NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 34
By Gerdha & Joe7
(first article: here; previous article: here)

ANALYSIS ABOUT RUBINA

MEETING ON EARTH: DUKE'S REACTIONS

There is another important aspect to analise, which is necessary to understand the meaning of ep72: was Duke Fleed in love with Rubina or not? We could try to resume the TTOTC ¹ here, taking care only of the visual evidences. What evidence do we have that Daisuke was in love with Rubina? Honestly, I can only find three ambiguous evidences and one, perhaps, certain:

1° AND 2° AMBIGUOUS PROOF
A couple of ambiguous dialogues (Koji and Daisuke in the bedroom).

3° AMBIGUOUS PROOF
At the lake scene with Maria Grace, while reminding for a brief moment a young Rubina, Daisuke’s expression is mostly inscrutable: no particular feelings are revealed by his face.

Personally, I think this scene has the main purpose to directly connect Rubina and Daisuke for the first time in the episode and nothing more, as Daisuke reminds her soon after looking at his sister jumping in lake while he is playing guitar (and his memory is in fact related to the boat trip in Fleed which has more or less the same particulars), but it could even be a nostalgia thought from him, so I put this scene in the ambiguous evidence list.

1° CERTAIN PROOF (perhaps)
Only after Rubina is dead we visually face a total change in Duke Fleed’s attitude, suddenly increasing from sadness (his first tears) to a total desperation (the first scream, the erratic circle, the rush through the flower grass, the other scream at the precipice).

These are really not much evidences, in my opinion, even if the last one, at first sight, could be considered sufficient. But do we have some indications that show the opposite, namely that Daisuke is not in love with Rubina? Well, looking at the visual aspects of the episode, it could be possible. For example:

1° PROOF AGAINST
Daisuke's first reaction when he first meets Rubina (= when she presents herself) is of total surprise (his expression is clearly visible, even under the helmet).

He does not express any relief or happiness for having finally seen Rubina: he shows surprise. As he never supposed that Rubina would have ever come here to meet him; as he found normal that Rubina would have never come to see him. Actually, at first, he thinks to a trick.

2° PROOF AGAINST
Only after a few scenes, when Rubina's spacer arrives close to Grendizer and Duke sees her for the first time, he is surprised once again seeing her crying for joy, like he did not expect her to have still feeling for him (his motion of surprise is clearly designed).

3° PROOF AGAINST
While Grendizer and Rubina's spacer fly in parallel and she continues to cry for joy, Duke for sure does not share a tear or a possibly happy expression. A natural reaction for a man deeply in love for a woman who he did not see for 8 years, right?

4° PROOF AGAINST
When Rubina's spacer is ahead of Grendizer some seconds later, Duke's expression is everything but moved or happy; I would call it instead angry or hateful.

5° PROOF AGAINST
At the first flowered grass scene, she runs to him joyfully, while he makes only a couple of steps outside of Grendizer giving to me the same feeling of a dead man walking.

6° PROOF AGAINST
When Rubina recalls the Fleed dialogue, she is designed full of enthusiasm at the idea of the possible union, unlike Daisuke, who, for the most time, avoids to look at her including the moment he tells her his best possible compliment (if I would like to do another exception to the no-dialogues rule, I would add that, of all possible word exchange between two lovers, Rubina is not able to find anything better to remind her man how deeply in love he was for her 8 years ago than that he told her "You are beautiful like that flower". Wow, I really hope nothing similar ever happens to me).

7° PROOF AGAINST
Once Rubina has proved her identity, Duke's attitude does not change at all. So we cannot suppose that his previous behaviors were due to the possible disbelieving about meeting really the girl he loved as now he doesn’t neither smile nor show any little joyful reaction in being 5 meters close to his unforgettable love.

8° PROOF AGAINST
The first emotional reaction from Duke arrives when Rubina shows him the photo of Planet Fleed. Even through his helmet, we can see his surprise and shock.

9° PROOF AGAINST
After hearing about the news about his native place, Duke turns to look at the sky (I suppose towards Fleed – no alternatives are possible for me) and continues to rest motionless along whole Rubina’s discourse about the need for them to get “together” in order to end the war and allow Vega population to transfer on his native planet. Duke does not stop to look at the sky not even when he comments about her proposal. He looks at her only for a second when she embraces him, but soon after his eyesight comes back to the sky again and we see a tear falling from his left eye. Again I get an unique impression: no love feelings towards Rubina at all, and instead the complete different guess that his thoughts are all concentrated on planet Fleed only.

10° PROOF AGAINST
In my opinion, the balcony scene is one of the best one of whole Grendizer anime, and personally I can hardly find anything worth of comparison even in other cartoons. What I would like to underline here, from this particular scene, is the total lack of enthusiasm from Daisuke after the first meeting with the woman he is supposed to love and willing to marry from 8 years. Instead, look at how he behaves. His facial expression is instead sad, worried and distressed.

11° PROOF AGAINST
At the balcony scene, we see a total lack of enthusiasm from Daisuke after the reunion of his "sweetheart". He has a worried, sad and stressed expression. He is looking at the sky while Koji, Maria Grace and Hikaru arrive: he does not change when his dearest friend and his sister talk to him

and reverses his eyesight to the ground when he turns back to the building.

Yet he has just received the best possible news for him: he could bond himself with the woman he has been loving from such a long time and he could go back with her as a prince on his native planet. Sorry, I find the visual aspects of the Centre balcony scene in total contradiction with the love affair hypothesis. However, we know Daisuke as a reserved person and usually without an expensive personality, this seems to me really too much. IMO something is wrong here if he has a lovestory going on with Rubina; the visual evidences seem instead to let me believe that Daisuke is in deep trouble and probably facing a conscience struggle.

12° PROOF AGAINST
More or less the same visual evidences arrive from the Centre control room scene, where Daisuke has a worried expression after Rubina’s call: he turns his eyesight left and right with what I intend is a scared expression – like somebody who is discovered doing something forbidden for example – then rushes out of the room without a word. Without getting too romantic, a really inexplicable behavior if Daisuke would have listened to his beloved woman asking him to reach her for a meeting.

13° PROOF AGAINST
At the bedroom scene, Daisuke once again seems to have more a serious than happy expression.

It seems that, at the beginning, certainly by Umon's suggestion, everyone went to sleep without thinking about Rubina's appointment. So she wasn't considered trustworthy. Daisuke does not seem at all happy at the thought of reviewing his "love". Note that all the time he does not look to Koji when he speaks. Not to mention that, when he talks about Rubina and their engagement, he looks serious and closes his eyes, as if he was remembering a painful memory.

It's an ambiguous expression, because the painful memory may be due to having abandoned Rubina because of the destruction of Fleed, or in remembering an imposed marriage. In any case, he is not happy to remember his relationship with Rubina. According to what Koji says in Dialogue 6 ("The Head of the Center should have told you not to leave, right?"), after Rubina's message, Umon must have met Daisuke, after he left the control room, to convince him not to listen to her request for a new meeting, and Team Grendizer is aware of it.

Or, Koji may have asked Umon to do this, since the scientist is the only person who could have made Daisuke change his mind. He does not seem happy with the return of Rubina: on the contrary, he seems to be resigned to a sort of inevitable destiny. Just watch him talking to Koji in the bedroom while he dresses and talks about Rubina. He does not look at him, closes his eyes, interrupts the sentence. In any case, his expression is certainly not cheerful:

Koji: What happened between you two?
Daisuke: (turning his back to Koji and keeping the serious expression) If the war with Planet Vega did not break out, now me and Rubina would be... (he leaves the sentence suspended and closes his eyes)

Daisuke's visual expression during his dialogue with Koji, when he says that "he would be"... married to Rubina? Most likely it is consistent with the proof against their relation: he says this closing his eyes, as if remembering a painful memory for him. Or the painful memory is because he could not get married to her? But it should not be coherent with Duke's behavior on the grass with Rubina, when he meets her the first time on Earth.

14° PROOF AGAINST
Duke, anyway, does not share a tear during Rubina's agony. He is very calm instead and seems to be in control of the situation.

Like in every other similar circumstances faced before: to remind only the most recent episodes, Kein’s suicide in ep68 – a guy he should have known as he was a childhood friend of his sister – and Morus’ death just the ep before.

I would say that being close to loose the beloved woman should be for every sensible man a bit worse than every other situation, right? Well, it’s not the impression I receive looking at this scene, whatever dialogue I am hearing. For sure this is another ambiguous scene, but anyway I don’t find particular evidences of a Duke’s strong attachment to Rubina.

15° PROOF AGAINST
The very final scene of episode 72 is another surprise. Duke is shown looking at the daylight without a single tear in the eyes (this scene should happen few moments after the desperate cry as the sun started to appear during Rubina’s agony) and with a strong and fiery expression.

Okay, maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t understand how this is possible. If his desperation was due to the death of the woman he loved, I must otherwise suppose his desperation was caused by something different, in order to let this final scene to have a meaning.

16° PROOF AGAINST
I admit I am not completely honest in jumping to ep73, but another evidence I would like to underline is related to the scene where Umon's satellite is flying to the Moon and Daisuke recalls Rubina telling him the location of her father’s base. Again, no particular moved expression is shown from his side, he is serious but not sad or desperate, thinking about her.

I find this strange and, to be generous, I would define this as an ambiguous evidence, taking into account Araki is not the designer of this episode, so there could be some inaccuracy in the drawing (which I believe anyway unlikely – but the final episodes are another topic).

17° PROOF AGAINST
To notice the difference, I would like to briefly show some visual aspects on ep25 (Naida's episode). Daisuke runs towards Naida with a big smile on his face when they meet; he expresses joy, sadness, anger during their meetings; he is not afraid to introduce her to his friends.

Ep25 is the only one in which we see Daisuke as a passionate man. For example, he and Naida roll on the grass, they kiss, Daisuke caresses her face with a flower, they hold hands together as they run to the lake. His eyes are shining when he and Naida are together.

In short, what I see in ep25 from Daisuke is not friendship, but love. A “teeny” kind of love, but, anyway, love. For instance, ep25 is designed by the same person as ep72 (Shingo Araki), so a possible not co-ordination between drawing teams should be excluded. I believe the different attitudes shown by Daisuke in ep25 and ep72 with the two girls have been purposely included in the storyboard in order to let us understand something. Even the writer, in both cases, is Mitsuru Mashima: so I think that Daisuke's different attitudes in these two episodes can tell us something.

At the end of this playful investigation, the final count of visual evidence about Duke/Rubina relationship is to me 1-17-3 (love – no lovestory – ambiguity). So, even considering as a pure theoretical hypothesis that all ambiguous evidences are in favour of the love affair, the contrary indications are anyway more than double. Coupling this result from visual indications analysis with the systematic considerations of the previous paragraph, I personally exclude that the script of ep72 meant Duke being in love with Rubina. Not only this: the history would make sense only if Duke did not love Rubina.

Instead, if Duke would love Rubina, the whole anime would be based, in my opinion, on a huge screenplay hole: I doubt it is so. In fact, the hypothesis of Duke Fleed in love with Rubina would show such a great narrative problem that would nullify the meaning itself of the anime, even the presentation of the character of Daisuke. In fact, only with two episodes from the end of the anime we learn that Duke was not only the Prince of Fleed, but he was also destined to become nothing less than the King of Vega. Think about it for a second. Rubina was the heir to the throne after her father (King Vega himself will confirm it indirectly in episode 73),

therefore her husband will become, consequently, the future King of Vega. This means that, for 71 episodes, we saw Daisuke fighting against his potential father-in-law, killing, among other things, the population of Rubina, the woman he theoretically loved deeply and without interruption for 8 years and with whom he intended to reign, without any particular scruple of conscience (well, he has several, but not this one).

Does it make sense, in your opinion, considering how the character of Daisuke has been developed up to ep72? We have seen a very psychologically correct anime: how is it possible that a similar contradiction suddenly emerges after a total of 71 coherent episodes? It is true that Daisuke has always been presented as a peaceful man who does not want to kill anyone and tries to avoid the death of the enemy if possible, but exactly this characteristic of his personality makes me think the possibility that he was not in love with Rubina, or otherwise here we would be facing a huge narrative hole. There must therefore be more as the cause of Duke Fleed's desperate reaction, but it can not be "the loss of the woman he loved".

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¹ TTOTC: Total Trial Of The Century. It was an analysis procedure of Ufo Robot Grendizer anime based exclusively on the visual aspect, which was used by Gerdha and by some users of the previous French forum.


(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 7/5/2020, 14:38