Digimon: Apotheosis - Ken

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“1. Exaltation to divine rank or stature; deification. 2. An exalted or glorified example” (American Heritage Dictionary)

I couldn’t resist this as my title for the page devoted to Ken. After all, it’s one of the meanings of shinka, and it was what the Kaiser was after. At least that first definition was. The second definition brought Osamu to mind in a big way, and he was certainly the root of a fair number of twists in Ken’s psyche.

Fun with Names

As has been noted elsewhere, the kanji used for Ken’s name is the one that means wise or clever. But without his nametag, the possibilities expand hugely. There are dozens of kanji pronounced ken; it’s like shin–all over the bloody place. And they all mean something different. Now, most of them have ken as the holdover Chinese pronunciation, and a different pronunciation attached from Japanese (that’s part of the fun). Some of the meanings that jumped out at me, though, were firm/hard/strong/strict, power/right/authority/influence, kind/considerate/to regard affectionately, and to be modest/humble. There seems to be a division of categories in the meaning. Some are, for lack of a better term, aggressive, while some are quiet. I would say the one that means sword falls into the aggressive side; if I recall correctly, it’s the kanji that’s used to form the word scolding.

At any rate, I rather suspect this name was chosen with an eye to this duality. Ken clearly has the capacity for aggression; my personal opinion is that all Darkness did was suppress his restraint. At the same time, his strongest defining characteristic is Kindness. Not only is it his crest, which indicates that it is his “best” quality as per Gennai’s explanation to the kids in 01, but it’s what Wormmon warns him about having an overbalance of in their first encounter (see flashback in Episode 23).

Pursuant to that…

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Kindness and Strength

Wormmon tells Ken that he values Ken’s kindness, but that Ken must also have strength. Enemies, Wormmon points out, will take advantage of Ken’s gentleness and corrupt him if Ken doesn’t have sufficient strength to back them off. Very cogent warning. Lo and behold, Ken gets back to the real world and we have a graphic demonstration of why he’s vulnerable. Someone who was nothing but gentle might only have been in danger of being tortured and killed, but Ken has something else that must have made him downright tasty to Arachnemon and Vamdemon (Myotismon)–anger. Hell, can you blame the kid? First his parents are just fawning on his big brother, and then big brother yells at him for being drawn to what is after all Ken’s own digivice. And takes it away again, on top of that. So here’s a good kid with a gentle disposition having to deal with perfectly reasonable anger at the people he still loves. It’s only to be expected that he would suppress the anger, especially after Osamu is killed. Then he’s got standard survivor guilt to reinforce his discomfort with his own anger. He probably manages to bury his anger for a while, though it’s hard to say for sure since we never see those years. Then comes the fateful email and the trip to the Dark Sea. Whereupon, it sure looks to me like all Ken’s buried hostility comes roaring to the surface, unrestrained by his basic good nature. This is one of those places where having the original helps. Price did a very nice villainous Kaiser, but listening to Paku we get the voice of someone who is not simply evil but actually insane. Think Escaflowne‘s Dilandu. Thus, my hypothesis that what Darkness does is suppress Ken’s restraint.

And, really, it can’t possibly have been a coincidence that the Kaiser bears such a striking resemblance to the way Osamu looks as he’s bawling chibi-Ken out for using the Digivice. The hair and reflectivity of glasses was almost identical. Besides, there are several visuals that reinforce the idea. When Ken ‘comes back’ to his parents, the shot of their reunion is from the point-of view of Osamu’s picture on the mantle. Then there’s the picture in Ken’s dream of Osamu holding the Kaiser’s glasses, surrounded by bubbles. There we have both sides of Osamu: the caring (bubbles) and the harsh (Kaiser’s glasses). This suggests several things to me. Ken may have internalized Osamu’s temper and harsh tendencies; after all, his parents seem to have wanted Ken to copy Osamu. And remember the words of wisdom over the bubbles? Ken is better at it because he’s gentler, while Osamu blows too hard and breaks the bubbles. That harshness definitely shows up in the shadowed Ken. Too, Ken may be externalizing a major cause of his anger, making it visible as he acts out his hostility. At the most basic level, I think it’s pretty clear that the writers/artists want us to realize that Osamu and his flash-paper temper are very involved in what the Kaiser becomes.

A particularly telling example of Ken’s lack of control as the Kaiser is the fight with Takeru in Episode 19.

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Violence and Control

So, Ken is being his usual obnoxious Kaiser-self and asserting his own perfection. Takeru laughs, which is probably the best/worst thing he could have done, depending on your point of view. Ken strips a gear and lashes out with that whip of his, cutting Takeru across the face. Takeru, at this point, gets that rather fey look on his face that he has when he’s dropping out of innocent-and-hopeful mode and into crusader-from-hell mode. He’s pretty sharp in that latter mode; he asks Ken whether his reaction to being at a loss for words is always to strike out. Ken, looking pretty taken aback, downright stammers that it is. Takeru notes that this is Ken’s big problem–not knowing when to talk and when to fight. Then comes the part that I think shows Takeru’s own fault-lines. He first says that this is a time to talk, and then yells that it’s also a good time to fight and jumps the Kaiser. I can’t help but think that he might have been able to turn Ken right then and there if Takeru’s own past hadn’t overwhelmed his judgment. Ken looks pretty shocked by what Takeru’s saying.

In fact, our dear Kaiser must have been pretty wigged out at this point, because Takeru gets the drop on him. We’re talking about someone who’s proficient in Judo, yes? He should have thrown Takeru into the wall. But he doesn’t. In fact, Takeru pounds on him before the return of Chimeramon interrupts them. Besides this, I find it curious that Ken, who is good enough at handling that whip to break in half a hefty branch that Iori throws at him (Ep. 8), suddenly uses it so clumsily that Takeru can catch it. Thus, my suggestion that Darkness produced a loss of control mechanisms in Ken. It let his hostility and aggression loose, and in the process seriously degraded his ability to deal with reality. When reality, in this case Takeru, intrudes in such as way as can’t be ignored, Ken doesn’t have access to any of the ways he might normally compensate for the unexpected. Unbridled anger does tend to make one extremely single minded and narrow of focus.

That’s one of the reasons I think Takeru has something in common with Ken during this confrontation; his own anger is making him behave similarly. They seem to do that a lot–note the similar expressions here and here. He passes it on to Iori, too, judging by Iori’s rampant intolerance of Ken for the next handful of episodes. Takeru is a bit more flexible than that; he strikes me as one of the most complex of the characters. For all the anger between them to start with, I suspect Takeru and Ken understand each other very well. As Yamato points out, Takeru is the only one who understands what Ken felt when Wormmon evaporated. Takeru is certainly the first one after Daisuke to think that Ken really has changed and deserves a second chance. The one I bet really baffles Ken is Daisuke.

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Water

See, Ken definitely has his pride. For all that his efforts toward genius-hood were inspired by all the wrong reasons, I think his pride in his accomplishments was real. He would not, I suggest, have broken so completely once he realized his mistakes if he hadn’t had a good deal of pride. It was the understanding that his actions were so very far from the image of himself that he’d held that causes Ken such extended agony; if he had been able to accept that his actions were the result of Darkness overshadowing him, he would have been all right. It was the fact that his actions were rooted in permanent aspects of his personality that threw him so badly. And what but pride would drive him to work alone for so long? Fear of rejection, to be sure, but he doesn’t precisely avoid the other Chosen. He saves Iori’s bacon, after all, which is how they figure out he’s wandering around destroying Spires. He just refuses to deal with those complications. At least until Daisuke wears him down (and smacks him one).

I imagine Daisuke is a real puzzle to Ken, no matter what condition he’s in. Here’s someone who seems to have a good deal of ego, but also seems to have no pride to speak of. Daisuke’s very good at groveling. Episode 8 is the most famous example, of course. Ken decides to engage in some psychological torture to make up for Daisuke a) surprising him out of a point in soccer and b) making him look bad in the process. So he wants Daisuke to beg for the lives of his alleged friends, hung up for the monster. Daisuke folds right up and begs charmingly; I bet Ken was in heaven. Daisuke’s words to Veemon are telling; when his partner hesitates to hold him down, Daisuke says to do it and that anything that gets the others free is fine with him. It’s torture for him all right, but only because his friends are (supposedly) in danger. The humiliation doesn’t touch him. Similarly, as Daisuke and Veemon are being chased by that triceratops looking mon, Daisuke has no hesitation in groveling when he asks for a favor before being killed (handwashing…). And these things never affect him. He’s like water. He gives way to everything and just keeps on going. His pride is based, not on any appearance of dignity, but on whether he accomplishes his goals–however silly those goals may occasionally be. Even after Ken recovers, I doubt he really understands this. But that’s precisely Daisuke’s gift to him–the message (or perhaps lecture) that it’s human to mess up and need help to fix things, and admit the fact.