forever on my anime bullshit

we don't talk enough about how rudo asked riyo specifically to kill him if his transformation went wrong

prior to this moment, she was contemplating retreating with the belief that facing mymo in their current state was a lost cause. normally, she's cocky. impulsive. she jumps into situations without any information and comes up with a plan as she goes. this, however, is the new riyo. the one who has learned from her near death experience against the humanoid trash beast during the information broker arc.

but then rudo asks her to revert back into the person she once was, the version of her who likely killed someone that was close to her (see this post for an in-depth breakdown on that).

(that post goes into detail about how whenever riyo is recalling her past, the manga only ever shows half of her face btw, which is something that is consistent here.)

this frame is the only reaction we get of her - the next time we see her is a couple of chapters later in 159 when she comments that felix and gil are missing, so we get no follow up to how she feels about this request.

so, we don't see any follow-up on this (at least not as of chapter 172 part 1). that being said, we do get some idea of how she might be feeling based on the conversation before rudo made his request:

"a human can't quit being human"

the conversation was between rudo and gountess about mymo trying to turn himself into a god, so i find it notable that we get a reaction shot from riyo, of all people, in this panel.

riyo, whose past life as an assassin has likely made her question her own humanity. riyo, who is still human regardless of how many lives she took. riyo, who is watching mymo turn himself into a monster - a being she might relate to in an abstract way - makes this face upon hearing that someone like that is still human.

unless she has some knowledge about gods, which i doubt based on her reaction to the word, i feel it's safe to assume that she's relating this situation to herself.

maybe someone she loved asked her to kill them in the past. maybe she asked someone else to kill her and they didn't. either way, rudo asking this of her clearly struck a nerve.

No because literally Riyo is so detached from her humanity that she doesn't try as hard to keep up the facade?? And other people even notice this about her?? And then Rudo asks her to kill him and she reacts like THAT??

she's a victim to a corrupt system and was told that rudo was found murdering the man who took care of him . all she knew was rudo was framed as a murderer and she had only ever known this system , how would she know to go against it ?

ITS THEM (indiviual transparent ver under the cut)

I've seen this theory once or twice and didn't think too much of it since I think there are more compelling options for the second angel, HOWEVER @sun-ashes and I were chatting about Riyo and it inspired me to look closer into the evidence. I've spent the past couple of days rereading the manga with the lens of Riyo possibly being the second angel and tbh I am a bit more convinced than I was before:

Starting out small, but I noticed that during the Lady of Penta arc, Riyo and Tamsy never speak to each other. I don't think this is significant alone - she doesn't talk to Delmon or Follo or Tomme in this arc either - but it's just something to put a pin in and track through the rest of the series. If they are working together, they likely won't be leaving a paper trail between them in public.

Okay, next up:

This is the first time we really see Riyo's distrustful nature and how quick she is to mentally turn friends into foes. The obvious explanation for this is her history as an assassin (perhaps she had to deceive her targets before killing them, so she has firsthand experience on the other side of betrayal?) and whatever happened between her and her parents (at this point in the series, all we know about her is her complicated feelings about parents in general, nothing specific to her own).

That being said, if we're looking at this from the perspective of her potentially being the second angel, then she would already know firsthand that there is betrayal sewn into the Cleaners already, so of course she wouldn't trust her team when given the slightest reason not to.

After Amo tells the Cleaners her story, as well as on the car ride back, only two people really question how the angels were able to cross the boarder and how Rudo made it down: Tamsy and Riyo.

In Amo's tower, Tamsy takes the "this girl's mentally unstable route" for reasons we already know, but everyone else is coming up with their own theories. Riyo is the only one to ask questions. And in the car, they both question Rudo about his descent to the Ground:

Obviously, as a former assassin, Riyo is probably trained to gather intel as much as possible. It's probably second nature to her. However, if she is the second angel, then her asking questions makes her appear ignorant while also fishing to see what everyone else knows. Tamsy does the same thing when Rudo says he saw something on his way down. (Regardless of whether or not she's the second angel, I do think it's odd that Riyo is the only other one asking questions. Not Enjin, not Zanka, not Gris, and not even the record keeper, Tomme. Just Tamsy and Riyo.)

Okay, now onto Riyo's fight with Noerde, which is where we really start to see some cracks forming:

First of all, this line always stood out to me:

Riyo being afraid of a cockroach is played for laughs, but also... why? Why include this? And why did Noerde bring up the fact that she lives "on the Ground"? The obvious implication of that statement is "You live on the Ground, don't you? A cockroach shouldn't bother you."

Yes, Noerde is a warrior and she feels a certain kind of way about fear and weakness, so it may just be a statement that characterizes Noerde, but it also plants a seed of doubt about Riyo. Is she from the Ground? Did she not grow up desensitized to the constant presence of cockroaches? Sure, she can have silly fears, but she's literally a former assassin. Being startled by anything kind of handicaps you in that line of work.

Unless, of course, she was an assassin in a place where there were no cockroaches.

Of course, we have this panel to disprove the idea that she was an assassin exclusively from the Sphere:

If she was born and raised there, and also was an assassin there, then she wouldn't have had a vital instrument due to lack of access to anima. That being said, if she's someone with the ability to go back and forth, the possibilities are endless as to how she could have managed to have the Ripper on the Sphere.

Just some food for thought.

Anyway.

Next, I wanna talk about these incredibly suspicious panels:

HELLO??

Okay, hear me out: if we isolated those two quotes and if I had no idea Riyo was the one who said them, I would have assumed they belonged to Tamsy.

"There's no telling how things are gonna go with Rudo." GIRL, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? That's a Tamsy statement if I've ever heard one. How what is going to go with Rudo? Him being a Cleaner? Him finding a way back to the Sphere like he said he wants to do?

What does this have to do with Amo?

Rudo connecting with Amo, another wielder of a Watchman series item, has fundamentally changed his life on the Ground and his perspective of life there. He said that talking to her and hearing her story calmed him down from his anger, which is something Tamsy certainly doesn't want. Now, Rudo is trying to save Amo and doing so means that he's building a life on the Ground. He's making friends and creating a network of people he cares about and wants to protect. He has other priorities besides getting his revenge on the Sphere and the angels.

So why would Riyo want him to have forgotten about Amo? What purpose does that serve?

Honestly, this is the biggest question mark for me when it comes to Riyo and, with all the information we currently have, the only thing that really makes sense is her being the second angel.

Okay, let's bring ourselves over to the Doll Festival:

So, uh, hey... What's up with this?

Why do those supposed Sphereites know something so specific about Riyo? Why, out of everyone else there, do they single her out and make note of her "lack of humanity?" (Speaking of, here is a post I made about Riyo and the other mentions of "humanity" in the Doll Festival arc.)

We can't be sure if Riyo knows the woman with the glasses, but we can probably assume that Tamsy does. Of course, nothing's confirmed, but if a random person from the Sphere has information about the Cleaners, who else would she get it from? The only other person who has traveled between worlds. And, if she doesn't already know Riyo personally, why would Tamsy tell her about Riyo's willingness to cast aside her humanity? How would he even know that? Presumably, no one else in the Cleaners knows that she was an assassin aside from Enjin and maybe Corvus and Semiu. Why would anyone else know?

How would anyone else know?

If not Tamsy, we'd have to assume that the woman knows either Mymo, Gountess, or Kuro - the only other people who could have found out about Riyo's past without her telling them. It's not impossible, especially since Mymo could have easily had help learning about gods (given that all information about them on the Ground has been erased), but in even in that case: why would Mymo, Kuro, or Gountess be talking to this random woman about Riyo?

If Riyo is the second angel and these people from the Sphere know Tamsy, then the dots connect themselves.

(Look, for full transparency, the woman with the glasses here is my current prime suspect for being the second angel. Sure, she doesn't have the amount of evidence that other characters do, but she also doesn't have anything going against her either. She's just someone who can move between the Ground and the Sphere and, based on this conversation, has clearly done it before. I will admit that her being the second angel would be an underwhelming reveal in comparison, though.)

Finally, we have this panel:

I speculated in this post that Riyo says this because she might have killed someone close to her in the past, specifically her father. That theory doesn't inherently conflict with her being the second angel, but it does directly mirror and complicate Tamsy's "act of love" statement.

Tamsy believes that the ends justify the means, and that everything he's done has been out of a pure love for Rudo/his mission.

Riyo believes that love is a liability. If it's "too strong" the "cracks" will get in. Using love as a motivator is a surefire way for the entire operation to split in two (just like Felix's barrier).

Regardless of whether or not Riyo is the second angel, this parallel is fascinating. These two characters have never spoken to each other from what we've seen and yet they each conceptualize love in a way that specifically challenges one another. From a writing standpoint, we have to ask: why would Kei Urana draw that line between them if there was nothing else connecting their characters?

"Oh, but what about Enjin's leash on her? He told her not to kill people! He told her to protect her friends from enemies! She wouldn't kill anyone, so she can't be the second angel!" I hear you, I hear you, BUT being the second angel doesn't inherently mean she killed anyone. It just means she didn't stop Tamsy from killing Regto. If she sees the Cleaners as her friends, which I truly believe she does, then she would have no problem getting her hands dirty to keep them safe. Look at what she did to Noerde, And if she is the second angel, then I wholeheartedly believe she would have done so with the intention of protecting her loved ones. We don't know her motivations, but I'd bet such extreme actions are justified from her perspective (well, we don't know Tamsy's full motivations, so we can't even begin to speculate what the second angel wants either).

Also, final note, but I think the "We have to protect out friends from our enemies" line is interesting because based on the context in the chapter, the assumption is that Enjin told her that, but there's actually no hard proof that it was him. Anyone could have drilled that into her. Enjin, her old boss, Tamsy, anyone.

In conclusion:

Do I think Riyo is the second angel?

Hmmm.... maybe. I used to dismiss this theory, but now I am on the fence about it. There's a lot of compelling evidence that could suggest she is the angel, but we also don't know much about her in general, so it's hard to have strong feelings about it either way. She intentionally keeps things hidden about herself both from other characters and also from us, the audience. A lot of the weird things about her would make sense if she was the second angel, but also her backstory is a blank canvas and all of those odd things she's said could be explained in a million other ways - we won't know until we get more of her backstory how plausible any of this is.

It's definitely possible, though. The crumbs are there. I think her initial feelings about wishing Rudo had forgotten about Amo, as well as the strangeness surrounding her at the Doll Festival, are hard to explain without her having some sort of involvement with Tamsy/the Sphere, at least at this point in the story.

I would also like to point out that if you consider the height difference between the Tamsy and the second angel, Riyo is significantly shorter than him so that would line up

And someone has pointed this out before but in this context it supports this theory-Riyo and Tamsy's characters being a reference the three strings of fate from Greek Mythology. Specifically to Clotho-The Spinner who spun the thread of life wielding a distaff (just like Tamsy's jinki Tokushin) and symbolizes the creation of destiny and life's potential (similar to how Tamsy wants to push forward Rudo's potential and unleash his rage/curse). And Atropos-The Cutter, also know as the sister fate who cut life's thread directly and ended a person's life with her scissors (ALSO just like Riyo who's jinki, The Ripper, are scissors and is in similar fashion-associated with death as Riyo has killed many as a former assassin).

This nod to the Greek myth would make so much sense if Tamsy and Riyo are connected in some sense. I have no clue who in Gachiakuta would be the sister fate Lachiesis (The Alloter, who by definition assigns or distributes something) who measures the string of life (could very much be camera girl from dollfest maybe for the reasons you stated and because a camera could be interpreted as taking a snapshot of someone's life, aka measuring it in real time AND for the fact that Riyo doesn't like being in pictures). But this would tie in all of three gachiakuta characters who take inspiration from the myth that are women and/or have femininity tied to them. And gachiakuta loves its Greek Mythology references so this wouldn't shock me at all.

Another thing to add on this potential theory is way more subtle but significant if you can pick up what I'm putting down.

Riyo has never intentionally sought out to visit any other character by herself or with anyone while they were in the infirmary that we see in the manga. With Gris she wasn't there, Zanka either despite him being her close friend and teammate, or even Follo. The only we see her in the infirmary is when she HAD to, when she was gravely injured by the trashbeast in the infobreaker arc which allowed for Kuro to ask if she wanted to know anything about her mother-which she says no to harshly. Giving a huge breadcrumb about her character and past. The only other time being is when she's looking for Rudo, but stumbles upon seeing him and Amo together, which is unintentional as she did not know he would be in the infirmary. But she takes the opportunity anyway to threaten Amo with her scissors when she sends Rudo away.

Which if you think about, is similar to Tamsy. The only times we see him visiting someone in the infirmary is for Follo and Amo which weren't for innocent reasons. And both times were to observe Rudo. Second time being to make sure Amo didn't remember anything about who really kidnapped and tortured her.

And for BOTH Riyo and Tamsy's interactions with Amo in the infirmary, their more less than innocent intentions are shown AFTER Rudo leaves.

The time where some of the Cleaners go to Alice after leaving Amo's tower could be counted to but that instance was because of Enjin wanting to stop by to see her.

Of course this isn't anything concrete, just purely speculative and something to think about.

(Originally, I had a very silly headcanon that "Riyo Reaper" is not Riyo's actual name and that she might have changed it after leaving her old job. Or, at the very least, I thought that "Reaper" might not be her real last name since "Grim Reaper" was very on-the-nose. Also the nod to Jack "the Ripper" felt like something a young, emo teen might come up with lmao)

I also love the detail about Riyo's hospital visiting habits! It is strange that she never visited Gris or Zanka (especially Zanka), but I had chalked that up to thinking that maybe she's the type to visit by herself. At first, I thought her visiting Amo was a red herring due to how they ended up being friendly with each other, but you're absolutely right in how odd it is considering that she's never visited anyone else!! And especially considering her initial feelings about Amo, it makes it especially odd, like maybe she has hidden motives..

I've also spent a lot of time wondering how Tamsy, who didn't have a Watchman series item at the time, crossed the boarder. My current theory is that he doesn't need one due to bloodline reasons, or maybe some other item connected to the "gods," but it's also possible that either he or Riyo swiped Enjin's watch without him noticing. If anyone could do it, it would be her..

The only missing piece is that the angel (presumably Tamsy, but it could have been Riyo/the second angel) returned alone. If Riyo is the angel, it would have had to be her who returned since she was there to meet Rudo on his first day on the Ground. BUT ALSO Tamsy was in the room when Enjin first brought Rudo to headquarters, so they would have returned very close together in time... Hmm...

The timing of it all is the biggest piece of evidence against it being Riyo tbh, but I'm sure Kei Urana could come up with something... Also, just because Amo saw one angel return doesn't mean the other didn't go back sometime before and she just missed it. Like, maybe Riyo returned earlier/at night when Amo was sleeping to return Enjin's watch before he noticed it was missing... lol okay, I'm totally just speculating out of my ass here haha!

Ughhh I love Riyo so much, she's such a devious little rat (affectionate) and I want to study her brain under a microscope. I kind of hope that she is the second angel ngl. I have a mini theory about the angel being Hyo, but I think Riyo would be more devastating and thematically relevant, but also who knows where the story will lead us. If anyone is going to break my heart into a million little pieces, it should be Riyo, she's earned it lol

Paper Cuts - (G, Complete)

Hyo will always find a reason to visit the infirmary where, as luck would have it, Eishia is always there waiting for her.

Painted Hearts - (G, Complete)

Hyo runs into Eishia in Canvas Town on Valentine's day and is invited to a paint bar for couples. One hopes it's a date, while the other is confident that it is.

Pollinate and Medicate - (G, Complete)

Hyo gets hit with pollen allergies after becoming a Cleaner and being exposed to Delmon's flowers. Unfortunately, there's no cure, but Eishia is still there to make everything better.

Pupils Dilating - (G, Complete)

Hyo is no stranger to making up illnesses as an excuse to visit Eishia in the medical ward, but this time she actually needs some attention, medical or otherwise.

Patient Care - (M, Complete)

Eishia is just a doctor and Hyo is just her patient... At least, that's what she keeps trying to tell herself.

Pecks and Stitches - (G, Complete)

In which Hyo is convinced that a single kiss (or two, or three) from Eishia will somehow heal the wound on her arm. This is, of course, in spite of the fact that she needs stitches.

Possessive Tendencies - (T, Complete)

Hyo doesn't question much about her new life as a member of the Cleaners; she simply does as she's told. That being said, there is one thing that's been bothering her as of late: who exactly is this "Follo" person, and why the fuck is he standing so close to Eishia?

Physical Touch - (M, Ongoing)