#and I will say I am disappointed w/ how Izu's character was treated

[firebirdsdaughter]

For a show that pretends to care about the balance/coexistence between humans and Humagears, they went the completely wrong way when it came to Aruto's last form. Zero-Two should've been developed by Yua and Horobi, or by Aruto and Jin. What good does it that it were Aruto and Izu (who is blindly devoted to Aruto just like a good lil pet and never had any agency on her own outside of serving him)?

I feel like I could go on for a long time about how I feel like Izu’s characterisation was wasted as a, at the risk of sounding harsh, ‘device’ to serve Aruto.

Like, def at the start, they seemed to be trying to set something up w/ her (esp w/ her and Yua)? But in the end…

To me, Izu should have been a balance about how freedom for HumaGear can also look like them choosing to work w/ humans. She could have been a cool angle of the Wonder Woman thing—someone who is able to show and prove that there is good in humans, a reasonable bridge between the two. I agree w/ a Jpn fan’s analysis that she wouldn’t make a good ‘HumaGear representative’ bc she had it too cushy, but she could have been a negotiator. Something where she comes to recognise that humans can be cruel but is able to genuinely argue for their goodness. And the potential of what could happen w/ HumaGear and humans working together is probably what they were going for w/ Zero-Two?  And tbh, I think that ‘balance’ is what they were trying to do.

Except…

They kinda sneezed at giving her a more balanced character a few times, but all in all, like I said, to put it in very basic terms, she felt mostly like a device to serve Aruto. She had a bit of stuff w/ Wazu, but even then it was all about it being totally okay that they can permanently die for human interests, that they exist to serve humans. Even when he was sacrificing himself to save her, the justification was ‘no one can support Aruto like you,’ not ‘this is for the greater good, but I want my younger sister to live.’ Or something. It’s just… She didn’t really feel like a character, or a person. She felt like an example of the ‘teach them to be happy in their cage.’ Her announcement that she wants to keep working w/ Aruto didn’t really have any meaning to it bc she feels like she never had any development outside of it. There were starts and stops, but it never felt like she was choosing anything, she never felt like… Like a person? She just… Revolves around Aruto completely. Even her ‘dreams’ are all about serving him. And then, at the end… The way she talks about Aruto makes me very uncomfortable. Honestly, it’s not just her, Jin got effected w/ it too in ep 41, but it feels very ‘idol worship’ and ‘messiah’y and it’s… For a human to be treated like that by HumaGear when the point is allegedly recognising them as people and not as mere tools… Like… It’s just uncomfortable. And that she’s lauded as the pinnacle of HumaGear goodness bc of that? That her idol worship of Aruto and insistence on the ‘good’ of humans is the ‘right’ view and Horobi’s experience w/ their negativity is ‘wrong’ when really it should again be the Wonder Woman thing of them being both, that neither are wrong.

I feel like it’s a mixture of the way KR treats female characters and the very… Inconstant treatment of AI in the show. For one thing, the ‘main’ heroine is supposed be the passive one who exclusively supports the mc—case in point, all the shit Tsukuyomi got for doubting Sougo, though I do feel like it wasn’t a very nuanced in actual writing, it did have enough natural progression to it, but she got hell for it, called an ungrateful bitch, etc. etc. Meanwhile Izu… To be really cynical, Izu feels like she’s popular partially bc she’s sweet and cute and bubbly and completely devoted to Aruto. Now, I know for a fact there are people who like her and see more to her than that, but I struggle to find anything concrete that went anywhere. It feels like she had some false starts and they kind leaned in that direction a few times, but ultimately wanted to play it ‘safe.’ I don’t know. But yes, it does kinda poison my feelings toward her and the situation. I don’t blame her anymore then I blame the other characters, not exactly. I blame the writers being inconstant and not following through. For instance, my issues w/ Aruto’s character are more about them not following through w/ character development and painting him as a saint when he wasn’t. And I guess it was made to make this whole thing more ‘shocking’ but instead it just felt… Stupid? Not exactly the right word, but… It didn’t make it shocking, it just made it progressively harder for me to like Aruto to the point that I find it really hard to have sympathy for him now, esp w/ how this ep went.

In terms of Zero-Two, I don’t really object to Izu being the one involved in it’s creation (though I do take issue w/ a certain thing they tried to equate w/ it in 44… bc, you know, at leats Aruto and Izu had a real, developed relationship of some kind) bc Aruto and Izu have an actual relationship, they could have been a thing about the possibilities when humans and AI come together. So… Like… I see what they were trying to do, but the lack of nuance in the writing and inability to follow through made it hard to feel emotionally invested.

If… Any of that made sense.