Juuni Kokuki Episode 30 Discussion

So, it's a shame that kid got one-hit-kill no-scoped by the carriage, but his conversations with Suzu didn't ring true for me. In the previous episode, Suzu and the boy had a great conversation and came to the correct conclusion - everyone suffers subjectively, so there's no point trying to have a contest to see who has it worse - but then he immediately followed it up with the hysterically dumb horseshit statement of "you can't have had it that bad, because you would have done something to change it". Not only does that absurdly contradict the conclusion he came to literally one sentence ago, it's also a huge pile of victim-blaming bollocks. Following that is this episode, where he sympathizes with Lady Riyou - there's probably a good case to be made about that somewhere, but he immediately weaponizes this apparent revelation to criticize Suzu for crying, because of some weird backwards logic about how crying is a display of self-pity, and it's somehow wrong to feel hurt or aggrieved about anything ever, including a century-long enslavement that only ended very recently. I just can't get on board with the mindset he's advocating. Still, he's a good character with some interesting if jumbled insight, it's a shame he appears to be dying so soon.

Rakushun is still fantastic. Real Starfleet material right there. A couple episodes ago, I suggested that Shoukei would benefit hugely from forming a genuine connection with someone who lives outside the bubble she grew up in, and Rakushun is just the guy. With a single brief conversation he managed to open her mind just enough to give her the opportunity she'd never had before to start learning about the world for herself. Let's just hope the plot continues down that path.

Meanwhile, the writers have absolutely let down Asano as a character, and every scene with him in is being dragged down as a result. It's unclear to me why he was ever even in the show at all, unless he's going to have something to do with the ending. He could have been a great character if the writers hadn't thrown him into a river for half the series and resurrected him as a lunatic. Anyway, he's going to shoot this generic chaotic evil man in the carriage now, I guess.