Thinking about how for 2/3 of his life thus far, Risu has essentially been a tool just as much as a symbolism for a pipe dream-- even down to his extremely rare magic type. He’s a single ant in a colony as part of the Cross Eyes, he’s a both a loathsome human and magic user in the eyes of many after discovering the truth of his smoke type, he’s brought back as a source of information for the very thing that got him killed in the first place, and then he’s a means to an end. Granted, many people within drhdr live like that. I just find it extremely on the nose that Risu doesn’t find any real autonomy until after overcoming the anger and bitterness that Curse brings and harnessing it for himself-- especially since that would probably be looked down on by most other magic users as suppressing his true power. It’s very much a mirror of the entire story itself, and Kaiman’s own “pipe dream”.
It’s also interesting how at the end of drhdr pretty much the whole cast is in the EXACT same position Risu was in once Hole materializes: aka being seen as a source of power to consume and then eradicate. Obviously the whole point of it was to be very forward about how poorly magic users treated humans and the rest of the world-- it’s just very ironic that Risu is sort of the humanized version of that very same mistreatment. I wonder if Q Hayashida meant for that sort of double allegory or if it was just coincidence.
