I've been haunted recently trying to overanalyze a lot of things about Victim/Hacker (especially how the way they're animated indicates their feelings and personality and such) but one thing I kinda stumbled onto while doing this is like. There is a notable shift in how they fight from before they get mindwiped by Dark and after. I feel like others must have noticed this but I haven't seen anyone point it out so. Rambling time.
(I really ought to use examples from Ep. 12 in this too, but for the sake of making things easier on myself I'm only gonna use Ep. 13 stuff. However they don't actually use their full toolset when fighting Dark, so I think it's worth noting that by focusing only on Ep. 13, I might overlook some parts of their fighting style.)
So. When we see Hacker fight against Dark, they seem to have a clear favoring of using tools, weapons, and surrounding objects rather than fighting with their fists/body. I feel like I've seen others note this before, but I can certainly redemonstrate it, focusing on some of the moves they use when battling The Dark Lord:
First off, a lot of this attitude of favoring tools can be seen in their swordfighting scenes like above. We do see them create shapes as shields and such and use those too, and they also use their sword as a whip during the fight. This is all pretty straightforward usage of external weapons and such to fight with and defend themselves.
Interestingly enough, they also use The Air Itself as a tool at one point, quite literally flinging a blade of air at Dark to slice through a wall. And of course I need to note the incredibly iconic whatever the hell you'd call flinging chunks of their entire company at Dark is. I wouldn't say any of this comes off as using their body or using items as an extension of themself though. The motion they use when they throw the air blade reminds me more of how they've handled shurikens. Their environment flinging, while it does extend their own body in ways, seems more like they're extending their own reach to use tools rather than using the tools like parts of themselves.
I think when they play "chopsticks" with the pillars, the "extending their reach" elements are especially clear—the pillars aren't their hands themselves, they're using the pillars as if they were in their hands. Really impressive spatial reasoning skills though, buddy!
We do see Hacker fight with their fists or other objects a bit too. You can see them using selection, but presumably to amplify their own punches, so it feels more reminiscent of how they fought in The Box. They're just completing Agent's side of that battle in real time on their own, rather than getting any outside assistance now that their powers can provide that boost to them. This parallel to The Box doubly goes for when they end up reversing The Dark Lord's fireball on him—it feels like they're more used to fighting with weapons, honestly, but can sort of imitate the conditions of The Box battle if they think about it. They don't actually use these powers much during the fight though, so maybe they're more taxing than just selecting and flinging stuff around?
Note how I did not even show the clones fighting. That is because I also wanna take a quick look at The Dark Lord's fighting style in this battle. While I've seen people comment before about how she seems to be really showy with her attacks and not taking the fight seriously, I'd just like to focus in specifically on how she uses her virablades:
He fights using his entire arm when he swings the virablades, notably. In the third pic here you can even see him literally grabbing at one of the clones with the bladeless arm—it really feels like the blades are an extension of him rather than just a tool, unlike how Hacker fights with a focus on using weaponry/objects. We actually kind of see this in the first set of pictures I show in this ramble, too; look at how he grapples Hacker's blade rather than parrying it! Look at how the stabbing motion into their shield is more or less a punching motion! She blocks their sword with her whole arm when she fights.
"Where are you going with this ramble," you may be asking. Well, what particularly stands out to me when we see Hacker fight for the first time after being mind controlled by The Dark Lord, is:
They stop fighting like themselves. We can clearly see them use their tools in a way we've never seen them use it before—their box selections, which have only been used as shields previously, are being used as blades now. Particularly blades that run the span of their arms, that they use as if they're an extension of their body.
It's just positively jarring to me, to see them moving more like The Dark Lord all of a sudden. It really gets across how they aren't in control anymore! Because we genuinely don't see them fight like this ever until they're under his command, and the resemblance is just uncanny to me. Like.
This is the exact same motion Dark does. These scenes are seconds apart from each other. *gestures wildly*
Interestingly enough, Hacker doesn't actually fight exactly like Dark for the entire battle, though. There's a few shots where we see them deviating from the Dark-esque fighting style: once, to select an employee to provide an assist kill for Dark, and once using their whip to kill others during the montage that leads into Second's powers nearly activating. I can't say for sure if this says much about their mental state, or maybe more about Dark's grip on their mind? But it's interesting to me that there are a few moments where they're using the powers they're more used to.
I think it's safe to say that selecting people as a whole is a pretty new thing to them, though, since we don't really see them do that in any previous battles before. Also, the scene where they literally crush a guy to death with the selection tool (not pictured here) is similarly uncharacteristic. It's not something The Dark Lord can do with his powers, but it feels more along the lines of his fighting style with how unneccessarily brutal and showy it is.
That aside. I don't really have any wrap up thoughts, I just think it's really interesting how Hacker changes not only in emotionality (or, lack thereof) because of the virus, but also in the way they fight. AVA forever amazes me with the amount of characterization and detail in every scene of this series.
