We’re getting to decision time, I suppose. Both for Darwin Jihen and for the season in general. I suspect this one ends up on the Patron Pick ballot, though I don’t consider negative results there to be binding. I’m about with the anime where I was with the manga – I like it, I don’t love it. The production itself is perfectly fine without being exceptional in any way, and extremely faithful to the manga. As such it doesn’t do a whole lot to change the equation one way or the other. But I also know that the manga improves a fair bit as it progresses, and that certainly factors into my thinking.
As we rejoin events Charlie is continuing to demonstrate just how exceptional he is. He’s tracked down the guys who attacked his house – which is more than we can say for the cops. He goes to their motel and confronts Feyerebend and Lesley Lippman, the ex-special forces dude and now the frontman for the ALA. But it’s obviously Feyerebend who calls the shots, as witness him doing basically all the talking. The two of them have quite an interesting conversation here. Feyerabend wants to know how Charlie tracked them down – the boy replies that he deduced the injured Lippman would need drugs and staked out the nearest pharmacy, and that he knew the third man – a former solder named Min-su – from his walk.
That’s how Charlie recognizes people – from their walk. He thinks differently from humans, that’s clear. He offers the trio the chance to surrender to the cops and avoid getting waxed by him and dragged to them unconscious. Feyerabend agrees (that it’s a ruse is obvious – to us). On the ride over he asks Charlie why he doesn’t ask any questions himself – isn’t he curious who the people who attacked his parents are? Charlie retorts that there’s no point in listening to lies, and Lucy has already declared him a liar. “I am a a liar”, Feyerabend admits. “But liars tell the truth sometimes. The truth is still the truth even if it’s a demon speaking it”.
The truth he wants to share with Charlie is about how royally screwed he is in human society – an “honorary human” at best. With no rights, not even those of animals protected by anti-cruelty laws. And of course the point here is that Feyerabend is actually right – this is something Hannah and Gilbert know all too well. But before this discussion can go any deeper Feyerabend sacrifices Min-su and he and Maj. Lippman make their escape (though you get the sense that Lippman was not at all happy about Feyerabend’s methods).
Unfortunately the aftermath of the ensuing car crash makes Charlie look extremely guilty, and he’s hauled in by the sheriff’s office and branded as “evidence”. Again, no rights – something Hannah acknowledges to Lucy in the car on the way over for a planned visit. She and Gilbert also share the details of what happened a decade earlier. Charlie – still in the midst of a “humanzee boom” was sent to kindergarten. But when some boys dunk him in the pool and hold him down (is it a prank? You’d like to think so) the 5 year old Charlie panics and reacts, leaving a bunch of kids injured and a bunch of cops injured worse. That’s when things started to go really bad for Charlie.
As this storyline develops, Darwin Jihen begins to veer off the broader animal rights theme and onto the specifics of a non-real situation – Charlie’s. This is more akin to something like the brilliant Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man” – which explored similar questions of an unfamiliar sentient form’s rights. For now things are playing out exactly as Feyerabend said – Charlie is property in the eyes of the law, and as such entitled to no protections whatsoever. This doesn’t seem to bother him so much, not that you could tell if it did. But it certainly motivates those around him to struggle for change.
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