#ruby taurus

I love the relationship between these three☺

Subaru's bisexual awakening...

Thomas:

Amongst the new designs, however, Thomas’ inspiration has been brought up less, and maybe this is entirely a coincidence, but it doesn't feel totally impossible to me that his design would be inspired by Super Sentai as well.

The multiple constellation references of Tiger&Bunny aside (all of them are for an another post), notably Kotetsu and Barnaby represent the constellation Orion. In the start slide of s2, you can see Orion with one green and one pink star. Orion is often depicted in combat with the constellation of Taurus, the very same Thomas has gotten his surname from Subaru’s first name, on the other hand, is the Japanese name for Pleiades, a star cluster within Taurus.

With that in mind, I looked at Uchu Sentai Kyuranger which features the Kyurangers, a team themed after constellations, originally aired from 2017 to 2018. Their Red Ranger named Lucky is the first ranger to have an enhanced form with a different colour from their default, because it turns out that he’s descended from the legendary warrior Orion, which gives him an alternative White Ranger form. It’s not the constellation he primarily references, however, because his own constellation is Leo.

It seems significant considering that Subaru and Thomas reference Kotetsu and Barnaby respectively, whereas the callback to Ryan seems more of a funny coincidence, even if Ryan’s character traits thematically exists between Kotetsu and Barnaby in many ways (also visually, but something for an another post).

It all could be a funny coincidence, but I digress: the T&B wiki references a Power Ranger for the colour change Subaru goes through, but I think it’s interesting for Lucky to be the first Super Sentai on record to have two different colour forms.

Either way, to find any possible inspiration for Thomas, I was looking for a ranger that fits the colour scheme of his hero suit, silver/white.

The Silver Ranger of Kyurangers is called Naga Ray, and he references the constellation Ophiuchus (the reason for the name Naga).

Visually, I think he has much in common with Thomas, not only having very similar hair and the same colour scheme in his civilian wear, you could argue that the snake on his helmet looks somewhat similar to the “T” on Thomas’ hero suit. (Or maybe I’ve just been looking at this for too long.)

Naga is an extra-terrestrial human from a planet from where they have all given up their emotions to become stoics (Thomas is rather stoic as well), and he left his home planet to learn about emotions. Interestingly, he has a partner called Balance, a techno-organic mechanical organism who references the constellation Libra, and the eventual Gold Ranger.

He felt Balance is the key for him to learn emotions, which is why they travel (and steal things from the evil organization of the show as thieves) together.

His special ability is that he can paralyze others while holding eye contact with them, during which his eyes are a vivid green (with slit pupils), much like Thomas’ eye colour.

In the picture above, Naga Ray is depicted alongside his Silver Ranger form Hebitsukai Silver, the third form being Hebitsukai Metal: it’s what he changes into after being brainwashed by a villain. In this form, he’s not only able to paralyze people, but he can control them bodies, which reminds me of the way Thomas was shown to control other people’s bodies in the finale.

I also think it’s interesting that once Naga’s emotions awaken, his home system sends a woman named Echidna to kill him. She’s portrayed by the same actor (all the people from the system have the same face due to not having emotions). She’s named after Echidna, a half-woman half-snake from Greek mythology.

Thomas, of course, has his little sister Ruby, who I think will come up in cour 2...

Initially Echidna helps the Kyurangers escape from the brainwashed Naga and a bigger villain, but then renounces them as awful for leading Naga to develop emotions, while Naga’s partner Balance vows to protect him.

Brainwashed Naga almost causes Echidna to shoot herself with her own gun by using his abilities, but the Kyurangers save her. It seems that Balance and Lucky die in the battle, and Echidna points that the Kyurangers hesitating to take action is what caused this. However, Balance and Lucky are actually only unconscious and fighting the corruption in Naga’s mind and eventually free him.

Echidna decides to not to go through with eliminating Naga and even if she considers emotions useless, she agrees that the Kyurangers are strong due to their emotions. This sort of reminds me of the whole “buddy heroes are stronger for their bonds, not weaker” as Yuri already learned (and yes, it’s nothing significant because it’s a very common trope). She then urges Naga to save the universe and leaves.

Of course, all of that could be a coincidence, even some visual similarities Naga and Thomas have, but I think it’s somewhat likely to have Ruby return as a villain of some sort, especially given the fact that Ouroboros consciously recruits orphans like Nikolai Brahe and the unsolved plot thread of the Nemo Children.

It’s also entirely possible that Ruby could’ve developed a NEXT power like Thomas, even if she didn’t have any at the time. Of course, like Balance (and Lucky and the rest of the Kyurangers), it would make sense for Subaru and the heroes to have Thomas’ back if anything similar happened.

They already supported Thomas when he lost control of himself and started beating the shit out of that criminal with a gun after he shot the civilian. Reading about Echidna made me visualize a scene in which Thomas interferes in some villain activity and a helmet is knocked off, revealing it to be Ruby. I think he would be too shocked to be able to catch her- Would he try to skip sides and seemingly “betray” the heroes to try save his sister?

This would also require Subaru to fully trust him, which would again prove the magic of friendship power of the bonds they make while having a buddy hero partner. Thomas is also a fan of L.L. Audun, who’ll definitely come up, so this could be maybe used to tie him into vigilantism things even further beyond the way he beat up that criminal?..

It would also make sense that since he’s similar to Barnaby, they may have to try to win people back over by divulging his sad backstory to the media (which would put him a similar position as Barnaby, whose sad backstory is also public). I’m not sure what Jungle is planning, since they’re definitely trying to make Thomas into something...

After all, they seemingly sabotage Subaru (his wrist band didn’t go off and alert him heroes are needed) and have very much relegated him into a support role, but if anything happened I think by now Subaru would know better than to act rashly and be frustrated with Thomas. Maybe something similar as to when Kotetsu found Barnaby’s pin in Maverick’s office?..

I imagine there’ll also be a timeskip of some sort (at least enough so that everyone will heal from their injuries), so Ruby too would be older by cour 2 as well, I think an Ouroboros-raised Ruby with NEXT powers would definitely be interesting!

It’s fun to speculate about all of it anyhow. It’s not too long till we’ll see what’ll happen in cour 2 and if Ruby will come up! I definitely think she’ll be important in some way, but I wonder if they'll make her an adversarial force or more of a maiden in distress.

After ep 16 was the moment Subaru realized he was in love

(Tried some coloring, I'm satisfied with the result)

Bonus:

Thomas, sarcastically: Oh. Yeah, sure.

Ruby: What? So you go tell him he's cute, what’s the worst that could happen?