AAaA Taro Iwatani
I remember someone remarking how this showed the healthy father-son dynamic between Iwatani and Taro, and even at that point I was like, Oh, yes, extremely healthy, those two, can’t see any conflict brewing on that horizon at all.
Still, their dynamic is kind of adorable here, I’ll admit. The Jason Waltrip expressions help with that.
“Never admit weakness” is one of those bits of wisdom that narcissists love, because there’s some genuine Sun Tzu deception-based strategy to it, but it’s also often narcissism rationalized as strategy. Someone like Syr’Nj is knowledgeable about many things but usually unafraid to admit what she doesn’t know. Someone like Iwatani Sr. may pretend military expertise, however, if it brings him power. But he is at least honest enough with himself to know much of what he doesn’t know and lean on the real experts when he needs to. Someone like our outgoing pres Taro will pretend so hard that he’ll start believing his own press.
Ugh, how timely. Too soon!
“Sad!”
I know Taro is just a boy, but I can’t help, but hear Chris Ayers voice when he talks. Am I alone on this?
“Don’t let them forget who the ruler truly is.”
Yeaahhh… about that part. You might have wanted to improve upon that effort.
I think what’s more a matter of: Don’t teach them the three lessons “poison is a good way to take what you want from those who have it,” “you should want power,” and “I have power.”
Particularly, don’t demonstrate that first lesson on people you’ve encouraged them to think of as family members.
Fifthly: Keep all the keys to the poison on your person.
Iwatani’s inability to see his son for the monster he truly is was quite the fatal flaw.
Yes, I agree. However, let’s not be too harsh on Mr. Iwatani Sr. It is hard to find someone menacing if you changed his soiled diapers and cleaned snot from his nose not long ago.
This is like the Sith in Star Wars. If power is your goal whyare you grooming an ambitious apprentice who you know damn well will turn on you at some point?
Because Sith also believe that if you can’t defend your power you don’t deserve to have it. Shev coming back in ep 9 is actually the antithesis of the Rule of 2
With the Sith it’s usually intentional. Most of the Sith Masters fully expected their apprentice to try and overthrow them at some point, after which either the apprentice wins, becomes the master, and finds a new apprentice, or the master wins and finds a new apprentice. It’s violent and not the most stable system (at least in my mind), but they mean to do it.
With the Iwatanis, however, it was not intentional at all.
Sometimes the master even feels so unthreatened that they keep the same apprentice after winning, but that’s a sweet spot between “not enough of a threat to be worth continuing to train” and “too threatening to keep around.” Really makes one wonder how much ancient Sith lore was irreplaceably lost with master’s who feared leaving their apprentices with nothing more to learn, but were eventually usurped anyway.
That’s what holocrons are for. Make stuff with all your secrets and squirrel them away somewhere for the generations that follow to find