Rokka no Yuusha – 06

<Insert Rasengan joke here>

There are all sorts of ways to achieve enlightenment.  Meditate under a waterfall, abstinence of worldly desires, or maybe training with a monk.  Just becareful, otherwise you might run into one of those child-kicking monks whose idea of fun is to throw there disciple off a cliff then time them on how fast they run away from imminent death.  That is advice you can apply to a surprising number of situations.

Friendship, Fact Finding, and Failure

And he wonders why they aren’t really connecting…

There comes a time in every heroes journey when they say “Fuck it, saving this world isn’t worth it.  Hey peasant, why don’t you go fight the demon lord?”  I am really surprised that Adelt hasn’t reached such a point.  Accused by his comrades, literally stabbed in the back by those he trusts, and no one really believes he is innocent.  But this line of thinking is why the fate of the world will never rest on my hands.

After last episode, we see Adelt cornered by his comrades and the seventh, and he is in a tight spot.  Nothing really changes in this episode, because we see Adelt floundering for several minutes while he just makes himself look less and less “Strongest Man in the World.”  Even Chamot could make a better argument than you Adelt!  But when negotiations fail, the next best thing is to take a hostage.  Good thing Flamie was still tied up?  I guess maybe taking Nashetania as a hostage might have also worked since she was on his side already, but then we’d miss out on all this sweet character development!

Don’t go into the light!

Poor kiddie Adelt, you had that blissful “small town were nothing ever happens” life going for you.  Shame your entire village died of a plague/was pillaged/annihilated by demons/sold into slavery/all the above.  Now the exact details of Adelt’s SAD PAST haven’t yet been revealed, but it has to be bad enough that he decided to go be abused by train under some hermit in the mountains.  The logic that to be strong you have to smile no matter the situation is something tried and tested by countless shonen heroes.  What you have here is an attempt to manufacture a shonen hero.

“Hey, I got an order for 3 Naruto class heroes and one Goku!”  “I got some fresh orphans we can make fight a dinosaur, I think we can make it work!”

This episode really makes me want to pity Adelt.  To him, the “Strongest Man in the World” is more of a mantra he tries to tell himself rather than an actual fact.  Adelt wants nothing more to be the Shonen Protagonist, who laughs in the face of danger and over comes his hurdlers with Friendship Effort and Victory.  But the sad reality is that Adelt doesn’t really have what it takes.  He might be a little smarter than the average man and have some neat gadgets, but Adelt isn’t actually stronger than someone with real power.  Kakashi might have countless techniques and tricks, but he still isn’t stronger than Naruto.  If this wasn’t a show that required critical thinking, Adelt would have no place here…

The sad fact is that all this bragging and bluffing is more for Adelt’s own sake than his audience.  You can imitate the “smirk under pressure” that a real hero has, but with Adelt it all seems hollow.  I find this all incredibly interesting, because this really does say a lot about Adelt himself and shonen heroes in general.  It is all just about as interesting as the actual mystery we find Adelt in.  I hope that Adelt can change his mindset, because as he is he is just an imitation of the hero he wants to be.  But nothing is stopping him from being a different kind of hero.  You can’t become Superman, but Batman is an achievable goal.

In the end, I really like Adelt which is why I can write so much about him.  The ideal he is going for versus his actual state is incredibly fascinating to me.  This weeks fact checking wasn’t as interesting, simply because a portion of it was devoted to review.  Who likes to review for test?  As for the stuff about the Eighth traitor, it does make sense.  Having two operatives working to eliminate the Flowers seems very effective compared to having a lone traitor.

You have 80% of the clues needed to solve the mystery.