#zero reverse

A question I had for a long while before I really started bothering to analyse the show, especially for fic writing, was when and how Yusei found out that his parents were leading developers in the Moment reactor that ended up causing Satellite's separation, killed presumably hundreds of people, and caused a lot of the misery in his own life, too. The thing is, the show never gives a definitive answer to that. Only context clues. We can infer from Yusei's reaction the first time Goodwin mentions his father and the Moment research before the signers depart for Satellite that this circumstance isn't news to him. Furthermore, we can infer from Crow's reaction to the impassioned speech Yusei gives in episode 57 that he must have known about his parents' identities for a while.

Personally, I take this to mean that Yusei has known about his parents' involvement in the Moment research for several years at this point—in fact, I'd go as far as saying that he's known about it since his childhood, and there's a reason why I think that: To a child, the line of thinking "my dad developed this giant machine that ended up blowing up and killing a lot of people, even many of my friends' parents" makes complete sense. (Even taking into account the cover-up the city did, pretending the whole explosion was a tectonic shift—because you can't convince me even for one second that the people in Satellite who lived close enough to the reactor didn't see that the Moment explosion happened first.) And I really feel the need to stress that this explanation is something I think especially a child could have come up with. Because with all the context the show gives us about the Zero Reverse incident, it's easy to see that there were a lot more factors involved there than just "man built bad machine, bad machine exploded". In fact, this drives me up a wall so badly I need to dig into it for a second.

With all the exposition Roman/Rudger gives us in this duel, we learn several things about the late Professor Fudo. Chiefly among them, three things: He was extremely smart, he had a project with the potential to change the future on his hands, and most of all, he was extremely passionate about that project, to the point of Roman/Rudger making this comparison:

The reason I'm mentioning that is because despite all the above-mentioned factors, Professor Fudo was 100%, completely ready to shut down his entire project when he realised it could become dangerous for the city and its people. And as someone who's worked with people engrossed in their own research projects, albeit in a completely different field, let me just say this: Giving up a project of this scale is not a decision you make lightly. Scientific research, as intriguing as it sounds and looks from the outside, can be an absolutely draining affair of trying to get funding for an idea, and fighting to keep that funding later down the line, sometimes even forcing you to pay for things with your own money for a while just to keep the project alive. At a point like the one Yusei's dad was at here, this project would have already had exorbitant amounts of money put towards it, not to speak of countless hours of labour from qualified professionals. This would have been a humongous undertaking, not to speak of the fact that it was likely to be the thing that could have defined the Professor's entire career (even though I don't think that's why he was so invested in it). So I'm going to say it again, because this drives me nuts: Deciding to not simply change the direction of a project like this, to not simply try a different approach, but to instead step away, install containment seals and shut the thing down entirely, taking the whole damned idea back to the drawing board, is. not. a decision any self-respecting researcher would have made lightly. And that's without talking about the sponsors' reactions to the Professor deciding to shut the project down.

The Professor may not have been willing to risk the city populace's lives for this project, but the sponsors certainly were. And so was Roman/Rudger, because by that point, he'd already been tempted by the darkness to give in to his worst impulses. It's honestly tragic because with all the facts laid out like that—everything from the project going out of control due to factors Yusei's father couldn't control, to him deciding to shut down what would have been the project of a lifetime, to Iliaster using their shadowy machinations to tempt Roman/Rudger, to him replacing the Professor as head of the project at the sponsors' behest because they wanted a return on what money they invested into it, all the way up to Roman/Rudger purposefully blowing up the reactor in order to be reborn as a dark signer—I, for my part, couldn't find it in me to blame Yusei's dad for everything that happened. Sure, he's somewhere at the start of the causal chain that lead to the Zero Reverse, but saying it was his fault is vastly oversimplifying the whole dilemma, in my opinion. Unfortunately, we all know that there's one person who can't find it in himself to forgive Professor Fudo for being part of the chain of events that led to the Zero Reverse.

And you know what makes this extra painful? Not only is Yusei blaming his dad, who was trying his damndest to prevent this catastrophe, for what happened, he goes as far as blaming himself for it, too, on behalf of being the late Professor's son. What drives me absolutely insane about this is that there's no need for him to. Even if the Professor had, somehow, been directly responsible for the Zero Reverse, that would still not make Yusei, his son, in any way culpable. None of what happened was even remotely Yusei's fault, and he couldn't have done anything to prevent it, either. He was an infant. This is what I meant by it being unnecessary above—Yusei is carrying this insane amount of guilt around, even though there's no reason for him to. Though I don't think he could be convinced of it, come hell or high water, Yusei is blameless when it comes to the Zero Reverse. What kills me is that Crow even tells him as much:

But. BUT. There's one more thing I absolutely need to stress: While seeing Yusei shoulder all this blame for a thing he's not responsible for and that I don't consider his father responsible for, either, is painful to watch, my frustration with it does not come from the fact that I consider it sloppy writing, or a character inconsistency, or any other such thing. In fact, I think it's the opposite. Granted, this is obviously built on my headcanon that Yusei has known who his parents were since he was a child, and thus came up with his rather simplistic, causal explanation of "my father invented a thing that caused a horrible catastrophe" without looking at (or even being able to look at, considering how hush-hush the public maintenance department and M.I.D.S. apparently kept the Zero Reverse thing) all the additional factors surrounding the Zero Reverse. And that this simplistic, condemning view of his father and his past had several years to fester, at that. But assuming for a second that this guess of mine is correct, I think the writing around Yusei's guilt complex is actually spot-on. Being confronted with this as a child, he would jump to the conclusion that his father was the reason the catastrophe that changed the lives of everyone he cares about for the worse happened. He would think that as that man's son, he has a responsibility to make up for his father's devastating mistake. And he would willingly put on blinkers, never stopping to consider whether there could have been other factors that contributed to causing the catastrophe, and never stopping to consider whether the friends he's so dedicated to compensating for the losses his father caused them even actually think that he's to blame.