misogyny in agito past hojos pathetic useless waste of space behavior begin ... well it was always there tbh! [i think this began drafting at 17?]
seeing hojo as not someone with a specific vendetta against ozawa is a failure of the police by default. but then we bring in his teacher, tsukasa, who immediately addresses hikawa first at the table out of all three SAUL members, asks for his point of view, and then prompts ozawa to follow up on hikawa. like shes not the woman in charge of all of it. he asks if they know why, and hikawa goes uh.. and ozawa says No. We don't know yet. and he immediately says oh so you dont know ANYTHING you USELESS FUCKS. obviously we know where hojo gets it
the thing about ozawa is that she is a genius. she went to MIT young. she invented the entire G3 system with her bare hands. she runs SAUL and its her duty. but it does not Belong To Her. the other officers are all men, her senior officers are all men. and they constantly try to take the wheel out of her hands. they constantly take hojos word over her own despite his constant failures and proving himself to be a pathetic coward. ozawa gets NO special treatment, which in theory is reasonable, but she doesnt get Standard treatment either. no matter how smart she is, she is a woman, and in the police (or anywhere in the workforce) that means she has to tolerate pathetic loser men with no talent and no skill beyond being an obsessive bootlicking dipshit being treated as on the same level as her. IT FUCKING SUCKS!
even the addition of tsukasa as his mentor does not absolve him. take a gander at this very funny screenshot.
see, the plot in the episodes leading to 19 is that tsukasa is rigging the game against SAUL to get away with murder and nepotism, and in doing so being a misogynistic and condescending prick towards ozawa and her unit and their intelligence overall. the thing is that hojo goes along with this! there is no point in these episodes where he is acting differently than usual except when he realizes his mentor Probably killed someone. if he is otherwise, its because hes so happy to torment ozawa along with his mentor. if anything, this shows that hojo is good at detective work when he applies himself. but he doesnt apply himself to anything but trying to make ozawa's life worse because hes obsessed with the G3 unit.
the only person who gets the grace of a bias being removed is another man in a senior position. not a woman. never a woman.
and ozawa is still kind enough to invite him to bbq afterwards. 🖕
then, you know, V-1 with a board full of male builders, the "best in the world", trying to surpass the G3-X. there is no implication that hojo did a smidge of it himself.
"i flaunt you to express my own ability, but how dare you think youre anyone who matters". feeling threatened by her intellect to the point of admitting that if he saw G3-X's proposal he would give up on V-1, to try to knock her down pegs that she earned and deserves. these are all the kinds of people hojo allies with willingly! doubting her honesty and her will and her dedication to her job. not listening to her as a person and going over her head to the men in charge. and there is nothing ozawa can do about it but prove them wrong, over and over, even if they keep doubting the abilities shes proven she has. over and over.
even her own unit member!!!
for hojo, after G3-X proves its worth, this stops his overeager direct haranguement of them, though hes still unpleasant whenever they meet. at least now hes actually doing his job, and for what its worth, hes pretty good at it when hes not wasting his time annoying SAUL.
ozawa is fantastic because these obstacles are neverending, but she never gives up, and she never truly backs down. she refuses to cede any undeserved ground. and her flaw is exactly the same as her strength: shes too smart, she makes things that are too powerful, and theyre hard for others to handle. G3-X injures hikawa so badly he should not be able to move. in that way, things that are too perfect are dangerous, and human flaw is what allows us to shine. it's not that she believed too much in either G3-X or hikawa, but instead that the pursuit of perfection is, in of itself, flawed. in that way, shes a true agito protagonist.
