Now that I'm thinking about it, I remember something from Bakuman (which I haven't read in over 10 years) about how getting your manga adapted into an anime is a highly political process. The people at Shueisha probably didn't like how the Japanese government was portrayed, and had the author pivot to making the bad guys a splinter cell/death cult. It would also explain the timeskip and the big costume changes, since that would result in more possible merch for the show to sell.
Maybe this arc is just a weird growing pain, and it'll smooth out once we're through.
Yeah, I did my own version of your rant previous chapter. It does feel really strange, while it wasn't incredibly genius pre-recent test things were plenty fun enough overall. But in these last chapters it feels like it's done this incredibly sudden nose dive into the intelligence pavement. And totally unnecessarily too, there's a lot of "generic" angles that could have been taken on this (like military usage) which nonetheless could have been executed on in interesting ways with this cast. Legitimate shades of gray that'd feel realistic.
Instead it's just... weird. Nonsensical, suddenly everyone is a completely 1D character and the stakes and drama we're supposed to care about falls so flat.
Hopefully. That said, I'll register that i'm quickly losing hope; All the major plot threads were abandoned and this new one is... weak. it's extremely weak. It basically reset all of the discussion about corporate alienation and not feeling like you're enough in ultracapitalist society in favor of a conventional thriller plot. And I think we're all in agreement this is just not a good utilization of these characters or those earlier themes.
Kana in Ch 1 is a struggling woman trying to discover her worth in a business environment after decades of emotional and social abuse. Kana in Ch 93 is just a struggling woman trying to discover a great big thriller that is related to her solely due to the specific 'big event' it has levelled against her. It's so much weaker, it's so much worse, and the worst part about it is what this will do to the relationship between Kana and Tsuchiba. Someone else in a similar position to Kana - with similar tragedies, similar pains. And the hell does that have to do with this new generic thriller plot?
I was positive towards the deregulation plot because to some extent it makes sense! But what's the end goal of this new deregulation movement - destroying the world for cash?
Consciously destroying the world for cash? It's stupid. It doesn't have a thing to say about alienation or capitalism, even if the first part of the story wasn't doing an astounding job in that regard. And where it's headed Kana and Tsuchiba are going to end up in the same box as every B-list shonen protagonist that got canned after Ch 180: 'determined to fight the enemy'. It's a terrible fuckin end, and it's just as sad it's likely that's where this is going.