I am sorry for taking time, but I happen to be very busy IRL to the point of getting only a few hours to focus on other stuff. For this response, I am planning to list all the arguments and counterarguments (mainly from my side) for the removal of ability of
Fear Inducement for
Ayanokouji Kiyotaka (from
Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e), since the debates about the other abilities hasn't continued for a while now. I have tried to condense everything so far in the thread into a detailed message to explain almost everything (though much shorter than having to read the entire thread).
This will be my last arguments' stuff on this thread.
Expected Reading Time: 5 minutes
The Feats
- In Year 1 Volume 11, it has been revealed that Kiyotaka was able to cause Kei Karuizawa and Hirata Yosuke their innermost secrets by making them perceive some sort of "darkness" which was so dark that it was terrifying, Hirata even reveals his own secrets later on (here).
- In Year 2 Volume 4, Kiyotaka directs his "killing intent" towards Nagumo Miyabi, causing him to feel fear as well, however, Nagumo resists it and stands back up on his feet, causing Kiyotaka to get shocked as a result of it (here).
The Debate
The thread is created by
@Vzearr. The most arguments with the proposal of the thread are done by
@Dinozxd and
@ThePrimalHunter. Meanwhile, I and
@XxZetsuxX happen to be in favor of keeping the feat, making us take part as the ones making up the counterarguments.
I will begin to list my counterarguments for everything, along with the arguments, but huge credits to
@Dinozxd for drafting
this as a TL;DR as well.
Arguments by Vzearr:
Since Vzearr is the person who made the thread, I think I would include his arguments as well.
His first argument regarding the supernatural means would be given with counterarguments later. But just to clear this, the ability is not on Kiyotaka's profile solely because Kei and Hirata possess a superior social position, the reason why their social positions was mentioned in the first place is because if you see the second feat, one of the reasons why according to Kiyotaka for why Nagumo resisted Kiyotaka's inducement is because of his higher social position of being the student council president, but it wouldn't mean that he cannot affect people who have higher social position than him, and the only reason why that is even used in previous threads is to illustrate that his ability can be used to induce fear in people with higher position socially as well, nothing much.
Arguments by Dinozxd and ThePrimalHunter:
I will be including the arguments of both at once since they match, and both possess almost similar arguments.
- The fear Ayanokoji induces in Hirata isn't done via supernatural means as Hirata is already visually in a bad mental state in the scene, so he very well has a reason to spill his secrets.
-> The thing about "supernatural" will be dealt with later, but for now, it is true that Hirata was in a bad mental state, in fact,
Kiyotaka implied that Hirata was even feeling suicidal, but also begging to be saved, but again, this doesn't make up for a good reason to reveal his secrets.
It's worth mentioning that Hirata was in fact
uninterested in revealing his secrets and didn't see any point in it. About the case of Kei (another girl), in which he used the same thing to cause her to reveal her secrets as well, she had the kind of secrets which could have ultimately caused her to get bullied and even drop out of school. Same with Hirata, it would have costed him his reputation and image indirectly as well, and as much as he looked in a bad state, he wasn't in a state where people could cooperate with someone either. So, both the people on which Kiyotaka used this power were refusing to reveal their secrets. Also, being in a bad mental state almost doesn't make it an excuse for someone to actually reveal their secrets. Like yes, they probably are going through a lot, but they would never reveal their secrets which can cause damage to them only. Also, not a good reason for someone to instantly feel fear and faster than a normal person. That's like saying horror movies can definitely make you feel fear when you are depressed, while most people would have delayed emotions when they are depressed.
- Ayanokouji has a kind of appearance which makes others feel fear when they look him into eyes.
-> This is false for multiple reasons. First of all, Kiyotaka has talked to many people, and many look him into eyes. His character is literally seeing a girl into her eyes and not being flustered even for a second. This can be found many times from like the first episode of anime, and it's very common for people to look into each other's eyes. In fact, even Hirata is looking into Kiyotaka's eyes the entire time. But yes, if the feats actually happen to be fear inducement or social influencing, then it would be still an active ability instead of a passive hax. Also, he is also described as a quite handsome boy, unlikely for someone if they look creepy just from their appearance.
- Kiyotaka manipulates his eyes to look scary appearance-wise, and that, such eyes are possessable as a person.
-> This is false again, because
Tsukishiro in Year 1 Volume 11.5 himself mentioned that the darkness in Kiyotaka's eyes couldn't be possessed by anyone from the White Room, no matter how exceptional they are, implying that the eye ability is kind of unattainable by even the most exceptional people. And this kind of means that he doesn't modify his appearance, because if he did, then it could still have been attainable as a skill to a degree, by training, but the fact that one character just mentioned that they cannot be attained by anyone, no matter how exceptional they are, this means that even if there is someone with both talent (genetically gifted with a kind of supposed appearance which can influence people that way) or training, this still cannot help a person get the power.
- The "darkness" and "terror" are purely used for exaggeration or as hyperboles.
-> The only thing which justifies the "supernatural" criteria is "darkness", because "darkness" is still something which is pretty unrealistic. Now, regarding the only thing as an exaggeration for an apparent writing device is unnecessary. According to Dinozxd, the more reason for "darkness" to be exaggerated is that
the anime doesn't show anything of that sort, but the truth is that anime has basically cut the things happening in the minds of Kiyotaka and Hirata as well (it doesn't show Kiyotaka mentioning about how honest he was with stuff and also what was happening in Hirata's mind, the conversation is skipped which would mean cutting the darkness part entirely), and makes it look like Kiyotaka verbally manipulated Hirata into revealing of the secrets if someone is an anime-only, which is false as the novel clearly shows that it was only after the fear inducement/social influencing by the eyes that caused the spilling of secrets. Also, it is the choice of the studio to show how they show the darkness or anything of that sort to be.
Also, Tsukishiro's statement mentioned earlier shows that Kiyotaka's eyes do possess "darkness". The fact that there's another character who outright confirms this, should be enough for the "darkness" to be a supernatural cause. Also, the appearance-related or him even modifying his eyes to look scary is kind of false. The thing is already unrealistic (because he is causing someone to reveal their secrets by just looking into their eyes while no verbal comments could help do it) and if it existed in real life, we would be already using it to have criminals confess their crimes. The only people who possess this darkness are Kiyotaka and his father, Atsuomi, and the power is largely implied to be unattainable in even highly exceptional cases. We don't know anything about how he attained them, like it can be a curse on Kiyotaka's family (which causes every person to have darkness in their eyes), or probably have them follow a ritual, or maybe even included with spirits of something of that sort, and all of these would be just theories, and it is never showed what the source of this "darkness" actually is, but the only thing is that someone's eyes cannot possess something supernatural as darkness, and attempting to classify it as an exaggeration and ignoring that the effect of the supposed influence was still unrealistic is bad imo, and straight up denying the feat's path.
And now, another thing pointed out by ThePrimalHunter was that the characters of the verse barely possessed any extraordinary abilities, which is false, the verse already showcases characters possessing abilities such as high extraordinary sense of having sixth sense of sensing people around them, or sensing someone's power just through their body heat, or someone even getting possessed by a personality, or maybe not, but the truth is that person became twice as stronger after getting the assumed possession, which is unrealistic for someone to become twice as stronger, and the character getting stronger after the possession is even listed as a key on the character's profile.
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