every anime protagonist needs their foil Goku has Vegeta Naruto has Sasuke Shinji has clinical depression an anime main character is nothing without a deuteragonist that acts as a stark opposite to the ideal that a character stands for a lot of the time in anime at least in Shonen our main character is an optimistic Sunshine boy who believes in the power of hard work and friendship which means that the foil is dark and brooding who starts off believing that friends will only hold them back before becoming a big old pink wear and softy later on in
the series and this idea of a main character being mirrored by another character in the story is nothing new and we can trace the origins back to some of the earliest fictive texts ever Cain had Abel gods of Law and Order are opposed by gods of chaos and trickery gods of Heaven are opposed by gods of the underworld even Shakespeare was playing around with foils presenting animated Duos of characters that could not be more different throughout his works for a writer conveying themes personified through a character is hard and sometimes the best way to guide
the audience to understanding those themes is to show the complete opposite of everything your main character stands for if your shown in MC believes in the power of hard work to overcome their faults their foil should try and take shortcuts if the main character thinks that friends and bonds are what makes them strong the foil should turn heel and cut ties with those same friends and go off on their own good writing is showing not telling that our protagonist exemplifies the morals of the fiction but it's through the foil that you can come to your
own conclusions that even though getting a sick ass neck tat is a 12-year-old is cool indentured servitudes to a psychotic snake man is not but what does that mean when your protagonist is well not like other anime protagonists as we talked about in my lios video lios reads like a subversion of common anime main characters so what would that make his perfect foil of all the Fantastic characters of roko kui's delicious and dungeon cabu is easily one of my favorites in a show brimming with Intrigue complex World building and characters with deep history is obscure
just out of sight cabu stands out as maybe one of the most enigmatic and alluring of the entire bunch one part claw Fire Emblem one part band of the hawk Griffith before the incident don't kill me and all part sweet little guy whom I will cherish to the end of my days cabu is a shining example of what makes dunam Messi's character so compelling his mystery his motives and his direct contrast to the main character lios toin cabu is introduced with his party another group of adventurers with a completely different vibe to laos's party's own
the difference in their presentation is immediate Ren the mage of Cab's party has a chilly severity about her making Marcel the only other Mage that we've seen up until this point seem downright Amateur hour in comparison please Marcel this was just a scrip forgive me Rin takes one look at one of Marcel's spells and flippantly remarks ah a m college student because it's so by the books and it Bears all the telltale signs of someone terrified of doing something the wrong way marabel the half foot is more of a trickster than chill Chu is and
Trav Trav with a partner something that grumpy old chill Chuck probably would never subject himself to there's a Healer who my live chat says that I hate there's a dwarf fighter and there's cro a Cobalt who is basically as much of a dog person as lios is we're introduced to this party is a tonal shift away from the comedy and levity of loos's party up until this point to something a bit more serious finally this is a group of real adventurers in this world taking their delve into the dungeon seriously and we're about to see
exactly what they can do and they immediately die Copper's team is immediately party wiped by treasure insects who without a monster freak in their party to determine there might be danger let their guard down to fatal consequences but this is a dungeon after all and as we've learned death is only temporary upon getting resurrected Cobra's group continues on their way the death was just a roadblock in this team's story because this time nothing can stop them this time nothing can stand in their way this time yeah um they immediately died in I guess the one
thing that Cab's party has in common with liosis is that you should expect the unexpected after being resurrected C's team is put in a precarious situation with some Bandits and after Discerning the hook of the encounter literally that's a fish joke that it's all an illusion Cabra mercilessly frighteningly Slaughters them before continuing along their way like it's just another day at the office so why were they so easily defeated before not once but twice by lowf floor monsters but so proficient against these thieves well that is the dichotomy of cabu remember everything that I said
about foil characters that you definitely didn't Skip and were totally paying attention to well cabu serves as a foil to lios in exactly the ways that you'd expect where lios knows a ton about monsters and uses that obsessive knowledge to navigate his party through the dungeon we can see through Cab's perspective that traversing this dungeon without any knowledge of monsters is perilous at best and continuously fatal at worst we're reminded that while lios is a compl complete freak it's kind of because he's a complete freak that the group continuously makes it so far beyond what
they might seem ordinarily capable of on paper cabu seems like he should be the protagonist of a fantasy series not acting as some bit player on another team you see unlike lios who is constantly unable to say the right thing or relate to people cabu doesn't have that issue dude is effortlessly charismatic easily the smoothest talking character of the entire series but just now naturally having a 20 Charisma isn't all there is to cabu cabu has a innate borderline creepy kind of psychotic ability to read and study people he just gets them he picks up
on the subtlest context clues and pieces together all the rumors he hears above ground to know anything and everything about anyone he chooses cabu kind of a gossipy Queen confirmed it's actually through cabu that we get our first real Exposition into the pasts of characters that have never been mentioned up until this point in the story which in of itself is a such a fun bit of Storytelling through Cab's accounts of the talks and rumors of the town he's actually very familiar with loos's party more familiar than we are as an audience it's through these
accounts that we learn what lios and everyone were doing up until now which was some questionable stuff we have this real moment of was loos's party were they the bad guys like what's going on here and with copu stating that he'd like to be there when the toaden masks are removed we get this real ambiguity to what his motives actually are is he just praying on the toaden siblings downfall from afar does he want to help what is going on not only is cabu deept at reading people or memorizing their personal details like he's the
most beautiful eyelash boy detective but he's also Adept at suddenly manipulating people whether they notice or not in the manga liner notes there's this really interesting translation note that kabu changes his own honorifics in Japanese when speaking to adventurers above ground and when he's meeting with lios and shur in the dungeon before he uses or to refer to himself as a grown ass man and then face to face with lios he uses the much more childish and I'm just a little guy coded Boku so when he's speaking above ground he wants everyone to see him
as a capable Adventurer which he is but when he's speaking to lios he wants to appear as harmless and innocent as possible to avoid all suspicion and he also imagines murdering L like several different times when he's forcing him to eat a harpy egg but that's neither here nor there much like Lio seems like a subversion of an anime hero if you want to interpret his character that way kabu is rokok kui's in Universe example that a typical Shonen protagonist won't work here you can't talk no Jutsu your way through monsters incapable of reasoning you
can't slash your way through encounters without knowing anything about the creatures you're fighting not only does coer freeze up when he sees monsters we'll get into that but he can't even imagine where he would even begin attacking when he sees the Sea Dragon which he initially confused uses with a kraken he tries to determine where to strike looking for some kind of weakness but his over analysis paralyzes him and he's only saved from yet another death when Shiro's team makes the save when cabu shocks everyone and stabs Fallon directly in her heart what would have
been a fatal wound to the human Fallon barely makes a scratch on her new Chimera form which lios is quick to determine must mean her vitals are in the monster half if lios is supposed to represent an unlikely solution to the Encounters of dungeon Mesi cabu is meant to express the exact opposite that just being an anime hero isn't enough in this world that things that might work in another series for another character won't always mean that it'll work in this one in a conversation with lios we get the first hint of Cab's backstory in
a second if you're paying attention it tells us everything we might have suspected about him and the roots of his persistent hesitation towards monsters cra's Hometown his mother and everything he loved was wiped out by monsters that escaped a dungeon that went through a similar growth spurt to the dungeon Central to our story and while that was just a hint at a backstory brilliantly foreshadowed for us we get the full reveal in the meeting with the island Lord and the canaries later in the series monsters overflowed from the dungeon annihilating everyone and the dead were
transformed into even more monsters it's this terrifying event that stealed Cab's resolve firmly against dungeons growing out of hand and he takes his own sense of justice very seriously not only for himself but for the entire world of dungeon meshy it's through cabu that we start to delve into the political Intrigue of this world and start to explore this idea of a conflict of interest between these fantasy races cabu remarks that the elves gaining too much influence could be terrible and not just for the dungeon not just for the island but for the entire world
for me this is almost an attack on Titan moment where you realize that everything we know about this world is so isolated and insular to this one location this single dungeon this one is in town but it's through cabu and everything happening above ground that we realize wait a second there's an entire world to this story it's also through cabu that we get the first direct counter to laos's party's ideals while we know the party would do anything to save Fallon cabu counters out with a cold brutal real question just how many other people will
have to die just to save this one person is this personal Victory worth it if it has catastrophic ramifications to the rest of the Island that's not to say that cabu is cold or unsympathetic to everything that's happening quite the opposite really he's so concerned about the greater good and everything that's going on on a world scale that to him one life and one person seems insignificant in comparison and I think it's this sense of justice this sense of morality that actually makes cabu a very interesting character especially when considering the end game of this
entire series well we know that lios only cares about his own kind of sus monster munching interests cabu is deeply invested in the outcome of this dungeon meshy prophecy Game of Thrones cabu considers Del gal's final words the promise to bestow a kingdom to the one who slays the Mad Mage as an actual tangible important goal in this series which again directly counters loos's own seeming disinterest and unlike chil chuk and Marcel laughing at the idea of lios being a king it's actually not hard to see cabu making a great king and it's something that
his party seems to agree with and hell it's something I agree with I think looking at this cast cabu makes the most convincing leader of the entire Bunch if cabu was King he could prevent this island from ending up like utaya which makes the next aspect of his character even more heartbreaking cabu knows that he'll never accomplish this cabu knows that his fear of monsters means that he can never achieve his goal cabu is someone who appears to have it all going on for him with every single Le credential it would take to be a
capable ruler but who is also fundamentally and paradoxically unable to achieve his dreams and again in direct contrast we have lios who is someone who doesn't want that dream who doesn't have that goal and yet he seems like the most likely person to actually pull it off but there's a little bit more to that when speaking with the island Lord in the canaries cabu admits that lios is probably the most likely candidate to fulfill Del gal's will but lios seems to bulk at the idea of killing people taking responsibility and rising to this occasion I
actually really doubt that lios would kill the Mad Mage even if he wanted to even if he had to as far as I can remember lios hasn't actually killed a single humanoid in this entire story and I don't think that starts with killing thistle but of course cabu has no issue killing humanoids cabu doesn't even hesitate could cabu be the one who kills the Mad Mage or some other humanoid later in the series has all of this been leading up to a moment where a man so afraid of monsters becomes a monster himself I have
no idea what the future holds for cabu but that's part of what makes him such an interesting character at the end of season 1 he's venturing into the dungeon with shuro and namari and the Western elves right behind him to clear out the dungeon but what comes after that will he descend back down alongside the Western elves will his own party join him will he team up with lios surely there's a larger part for cabu to play in the story still even if it's just helping loos's party out by eating Fallon kerah have although he
does hate the idea of eating monsters so I'm not sure how well that one would go but it really is interesting to think of the endgame of dunam Mesi and where these characters will end up does lios truly become the king does he even want to become the King by the time this is all said and done it' be kind of interesting to see if lios did just want to continue adventuring continue researching monsters and you know making meals out of them but if lios is concerned with his own Adventures maybe it is cabu who
steps up to lead the island maybe it's cabu who even steps up to lead the Golden Country achieving his dream of eradicating the dungeon's curse and becoming a benevolent ruler not by himself but with the help of everybody anyway thank you guys for checking out this video be sure to subscribe to the channel if you liked this video leave a like and leave a comment what are your thoughts on cabu if you're an anime only what do you you think his Arc is going to be in the second season and if you're a manga reader
what were you thinking around this point in the story as always keep your comment spoiler free there's a lot of anime ones that watch these videos and I'm an anime only myself so I don't know what happens later on in the story so if you do leave a comment make sure it's not spoiling anything for the rest of us and finally if you'd like to get more of my content including all the vods from my live reads of the delicious IND dungeon manga as well as some uh bonus stuff coming very soon check out my
patreon or become a YouTube channel member all the support really helps I'm a very small channel so your support actually lets me take time out of my day to do these videos a big thank you to everyone who supports their names will be on the screen here and if you'd like to join those guys and help us small Creator out uh you know what to do so thank you guys and until the next one I'm Dom this has been cabu peace
