be seen in Arthur's fundamental trust of others, his fundamental assumption that everyone around him is not seeking to harm him, and that people are generally good. This ties a bit into the idea of social obligation. Arthur's idealised world is one in which people have bonds of social obligation towards each other, that people are seeking to act in the interests of the community. It's an idealisation, both of the medieval era but also an idealisation in Arthur's own head of the world he lives in.

Morgana and Gwen

Their relationship is somewhat expanded on in this episode, and they are just so sweet. Gwen gives Morgana flowers to cheer her up and its just lovely. They have a very genuine and close relationship. Morgana also has great respect for Gwen, for the work she does, and she treats her with respect.

Morgana: "If she was a sorceress, why would she kneel on the cold stone floor every morning if she could make these things happen with a snap of her fingers, like an idle king."

Aside from being one of Morgana's many quality burns towards Uther, this also illustrates one of her greatest characteristics, her empathy and genuine respect and admiration for what Gwen does everyday. She doesn't see the class divide in the same way Uther sees it or Arthur pretends to see it.

Also interesting note I heard in a Merlin podcast (I can't remember which episode), it could have been the episode about this episode. It's called Destiny and Chicken (you can listen to it on Spotify and anywhere else you find podcasts- they even did an interview of Bradley James who plays Arthur at one point), and its very good. But, they said something interesting about the paralleling between the relationship between Merlin and Arthur and the relationship between Morgana and Gwen. Both are fundamentally important and genuinely caring relationships for the character. However, for Morgana and Gwen (unlike Merlin and Arthur) the class divide remains much more in place, Gwen treats Morgana like her friend but she also treats her like her mistress in a way Merlin just doesn't with Arthur (especially not so early in the show when he's not so admiring of Arthur). This isn't to say their relationship is bad or has problems, its just different whilst still acting as a parallel. I'm not sure exactly the extent to which I agree or what this says overall in themes but its definitely interesting to think about.

Uther: "A Good and Terrible King."

This episode shows Uther at both his best and his worst which is always fun because Uther is a genuinely interesting character. I got the line from my favourite Merlin fanfiction Coronation by rageprufrock, which you should definitely read, I'll link it down the bottom, it's not too long so you can read it in half an hour. It's a character study of Arthur more than anything else and its amazing, wonderful and deeply poetic. Uther is not a huge part of this fanfic, its about Arthur's character and his relationship with Merlin and his kingdom, I'm not even sure he actually appears. This line though perfectly tapped into how I always felt about Uther so it connected:

"He's been a good and terrible father, a good and terrible king."

I often think in characterising Uther we do tend to villainise him to an extent which I personally don't find accurate. This is obviously just my opinion, and I have a tendency to think the best of people so more intensely negative views of Uther are very jarring for me. He did terrible things and I truly believe he is the ultimate villain of the show but he is very human and he could be a good king and he loved his children more than anything else. We cheapen Merlin's point if we cast Uther as pure evil, everyone is capable of evil just as much as goodness. Uther is the tragedy (like Morgana) of a person who could have been good or at least halfway decent corrupted and destroyed by his own hate and ignorance. That's the point of the parallels between Uther and Morgana, we love Morgana and she was capable of so much good, but she corrupted herself with hate.

Onto this episode, Uther shows both his capability and goodness as a king in this episode as well as his hatred and ignorance. Uther's initial reaction to the fact that the plague is caused by magic is a concern about his own authority, which isn't entirely unfounded, but does reveal a huge priority of his which is control. He fears not being able to control, that's were his cruelty as a father comes from and to some extent his opposition to magic. This does not show Uther in the best light, but his actions later in regards to dealing with the plague show a decent king who cares about his people. This scene in which he tells Arthur to shut off the lower town perfectly illustrates this:

Arthur: But what about the people who live there

Uther: Don't you think I haven't considered it? What else can I do? I have to protect the rest of the city

In this situation Uther is right, there is very little other choice, he's making a hard call but it's one he has to make, and he seems genuinely distressed at having to make it. He does care about his people's well being, and he feels the burden of their protection, he can be a good King. Much of Arthur's story is in breaking away from the legacy of Uther, and rightly so, but Uther also taught him many things and one of those things is the duty Arthur has towards his people, it's a duty he takes even more seriously than Uther, but nonetheless he learnt it from him.

This however, as I've hinted, is not the whole story of this episode, Uther is also shown at his worst, and his worst is his ignorance and prejudice towards magic. He is willing to sacrifice justice and even sacrifices logical thought to his blind persistence that magic is evil.

Arthur: She's right Father. You hear the word magic you no longer listen.

Uther: You saw it for yourself, she used enchantments.

Arthur: Yes, maybe. To save her dying father, that doesn't make her guilty of creating a plague. One's the act of kindness, of love, the other of evil. I don't believe evil's in this girl's heart

Aside from what this says about Arthur. Arthur's comment about Uther hits right to the point of things "you hear the word magic you no longer listen". You no longer listen implies its a choice, and it is. Uther has made the choice for the last 20 years to choose to go on a dogmatic campaign of hate against magic because its easier than considering the alternative, that he was complicit in his wife's death. What Uther says immediately after "there are dark forces threatening this kingdom." is the argument used by so many people throughout history, used to justify so much hate. That there is an evil out there threatening the stability of life, that the world must be controlled and people have to live a certain way or risk destroying their own lives. It's an argument that justifies campaigns of hate and makes them personal to ordinary people who usually wouldn't care, and it is always a lie, that's not how the world works.

This episode thus shows Uther at his best and his worst, both a dutiful king and a stubborn tyrant. It's a tragedy of what he could of been, and shows how twisted up people can become when they justify their decisions with hate and fear.

Arthur

This is the first episode where Arthur really opposes Uther, he directly questions Uther's indiscriminate hatred of magic, and an episode where he realises to an extent he perhaps hadn't before some of the ways in which Uther has failed as a king. He also consciously acts in deception of Uther, because he can see Uther can't see sense. Arthur shows far more nuance of view than Uther does, understanding (even whilst still accepting as he will for a long time that magic is dangerous and it corrupts) that using magic doesn't make you automatically evil. To see the world the way Uther does is a conscious choice, you have to choose to be blind to the virtues of every apparent magic user you come across, you have to believe harmless spells are the signs of greater evil. Arthur is not someone who lets his own cowardice blind himself to reality, and so his worldview can see far more nuance than Uther can.

"One's the act of kindness, of love, the other of evil. I don't believe evil's in this girl's heart."

He further has a very positive view of others, Arthur will always see the good in people and that is a great strength in my view. In a lot of versions of the story Arthur's not just inspiring because he's good but because he assumes others are good too, he trusts people to do the right thing and I do believe that, that can inspire people to do the right thing. It's funny in Merlin Arthur's trust gets betrayed so many times but it never really hardens his heart, he continues to trust people no matter how many times he gets betrayed. This can be seen in his perception of Guinevere here, he will not assume she is evil because she has made a mistake, he can see the virtue in her actions, and he will assume goodness until proven otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty, in other words. It's its own form of justice, a justice Uther is forgetting, its a tenant of many legal systems and its a tenant Arthur clearly supports.

Arthur is also seeing his role as the king of Camelot in creating a Camelot that he would like to live in.

"Yes I am yet to be king, and I don't know what type of king I will be. But I do have a sense of the type of Camelot I would wish to live in. It would be where the punishment fits the crime."

It's not the Camelot he would wish to rule, its the Camelot he would wish to live in. Arthur wants to live in a just world, he wants his people to be treated with justice just as he would like to be treated with justice. This further illustrates that unlike Uther he is not letting anger or ignorance blind him to reality, he wants the world he lives in to be fair without exception.

Finding the Balance between The Greater Good and The Immediate Good

The Greater Good is a tricky concept, you can justify any amount of cruelty if it will lead to good later on, but do the ends justify the means? It's not really a question its ever possible to provide a definitive answer for. It's easy to say that they don't, that you should just do the right thing, the nice thing, the good thing in the moment but actions have consequences and doing the good thing all the time (especially in a position where thousands of lives depend on you) is not usually possible. Merlin tackles this theme, I believe, quite well, trying to find a balance between acting for the greater good and acting with what is immediately good, and this episode is a good example.

In a just and fair world you would be able to do good all the time, but this is not the case for everything, though you should never use the worlds not fair as an argument for not doing good things but I digress. Merlin's decision to save Gwen's father ultimately backfires on Gwen because the world is not fair, the world Uther has created mean even these acts of love are punishable with death. Because, for Uther, magic is magic, and magic is evil. Gaius was, in this situation, ultimately right, Merlin can't always do what is easy and what feels right because the consequences may not be good. In other matters like closing off the lower town, Arthur's initial response is concern for the people who live their, but Uther's right he has to make this one tough decision because otherwise he risks the whole city.

However, Uther's attitude to Gwen (aside from revealing his own stubbornness and prejudice) is an example of the greater good taken too far. He has absolutely no evidence that killing Gwen will stop this plague, but he's making that sacrifice anyway because it might, that is not justice or fair or anything resembling goodness. And he justifies his decisions with what I've already said is an age old argument- "These decisions must be made. There are dark forces threatening this kingdom." This is just another version of any easy choice, acting without regard to the greater good is an easy choice but so is ignoring what is immediately right in pursuit of some ambiguous goodness. He's confusing his own weakness and ignorance for strength.

The point Merlin is, I believe trying to make is that there must be a balance. Sometimes you have to pursue the greater good, but the ends don't really justify the means.

There is a reason Arthur and Merlin will create the Camelot of legend and Uther and Gaius don't, Merlin and Arthur aren't going to sacrifice their own goodness for the sake of the greater good. Merlin for one ensures Arthur never has to, its sad but Merlin in many ways makes the harsh and cruel decisions that Arthur never has to make. However, he also often doesn't make those decisions. He reaches a point where he wants to let people die, but he never actively attempts to kill Morgana or Mordred by himself unless it is an absolute in the moment choice between them and Arthur, and even though there is plenty of moral ambiguity about that and plenty of debates you can have about that. Fundamentally the point remains, Uther would have killed them and that's why he could never be the king Arthur would be or the influence for decency Merlin would be, the ends don't ever entirely justify the means. Besides if Merlin had thought that and killed Mordred and Morgana for their possible futures he would not have been the decent person he was and he could not have helped Arthur build a good Camelot, Camelot would not have existed if Merlin had acted entirely with the greater good in mind to ensure Camelot's future.

Other Stuff

Gwen's scene in the cell is so terribly sad, she's trying to be brave and her final request to Merlin is just so sad, "Remember me." She's so young and its the injustice and cruelty of Uther's kingdom that's condemning her, his own blindness to anything involving magic. We all want to be remembered don't we, especially when you die so young that you've barely had the chance to live. -----Also Guinevere will be remembered, she is a legend so there's something very bittersweet in this. She is not forgotten, then or ever

It's funny watching back to season 1, Merlin spends a lot of the time complaining about how Arthur will never recognise him for who he is. He wants recognition. But by the end of the show, yes of course he'd like recognition but he's learnt to just put up with never getting it. His priorities have changed so much.

There's this thing that happens a lot in season 1 and 2 (and I think a bit in season 3 but its less funny then) where Morgana persuades Arthur to do things by insulting him and its the funniest thing ever, and the first instance of it is here. I like to call these her 'epic sibling powers' cause they are just such siblings and its hilarious every time

"You are one side of the coin, Arthur is the other."- Kilgaharrah--> Just, yes.

Also when Arthur gets Merlin out of when Merlin confesses to being a sorcerer—> he's obviously making stuff up on the spot—> like he might sort of believe it (the stuff about Gwen) but fundamentally he's just trying to protect him without really knowing for sure why Merlin's lying

"One day people won't believe what an idiot you were."- Gaius--> Fun little nod to the audience who know Merlin of legend (as nothing like the BBC Merlin)

Also at this point we don't know why Uther really banned magic so there is an element of moral greyness to it all. We know magic's not evil, we know Uther went too far but at this point there is still a question about 'how too far' did he go?

Coronation by Rageprufrock (seriously read it. It's amazing): https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749

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semper-legens · 3 years ago

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12. Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb

Owned: Yes Page count: 648 My summary: Fitz is growing up, but with age comes uncertainty and danger. The Forged ones batter the coasts of the kingdom, the king is slowly dying, and his heir is run ragged with defending the realm. Not helping matters is the king’s youngest son, who seems to have it in for Fitz. But what will Fitz sacrifice to see the kingdom safe? My rating: 4/5

Book two of the Farseer trilogy! Yep, I got all three of these, and it turned out to be a good idea, because I’m really enjoying them. Gotta love a bit of low fantasy. Well, I say ‘a bit’, the page counts for these novels are large. And yet, they feel well-paced, without a bit of wasted space. I never felt as though this book was a slog to get through; rather, I enjoyed every second. This book is big and complicated and nuanced and I’m not going to be able to talk about every single aspect of it - still, let’s dig in!

Checking in with Fitz, he’s older now, and his life is considerably worse. A huge theme with Fitz’s arc in this book is duty versus his own needs, and that’s encapsulated in his relationship to Molly, his childhood sweetheart. Poor Molly’s fallen on some hardships, and is a servant in the palace now; Fitz wants a relationship with her, but his own dubious status within the royal hierarchy makes it difficult, not to mention his own flaws versus Molly’s trauma. And it ends badly! Molly ends up leaving him just before his life goes really downhill, and he ends up losing everything because of his devotion to his duty over his personal life, even knowing that he is sacrificing himself for the cause and absolutely hating every second of how he is being used. At the same time, we see his defiance - he bonds with a wolf despite everyone telling him how bad the Wit is, and carries on with Molly against his better judgement.

On the other hand, we see a very good reason why he is willing to give everything up. Verity is very much my ideal of a male fantasy character - a self-sacrificing sad boy! Love that archetype. Verity makes some abjectly terrible decisions and ends up disappearing halfway through the narrative to chase some quasi-mystical people that might be able to save the realm. But enough about him, let’s talk Queen Of My Heart Kettricken. She married Verity at the end of the last book, and comes from a mountain community where being the ruler means sacrifice - literally, the ruler is called the Sacrifice - and she more than lives up to that ideal. She is relentless, constant in trying to do what is right against the court’s social mores, but she is a person too. Verity neglects her, and she is sad about it. She seeks Fitz’s friendship because she has few people she can truly trust. It’s heartbreaking, but at the same time she is such a strong character.

Who else? I love the Fool a lot, the ambiguously-autistic prophetic sarcastic bastard (er, non-literal) is totally my jam. King Shrewd’s slow decline into dementia is absolutely crushing, and also a really interesting depiction of what it might be like to have that sort of degenerative condition in a historical fantasy setting. Regal is a shit and I hate him. Burrich also fulfils the sad boy criteria of being my boy. I find myself without much else to say about this book specifically - in the tradition of middle books in a trilogy, there’s a lot of setting up to be done for the next book, and it feels particularly transitional. But I still really want to dig into the next one, and that can only commend it.

Next up, some horror short stories, as I dive back into the world of Junji Ito.

#Royal Assassin #Robin Hobb #bookblr #book blog #book blogging #4

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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“The 02 characters didn’t get any character development”

Yes, they did.

“But -- “

Yes, they did.

Having had the gift of having rewatched 02 recently, I have to say that it still really, really confuses me how the hell people get this impression. It’s not even “I’m trying to see the best out of this” but that I genuinely do not get it, because as far as I’m able to see it’s pretty much literally right there!! This isn’t even tinfoil hat tier!

But in case you have any doubts, sit down because Shiha’s gonna sit here and write a meta about the 02 kids, and how they are perfectly reasonable characters that developed properly fine over the course of the series.

(All below translations of 02 dialogue are by PositronCannon.)

So the first thing to understand about 02 is that it is fundamentally made with a very different writing approach from Adventure in the first place, and therefore it is not meant to be compared in a one-to-one fashion.

This is a point I’ve said many times over and over, and I think it’s to the point where it shouldn’t even really need official clarification, but I’m just going to go ahead and bring up the words from Director Kakudou himself:

For instance, we had the prior series stick out in terms of its points about “what it means to be oneself”, and for 02 we made it so that you would pay attention to “the relationship between yourself and other people”.

Right, so: 02, by design, does not use Adventure’s character development methodology of “self-awareness”. It is built from the ground up by having its characters and character development predicated on relationships instead of singular characters. This might seem a bit odd on its face, but no man is an island, and, in fact, changing the way you interact with other people and with the world in general does speak a lot about one’s personal growth in its own way. And this also means that if you try to analyze 02 by holding it to Adventure-based standards of “character focus episodes” or the like, you’re already on a losing battle.

This means that character growth in 02 is not presented in a way where it’s up-front and center, but rather something you have to glean over the natural course of the series. We’re working off relationships, so you have to actually pay attention to the natural interactions between the characters or what they say even during “off-hours” -- the focus-episode format used by Adventure doesn’t apply here anymore. And it’s something apparent enough from how “evolution” is a metaphor for “personal growth” in this franchise -- in Adventure it was via the Crests, which meant self-awareness, but 02′s key evolutionary trump card is Jogress, which relies on the strength of relationships.

One thing I have to say in terms of my experience as a 02 fan is that I’ve found I actually appreciated it significantly more as an adult than I did as a kid, and that, in general, a lot of the things to appreciate about 02 are things that you really viscerally feel and understand when you’ve gotten that degree of life experience under your belt. Unfortunately, this is kind of a double-edged sword, too, because it ends up becoming the kind of series that often risks going over the heads of the very audience of children it was supposed to be targeting. It’s got a lot of very nuanced depictions of mental health and the childhood experience that are maddeningly subtle, to the point of possibly going over one’s head or even coming off as illogical without sufficient life experience, or simply just not being as visceral (the entire theme of “parents stroking their own ego with their kids’ achievements” hits the hardest when you’re college age).

So what this means is that 02 doesn’t exactly hand its themes or character development to you on a plate. But it is there, once you actually start looking for it.

Let’s start off by talking about our main core cast of characters. Adventure and 02 prided themselves on the fact that they tried very hard to not be adherent to anime tropes, but rather to portray well-rounded, nuanced characters that felt more like actual kids you might meet at school. So how does the 02 cast fare in not being pigeonholed anime tropes?

Daisuke: Even though official freely admits he has “the most anime-like personality”, it’s hard to say he actually falls that much into the generic shounen archetype. For one, he’s actually shockingly humble and polite in certain situations (he’s consistently polite with his elders, and is very quick to admit his own limitations). Actually, he comes off as a surprisingly friendly and deferential person -- it’s just that he happens to have somewhat of an abrasive exterior, and even then it’s implied heavily in the first half that this stems from a lack of validation and purpose. (He actually “deflates” really easily, so you can’t even say he’s all that arrogant past the surface.) Certainly he’s simple-minded, and kind of an idiot, but his abrasive exterior is actually pretty deceptive.

Miyako: Miyako floats an interesting duality of simultaneously being aggressively feminine and being aggressively un-feminine -- not necessarily in the sense she tries not to be feminine (on the contrary, she absolutely embraces it), but more that she’s also an aggressive, “inelegant” mess in ways atypical for a lead heroine in a shounen show, who are usually either cute or “badass action girls” and not...a mess. Despite that, she is also consistently portrayed as capable of heavy emotional depth and being very genuinely kind and concerned about others, which are not in any way diminished by the fact she happens to be an aggressive mess with a severe case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. It’s an interesting mix of character traits that you don’t see often.

Iori: “Designated young characters” usually fall into the “cute” archetype a la Adventure!Takeru or Tomoki, so it’s interesting that the youngest one is actually the most mature one, and impeccably polite at that (having been raised by a family that emphasizes formal manners and propriety). Even more interestingly, nobody actually treats him like he’s that much younger, and he’s given the weight of respect in a sense that has nothing to do with his age (think about how there are indeed quite a few kids who simply just get along better with older kids). Yet the series doesn’t shy away from his youth, and his overly black-and-white view of morality is portrayed as immaturity in its own way, along with the occasional “slips” in his facade or manners indicating that it’s still something he has to consciously focus on.

Ken: Ken’s development goes without saying (it’s one of the most consistently praised aspects of 02), but it’s also interesting to note the unusual way the series plays his redemption arc. Instead of making him a typical “jerkass anti-hero who learns to get a bit better”, the series completely blindsides you by revealing that Ken is, in fact, a naturally soft-hearted and kind boy, and then plays up the mystery of the severe kinds of trauma that would lead him down that path. And ultimately, even though the cause is revealed to have supernatural influence, the series also makes it clear that it doesn’t matter -- that, whether it was his conscious “fault” or not, he still is responsible for what he did. And on top of that, it also scorns the usual “redemption by sacrifice” mentality by pointing out that it’s a cop-out -- it doesn’t actually solve the problems that were caused, and, in fact, a much better way to make up for things is to fix them going forward.

Takeru: Takeru had the “designated young character” role in Adventure, and it turns out that once one of those gets a few years older, they’re naturally not going to be nearly as pure and innocent! The “sweet child” from Adventure has now grown into having slightly pettier emotions, even to the point of grudge, and things he won’t let go of. Oh, and also, trauma from three years prior is still going to have impact on an eleven-year-old kid. Who would have thought.

Hikari: Adventure’s most infamously inscrutable character also seems to have gained some individualized, not-quite-innocent traits of her own (observe how she deals with Daisuke’s advances), and, moreover, it turns out that her deferential humility and refusal to open up about her problems is...not a good thing! when it starts to actually bite her in the rear in front of her friends. Yeah, it turns out that being the “quiet cute girl” actually has its own mental health drawbacks. Oops.

We’re doing pretty well, actually! At the very least, they certainly feel like they already have the Adventure/02 brand of character nuance, where their personalities are inherently varied and nuanced enough that you may not quite find characters like them elsewhere. On top of that, we definitely get to see what makes these characters “tick” -- we get a lot of depth into their thought processes and what their likes and dislikes or strengths and weaknesses are, and that’s something 02 still completely beats out a lot of other kids’ shows or even certain other Digimon entries with.

But here we’re talking about character development. So what do we know about them at the very beginning of the series?

Having watched 02 in Japanese a few times and being very used to the core cast’s latter-half characterizations, rewatching the early episodes always strikes me really hard in the face with genuine shock at how shallow the kids -- especially Daisuke and Miyako -- start the series off as. It’s understandable in terms of the context of the series -- unlike the Adventure kids, who were thrown into a “survival, need to get home” situation off the bat and thus already understood the need to be wary, these kids started off having comparatively easy access to home at any time, and didn’t have a constant sense of danger and survival looming over their heads. It naturally took a lot of time for the gravity of the situation they were in to start really hitting them, and so even the relatively straight-laced Iori didn’t exactly take it all that seriously at the beginning.

Yet while it took them a significantly more delayed time to understand what they were dealing with and take it as seriously as they needed to...they started cultivating something else in the meantime.

02′s first half is especially full of “random banter conversations” that seemingly involve nothing in particular, but, in fact, that’s actually part of the point. One thing I have always been quick to point out in regards to 02 is that it is rather unique among Digimon series in how it goes out of its way to portray its core cast as having become friends even in pure daily-life social friend terms, even if it had absolutely nothing to do with Digimon incidents -- these are kids who genuinely enjoy each other’s company even in the most mundane of situations. This was something that wasn’t the case for the original Adventure kids -- having been a group of kids thrown together by necessity, even though they most certainly kept in touch and trusted each other as fellow Chosen Children deeply, they started floating back into their own different social clusters after the events of 1999. Relationships are multifaceted, after all; you can still have a deep relationship and bond without necessarily being friends on a social level.

But already, off the bat, Miyako brings food for her new best friends, and it’s implied that she’s the main ringleader behind holding the picnic -- a picnic that started off having no intended relation to the Digital World territory war -- in episode 6. And, to be quite honest, can you really blame these kids? Even the Adventure kids wistfully entertained the idea of a long-term fun adventure through the Digital World in Adventure episode 54, wanting to enjoy its beauty and fun in a situation where they weren’t constantly running for their lives. Now that this luxury is actually available, why not take advantage of it -- and bond further with the others in the process? And for the rest of the year, these kids actively end up spending mundane conversations together and bonding to the point that, by the time we get to the end of 02, these kids have just genuinely bonded so much that they really come off as a cohesive, inseparable unit that would actively choose to spend time with each other if given the opportunity. In fact, even going through all of the TV Digimon series that exist as of this writing, I would say Appmon is the only one that really competes with 02 in portraying its core cast in this manner.

Again, remember: this is a series where characterization is dependent on how the kids treat others and interact with them, so you do actually have to pay close attention to these interactions and see how they change over the course of the series.

So once the episodes start coming in play, we actually learn a lot more about what happens when the characters start breaking away from their shallowness. For instance, episode 8, one of the first key episodes to understanding Daisuke’s character:

Daisuke: He'll be a great opponent. We didn't face off in the last tournament. Takeru: If you had made it to the finals, you would have, right? Daisuke: Don't remind me... Hikari: Can you win? Daisuke: It's not about winning or losing. Right now, all of the boys who play soccer in this country want to be like him. Just thinking about playing against him makes me excited!

For all Daisuke initially seems to be arrogant, he’s actually not that incapable of humility. Far from it, actually; he does have a genuine love for soccer and the spirit of the game, and, when completely and obviously unmatched, fully admits he has no chance and is set on enjoying the most he can out of it anyway. I feel like Daisuke’s surface-abrasive attitude really does throw off the fact that he’s a lot more genuinely humble than he’s given credit for. In the end, he’s satisfied enough with the accomplishment of pulling off one sliding tackle against Ken, and is able to enjoy that -- a foreshadowing of how the latter half relies so much on the fact that he’s capable of enjoying simple pleasures and being straightforward about them.

I find that this scene is really underappreciated, too (mainly because it gets lost in all of the other major things in this episode) -- while Daisuke jokes about his accomplishment, it only takes a single comment from his respected senior Taichi to shut him down.

There’s a huge reason I constantly emphasize that Daisuke respects his elders -- this part tends to get lost in translation a lot (especially the American English dub, which just smashed this aspect out of him wholesale, among other things) due to it being a bit reliant on Asian senior deference and cultural propriety, but Daisuke is respectful not only out of societal obligation but also because he genuinely respects his elders! The way he looks up to Taichi and chases after his approval is genuine, and even his interactions with the other Adventure kids have a major hint of him having genuine respect and deference to them. Daisuke is just a deferential person in general -- note that while his crush on Hikari tends to manifest when he’s at his most shallow, he’s actually the one putting Hikari on a pedestal (considering it his own responsibility to impress her), so he’s not actually as assertive as he tries to come off as. The first half of 02 arguably has him deflating more often than he actually stands his ground...and this is a trait of him that starts to actually change quite a bit over the course of the series.

Miyako comes to terms with the fact that maybe she’d been taking this whole Digital World adventure thing too lightly in episode 10, indicating that she actually does have a good sense of priorities when they become increasingly clear! This is actually very important, because it fleshes her out as someone who’s emotionally sensitive -- too emotionally sensitive, to the point that “emotional sensitivity” is just as much of a driving point behind her later breakdown in episode 18, this time from taking her duties too seriously. Miyako is a very id-driven person, and so a lot of the early series is her struggling to find a proper balance on how to adjust her emotions in an increasingly escalating situation. Her heart is in the right place, she’s just not someone with an inherent sense of preparedness to deal with this kind of problem.

We get into the secondary Digimental arc, and there’s a noticeable consistent thread that all of them involve admission of personal faults. This is something that tends to throw people off at times -- wait, having bad traits about yourself is what awards you? -- but the point is that this isn’t like Adventure’s Crests, where things came from proof of exercising the virtue, but rather admitting that there are ways you need to improve, and showing a will to improve in that manner. In the end, people are not perfect human beings, and sometimes even understanding that you’re deficient is half the battle -- after all, the second half is all about a certain character named Ichijouji Ken coming to terms with some very, very serious personal problems.

In episode 11, Daisuke completely admits that he doesn’t feel he understands the concept of friendship the way Taichi and Yamato et al. see it, also latently admitting that he doesn’t see himself as worthy of the Digimental of Friendship. Beyond betraying a lot deeper issues within Daisuke that he seems to have actually had a background lacking in friends and sources of validation, he actually acts very self-effacing when admitting his issues to Taichi and Yamato, ultimately culminating in him calling himself pathetic. Or, in other words, he does want to be a better friend and to understand the concept better, and is harsh on himself for not doing better (which, of course, ultimately leads to how he eventually does gain better relations with the rest of the group and reaches out to Ken).

In episode 14, Miyako admits that she’s shallow and judgmental and tends to jump to conclusions based on first impressions. Recall that she’s comparing herself to Mimi in said relevant scene -- Mimi, whom she admires, and actually spends part of the episode trying to understand and empathize with the mentality of. This is not a statement of Miyako being proud of herself. Rather, this is Miyako being very straightforward about the fact that she needs to try harder to see through the essence of things and to see through to the emotional core of. Again, something she actually does start developing over the course of the series.

In episode 16, Iori gets his first major lesson on the limitations of being too stuck on principles in his attempt to be honest. Recall that Iori’s later character arc is very dependent on him realizing that his own view of the world is too black-and-white. It’s great if you could never tell a lie to anyone, ever, but in the end, that’s going to reach limitations of practicality -- after all, as Jou points out, what Iori did ended up not actually hurting Jou in comparison to the incredible amount of hurt it would have caused everyone by being too stubborn, and thus Iori would have failed to keep his responsibility to help the others because of one narrow-minded principle.

Hikari even gets in a bit during the infamous episode 13, where we learn that her “passive” attitude is biting her in the rear. In Adventure, Hikari’s passiveness and reticence had mostly been used as satellite development for Taichi (his insecurities as an older brother and his obligations to her), so this is actually the first time we get to see a proper perspective from Hikari’s side, and it turns out that his overprotectiveness has actually caused her to get dependent. But even though Taichi is the one the episode actually focuses on, the larger focus is more specifically on the fact that Hikari is too passive -- that she sees being taken by the Dark Ocean as an inevitable thing that’s just going to happen unless someone else steps in on her behalf. Takeru, of course, is having none of it.

Once that’s out of the way, we go back to taking a look at the subtleties of everyone’s interactions. While everyone generally tends to focus on the second half of episode 17, it’s also pretty interesting to see how the 02 kids react to hearing about their seniors’ adventure in the first half -- remember that this is the first time the 02 kids are actually given any real depth about the degree of 1999′s events that’s not just random points of hearsay, and the way the new kids react to it indicates that they’re thoroughly floored. It’s later established that they didn’t even get the full story (it may not even be possible, given that the Adventure kids’ experiences may well have gone even further beyond what we got to see in 54 episodes), and yet the new kids are overwhelmed. 02 itself does not shy away from the fact that the younger kids really have no qualms about deferring to their seniors if need be, and treating them with utmost respect.

Another minor note, which I pointed out in my Daisuke meta earlier, is that the beginning of this episode is pretty much the last time Daisuke ever shows outright hostility towards Takeru for his relationship with Hikari -- it’s something you have to glean by squinting, but the implication is that the insecure and clingy Daisuke actually got to learn this episode that the two of them had a pre-established shared experience that he himself may not understand, and that it wasn’t just Takeru randomly swooping in and snatching away the closest thing he had to a friend for no good reason.

Once the Kaiser infiltration arc begins, episode 18 ends up being one of Miyako’s funniest episodes, but it’s a bit distressing that a lot of people in the fanbase often never let Miyako live this incident down, when in actuality this was explicitly not a good mental health day for her. (This is basically the equivalent of pinning Mimi as a conceited, self-centered jerk based on the fact she was one for a fashion in Adventure episode 25.) The beginning and ending of this episode establish that this is basically a result of Miyako...trying her hardest. She’s scared as hell, but she also learned in episode 10 that this is something she needs to take seriously, and the stress puts her into a mental breakdown. This is why she ends up having a heart-to-heart with Hawkmon at the end; her heart is in the right place, but she needs to find a way to channel her emotional sensitivity in a way that doesn’t make her into a complete mess.

And note that her own voice actress, Natsuki Rio, even pointed out that Hawkmon’s actions had enough of an influence on Miyako’s character that she had to play her differently thereafter.

At first I always played her with Maximum Excitement, and I kept thinking “someone, please, stop her,” but the more straight-laced Hawkmon did his best to pull her in and hold her by the reins (laughs). Thanks to him, Miyako became a lot more of a put-together person…thank goodness Hawkmon is her partner!

Episode 19 has two interesting things of note that I want to point out -- first of all, starting from the very beginning of the episode, everyone ditches Daisuke because they’re independently going in to infiltrate the Kaiser’s base. Note the complete lack of a plan here whatsoever -- everyone’s just going in on their own -- and the fact that everyone expects Daisuke to come up with what he wants to do on his own. For all it’s worth, even though Daisuke may have a designated protagonist aura to him, within the story itself...nobody actually sees him as a leader at this point in the series (and, to be fair, he’s never really tried to claim the position, either).

It’s similar to how Taichi was never recognized as a particular leader of the Adventure group until Adventure episode 28, but in regards to the full team dynamic, it’s actually inverse -- the Adventure kids were capable of making tactical plans together as early as episode 20, but fell apart emotionally in short order as soon as Taichi was gone, whereas here, the kids are fond enough of each other to hang out socially and support each other emotionally, but they take a while to get any real cohesiveness as a fighting group.

The other is that Iori personally witnesses Takeru’s sudden whiplash into his grudge against the darkness and the Kaiser, and it scares the hell out of him.

Takeru eventually laying a punch on the Kaiser is a pretty awesome moment (and, really, Ken kind of deserved it, so it’s hard to not cheer for him), but it’s also important to note that within the context of the series, this is not a good mental place for Takeru to be in. Iori, the person who should by all means sympathize with hatred of evil things at this point of the series, is still extremely unnerved by Takeru’s actions here, because he’d always seen Takeru as a mature person who’d always kept his composure, only to show a drastically different side of him that he hadn’t even shown a hint of before. That kind of “two-facedness” and emotional repression -- and this way of venting trauma in general -- cannot be good for Takeru at this point in time, and it’s also an important moment for Iori when he later admits during the two’s Jogress arc that he’s having a bit of a hard time understanding him.

And so episode 20 comes, and Chimeramon pretty much takes out the entire party, leading to this conversation.

Takeru: Let's escape. Daisuke: Escape? Takeru: We can't fight anymore. Our mission has failed. We'll retreat and wait for another chance. Hikari: You're right. We have no other choice. Iori: Understood. Daisuke: No. Miyako: Daisuke? Daisuke: We can't just say "another chance" like that. If we leave now, they'll keep attacking anything in sight. We don't know if we'll be able to get into the fortress again. So this is our only chance! Hikari: That's crazy... Iori: Exactly! Miyako: They're all back to their Baby forms... Chibimon: Daisuke... Daisuke: But...didn't you all see it? Destroying those towns...and all we could do was watch quietly. I don't want to see that ever again. I won't let them do whatever they want! So I'm going, even alone. I won't give up now. After getting this far, all I can do is go forward!

Why is this moment important? This is the first time Daisuke has actually stood a firm ground against anyone else in the party -- and not only that, with the entire party standing against him.

Recall that I mentioned earlier that, in spite of Daisuke’s abrasive attitude suggesting otherwise, he actually has a tendency to “deflate” pretty quickly when people tease or criticize him. He spends the first half of the series having a lot more bark than he actually has bite. Earlier in the series, if the entire party were to go against him, he’d be more likely to begrudgingly go along (while complaining) -- in fact, he actually did just that at the beginning of episode 7! But now that push has come to shove, Daisuke’s own sense of morals and bleeding heart have won out. (While his decision here is definitely a bit reckless, he does have a point; if they’d retreated, they might genuinely lose any future chances.) Even with the entire party telling him to pull back, he refuses to accept what they want him to do, and pushes forward.

This is where Daisuke first starts to really make strides towards what becomes his eventual major role in the group as “the one who pulls people forward”. It’s a moment after which the rest of the group themselves also start to treat him with more respect now that he’s proven he’s not just a doormat, and that when it comes to there being a real problem with real priorities, he does have the resolve and initiative to keep going.

Also, a very important point is that he immediately says he’ll go alone if he has to. He doesn’t begrudge the others for wanting to fall back, and has no condescension towards them; he just can’t stand the fact that he himself is being asked to sit it out.

So, you know. Episode 21 happens. Ichijouji Ken goes through some real trauma as Wormmon dies in his arms. And all Daisuke has to say is...

Daisuke: You should go home. There are people who are worried and waiting for you! Go home!

Remember when I pointed out that 02 takes a very unique perspective on Ken’s redemption arc, pointing out the futility of being too trapped in the idea of symbolic penance and focusing more on actively taking steps in the future to make up for and fix things? Here’s our first major sign of this, and Daisuke’s eventual approach to Ken -- Daisuke does not choose to scorn or lambast Ken for what he’s done, even though there are a lot of things Ken deserves to be harped on for, but rather instructs him to take the first active step towards fixing his mistakes, in this case fixing things with his family.

Episode 22 is Daisuke’s own “fanbase will never let him live this down” moment, but there’s still some interesting things to note here. Firstly, Daisuke’s “relapse” happening exactly when it seems like his duty to the Digital World is done and there’s nothing to do besides community service doesn’t seem coincidental, especially when this exact episode actually dedicates a full scene to Takeru, Hikari, and their partners going “...now what?” Secondly, as I touched on earlier, note that Daisuke’s never really seemed to have any resentment against Hikari for not responding to his affections -- in fact, he still considers it his own (and V-mon’s, by extension) duty to be the one to impress her. It’s a surprisingly refreshing take on the “shounen hero with a crush on a girl” trope, because in the end...Daisuke isn’t actually all that possessive of her, he just really wants validation from her, and respects her a lot.

More importantly, though -- note the way Daisuke handles this topic. He’s not actually mad at or resentful of Takeru anymore. In fact, he’s mulling on the topic and wondering what he could do to be on that level. Yup, even when Daisuke’s being shallow and jealous, he’s still learned to handle this issue ever so slightly more maturely than he would have at the beginning of the series.

This is also important because only one episode later, once Daisuke becomes disappointed again at Takeru and Hikari walking off on their own, Miyako intervenes -- not only so that Takeru and Hikari can have their space, but also so that Daisuke can have some genuine fun and something to do. This is a very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in episode 24, but it makes it very clear that Miyako was looking out for Daisuke’s welfare, too, and I think it’s very important in light of the events of the prior episode. Miyako, who had always been fumbling on what to do with her emotions, is starting to properly channel them into managing the dynamic between the team and checking in on how everyone’s doing, and that starts to guide her actions and relationships for the rest of the series.

The next episode (25) is where we kick off not only the Jogress arc, but also the arc where we start going into everyone’s attitude towards Ichijouji Ken. This is important not only because Ken happens to be the effective central figure of 02′s story, but also because -- well, remember, 02 is fundamentally founded on the concept of relationships, so it’s only natural that the other kids’ relationship with the “team newcomer” will be a key aspect of the second half, and in relation to their own characters.

Remember how I said that Daisuke’s first-half character involved him being extremely deferential and often deflating whenever he was criticized or someone stood against him? At the time of episode 25, once again, pretty much the entire team is standing against him -- he’s the only one who’s this level of open-minded about getting Ken into the group, and everyone else is showing differing levels of opposition. But while Daisuke doesn’t begrudge the others for thinking this way, he also doesn’t back down, either, and reaches out to Ken on his own because he still really believes in what he’s doing. Now that he’s settled into what it means to be a Chosen Child, he’s started to gain a proper idea of what he wants to do, and what he feels needs to be done.

So, let’s recap everyone’s stances on Ichijouji Ken at the time of this episode!

Daisuke: Forward-thinking and optimistic; willing to believe that Ken should be given the chance to make up for his mistakes and that they should put everything behind him, even to the extent of believing that there’s probably a good reason for the more suspicious aspects about him (prior to the events of episode 25, it was unclear whether Ken was being a bit too callous about killing Digimon). Also the most actively aggressive in reaching out to Ken and trying to get him to join them.

Miyako: Forward-thinking; she openly states at the beginning of the episode that she thinks Ken’s learned his lesson, she’s just worried about whether he’s going to keep doing questionable things in the future (killing Digimon). Once it’s on the table that he’s not just doing this callously, she immediately is on board with him (to the point of even being the first in the group to use given name basis with him), but her stance on what to do with him is more on the edge of “give him space and wait for him to come on his own terms” (she ends the episode saying she’ll be waiting for him to come).

Takeru: States in the episode that he does believe that Ken’s changed, but doesn’t really know what he’s thinking (i.e. too inscrutable to really be sure about). The later episode 35 implies that Takeru was inclined to be a bit more sympathetic than you’d think otherwise, because he understands the trauma of losing a Digimon partner.

Hikari: Wants to wait a little longer and see how things play out. (Remember that Hikari has a known, consistent thread of taking a very passive approach towards things.)

Iori: Absolutely against it on sheer principle.

It should be noted that none of these stances are wrong. Iori sometimes gets a lot of flak for being the one with the most infamously cold stance towards Ken, but when you really think about it, Daisuke and Miyako are very lucky that their hunch about Ken was right and that he actually did happen to be a very kind boy who had a little too much trauma and some supernatural influence. The fact that Ken is a very emotionally withdrawn person for the rest of the series meant that the two of them ended up breaking through to him the most, but there’s nothing wrong with Takeru, Hikari, and Iori’s skepticism; Ken did some pretty shockingly horrible things in front of their eyes for the first half, and it’s entirely within their rights to determine how forgiving they want to be with him.

In any case, we get to episode 26 (the first Jogress), and most of that episode goes without saying, but I do want to emphasize Daisuke’s lines right before it happens.

Daisuke: If you die now, you won't be able to accomplish anything...I don't want that! Ken: I don't want that...There are still many things I must do.

Daisuke urges Ken not to go for the “suicidal penance” route not only because it sucks, but also because, as symbolic as it may be, it’s also counterproductive to the whole point of doing penance to begin with. If Ken really wants to make up for his mistakes, he’s only going to be able to do that if he’s actually alive to do it! There’s only so much you can do by drowning in self-pity by going “because I did this, because I did that” instead of actually taking responsibility for your actions.

02 itself is deliberately ambiguous on how much Ken’s transformation into the Kaiser was Ken’s own conscious will and how much of it was Dark Seed-induced supernatural influence, but one thing it’s consistent about is that it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of what the cause was, Ken did what he did, and it’s his responsibility to make up for it, and the only way to actually do that is to keep moving forward. The fact that Daisuke is so able to viscerally and directly address what Ken needs the most right now is what fuels their first Jogress, and why Daisuke becomes Ken’s closest friend through the rest of the series.

People have pointed out that 02 has a lot of moments of physical hits, but, notably, other than Takeru punching the Kaiser in episode 19 (which he really deserved, honestly), all of these hits are done with the express intent of bringing the other person out of a very, very deep mental abyss (Yamato punching Taichi in episode 10, Daisuke slapping Ken in 26, Miyako slapping Ken in 30, and Miyako and Hikari’s mutual slaps in 31), because they were in a state where words would no longer reach them otherwise. These are all circumstances of the kind where the person on the receiving end understands that they really needed a drastic wake-up call because of how deeply they’d fallen (and these aren’t some average mental abyss problems these kids are getting put through, either). It’s actually hard to imagine any of the 02 group getting in the kind of genuinely angry and vicious fistfights Taichi and Yamato would in Adventure, because of how close they are (the closest being Daisuke and Takeru grappling in episode 11, but it never got near that level) -- in fact, these kinds of things are done with the implication that they’re doing it because they trust the other person to not hold it against them (and in fact, the fact Yamato does this with Taichi in this way is intended to be read as a sign of how much better they’ve come to understand each other).

So, moving on with the series! The Giga House incident in episodes 28-29 is the first time the group works together in an organized effort, which is notable not only because it’s their first time coordinating with Ken, but also because it’s their first time properly coordinating at all. Remember when I mentioned that, back in episode 19, as much as the kids were pretty fond of each other and were great friends, they still hadn’t figured out how to actually fight as a team? Here we are, with them actually having started to figure that process out.

We then get to episode 30, where there’s actually quite a lot of interesting things to unpack.

Miyako: What's wrong with you? Daisuke: E-Eh? Mi-Miyako-san? Miyako: It feels weird when you add the "-san". Daisuke: Shut up! Man, you're all the same!

Miyako and Daisuke’s relationship is often misconstrued considering that they’re the two most chaotic in the group (their temperaments are very similar at times, which causes them a lot of friction), but I also think this blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment is pretty much their actual relationship in a nutshell. They fight a lot, and they’re ostensibly vitriolic, but they’re actually two of the most like-minded in the group -- they banter because they’re comfortable with each other. Recall that I mentioned that Daisuke is normally respectful with his elders, yet he’s the only person in the group who won’t use the -san honorific on Miyako (even though she’s the oldest)...but the one time he gets flustered and uses it on her, she tells him that it’s weird and he needs to cut that out. Or, in other words, “it’s not like you to be weirdly respectful of me like that, we shouldn’t have that kind of distance between us, stop it.”

(It’s also pretty notable that Miyako has never seriously used -kun or any other honorific on Daisuke, even right after meeting him -- the only other person she dropped honorifics on was Iori, whom she’d known prior to the start of the series, but she seems to have deemed Daisuke enough of a fellow disaster child that he merited dropping it.)

This is especially because, right after that, she recruits Daisuke into her plan to get Ken and Iori to get along -- in the end, when things really get serious, the two are incredibly like-minded (look at how in-sync they are when they scheme together).

30 is actually a surprisingly Miyako-centric episode, despite not ostensibly being one. For one, it says a lot that right now, her biggest priority is to get Ken and Iori to get along -- something that has absolutely nothing to do with herself. In episode 14, Miyako freely admitted that she had a tendency to jump to conclusions about people, and that she was shallow about aesthetics, but this is a very different Miyako from the one who harassed Daisuke for Ken’s autograph in episode 8, or immediately became distrusting of Digitamamon in episode 14. Instead, she’s simply just genuinely invested in seeing people she considers friends get along, and in a selfless manner -- one that has nothing to do with herself. She just really, really cares, a lot.

After all of the first-half hubbub of Miyako really having no idea of what to do with her emotions, the second half has her start channeling that energy into what’s always been one of her biggest strengths: checking on, connecting with, and caring about her friends. Daisuke may be an aggressive forward-thinker who can push everyone in the right direction, but unlike his predecessor Taichi, he doesn’t actually have particular charisma or leadership skills that can necessarily hold everyone together. In the absence of that ability, Miyako fills in for him, checking on the moods and feelings on everyone in the team and making sure everyone’s doing well. And that’s why she loses her temper and slaps Ken late in the episode -- because, really, she’s reached her limit on her “give him space” philosophy when he’s abusing it to be standoffish in a crisis situation, and, on top of that, she really, really did have a huge emotional investment in him.

Moving onto more Miyako in episode 31, her Jogress episode with Hikari, we get to see a little bit of the old emotionally compromised Miyako again, but -- much like the second Digimentals arc -- it involves the two of them acknowledging that both of them are not going about things the best way, and that there are things they can learn from the other.

Hikari: Miyako-san, you're a handful sometimes. Miyako: I knew that's what you thought of me... Hikari: But...I've always envied that. Miyako: Huh? Hikari: Because I can't be honest and say I'm scared or scream like you.

Miyako’s tendency to lose control emotionally results in her being insensitive much of the time, which she calls herself out on multiple times during the episode, and she can’t always be as “kind” as Hikari is -- but, on the flip side, her antics are something that can be a “light” (pun not intended) towards those who are falling in a bad mental state or into the darkness, and Hikari even acknowledges this when one of her trains of thought makes her break out into laughter. Miyako ultimately manages to get through to Hikari this way at the end of the episode, which results in a Jogress and mutual growth for both of them -- Miyako puts more thought into how to approach others (it’s pointed out at the end that she’s still thinking about understanding Ken and Hikari better), and Hikari gains more resolve and determination to fight against things instead of passively accepting her fate (she tells Takeru very directly at the end "I’m fine now. I’ll never go there again.”).

Iori and Takeru's Jogress is a little more complicated to the point where it spans multiple episodes, but a lot of it ends up having to do with the fact that the events of the BlackWarGreymon arc start really putting Iori's black-and-white principles into conflict -- it's wrong to kill something that's been proven to be alive, but it's also wrong to be evil. Putting a huge nail in that is that there's a stake in him forming a relationship with Takeru, but he doesn't really understand Takeru either -- the "two-facedness" he witnessed back in episode 19 scares even him, and he's so intimidated by Takeru that, in episode 35, he goes to approach Yamato about Takeru's past instead of asking the person directly. Takeru, hearing about this, complains that he could have just asked directly, but admits he understands why Iori did so.

By the way, I should point out that episode 35 is the last time within the TV series that Daisuke is portrayed as having a particular interest in Hikari, and it’s just in terms of being slightly more excited that Hikari is joining his meeting. At this point, there are actual important things happening in the Digital World, and he needs to take care of Ken, too, and so...in the end, once again, Daisuke proves that he’s actually capable of putting aside those kinds of more shallow things when he really needs to.

On top of that, this is when the kids start actively working with Ken in the real world (and, if post-02 materials are any indication, continue to hang out with him even for social outings). The choice to have Ken live in Tamachi instead of Odaiba facilitated his isolation from the group during the Kaiser arc, and during around the third quarter they were all grouping up in the Digital World anyway, but the fourth quarter actually has the kids make an attempt to include Ken in their real-world outings despite the distance. Tamachi is not temporally far from Odaiba (approximately half an hour by train), but it’s a bit of a nuisance to get to, requiring crossing a bridge to/from the Tokyo mainland and paying extra for the Yurikamome. But at this point, he’s an important enough friend to them -- and them important enough friends to him -- that they’ll make it work.

At the end of episode 35, Iori finally decides -- to the point of recklessness, something that would have been previously very uncharacteristic of him -- to try and appeal directly to BlackWarGreymon to get him to stop destroying the Holy Stones so that they won’t have to fight. It’s emblematic of Iori’s heart being genuinely torn, because he’s having such a difficult time rationalizing all of these conflicting feelings. This comes to a head in episode 36, when Iori loses his temper at the rest of the group for “playing around”, but Armadimon snaps him back to reality to remind him that they’re tired and hungry, and this can’t be neglected. Iori himself ultimately becomes the one to proactively suggest that they take time to sit down and eat, indicating that -- little by little -- he’s starting to shift his thinking a bit, after being so incredibly stubborn for much of the series.

This is what leads to Iori and Takeru’s Jogress at the end of the episode, now that Iori is flexible enough in thinking to understand the emotional id behind Takeru’s mentality. And likewise, Takeru’s started to loosen up by 36, too --

Takeru: Sure, darkness is frightening, and we would feel at ease if we could get rid of it completely, but I'm sure that's impossible. Ken: Impossible? Takeru: Where there's light, there's always darkness. Hikari: The brighter the light, the darker the shadow, right? Takeru: Yes. That's why I think it's important not to lose sight of the light inside you, no matter how dark it is.

The thing about Takeru is that while he deceptively seemed more open and playful than Hikari for most of the series, he was actually bottling up a lot of emotions in a way not entirely different from the way she did. (Note how, despite how tied at the hip the two constantly are, they almost never actually talk about their thoughts on each other; it feels like a relationship where they implicitly trust each other but are practically reliant on that implicit trust to maintain that close of a friendship at all.) And he’s been keeping those emotions bottled up until they exploded in less-than-healthy ways, initially distancing himself from Iori. But being a lot more open about his thoughts on the matter allowed them to connect better, and eventually Takeru came to embrace a somewhat more reasonable stance on the matter after observing Iori.

It also doesn’t seem like coincidence that this is the episode that ends with Takeru’s first major act of goodwill towards Ken.

This leads into episode 38, the Christmas episode. Fun things to note!

The episode opens with Daisuke and the other younger kids giving a “Christmas present” to their seniors in the form of letting them reunite with their partners. Remember how I said that the 02 kids always admired their seniors and looked up to them? Even this late in the series, the series does not shy away from the fact you’re supposed to see the 02 kids as their deferential juniors.

The Christmas party is, of course, notably, the first major moment of reconciliation between Iori and Ken, with Iori having gone through major harsh lessons about morality in the last few episodes, and Ken opening up more to the rest of the group. Said party is also yet another notable example of how much of a priority it is for the 02 kids to be “social life friends” and not just friends working as a Digimon incident team -- after all, having genuinely emotionally present friends is what Ken needs most in his life right now, considering that the party is treated as the first time he’s been truly happy in a long while.

This is followed by episode 39, which is notable as the time when Daisuke finally commits to switching to given-name basis for Ken, and actually opens the episode standing against Taichi -- because he's so worried about Ken that he needs to go join him. This is something that's lost a bit in translation, but although Daisuke stands down against Taichi, he's not rude nor does he overstep his boundaries with his respected senior (he even opens his statement in polite-form Japanese) -- he's just saying, firmly and politely, "I'm sorry, but I can't go, I have to go help my friend." It’s a notable moment because while Daisuke has been becoming increasingly assertive and aware of what he really wants to do, this is the first time we’re actually seeing him refuse to defer to the very senior he’d spent so much of the series idolizing and looking up to.

We get to episodes 43-45 (the Demon mini-arc), which is also the culmination of the 02 kids having to face the limits of pacifism. This tends to throw off people who are coming in from Adventure, since the Adventure kids ended up killing Digimon with a lot more ease in the original series, but it’s also important to make note of the fact that the episode itself deliberately portrays a gap in mentality between the Adventure and the 02 kids -- with Hikari torn between the two. It also creates an interesting subversion of expectations when Hikari, the one you’d expect to be more on the pacifist side, is the one who’s already accepted that it may be inevitable, whereas Miyako, the more aggressive and belligerent one, is the one staunchly against it.

The reason for this “paradox” comes out of a single line from Hikari in episode 44:

Hikari: You’re the one who saved him, Miyako-san.

The Adventure kids never liked killing. They were never enthusiastic about it -- it was just that they were almost immediately put in a situation where the entire fate of the multiverse was at stake thanks to some unambiguously evil Digimon who wanted nothing but wanton destruction. Even then, it was pretty clear that they never enjoyed it -- Takeru professed a desire to avoid fighting in Adventure episode 12, and the pacifist Mimi went through a breakdown in Adventure episodes 45-50 trying to avoid casualties. But one of the most important lessons Mimi learned at the time was that pacifism has its limits -- there’s no point if it ends up in more deaths than it saves, because at that point you’re adhering to moralistic principles more than you’re actually saving lives.

The fact that the Adventure kids and the 02 kids have a “different mentality” isn’t just happenstance, but outright embraced. Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori never had to actually deal with a conscious Digimon that was unambiguously evil for most of the series, and Archnemon revealing that her motives were pretty much nothing but wanton destruction in episode 29 was the first major warning signal to Iori that his pacifism might have limits. And during this Demon mini-arc, it’s not like these Digimon are threatening multiverse destruction or anything -- it really does seem like a constant “glimmer of hope” that maybe, just maybe, they can save people non-lethally. Alas, they can’t.

Daisuke, being someone who’s inherently practical-minded, starts entertaining the idea that push may come to shove as early as episode 25, and finally makes his first statement about practical limits in episode 43. But the more emotionally caught-up Miyako and Iori end up taking another episode to swallow it, and they don’t take it well. Most of the attention in 44 is given to Miyako, and it reconfirms that, despite her aggressive exterior, she’s emotionally sensitive and empathetic -- and while killing LadyDevimon is framed as truly the only thing that could have been done in that situation, Miyako is not faulted for being emotionally compromised, nor is Iori likewise when he faces a similar situation with Takeru and is forced to confront the people whose lives were at stake.

Episode 45, when Ken opens the gate to the Dark Ocean, doesn’t really have much to add on top of what’s already there, but this is basically “the point of no return” when everyone confirms their own emotional investment in Ken and understanding that he’s not just reformed, he’s genuinely struggling under the pain of what’s been happening -- and this is before they find out about the truth behind the Dark Seeds, and that Ken’s transformation into the Kaiser may have been supernaturally influenced, too.

It’s also interesting to see the different ways each kid reacts to Ken as they support him:

Hikari, the most outwardly compassionate, goes to support him the second she notices him in physical pain; Takeru notices that it might work, realizes Ken needs the support, and joins.

Iori and Miyako reflect on how Ken’s putting all of his efforts in, and lambast themselves before joining. Interestingly, given the circumstances behind what’s happened up until now, Iori and Miyako criticizing themselves take a different meaning -- Iori, who’d been scornful of Ken until recently, seems to be regretting that he distrusted him when Ken had been trying so hard, while Miyako, who had been open to him since episode 25, seems to be upset that she’s sitting there and not doing enough when he’s in all of this pain.

And Daisuke, of course, the most “forward-thinking” of them all, gives Ken a speech about what he’s done so far and reminds him that he’s already done more than enough for “atonement” -- which is, of course, what directly reaches Ken the most.

And when we get to episode 46, and the kids, now knowing about the Dark Seeds, hold a roundtable (and emotional support group) to discuss what to do about the Dark Seeds, Daisuke’s the one with the most spirit and energy about it, but...

...the one actually leading the roundtable? Miyako.

Miyako: Sorry, that's all I can think of. Ken: Please don't worry about me. Miyako: (nods)

It’s subtle, but the scene in question does actually make a deliberate move in indicating that Miyako’s continuing to channel her emotional sensitivity and desire to go out of her way to help Ken -- of course, they all know how traumatic this is for him, but she’s the one who’s actively calling attention to how he must feel about it first and foremost.

Episodes 47 and after end up becoming yet another major wake-up call for Iori (seriously, I do not understand why people claim he had no character arc when this wasn’t even remotely subtle) when he learns that Oikawa, whom he’d pinned as “evil”, has a deep relationship with the father he’d grown up idolizing so much, and it completely flips his world around -- even though he had started to get a bit more open-minded, he’s still trying to rationalize what should have been, in his mind, two diametrically opposite things. It fuels his confusion and desperate desire to understand more, not just about Oikawa, but about everything he’d thought about morality and why people turn to evil.

So we get to the final arc of the series, and it involves a confrontation with BelialVamdemon -- but said finale is heavily dependent on talking to the Dark Seed children and inspiring hope back into them. This results in a conversation where everyone talks about their career dreams, and Daisuke admits that he wants to be...a ramen chef, which completely blindsides even his friends.

What’s with this arc?, you might think. And moreover, why is Daisuke ending the series still kind of an idiot? Even Miyako still seems to be a bit of a mess and chaotic. Weren’t they supposed to be growing into dignified heroes, like Taichi and his friends were last series?

Well, here’s the thing -- the fact that the 02 kids end the series comparatively “undignified” is actually very inherent to the core theme of 02 itself. There were more than enough episodes that established that said kids are heroic in their own way -- caring about others, fighting on others’ behalf, and learning important lessons about what’s important to fight about. That doesn’t mean they don’t get the right to continue being disaster children while they’re at it.

Why?

Let’s look at a few official statements behind the creation and intent behind 02 as a series. From producer Seki Hiromi, from the Digimon Animation Chronicle:

That came from an idea I had while reading a newspaper article. I read a story about a nine-year-old boy going to Columbia University, and I thought, “This boy is going to college because he’s considered a genius, and everyone around him will be in their twenties, and he won’t get to have any friends his age. What kind of life would this boy end up having?”

Or some very interesting statements from head writer Yoshimura Genki from the 02 Blu-ray box:

When I was writing Ken Ichijouji, the main idea for him I used as a basis was the conflict between “the self that has to be a well-behaved child when adults are watching” and “being able to be oneself”, and the pain that came from it as a result. So for instance, in the same way as the Pinnocchio fairytale, or the short story A.I. that was adapted into a movie, or many other works, there are probably universal worries that all children feel as they grow, but also, there were ongoing unimaginable, atrocious incidents happening with children at the time, and perhaps it was those social conditions that gave me a hint on what to do. I think I had some thoughts that I wanted to convey to the children who were living through that time. I was given the opportunity to put those kinds of feelings, as much as I liked, into episode 23, and I am truly grateful to all of the staff, including the director. ... Also, this is about Daisuke’s character, but I believe I paid particular attention to making him “a child who could be himself”. He has no special talents, and although he’s clumsy and scatterbrained, I wanted him to be someone whose strength was in his straightforwardness, and wrote him that way.

Lying underneath the entirety of 02 itself is a theme about “children who are not allowed to be children”. Or, in other words, the pressure placed on children to be “talented” and “dignified” and “well-behaved”, often imposed on them by well-meaning parents who are unfortunately taking the opportunity to stroke their own ego, robbing them of the happiness and mental freedoms they should have as kids.

Ichijouji Osamu and Ken, who were placed under the pressure to be “genius children” and cracked under the pressure to please their parents. Oikawa Yukio, who was cut off from the Digital World in childhood by a well-meaning Hida Chikara, worried about his son getting into “foolish” talk. The Dark Seed children, who also fell victim to similar pressures that Ken did, and lost hope for life unless they could force themselves into that mold.

Takeru: If you want the Digimon to exist, if you believe in that, they will. Just like our feelings...Just like every child having the power to make their dreams come true. Keiko: That's just childish. Daisuke: You all have dreams for the future, don't you? Noriko: Dreams for the future? Takashi: I've forgotten that stuff. Daisuke: No way! You must have one! Takeru: It's nothing to be ashamed of. Takashi: Then, what's your dream? Daisuke: Mine? Mine's a ramen shop. I love ramen! I'll become the world's best ramen maker! Ken: I had no idea... Noriko: Well...actually, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. Hikari: Me too. Daisuke: What about you guys? Takashi: A baseball player! Keiko: I really want to be a pastry chef. Hiroshi: When I said I wanted to be a manga artist, everyone laughed, so I gave up... Takashi: We all had aspirations, and at some point we thought that wasn't allowed...But we were wrong, right? Daisuke: Let people say whatever they want! Noriko: You're right, we should be free to dream. Miyako: Not just dreaming. If you work hard, your dreams will surely come true!

Notice something about all of these careers mentioned? They’re all the kind of “overly childish” “wild dream” “undignified” “too simple” kinds of dreams that an average parent might be uncomfortably quick to shoot down because that’s “not good enough”. These are the kids who willingly accepted the Dark Seeds; they, much like Ken, probably grew up under parents who prioritized school performance and other “societally dignified” things that ended up eating away at their happiness.

02 has a lot of different themes, but the one that lies in its undercurrent from start to finish is “so why does a child have to be this way? As long as they still understand what’s important, do they have to be dignified people? Why can’t they just be free to have dreams and be themselves?” And Daisuke and his friends are there specifically to stand up against this mentality, and to remind Ken and the other victims of it that it doesn’t have to be this way -- that it’s okay to be your true self, and be a child, and not succumb to all of those arbitrary, shallow standards people put on you. Even if that means you’re still a bit of a chaotic disaster at the tender age of eleven.

Digimon, in the Adventure and 02 universe, have always been treated like a part of the self (they were literally conceived as a physical manifestation of the soul), but in 02 they gain an extra meaning of representing “the inner, deepest part of yourself that represents your wildest ‘childish’ dreams”. The symbolism of Ken spending the first half of the series trying to reject Wormmon for being “weak” -- in other words, rejecting his own kind-hearted self for not being the kind of “strong” entity he was pressured and groomed into being -- is not lost, nor that of the Dark Seed children gaining partners when they reconnect with their dreams and wishes, nor Oikawa finally, finally meeting his partner when he comes into contact with the past he’d really lost (and especially not the fact that his attempt to reclaim shallow reminders of said childhood involved trying to make his own Digimon).

And notably, the series’s finale (prior to the epilogue) ends not on Daisuke but on Iori, escorting Oikawa to the Digital World despite how completely impossible it would have been for early-series Iori to even entertain the idea, finally coming to truly understand what happened with him and being most personally impacted by his death.

But in any case, where are we with the characters? We’re here to talk about how they’ve grown and developed over the course of the series. Let’s recap:

Daisuke: Started off the series as an abrasive kid with more bark than actual bite, constantly deferring to others and easily deflating, relying on shallow sources of validation like wanting attention from Hikari; gradually gained an ability to identify what was important and put his foot down for it, embraced his forward-thinkingness to reach out to a heavily troubled child as a friend, and ended up surrounded by a friend group that loves and respects him.

Miyako: Started off the series as a shallow, flighty girl with poor control over her emotions and difficulty in appreciating the gravity of things; came to channel her emotional range into empathy for others and compassion, bringing other people together and taking care of them.

Iori: Started off the series as a straight-laced but too principled child who stuck to “rules of what’s right” not only in morality but also in way of acting; started to appreciate the emotional nuances and heart behind why people do what they do and how it’s possible to be more flexible in “doing good”.

Ken: Well, his character arc is pretty obvious, but -- again, while his arc of learning to forgive himself is well-known, less often pointed out is that it centers very heavily on not only having penance but also not being too hung up on the past, and the futility of drowning in self-pity and regret instead of choosing to take responsibility and act more productively going forward.

Takeru: Started off the series as a seemingly mature but deceptively inscrutable character whose duality made him hard to approach; eventually opened up with the help of others and showed a capacity for being more flexible with his personal grudges.

Hikari: Started off the series emotionally repressive and passive to the point of self-destruction; eventually embraced connections with her other friends and became more active in taking a stand for herself.

Hey, not bad!

And, again, this is not a series you should be reading in terms of “self-awareness” in the same way Adventure was, but in the sense of their “relationships” and how they interact with others. By being less abrasive and more assertive, Daisuke gained the respect of his other friends. By putting her emotional capacity into caring about others, Miyako became someone who holds the group together. By learning to think a little more flexibly and be less stubborn, Iori arrived at a position where he could more easily sympathize with others in the group. Takeru and Hikari both moved from their previously relatively inscrutable positions to ones who could more effectively interact with and open up to others. And Ken, of course, became someone who managed to integrate himself into a group of true “friends” despite everything he had done against them in the first half.

This, in the end, is how you get what’s one of the tightest friend groups in Digimon history. In the end, the relationships themselves are almost like characters of their own that got development -- I say very often that you could take two of the characters and have an excellent scope of how they’d interact and play off each other by the end of the series. And although they end the series as possibly one of the most shameless, undignified disaster groups out there...they’re certainly still heroic, and in any case, given the lessons they learned throughout their own series, they probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta

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