Can we talk about Ikeda’s main color being red? One of the last videos of pink was Sasaki’s poem about how red means innocence. It’s a symbol for childhood in the game. Red was also Wanda’s color. The kid who never got to grow up. Now, it’s Ikeda’s color, the age regressor stuck as a child without ever having the chance to grow up. (Especially now that we know he’s probably going to die soon.) Anyways, Ikeda was born with red. He was born with wolves. The lines that made me think of Ikeda specifically are the ending:
“It almost makes you want to be a wolf sometimes.
It almost makes you violent.
The idea that if you had claws,
and if you can run and stalk and hunt…
…you’d be able to protect yourself.
It makes you want to be worse.
It makes you want to pull your hood down and run into the tree line where it’ll be your turn to ruin a life,
where it’ll be your turn to bite and claw and hurt people, but—
He has spent this whole killing game trying to be a wolf. To him, hurting others is a coping mechanism (the worst one; I’m speaking from experience but not on his level). Hurting others takes away from acknowledging his own weakness. He’s small, weak, and vulnerable, but if he makes himself a wolf, he won’t be seen that way. He hates the pity. He hates the reality of his situation. If he’s a wolf, he isn’t the prey. But he is. He can’t hide that he isn’t the big bad. He is literally forced out of that persona and stuck as little red. We know he’s gonna die, right? My best bet is that it won’t be as the big bad. It’ll be as little red, the child stuck in a killing game wanting to be the predator but always the prey. Unlike with Little Red though, no hunter will be able to save him.
