Sorry I dug through your blog to find your post and notes from Subject One, but I remember you mentioned you had posts on here while you were writing it 🤣
Anywho, I agree that Divine have never “sold” Aki, as like you said, she was his ultimate weapon, so it wouldn’t make sense to just send her off. However, and this is more headcanon-y, but I believe he did “sell” Aki… to Godwin!
Let’s think about it, how did Aki end up participating in the Fortune Cup? Do you really think Divine was going to let Aki walk there on her own, willy nilly? I like to imagine that Godwin suspected that Aki was a Signer and in order to get to her, he would need to get through Divine. Maybe at first, Divine denied his request, since he knows all of Godwin’s secrets and plans, right? After some negotiation, I can imagine Divine agreeing to “sell his services”, but under the condition that whatever the offering price was would be tripled, and that Divine and a handful of his most loyal “bodyguards” accompany and escort Aki. This gives Divine a chance to open the Arcadia Movement to the world and Godwin gets his Signer!- I mean, Godwin would care less about these conditions since he’s about to be GOD and will most likely just wipe out Divine and the Arcadia Movement lol
And I don’t think the “psychic army” was just a dub-ism. He mentions: “training psychics would make them excellent soldiers” in the Japanese sub, also he LENDS them out, not just sells them outright; so I guess you can say he leases then 🤣 it’s STILL HUMAN TRAFFICING, but this is how I think would make the most sense, from Divine’s POV, because-
“I’M GOING TO RAISE A PSYCHIC ARMY TO TAKE MY REVENGE!… by selling off my soldiers(?)”
Doesn’t sound like a smart idea lmao to me at least, I’m pretty smoothed brained sometimes. And in episode 42, I feel like Mikage was assuming what the Movement was doing, because it sounded like that list was the only thing recovered from the wreckage and are still investigating. Like what’s point of snatching random kids and experimenting on them? Sounds like a big waste of resourses and time if he’s just going to sell them and traffic them off to some shady places. I dunno, maybe I missed something? Also in Episode 37, Carly found a list of missing people linked to the Arcadia Movement, and those were ADULTS (plus that one flashback of Aki dueling Divine, there were adults in the background).
The way I see the Arcadia Movement, or how I would like to see them go with, is that they are similar to the Spartans of ancient Greece. Kids forced into a life of violence and mental torture to become apex warriors who are only loyal to the state, to Sparta. The Arcadia Movement would basically do the same, because why go through the trouble of experimenting on psychic duelist and then just ship them off while their are still freaking out… would be kind of usless for any work. If you’ve seen the movie Blood Diamond, the child soldiers scene are really heart breaking, with the abuse and manipulation to finally being fully commited to the rebels (or in fear of not compying), I can see this going on within the Movement or any branches. I can go on a WHOLE tangent about this, but I do not want to waste more of your valuable time. 🥲
