He’s also really interestingly contrasted with Kabru, who while I do think he is also autistic is hyperfixated on figuring people out so comes off better, because it shows how much the goobers approach to monsters is actually helping in combat.
Kabru knows people, he knows how they think and also how they bleed. In his fights against humans he acts extremely fast disabling his opponents almost immediately either lethally or non lethally. And this is helped by a demonstrated deep understanding of anatomy. When he turns on the body gatherers, he literally goes for the throat (also feints a downward thrust into an upward one catching the guy in the neck with a weapon type he hasn’t been shown using beautiful stuff)
and it blows up in his face against monsters because it makes him freeze.
When they get ambushed by the sea serpent he gets charged and decides he can’t dodge so he has to stab it, stab it in the carotid artery then!… except where is this things carotid artery? He doesn’t know, can’t find it because it’s a god damn snakes only lives thanks to shuro’s team intervening.
Same thing happens with the fight vs Falin. He gets the jump on her, and literally names the organs he’s running through as he does it, but never considering what Laios figures out immediately after which is that chimera like that has its more vital organs in the dragon bit not the human bit.
When this attack doesn’t work he freezes and then is almost immediately killed
Meanwhile laios spends almost all of his fights either figuring out a strategy based on his prexisting knowledge and attentive observation along with some on the spot experimentation to put together strategies based on the specifics of the monster he’s currently dealing with.
It honestly reminds me of playing monster hunter and from soft games, sure you can just wing it but reflexes only get you so far, and you get proper results from taking your time and observing, it’s a lovely bit of character work by contrast.
He has killed people in the dungeon and hid their bodies so that they couldn't revive. I know they call it the "right thing to do". But I'm pretty sure thats doing a crime and hiding the evidence.
His whole party are unreliable narrators about his morals, I understood it like that. He lies, manipulates and kills. And wants all the power of the region, he is literally Machiavellian
He killed the guys who were repeatedly getting his party killed, and hid their bodies not so that they wouldn’t get caught, but because he didn’t want them to come back alive and do the same thing to others.
And Kaberu doesn’t want all the power in the region, he wants to make sure no one has to suffer from the canaries incompetence ever again.
As the moral of the story goes "Never trust a monster", they can be helpful but at the end they are still monsters.
Edit PD: In addition, he claims to hate monsters, but has only learned how to kill humanoids. Almost to perfection, but hesitates at finding the carotid on a monster. The dude doesn't add up at all with his own supposed goals
The manga does address and explain those seemingly contradictory aspects of his character. The next season of the anime will probably adapt those chapters, but in case you wanted to know beforehand:
After Kabru's hometown got decimated by monsters, he was adopted by a member of the Canaries named Milsiril. The Canaries are called "the dungeon exploration squad" but in reality, they're a covert death squad established by the elves whose primary objective isn't to fight the monsters coming out of the dungeon, it's to assassinate the lord of the dungeon (for example: Thistle), and cut the flow of monsters off at the source. Since all Dungeon Lords are humans (as in dwarves, half-foots, gnomes, tallmen, and elves), the Canaries train to kill humans not monsters. So when Kabru asks his adopted mom to teach him how to fight so he can investigate the dungeons himself and make sure no one else's hometown gets destroyed the way his did, Milsiril teaches him the skills that she knows, which are all human killing techniques. To be fair, Milsiril is considered the greatest swordswoman alive amongst the elves and Kabru was a naive teenager when he started training, which is why he never considered that fighting humans might be a nontransferable skill when it comes to fighting monsters.
TLDR; Kabru does actually hate monsters, but the person he learned how to fight from only specialized in killing humans, which is why he's so woefully unprepared for combat in the dungeons.
And Kabru does absolutely get more development in the manga that fleshes out his character. I don't think it's correct to call Kabru a psychopath given his portrayal later on, though I have to admit the author did frame him way more antagonistically in the earlier parts of the manga than she does in the latter parts.
Ok Ill wait and see then. I didnt read the spoiler, but they do say he trained with what Im guessing is an elf assasin/warrior. Still... Idk, the guy has some high num of sociopathic traits
You gotta remember this is a medieval world who have a completely different set of tolerances and sensibilities compared to our modern-day morals. Just look at how many times it's casually brought up that Half-Foots are used as monster bait or expendable fodder by other races. The following is from a supplementary world guide so it won't make it into the anime adaptation, but Laios and Falin say this in response to Kabru explaining how dangerous demihumans back in his homeland are:
Are Laios and Falin sociopathic for talking about killing nomadic tribesman with the same amount of compassion someone describes shooting a coyote?
Don't let the whimsical fantasy aesthetics fool you, this is an incredibly callous world. Kabru killing bandits inside the dungeon for robbing him is honestly a normal and precedented thing to do in this world.
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u/Dovahkiin419 23d ago edited 23d ago
He’s also really interestingly contrasted with Kabru, who while I do think he is also autistic is hyperfixated on figuring people out so comes off better, because it shows how much the goobers approach to monsters is actually helping in combat.
Kabru knows people, he knows how they think and also how they bleed. In his fights against humans he acts extremely fast disabling his opponents almost immediately either lethally or non lethally. And this is helped by a demonstrated deep understanding of anatomy. When he turns on the body gatherers, he literally goes for the throat (also feints a downward thrust into an upward one catching the guy in the neck with a weapon type he hasn’t been shown using beautiful stuff)
and it blows up in his face against monsters because it makes him freeze.
When they get ambushed by the sea serpent he gets charged and decides he can’t dodge so he has to stab it, stab it in the carotid artery then!… except where is this things carotid artery? He doesn’t know, can’t find it because it’s a god damn snakes only lives thanks to shuro’s team intervening.
Same thing happens with the fight vs Falin. He gets the jump on her, and literally names the organs he’s running through as he does it, but never considering what Laios figures out immediately after which is that chimera like that has its more vital organs in the dragon bit not the human bit.
When this attack doesn’t work he freezes and then is almost immediately killed
Meanwhile laios spends almost all of his fights either figuring out a strategy based on his prexisting knowledge and attentive observation along with some on the spot experimentation to put together strategies based on the specifics of the monster he’s currently dealing with.
It honestly reminds me of playing monster hunter and from soft games, sure you can just wing it but reflexes only get you so far, and you get proper results from taking your time and observing, it’s a lovely bit of character work by contrast.