Usogui - Vincent Lalo and the water-diamond paradox

Random, spontaneous rambling about the tiny part of Usogui's antagonist (who just so happens to be my favourite in the series), Vincent Lalo - that which is probably not too correct as I am too lazy to re-read the manga, but will at least give a perspective to think about





Spoilers, obviously it was brought up in the discord server months or year ago that there exists 'water-diamond paradox', so I will combine his thoughts with mine




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value

https://www.britannica.com/topic/diamond-water-paradox




And as we know, Lalo has a fetish for diamonds








whats interesting though is the fact that all of the members of IDEAL die whenever there is water involved. for example voja’s fixation on being pretty relates back to lalo and how he thinks the talented people are beautiful, and voja drowning while hal floats up and away is





a mirror of the end of air poker. in a way, hal’s escape from voja there started the whole ban match as well, so its like the whole thing started and ended with drowning. When Kyara killed a member of IDEAL, he was also thrown in the water.













Billy Craig, before 'activating' his Caracal mode ( in this case, he got a fatal injury while flying - a point regarding flying vs floating could be possibly made, but I have not thought about it yet), also 'died' in a situation where water was involved.





The funny part being, that Billy's death was a crucial point of crafting the whole Protoporos ordeal as well - island is surrounded by water, that which is also wet (lame joke, soz).





Now regarding how diamond is more valued than the water and all, how it connects to the narrative is probably about the friendship and (mis)judgement of its value - IDEAL being the ones misjudging, Baku and his squad judging and trusting 'properly'.










like how Lalo got nailed cuz he was affected too much by Billy's death and out of the impulse made the lapse in judgement and value, which is a humane thing to do, especially for someone whos such a perfectionist.





He does not even show his genuine emotions after all, even when he was dying, he still was fully invested in the 'facade' (for the lack of a better word), but was actually quite sensitive, which was reflected in the water.




Point gets actually twisted, once its revealed that Lalo quite literally turns people, who he finds valuable, into diamonds - so 'water-diamond' gets apparently intentional as the water wins over the diamond.






well this was quite an unsatisfying write-up, but I still wanted to share, as I do not really feel like re-reading Usogui as of now and would gladly hear opinions to improve this perspective