Occutrousers

 I have a love-hate view of Chrono, and by extention people like him. On one hand, it’s his own choice to be kind, loving, and forgiving. I have to respect that. And it totally makes sense when you remember the demographic Makimodoshi is mainly aimed at: young children who are generally assumed to not deal with anything worse than some generic playground bully, and will thus probably benefit from that message, however simple and overgeneralizing it is. I get why things have to be this way.

But that doesn’t mean I necessarily have to like it.

I’m a rather…vindictive person so to speak. Now, rest assured I don’t have the guts to pull off a fraction of the things I regularly fantasize about. Seriously. That’s a good thing. But that means that my values and morals (or lack thereof) directly clash with how the character Chrono is going about things so far. The motherfucker’s gotten betrayed by two people he trusted (maybe three if you count Lemon, but she was far more justified in her reactions than Mai and Chainu are). Though I can’t even say that he isn’t suicidal. IMO he’d totally kill himself on the spot, just so long if it’s for the greater good and to save Tokine.

As someone who is a self-proclaimed selfish jerk, seeing a 14 year old boy willingly do this to himself, with the two good adults around him (Shirai and Gorou) seemingly being fine with this, disturbs me a whole lot. Again, I understand why: the child soldiers aspect of the setting was likely intended to be wish-fulfillment for the kids reading it, who are expected to overlook the implications and simply want to go on fun adventures while feeling good and looking good. It just came as a shock to me right after being fresh off of series like Bokurano and Madoka Magica, which both show how things like this can go horribly wrong (in slightly different ways). I guess I’m just not used to the kid hero trope being played straight, and the series just doesn’t feel like it was made for people like me. I’m actually surprised I got hooked on it at all. I might take a break from it to let the chapters pile up a bit.