#ultimately mai and suoh crucially differ when it comes to agency

[miminmimikyu]

Dug up my Darker than Black DVDs the other day for a rewatch and I've concluded (after getting to episodes 3-4): Mai's story is so heartbreaking no matter how many times I've seen it.

Her coming of age+shitty parents arc--The (literally) fiery outbursts where she loses control of herself vs. her dad wanting to stop this change in her to the extent that he subjects her to an untested experimental "treatment" that ultimately only delays the inevitable! Making Mai even more unstable and doomed to keep lashing out in fear, killing people until she's a soulless shell of herself. Her dad even remarks "You know how society treats contractors. [...] If I had known this would happen to her, I would have preferred for her to become a contractor." And then she becomes one anyway and is carted off by the syndicate to be trained into a killing machine. Oof.

I was also struck by how many parallels there were between Mai's story and Suoh's in S2. Mai and Suoh's similar ages, the controlling/experimenting relatives, being unwitting pawns, their best friend dying in front of them..etc. But! Mai's story had so much more emotional weight in just TWO episodes and a cameo. And in those two episodes Darker than Black also manages to:

show us a glimpse of just how horrific it is inside Hell's Gate

show us that new stars appear together with new contractors

explain differences between contractors, dolls, moratoriums

introduce Hoshimi-sama and the doll network

give a clearer hint on Hei's powers, but keeps you guessing how they work

show that Hei acts oddly for a contractor, that there's something else beneath the cold mask

give Misaki proper interactions with her colleague/friend Kanami

NOT leer at Mai's body even for a second! Instead leers at the adults (Misaki and Kanami)

And even with all that worldbuilding stuff it's still Mai's story