let's get dusty

Like, where do you begin here? They’re practically made for each other, Takumi killing him [and absorbing his hemoanima] in route 0 was /the/ damning act that bound them together for every reset thereafter. They bring out the absolute best and worst in each other, and prove that they both, deep down, lack the strength to carry out their convictions despite the gravity that they’re treated with. They both possess qualities that, at a surface level, seem completely at odds with their respective goals.

Takumi is, as we know, majorly invested in saving everyone — he takes on this savior/martyr role where he shoulders basically every act that requires judgement some way or another, including everyone’s burdens and the continued war effort. He is so deeply entrenched in the belief that if no one else does it, he has to, to the point of actually being pretty brutal about it; in these positions where he has to make increasingly difficult decisions, he’s the one who has to choose the most pragmatic options — even if it directly leads to others, and often himself, getting hurt — for the sake of survival, to make it to the end of the 100 days.

Really, there’s a sort of resignation to Takumi’s character where he actually ends up being pretty complicit to [often needless] violence when the situation “calls for it” (ie. Eva getting repeatedly tortured). He’s not usually in a position where he protests wrongs (even if he internally disagrees with them), instead seeing the war (and by extension the violence associated with it) as an inevitability — an immutable factor. He’s more on the reactive side than proactive. If given the mullen, he will bite it, often unquestioningly. Takumi is a character that changes drastically depending on the choices that are made, but I’d argue on an overarching level that it’s the possibilities that he considers that really define him as a character. Everyone knows that Eito’s skill names (judge, jury, and executioner) reflect him on a personal level, but Takumi is put in the same position time and time again, as well. (Notably, Takumi’s foreknowledge and past experiences do have the tendency to inhibit his ability to make sound judgement — there’s a reason that court of law deems evidence of other unrelated crimes inadmissible because it interferes in judging the here-and-now).

* One of my favorite aspects of the Multiple Eitos route is Takumi’s tangible shift in thought process — from “Why didn’t I choose to spare him?” to “Why did I let him live in the first place?” I like how the true route sort of pushes that further, in the way it encourages you to take certain options (choose Kyoshika, to help Nozomi and Kurara reconcile, and because she has additional dialogue that makes her death seem less cruel and more willing; choose Gaku because he is vital to learning more information; let Shouma kill Eva because it is vital to learning more information and because Eva is an ‘uncontrollable and unstable variable’ not worth investing in any longer). He’s so viciously pragmatic at times — a true “Whatever it takes” mindset (and showcase of his circular reasoning).

On the other hand, there’s Eito, who lands on the opposite side of the spectrum with this “Hell is other people”-oriented worldview (a fallacy of mind projection). He hates humanity with a passion, he believes himself fully righteous having been given the ability to see humanity for what it really is, and thus he feels justified in carrying out the extermination of all of humanity. There is an emotional core to his ideals despite him initially presenting cold, harsh logic and cunning — the fact that he grew up isolated from the world around him, in reality wanting companionship but being unable to trust in it both due to his affliction, being alone in his affliction, and the evidence he bases his logical argument around (the books that he read). Even then, the books themselves end up being a supplement to his lack of human connection, a grasp for some sort of understanding — for something to reaffirm the world he views on an outward level so as to justify it(s) (and his) existence. With Eito, there’s a repeated motif surrounding him about what it means to be defective, a glitch, an aberration, an uncontrollable variable that’s (as stated later on by Sirei) not meant to be there — something that Eito protests long before the nature of his exact existence is revealed. It’s clearly a doctrine that he is intimately familiar with having grown up more or less confined to a hospital after his own parents — who are supposed to be the very epitome of unconditional love (which extends to forgiveness) — gave up on him, leading to his inability to comprehend it.

I should say, the intriguing part about Takumi to Eito is that by the first reset, Takumi has effectively made himself an outlier just as Eito has been; it’s the fact that Takumi has the option (and is narratively compelled) to give Eito not just a second chance, but a third chance, at living and proving himself despite having multiple timelines (as a testament to his ability to be irredeemably reprehensible) stacked against him. Would I call it unconditional love, per se? Not really. But it is this idea that, in spite of all of Eito’s faults and his standing as a variable that is technically illogical to keep around during a war that begs vicious and inhumane pragmatism, Eito has a right to exist. It’s this that has him opening up his world just enough to let the Special Defense Unit exist beyond a generalization — or to at least entertain the idea of it.

* On a semi-unrelated tangent, the choice to have Eito literally rip out his eyes and replace his previously clear-viewed lenses with tinted frames is absolutely interesting thematically; although there is the aforementioned emotional point in his worldview, he tends to operate on a sort of unrelenting vicious logic when it comes to humanity that leaves little to no room for stragglers. He places a lot of value in his judgement and where he stands so as to make [what he perceives to be] the correct choices both strategically and when it comes to justice and comeuppance. He puts an insane amount of pride in his ability to ‘see clearly’, so both the fact that he willingly discards that and sees it as absolutely necessary to trust the others as his comrades goes to show that he believes himself to be impeding on his judgement to take that leap.

That said, Eito’s perspective, while very extremist, is absolutely a necessary counterbalance to the war effort and the predatory nationalism of the Last Defense Academy. Takumi states time and time again that he dreads learning new truths, often wishing he never learnt them at all. Eito, on the other hand, actively searches for the harsh reality of the aforementioned war effort even if it comes from a place of bad faith. Just the introduction of skepticism goes a long way, and it’s that that allows the others to humanize the Futurans instead of giving in to the rampant propaganda presented by the Academy. At the end of the day, it’s about reaching this middleground: “humanity can be terrible, we have been made to do something terrible for the sake of survival, but that doesn’t define our future — we can take the initiative to right the wrongs of our predecessors.”

Anyways, when it comes to Eitaku, there’s a definite push-and-pull dynamic here. They have the mutual ability to bring out the best in each other just as they have the ability to bring out the absolute worst. As stated, a defining part of Eito’s character is his need for autonomy and control when the circumstances of his birth were outside of it (control is a facet of Takumi’s character, albeit in a different way — ‘Its your future!’). By killing Eito, Takumi is both corroborating Eito’s cynicism regarding humanity and completely removing his agency — his opportunity to redeem himself.

In ways of the former, it’s about bringing each other to the very brink of hate-filled insanity as a twisted form of companionship (Eito absolutely sees Takumi as his nemesis, but up until then was seen more like a roadblock to work around for Takumi. Multiple Eitos revolves around actualizing the former until it’s mutual. This, in itself, is a form of understanding. For Takumi, dropping down to Eito’s level; for Eito, radicalizing Takumi up to his). As for the latter, the Multiple Eitos Route is exactly about repaying that in kind (literally taking over Takumi’s body, denying him the ability to save his friends, making his time-traveling escapades effectively moot).

What’s neat about Multiple Eitos is that it is technically a foil to Goodbye Eito and the True Route. While Multiple Eitos showcases Takumi’s capacity to be rationally cruel to the point of irrationality, the latter routes are case studies in Eito’s ability to display genuine kindness (it’s so important to Goodbye Eito that it’s children that Eito encounters in the perimeters, especially when there’s both a certain sort of childishness to his ideals, and the fact that he killed whomever tried to befriend him as a child; he is given the opportunity to perpetuate the cycle of hatred and isolation he suffered as a child but chooses not to, encouraging them to find community. In a way, the true route encompasses ideas of breaking such cycles, Takumi doing a similar thing when he and the group voluntarily accepts death to stop the massacre of the Futurans — when Nozomi chooses kindness by reaching out to them in spite of the tragedy of her situation).