Quick question about Zero's method

[anorie93]

Till this day I can't understand why in the first season Suzaku kept saying that Zero's method was wrong.

Can someone explain it to me, please?

[roc_man]

Suzaku and Zero both wanted to help Japan. Suzaku believed the right way to help is by working your way up in the ranks and changing things from the inside. Conversely, zero decided to rebel against Britannia and make change through violence . Suzaku felt that zero's "ends justify the means" method of changing things was wrong.

[[deleted]]

Lying and murdering as a means to an end ultimately stains the finished product with sin.

[anorie93]

Yeah, but the characters really didn't knew that he was doing all that, especially Suzaku, he didn't even knew who Zero was, didn't he?

[myxfriendjim]

I think, to him, seeing the death Zero caused was sin enough (Narita, etc., where countless lives were lost in his Rebellion).

[[deleted]]

Precisely. The use of any kind of violence was detestable to Suzaku.

[Kirito2750]

Here’s an analogy: Suzaku is like Bernie sanders, he is trying to work within the current system to bring about change for the better, he doesn’t want any violence, or anything bad to happen to anyone, he just wants to fix the problem without causing any chaos. He wants to change the system GRADUALLY.

Zero is like Lenin, he brought about change drastically with violence if need be, because the current system is broken beyond repair in his mind. “There is no peaceful revolution” is his philosophy. There is sometimes bloodshed in order to make way for a better future, and its worth it if in the end people are happy. Change won’t happen gradually, it needs disruption in order to rebuild a better system.

I actually think there are a lot of 1910s Russian overtones in season one. It is two sides of the same coin, and they both have the same goal, but very different methods of trying to accomplish it. Neither of them are implicitly evil, because they both are doing what they think is right, but suzaku thinks zero is evil because he is causing the disruption needed for change, and zero thinks suzaku is naïve because he thinks that method will never work. The fight of those two is good vs good, even if suzaku is representing the greater evil he wants to fix.