Oh no, ID-0. Out of all the possibilities you could’ve picked for the climax, you chose the worst possible one. Ido’s past self, Dr. Kane Arisugawa turns out to be an evil scientist, using human as a sacrifice for his own research’s advancement. If this already sounds well-worn, it’s getting worse from there. The first half of the episode is basically an info-dump where the main antagonist literally throws info-dumps screen served as Arisugawa’s memories without shame. Everything makes sense now, in fact it makes too much sense that it leaves out all the ambiguity it had built up to. Adams Forte blah blah blah, our new antagonist, comes from nowhere to become the worst villain, scratch that, the worst character I’ve encountered this year, not a small feat for a character who only appeared in one episode. It’s worrying signs, really, as the climax now seems to be our group tries to regress this Adams dude from his incompetent plan, as the same time saving the humanity just like Maya loved to do. And I don’t care one iota for either one of those. Such a waste since this one had its feet firmly on the ground for two third of the way just to be swept over by this misfired last arc.
The cliffhanger from last week revealed that Ido is Dr. Kane Arisugawa, and this episode goes an extra length detailing us his backstory. Kane, one of the most genius mind of his time, working together with his colleagues Adams and Jennifer. Jennifer had a daughter, Alice, who was disabled so she wanted to Trance Mind Alice to an I-Machine (she would be the first one, if I understand it correctly, to transfer the mind into an I-Machine). Kane had a better idea though, he transferred her mind into the Orichalt and thus she became humanoid Orichalt, an Orillian. The result upset Jennifer and shocked Adams, so in a state of “saving humanity” he eliminated Kane by putting him into the exile ship and wiped out his memory. Now, although I would prefer ID-0 goes different direction than this (well, it’s not bad, I’s just ordinary), the notion that Kane, Ido real self, was ruthless and heartless creates a nice contrast of how much Ido has grown to become his own person. Throughout the course of this episode, even after he regains his full memory, he assured many times that he isn’t Kane but Ido the Excavator, because now he values the friendship of he has with his comrades, Alice and people around him.
This week also reveals that the person behind all this was Adams, one of Kane’s self-proclaimed best friend. Turn out that the very reason he wiped out Kane’s memory, putting him an exile ship and took over his friend’s identity is a mixture of inferior-complex and saving-the-world mentality bullshit. They are superficial at best and most of the time contradicts each other, making his reasons behind every action sound utterly pretentious and inconsistent. For example, his reaction towards meeting Ido is a bit of childish proud that he became someone important now, a bit of wanting recognition from the person he used to look up to, and a bit of self-satisfied that Kane himself deserved the sentence he did to him. All of this still don’t justify why he wanted to kill him NOW, not THEN. He said that he didn’t kill Kane back then because he still regarded him as friend, then why shoot him in the back at the end? He doesn’t have anything of his own personality to begin with, so it’s hard to identify with all his complex. ID-0 tries so hard to paint him as an opposition to Ido that all his actions are unbearable, and plainly annoying over the times. It doesn’t help that he overacts all the time, even in his I-Machine robot version which was supposed to hide your facial expression.
Not all about this episode is going in the wrong direction though. When the show focuses back on the main cast and their chemistry together, they shine through. Karla has a chance to return to her long-lost body, and the moments when she finally tranced back to her body, the fact that she’s overwhelming both because she’s finally back to her body, and because she still isn’t used to the body, is unflinchingly raw and honest. She then decides to shield herself protecting Maya and Alice as a payback for her betrayal – it’s another emotionally satisfied moment. In fact, I hope the show focuses more about them working together in this last arc because if so they can still provide an entertaining and worthy showdown. Otherwise, the longer Adams stays around and affects the plot the closer ID-0 train is going to wreck. I hear a ticking clock now.
I really don’t agree with this negative view. One, all the pieces of the puzzle are finally coming together very nicely and the overall story is making a lot of sense.
Although it’s true the central narrative is focusing on saving humanity, it’s also increasingly shining light on Ido’s situation and the implications that everything we’ve learned has had for him as a person. In other words, that theme is also being explored.
In terms of storytelling that’s a good thing. If you think about it, no revelation has come out of nowhere. That has absolutely nothing to do with a “wreck” if you ask me. Even if you happen to disagree with the direction of the story’s flow on a personal preference level, there is nothing objectively wrong with its general construction. Quite the opposite.
Two, I don’t see what makes Adams the “worst” character. He’s a bad guy and does questionable things, but if anything, I can fully understand his situation after seeing the flashback. He made the right choice by stopping Kane’s plan back then. Sacrificing humanity for an experiment isn’t a good idea. The original Kane was wrong.
Now, his own ego has clearly gotten out of control and the years might have affected Adam’s mind by shifting him closer towards insanity, this is true, but he still genuinely wants to save mankind from the wandering planets and even kept his promise to Karla by giving her body back.
Of course, it’s not good that he’s treating Ido and the others this way, but that makes him misguided rather than truly evil. There’s also his bias towards Kane, which he still can’t let got of in his treatment of Ido.
Either way, Adam’s goal isn’t to dominate the universe or enslave humanity. Just to be recognized as its savior by solving a real problem: wandering planets are attacking humanity because of their dependence on orichalt. Plus, I liked how the voice actor’s performance reflected Adam’s state of mind. It was quite fun to watch in my opinion.
Thanks for giving your thoughts Madonis, and I respect your opinion but I stand by what I said. In the review I mentioned that the revelation isn’t bad itself, it’s just ordinary. For Adams, it’s no coincidence that I said him come from nowhere. Prior to this episode, there was no mention or hint of his existence everywhere (that’s bad writing), they have to make an info-dumps flashback to bridge that gap (that isn’t subtle at all), and most of all he doesn’t have any personal traits that make him… him. All I see is his obsessions towards Kane, not his personality. For me, Adam’s just there to move the plot forward (bring Ido’s memories back and present the bigger plot threat) and that’s the worst kind of character.
I’d argue otherwise about your point though.
We hadn’t heard the name “Adams” before, yes, but there was foreshadowing about the character in a couple of early episodes. The clues are there if you go back and examine, including some that are actually pretty subtle.
We’ve been seeing the Masked Man in almost every episode, I believe, and certain implications could be derived from this alone, but the original Adams himself and Jennifer were explicitly seen in the presentation about Mind Transfer technology shown back in episode 2.
We also had another cryptic flashback that alluded to what Adams told Kain when sending him into the transfer pod (blaming him for his sins against humanity, etc). It wasn’t immediately clear at the time, but now these pieces of information all fit. Which is why it isn’t bad writing.
In any case, I don’t think everything that is not “subtle” equals bad. Otherwise, we’d have to criticize every single show that has had a flashback or an info-dump.
It’s perfectly fine that we have different opinions on this. But for the sake of this argument (thank you for putting up with me, haha), let me just compare the plot revelation of Kane to Adams. I actually think revealing the true identity of Kane is quite well done since we learnt all the pieces before: he was in an exile ship; someone called him “a threat to humanity”; his very first attitude when encounter our group was “every man for himself – I don’t save you, you don’t save me (my favorite detail actually). So when it’s revealed that Kane was ruthless it all makes sense.
Not so much with Adams. What the show failed so far is putting Adams as the “boss”- the one who actively change the main plot when there was little development for him. Apart from the flashback you mentioned, when he was in Masked Man mode he did little to further his personality traits, or offer any solid backstory. We need to actually know about who he was BEFORE we learn that he’s our enemy, not the other way around. And like I mentioned before, all his reactions in this episode all pointed towards his relationship with Kane, if we leave Kane out of this equation, Adams’d become a character with no real personality. In fact I still consider him more as a plot device than actual character.
The info-dump flashback I feel distaste not only because it’s not subtle, but also because it was too convenient. Building up a character development is a process of fleshing them out bit by bit, not some “now we showing you the big catalyst that changed everything”. It feels like cheating to me.