(1/5)I’ve been thinking about why Daisuke isn’t affected by Belial Vamdemon's mind control, and I think I’ve finally settled on my headcanon. To me, the reason isn’t that Daisuke is perfectly satisfied with every aspect of his life. Instead, it’s that by instinctively channeling his primary virtue, Courage, he becomes temporarily immune to mind manipulation.
"Daisuke was full of shit and was actually just very tunnel-visioned on fighting BelialVamdemon" is the only explanation that really makes sense, but it's also unsatisfying because it undercuts what's clearly meant to be a moment of actualization for his character.
For me, I just feel like it's a payoff without adequate setup. It's positioned like it's meant to be the final statement on his character. This is who he's become, who he's been forged into by the experiences he's undergone throughout this series.
But we've just been so busy these last couple dozen episodes doing this that and the other thing that we forgot to, y'know, actually show the forging. We heated the metal and began hammering an outline of a person. But there's a gap between the hammering and Daisuke emerging from the water as a finished product.
We saw, especially with his relationship to Ken, Daisuke becoming the kind of person for whom resolution with his feelings for Hikari and his feelings for Jun and whatever may or may not be going on with his parents is possible. We just. Forgot to actually resolve those things onscreen.
Note that Daisuke's not the only one that gets screwed this way. Once we hit the Holy Stones and the plot begins to take precedence over fleshing out the characters, Miyako, Takeru, and Hikari also aren't given a lot of focus. Well, Takeru is, but only insofar as talking about his relationship with darkness. His feelings about the divorce, which the Mind Illusion centers, barely even comes up.
The Holy Stone arc is about Iori, Takeru, and Ken. The World Tour arc is a super fast-paced introduction for all of these different characters using our protagonists as the vehicle for meeting them. And then the Oikawa arc, the final arc of the series, is just about Iori and Ken; The rest of the cast are window dressing around those two.
In the back half, the show just doesn't have room to explore the personal dramas of its primary cast unless they're directly related to its main plot. The Holy Stones are where we abruptly and violently switch gears from being character-driven to plot-driven.
With the veteran Chosen Children, main antagonist Oikawa, and new characters like BlackWarGreymon and the global Chosen Children all grabbing up so much of the spotlight that we barely get to spend any time at all in the approach to the finale putting capstones on the main six characters' emotional growth and development.
There's just too much other stuff happening and not enough time to do it all in. For which I ultimately blame the six episodes spent on the Holy Stones and the decision to cut the show by 4 episodes from the previous. I think the World Tour/Oikawa arc having 10 more episodes to it would pretty much fix every single thing wrong with it.
It just needs the space to take its time, breathe, and give everyone and everything their final dues.