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Concrete Revolutio
Episode 8

by Rose Bridges,

How would you rate episode 8 of
Concrete Revolutio ?
Community score: 4.0

Concrete Revolutio always starts out like a confusing mess, throwing new terminology and names at you, but slowly, over the course of each new episode, you can piece the full picture together. This episode was no exception, with its story of the "Rainbow Knight" who united the lives of two boys. One of them is Jiro, allowing this episode to reveal more about our tormented hero as we move closer to his turn away from the Superhuman Bureau. It's now 1968 (Shinka 43), which means we're only about a year away from the timelines joining.

The Superhuman Bureau gets a letter from the "Eye of Lucifer," an old-school supervillain and the archenemy of Rainbow Knight, a classic robot-suit superhuman. He was popular in Japan until a few years ago, when he was caught trying to kidnap children. Still, some fans remain, including Jiro, who collects Rainbow Knight memorabilia. The Eye of Lucifer threatens to steal them, and he may have a connection to the "Juvenile Investigators BL Clan," a group of superhuman kids solving petty crimes unaffiliated with the Superhuman Bureau. One of them, Yumihiko, pilots a Giant Robo-style mech called Gigander, and he also appears to admire Rainbow Knight. Rainbow Knight may have turned out to be a criminal, but as Yumihiko himself says, kids "don't understand things like politics." So this episode is about the conflict between childlike and adult conceptions of morality, and where Jiro falls in that equation.

This is also a theme that runs deep through Watchmen, Concrete Revolutio's biggest influence. The comic goes to great lengths to distinguish the black-and-white, childlike morality of Rorschach from the more nuanced (in both good and bad ways) outlooks of the other major characters. Which outlook it ultimately favors is left up to the reader and how they feel about its infamous ending. It's also unclear whether Concrete Revolutio prefers the more simplistic morality of childhood or the greyer outlooks of adults at this point. Regardless, it was interesting to see Jiro wholly convinced that other enemies (like kaiju) were irredeemably bad, yet grant Rainbow Knight so much complexity. He was a "great hero of justice," and he was a criminal, as Jiro watched him die. It was possible for Rainbow Knight to embody all these things, because people are complicated (but not kaiju, apparently).

Additionally, Jiro's childhood encounter with Rainbow Knight is what allows him to view the hero so charitably. Whatever his other crimes were, Rainbow Knight was an "ally of justice" (as he described himself) when he saved Jiro from GigantoGon. He helped inspire Jiro to pursue the same life, which is why he says "even if they are [morally] grey, if they believe in justice, I want to be an ally of justice." He recognizes that someone can fundamentally fight for good things, even if they also have negative qualities.

Yumihiko recognizes this all too well, because he's really Daitetsu Maki under a new name. Daitetsu Maki was one of the children Rainbow Knight captured and offered for ransom, before he was found out. He recognizes that what Rainbow Knight did was wrong, because if he had truly been "protecting superhuman children," he probably would not have asked for ransom money. Still, Daitetsu cannot forget the kind and fatherly way that Rainbow Knight talked to him in that moment. In spite of his admission that "kids don't understand," Daitetsu even grants Eye of Lucifer moral complexity: he seeks out the former supervillain, who is now ready to leave that part of his life behind but wary of how much people may still suspect him. So Daitetsu dons his costume and commits the crime of stealing Jiro's Rainbow Knight collectibles while the previous Eye of Lucifer has a rock-solid alibi. Daitetsu both gives Eye of Lucifer a new life and preserves his own connection to the flawed superhero of his memories. Even as a kid, he gets that grey is more common than black and white, teaching Jiro a valuable lesson about how people are all complicated.

Interestingly, Jiro is somewhat unique among the Superhuman Bureau in his dilemma. Most other members seem to understand that morality is complicated, and they can't always guarantee they'll be on the right side of it. Kikko has accepted this even as she's still working out the problems of good and evil in people's sympathies in her teenager-ish way. Emi places herself completely beyond and outside of these struggles as a non-human—she's the Doctor Manhattan of this troubled superhuman team. Jiro has only gone this far without growing in his morality because he's so attached to the idea of "justice," believing in some outside, abstract standard of the "right" thing to do. He has to be on the side of righteousness. He can't just do his job while accepting that he doesn't have all the answers. Even when he talks about not being able to judge if someone like Rainbow Knight is "good or bad," the question is clearly important to him.

This explains why Jiro finds kindred spirits for his future cause in robots, especially Earth-chan, with her extremely black-and-white sense of morality. He also appears to gain sympathy from Daitetsu, which makes sense given their similar life experiences. That begs the question: does Jiro actually expand his ideas of morality? Is that what causes him to leave the Superhuman Bureau? Or does he just realize that his role there isn't compatible with his existing black-and-white beliefs, because justice isn't what the Bureau is really fighting for?

Just as it shares Watchmen's eye toward political history, Concrete Revolutio is also all about interrogating "classic" superheroes, in this case from Showa-period anime. The focus remains on the black-and-white conceptions of morality that these stories gave us, where everyone is divided into clear Good and Bad Guys. In the real world, even if one side is more obviously "just," it's rarely without nefarious motives or actions on either side. Rainbow Knight fits the model for a self-appointed vigilante in the real world more than he resembled a superhero—he was a troubled type who might have committed more crimes than he solved. That doesn't mean we can dismiss his sense of justice at its core, though. Society needs people with strong values to keep it going. We just have to ask ourselves what our beliefs mean—and how to wield the power we're given.

Rating: A

Concrete Revolutio is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn, and on Twitter.


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