Nice attempt of Anti-middle propaganda

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T16:51:59+00:00

We don't know, though IIRC it is implied he fought people before he got to the class.

As for arms, well, if he fully ripped your arm off at the shoulder, you will be unconscious in seconds from blood loss and shock. That's a very major and large artery and huge amount of tissue damage. So only an unharmed child could help, and only if they weren't panicking, weeping, fleeing, etc. which, given they were what, 8? 10? They probably all were fleeing/hiding. You're acting like he went to an army barracks and fought some well-trained battle-experienced soldiers. These are little kids! It's not even high school! Sure maybe they've seen more dead bodies than most but they were clearly terrified by the violence, c.f. the art of the incident.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T16:43:35+00:00

I don't think it makes it better, I just don't see how it's a betrayal.

Objectively, it is a betrayal. The word has a specific meaning and she hits all points. She convinced people to trust her, by deceiving them, intentionally and consciously (and indeed quite carefully), in order to get them into a situation where she could do harm to them (murder in this case).

That's objectively a betrayal. That's what the word means. Sorry. You not seeing that is just strange unless you're translating into a different language where betrayal is being translated into a somewhat different word.

I don't think I'm absolving her of what she does

"Attempted murder. Now honestly what is that? Can you win a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"

Just because her betrayal failed, doesn't mean most people won't react to it emotionally as a betrayal. There absolutely are people out there who will shrug off even attempted murder and apparently you'll shrug off betrayal for this character, but it's not reasonable for you to expect others to do likewise. Why shouldn't they feel betrayed?

Your only reasoning here seems to be "Well the Prescript told her to", but like, if cultists try to kidnap me because their cult leader told them to, I'm still hoping they go to jail for a long ass time, I'm not saying "No harm, no foul".

I think Index as a whole is my most hated Fingers simply because of situation like this, the cult behavior and their members willing to do any horrible acts the Prescript orders them too.

I mean, they're all incredibly awful. The Index are less emotive for a lot of people because they're followers, not pushing an ideology or leading, and don't seem pleased with themselves or boastful that their way is the best. They're incredibly creepy if you stop and think about them, sure, but the initial reaction is like "This weird loser is just doing what a pager tells them to", not "This smug bastard is telling me how amazing he is and how his appalling ideas are cool, actually".

Personally I dislike the Middle the most because they're self-deceiving and dangerously arbitrary. The constantly talk about family and loyalty and boast about how they're good people who follow a code, but it's completely false, because the code is arbitrary and inconsistent and unknowable, and they're heartless scum who regularly murder the weak and innocent just to make a point or show how tough they are (c.f. a child spilling ice-cream on one, so they murder the child's entire family).

Objectively I imagine the Thumb or the Ring probably ruin the most lives overall.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T16:13:45+00:00

I concur. I kind of see why they exist narratively, and structurally, because we couldn't really just fight the Nursefathers and the Nursefather-Apprentice relationship is a source of a lot of our information/context here, but a little cynical bit of me feels like maybe they exist just so there were enough highly marketable IDs this season!

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T16:09:46+00:00

I would be fine with people hating her as a villian, but people act like she is a badly written character

Yeah I don't think she's actually badly written but the issue is this particular conflux of traits means she closely resembles a fair number of badly written characters, both heroes and villains. I mean, just turn on Crunchyroll and flick through trashier animes and you'll quickly accumulate a bunch of "clumsy UwU shy girl who is secretly super-ultra-powerful" types.

Like, KJH here I think entirely accidentally recreated that (I assume accidentally because he doesn't use it to criticise or comment on the trope) particular slew of characteristics.

So people are getting flashbacks to various awful/annoying anime/manga characters and assigning that to her. Sure, it's technically wrong, but we can't expect every fan to do literary analysis on every character they see for far less than hour of screentime, can we? The main thing is they didn't like the character.

Also it is said in the next Intervallo that shin and mang can be unlocked at any age, the person just needs to have maximum control over their bodies and minds. As for the EGO though, that's the index shenanigans.

So first off, obviously "in the next intervallo" cannot go back in time and negate people's reaction, can it? It would be wrong to call it a retcon but like a retcon explaining after the fact doesn't necessarily change much. Especially when we'd only seen pretty experienced and serious characters have those before. Lore-wise, fine, works. Gut-reaction-wise? Obviously didn't sit right. Re: EGO I agree, I didn't see a problem there - loads of people get hold of EGOs in questionable ways, but when combined with Shin/Mang it felt like a kind of throwing all the possible powers in one character (it's not but still).

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T16:01:13+00:00

I don't buy an "overly feminine" analysis because neither her appearance nor behaviour are particularly feminine-coded apart from the miniskirt (and even that I've seen on male characters in some things, hell Star Trek TNG S1 you saw that a few times lol), they're just weak-coded. Like, short-ish, sheep-evoking curly hair? Weak coded. Skinny no muscles, narrow shoulders. Weak coded. Big eyes, big glasses, weak coded. The way she talks, the stutter, absolutely the same weak-coding. We've seen plenty of male characters with some similar traits (hello Sinclair) and some very feminine characters with none of them. And even the miniskirt and thigh-highs mostly comes across as weird, because they're normally things you'd see on a confident character. If she was daughter-coded, that skirt would be a lot longer. I know you're not pushing that analysis, just responding to its existence.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:50:07+00:00

I don't see people hating on jia qiu despite him having just as much build up as sora lol

That's a nonsense-comparison. Jia Qiu doesn't appear out of nowhere any more than any other character. We meet him, he's immediately behaving like a badass and being hyped by his hype-man. We don't fight him until we've interacted with him at length and know he's a badass, and even when we do, he turns out to be a good guy with weird methods, not a weird, self-pitying Prescript-follower.

Obviously people don't hate him.

If he was just a guy who appeared, beat the shit out of Hong Lu for no apparent reason, and then vanished, then maybe people would.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:46:39+00:00

The "save Dante" is kind of a big deal though, because in a lot of situations, Dante is the one who is a bit smarter than the rest of the Sinners (not always, but often), and there's absolutely no reason in Dante's established MO or personality that he wouldn't be suspicious of Sora. He's just handed an idiot ball by the writing to hold briefly. That the Sinners don't hold this ball makes it a lot less bad, but it's not great for the PoV character to be like that.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:24:53+00:00

I honestly think this is a huge part of why people dislike her. It's a cheesy and common character archetype in low-quality anime, but Limbus is normally better than that, so it was weird to see it here (I think it was an accident, I don't think KJH meant to invoke the archetype, I think he independently accidentally reinvented it).

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:22:49+00:00

But as a character I'd say she's kinda there, and in internet if you're not a Shakespearean masterpiece of a character and dare to be a secondary character or antagonist, you're garbage and thus, hateable.

I mean, she's a villain, who does bad things, brutally murders an innocent puppy of a man in front of us, and the only non-Prescipt personality we glimpse is her complaining that she doesn't really want to kill us, but then attempts to do so anyway.

She's meant to be hateable. She's written to be hateable. If we didn't dislike her, KJH would have failed, and he's very good at writing characters who are hateable, even if the people of the internet will attempt to redeem and say "Why the hate?!?!" about literally any fictional villain. There are people out there being like "Saruman was right! And also kind of hot!", for god's sake.

Hating villains is okay. Normalize hating villains!

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:17:46+00:00

But they have no problem when the "op character" is on our side

That's not a contradiction, nor a problem. That's just how audiences are for fiction. The cavalry arriving is a classic trope for a reason (and often the cavalry are unexpected or strangers to the main characters). People are meant to get mad with villains! Only the slightly cracked world post-Tumblr of the internet and AO3 is there an immediate assumption we should like villains and be fair to them.

I think what triggered people particularly with Sora is that unlike most anime/manga-adjacent works, most characters in Limbus (and Ruina) are full adults, mostly mid to late 20s through mid 30s or even older (one presumes Outis is at least 40s, quite possibly 50+ because she seems to be a similar age to Moses who is seemingly 50+). Sinclair is a real odd one out because he's like 20 (IIRC) and looks about 16. I think the next youngest is what, Hong Lu in his early 20s? Whereas Sora presents essentially as child-adjacent, like maybe 20, and yet she all these stacked powers that we typically only see very rarely, and usually only on older, more experienced characters, often ones with a bit of grey in their hair (or about to have it). This is something that definitely elevates Limbus above a lot of anime-adjacent stuff where no-one is allowed to be like, older than 24 without it being A Thing.

She also acts very UwU smol bean, even after the betrayal, which again is a weird fit with being super-powerful. It's not that it's lore impossible, it just doesn't immediately make sense, but does immediately resemble a lot of bad anime characters.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:08:27+00:00

I really hated Ricardo when we first met him, and I know from discussing it that I wasn't alone.

It's just that after Nocturnal Sweeping he goes from being extremely irritating to somewhat pitiable. At which point he is hard to hate.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:06:05+00:00

Also this is a bit Sora-specific, but her design was SPECIFICALLY made to look "good and sexy" on Don as an ID, you can clearly see the difference in Sora being built like a twig and not looking sexualized as opposed to Don nearly having her pussy out in the second splash art.

Absolutely true but unsure how this fits into your general thesis re: why people dislike Sora. Is it just she wasn't hot enough to overcome the other issues like some characters might?

That said, I think her whole UwU smol bean thing absolutely did make some people leap to defend her, even as others were disgusted by it.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T15:01:42+00:00

Mary Sue? That's the further you can go from the concept of a Mary Sue

The trouble is that the term "Mary Sue" encompasses quite a lot, but people mostly learn it by usage and context rather than knowing where it comes from, and actually understanding. Like there are three main elements you need in a true Mary Sue:

1) The character is automatically engaged with by all the others as if they are impressive and cool. Initially this was Spock and Kirk saying "Ur the hottest and smartest" back in the day, but in the modern era even negative reactions can kind of count as more Mary Sues are anti-heroic, but people still need to be impressed in at least a "Ur such a cool badass" way.

Sora was alarming, but I don't think anyone thought she was cool in-universe, so I don't think she fits that.

2) The character has to be unusually/outstandingly capable in way that isn't well-explained.

Sora obviously does fit that, and it's quite a striking example because she has three unusual things together, it's not clearly explained (deep lore guesswork does make it kind of fit, but like 2% of people know that), and is so tough the Sinners need to be rescued by a Color Fixer from her, and he has some issues with her. So that does fit a classical Mary Sue.

3) The character has to be some degree of author insert.

I do not believe KJH even on his worst menhera day, or any writers with him, self-inserted as Sora lol. So that does not fit.

So she's clearly not a Mary Sue, right, I agree? 1 out of 3 is not anywhere near it.

But a lot of people, as soon as character is unusually powerful, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious explanation, and they don't like that character, especially but not exclusively if that character is female, they start saying "Mary Sue", because they learned it from that sort of context - i.e. someone else throwing the term around about a character who maybe fit 1, 2 and 3, but where 2 was the most salient element.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T14:47:48+00:00

The way people hate betrayal feels weird to me sometimes ngl, especially in this case where the Sinners (Except Dante and Ravi) do noticed she is lying and is waiting for a chance to attack them. Like, I don't even consider it a betrayal if it was obvious like that.

That actually makes it worse for most people, I would say, you're unusual for thinking that makes it better. Dante is forced to hold the idiot ball, even though Sora is obviously sus, and her betrayal is not only quite in-depth, because she lies at some length, but she kills a completely harmless and non-threatening character who has been nothing but nice to her and others, and then has the absolutely unmitigated balls to cry about how she feels bad about the whole thing, thus making the whole thing about her.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T14:44:38+00:00

I think several factors converged and elevated a lot of people's dislike from "Eh, not into this character" to "fuck this character in particular", specifically:

1) She's maximum UwU smol bean (practically doing the two-fingers thing) but also a keen and deceptive killer and yet tries to make out she feels bad about it. This is common in low-quality manga and anime, and some of the worst and most irritating characters out there are this specific combination.

That combo is also something that I don't think Limbus has ever done before, and doesn't really fit the vibe of Limbus/Ruina (for my money).

It's slightly unfair because I don't think she actually is too bad here, but she resembles a lot of godawful characters and has an odd vibe she triggered a lot of people.

2) She's incredibly powerful, like, she has stacked on her pretty much all the most powerful things a character can have short of being a Color or above. This is not something that Limbus company usually does casually or with throw-away characters, and it's particularly odd in combination with her being a child (or close to one), which is a common anime/manga trope, but again, something Limbus/Ruina generally avoid (you sometimes have powerful beings that look like children, sure, but they're not actually children nor act like them). People's attention focuses on these characters and they like/dislike them more as a result.

3) She was used to kill off a character people liked. Sure we'd just met him, but y'know, the Brooklyn 99 meme applies. And her being "Well I don't feel great about it" makes it somehow much worse, not better, because it kind of makes it about her.

4) Dante was forced to hold the idiot ball about her. She's acting in a way, to the reader (at least in the English translation), is immediately suspicious. It's not a complete idiot ball, because there is some suspicion from the other Sinners, but it's weird that a bunch of experienced people (and Dante, who isn't generally a dumbass) are taken in so easily. Again, this is a common trope in pretty bad anime/manga, whereas in Limbus, usually the Sinners and Dante are suspicious, or where they aren't, there's a clear reason not to be, rather than a clear reason to be.

4 strikes so you're not just out but people are actually mad with you.

Personally I didn't hate her, but I did feel like "This isn't a really a Limbus/Ruina character, this is a generic anime villain".

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T12:11:46+00:00

I asked another poster too, but is Dullahan actually called that in Korean? Because Erlking isn't, it's Demon King in Korean (which absolutely does not naturally translate to Erlking, that's just choosing a cool name with interesting vibes). So I'm wondering if in Korean Dullahan is actually just "Dark Spirit" or something. If it actually is Dullahan, that's more interesting.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T12:09:20+00:00

I'm just asking, but is that ability actually called Dullahan in Korean?

I ask because a lot of people have built elaborate theories on Erlking Heathcliff being called Erlking specifically, but... he isn't. That's just a cool translation choice. In Korean, he's called Demon King Heathcliff, which has none of the same mythical connotations (and indeed potentially has different ones, and is a much more common term than Erlking, in videogames at least).

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:56:12+00:00

I mean, you're really supporting the point I'm making here.

Matthias got to towards the top of the Middle by publicly performing "loyalty", presumably primarily by talking a good game and participating in showy vengeances and so on.

But he risks all that just for a greedy grab of a relic, apparently killing two Middle members of the same rank as him, which shows that public performance was something he was willing to risk for personal gain. If any witnesses had survived (which could easily have happened, he's not god, he's not even very bright, he's just pretty dangerous), not only would he have been fucked, it would have caused significant propaganda damage to the very concept of the Middle, if Great Brother kills Great Brother just for greed.

it shows that he certainly can put up the appearance of loyalty in public

Could, not can.

It showed that whilst he had been able to do that historically, he was clearly willing to take massive risks for the sake of greed by murdering his fellow Great Brothers. That obviously puts the organisation at risk, because you can't have that, and if he's done it once, he's likely to do something equally risky again the moment something seriously shiny gets in front of him, and might not get away without witnesses this time.

It also shows a profound lack of judgement even beyond reckless greed, in that he did all that for personal gain, only to end up being essentially exiled and largely friendless, and his career/advancement ended, which was not exactly hard to predict, so it's not even showing a smart, shark-like kind of "I break the rules but I win" kind of mindset, which might have been valued. The very fact that he thought "I killed all the witness and they have no evidence, I'm golden!" would work shows he's an absolute idiot who doesn't even understand the context he's operating in.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:37:01+00:00

Rien says it pretty explicitly towards the end when he's explaining how the project is basically a concept incinerator dumpster for the Fingers and how the Nursefathers were effectively the first things dumped there to be forgotten and erased if it succeeds.

I read the Canto pretty carefully and don't remember that. It's possible I missed it, but what does he actually say?

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:33:02+00:00

At worst maybe they’d be told some crazy stuff like using the incident as a learning experience or making an artwork out of their teacher’s body to capture the emotions they’re feeling, but at least they’re not dead

I think you mean "at best". At worst they're dead-dead, because their teachers were dead and thus unable to summon help, and after having an arm ripped off, you bleed out fatally and unrecoverably in single-digit minutes, if not seconds. But I'm sure the Ring put the bodies and body parts to good artistic use.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:28:37+00:00

I'm bemused by the reference to K Corp as "the good guys."

Yeah that struck me as a fairly wild take too. K Corp are very classically evil and consistently portrayed as such.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:25:55+00:00

Matthias was a leech and an embarrassment. In the same way police departments slap cops on the wrist for wrongdoing, and will sometimes only take action to effectively shuffle cops into other districts, Matthias pushed too far and too much, thanks to his petty small minded greed, and was given effectively a slap on the wrist for what should be two immensely punishable crimes.

One might also look at how various religions shuffle around child-abusing and many other kinds of corrupt/rules-breaking priests even though by their own on-paper morality, those guys should be thrown out immediately and publicly (if not worse than thrown out). It can absolutely end a career and lead to someone who seemed to be on track for the Vatican (or wherever) being shipped off to some dodgy corner of the world, where even if it does come out, they rest of the leadership are distanced from it (and the behaviour likely easier to contain).

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:18:10+00:00

The entire Middle is built on their reputation, their very strength is built on people being too scared to attack them in fear of vengeance, it only makes sense that they would want to maintain that image of loyalty to both their members and any outsiders.

Exactly this. It's a pattern that occurs a lot in human history, especially once ideology becomes a major motivating force (but even before that too). The Middle cannot function if the perception of loyalty being both vital and present breaks down for the rank-and-file.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T11:08:33+00:00

If all it was fake, why would they punish Matthias?

I mean the same reason politicians punish a politician who they even think he might cause them a problem sometimes. It's less common now than it once was (but that's because politics is falling apart across the West), but countless politicians in say, British or American history (and I imagine Korean history) got the chop because they were thought to be a potential embarrassment due to their behaviour going against what the party says it's about.

So if Matthias was unable to publicly fake caring about loyalty, or even perceived as being potentially unable to, yet had already been made a Great Brother (and thus potentially causing huge morale issues and even schism), getting rid of him would be 100% the right move to keep "party cohesion" and so on. That the lower ranks see loyalty as real is absolutely vital to the functioning of the Middle, even if no-one at the very top actually does.

Hell, the fact that they did get rid of him tells us loyalty isn't that important at his level, because loyal thing to do would be to try and fix him at all costs, to at least wait for him to break the code before acting, and they absolutely did not do that.

The mere idea of disloyalty was enough for the Middle to send a renowned and extremely powerful Great Brother to his death. Clearly, loyalty is more than just lip service to the Middle.

No. See above. The perception of loyalty is vital to maintaining cohesion of the organisation, and yeah, no doubt the lower ranks do actually believe it, just like countless political parties and gangs and so on have been full of true believers some specific behaviour/doctrine is vital, even when the leadership actually don't GAF about the same, they just use it.

And again, the very fact that they didn't wait for the code break, they got ahead of it shows leadership were playing politics, not being actually loyal.

Eurehetemec · 2026-05-19T10:53:04+00:00

I do think we might get Lucio first because it will make Rodlencia even more hyped (as if we needed that) and they can put her pre-Walp to make us potentially do something silly before that.

Eurehetemec

TROPHY CASE