It's been almost a week since the 9th episode has aired, and I've just now realised that the real King Torture is the show's director. He certainly did his best in gathering a very specific audience with the first 6 episodes of comedy and slice of life, only to bring up the twist which caused the masses, craving for entertainment, go all WTF. Marvellous! Brilliant! This makes you seriously question if the fact that all minions have "B" on their face masks, could really be a reference to /b/? LOL
One question I don't have a good answer to is how KT managed to capture Samurai Girl. I mean, even assuming that Konno did choose to live for entertainment and become a monster, how was he able to contact her? He shouldn't really have Mari's contact. Remember, she herself contacted Konno earlier that day, not the other way around. And the video in which Samurai Girl challenged King Toruture didn't seem to be filmed at Mari's home either - the floor was different, the walls were different, no those extra lights. The red sofa, chairs, their placement, and the red curtains sure were trying their best to make it very confusing, but unless the animators failed miserably, it didn't seem like Konno knew who exactly SG was and neither did he have Mari's contact details. So either she left him her SG contact information, or Konno actually spent time investigating SG and SF in the last months on his own and found out their identities. This could explain why he kept coupling those together when meeting or calling Ishihara earlier.
But did he really go against his original resolve to die with honour as a human? Didn't he even call his beloved Ishihara to propose to her and get rejected, so that he could have no regrets and die? Oh, if only she knew, how ironic and foreshadowing were her last words to him, "Die"! Because, if you carefully think about it, the truth here is that Konno had no real alternatives but to die. Either as a human at that very moment, or as a monster later with the Viva Torture scream, which essentially meant, even if metaphorically, dying as a human at that very moment too - monsters are no humans after all. So Konno wasn't really choosing between life and death, he was choosing between honour and entertainment.
And this seems to be the true theme of the entire show. It's the change in the society, which director has noticed and is communicating to us, by torturing us with the crazy twists. We only crave for entertainment. If something gets dull and boring, we ignore it. We ignore it and replace it with something entertaining. We stopped thinking how minor problems could be signs of something bigger, because it's boring. If someone finds solutions to tackle them here and now - great, otherwise we simply ignore them or accept them as part of our everyday life. We stopped thinking strategically. We let the evil reach the predetermind quota, the critical value. But then it will hit and blast big time.
And that's what I expect to see in the upcoming episode. There was so much death-related foreshadowing in ep. 9! For example, aside from Ishihara's "Die!", when the professor gives Masayoshi the DVD labeled 'Videos of King Torture Monsters (Explosion Deaths)', the camera stills at the word 'Deaths' full screen as if something bad really is approaching. In fact I do expect something major happening to Samurai Flamenco himself. Did you notice how the superhero figurine in Masayoshi's hands performs a seppuku? From wiki: "Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture)". Combine it with King Torture, Jouji's "You never know what could happen to you in the final episode" and the next ep preview on Hazama's screen '"You're the target." Tune in for the final episode!', and you'll get the picture.
I don't know if we end up with real deaths or the deaths are going to stay metaphorical - Samurai Flamenco and Samurai Girl dying as superheroes in the eyes of the citizens being unable to do anything. KT has everything to broadcast his torturing and SF's failure after all. Or will SF commit the seppuku to remain a superhero, to follow the samurai's honour code? My best bet is to rely on Kaname Jouji's name. Assuming he really is the main and key figure of the show, he might end up being the one who saves SF, SG, and the rest with his "Red Axe" comeback.
And there also must be a good reason to introduce four new characters to the show. So killing (not necessarily in a literal way) the main characters is a good opportunity for those to appear. Especially if their mission is to save the would-be superheroes. In this sense, Red Axe could be a great leader to them, since their names are literally translated as blue, green, black, and pink repsectively.
Well, that's ended up as too much speculation, I guess, and there's still so much I could keep writing about. It's amazing how many small hints and details were put into the whole series and especially in the last episode. Can't wait to see the next two episodes! |