Annotated 39-4
We changed Her Grace Iwatani’s first name at the last moment after realizing we’d already seen her and that her complexion matched her husband’s. It had been “Justiana,” which reads pretty white. There’s no rule that says human names and complexions need to sync up as they do on our world, but we’d already established a pattern with Iwatani, Miyamoto, and even Taro, so it was better to keep it going.
Panel 2 is likely to be my favorite Head-of-House gag that’s not an Annunziata sight gag. It shows us another side to Iwatani. It’s not a terribly admirable side, to be sure, but it does flesh him out a little bit. This is the first time he sort of admits that he can’t have everything he wants: he has to choose between the slow, patient dynastism that he’s been practicing and the wild self-indulgence of his fantasies. As we will later learn, there was a time in his life when he preferred the second option.
Some sociopaths don’t really feel genuine emotion for anyone else, but I’m more interested in (and scared by) the ones who can feel for others and choose the path of power anyway. So I think Iwatani is seasoning his manipulation with some genuine emotion. He does feel grateful, in his way, to the Peacemakers for returning his boy to him. And he probably really does think Rachel sounds remarkable. We know from his dealings with Syr’Nj that he has no trouble showing respect to women of distinction.
It’s just… none of this is going to stop him from setting the Peacemakers up to get killed. It won’t even make him hesitate. So in the final analysis, his better feelings only serve to make him a more convincing liar.
You can be both a smart, disciplined man attempting to create something lasting *and* a squirrel just looking to get a nut. I respect it.
Vintage 1298 Dom Pérignon is quite the anomaly! It can’t exist in our world, since a) Dom Pérignon (the monk) lived from 1638–1715 and b) the first vintage for Dom Pérignon (the wine) is 1921. In Arkerra, however…
I wonder how E-Mo’s cuffs are staying in place under such circumstances. Magic? Double-sided adhesive tape?
Also, that second panel is both amazing and something of a departure from the usual style — in this case a really welcome one. That joke would have been hard to fit in the alt-text, and then it would have been out of canon, too.
Iwatani was always a very interesting villain. Irredemable and duplicitous for certain, but he had a style and a grandeur and a charisma to him even if it did make you hate him more when you realised what he was truly up to. He could weather the burdens of affecting magnamity in his facade and could appreciate others, even as he made his next steps in his plans that would bring them death for standing in the way of his rise. There was a sense of competence there, even if what he was competant at wasn’t very nice. And nothing is more terrifying then knowing that the foe your heroes are knowingly or not set against is competant.
I don’t know. To me, every friendly word he uses seems to be some part of his pretense. Like he has no style, no respect, nothing, but he’s good at portraying all those things. I see absolutely no charisma there.
Kind of weird given that your interpretation is probably much closer to what T intended, but his voice in my head does not sound likeable, charismatic or respectful at all, ever.
Wholeheartedly agree!
Which is also why I was a bit sad to see Taro become the main villain, as he was sorely incompetent.
There was poetic justice in “Imitatey” being undone by what he himself set up, but ultimately I found Taro a much less interesting villain than him.
(But I still loved the story overall!)
Woops!
This was supposed to be a reply to Kammon.
It was all about the poetic justice you mention. By the time Taro ascends, other much more pressing villains have taken the main stage so, in another round of poetic justice, the brat who foiled the dreams of grandeur of a canny Machiavellian statesman got relegated to a side plot and offed unceremoniously. Iwatani himself represented a cheapening of the altruists’ grand plan so in a sense it was all on a downward path already.
Much less competent, yes, but also much more vile.