Yondome wa Iya na Shizokusei Majutsushi - Vol. 13 Ch. 60 - The Shadow That Corrupts the Slave Mine

[lordb1]

How exactly? He's fighting to help people within the means available to him.

Not everyone can be an eldritch monstrosity that breaks all the rules.

He's a hypocrite because he never once thought twice about what he was doing with Van's mother but now is raising a dhampir just to assuage his own guilt, and he's a coward because if he truly, believed Van was the baby from back then he should have given chase even if it led to nothing because any action is better than inaction.

 

[theblasblas]

He's a hypocrite because he never once thought twice about what he was doing with Van's mother but now is raising a dhampir just to assuage his own guilt, and he's a coward because if he truly, believed Van was the baby from back then he should have given chase even if it led to nothing because any action is better than inaction.

"Never thought twice"
He was literally questioning whether or not they should've arrested her in one of the first scenes he's in. Let me ask you, if you saw a wanted poster that said "Wanted. Dangerous Criminal" and you saw someone apprehended that wanted person, would you be as harsh on that person?


He's raising a damphir in order to help just even one person, why does it matter if it also helps assuage his guilt? Lastly, he had a suspicion that the damphir boy was Van, but he wasn't sure, and then soon after the undead started attacking so he didn't really have time to chase after him.

 

[irem01]

Got it a bit backwards. Rodiot didn't remove any cheat skills, rather he prepared a bunch of them for Van/Hiroto in advance because he knew someone with a huge soul was coming, but gave them to the wrong person. Without any cheats to take up space, Van is left with a massive mana pool, a side effect of which is that destiny attempts to fuck him over at every turn. (This is explained in, like, Chapter 1 and/or 2 of the novel, I think).

If you're wondering why Van has had such a good turn of fortune as Vandalieu, it's because When his soul was traveling to Lambda to be born, Vida woke up, saw it, got reminded of Zakkart and decided to bless it with a bit of luck, so it could live a happy life. This was enough to overpower most of the "shit destiny" effect.


The reasons we hate Heinz are twofold. First, Darcia was the first nice thing to happen to Van in three (four) lifetimes.

Let's look at the facts:

1. Life 1 (Hiroto Amamiya): Parents died when he was an infant, raised by an abusive aunt and uncle who squandered his inheritance and insurance money on themselves, denied him the most basic of necessities as "luxuries", and would beat him for the smallest thing, such as having a new pencil that a classmate gave him after seeing Hiroto's pencil box full of literal nubs. Dies trying to futilely save someone, which she doesn't even remember.
2. Life 2 (Experiment Whatever): Sold at birth by his egg donor to a research facility, tortured and experimented on daily for twenty years, gets killed by his handler in a fit of pique, possesses and reanimates his own body with his unique new magic and stages a break from the facility along with the other experiments only to be mercilessly gunned down by the very people who were supposed to help him the moment he gets outside.
3. Life 3 (Vandalieu): Stripped of most of his abilities and cursed to never gain power in the conventional ways, lives for one year with his new mother before said mother gets captured, tortured and executed.
   [*]Life 0 (Zakkart): Orphaned at a young age, had to work hard to make something of himself, summoned to fight in a war on another planet. The person who should be his best friend refuses to get along with him, he dies by being too much of a threat for the enemy to ignore, his soul then gets shattered by the demon king, and later on what's left gets composted by Rodcorte, along with the other soul fragments and the demon king's soul.
   

So, Van has gotten his first bit of happiness and unconditional love in multiple lifetimes, and the when it gets taken away from him the first thing he hears are people gassing up this "Heinz" fella as the one who caught his mother. So naturally, he swears a vendetta on the person who took away the one good thing that had ever happened to him. The whole thing is from his point of view, and all of us feel for the guy, so of course we side with him as the protagonist.

Secondly, and I had to have this explained to me as well, was meeting Selen in Orbaume, and hearing what Heinz has been doing since that night in Mirg. Van's reaction to hearing that Heinz has turned over a new leaf and begun protecting Dhampirs and their non-vampire parents as penance for what he did to Van and Darcia incurs the very logical response of "why couldn't you have come to that conclusion before you killed my mother?" And then after that, what really sealed the coffin is when, as in this chapter, Heinz went upstairs and let Edgar and Diana convince him that he was right and the vampire child was wrong because Heinz really was working to atone for his actions, and atoning nullified the crimes of his past. In that one moment, Ketchup's motivations went from atonement to sophistry, and everyone hates sophistry.

Third reason (I know I said two) is PR. Van is the protagonist, and we want him to succeed. Never mind the mental corruption, cult of personality or even the fact that in spite of those two qualities Van is a decent guy; he's the protagonist of the story, and we're reading it because we want him to succeed. Van wants to kill Heinz, so we want to seem him kill Heinz, and the story gets us into Van's head so we can understand his mindset. Or Van's mental corruption is crossing the realms of fiction and we're all twisted.

But, a certain type of person is going to like reading stories like these, where the protagonist isn't a good guy, but they still wanna see what happens. Whether they're a serial murderer (Summoned Slaughterer), a war criminal (Nidoume no Jinsei), a rapist (Redo of Healer), an amoral death god (Overlord) or whatever the hell Kazuma is, we're gonna get into their heads, and make their problems our problems for as long as we read the story, because we want them to succeed.

TL;DR We're all fucked in the head, get out while you still can.

OH MY GOD EXACTLY THIS

sophistry

this even more

 

[RobDog]

The elbow of that twin girl in the last page looks a bit fucked up. w.e

 

[zerio]

Got it a bit backwards. Rodiot didn't remove any cheat skills, rather he prepared a bunch of them for Van/Hiroto in advance because he knew someone with a huge soul was coming, but gave them to the wrong person. Without any cheats to take up space, Van is left with a massive mana pool, a side effect of which is that destiny attempts to fuck him over at every turn. (This is explained in, like, Chapter 1 and/or 2 of the novel, I think).

Spoiler: Question

Who exactly is the wrong person aka Amemiya Hiroto? In ch 1, MC did mention that he should have been aware of a guy with a similar name like his (Amamiya Hiroto). Even the first classmate assassin was confused that there's two classmates with similar names. Not to mention, MC said they look similar too.
This makes me think that Amemiya is some kind of clone prepared by someone to steals MC's blessings. Or maybe it's some kind of time travel shenanigans where both are MC.

 

[zerio]

Let me ask you, if you saw a wanted poster that said "Wanted. Dangerous Criminal" and you saw someone apprehended that wanted person, would you be as harsh on that person?

If the wanted person turned out to be innocent, and the catcher didn't try to make up for the victim and family, as well as publicly apologize, then yes I will be harsh to that person.

 

[theblasblas]

If the wanted person turned out to be innocent, and the catcher didn't try to make up for the victim and family, as well as publicly apologize, then yes I will be harsh to that person.

1. As far as he knew Darcia had no surviving family members, him trying to help other Damphyr and races of Vida is the closest he could get to helping make it up to Darcia. When he saw someone that could have been Darcia's family, that person ran away before he could confirm anything.
2. Honestly, public apologies often do more harm than good and should only be done once you know the victim wants it. And again, as far as he knew, all of Darcia's family was dead, who would he even be apologizing to?

 

[zerio]

1. As far as he knew Darcia had no surviving family members, him trying to help other Damphyr and races of Vida is the closest he could get to helping make it up to Darcia. When he saw someone that could have been Darcia's family, that person ran away before he could confirm anything.
2. Honestly, public apologies often do more harm than good and should only be done once you know the victim wants it. And again, as far as he knew, all of Darcia's family was dead, who would he even be apologizing to?

While Van ran away before he could confirm anything, he didn't put any more effort into confirming it. He didn't leave the guild building to try catch up. And even after seeing the monsters screaming "kill Heinz", he didn't try to investigate more.
Cmon, he isn't that dense. His instinct is sharp, like how he could guess that it was someone else who unsealed the demon lord.
If he truly regrets it, he should have searched more info to confirm it, find him, then try to apologize. Instead, he convinced himself that Darcia's kid had died, and there's no one he should apologize to.

My point about public apology is to admit his mistake to the public, especially if there's no survivor. Instead, he still rides his hero status, deceiving others especially the damphir girl. He still reaped the benefit of his popularity and didn't suffer anything.
Heck, he doesn't even apologize to Darcia and her kid in his monologue. He could have built a grave for them too and apologize that way. He hasn't done anything to respect Darcia.

Btw I'm curious. Can you give an irl example of when a public apology does more harm (to the victim)?

 

[theblasblas]

While Van ran away before he could confirm anything, he didn't put any more effort into confirming it. He didn't leave the guild building to try catch up. And even after seeing the monsters screaming "kill Heinz", he didn't try to investigate more.
Cmon, he isn't that dense. His instinct is sharp, like how he could guess that it was someone else who unsealed the demon lord.
If he truly regrets it, he should have searched more info to confirm it, find him, then try to apologize. Instead, he convinced himself that Darcia's kid had died, and there's no one he should apologize to.

My point about public apology is to admit his mistake to the public, especially if there's no survivor. Instead, he still rides his hero status, deceiving others especially the damphir girl. He still reaped the benefit of his popularity and didn't suffer anything.
Heck, he doesn't even apologize to Darcia and her kid in his monologue. He could have built a grave for them too and apologize that way. He hasn't done anything to respect Darcia.

Btw I'm curious. Can you give an irl example of when a public apology does more harm (to the victim)?

Heinz does search for more info on "the damphyr he met at the guild", but found nothing because Van was explicitly trying to hide himself from Heinz. There isn't even any explicit evidence that "the damphyr" was Darcia's son.

Also, if an undead horde attacks you it's far more believable that it's the vampires you've been hunting that sent them rather than a little kid damphyr. Try to get rid of your omniscient reader bias and see this from the perspective of an adventurer who has lived in that society since he were born. Even in legends there hasn't been anyone like Van.

"rides his hero status"
You're acting like he's out partying and picking up chicks by saying "I'm a hero". He primarily uses his hero status to help others, especially the races of Vida. THAT'S how you actually make up for a past mistake. All the ways you describe of "apologizing" are just symbolic and superficial instead of actually practically helping the races of Vida.

Plenty of instances on twitter where a public apology just incites diehard fans to attack the victim.

 

[zerio]

Heinz does search for more info on "the damphyr he met at the guild", but found nothing because Van was explicitly trying to hide himself from Heinz. There isn't even any explicit evidence that "the damphyr" was Darcia's son.

Also, if an undead horde attacks you it's far more believable that it's the vampires you've been hunting that sent them rather than a little kid damphyr. Try to get rid of your omniscient reader bias and see this from the perspective of an adventurer who has lived in that society since he were born. Even in legends there hasn't been anyone like Van.

"rides his hero status"
You're acting like he's out partying and picking up chicks by saying "I'm a hero". He primarily uses his hero status to help others, especially the races of Vida. THAT'S how you actually make up for a past mistake. All the ways you describe of "apologizing" are just symbolic and superficial instead of actually practically helping the races of Vida.

Plenty of instances on twitter where a public apology just incites diehard fans to attack the victim.

Wow, way to make light of the feelings of the victims. Are you saying if a robber steals everything you have, you will forgive them if they simply volunteers to help others but never make amends for you? Are you happy if they easily get the people's trusts and no one knows that they robbed you in the past?

Again, Heinz is sharp and can act based on that sharp intuition. He deduced that it was someone else who unsealed the demon lord and started chasing Eleonora.
But then he downplayed his intuition about Van? About his mistakes?

And I don't mean picking up girls and having fun when I said "riding his hero status". He uses his hero status to make it easy to help people. He doesn't have any trouble to get trusts.
But if the Vida races knew about Darcia, he would have more struggles. And in my opinion, you only make up for your mistakes after overcoming these struggles.

 

[bk3k]

He is highly hypocritical

Not really. Doing something bad once based off of bad beliefs (his faith at the time and cultural norms of the place he was raised would say his action was good), realizing it was bad despite the indoctrination he underwent, trying to be better, and trying to inspire others to not repeat your mistake... is not hypocrisy. Were he still behaving in the way that he denounces, that would be hypocrisy.

and latter on you will see how much of double standards he having.

I've read through the end, though I had to use MTL for the very ending. Sorry, but I don't agree at all. He's an enemy, but certainly not "bad" at all. Alda is bad, though he doesn't see himself as such. Rodcorte is 100% garbage.
Bellwood certainly was, and he's a fine example of the sort of "hero" you see Heinz as, though he's at least come to realize it.
Heinz is only human, in more than once sense. He's certainly wrong about things, but he has perfectly valid reasons to believe as he does. He doesn't possess the meta-knowledge you do, and hasn't even received a proper explanation from Van (though that's perfectly understandable too). His perspective couldn't be anything else.

The reasons we hate Heinz are twofold. First, Darcia was the first nice thing to happen to Van in three (four) lifetimes.

A lot more lifetimes than that. He won't remember most of them, being normal (clean wipe) reincarnations across 100,000 years. And you don't need to spoiler something that's already been revealed in the manga(chapter 49), namely being reincarnated combination of those 4 souls.

Now, did Heinz know that when he captured her? Did he capture her to take away Van's happiness? You know that, but he didn't. That's a valid reason for Van to hate him regardless, but irrational for you.

Let's look at the facts:

It's all meta-knowledge, and you're using it to judge people based upon things you know, but they did not and really couldn't reasonably know - especially at the time. I'd say your empathy needs work. You can place yourself in Van's shoes, but you can't do this with 2 people at once, or perhaps you refuse to. I'd say it is likely you make the same mistake regarding characters in every series you read. Try to see from their perspective too, not just the MC, at the same time. It's more interesting to do that anyhow.

Secondly, and I had to have this explained to me as well, was meeting Selen in Orbaume, and hearing what Heinz has been doing since that night in Mirg. Van's reaction to hearing that Heinz has turned over a new leaf and begun protecting Dhampirs and their non-vampire parents as penance for what he did to Van and Darcia incurs the very logical response of "why couldn't you have come to that conclusion before you killed my mother?"

Why? Should be obvious, but here we go. Again, he doesn't have your meta-knowledge. Heinz was raised in a religion and culture that considers what he did to be unquestionably good. That Darcia 'deserved to die' was common sense to everyone in that village, and indeed the whole nation. Upon seeing the reality with his own eyes, he questioned it anyhow, and feels guilt. That despite those around him not feeling it, as most people won't. That puts him above what you'd expect from 99% of humans, which won't ever rise above the things they've been indoctrinated to believe their whole lives. Yes, that likely includes you too. But you expect him to come to that conclusion BEFORE having any experience with it? That's a totally unreasonable expectation that flies in the face of basic human nature.

And yet Heinz agrees with you. He wishes he realized it before it was too late, but the fact is that he didn't. That's a regret he can't let go of. Guilt (rational or not) is something felt far more strongly by good people than bad people.

And then after that, what really sealed the coffin is when, as in this chapter, Heinz went upstairs and let Edgar and Diana convince him that he was right and the vampire child was wrong because Heinz really was working to atone for his actions, and atoning nullified the crimes of his past. In that one moment, Ketchup's motivations went from atonement to sophistry, and everyone hates sophistry.

Plainly incorrect. He wasn't convinced that "he was right". That's your (rather bad) interpretation, since you're determined to see him as bad. The way you view Heinz is the way Alda views Van, through a lens of "of course he's bad", interpreting everything to conveniently match your existing view. Meanwhile Heinz isn't viewing himself conveniently (as most bad "heroes" in stories do), repeatedly beating himself up. He calls himself a coward this very chapter (a correct diagnosis).

What they're telling Heinz is, that he can't change the past, not that "he's right". All he can do is move forwards, doing as much good as he can (still limited by his knowledge). And being powerful, he's in a position to do a lot of good. Throwing away his life won't benefit the world, but his actions going forwards can. Saving and protecting Selene is simply one good thing, but he's not limited to one thing. There's no sophistry. It's "I screwed up badly... but now what should I do?" So now what?

And despite all I've said, I can keep two thoughts in my head at once. Van has an absolutely valid reason to want revenge against Heinz and his party. Heinz isn't bad, yet Van isn't wrong for wanting to kill him anyhow. Van himself (despite his insanity) recognizes this and says so, but you refuse to understand. Not everything can be reduced to "good vs evil", "right vs wrong". The world is muddy. You can still cheer for Van while seeing it for what it really is... and I do.

Spoiler: Truth is:

The final battle to the death is good guy vs good guy. Well there's others there who are gonna die too, and they don't all deserve what they're gonna get.

But that only makes it a better story.

 

[theblasblas]

Wow, way to make light of the feelings of the victims. Are you saying if a robber steals everything you have, you will forgive them if they simply volunteers to help others but never make amends for you? Are you happy if they easily get the people's trusts and no one knows that they robbed you in the past?

Again, Heinz is sharp and can act based on that sharp intuition. He deduced that it was someone else who unsealed the demon lord and started chasing Eleonora.
But then he downplayed his intuition about Van? About his mistakes?

And I don't mean picking up girls and having fun when I said "riding his hero status". He uses his hero status to make it easy to help people. He doesn't have any trouble to get trusts.
But if the Vida races knew about Darcia, he would have more struggles. And in my opinion, you only make up for your mistakes after overcoming these struggles.

It's not a matter of me personally forgiving him, the victim's forgiveness is not what decides the perpetrators character, but rather the perpetrator's attempts to atone and in that regard Heinz has done a lot, far more than most people.

That's what makes this whole dynamic so good. Van and Heinz are, at their core, good people, but personal conflict means that, very likely, one will kill the other.

I'm not pushing for Van to forgive Heinz, but us as 3rd party observers shouldn't misrepresent Heinz as some evil character just because Van won't forgive him.

 

[zerio]

It's not a matter of me personally forgiving him, the victim's forgiveness is not what decides the perpetrators character, but rather the perpetrator's attempts to atone and in that regard Heinz has done a lot, far more than most people.

That's what makes this whole dynamic so good. Van and Heinz are, at their core, good people, but personal conflict means that, very likely, one will kill the other.

I'm not pushing for Van to forgive Heinz, but us as 3rd party observers shouldn't misrepresent Heinz as some evil character just because Van won't forgive him.

Yes, he is not an evil character. But he doesn't deserve his reputation as the hero. He used this reputation to judge others, but he never judged himself. He's just playing pretend as a hero.

I don't dislike him because he's evil. I dislike him because he's a hypocrite. He never had a taste of disapproval. And again, he never, even internally, apologized to Darcia and her dead son. I might change my mind once we get an arc where he confronts his mistake.

 

[theblasblas]

Yes, he is not an evil character. But he doesn't deserve his reputation as the hero. He used this reputation to judge others, but he never judged himself. He's just playing pretend as a hero.

I don't dislike him because he's evil. I dislike him because he's a hypocrite. He never had a taste of disapproval. And again, he never, even internally, apologized to Darcia and her dead son. I might change my mind once we get an arc where he confronts his mistake.

Heinz judges himself, A LOT. In fact, other than flat out evil monsters like Ternecia he doesn't judge other people at all. Heinz is very forgiving even to those who attack him.

Heinz just realizes that the chance to ask forgiveness from Darcia and her family is long gone because, from what he knows, they're all dead. I really don't see what's hypocritical about that. You keep wanting him to make symbolic apologies that will amount to nothing, while ignoring the practical help he's giving to the races of Vida.

 

[zerio]

Heinz judges himself, A LOT. In fact, other than flat out evil monsters like Ternecia he doesn't judge other people at all. Heinz is very forgiving even to those who attack him.

Heinz just realizes that the chance to ask forgiveness from Darcia and her family is long gone because, from what he knows, they're all dead. I really don't see what's hypocritical about that. You keep wanting him to make symbolic apologies that will amount to nothing, while ignoring the practical help he's giving to the races of Vida.

It might be symbolic to you. It might amount to nothing for you. But to me apology is still important.

 

[bk3k]

He used this reputation to judge others

Point to when he's done this. (You can't spoil me, but please use the spoiler tags anyhow for other people.)

but he never judged himself

He literally judged himself THIS CHAPTER, and you still say that? It's not the first time either. He's been judging himself ever since capturing Darcia. And since then, he's tried to do better (within the limits of his own knowledge rather than your meta-knowledge).

But let me ask you: Having done what he's done, and being unable to change the past despite feeling guilty about it, what (remotely realistic thing) should he have done differently from that point? What would make him a "real hero" instead of a "pretend hero" in your eyes?

I think what you're saying describes Bellwood until Bellwood met the god of sinful chains, not Heinz.

I don't dislike him because he's evil. I dislike him because he's a hypocrite.

And just how is he a hypocrite? Elaborate.
Meanwhile, I'll repeat myself.

Doing something bad once based off of bad beliefs (his faith at the time and cultural norms of the place he was raised would say his action was good), realizing it was bad despite the indoctrination he underwent, trying to be better, and trying to inspire others to not repeat your mistake... is not hypocrisy. Were he still behaving in the way that he denounces, that would be hypocrisy.

Trying to be better than you have been is not hypocrisy. That's growth. Ideally, that's what we all should be doing.