#it's scary how militaristic these characters have become. they even did the salute while leaving the island. sigh... that's japan now 4 u

[magnoliawaltz]

I wish we had more Kazuki in TBY

Me too, anon. He was cool in a somewhat dangerous way, but also looked like he was going to disappear at any moment, as if only a mere vestige of his existence remained there.

But to be honest, following TBY's line of thought, if they showed more scenes of Kazuki just to have him be a scumbag father figure to KoSoushi I don't think I could take it lol. Do you realize he left the island without saying sorry to him once? Now that I think about, I don't remember him apologizing even to Soushi in DA. He only said he wanted to do that, but then there was nothing to forgive because Soushi was actually grateful.

Hohoh... Is that also part of Makabe Kazuki's hubris...

TBY was trying to remove itself from the shadow of Kazuki and Soushi's story, right. That's fine (it's not but let's pretend it is), but it also refused to give us relief by presenting his conclusion. It feels incomplete. Purposefully so (eternal return...), but still.

More than that, it feels like they intentionally omitted some vital scenes here and there to leave us speculating. The fact I keep seeing wildly different interpretations about his behavior in the last two episodes in the Japanese side is a good indicative of that. It's like the tabula rasa in that way. It could go either towards a positive development or a negative one, it is only full of potential.

And I am a pessimistic person, so I can only imagine somewhat gloomy scenarios after that ending lol. Because what I want most is to Kazuki to come to reject that island's way of thinking too. KoSoushi did a lot but it wasn't nearly enough, and he too embraced militaristic power with real zeal, otherwise he would have no voice there. Even the meaning of a blessing has been re-contextualized, so they've all supposedly been freed from any restrictions imposed by the Mir, right? Stop being a soldier, Kazuki. Stop.

Well, he already left that place anyway, maybe that's enough for now. I think it was meaningful to end TBY by having two characters who had to fight since childhood, to the point they stopped being human, leave with their deadly machines. They finally earned the opportunity to see the world with their own eyes and reevaluate their experiences.