History Headscratchers / DarkerThanBLACK

** I thought that the series handled the interaction well enough to be neither 'fucking' nor 'pedophilia', seeing as all but a handful relationships are developed in a way that practically spells out: "''this is '''not''' healthy''". And then there's Suou's heartbreaking "confession": ("It hurt even more when you hit me. There are so many things I don't understand... but when you called me Suou, I was so happy. Then I found out it was to save [[spoiler:Yin]], I became confused. '''[[spoiler:You killed my dad.]]''' You're a terrible, good-for-nothing, violent drunk. Yet I became so lonely when we were separated.) That's bad enough coming from an abused wife, but this is from a kid, barely in her teens, who's been screwed up by events entirely beyond her control. If her character is being exploited, it's tugging at our heartstrings, not our nether regions. As for Norio, he's a nutjob and never taken seriously. It's interesting to note that Norio and Suou's age gap (~18 and ~13) happens to match that of [[RomeoAndJuliet another famously doomed couple]].

* Since when have cases of "Death by Electrocution" had their causes of death marked as "Unknown", as indicated by the police in the first episode? I mean how is Hei killing people with electricity without damaging any organs, or if he does damage organs, how does the Police Coroner miss it?

** Another explanation can point that Hei can control the electricity flow (he can HACK electronic locks with his powers) efficiently enough to stop human heart or scramble brain without whatsoever collateral damage.

** I don't really see a problem. The hotel is big, but I douby it hosts giant events like that one every single day. The party is HUGE and they probably hired some extra help for it. Which, I assume, they'll do through some catering company which just provides servers. The staff manager surely works for the hotel, but not all of the servers - he just needs to know their names (which isn't that hard) so he can yell at them, instead of going "Yeah, you, that guy". The hired servers may have been "working" in the hotel prior to the party, though - maybe something like a couple of days - enough to get them familiar with the setting and what is where. And by "working" there, I mean they might have been stocking up the kitchen, cleaning the floors and generally just preparing for the party. A couple of days should be enough for both familiarizing them with the layout, being given instructions how to conduct themselves, and to prepare the hotel for the party. As I said, I really don't see what's the problems of somebody infiltrating the place - especially if they would have documents and references and stuff readily made for them.

** Wei's RequiredSecondaryPowers are weird. But he has "elven" ears and survives electrocution without police noticing he's [[NotQuiteDead not exactly corpse]], so his entire physiology seems to be deeply messed up by the powers of Gate, so this weirdness is sort of justified.
** Plus if you actually watch the ''finale'' your discover that Hei did not in fact win the SuperpowerLottery.

** ...or advanced Truth Detector and countermeasures for it, or glass flowers, or those seeds. Whoever stole stuff got from it whatever they could. After all, people we see are handful of operatives and handful of technicians with already working systems. They know which button to press, but it's all they can do about "xeno"-tech. That is, everyone save MadScientist (who's not quite sane to begin with) and some of his comrades (who never said anything on screen). {{Handwave}} is simply out of scope. That, and none of "Roadside Picnic" derivatives ever unambiguously handwaved anything. UncannyValley incarnate is ''supposed to be'' weird.

** It was not stated that anyone with sky map and eyes can do this. As long as agency they work against has access to observation-analytics-library facilities like the one we saw, they aren't too "covert", yeah. And that's what happened on-screen, especially if Contractor doesn't leave the scene immediately. Lois was cornered, and then cornered ''again''. Berta and her partner were pinpointed after first use of her power and would be caught if guy could not deal with so many observers so quickly. "Gate-sama" was an enigma only for {{Muggles}}. Primrose's hideaways were visited by police at least twice. Hei got away repeatedly only on pure ninjutsu. On the other hand, we see too many Contractors already knowing each other anyway, whether personally or from briefing.

[[folder: Unknown murder motive]]

* Why did November 11 murder Havoc?

* Those random Scandinavians (which I ''think'' are supposed to be Finns, based on the names, but I could be wrong here, as the guy's name is kinda odd, as far as I've observed) were an interesting addition and all... but c'mon, is it too much to ask to get the {{VA}}s to learn how to ''pronounce their characters' names right''? Eelis' VA did get close with Eelis' name, yeah, but considering that Eelis should be of the same nationality as Yin/Kirsi, not to mention having been closely acquaintaced with her, he really should be capable of getting Kirsi's name right.
** This is a failing of the Japanese language, not the VAs. They don't actually have a "si" sound, so the closest approximation is "shi". Unless you're talking about the dub? In which case, just ignore me.

** I am also offput by all of the lolicon- they better not hook up Hei and Suou. On the other hand, I did get the vibe that with the crossdresser father, they might have been going for the gay = mutant idea of the Franchise/{{X-Men}}. On the other hand, it's kind of surprising, but besides TheSyndicate, average people so far don't really seem to hate Contractors, which is weird given how mutants are treated in most series, and Contractors are a lot more dangerous. Like that mother in the latest episode telling her child not to look at Hei fighting Genma, because if Contractors see you, they will "take your bellybutton". Sure, that's making them bogeymen, but she seemed pretty calm.

* Why does everybody say that Genma was a pedophile? I never once got that vibe from him. The only things I can think of that even come close are the two instances in which he calls Suou a "cute little kid," and even then, he sounded more as if he were mocking her for seeming unthreatening. In fact, he's been labeled as a CompleteMonster several times on this site, but the most evil I ever saw him commit was killing Yoko and nearly killing Suou, and while those are certainly evil actions, I don't see how they transform him from "villain" to "complete monster."

*** ...Wait, ''What''? I ''must'' see this page and quote, if only the confirm that totally cracked-out tidbit (as for the initial question, Mayu's collarbone fixation probably has to do with the fact that Hei was wearing a) a mask and b) a shirt that was neither his usual man-cleavage-showcasing button-up nor the skin-tight spy catsuit that's usually under the BadassLongcoat. Therefore, the most immediate object of focus would be the infamous "delicious collarbone." Also, she was drunk during the rescue. People think of some pretty weird things while drunk.)

*** Suou also has a very strong theme of not belonging to any group and searching for connection.

*** I always wondered what was wrong with the people in the marvel universe. Look, there is the guy who can disintegrate me with a though. Let's throw some rocks at him, what could possibly go wrong. It is entirely reasonable to be as polite as possible when you talk to them and run as fast as you can when you are out of their sight.

*** Personally, it's the never-taken-seriously aspect that I found most creepy. Norio is a nutjob, but none of the characters even tries to stop him from sexually harassing a young girl, except on the grounds that he'll get hurt. Suou's speeches do call out the abusive nature of her relationships with him and Hei, but only ambiguously. Add in Mina apparently thinking that grabbing someone and holding them restrained against your body (whilst explaining that virginity is unhealthy) is a reasonable way to make a pass, and I'd really like a lampshade to tell me whether or not sexualised abuse and pedophilia is considered acceptable.

*** Damn. Well, for moving so fast, he sure changed his expression into the show's biggest "oh shit" face in time. Thanks for the explanation!
**** Problem is, why doesn't his moving at the speed of sound through air itself trigger existence issues? Surely the body is not made to withstand air resistance while moving at 340 m/sec? Unless he has some secondary powers not mentioned.
**** I always assumed that he had some form of force field that could protect him from the impacts/friction but once they get up to a certain force value they just blow through the shield.

*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Shion copied either the entire planet to shape it to his will, copied the moon to slip it underneath the Gate's veil, or copied the entire universe and shaped ''that'' to his will. The backlash of this remuneration killed him.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]To be honest, I'm not really sure why he had to meet up with Yin in order to do this. There was an obvious metaphor where Izanami (Shion) was the god of life and Izanagi (Yin) the goddess of death, but there was never any mention of Yin killing or destroying anything in order for Shion to put his own copy there.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]As Shion's copies must always have something different about them, in this world/universe/whatever he never existed, and his father and Suou live a happy generic schoolgirl family life, reunited with Suou's mother, and July could live a normal life as well.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]This was the "end of the world" foretold in the prophecies concerning Izanami and Izanagi, and in a sense it was the end of the world. Oreille's organization, for whatever reason, had been working to make this happen because they too wanted the world remade.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]I guess Japan is a strategically valuable island or something, because this allowed the United States to take it over.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]August 7 was alive, I guess. Either that or July had his own personal CONGRATULATIONS vision and he really is dead.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Another gate showed up somewhere, I guess. I'm not sure if Japan's gate is still there or not.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Contractors still exist, though, as evidenced by the bit with Yin at the end.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Suou's memories and "soul" had been stored in the meteor shard. That's why the anti-contractor machine caused Hei's powers to go to it rather than Suou herself-- because that's where "she" was.[[/labelnote]]
*** An OVA is slated to come out in 2010 concerning the events between seasons 1 and 2. At the very least, it will explain some about Yin.

*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]If you watch carefully, Shion copied the planet/universe/whatever before he started deteriorating, and ''well'' before he met Yin. I think it was Yin's influence that killed him in the end.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Shion's copy of the world had neither himself nor the Gates; hence July's display of considerably more emotion than before.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]"Izanami" is some sort of EldritchAbomination-type consciousness that will presumably be a little better explained when the OVA comes out, but at any rate it causes Yin to force Contractors to commit suicide and, apparently, takes their souls; Yin managed to overcome/suppress it at the end when she asked Hei to kill her.[[/labelnote]]
*** [[labelnote:spoiler]]Hei stopped whatever would have happened because of Izanagi and Izanami by killing Yin.[[/labelnote]]
*** Unfortunately, I have ''no freaking clue'' what Madame Oreille was trying to accomplish in this interpretation, or why.
**** My guess is that she was trying to stop the Izanagi and Izanami as well, Hei did it for her

*** No, not really. All we see is that they're really close and Hei [[MoralityPet gets extremely protective of her]], which we already knew; it's deliberately left open, so a shipper can legitimately [[ShippingGoggles interpret their relationship one way]], while someone who disagrees can interpret it differently. [[spoiler:Sure, Izanami is all over Hei, but it's hard to tell if she's a SplitPersonality or a separate entity, and he mostly seems quite understandably creeped-out. Otherwise, all that happens is that they hug, which can just as easily be platonic.]]
**** That's just your personal opinion, [[WordofGod Word of God]] has already stated them as being canon.
***** Where?
***** WordOfGod has been pretty tight-lipped about the entire situation, actually. This Troper hasn't seen much of ''anything'' from the writers alluding to them being in a romantic relationship or having mutual romantic feelings for each other. As the above troper states, it's relatively ambiguous and shippers can ship whoever they want, or ship no one at all. In other words: if you want to see it, it's there. If you don't want to see it, it's not there.

*** except it was never said Yin became a Doll ten years ago. She could be fifteen or twenty since it's never clear if she became a doll ten or as little as four or five years before the story.

*** This is very heavily implied. Heck, the original poster touched on it when he said that "Contractors are becoming less sociopathic."

*** Actually its pretty difficult to learn to seamlessly blend in when you have no emotions. Ask some real life sociopaths about it.
*** Even RealLife sociopaths (who aren't completely devoid of emotions, by the way) learn to do it overtime, hence why the disorder is so hard to diagnose in the first place. And contractors don't "seamlessly blend in" anyway. There's always something "off" there, even with the more charismatic ones like Mao or November 11.

*** Well let's meet in the middle here then. They are TheUnfettered with their primary purpose being self preservation. They are coldly rational about everything ''except'' for self preservation.

[[folder:Cell phones with no satellites]

** This is of course correct, the above debate was simply about their viability as covert operatives in and of itself. And as you point out, even if their spying capabilities weren't that great its just really nice to have an enforcer who can topple buildings and kill scores of people at once(and not even need mental conditioning beforehand or run the risk of needing therapy after) on hand in that kind of buisness.

*** Actually this troper, when I was learning Japanese, was taught to pronounce his name in Japanese syllables when introducing himself. It's possible they're simply doing the same thing, rendering their names in a way that's easier for the language?
* If rockets vanish once they're launched past the stratosphere due to the false sky, how come cell phones and other commnication devices are able to work?

* A clip-show montage, multiple single instances of flashbacks, and a totally mood-breaking insert of the transformation sequence? Is BONES really so strapped for cash that they had to cut that many corners for a ''final episode''?
** Well, both season endings and the show itself were heavily inspired by NeonGenesisEvangelion...consider it the EnforcedMethodActing equivalent of animating and writing a show.

* It just bugs me that the second season has a plot outline that sounds like a bad fanfic. To whit: A [[OriginalCharacter completely new character]] joins the original protagonist, who is [[OutOfCharacter turned into]] [[TookALevelInJerkass an abusive jerkass]] to [[SympatheticSue make us feel sorry for her]]. Then she becomes a Contractor, but her emotions don't change at all, with no explanation (and she gets a TransformationSequence!). From that point on, [[SpotlightStealingSquad most of the plot is about her]], even though at the end it turns out [[spoiler:she wasn't even directly involved in the scheme that got the whole mess started]]. A character who died is [[UnexplainedRecovery brought back]] with just a {{handwave}} (presumably because the author liked him), and most characters who survived the original are reduced to a few scenes at best: Kirihara is mostly shoved offscreen despite [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot her great story potential]], and Yin spends the whole time [[spoiler:either [[ConvenientComa in a coma]] or possessed by her shiny new SuperpoweredEvilSide]], which seems almost like a MoralityPet version of DieForOurShip. If this had been a story on fanfiction.net, I'd ask somebody to write a ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum mission for it! I actually don't think it was bad, but it still bothers me.
** This troper skipped the entire second season really. The first season stands up on it's own and the ONLY plot hook is very transparent and was obviously added at the last second.
** Good point. I was glad to have Mao there, but there's really no reason at all he should have been.
** I'm going to disagree with Mao, mostly because his reappearance solved some FridgeLogic I had with his death. I wondered if they still had the backup of his brain still on the server somewhere, and could just turn it back on. Made sense to me.
** This troper was always under the impression that Suou was a deconstruction of the self-insert MarySue. Given [[DeconstructionFleet the nature of the show]], it's entirely plausible.
*** When Suo is not transforming she is either mourning someone's death, stalked, beaten up or kidnapped. I don't think labeling her Mary Sue is justified.
*** He didn't call her a MarySue, he called her a deconstruction of it. Although in this tropers opinion she is far closer to a deconstruction of the MagicalGirl. Complete with TransformationSequence!

* All the transformation sequences. Honestly, were they ''really'' that necessary? After just one of them, I think the animators would have realized that yes, the audience knows where Suou's rifles are coming from.
** The same reasons a transformation sequence, or other stock footage, are EVER used.
** It's a DeconstructionFleet. DarkerThanBlack has a lot of cliches like this and it's a meta show that's not afraid to make fun of itself. [[Film/JamesBond November 11]] wore a black suit only when he died, for example. The transformation sequences are supposed to make the viewer think something like "oh, hahah, this is totally going to be plot relevant, I bet the transformation sequence will get interrupted or cause something bad to happen." [[{{AvertedTrope}} And then it doesn't]].

** Maybe [[spoiler:Amber's implied dying]] actually means she's suffered a FateWorseThanDeath: [[{{Futurama}} pre-life! Then death.]]

* So, I just got done rewatching the series, and... I don't understand a thing about Suou. All that I think I can safely say is that the Suou we see was created by Shion two years before the start of the second season. But it seems like there are several different versions of "Why?" that go with that. For starters, we know that there at least ''was'' a real Suou at one point, who was killed when a rival faction blew up the university that Suou's father was working in, and while he did manage to extract her memories, Suou's mother ultimately took her and had her cremated. But then, during the meteor shower in the first episode of Season 2, Shion gets wounded, apparently sees an apparition of Yin's spectre, and creates a copy of his long-deceased sister for... some reason. Even though it is later stated that Copy!Suou is a girl simply because she is one of Shion's copies, which always have some major difference from the original. So what, was Shion trying to copy himself, and the product just so happened to be identical to his dead sister, just because it had to have a key difference? That seems awfully coincidental. But even later, in the finale, they said that the whole purpose for her existence was to be an experiment to see if the meteor core could sustain false memories in a clone for an extended period of time. So now, did Shion get hit by a meteor and just up and then decide, "Oh, I need to try and make a copy of myself to see if we can use a fragment of a meteor to sustain fake memories in copies of people that I may or may not be making anytime soon because I might be DYING RIGHT NOW"? (And did they happen to just have a spare Doll lying around? Because the copy of Shion's dad was said to have been a "Doll that Shion prepared," which makes it sound as though he grafts the image of the copy onto an existing body - which the copies of Shion that make up the Doll Network used for the Ark certainly seem to suggest as well.)

* So, I just got done rewatching the series, and... I don't understand a thing about Suou. All that I think I can safely say is that the Suou we see was created by Shion two years before the start of the second season. But it seems like there are several different versions of "Why?" that go with that. For starters, we know that there at least ''was'' a real Suou at one point, who was killed when a rival faction blew up the university that Suou's father was working in, and while he did manage to extract her memories, Suou's mother ultimately took her and had her cremated. But then, during the meteor shower in the first episode of Season 2, Shion gets wounded, apparently sees an apparition of Yin's spectre, and creates a copy of his long-deceased sister for... some reason. Even though it is later stated that Copy!Suou is a girl simply because she is one of Shion's copies, which always have some major difference from the original. So what, was Shion trying to copy himself, and the product just so happened to be identical to his dead sister, just because it had to have a key difference? That seems awfully coincidental. But even later, in the finale, they said that the whole purpose for her existence was to be an experiment to see if the meteor core could sustain false memories in a clone for an extended period of time. So now, did Shion get hit by a meteor and just up and then decide, "Oh, I need to try and make a copy of myself to see if we can use a fragment of a meteor to sustain fake memories in copies of people that I may or may not be making anytime soon because I might be DYING RIGHT NOW"? (And did they happen to just have a spare Doll lying around? Because the copy of Shion's dad was said to have been a "Doll that Shion prepared," which makes it sound as though he grafts the image of the copy onto an existing body.)

* And speaking of the meteor core, if Hei was working for Madame Oreille, who was working with Shion and his father, then why was Hei looking for the core in the first two episodes despite Shion specifically instructing Suou to take it? Yeah, maybe Hei hadn't received that order yet or was working off of outdated ones, but it really just seems like a trick to bait the audience into thinking that Hei has turned villainous, regardless of whether or not it fits into the wider context of the series.

** Sex is a major theme in season 2, especially sexual deviancy. There is exactly one lolicon, one shotacon, one lesbian, and one okama in the cast so far, in addition to Suou's period. Why? I have no idea, but if I were paid money to guess I would say that it's meant to tie in to Suou's [[FinalFantasyVI Terra]]-esque "what is love" motif. Alternatively, the writers may be going for an X-Men vibe of equating contractors to sexual deviants, much as X-Men recently started using mutants as the new gay people--note that the okama father is immediately and utterly accepting of contractors and doesn't question their coldness.

** It's a DeconstructionFleet. DarkerThanBlack has a lot of cliches like this and it's a meta show that's not afraid to make fun of itself. [[JamesBond November 11]] wore a black suit only when he died, for example. The transformation sequences are supposed to make the viewer think something like "oh, hahah, this is totally going to be plot relevant, I bet the transformation sequence will get interrupted or cause something bad to happen." [[{{AvertedTrope}} And then it doesn't]].

** For example, Hei could cut off the electric signals in the muscle creating cardiac arrest or stop him from breathing or he could just "turn off" the brain.