Book of Bantorra is the greatest love story ever told in the history of greatest love stories ever told in history.
It should be pretty obvious by now that everything that happens in Bantorra (of significance) boils down to “someone loves someone, then someone dies because of that love.” Colio became obsessed with Calico and because of that love he killed an arrogant Church “true man.” Volken was in love with Mirepoc and the concept of “justice” and ended up dying pathetically and branded a traitor. Noloty loved everything and refused to do anything worse than give someone a black eye, and she died and nearly triggered an apocalypse.
Until the latest storyline, though, one could argue that the whole “love” angle was just a subplot to spice stuff up. Said latest story blows that out of the water and proves that Bantorra is ultimately about love and how it makes us do crazy shit and get killed and blow up people. For love.
Chacoly was bred to basically be a weapon of mass love-in. She can manipulate people’s emotions, essentially making someone fall in love with her if she so desired. She was then conditioned to only want the love of one man: Ruruta. Ruruta is essentially god in the world of Bantorra, since he ousted the namesake of the series or something like that and became a book-eating tree that’s actually the “heaven” everyone talks about. Chacoly wants to fall in love with him, make him fall in love with her (using her hair-glowy mind tricks), and then pull a murder-suicide to save the world. All in the name of love.
Catch is, Ruruta already has the hots for some other chick. As far as we know she died (because of love) billions of years ago, but Ruruta still longs for her. Since he’s already dating, he’s able to resist Chacoly’s super-flirting and turns her into a gibbering shell of herself that instinctually tries to Jedi Mind Trick anyone that gets close to her into being her love toy.
Then Hamy snaps her neck. Again, because of love.
We’re coming to the end of the series, and everything is turning into a big apocalyptic soap opera. It’s as if The Young and the Restless got super powers. Matt’s getting into the mix, since he’s able to resist Ruruta’s world-ending snow machine power through the dual powers of love and bullets. Despite all of Hamy’s awesomeness, Matt’s “I’ll shoot myself to keep myself awake because I want to be the one to put the final cap in Hamy’s ass” moment is the most badass (and romantic) moment of the series so far. I’d wager that he knows what Hamy really wants, much like how Minth read her soul and knows she’s an empty, self-loathing love-sick puppy (who mass murders). He’s come to that realization at some point and knows that he has to be the one to fulfill her ultimate wish.
Matt has to perform the ultimate gesture of love and put a bullet in Hamy’s head. It will be beautiful.
As much as Hamy’s a superduper ultrabadass, and as much as she’s become one of my all-time favorite female anime characters over the course of the series, I think Matt’s my favorite character from the entire series, and a lot of that is due to what’s hinted at in this episode. He’s genuinely in love with Hamy, and he’s all but gone to hell for her sake. He was already fairly cynical before meeting her, but his love for her has caused him to do some rather nasty things he’d otherwise never give a damn about. He’s almost as wrapped up in the conspiracy as she is, knows about “the truth” behind all of Bantorra’s crazy secrets, and has performed all manners of heinous acts all for her sake. The others see him as her lapdog, but he’s doing it all out of genuine devotion.
Most male anime leads never have to sacrifice anything to get the girl. Usually it’s the girl who seems to “settle” for the guy due to some plot contrivance that’s nothing more than wish fulfillment, but Matt is the one that’s giving up what little he believes in for the sake of the woman he loves. Granted, he still gets him some on the side (which makes him all the more awesome, since he’s willing to cheat on a god-killing super villain), but this is one of the few anime relationships where the guy is on the giving side. He didn’t wish for her or lucked into knowing her as a child or saw her naked in a pool/beach/hot spring episode or picked the right choose-your-own-adventure lines and accumulated love points.
Hamyuts x Mattlast is the best anime relationship since Revy x Rock.
No comments:
Post a Comment