The main lead started out as a weak knee cry baby and suddenly turned into a flow blown sociopath. They really could've done a better job, he could've started as a sociopath or give the transition more contrast like tokyo ghoul.
Just a stumble of the first 2 episodes, a great series otherwise.
I agree, the series was perfect for me up until that point, then suddenly he went psycho out of nowhere. Previously he risked his life to save those 2 researchers from Sato then suddenly he didn't care about Sato killing thousands of people. Later he explained it as he thought the researcher he dropped from the roof would be useful to him, but that was not a good explanation. If he really only cared about himself, he wouldn't have shot Sato and he would have surrendered as soon as Sato said he would decapitate him. It also went completely against the earlier scene in his mind when he was on the dissection table and he refused to kill the doctor out of respect for his friend Kei. Where is Kei anyway, he just dropped out of the series once Kai abandoned him?
shareI agree. I am not well versed in the Anime story arcs, but one thing that bothers me and decreases my interest is the repetitive storylines, no matter what Anime show. All this self internalizing, am I good, am I bad, what should I do, etc. For me, shut up and deal or get out of the way and be good or evil. Ajin is no different, for me at least. Am I missing something? Is it lack of story with dialogue filler?
shareAm I the only one that realizes he's 15 or so while trying to live NORMAL. Everyone else was older and knew what they wanted. The other young guy just has a good heart.
shareYeah early on in the show he wasn't a sociopath. He cared for his human friend, whom he cried for and said " do what you want with me but call an ambulance for him," (paraphrasing). He also literally decides not to use his voice on the guy chasing him because he "might" die from falling off the motorcycle. That was shown by his inner monologue so its not even like he could have been manipulating someone... he actually didn't want to harm the guy chasing them. Then suddenly he cares for nobody and has no emotion. Almost as if the creators got to a certain episode and were like.. " oh, and wouldn't it be cool if he was also a sociopath? Hey it's not too late to add that in right?"...
shareI disagree. There's plenty of flashbacks showing Kai's disconnectedness from an early age, whether it's only playing with Kai cause he's a 'loser', to watching snuff films on the internet while on the school bus (ajin experiments). I tend to think his morality is completely centered around his survival instinct. He needed those researchers to escape the true death from Sato decapitating him, so he weighed it against not saving them and found they were better use to him alive.
Those other people targeted by Sato's terrorist attack offered no immediate survival gurantee to Kei given his place hiding in the mountain village; the potentical victims only threatened his survival guarantee it by reintroducing Sato to him.
However, Kei's IBM appears to be a 'good' spirit, given how Kei automatically protects those around him (like when he instinctively killed Sato with the rifle to save the two guards, and Kei says 'I don't know why I did that, it just happened!'). Kei's nature by default is sociopathic, and the IBM is probably conflicting with it in some way. I think this is the reason why the IBM only does the opposite of what Kei commands, but I haven't read the manga and the explanation is probably in there.
I thought he had Asperger's first and hoped they would build on that. It looks like they wanted to make him weird, but did not get past a typical teenage-weird with heavy mood swings. The whole "I won't help you.... oh wait, I will help you" turn suffered from that.
Other than that this show felt like a real tv show and did not use the typical anime cop outs of changing the rules out of nowhere or creating some fairy-tale-esque enitity, which does not obey the laws of reality anymore. Instead it almost had a science fiction vibe and probably was thought through better than a lot of non-animated shows of that genre.