(Yeah, wasn’t kidding when I said I would talk about the robo-Kaito incident. In all honesty, if thought about enough, it could be more traumatising that Nightmare. (And I’ll explain why I say that as well.))

(Okay, so, to start this off… the fact it wasn’t even Kid related. (Yeah, yeah, ‘Kid’ shows up literally right at the beginning of the chapter, but that’s not what I mean. I mean the premise for why the whole chapter is taking place to begin with.) The Ticking Heart, the Underwater Pirate Ship, Ghost Game. That’s it. The ones that didn’t start out with the main problem at a heist, someone suspecting him, or someone using the thief’s name with Kaito finding out.

But the Ticking Heart is the only one from those that, while it did start without Kid, used Kaito having a secret job to drive the story afterward. However… even then, I’d argue that it isn’t about the job itself so much as how Kaito viewed the situation.)

(Actual first off: he got friggin’ kidnapped. This is why I say it didn’t really have anything to do with Kid. Jeeze, he was walking to school (Not from school, only a day goes by and Aoko later says he hadn’t been at school the previous day, so…). No thief, no one out to get him, Kaito, as himself, just up and got taken away by some random and probably insane man. (And side notes, in the manga he doesn’t live alone. Chikage is still at the house and I do have to give a thought to how the robot acted at home… anyway.)

Also have to wonder if he was given food or anything, but for a day, I won’t worry too much over that. What should be noted is the fact that he didn’t even know why he’d been kidnapped up until that point, when the robot came in. Literally left there, tied up, for a day without any idea what was going on other than that the man had taken him and he was hooked up to some kind of machine. And for all the current day for the robot talking to him, no one would have seen him at all, since the robot maker had been killed the night before.

And the first thing he hears after something else comes in is that the robot that looks like him and has his memories killed the guy. Without batting an eye. This is the main thing I’m interested in, and something Kai doesn’t like thinking about when it comes to the robot. Even if you argue that a robot doesn’t have a soul and cannot feel, and doesn’t know right from wrong or full consequences… this one isn’t quite like most robots that have that happen. He has memories. A mind that should know about death and morals, or at the very least, the reason Kid exists.

Granted, at this point, it didn’t feel like it knew everything and was confused…

…But Kaito’s emotions and thoughts clearly came out before, though Kaito didn’t know that. It honestly believed, or wanted to believe it was human, but clearly missed the mark on morality and self restraint. Hmm…

After hearing about the other casually killing someone, the next thing he’s met with is this. The robot came in questioning why he has to be Kaito, but wanted more answers, and did this. …And it wasn’t until he had the rest of Kaito’s memories, that…

It decided it wanted to take Kaito’s place. Also, I’ve used that quote out of context before. The ‘a copy is just a copy’ one. …Well, mostly out of context. Yes, it was said here, but I used it with regards to Kid and Toichi, the previous Kid… And trust me, I’m looking into this, but it is something I believe Kaito has thought before. And the robot, immediately after getting more of Kaito’s mind, says no. He’ll surpass Kaito. That he’s not just a copy. And he’s proving it by becoming Kaito… Please say I’m not alone in the thinking it’s eerily similar to how Kaito is taking his dad’s place as Kid. Questioning it, looking for answers… But he got stuck on not thinking he was as good as his father. The robot has no restricting thoughts like inadequacy, just knows what it wants and how it thinks, and it knows it wants to be better than Kaito. Also, personality change there. After getting Kaito’s mind, it’s… not quite as innocent. Yeah it had killed someone, but it was quiet, thinking, questioning, confused… then to having a goal and jeeze he got confident quickly. He didn’t start acting with purposefully ill intentions until then. Would he have if he hadn’t? Would he have started acting out if he’d been out longer than a day? Who knows. What we do see is a definite change now, though.

…So can I hazard this theory that the robot showed Kaito’s darker side that he normally doesn’t show? Because it really seems like that to me, and I think Kaito himself was aware of that, to a degree. Kaito just has a ton of self control in that area. Not that it wouldn’t ever come out… But he has a lot of good to balance it out. He’s more caring, and has sentimentality that he pays attention to. When people talk about dreams, or promises, or he learns something that makes him feel for them in any way (usually involving family, this), he helps. The robot seemed to have missed that part. It focused on the ‘Kid’ part more, really, which probably skewed its way of thinking. Mentioning that he became Kid, immediately planning another heist, and making special mention that he would not only be Kaito, but Kid. The robot liked being Kid. It had a will to live, and no one to command it anymore, and honestly, it hadn’t taken command all that well in the first place…

…Like, at all… I… don’t think it liked that restriction… Just like normal Kaito wouldn’t.

Just… robo Kaito is Kaito… without anything holding him back. The psycho Kaito people are so afraid to see, but want to see. We’ve seen him. The manga readers, anyway.

Seriously, it’s this robot.

Doing…

…anything…

…to get…

…what he wants. Without a care for morality.

And if that idea wasn’t bad enough…

What ultimately brought the robot down wasn’t really Kaito outsmarting it. …Not entirely…

It more… Kaito had to consider his own weaknesses that the robot would have gotten. In this case…

That overconfidence. I can shoot faster, and first, wherever you aim.

And sticking to that cockiness ultimately is what killed him. Yes, some outsmarting, either that or a ton of luck for that to have worked without Kaito getting a card in his own head… because he did pull that trigger. If the robot had caught on, managed to stop from shooting himself… I’m fully confident it would have killed Kaito. Shooting himself was his last resort…

…And then after all of that…

After it had thought it had taken over Kaito’s life up until Kid showed up… had it not felt human until just then? When it was about to die? …“Once a human is dead, he can’t be repaired.” Continuously saying it was Kaito, calling Kaito himself the false one, the robot, fighting to take over someone else’s life… but it didn’t feel alive until it was broken beyond repair and it lost everything. And just to point out, that last little bit over the eye is the last part of it that looks like Kaito. Everything else was the endoskeleton. When it was itself more than someone else…

Am I looking too far into it? Probably. But I do think the robot screwed up Kaito’s mind more because it had his mind than most of the other experiences he’s had. Yes, Nightmare probably hurt him as well, hitting so close to home with Kenta’s and Jack’s relationship and having someone’s life literally slip though his fingers… But I think he’d be more scared of what he could become over another life he failed to save. That death was closer to one he could have successfully stopped, but… the robot is a unique, disturbing, and terrifying experience. Even if you don’t go into mental implications: He was kidnapped, had something that shared his face outright murder someone, hear the thing saying it would become him, then almost killed him in an explosion, and nearly killed him again when he went to stop it at the heist.

And probably shouldn’t forget that, even with its face being torn off, it’s still saying Kaito is the fake one. I’m sure that’s a lovely image for Kaito to have…

…In short, overthink it, or just look at what was given, it’s still a very potentially traumatising event for Kaito, and it deserves to be seen, dammit animators. >:V (All chapters deserve it, and heck, they even did a version of Ghost Game, which I doubt anyone expected. Give us this robot!) )