Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: KADO - The Right Answer
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5528 Location: Mexico |
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We're in episode 7 and the show continues to do its mightiest effort to avoid any meaningful conflict or raise any stakes at all. Episode 6 ended with the tension of zaShunnina having messed up with Shindou's brain, perhaps with the right intentions, but with potentially dreadful consequences, but then it turns out that once again, this new alien device is all benefit no negative secondary effects. And given how they completely nullified the possible conflict of the Wam revolution, (we gave them away but also gave them to the people but no one can actually make them so no chaos happens), I'm sure the same will happen with this Sansa thing. Even the protesters are almost a sight gag and are immediately countered by "look, locals are benefitting from this by making Kado merchandise". No stakes, no consequences, just talking heads and magical alien devices that have no visible effect in society. They could've raised an issue with Shindou and how his own perceptions were altered without his consent, a crack in the trust between him and zaShuninna, but nah, it's all chill, all good, haven't slept in 8 days, the karoshi rates are gonna plummet isn't this great. The writers present quasi-conflicts and potentially interesting ideas but then don't commit to any of them, and it's maddeningly frustrating
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Random 21
 Posts: 198 Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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I get this means more "Neither of the viewpoints have been shown as being wrong" but well, I'm not the only one who got the impression from the way the episode ended that ZaShunina is being set up as an antagonist? Like, that ending shot was clearly supposed to be ominous, right? If ZaShunina is being set up as a villain, wouldn't that undermine the show's neutral stance? I kinda felt this already happened when Shindo, the focus point character, was swayed over to Tsukai's viewpoint, but by making the figurehead of the other side of the argument the villain of the story? That kind of just destroys the grey area, because then it would be clear the advancements ARE a bad thing, and we all should've listened to Tsukai before it was too late. Like honestly, I've been with the show 100% up to this point, but this episode completely pulled me out of the story. The preview didn't exactly do much to alleviate my concerns either. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I think that it is coming down that ZaShunina has decided for himself what the right answer is. He has taken some human medium to find a way to get his message across, but I don't think that he has taken much work to actually understand why some things are important to humans. He sees all the conflict and thinks that they should be like him, not even that he could take some ideas from them. Like a civilised society deciding for themselves that a more primitive society should be like them, seeing all of the quirks as problems instead of something that makes them who they are. Shindo just went up with alcohol, would ZaShunina actually approve a substance like that?
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Merida
 Posts: 1946 |
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Same. I was rolling my eyes all the way through, from the "funny" misunderstanding about Shindou's and Tsukai's relationship by her family, over our "genius negotiator" apparently being so impressed by Tsukai's incredibly trite and clichéd speech that he goes right over to zaShunina and tries to convince him by filling him up with beer, to that "evil smirk" at the end... 
At first this show looked like it might be the surprise of the season, but now it's shaping up to become one of the biggest disappointments. Sad. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11586 |
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It was nice to see Tsukai get some traction, though they still went out of their way to undermine her and make her look like a fool.
I'm not sure I buy that they couldn't have stopped the broadcast, but maybe not, since google apparently now has direct access to zaShunina. Even so, that warning was woefully insufficient for such a drastic alteration. It was on a par with "watch in a well-lighted room and don't sit too close to the screen." I know the series couldn't reiterate everything we learned last week, but they needed to somehow convey that the audience was getting more prior information than, "This may mess you up, but at least you won't have to sleep," to make their choice to watch or not. And you know there would be trolls recording this and Rickrolling it on YouTube, so even if you wanted to avoid it, you'd probably end up seeing it anyway. Did it not affect Adam Ward? He didn't seem to have a moment of disorientation or shock. Had he already watched it, or did he avoid watching it? I dunno, the whole just-see-it-and-be-affected thing gives me a Ring vibe. Yeah, not sure what to make of Evil-Look zaShunina at the end, which I guess is the purpose of it. We'll see if they'll gloss over that if it's a red herring, or reveal something. I felt bad for the poor turtle on his rock in that tiny tank on Shun's desk. |
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LilacSkyAtDawn
Posts: 10 |
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While I've been expected the Shindou/Saraka thing ever since I saw the series image (it actually took much longer than I thought it would), I didn't at all imagine Shindou's transition to Saraka's "camp" would coincide with zaShunina revealing his true colours, whatever they may be. Which, now that I come to think of it, was incredibly stupid of me considering how Saraka was always anti-zaShunina, and Shindou will always be the protagonist, making zaShunina's actual role much more likely to be that of the antagonist. Oh, well. Hindsight is always 20/20! Like others have mentioned, I doubt he'll ever be a "bad guy" in the true sense of the word, but I was hoping he'd be different from other overpowered aliens in fiction in that he'd not be interested in manipulating humanity for his (species') own gain. As that doesn't seem to be the case any longer, Kado is going on hold for me until it ends and I can get some confirmation - or the opposite - of my worst fears 
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Random 21
Posts: 198 Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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Dunno what I thought of that episode. On the one hand, I think the twist with Tsukai was kinda cool and interesting, and the history of the Anisotropic's relationship with Humanity was also a cool concept, but I'm still frustrated at this sudden insistence of making ZaShunina the bad guy, it just seems like an unnecessary development and really sours the story as a whole for me, not even getting started on how the show keeps showing it's support for Tsukai's viewpoint which I REALLY do not agree with at all.
On the plus side, I appreciated that they revealed that Hanamori had feelings for Shindo, that was neat. Tbh I've been rooting for him ever since episode 0. |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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This was definetely the "Yeah, no, YOU don't get it" episode. I've been holding off on that, I've been very skeptical so far that it might have gone this way aand it did, it totally did.
Here's a problem with Sci Fi, it has a LOT of trouble imagining how the humanity and its production structure as well as its culture work and or are affected by the Sci-Fi Thingy that happens in any SF narrative. Some resolve this by making the Sci-Fi element just a "little push" that change things gradually but present several problems to match the previous state the world was in and the protags struggle in that potential crisis (See, Psycho Pass or Ghost in the Shell and in Netflix terms, Black Mirror except for that reality thing episode). This ended up being completely useless at this, because I have literally no idea how the artifacts have changed anyone's life but Shindo AT ALL. All I know is "This is very important, look at it!" And that's it. I must say, it was half entertaining to see them developing to a finale of how the world might end up, but this episode's revelation broke that expectatoin, and not in a good way. First of all, I have no idea why zaSushinna is bad. And I believe nobody in the show really got it either, so he had to be "disastified" for some reason with Shindo and replace him on a whim, because that's clearly how he's been handling situations so far instead of asking first. And here's why I think zaSushinna being bad is bull, because the most crucial part in which Shindo should have made his point, he is just "W-what?". zaSushinna says that human production won't go over of what they need, which doesn't mean unlimited progress is halted, it means it will be a balanced and equal progress in terms of production. Because here's a problem, and it's something obvious: the world production is unfairly distributed, and we as civilization never manage to get to a point in which the human produces (I mean produce, invest, not work) especifically for another human other than themselves, at least not globally or nationally. But let's say that is not what the show wants to say, okay, fine, understandable. DO IT, make your character argument WHY this guy is bad, otherwise I'll just have to do with him having a spirit sword and this tsundere casket of a character having another one. So all I see from this sudden turn of tables is a poorly executed raise of stakes. I'll finish it, it's just three more episodes but I'm sorely disappointed. |
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Merida
Posts: 1946 |
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I really should have dropped this show last week because now i probably won't be able to turn my eyes away from this trainwreck anymore...
The only amusing part of this ep. was that literally everybody seems to be in love with Shindou who's basically a rather boring guy with good negotiation skills, despite the show trying its hardest to portray him as OMG, AWESOME!!! 
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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But what is a "bad guy"? ZaShunina has already done things like disrupt an airport, kidnap people for a month, and a whole host of things that already makes him a bit of a bad guy to people. There were people complaining just the other episode that the cube was blocking the view and or sun, he had effectively already been a bit of a bad guy even if not on purpose and that he had good intentions, we were really just waiting until his not quite getting people. What we kind of found out is that ZaShunina is a bored kid who could not wait to open his Christmas presents. He had been kind of using Shindo as a test where he was pushing humans a bit further so he could push them really provide the gift of entertainment to higher dimension beings. And he just realised that he went too far, he made a boo boo, so tried to do take backs, and for him who sees time in such a way that he accidentally fast-forwarded someone for 70 hours, he probably sees nothing wrong with just the idea that he make an exact copy of Shindo to go on instead of the one he made a mistake with. I was googling and some theory is that time is the 4th dimension, while ZaShunina perceives within 37 dimensions, a ridiculous thing if you put general human morality into that. And it comes down to that the big show ZaShunina has put on is that he is an intruder, a kid running into a greenhouse and chucking chemicals onto the plants to make it grow faster because he is getting Impatient for something sweet to eat. And by the looks of it the more benevolent outsider had existed in the way that no one would know it was there, trying to help humanity under its own power, before it has finally in against the child from destroying a plant it likes, which it thinks is okay because it has another to replace it that is exactly the same. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24133 |
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When is ZaShunina going to bequeath humankind a truly useful gift? Like, a gizmo that helps you pick up hot chicks, fer instance?
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Valhern
Posts: 916 |
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This is certainly true, but so far we've been understanding thaat zaShunina literally does not understand human concepts whatsoever. When he kidnaps the plane he is more a force of nature rather than a conscious person kidnapping people; hell, if he was one he'd realize kidnapping the plane was unnecessary and everybody would have turned around to see the big cube. Unless now it turns out his intention was to reach out to Shindo particularly but I don't know about that. Now he is a "bad guy" because, from one episode to another I'm directed to believe that he puts our MC (which is undoubtedly the hook for the audience) in danger and will erase him, not even that, the MC's kind of love interest turns out to be an anisotropic being who can fight the other, and according to the preview, that's what we are doing next week. He forcingly becomes a bad guy, instead of coming out as one who was that all along.
Yes, but this feels completely disconnected from what we've seen. Anytime zaShunina has been set with a drawback he has managed to reasonably solve them, even though all this time he had a device that could wipe out and re-enact humanity as he sees fit and then advance them further. He accidently kidnaps people but agrees to release them as soon as possible, he has to move Kado and instead of rolling it out on everybody as he could or just be plain intransigent, he waits until Shindo makes a plan. When he reveals the Wam he patiently waits until Scientist Girl figures it out, instead of lightspeeding her process somehow. When the journalist come up to him he talks it out with them about the Sansa, and while surely he had the expectations of them accepting, he also had to make the concession of the other two journalists being totally against it. Now that Shindo goes "Hey, that doesn't sound very good, can we talk about this?" (not the first time actually) he finally goes "Welp, there goes this human". I see no reason why, because zaShunina hasn't really had a personality inspection episode in which we can somehow understand that this is what he's actually like. Instead he's just framed at the end of some episodes a little suspicious. |
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LilacSkyAtDawn
Posts: 10 |
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I didn't watch ep.9, but the MAL forums already ruined it for me anyway. (Entirely my fault, of course. As they say, train wrecks are fascinating)
In the end, whether you think the recent developments "made sense" or not depends entirely on whether you were rooting for Saraka or zaShunina. If you always wanted the alien to be shown up as evil and forcibly banished from the world, you'd come up with any number of reasons why "it was hinted from the start." If you dislike Saraka and/or her point of her view, you'd oppose the abrupt choice to fast-forward her relationship with Shindou and reveal zaShunina's "true cruelty" in a grand total of 1 1/2 episodes after 7 episodes of slow-paced development. In a way, I ought to praise the writers for making it so that both camps would have enough "evidence" to argue about it like this. But I don't want to, because, at the end of the day, Seikaisuru Kado ended up becoming a mainstream anime. And if the primary conflict in a mainstream anime is between a beautiful girl and a guy (even given that the 'guy' is actually a genderless alien in male form), it's obvious that the girl would win out in the end. It's what the majority of fans want; and what the majority wants, it gets. If this had been a novel or a manga it might have played out more fairly, with better development for both sides of the argument. (Or if zaShunina's chosen form had been female, she could have safely joined Shindou's harem, and all would have been right with the world )
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11586 |
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Setting aside the crazy reveals of this episode, it left me wondering a couple of new things. Why didn't zaShunina just anti-grav the cube over to the new location, or even just move it in and out of dimensional space like he does his arms? And why does the cube need to be so goddamn huge? We've seen him use about 1000 cubic feet of it, max - what's all the rest of it for?
Surely there's a more efficient way of memory wiping than replacing him entirely with an earlier version. So...apparently the unprofessional tsundere high school girl persona was just her cover, right? |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Maybe it was the first clue that the cube itself is super weird, for someone who kind of has abilities to control space so well, why did he need a big cube which could interfere with the lives of people if he just wanted to gift things? Apparently his deal was that he could not have it disappear and reappear in the new space, that it is not something as simple as mass from our/their universe that could have its weight and the like altered to move it freely from one place to another. Trying to think of concepts it might be like saying if you are only sitting in the seats of a car to move, then why do you have everything else like a motor or steering wheel. Point is that it is so complex a reason that us being that only think 3 dimensions would have trouble understanding the concepts, that the things he is doing are more than just communicating and giving gifts, really it maybe seems that he was not even supposed to be there in that he broke in, and was taking as much information that he could take, with something that was so dimensionally dense (Kado) that it is not able to be altered like normal things that exist in our universe. And why wouldn't a perfect copy of Shindo not be an efficient way to act as a memory wipe for zaShunina? He has all of Shindo's data, is it too different from copying bread or loading back an earlier save in a video game because I made a mistake? It is just data, not something like myself. ZaShunina could appear patient in the eyes as a human, but under concepts of what he really is of something so much more complex, that he has been super impatient that he maybe could not have just given a little push for people to look in the right direction and let us adjust slowly at our own pace. You might as well say he is currently turned evil, which is as laughable judging him in human terms, for his character you should have been judging him by what he is. Which is to say he was either wrong from the moment he started interfering with humans, or from his point of view nothing has now changed as he has decided to use earlier Shindo instead. It is just data to him. Humans just taking offense to one human body when he could effortlessly created one as soon as he had the data, which he had at the start of the series, and you thought he would not because he talks like human? For us human he fits the role because he was about to cross a line that was too far, the concept of which he probably does not quite fully understand. A bad guy is someone who breaks laws, or perhaps a code, and he has been breaking the laws of that universe from the moment he entered it, he does it every time he moves his hands, it is only now that he was about to really break a human law. It has only really been forgiven in human eyes because he has given things that give benefit to people, even if those are breaking the laws of the universe. A bigger problem for me was some human just criticising a lot of it from what I feared was xenophobia of something that looked different, but instead it was the case she was something that could judge zaShunina both from human and as an anisotropic, and thus from how he should have been measured was from her point of view from the beginning. Rather than be just a twist out of nowhere akin to a deus ex machine, I would be kind of interested to go back to see what this information means for her character, like her laughing at how she saw him interacting with zaShunina. |
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