eto's not dead

I appreciate so damn much that Zora turned out not to be the big bad, but just one more cog of the cause & consequence machina that seems to be one of Choujin X's themes.

Zora's a villain in the instance that she feared the future so much and trusted in her visions so blindly that another faction led by Mado's dreams and nightmares assembled to fight against her own. Yet Mado's own beliefs obviously led to a lot of damage on her side, because it was all mostly done for the purpose of "protecting people" against Zora's visions.

In that aspect, it makes so much more sense that leadership-in-the-wrong is not what we're fighting here, but regrets are :

Hence Batista going insane about wanting to protect & recreate the past, a time when he still had a choice about the path he wanted to take, before both leaders basically destroyed his life (amongst others) by fear of the future (probably triggering that exact future, because we love time paradoxes).

This, in turn, really echoes with the main trio's path in the story : as @kakujaeto pointed out in this nice post, Tokio's acceptance of being used as a tool is contrasting a lot with Azuma who, upon learning of his true nature, rejected that concept entirely (which also makes sense considering he wants to be a hero so badly and heroes definitely can't be defined as someone else's pawn, right ?).

This is particularly interesting considering that, until recently, Azuma seemed to 100% believe in Mado's faction, while Tokio was more open about negotiating with Zora's. Meanwhile, as always, Ely was the opposite force (ch47)...

...meaning she mainly believes in herself and her own capacities, following her own moral compass, no pressure of being neither a tool nor a hero hindering her, no one dictating her life.

With Batista having stolen the mark (if I got that right), things have gone batshit crazy and I do enjoy that this recreation means the different narrative parallels are becoming very intricate : on the one hand, we have Batista who became a big villain thanks to the joint effort of Zora & Mado (many thanks, ladies) ; and on the other we still have the ongoing parallel between Azuma as Queem's heir, Tokio who was supposed to inherit Zora's mark and maybe Ely as Antitise (unless Tokio inherits that role now that Zora's mark was taken by Batista ?). What a cliffhanger !

as the fledgling vulture floundered through the air, the boy realized that he was no longer the vulture's personal hero.