#pleaks

10. Your choice.

Well, I’m willing to concede that while at this point it seems to be true (this chapter made me very pleased with my portrayal of him, making him more brutal and cunning than some people like) there is always the idea that Ohtaka may turn him off that path later.

But his dialogues through this chapter were so beautifully passive-aggressive, it wasn’t even the manipulation of Kougyoku here as a highlight of it, but how he talks to Kouen. There’s a definite swagger there, a man who knows he has enough power to take on anything these people could throw at him — but who also has enough power to know he doesn’t need to. Maybe though on some level, just like Kouen referred to the idea of fighting with him dozens of Nights ago with “tanoshii” (as in “fun”) he maybe also DOES want to fight Kouen just for the sake of pleasure.

Yet what bugs me about the fandom sometimes is they try to chop characters down to easily digestible bits, the smallest parts of their sums. Like take Kouen “snatching” Aladdin. If you look at it more closely, you see that he does this to try and shield himself and also gauge Sinbad. He’s surprised to see that Sinbad won’t kill him and his siblings to take back Aladdin from him. Yet people have tried to say this is Sinbad being “cold” or “discarding” Aladdin. (And Kouen releases him, how else did he run over to Titus?)

There was a lot of political power plays between old men going on here, which I believe Ohtaka tried to display by the intense stare-wars going on. Kouen and Sinbad were having a war over the Stoplight Trio’s heads, even as they were elated by Titus returning. But most importantly of all, even if he is doing asshole/evil things, we must realize that in this timeframe, the Kou Empire is still knotted with Al-Thamen. Even after nearly dying and seeing that they were manipulated by Gyokuen, the Kou siblings have murder in their eyes at losing Magnostadt. Kouen, even knowing what he does now, has not backed down from the prospect of war, meaning that the Kou Empire still serves as the vehicle of an organization that Sinbad has sworn to eradicate, who has “no place in this world”.

Meaning that, by extension, perhaps they don’t either.

Saying that he is “evil” or “has fallen into depravity due to these things” isn’t really fair IMHO. You fall not because of doing evil (look at Cassim’s father, for example) but because you have willingly turned off the path of fate. To put this in perspective, a murderer who is fated to kill turning from that path would also be the same thing. There is a reason Aladdin mentioned that “this world is cruel” as he looks on his friends, because at that point he’s come to the realization that following Fate does not always mean “good”.