Infinite Ryvius spoilers ahead, as in right now.

Despite being nine years late on this series, it warrants untamed thoughts undoubtedly still, probably. I’ll try and avoid a general Lord of the Flies style commentary to point out one element I enjoyed: The Gun.

Specifically speaking, this is The Gun that originated in the hands of the two covert sink-the-Braticus guys. And so I wanted to take note of how it’s this same gun that gets transferred between many hands. There’s probably a lot we can extract from this; what does the gun itself mean? Its transience? It’s lack of transience? The paradox of the last two are important. Amidst chaotic development elsewhere, the monolithic gun remains steadfast – it is carried through many hands, yet its unchanging demeanor (it’s a gun, anyway) carried steadily.

Airs Blue is the next guy to take ownership of the gun, yet this sense of “ownership” begs for a bit of clarification. We can obviously conclude that the gun symbolizes power, yet while picking up on the chronology of the gun as it transverses the plethora of sweaty palms, we find that our sense of “ownership” need be reversed; rather, the gun “owns” its captor – it’s a subtle, yet very hegemonic power relationship. The bearer of arms proceeds to enter the territory of power, and so he is territorialized as powerful, both physically and thus mentally in the special square within the cakewalk of ideologies.

The noticeable deviant to this is Kouji, our protagonist that for a long time we can assume has possession of The Gun but does not instantly succumb to the power of arms; it takes time for Kouji to actually display his desired authority via The Gun, time spent as Blue repeatedly asks him “I want to see what you’re going to do.” Yet Kouji inevitably resigns to The Gun, as Yuki’s provocative mamoru-ism infiltrates his soft spot for Aoi, or rather his own inherent mamoru-ism. It seems like referencing women always does the trick when it comes to insinuating unhealthy doses of RAEG.

We perhaps think that power is a kinetic thing, something that is transferable, but that isn’t necessarily so. Is there a finite amount of power to be “distributed” within the Ryvius? – yes, to an extent, since the economy of The Gun itself presents us with that very limited quantity.[1] Maybe dissent directed by steel pipes and wooden planks can constitute a creation of power, yet the single insurrection was pummeled by Airs Blue’s gun, and simply the sight of it. Still, regardless of the quantitative characteristics of power, it is in stasis, and we find that, because of the continuously transforming characters and the need for alignment between self and power (with no alignment you wouldn’t have anyone with power), the latter must be relatively motionless.

So we find that it’s the position that our contestants insert themselves into. This doesn’t disregard agency, as Kouji stands up for his beliefs (valiantly, at that) in face of demigod Ikumi’s systematic edict on “order”. Situationally, agency plays the role of channeling gravity (no pun intended), the force that directs power and structures its flow. It’s structuring the structure; architecture, if you please.

The position of power can be quite an infectious one, as Ikumi’s quickly descended into the depths of insanity, or so I’d call it. It’s important because, originally, he was the nicest guy, nicer than Kouji, the so-called Nice Guy. Protecting Under the Influence? Yes, very much so – in fact I’d say that for a lot of the crew onboard the Ryvius power couldn’t be anything but hegemonic. Airs Blue was the only level-headed guy with The Gun, and the bridge members acknowledge that fact. I think the two-fold hegemony of power works because, within the Ryvius, it isn’t organic: it doesn’t arise out of long, historical movements, but rather spontaneous events, the results of which find certain people in a whole new position that they must readily adapt to.

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[1] Zero-sum model.