NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 16
By Gerdha & Joe7
(first article: here; previous article: here)

ANALYSIS ABOUT NAIDA

NAIDA'S LIES

Now that we have established that Fleedian brains' story is false, we need to clarify the fundamental question: why is Naida lying to Duke Fleed? I believe that ep25's dialogues can be of help. In Dialogue 1, Gandal states that he gave personally instructions to Naida about what to do when she will meet Duke Fleed:

Gandal: I have already ordered to Naida's brain the job to do.

So, according to Gandal's words, Naida knew that Duke Fleed was hiding on Earth and she stole the Monster Disc to meet him, dropping it down on purpose near the Shirakaba Ranch, thinking that Duke Fleed, or at least Koji, would definitely come out to examine it.

Gandal: I purposely let Naida hijack the spacer. Naida and Duke Fleed are childhood friends, she will track him down for sure. I have already ordered to Naida's brain the job to do.

Consequently, there is serious doubt about Naida's great surprise in meeting Duke Fleed.

In this case, Naida acts as a liar from the beginning. In fact, examining the encounter between Naida and Duke (Dialogue 2), you can experience a strange effect in seeing her behavior of astonishment and in hearing her sentence:

Naida: I didn't believe to be able to see you again!

OK, she may have said it for emotion. But it's strange she did not say, for example: "I was hoping to see you here, it was told to me on Vega Planet" Why pretending surprise, instead of feeling sincere relief in seeing her hopes come true? But this is just the tip of the iceberg: let's see her story in Dialogue 3.

Naida: Planet Fleed, which was invaded by Vega Kingdom ¹, from then on it has been nothing else than hell. The only alternatives for the few survived people were hard labour, being experimented, or the death for desperation which arrives sooner or later.

This speech, however, contradicts two facts:
1) Blacky's words, when he speaks about Naida's escape. Let's read again:

Blacky: A monster-saucer ² that was heading from planet Vega to the Moon has been hijacked and it has fallen on Earth.

So Naida, who had just kidnapped the Monster Disc, was imprisoned on Planet Vega: this is confirmed later, in the scene where King Vega in person hypnotizes her. How could Naida then describe the condition of the Fleedians on her native planet?

2) We know from the anime - even after ep25 - that Fleed Planet was completely destroyed by Vegatron Bomb explosion and Duke Fleed himself observed the event.

Consequently, no Fleedian could have been enslaved directly on Planet Fleed, as Naida instead claims.

How can these two contradictions be explained? A bad script? Or was Naida describing the conditions of the Fleedian survivors in Vega prisons? Or was she lying to Daisuke, describing scenes that she has never seen or that have never happened anywhere? A possible explanation could be the fact that, since the conquest of Fleed planet lasted a long time (it was implicit in ep2), King Vega had first enslaved the Fleed inhabitants on their own planet, including Naida, who was then brought to Vega planet before Fleed planet was destroyed by the explosion of vegatron. But this hypothesis is implicitly denied by Duke Fleed in ep2, because he never spoke of Fleedian slaves.
Also, it is remarkable that Naida does not tell Duke Fleed that she has been imprisoned (also) on Vega. Why would she ever omit such an important thing? It does not make any sense, and the only reasonable explanation is that Naida is deliberately lying.
There are further "strange" details in ep25 concerning Naida. She was not held "prisoner" on Vega in the "classic" sense of the term. Let's carefully read Gandal's talk in Dialogue 1:

Gandal: Naida from Baron family, who I took as an hostage on Planet Fleed, should have been onboard, but what about her? ³

So, in VO, Gandal says Naida was captured as a hostage, not as a prisoner. This is a crucial point: it must have a sense. Why define her as a "hostage"? Hostages usually serve as a blackmail, if not in immediate use, at least in potential use. If Naida was only a "childhood friend" of Duke Fleed or a simple noble Fleedian girl, why treating her with a special treatment, not only capturing her alive, but also keeping her alive for 6 years on Vega planet? We know that King Vega and his major state were well aware that Duke Fleed had fled away from Fleed with Grendizer, so they could reasonably imagine that, if he had not died, they would have sooner or later met him. In fact, in ep1, Blacky is not shocked by the surprise at Grendizer's appearance: his approach is more like "hey, look who I am seeing again".

It can be speculated that Naida was well-known by King Vega, Gandal and Blacky (who is not surprised by his superior's words ...), if Gandal personally provided for her capture and with such a particular status of "hostage". These details open to the possibility that Naida was given a "special treatment" because of her particular connection with Duke Fleed, which had to be known among the highest ranks of the Vega Empire.

Her importance would therefore admit the involvement of King Vega himself. But how did the Veghians know Naida so well and how did they think she had a special relationship with Duke Fleed, so much to consider her as a useful hostage? We'll talk about it later. What I would like to focus now is this: if Naida was taken as an hostage in order to be used as a blackmail weapon towards Duke Fleed, it was necessary to keep her safe and in good condition. So, despite her words in Dialogue 3, I don't think Naida had a bad treatment during her imprisonment on Planet Vega.

I would like to point out that I don't deny that Naida may have suffered, either because of the attack on Fleed Planet and during her imprisonment on Planet Vega. My aim is to show that this episode is far more complex than the concept of "the poor Naida who has been forced to act badly".

In fact, here we come to the heart of the question: if Naida lies, was she "herself" or not when she was lying? Are her lies produced by mental conditioning? That is, her stories are just the result of external inputs? Or are Naida's lies coming from her conscious decision? This is not an irrelevant issue. In my opinion, the answer to this question is the key to interpret the whole ep25. If conditioning is not the main cause of Naida's actions and she acts fundamentally on her own initiative, ep25's events shed a different light.

But, if Naida acts on her own initiative, then it is necessary to deepen her motivation and carefully evaluate her personality to explain her actions. It should be noted that the explicit technique of hypnosis is used by Veghians only twice: on Naida and on Morus. But there is a difference: in ep25, a special instrument was installed in Naida's brain, while this does not happen to Morus.

But is it entirely true? With a careful examination, it does not look like that. In fact, on Naida King Vega's hypnosis occurs before the instrument is installed on her: the scene of torture seems very clear about this.

Instead, in ep71 we see a conditioning process, but in OV (Original Version) it is explained that that typology (among other things, carried out with the help of mechanical means) has only a temporary effect, that can be reversed after a certain period. Morus's brainwashing would remain valid for three years: in fact, according to OV, conditioning was applied shortly after Vega had conquered Moru, which happened, according to VO, three years before ep71.

Consequently, Morus' conditioning was done about two years before ep25. This is indirectly confirmed by the evolution of the conditioning technique: on Naida it is performed without the aid of mechanical means, but directly as "pseudo- hypnosis". Now, we can suppose that, knowing that brainwash techniques are reversible, and trying to avoid this problem, Veghians have applied the instrument in Naida's brain in order to send continuous electrical messages to keep her in an altered chemical state, capable of making her act according to her unconscious feelings, without her rational part taking over.

Can we deduce from clues present in the anime that this hypothesis is correct? In ep18, Koji is mentally conditioned (with a different method), and he receives the order to kill Umon, and his action is stopped only through the destruction of the control tool.

Let's go to another case: the conditioning of Kaori, Hayashi's girlfrend, in ep16. Kaori is conditioned by an electronic instrument and she was ordered to kill: but, when Hayashi gets in the way, the girl's feelings for him are able to counter the orders of the Veghians and their plan fails.

Be careful of this particular: Kaori is mentally conditioned by an external instrument, but she cannot hurt Hayashi when they meet face to face, when she is ordered to kill him. Kaori says she is in love, as does Naida, but the actions of the first girl are very different from those of the latter girl.

Why? It is very likely that the reason is due to Kaori's intimate feelings, which were different from Naida's feelings. Or, one might say that Kaori's mental conditioning was at a different level than Naida's: it might also be. The Veghians may have perfected their conditioning methods over time in the 9 episodes between Kaori and Naida's episodes. But in comparing Naida's psychology with that of Kaori, at the end I'm leaning for the first hypothesis, the one about the feelings. We will take care of analyzing in detail Naida's deep feelings in the next paragraph: meanwhile, I can anticipate that my theory is that Naida is really herself throughout all ep25, and what she says and what she does is not due to external orders or conditioning, but it is of her own spontaneous initiative. The words she says, the lies she inventes, the physical attack on Duke Fleed at the hangar...these are not a consequence of orders received, but are the revelation of her real long-repressed sentiments.

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¹ Vega Kingdom: “Kingdom Kyousei of Vega", exactly.
² monster-saucer: “Enbanju” in the original.
³ "Naida from Baron family, who I took as an hostage on Planet Fleed, should have been onboard, but what about her?": “Furiidosei de horyonishita Baronke no Naida ga notteita hazudaga dousita?” in the original.

(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 5/3/2020, 15:52