The ninth episode of Kaiba begins much like its predecessor, with the supposed “King Warp” taking a bath, carefully bandaging his wounds while the machine monitors ask him what happened and Why can they feel blood? As before, words that could theoretically have kinder meanings here are known as anything but—though they masquerade as caretakers, his fish-like robotic guardians. get fatter, smell weaknesses and circle around to kill. To stand on top of this world is to give up all privacy, all anonymity. In fact, he is not really the ruler of this world, but merely its highest cog: the crown-shaped screw that adorns a machine that is essentially indifferent to all its individual components, knowing that each of them are just the ones that will eventually be replaced..
It would be comforting to imagine this objective, totalitarian future as the result of alien intervention or a robot uprising, the consequence of something alien to us controlling the wheel of our society. But in reality, alienation, monetization of every life experience and a widespread indifference to suffering can become the norm of society with or without outside intervention. The moment we surrender to the inherent wisdom of the market, the moment we decide that capital is the final arbiter of value, the moment we have entered the path of moral indifference and human suffering. As long as we can abstract our individual actions from their consequences expressed through the corporatized apparatus and financial logic, we can live in a regulated society. at the same time by humans but completely devoid of humanity in the views and priorities of that society.
For those at the top, the system is at least presumably intended to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, while also honoring their persistent desire for a humane self-image. By allegedly handing over control of the operation of this machine to some secondary means, be it a robotic overseer or simply capitalist pragmatism, they could benefit from a system system that feeds on discontent and endures suffering without feeling guilty for its actions—heck, they may even tell themselves that this is ultimately the only way society can develop, okay driven by an almost spiritual belief in the righteousness of commerce unconstrained by moral regulations. Framed that way, Kaiba’s world actually seems preferable to ours; At least King Warp still adheres to the system he is supposed to rule, while our kings stand outside the means of their moral oblivion.
The revelations pile up as we return to the growing conflict of the capital world. First came the announcement from the fake king’s supervisors, announcing “good news! A new successor is born” with all the false cheer of a business announcing increasingly exploitative terms of service. When the king calls for “beginning of admiration”, he is contacted by Popo, who promises to be loyal and escape obsolescence. And we finally return to the original protagonist Kaiba, as memory surgeon Kichi reveals that the Kaiba we know him as only possesses a portion of his own memories, at most any any shell other than the Warp can actually hold. Before we can process this revelation, Kichi is discovered by Popo’s collaborator Sate, and Popo begins his plan to destroy the past, present, and future of the Warp.
It’s a series of startling revelations, doubling down on the audacity of the choice to go from seven episodes exploring “our” Warp straight into this tangled political drama where it’s uncertain whether our former protagonist Do we still exist or not? Our emotions thus resonate with those of characters like Neyro and Popo, reflecting their understanding of the fragility of identity, of the ambiguity and seeming meaninglessness of loyalty or grudge. Who we hate and who we love has become almost indecipherable; Flashes of memories not necessarily our own intrude into our most intimate moments, forever emphasizing how fragmentary and renewable we are.
Perhaps survival in this world requires accepting the inevitability of deception. So Popo seemed determined, as he declared to his stolen cult that “following Lord Dada, we will defeat the Warp!” Just as the false Warp took a throne he did not win and could not command, so too did Popo use the false power of Lord Dada to give meaning to his world, urging his followers to initiate incited a rebellion against a false idol in order to serve a false idol. If you are seeking to gain power in this world, you must accept this inauthentic disguise, taking advantage of people’s desire for something stable and unbelievable. When they cannot trust their own bodies or memories, they naturally turn to the gods and kings. – characters that are never closely examined, but can often be too far away to be fully observed.
After Neyro is given the “honor” of killing our Warp, she is confronted by her childhood friend Cheki, who demands to know how she transformed from a gentle girl into a cold assassin. . Cheki suspects memory alteration, and she is soon proven right, but in reality, such obvious methods are rarely necessary for such dramatic personal transformations. We are not asking this memory transfer and alteration system to become completely different people; we just need to be pushed as far as our former selves can effectively exist, and thus apply the callousness necessary to keep us together. There is little room for gentle people in a harsh world.
Cheki couldn’t imagine making such drastic changes to survive or challenge the world – she had kept her own gentleness, but that also meant she had become irrelevant. This conflict and how to resolve it. There are countless people out there like Cheki, who maintain their sense of decency and compassion despite the world punishing and oppressing such people without remorse. On another planet, she would be Cronico—here, she survives simply because her friends are willing to undergo such ugly transformations for her. And that doesn’t mean Cheki is wrong for not changing, nor does it mean her friends are brave or noble in being willing to accept inhumane methods. This system does not allow for simple things like this or that is right; some of us will die for compassion, some will harden our hearts against compassion to ensure a brighter future, but in the end all will be victims of unbelievable expectations of a cruel world.
“Destroy the memory containers for that?” Cheki cried. “It’s not true!” It was true that Neyro had indeed committed some unimaginable acts of terror aimed at destabilizing the rule of the Warp. But can we allow ourselves to be bound by conventional morality while trying to overthrow a regime that will inevitably cause more suffering? Perhaps some people must become indefensible agents of change, embracing the morally reprehensible to bring about a future where such notions of morality are once again possible enforced at the societal level. After all, what good can those values do when they are seen as just personal beliefs, preferences that our overseers are willing to ignore or even exploit to maintain control? their control?
Those in power are often happy to accept decisions out of politeness to prolong their reign. They wish to promote what Martin Luther King described as “a negative peace without tension” instead of “a positive peace in the presence of justice,” knowing that even their allies Comrades and well-intentioned fools will always praise simple ideals of kindness and civility. The search for true justice often requires disrupting the supposedly peaceful stagnation, so that the atrocities that lurk beneath that shimmering exterior can be challenged and brought to light. The search for justice in an unjust world is naturally an irritant, an outlier, and at its extreme an agent of profound state-directed violence. No tyrant will fall if we are polite enough to them; No regime will be conquered because everyone just gets along.
Seeing Neyro’s indifference towards her morality, Cheki steps to the edge of the balcony, betting his life as a bargaining chip to awaken Neyro’s morality. If Neyro cannot consider the countless lives in those pools of memory as real or important, then what about this single life, the life of a friend she has known since childhood? For all our noble efforts to rationalize great acts of destruction as necessary prerequisites for a better world, the mere sight of someone we love Dangerous loved ones also tend to reorient our thinking, making us vulnerable, helping us see each of them for what they are. the lives lost could have similarly stretched in a thousand directions, meaning the same for everything and more for those who loved them. If Neyro can sacrifice countless strangers to the cause without a single precious friend, then what are her morals in the end? By betting his life on this argument, Cheki emphasizes the hypocrisy of Neyro and Popo’s hard-line stance.
There are no comforting answers in a debate like this – only compromise and casualties, sacrifices for the dream of a better future. As Cheki is subdued and dragged away, we learn that the Warp’s regime has avenged the attack on the memory tanks, killing everyone in their northern base. How much must be sacrificed for an uncertain future, and is anyone left truly qualified to lead a peaceful, compassionate society? Can we apply such methods without them becoming second nature to us, without their effectiveness informing our views of truth and justice? Do we have enough good left to create a better world, or will we simply become the next Warp?
Kaiba awakens just before the end, with Popo whispering menacing lies about “traitor Neyro” in his ear. Driven by the mistaken belief that it was Kaiba who killed her family, Neyro attacks the laboratory, sending both Kaiba and Neyro’s unwitting memory tank plummeting into the canyon below. While Kichi brings up the truth about how he changed Neyro’s own memories, Popo urges her to hold on, telling her to “trust your memories! Modifying them would be the ultimate betrayal of our principles!” Like so many despots, Popo embraced the audacity of his own crimes as a defense against their values, relying on expectations of decency fostered by fools. kind like Cheki. But somewhere, deep within Neyro’s hideously altered memories, the love she shared with Kaiba continues to exist. As Popo chuckled in victory, Neyro looked down at Kaiba’s body in horror. And the tears won’t stop falling.
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