#vrainalysis

No bother, no bother! Sorry this took awhile to answer, I wanted to slowly put together my thoughts.

I know I’ve been kind of distant from the fandom for awhile, but I still love Vrains, and those days in the fandom were really fun! Even if things got a bit wild (I like wild, I like discourse, and I especially enjoy pissing certain individuals off). And I’m really grateful for everyone I met and befriended through Vrains, especially the DS discord crew. It was a blast, through and through.

As for my final, hindsight thoughts on Vrains, have this sort of pros and cons like ramble:

I really loved the core characters—Yusaku is by far my favorite YGO protagonist, and the most refreshing. I love his independence, his ferocity, his tenacity, and so much more. His backstory is incredibly interesting, the Lost Incident is a really gripping concept, and not the kind of thing I expected from a YGO series. Not to mention Yusaku has the best play style and the coolest aesthetic. Ai always managed to walk the line between charming and ominous perfectly, always leaving questions regarding his motives and true intentions while being genuinely entertaining and likable. Ryoken is my favorite YGO “rival”, thanks to the depth of his character, the complexity of his role in the story, and the development he undergoes. Not to mention his design is probably the best to come out of modern YGO, well worth the long wait it took for it to be revealed.

That said, the minor characters ranged from mediocre to practically nonexistent to outright detrimental to the development of the plot and the show as a whole. Some of them, like Ema, were decent, interesting additions that added a bit of flavor to the setting and the storyline. Others may as well have not been in the show at all, and others I can only wish were so unobtrusive. Whenever Aoi was involved in an episode, the writing, particularly the dialogue, would notably and painfully dip in quality, sometimes becoming near nonsensical or outright contradictory to what was happening on screen. As I’ve pointed out before, a lot of Vrains’ issues arise from the writers trying to force the same minor characters into being relevant to the story instead of inventing new ones or switching in other characters that would make more sense thematically. They kept trying to push the same four circle shaped characters into square shaped holes.

Season one was very strong and remains by far my favorite. It had its weak moments, aka the Anothers arc, but otherwise had an engaging storyline, an epic revenge plot, and a poignant ending with some great, standout duels, concepts, and execution.

Season two had its ups and downs and rock bottoms. There were parts I really enjoyed!…Probably. Hanoi/Revolver’s comeback kicked ass at least. I was very excited for the other Ignis and lost kids and extremely disappointed when that went pretty much nowhere. Takeru was alright, though I kinda wish early fan theories had panned out and he did get a villain arc or something, because that would have been sick as hell. In comparison to the hype, what we did get from him was kinda bland. The oscillation between SB being a cocky challenger and a fanboy was weird and not executed well, and outside of the SB persona, Takeru himself could be kind of boring. Still, SB had an awesome design and I liked Flame and the other Ignis, especially Earth and Windy. Earth’s death still gives me a pit in my stomach. Bohman really struggled to fill Revolver’s shoes as primary antagonist and boy did it show, and Aoi’s weird virtual identity crisis was clunky and tiresome.  

Season three was…not what I wanted? I was dying for a villain arc for Ai, and he had his moments! But mostly everything that could have been awesome fell kind of flat. It really lost momentum and suspense. But I enjoyed the exploration of Ai and Yusaku’s relationship that we got and found the ending interesting enough. I wish more characters actually had to, like, suffer or pay for all the horrible decisions they made. Not just the KoH, but SOL characters like Akira and BS too should have had to at least start over from scratch or something. Thematically it felt like the writers completely lost their grip on what was set up in season one, which was probably the biggest disappointment to me.

So yeah, in the future, if I rewatch Vrains, it’ll probably just be season one. Nevertheless, I’m very fond of the show and immensely glad they took the risks they did with Yusaku’s character, backstory, and motivations.

Akira actually talks about Pandora this episode, which was a pleasant surprise.

Not exactly how I would word it, but they’ve got the gist of it there.

That is exactly how I would word it.

Pandora was created by Zeus and the other gods to be the first mortal woman, specifically intended to exactly as Akira stated. She was given by them to Epimetheus.

Everyone knows vaguely about Pandora’s box. However, the exact nature of the pithos Pandora received, aka Pandora’s Box as people know colloquially, is actually argued by some poets. Many argue that her pithos is what carried the plagues, but others argue that in fact, her pithos carried blessings, and it was Pandora herself, not the pithos, that contained evil. Lots of Greek poets were raging misogynists and insisted that women, the first among them being Pandora, were the root of all men’s suffering, not the pithos specifically. Pretty much all ancient versions of this myth either direct state, or imply, that women were created to punish men, as Pandora was created to punish Prometheus and his brother. To punish, specifically, the sons of Iapetos.

I’ve talked before about the possibility of Yusaku actually being Iapetos, not Atlas, and this development does fall in line with that, with Ai being Yusaku’s “son” who is being punished by the gods for his transgressions against them. That brings about its own dangerous implications, Iapetos representing the end of everything and all. 

Back to the matter of Pandora, if her pithos carried blessings, then when she opened it, all the good spirits besides Hope abandoned humanity and fled back to the heavens.

Interpretations of Pandora and her pithos vary; some claim she was innocent and curious and didn’t mean to bring the doom of humanity, others claim she did so deliberately and maliciously, and even others claim she was the literal doom of humanity, which falls in line with Akira’s dialogue above.

One thing is certain: Pandora was always going to open the pithos and bring doom to humanity. That was the gods intentions from the start, her fate. Some of the myths portray this by specifically stating that the god filled her with curiosity, so that she wouldn’t be able to resist looking inside the pithos they told her to never open. This next scene seemed something of an allusion to this.

Pandora, whether you view her as the literal calamity or not, never really had “free will”. Even if she was genuinely malicious, it was her fate from the start to do as she did, and fate isn’t something that can be fought or avoided in Greek myth. From the moment she was created, humanity was doomed. 

Or at least, that humanity, because the myth doesn’t end there.

It was Pandora who mothered Pyrrha, who went on to mother the rest of the new humanity, post their decimation. This new generation was more “hardy” and resistant to the evils unleashed upon them. Being made of rock and all, instead of clay. 

Pandora may have been the bane of Prometheus’s humanity, but she was the ancestor of the next. 

So, as for season 3, Ai and Pandor starting a new generation of AIs together... could be a very real possibility? 

Ryoken has previously drawn comparisons between his father and Prometheus, who was punished separately by being strung up and tortured for eternity, and creates this version of Pandora to punish his father’s creations, the Ignis. Which would make Ai Epimetheus in Ryoken’s interpretation, aka the foolish son of Iapetos. 

But I doubt that will work out well for the actual humanity in Vrains. After all, Pandor isn’t being gifted to the Ignis, she’s being gifted to Akira, who is a reckless guy with a lot of regrets and talks often about feeling bad about what he does in hindsight. Which is literally Epimetheus’s whole deal. 

Anon asked: “Hope it’s okay to ask. I find your analysis very interesting. How do you think Ryoken felt when he learned about Playmaker’s identity? What of his feelings when Yusaku told him they lived in the same world? And the recent development between him and Yusaku. Despite being rivals, Yusaku still sees him as his special person. How do you think Ryoken copes with that?”

Sorry this took so long! Let’s right down to it!

So at first, Revolver really didn’t care who Playmaker is, whether he managed to do what they couldn’t or not. He thought Playmaker was just another person that had a grudge against the Knights of Hanoi, because there are apparently quite a lot. And considering that most of the organization was just a means to an end, Ryoken felt like Playmaker and whatever he held against them was unimportant. Ryoken is always keeping the bigger picture in mind at this point; he’ll do whatever it takes to destroy the Ignis, no matter who gets hurt. The grievances of other people can’t compare with the big bad threat against humanity!

But as the duels go on, he gets more interested. Right up until Yusaku says “three things”.

Rev gasps then. As far as I know, this is the first moment we see Revolver have such a genuine reaction to anything since closing the Cyberse. Before this, it was all smirks and mocking and disregard. He’s caught off-guard, and you can see it on his face. He goes through a lot of emotions: surprise, disbelief, dismay, and then anger.

He seems betrayed. Even jumps to the assumption that Playmaker is helping SOL, even when he has evidence to the contrary. He’s angry and irrational in this moment, like he’s been hurt. More than his loss, this is what seems to hurt him most. Playmaker “choosing” SOL over him. Revolver perceives this as a sort of rejection, and feels wronged by it. Playmaker, as some nobody, hating Hanoi and “helping” SOL didn’t bother him in the slightest. But Playmaker, as the child he saved, hating Hanoi hits Ryoken hard. 

When Kogami interferes, he snaps out of it. He recollects himself, and gets back into character as “Revolver”. Here we see Ryoken’s faith in “fate” kicking back in, and he retreats, knowing that this isn’t the end of the matter.

Upon his return, we see Ryoken scowling in the hall. He’s failed, lost an arm, and someone important to him has turned against him. This is the first time we’ve ever seen Revolver look so frustrated outside of the duel with Playmaker. He didn’t even make this kind of troubled expression when the Ignis they’d been hunting for ten years was captured by an enemy.

Kogami is right about Ryoken being shaken by the mention of the incident, but he seems to think that it is just because Yusaku is one of the victims, not a particular victim. It doesn’t seem like Kogami knows about his son talking with Yusaku during the incident. This may seem like a small detail, but it does suggest that Ryoken has been hiding everything in regards to his relationship with one of the test subjects from his father since the beginning. For someone who admires is father as much as Ryoken, who even compares his father to the gods, that Ryoken feels he needs to hide this tells us a lot about its relevance to his “mistake”: ending the Hanoi Project. Ryoken doesn’t want to bring up the victims, or at least one particular victim, around his father. We’ll get back to that later. 

The first three match perfectly, with Yusaku, Takeru, and Miyu aligning with their respective Ignis. 

Since we know Yusaku was the sixth test subject and Ai is IGN006, we can extrapolate the others from there. 

This has a whole lot of implications, including that Jin may very well have been the first to be kidnapped. 

But if you look again, though the first is a match for Jin, the second test subject has to be Spectre, right? The Wind Origin and Spectre are switched compared to their respective Ignis. This makes me wonder if the writers may have decided to switch Windy and Earth at some point in the narrative. 

Obviously this is all just silly guessing, but I do think its fun grounds for thinking about the order the Lost Kids were taken in and how long they must have each spent individually. We don’t know exactly how much time was between each kidnapping, just that they were vaguely around the same timeframe, so it could be a matter of hours or days. But if Yusaku really was the last child taken, he was there for the shortest amount of time. And if Ai really is the most developed and advanced of the Ignis, that means he had the shortest amount of time to develop, while Lightning had the most. 

Curious, right? When you think about it, the circumstances were probably in Lightning’s favor of being the “best” Ignis, but instead he ended up the “worst”. But if you look at it another way, Lightning being the first does make him the “older model”, or even the prototype. 

Whatever that means, in regards to a fictional character in a show about card games. 

Short answer: Pfft, no. Morality is more complex than “good” and “bad”. And it certainly isn’t simplified in Vrains, which has a long running theme of taking responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of both “good” and “bad” acts. (But that’s a different post I have in the works.)

It’s not so easy to break down what classifies a “bad person” in fiction, so lets instead ask a different question.

Is Ryoken a mass murderer? No. 

Was Ryoken almost a mass murderer? No. An accessory at most. 

I’ve seen some forget, or purposefully ignore, that Ryoken wasn’t the one behind the Tower of Hanoi. The program was designed by Kogami, and activated by Kogami. It was Kogami that insisted they were doing the right thing, and that humanity would someday understand. Kogami who decided thousands of lives were worth sacrificing to prevent a future tragedy. Not Ryoken. 

The reason Faust, Vyra and the others talk about how Ryoken is going to be one of history’s worst criminals after the Tower activates is because he’s the face of Hanoi, the leader in name, and Kogami is legally already dead and in the eyes of rest of the world, no longer able to commit crimes. Kogami was also going to die, again, with the network, leaving Ryoken alone to take the blame for the fallout. 

The Tower was not Ryoken’s idea or his choice, but he takes responsibility for it anyway, because that’s the kind of person he is. He doesn’t see himself as someone victimized by a controlling megalomaniac, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t. Ryoken blames himself, but he’s not as guilty as he makes himself out to be. Ryoken definitely isn’t innocent in the matter of the Tower; he was its strongest line of defense. He fed Ema and Gou to it. But if the Tower was a bomb, Ryoken wasn’t the one with his finger on the button.  

In that metaphor, he’s even the one that defuses it. Ryoken could have just let the Tower activate. He didn’t have to go back in VRAINS and give Yusaku a chance to deactivate it. No one had to tie him up and force him, like Ai suggested. Hell, there’s nothing to suggest the Tower was set up to automatically deactivate upon Ryoken’s defeat. Going by how he handed over the virus removal program early on in season 1, Ryoken most likely deactivated the tower himself out of respect for Yusaku’s victory.

Ryoken almost allowed thousands of people to die, yes, but he didn’t. During the season 1 finally, Ryoken has hit the lowest point in his life, and makes the worst mistake he’s ever made before by standing by as the Tower almost kills an inconceivable number of people, including his family and friends and himself. But it doesn’t happen, because Yusaku was there to stop Ryoken from hurting himself and everyone else. And Ryoken doesn’t keep going anyway, or try again. Even though his father died so the Tower would succeed, Ryoken still either lets it shut down or shuts it down himself. And the whole time, he must have known he was disregarding his father’s dying wish, was making his father’s sacrifice for nothing. He accepted his defeat gracefully anyway.

With no Kogami in the picture, Ryoken has shown zero interest in hurting anyone besides potentially dangerous AIs. 

That’s a good idea!

Pandora is often said to get her name from the fact that she received a blessing/gift from each of the gods (though the validity of that is questionable), so I could see her taking on the roles of the fallen Ignis, if things go that route.

I’m not certain the Ignis will return, however; just the fact that they actually got graves leads me to believe we may have seen the last of them. At the very least, Jin’s relevancy got axed when his memories of the Hanoi Project were erased, and with Jin likely serving no further use to the plot, Lightning probably doesn’t either. If the Aqua and Windy are brought back, Miyu and the WO would have to be brought back too, but considering there’s no sign of them in the opening nor any mention of them since S3 began, I think it’s unlikely as of now. 

But Ai might be aiming to bring them back somehow, and Pandor may very well be a method to do so. I just don’t think he’ll succeed, or at least, not anytime soon. He may try to bring back his friends using Pandor, but Pandor may not go along so easily. 

It would be interesting to see Pandor and Roboppy replacing the fallen Ignis, and it is a possibility. Hopefully, we’ll be able to mAake more coherent theories once we learn more about Pandor and whatever Ai’s plans are. 

I'll have to add screenshots to this later, because right now I'm on mobile.

Seeing Faust and Genome hanging out in the hotdog truck… yeah, I don’t even know how to feel about that, and it's not anything I ever expected to see. Especially with them talking about atoning for their crimes. With almost all the LI victims now in peril, with only the last victim still standing and Revolver to save them, it makes sense that they would feel that this is their chance to actually help the kids. I don't exactly approve, nor do I think this makes up for what they did, but at least they're trying, I guess.

I enjoyed lots of things about this episode. Vrains did some really fun things with the flower background. The petal rain was cute. I'm glad we're finally seeing some more interesting backdrops for duels, which is something they've sadly underutilized so far for a show that takes place in virtual reality. (But…What was with that spinning shot. Whose idea was that.) That back and forth between Ai and Bohman was actually pretty funny, and lots of great shots of Rev.

As for the big reveal, well, it's all very interesting. Kogami treated the Ignis as a singular entity in his calculations, blatantly ignoring that he himself gave them the capacity to act as individuals. Because of this he severely miscalculated the problem and led the Knights of Hanoi on a wild quest of extermination. Had he known only one Ignis was "the problem", would he have made a different decision? Or would he have come up with a more targeted method to deal with Lightning, and let the other Ignis go?

This also really shows how futile Kogami's actions after their creation were, how out of proportion he took things.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is something we've brought up before in regards to Kogami and the Ignis, how his actions led to them seeing humans as a potential threat, but now we see that Lightning also takes after him. True to his Roman/Greco theme, Lightning put them on that "fated" path despite wanting to resist the future he saw. What Revolver was getting at, by bringing up free will, was that even though Lightning did all these simulations, and should have had the free will to choose another path that didn’t lead them all to ruin, he ended up on the simulated path anyway because of his own inferiority complex. Again, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even more so, did Lightning's realization that he was inferior lead him to resenting Jin so much? Does he blame his own flaws on the seeming fragility of his Origin? Considering Jin's broken state, I've always been under the impression he was the worst of the Lost Kids in terms of dueling and therefore suffered the most shocks and starvation. Does Lightning think this hindered his development? And does his strange mix of admiration and disdain for Ai suggest the Ai is the most advanced Ignis, as Bohman seemed to suggest, meaning Yusaku won the most? Did Ryoken's encouragement during the project lead to Yusaku producing the most developed AI?

That seems to be the implication here.

It's hard to say who will win this duel, but the repercussions are likely all the same. If Ryoken wins, Bohman will almost certainly absorb Lightning right there. If Ryoken loses, he might still, because otherwise Yusaku would have two bad guys to defeat. If it's a tie, probably the same result. No matter how the duel goes, I see Lightning "becoming one" with the fallen Ignis.

On that point, they still haven't explained how Bohman got Earth, haven't they? Unless I'm missing something, they really are just skipping that! What happened to Go and SOL?

The visuals of the new ending are hopefully just filler until the new arc starts up, because they're really... Uninteresting. Not too much to analyze there, but the long shot of Roboppy seemingly wishing on a star was kind of ominous considering last we saw her her eyes were glowing red. Ai's agonized expression before he disappears in a flurry of yellow light particles also seems kind of suggestive of something bad. The ending shows a whole bunch of the characters okay in the wake of the events of this season (thanks for the spoilers, I guess?), but the other images make me wonder if others may not be so lucky. Will Ai get absorbed into Bohman, or is that light supposed to be indicative of his relationship with Yusaku banishing his despair over his friends?

I was hoping this episode would make more sense on the second viewing. Nope! It’s even more confusing!

I mean, at first this episode seems pretty straightforward, but everything that happens is pretty darn nonsensical from the start.

Let’s get right into it...

There’s a lot of weird things bout these lines. First, “once upon a time”? The Cyberse was destroyed a couple months ago, tops. If Miyu and the Wind Origin were attacked in the same time frame, it can’t have been even a year since their individual tragedies. Why is something so recent being referred to as “once upon a time”? I know Aoi likes fairy tales, but this is just...a bizarre way of talking about something that may very well have only started three months before. 

Plus, we’ve seen no evidence of the rogue Ignis attacking anyone besides the three other lost victims. So the whole “invasion” line is odd too (even if it was almost cool).

I’m glad we’ve gotten Miyu’s full name, but, uh, what the hell, Aoi? This duel is being broadcasted to all your other “allies” and the enemy. A group that not only includes a bunch of guys you know almost nothing about, but also Miyu’s kidnappers. Is it really a good idea to tell Miyu’s kidnappers her full name and that she’s in a coma? Especially in front of a bunch of news-chasing reporters? She even goes as far as to implicate just how involved in this mess Miyu is, even pointing out that she’s related to the Ignis, right in front of Frog and Pigeon. 

For someone who seemingly changed her avatar twice to hide her own identity, this is pretty careless! Is it really okay for Aoi to just go around dropping other people’s names? It’s fine if you want to give yourself away, like Ryoken, but you really shouldn’t be giving away the secrets of people who aren’t even awake! Especially not to their kidnappers and some random reporters! And especially when you haven’t even spoken to the victim in over ten years! 

And while we’re on the topic of giving away people’s identities:

I thought the whole point of Blue Maiden was so Akira wouldn’t know Aoi had an Ignis. Or at least keep him from getting caught up in things while Aoi made her own decisions. She even left that weird letter! It was never stated, but that seemed like the only explanation for it. After all, it’s not like SOL knew Blue Angel was Blue Girl, so there was no problem with them knowing Blue Girl had an Ignis. So Akira’s the only one who would find that information concerning. 

But here Ema really just comes out and says it, which…makes Blue Maiden pointless? The letter pointless? Or I guess, that was never the point of any of those things, but then I gotta wonder, what was the point then? Am I missing something? Totally possible. 

And of course, the rest of the dialogue doesn’t make much more sense. 

Minor nitpick, but back when Yusaku was dueling Bohman in an effort to get Jin’s consciousness back, he won (twice) and still got nothing. Suddenly Bohman is willing to just give Miyu’s consciousness back if he loses? I guess Lightning’s just not using it for anything important?

Bohman has literally seen Yusaku pull off absolutely absurd protag combo plays so many times now without even batting an eyelid, but he finds such a simple monster effect really impressive apparently. 

There’s been nothing but illogical and wasteful actions all episode! There’s not a hint of logic to be seen! Get out of here! Σ(°ロ°)/

It sounds more like fate was keeping her uninvolved actually, considering she and Miyu haven’t met again, haven’t had any contact, and don’t actually know a single thing about each other anymore. Having Aoi actually around and there for her may have made things easier on Miyu, but “fate” never allowed that to happen.

How?

Aoi found out about Miyu a couple of episodes ago! It doesn’t seem like she ever even looked for Miyu, despite knowing her full name in a city that’s probably overflowing with social media! Miyu being a victim hasn’t altered Aoi’s life in the slightest. She never had to deal with not knowing if Miyu was alive, or ever coming back, like the families did. She never had to deal with the fallout like Kusanagi and Takeru’s grandparents did. 

Finding out your childhood friend , who you seemingly haven’t even thought about in years, got kidnapped, ten years after the fact, isn’t some life altering event! 

At least Ryoken has the excuse of probably not knowing that. For all he knows, Aoi and Miyu have been glued at the hip for a long time, not that they’re practically strangers at this point. The writers don’t have that excuse. Can I talk to whoever wrote the script for this episode please?

There’s even more odd lines than just these, but let’s move on to the things I did like. Marincesses bursting into water when they die is a fun touch, and the OST this episode was used well. We got some more world building this episode, which I enjoyed, and Bohman’s parts were very interesting.