Cruel Angel Theses

Poor, poor, misunderstood Amber.

People do crazy things in the name of love, but you take the cake.

“Amber’s Smile is a Memory of Betrayal”

And by “betrayal” I mean that Amber likes to play with little boys’ hearts, if you know what I mean. It’s actually hinted–not too subtly–in the dialogue and in the way Maki’s characterised that he’s to Amber what Amber is to Hei; in other words, someone who’s a tad too fond of them to the point of doing anything for their loved one. Yandere, in other words.

Her understanding of Maki is perfect, as evidenced by this last bit of dialogue. It could very well be that, seeing herself in Maki, she manipulated him into working for her, knowing that he would go to such lengths to wreak havoc and attract Hei’s attention.

And it all began with a smile.

Here we see that Amber’s doing so because she’s in love with Hei and wants to see him happy, even if she has to go through rather questionable means to do so:

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But why is she doing this? Isn’t it, y’know, a tad excessive just for the sake of a bunch of facial muscles arranged in a particular order? The answer should come in good time, but for now the motivations of THAT FIRE, TEN YEARS AGO that incident in Heaven’s Gate in South America should be clear, as Amber doesn’t deny her involvement.

How does this fit into the puzzle, though? I’m wont to think that Amber is, for the most part, like Dr. Manhattan–she knows what’s going to come and what’s to be, and she sees time as a linear sequence of events, yet perseveres through it all. Which makes her efforts all the more heartbreaking with this subtext in mind.

Assuming that Hoshimi-sama (Stargazer is a likely translation) is Amber, wouldn’t that imply that Amber is either older than she seems or has more power than just stopping or reversing the flow of time? When she finally completes her obeisance of growing younger, where would she go to? Parallel universes, perhaps?

This was a horribly accurate spoiler, even if it’s only really evident to someone who’s completed the series.

Once again, the finale is foreshadowed rather conveniently through dialogue–a stellar bit of writing, this.

Things are a lot clearer this time around, even if I still do think that plot advancement arcs suffer from the lack of a clear theme the way that those precious forty minutes aren’t enough to fit in two things at once; Yin and Huang’s arcs are great simply because of how they’re so cohesive from the opening scene right up till the end. Amber was also one of the more fleeting characters that passed me by on the first watch, so I’m glad that this time around I’ll have more time to focus on her.

~

Hige says:

This was a major core plot episode and because of that it flew by. Amber comes to the fore with her unique outlook and causes all sorts of mayhem with her partners in crime. To refer back to my previous post, this arc really continues the theme of sympathetic bad guys and the idea of learnt humanity. Both of which are perfectly embodied in the childlike frame of Maki.

From Amber, who exhibits all the traits of your standard messianic figure (as well as a very comprehensive set of emotions for a Contractor), Maki gradually learns to feel like a human again. She teaches him phrases to be more personable and seemingly through her compassion she opens him up to the humanity he lost when he became a Contractor. The consequence of such is that he regained all the uglier elements of human nature, too; particularly jealousy. This snapshot of his personal development, as well as his young age, made his death very difficult to watch. Especially as it was November 11 who brought the retribution. Ultimately it was justified as a response to the pain that Maki caused April, but seeing November’s looming figure in the door way, ice spear in hand, was a startling remind that Contractors have no qualms killing someone, regardless of how charismatic and human they may appear.

This arc is the first to present us with the idea that Contractors are a new race of people (remind you of something?); a new and improved race of people. It seems to be the driving ideology being Evening Primrose and the key rationale behind their terrorist activities in Tokyo. Personally I think there’s something quite apocalyptic about the notion that Humanity has evolved into a bunch of soulless killing machines. If anything you’d think it would signify the end of the human race, rather than its next evolutionary step. Still, it’s a established dramatic conceit and it works well within the themes and ideas of the show.