We've all watched Steven Universe, right? For a time, my favorite character was Garnet. That's why I immeditaly saw a huge incoherence when the writters suddenly decided to change the ideas they wanted to convey through the character. Garnet, being the fusion of Ruby and Sapphire, was an allegory for love. Ruby and Sapphire loved eachother so much that they became the same entity, in perfect union and understanding of themselves. The song "Stronger than you" (banger btw) is a clear tribute to their relationship with quotes like: "I'm made of love" "This is who we are, this is who I am".

However, later in the show, the writers separated Ruby and Sapphire into distinct characters that went like "Why are you so surprised to see us unfused?" "We both have our own lives, you know". In addition, we learned that they apparently always unfused themselves to go on daily activities. That doesn't make sense in the slightest, the whole basis of their character were them always being fused together and this change obviously wasn't planned since we only ever saw them as Garnet before.

I understand why they did that. The writers wanted to avoid sending the wrong message about always doing everything with your partner, always sharing the same viewpoints and not giving eachother space. But then, they could have just made a dedicated episode where the two characters decide to separate themselves rather than this. Instead of addressing the issue straightforwardly, they pretended it was never a mistake to begin with. They could have easily corrected the inconsistency instead of making up a new story that isn't even coherent with the original one, straight up lying to us in an attempt to cover the whole thing up.

I don't know about you but I call this gaslight, and that's what we're going to discuss in this review. Gaslighting in fiction.

This one is kind of a special review because I'm not going to deal with the entierty of Moriarty The Patriot, but only with chapter 48 to 56. The 'finale' of the first cour of the manga. Why? Because I found those chapters to be atrocious. I always really liked this story so talking sh#t about it saddens me but the ending was such a disappoinment for me that I just had to. I won't care too much about the presentation of the review this time around as it is more of a structured ramble than anything else.

Chapter 48 opens up with the consequences of Sherlock killing Milverton, his death causing the identity of the Prince of Crime to be revealed publicly. William decides to run away without his brothers so that the Queen only targets him and consider him to be the only Prince of Crime. He decides to take all the blame on himself and wishes for Sherlock to kill him as the final act, eliminating 'all the demons" of England.

His brothers, Sherlock, Fred and Sebastian basically all refuse to adhere to this plan as William would be the only one suffering. This premise is pretty good and promising, I've got nothing against it but as always, the execution is the problem.

LET'S SEE HOW IDEOLOGY IS RIDICULED BY PSYCHOLOGY

"I bear no personal hatred against you... I'm simply here to execute your sentence" - William to one of the aristocrat he kills.

This quote is supposed to explain William's mindset. He doesn't kill for fun, he kils as a duty. Right. His whole childhood was messed up because of the aristocrats, he was bullied by them, he dedicates his whole life to kiling them, yet... Yet he doesn't feel even an ounce of joy by doing so. He's almost like a messenger sent by god to do his work.

I'd like to bring up a quote from the movie Se7en: "But it seems to me that you're overlooking a contradiction. If you were chosen, by a higher power, if your hands was forced, it would seem strange to me that you'd get such enjoyment from it. You enjoy torturing these people. That doesn't seem to fit with martyrdom, does it?"

What I like about Se7en is that the writters made a character that 'killed for the greater good' but still gave him a believable mindset. He'd like to see himself as someone who just accomplishes his duty but the fact he enjoys it prooves that he's not the saint he's pretending to be. It's possible for humans to be selfless, but to the point you purposefully dedicate your entire life to something for ohters whilst not feeling any sort of satisfaction from it whatsoever? Nah, it's impossible.

It's beautiful and touching thematically wise but it's just unbelievable from a psychological viewpoint. I can forgive fiction for being unrealistic, that's the whole point of it in a way, but when you write something completely unrealistical you at least have to make it believable to your viewers. Take by example Luffy, Luffy isn't a realistical character, mainly because of his surhuman willpower, his confidence and his insane goals, but he's still believable to my eyes because he's represented as someone with normal human feelings and interactions. If Luffy were not to feel ANY enjoyment from beating the bad guys or freeing nations then his character would be completely unbelievable.

That's my problem with William, him not feeling any joy from his revenge is just a pathetical attempt to make the viewers see him as a martyrdom and a poor victim. (I hope you understand I used Luffy as an example because everyone knows about him, I'm not saying Moriarty should be like OP...)

clarification: The example of Luffy from One Piece is used to illustrate that even unrealistic characters can be believable if they exhibit normal human feelings and interactions. In contrast, William's lack of joy from revenge is seen as an unrealistic attempt to portray him as a martyr without making him believable.

NARRATIVE MANIPULATION TO MAKE YOU THINK OF WILLIAM AS A VICTIM AND NOT AN ACTOR OF HIS SITUATION

Ryousuke Takeuchi is an expert at manipulating his audience. I have to give him credits for that.

In the scene below, Fred is a vessel to convey the readers' voices. He asks the same question we'd ask to William, making this exchange very significant in the story.

(read it from -> to ->)
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Before that, it's stated that William thinks of himself as horribly as the people he kills. Of course, normally, readers who've followed his story since the begining of the manga do not agree with William. Yes, he's done some killing but unlike the others, he only kills for the greater good. A normal reader would naturally forgive his actions.

Look at the second panel, William is saying that he can't forgive himself. He's so gentle and kind and nice that he can't forgive himself for something the readers already forgave him for. This is a genius move to make him seem like a saint. He's even more virtous than the readers. He's portrayed as a victim of his own plan even though he's the main actor. This could be intersting narratively wise but it's only done as a way to victimize him.

This is crazy because at some point in the story, I was like "Come on, next they gonna say he's like Jesus or sum" and the impossible happened.

You can't make this up lmao. William is canonicly the Jesus of Moriarty The Patriot. This is such a bad way to describe a serial killer.

This is disappointing because I can think of many movies or shows liks Oppenheimer, Se7en, Berserk, Code Geass and F/Z that have a similar plot but they all portray the hypocrisy of their character and their flaws along with glorifying them. In Moriarty The Patriot, there's only mindless glorification, it's not even nuanced. William is just, genuinely, a perfect human being. Every possible flaws he could have is cut off from the narrative and replaced by positive characteristics. It's a shame that a manga dealing with psychology fails so incredibly at giving a believable psychology to the main character. If I were to be mean I wouldn't even call this a psychological manga, it's just ideological through and through no matter how unbelievable it is.

I still apreciate Moriarty as a whole but I don't know if i'm going to continue the manga after this disaster, honestly.
(If you're wondering, my original rating was 8,3/10, this arc lowered it to 7/10)