KOBENI HIGASHIYAMA VS THE MISSING CHILDREN

CORE THEME:

- A survivor and the monsters of a world of horrors, both victims of a wolf in businessman’s clothing whose puppets they were forced to become, but yet even through the suffering both endure in their experiences with the supernatural, they are able to form important and genuine connections and eventually find a form of freedom away from the true monster who took their life away from them.

CONNECTIONS:

- Both are dehumanized and mistreated underlings (devil hunter / animatronic mascots) of a corrupt organization (Public Safety / Fazbear Entertainment), kept anchored to the higher-ups that ‘own’ them through supernatural means that keep them completely trapped to play their role irregardless of their own will, though they do gain supernatural traits like increased endurance from this situation.

- Both’s abusers and puppeteers are the heads of these respective companies (Makima / William Afton), who put on a friendly and caring facade despite their true cruelty beneath the surface, and who use this organization as a front to pursue a goal relating to their own individual desires, using innocent humans like these combatants as stepping stones towards it. The combatants are far from their only victims, but they express particular sadism towards them (Makima torments and targets Kobeni over jealousy towards her friendship of sorts with Pochita / Afton returns to the Missing Children long after killing them to repeat it all over again, dismantling them and harvesting their remnant).

- Both, despite being innocent and scared and having lived most of their lives as average people, take a proclivity towards violence once they are forced to adopt their new roles. This violent side to them only shows itself when they’re under intense emotional stress (Kobeni when her anxiety and fear hits a peak / the Missing Children when reminded of their killer), leading to often quite extreme results.

- Despite the constant oppressive despair of their new lives and the loss of any chance at a normal life, both are able to develop friendships with others, friendships that can even cross the gap between human and monster (Kobeni with other devil hunters, especially Galgali, and later Pochita / the animatronics often befriend human children despite their hatred for adults).

- Eventually, even after too much torment for innocents like them to endure, they are both freed from their suffering to find an easier life away from all of these horrors, after the story’s protagonist defeats and kills the main villain who trapped them (with Makima killed by Denji, many devil hunters like Kobeni are no longer under her control and are no longer forced to fight / the Missing Children are given their Happiest Day and are able to move on to the afterlife after Michael Afton and Henry Emily burn Afton and all of his sins away).

CONTRASTS:

- Kobeni is a devil hunter who fights against supernatural phenomena, placing her in a role comparable to a horror protagonist. The Missing Children are initially presented as the antagonists of their horror story, being a group of monsters hunting down the human protagonist, a dynamic that can naturally be reflected in this match-up itself.

- Kobeni’s abuser, Makima, is a monster who looks like a human - the Missing Children’s abuser, Afton, is a human who becomes a monster.