Since its beginning, Kaiba has presented little reason for hope regarding the future of its universe. Though there is allegedly some sort of rebellion pushing back against this transhumanist-by-way-of-capitalist hierarchy, from our position on a pleasure barge, such interference has amounted to nothing more than fireworks seen from a great distance. We have witnessed the full solidification of class stratum while safely ensconced in a luxury cruise liner. And though these circumstances have provided distance, they certainly haven’t offered comfort; in fact, our position has only made this world’s crimes seem all the more horrifying.
It is one thing to witness the cruelty of this world from a position of solidarity, suffering alongside the universal underclass. It is quite another to stare down from above, seated among this society’s victors, sharing their gaudy pleasures, and understanding the ease with which they partition the screams of the downtrodden into some memory hole. And as last episode’s lovely couple demonstrated, this capacity for moral indifference is not the sole province of the committed sociopath. We as human beings are fundamentally excellent at accepting any established social paradigm as mundane, at concerning ourselves solely with the struggles of our own lives, and at not seeing what we do not wish to see.
Episode seven begins with a rare cold open from Kaiba’s perspective, as he is led across a strange oceanic planet by a smiling Vanilla, this episode’s titular “Forgettable Man.” Incurious people like Vanilla are uniquely susceptible to validating dystopias like this. They’re generally not interested in concepts beyond their ken, and a world like this one actively encourages that sort of willful ignorance, making it easy to accept the world’s conditions as they are. In our own world, the willfully incurious must be proactive in preaching ignorance – thus you have our religious fanatics and book burners and reactionaries, all of whom have stared out at a changing world and declared “too much, too fast, I don’t want it.” Ignorance is the ultimate sanctuary of the conservative and the authoritarian, and promoting ignorance is how both gain power.
Vanilla is not a willful champion of ignorance; he is just a simple man, like countless others who have too many problems in their daily lives to concern themselves with the grand project of society. In spite of all the horrors he’s witnessed, his mind remains shiny and clean as he thinks to himself “the moon on this planet is a major date spot!” It feels almost like he’s been living in another world this whole, though in truth, it is us and Kaiba who have been living in another world.
Vanilla lives in this world as it exists, accepting its social and economic structures without question, and only breaking the law in order to score with chicks. He is a fool, but in his foolishness, he casts a mirror on our own passive acceptance of the conditions of the world. Most of us are not Kaiba, traveling widely and reacting with horror at all of the variable cruelties of human nature. Most of us are more like Vanilla, just trying to get by, hold down a job and maybe find some love.
Securing a flight to that major date spot, Vanilla flies Kaiba-as-Cronico to the moon of Libra, described as a “bastion of the ghosts of failed independence moments.” It is a strange, lonely place, an empty city filled with replicas of its former inhabitants. Though their bodies have passed on, their memories remain, infusing the city with a collective spirit that struggles to keep up appearances, maintaining its form even though its people have long since died. This will be the fate of many of our proud monuments – our grappling towards transhumanism is in part based on our desire to cheat death, but even in this world where body swapping has been realized, there are still dead cities of forgotten ghosts. Our hubris expressed in physical form: the marvels we create will always outlast us, just as our ambitions will always exceed our reach.
With Vanilla pushing “Cronico” on her feelings towards him, Kaiba is confronted by a rush of emotions that he can’t quite believe are his own, and flees the scene. Wounded by this, Vanilla distracts himself by checking the news, and learns he is now a wanted man whose police license has been revoked. A despairing expression on his face, he carefully extracts a memory chip from his pocket, stating “sorry, Ma. It might be a little while before I can buy you a new body.” It’s an intimate, heartbreaking moment, and a reflection of how this cruel society can turn mundane, even sympathetic people into agents of oppression.
Vanilla is not a particularly cruel or hateful man; he is just also not a particularly curious, bright, or righteous one. He is perfectly normal, and in this world, perfectly normal people generally get by until they accidentally step one foot outside of their prescribed boundaries. Through its focus on this “forgettable man,” Kaiba emphasizes the humanity of someone we’ve come to see as either an antagonist or a buffoon. In the context of a society where the consequences of your actions are so divorced from your intent, Vanilla really is no more than a man attempting to do his job with reasonable diligence, hoping to one day buy his mother her dream body, and perhaps find a girl along the way.
Meanwhile, having made a copy of “Gel’s” memories, Kaiba steps inside and finds his suspicions affirmed: Gel was indeed Neiro in a new form, sent down to destroy the soul factory. “Aren’t those hands nice?” a technician asks as Neiro is warped into this shell. “They’ve been turned into bombs, but you’ll get used to them soon enough.” In order to rebel against this society’s order, Neiro is transferred down into a body that doesn’t represent her, fitted with hands that can’t even reach out to hold the one she loves.
While Vanilla lived in the sunlight of this society’s favor, he was able to concern himself with lofty hopes like finding love and securing a home for his mother. For Neiro, entrenched in this society’s dark side, the need to hone herself into an instrument of violence has stripped her of even the ability to connect with others as a human being, turning her into a total vessel of destruction. These characters need more room than this world’s dark alleys provide to truly realize their selfhood – for now, all they can do is throw their bodies against the walls, hoping that one more sacrifice might make a dent in their tormentors’ defenses.
Peering deeper into Neiro’s memories, Kaiba comes to a shocking realization: it was he who was Neiro’s collaborator in this rebellion, he who is possibly Lord Dada himself. Though he believed he was chasing his love, his current journey might have actually been about avoiding the true past, constructing a more flattering story to believe in, and pursuing that reverie instead. But Kaiba has little time to process this revelation, as the city has now mysteriously sprung into life.
Vanilla bounces happily inside a cavernous music hall, surrounded by projections of smiling faces. “It’s like they’re throwing a party to welcome us!” he cheers, his prior sorrow forgotten. Incapable of processing the full consequences of his downfall, Vanilla retreats to the comforting and familiar, to the fantasy that this whole world is set up to support him. It was, until recently, but no longer – but it is a difficult feat to manage that transition, and Vanilla lacks the perspective to grapple with what this means. Rather than flee from this society to its shadows, he will live up until his last moment in comfort, security, and ignorant bliss. Sadly, even this solipsistic oblivion is denied to him, as the party is crashed by police and a desperate, final chase begins.
Pursued by ships equipped with powerful weaponry and stronger engines, Vanilla understands there is no escaping this situation, and that only a mind transfer might save either of them from oblivion. And so our “forgettable man” performs a final heroic act, allowing Kaiba to escape while ensuring his own demise. His motives were never particularly pure, but they were also never particularly rotten. He was an unexceptional man, and in a better world, he would have lived an unexceptional but generally happy, rewarding life. The true horror of this world is not its monstrous overseers – it is that it makes monsters of us all, as we come to accept the conditions of our world as mundane no matter how terrible they may be.
Yet even as Vanilla demonstrates how this world makes us all complicit, so too does he reveal how easily its power might be overcome. In his final moments, a connection he’d made with a fellow traveler convinces Vanilla to do something outrageously brave and dangerous, all so that his friend might survive. Very few of us are so heroic in mind and spirit that we can rally against the world order we inhabit, with little hope of becoming more than a smear on the pavement. Most of us are like Vanilla, perhaps a little brave some of the time, and yet all of us forgettable souls still deserve love and happiness.
Lying to reassure Kaiba, he states that this is simply his preferred body type, and that he will surely be revived. In his last moments, he sees Cronico’s body recoil from his kiss, and knows she was never actually in love with him. And yet he still sacrifices himself to save Kaiba – for even if his feelings were never reciprocated, they were still real and important to him. Kaiba is important to him, even through all the layers of deception that separate them. Hugging his companion close, he cries in happiness, apologizing to his mother one final time. As their bodies are destroyed, we see their spirits embrace. Perhaps Cronico would have loved this man – perhaps, somewhere out in that celestial sea, their spirits might meet. As for their bodies, our last sign of Cronico is that boot she loved so much, floating gently in space. All of the feelings attached to that boot have faded into starlight; just like this lonely moon, only inert markers of our existence remain.
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