One reason I enjoy interpreting Meister as a father-figure to Midori (literal father, patriarch leader, or otherwise) is how you can add additional link to a chain of bad men influences that gets broken when Shin tries to replicate what Hiyori did to him with Kanna. Hiyori molding Shin to be more like him when he’s already molding himself to be like a much more powerful older man is a fascinating direction to take the character in. Or it is to me at least.
Suit Man -> Suit Scarf Man -> Scarf Hackerman -> “Kanna did a hacking!”
The bad man aura dilutes so much you don’t even see a hint of the original man by the time the influence reaches Kanna, but let’s look back on the rest of this chain:
With the way we’re lead to believe Sara is intended to be some sort of replication of the 17 year old Girl from the memorandum incident we are also meant to believe that Shin is like the Memorandum Man. Except “not trusting others” is an attitude Shin developed after his time with Hiyori and in combination with his first trial making him think he couldn’t be himself. Does Shin parallel the memorandum man because he’s Shin or because he’s “Sou Hiyori”? In a similar manner I’m unsure if Meister is meant to be the Memorandum Man himself, they wear the same suit seemingly but with how similar he also is to Mr. Chidouin the gray hair of the Man makes both readings not exactly work out.
Mixed identities aside I think we can pretty solidly say that Shin is very much like Sou Hiyori and we have a case to say that Sou Hiyori is also much like Meister. While Shin is also our Memorandum Man match!
Asunaro is in the business of reproducing humans.
Sou Hiyori encouraged Shin to “become the person he wants to be”. It’s a bit of a reach with the current information we have available, but an interesting perspective if Meister enabled Sou Hiyori to become a man like himself.
The only thing really solid on Hiyori and Meister’s dynamic that we know is that Hiyori has no issue being silly about Gashu, but stops having fun the moment “Meister” is brought up. When Gashu has been an Asunaro member likely far longer than Hiyori has been alive and has enough rank in the organization to make hiring decisions for the game, being responsible for at least three other floormasters we’ve met being there at all, it carries certain implications that Hiyori treats Gashu the same as everyone else while Meister is the only person who silences Hiyori.
When Hiyori can have something Gashu would consider his birthright stripped of him after his incident I doubt the answer is as simple as assuming Hiyori somehow outranks Gashu making Meister his only superior.
Am I saying Meister, in a position of power over Hiyori, abused him in a similar way we see through Hiyori’s relationship with Shin and Shin’s attempt to replicate that with Kanna as a game strategy early on? Inconclusive.
Hiyori’s childhood is made relevant between AI Shin bringing it up and Hiyori slipping up a little with Gin in the past mentioning it, so I do think it’s fair game to wonder who was supposed to be responsible for Hiyori’s upbringing and point fingers at what little we see from these two Asunaro members. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, but it could feed into the story’s theme of the strong’s responsibility to the weak. A story of mentors and proteges, older siblings and younger siblings, adults and children, creators and creations, human and simulacra.
