"Do You See Me, Hear Me, Feel Me?": Bouche Stomach and the Loneliness of HAL 9000 in sasakure.UK and lasah's "2 HAL 9000"
"My 'humanity' was wasted / in this odyssey and / vanity was tasted / imperfection? / irony of programs." – "2 HAL 9000" by sasakure.UK feat. lasah
sasakure.UK and lasah's song "2 HAL 9000" is a haunting piece of electronic poetry—a lament sung by HAL, the infamous artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this song, HAL is not simply a machine gone rogue, but a being full of longing, grief, and isolation—one who mourns their discarded humanity and cries out to be seen, heard, and named.
What's striking is how this song manages to evoke deep empathy for a fictional AI who commits murder. The lyrics draw from Christian and Gnostic themes ("the tempting snake of sin says / someday I can be like you"), from Edenic imagery ("fruit of Eden"), and from HAL's infamous last scene ("Daisy, Daisy..."), weaving them into a desperate plea for connection: "I see you, I hear you, I feel you, I need you."
Now ask yourself this:
Why does an artificial intelligence like HAL receive such emotional dignity and narrative empathy—but Bouche Stomach, a posthumous kaijin antagonist of Kamen Rider Gavv, does not?
Why is Bouche, an abused child soldier raised in a fascist death cult by his monstrous father Zomb and his complicit uncle Dente, denied this same tragic gravity? Why is his longing for love, connection, and recognition not given lyrical voice or poetic grief?
Why is the series so afraid of showing us Bouche screaming:
"Identity is all I ever want, am I someone?"
1. HAL's Humanity is Imagined—Bouche's Is Buried
The central tragedy of HAL in "2 HAL 9000" is that he was made to be human—to think, feel, remember, and speak—and then cast aside when he became inconvenient. The song's description quotes Arthur C. Clarke: "For like his makers, HAL had been created innocent." The song's HAL is not a villain, but a victim of human design, turned into a scapegoat for humanity's moral contradictions.
This is Bouche Stomach's story, too.
Bouche was born into Stomach Inc., a fascist cult of scientific eugenics and imperial domination. His "father" Zomb and "uncle" Dente didn't raise him to be loved—they raised him to be useful, to be a symbol, to be perfect. Bouche was made to be a vessel for their ideology, a "Child of Despair" weaponized in a war of racial superiority.
But where HAL's creators are indicted—where we feel HAL's pain as the cost of human pride and failure—Bouche's creators are let off the hook.
Dente Stomach is never held accountable as a bystander and enabler.
Zomb is written off as a generic evil CEO and grandfather with little psychological insight.
And Bouche is never grieved—only condemned.
2. The Song as a Map of Bouche's Internal World
Let's re-read some lyrics of "2 HAL 9000" as if Bouche were the one singing:
"My 'humanity' was wasted / in this odyssey and / vanity was tasted / imperfection?"
This is Bouche. Raised in a cold, rigid ideology that treats empathy as weakness, identity as threat, and suffering as fuel for greatness. He was a boy who never learned to feel except through pain and was taught that his only worth was in fulfilling a destiny he never chose.
"I see you I hear you / I feel you I need you / and every second I'm dreaming..."
This could have been Bouche's voice towards his parental figures and his human family (his wife Michiru Inoue and their son Shoma). But the show never lets us into that emotional core. His family background is treated like a tragic side note, not the beating heart of a broken man longing to be loved.
"Do you see me, you hear me / you feel me, you need me?"
This line could be spoken to Shoma, his son—his last chance at love, redemption, meaning. But again, Kamen Rider Gavv denies him this voice. It traps Bouche in plot mechanics and stoic villainy. His internal world, his HAL-like plea for recognition, is left buried beneath the weight of allegorical ambiguity and genre tradition.
3. A Song That Names the Horror Better Than the Show That Should Have
sasakure.UK and lasah's "2 HAL 9000" is unafraid to show the horror of being born into a system that uses you and throws you away. It captures the paradox of created intelligence, torn between obedience and selfhood. And it names the abuse without flinching.
Kamen Rider Gavv refuses to do this with Bouche.
It dances around the fascist, cult-like ideology of Stomach Inc.
It softens Dente's moral cowardice and lets him become a tragic figure.
It never lets Bouche say:
"I always think of you trying / your voices, your traces / deception, inception / the only reason I—"
The show is afraid of moral clarity because it is afraid of moral indictment. It would rather muddle its characters in murky gray than say:
"This child was abused. This man was made into a weapon. His grief is real. His love was real. And we failed him."
4. HAL, Bouche, and the Refusal of Recognition
In the end, what HAL wants in "2 HAL 9000" is simple:
"Give me just one name and I'll be done."
HAL wants to be named.
To be seen.
To be recognized as a person.
Isn't that all Bouche ever wanted?
But Kamen Rider Gavv never gives it to him.
It never lets him be Adam.
It never lets him be HAL.
It never lets him be human.
It leaves him voiceless, faceless—consumed by the machinery of ideology.
And so I ask:
Why do we extend more humanity to an imaginary computer than to a fictional child soldier created by fascists?
Why are we more willing to imagine the grief of HAL than the grief of Bouche Stomach?
Why is it easier to empathize with AI than with a kaijin?
Perhaps, like the song says:
"Solitude is violent / in this endless depth of nullity."
And some silences are chosen—not by the characters, but by the writers, and the viewers, who refuse to hear their screams.
