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EP. REVIEW: Inuyashiki Last Hero

meiam wrote:

Hiro is just an amoral asshole.

No, Hiro is a sociopath. The kind that cannot feel remorse for his actions. These type of people do exist in real life. If they had super-powers it's reasonable to assume some of them would act like Hiro.

Also no, most interesting bad guys don't make us secretly root for them. I don't know why would would think that.

@ meiam - where did you get the idea that sociopaths don't kill for fun? They kill based on whatever their compulsions are. If a sociopath likes killing women, he'll most likely target prostitutes because when they go missing people assume they've just moved away or something and don't look as hard. Believe me, this sickos find that "fun." Sociopaths rarely kill for some rational objective like getting ahead in business.

Hiro isn't killing just for fun. He has no empathy so he's experimenting on people. He's trying to find out if he can elicit any emotion from killing his random victims, like he can feel reading a volume of One Piece, for example. So far his experiments have failed.

persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits

@ meiam - where did you get the idea that sociopaths don't kill for fun? They kill based on whatever their compulsions are. If a sociopath likes killing women, he'll most likely target prostitutes because when they go missing people assume they've just moved away or something and don't look as hard. Believe me, this sickos find that "fun." Sociopaths rarely kill for some rational objective like getting ahead in business.

Hiro isn't killing just for fun. He has no empathy so he's experimenting on people. He's trying to find out if he can elicit any emotion from killing his random victims, like he can feel reading a volume of One Piece, for example. So far his experiments have failed.

No, a sociopath doesn't feel remorse for his action, but that doesn't mean they'll kill for fun.

Sahmbahdeh wrote:

Also, I think there's some interesting things to be said about the nature of a villain who takes the idea of "I only care about my friends and family" to the logical extreme. Also, his constant references to One Piece may be playing off that manga's obsession with 'nakama', and the idea of friendship above all else, even at the expense of others.

It does look like Hiro's villainous moral system is partly a criticism of the simplistic morality of a shonen jump protagonist that only fights for his friends. While that does keep a story simple it does basically teach the concept that morality is tied into how familiar you are with other people. Complex objective moral systems are difficult to explain to children but they are a requirement for modern society in which the vast majority of people will be strangers.

@ lebrel - yes, I am aware that sociopath does not equal killer. My point is that sociopaths who do kill do so out of compulsion. The sating of that compulsion is a form of "fun" for some of them. I don't believe Hiro is killing just for the "fun" of it. He has discovered he has uncanny abilities that allow him to kill with near impunity. Now he's experimenting to see if killing random strangers can evoke some sort of emotional response in him, like he can get by reading manga. The fact that he is a sociopath, and thus cannot empathize with strangers, means his experiments will always "fail."

meiam wrote:

No, a sociopath doesn't feel remorse for his action, but that doesn't mean they'll kill for fun.

Hiro is not killing for fun. He's killing so he can feel something. Killing people gives his a rush just like saving people gives Inu a rush. You see that after he killed he said "I'm alive". The killing is not the ends it's just the means. If he could get the same rush another way he would probably do it. But since he does seem to be at least somewhat of a sociopath he does not realize there are other ways.

Episode 2 is basically "What if Ayn Rand had a robot body?"

These two have basically become omnipotent godlike creatures, but what's the price they have to pay? How much of their original "soul" (for lack of a better word) is still left? Hiro claims that he's still the same but his friend tells him that he's changed, so how much are they actually aware of these changes? It would be interesting if the show focused more on these kind of issues, though i somehow doubt that is going to happen...

Was anyone else reminded of Ralph Hinkley and his supersuit during the flying sequence? Come to think of it, half the premise seems to be cribbed from The Greatest American Hero, which had aliens bestow a body suit that made Ralph superpowered, he didn't know what all it did or how it worked, and in the second season there was even a second person who had been gifted with the suit, but used its powers for evil. Can't wait for the Maxwell character to show up...