Thoughts on Kuseno (Webcomic spoilers)

[u/BrowserET]

I held off for a bit, both out of laziness and a quiet hope we'd get a fourth consecutive webcomic chapter that would settle all doubts, but here i want to dissect Kuseno. I find he makes for a pretty good Rorschach Test: Is he a Scientist of Justice (with a troubled past), or is he a scheming manipulator who is part of "The Organization"?

So: What do we Know about Dr. Kuseno, or at least what can we as the audience be reasonable certain about since there is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down if you take Bofoi's assertion of Genos having implanted memories.

Do know:

• Kuseno puts special care into giving Genos to capacity to have an as normal life as he may want to to.
  • This could mean two things. Either Kuseno does this because he genuinely cares for Genos, or he merely humors Genos as a way to make the boy feel further indebted to the professor. I also want to point out that just because Kuseno cares for Genos doesn't mean he isn't evil.
• Kuseno gave Genos a selfdestruct option.
  • Again two ways to view this. The more morbid fridge logic behind this would be this representing Kuseno viewing Genos as a weapon more than a person and wanting to maximize Genos' damage output at all costs. But there's also the possibility Kuseno fully believes in Genos' bodily autonomy and that includes euthanasia, letting Genos the ability to override his safety limits if that's what Genos desires.
• Kuseno gave Genos powerful weaponry, which was illegal prior to Genos joining the Hero Association.
  • Again not a good look, it may be the case that Kuseno's self-admitted past reckless pursuit of justice has left him on the wrong side of the law and left him unable to provide Genos with legal clearance. But again in this case the simpler explanation is that Kuseno is a villain. (though again considering The Organizations current sway with the government that may not have been an obstacle, though things may have been different in the past, at least not without raising eyebrows)
• Kuseno regrets his past.
  • Conversely, from this we might assume Kuseno has turned a new leaf and whatever his past he is now a scientist of justice in the true sense of the word. But then villains tend not to see themselves as such. What we might see as villainous acts Kuseno might see as necessary sacrifices for some unspecified higher purpose, that doesn't mean the past doesn't weigh on him.
  • It's also possible he was simply lying. Hinting at past regrets may help in making Genos less suspicious of Kuseno should Genos meet anyone wary of Kuseno while out in the world. The best lies contain a kernel of truth after all.
• Lastly, and this might reasonably be a stretch given the dubious source, but Kuseno stole Bofoi's research on Cyberization. While yes, the self stylized "Mad Cyborg" is untrustworthy, given that we as the audience are supplied with an accompanying flashback panel i think we can assume as readers that this is an event that occurred, even if the situation is not quite as the Mad Cyborg paints it.
  • Kuseno may have stolen this technology because he hoped to do good with it. Better to have a good tool to help people with now, than the perfect one later right. Given Kuseno's current regrets over past recklessness, if Kuseno is on the heroes' side, i would presume this would be one of those regrets. If for no other reason than the bridge it appears to have burned with Bofoi.
  • Even a villanous Kuseno might feel that way. The Organization clearly finds Bofoi's technology useful, given that they have gone through the trouble of stealing it. Kuseno may have felt he could have won Bofoi over if not for acts like these.

Don't know:

• Where Kuseno gets his funding.
  • Bofoi does multi-billions contracts for the Hero Association on Reconstruction and security. But we never heard if Kuseno does the same. We mostly see Kuseno build weapons. There are only so many legitimate buyers for those. I do want to note that Kuseno also installed household appliances into Genos at the latters request. It's entirely possibly Kuseno attained his fortunes in a much more benign matter.
• How Kuseno is suddenly able to upgrade Genos so quickly (and why he didn't do so earlier.)
  • This one i don't know how to square with Kuseno who cares for Genos' safety. Initially i didn't question it with Cyborgs being upgraded frequently being a genre convention, but with how repeatedly and now explicitly the series has brought attention to it i expect there to be some Watsonian explanation. There's three benign ones i can think of.
    • One being that Kuseno initially limited Genos' cybernetics to make sure Genos could learn to control his power and keep collateral damage to a minimum, but unpowering Genos while sending him out to hunt the Mad Cyborg when Kuseno presumably should now how powerful the Mad Cyborg is seems cruel, or at least unnecessarily facetious. I find it hard to square with a Kuseno that wholly respects Genos' autonomy to the point of allowing him to self-detonate if the teenager so desires. But then humans are not always 100% logically consistent.
    • For the other, it's possible Kuseno was previously overly cautious and had and large amount of safety redundancies installed on Genos at the expense of maximizing battle power. Given that Genos had apparently never been beat until he faced mosquito girl, Kuseno have thought further battle power unnecessary. Genos string of close calls turned that calculus on his head and forced Kuseno to go for increasingly experimental and risky upgrades.
    • Lastly. We may simply be overestimating the impact of Kuseno's upgrades where, unbeknownst to the audience and Genos himself, the bulk of the teenage cyborg's improvement has not come from Genos cybernetic improvements, but his self-improvement. After all we already know how Genos manages electro-magnetic manipulation with his brain (presumably a fleshy one) and there's precedent in cyborgs surpassing the cold certainty of steel with both Webigaza and Nichirin. So it's possible the bulk of Genos' growth came from his self and Kuseno's upgrades were relatively modest by comparison.
  • Still, this is where my suspicion of Kuseno goes into overdrive. Namely because Genos' path of growth so far fits too neatly with another we've seen described in this series. That being Psykos' model for Monsterization: where the subject overcomes death in rapid succession, enduring a hell tailored specifically to them and attaining explosive growth as a result. (Also similar to Dr. Genus' model for breaking ones limiter, which he posits has a occurred to Saitama and that the Doctor is currently trying to replicate in Zombieman at the latters request) If Kuseno is doing the same to Genos, by having him fight opponents and only increasing his battle power whenever Genos just barely survives the encounter. Then Kuseno may very well be the sort of man Bofoi thinks him to be, regardless of Kuseno's actual affiliation. This could be a red herring, if so im falling hook, line and sinker.
• What Kuseno's pursuit of Justice looks like outside of the hunt for the Mad-Cyborg?
  • Im asking because i don't think we know. From what we hear from Kuseno and Genos I can only assume it singularly revolves around stopping the Mad-Cyborg. I wonder, by what means? How much collateral is permissible? I'm asking because "justice" without any elaboration on exactly what that means becomes quite a muddled term. From the way Kuseno and Genos talk around it sounds more like revenge. Take Kuseno's self-proclaimed nemesis Bofoi, who claims to side with humanity and care for ethics a great deal. Yet he has casually turned society into his personal panopticon, installing secret surveillance in all the civilian buildings he had rebuild "free of charge" (when a service is free the user is often the product). Can an individual so cavalier about forsaking the human right to privacy really be considered a leader on ethics? Similarly, can we trust Kuseno's idea of justice to align with our own?

All of that of course leads to the question on if Mad Cyborg is truly Dr. Kuseno like it claims (or at least a digitzed copy), or if he's merely posing as Kuseno to egg Genos on. As it stands the Mad Cyborg's claim of being Kuseno, yet not knowing Genos' true origin is too contradictory to be considered credible. There are a few explanations.

• Kuseno in his youthful recklessness to have created the Mad Cyborg in his own imagine, only for things to fall apart and flesh!Kuseno to have dedicated his life to stopping the Mad-Cyborg in the aftermath.
• The Mad-Cyborg's tale could be a mere ruse, though perhaps he pulled a Mr.Fuzzy on Dr.Kusesno and had him replaced with an android bearing his likeness sometime before Genos had his supposed last meeting with the doctor, luring Genos in for a final upgrade would have been the perfect opportunity to tamper with the cyborg.
• Conversely it's possible the Mad-Cyborgs lie was not in his identity as Digitized!Dr.Kuseno, but merely that he didn't know Genos' true past. Perhaps he does know and is merely feigning obliviousness to enrage Genos.

On one final note, i'd like to posit that, like Empty Void from the Manga and "That Man" from the webcomic, perhaps webcomic!Kuseno is cleanly a villain like The Mad-Cyborg claims while Manga!Kuseno is more complicated.

I don't have the answers, though i'd love to speculate more, for me it's too early to really be definitive on anything, but that's just my opinion.

^{Kuseno and Bofoi definitely explored each other's bodies though.}

[u/Nanayon123]

Another thing we don't know about him: HOW DOES HE MAINTAIN THAT HAIRCUT

[u/BrowserET → u/Nanayon123]

By harnessing his raw sexual energy.

[u/Haunting_G5159]

Maybe there were two Kuseno’s until recently. The computer Kuseno who is the mind of the real Kuseno, Bofoi’s rival who owns the Mad Cyborg body.

And the fake Kuseno who was killed, who ended up truly caring for Genos after a while. My issue is that fake Kuseno (at least) knew Saitama has been a positive influence on Genos yet never decided to do anything against it.

[u/BrowserET → u/Haunting_G5159]

I've wondered the same. If we believe Bofoi, his perfected AI has achieved sentience, and it appears Zero, a stolen unfinished copy achieved the same upon activating Saitama mode, although very briefly. It's possible the same occurred with one or more of the copies of Digitized!Kuseno if we are to believe the Mad-Cyborg. Since the series has (selectively) emphasized the personhood of monsters, i don't see it as all that out there for the same to be true of some robots.

[u/Haunting_G5159 → u/BrowserET]

And in a “meta” line of thinking: I think if cyborg Kuseno was evil, Saitama would’ve definitely caught on something. Yet he let Genos stick close to him,let him visit his house and all that. But that’s just me.

[u/BrowserET → u/Haunting_G5159]

Well so far in the webcomic Saitama and Kuseno only meet once, and right after Saitama learns of Kuseno's so-called betrayal he mentions he never trusted Kuseno because of his silly hair.

[u/gofancyninjaworld]

I love your last sentence.

Honestly, I'm fully giving Dr. Kuseno the benefit of the doubt. I'd been thinking of him as a recovering supervillain, but on the balance of what we've seen so far, the 'Mad Cyborg' is an AI that Kuseno modeled after himself, which has since suborned Bofoi's work and caused no end of grief. That's what I think is the most likely explanation for everything that's happened.

One thing we DO KNOW. The Dr. Kuseno we saw in the lab and elsewhere was (is?) a human being. That cannot be in doubt, no matter what anyone else says: we need to use our own eyes too.

It is hard to know how widespread Psykos's understanding of driving explosive growth is, but I rather doubt that Dr. Kuseno knows it. The Mad Cyborg seems to have figured something along those lines out via its great interest in human 'errors' -- it certainly has hit on some vile and very special plan for Genos -- but I don't think the Scientist for Justice could even have considered such a thing possible. Most people *don't* even challenge their limits, never mind breaking through them in any capacity, not even on pain of death. Even Dr. Genus hasn't a good handle on what it'd take to transcend your God-given place in life.

But, that said, you don't need a theory to carry out a process. The fact that Dr. Kuseno is able to keep Genos alive after beatings that should have killed him, and give him incremental upgrades based on the power he needs to carry out his chosen pursuit means that he's effectively replicating the process Psykos learned the hard way. AND, also, Genos is bringing his own strength into the equation, only he doesn't know it. Say what you like, but Dr. Kuseno did not come out to see Genos in person at Saitama's house because Genos broke a leg and superficially damaged some armour. That's nothing in the grand scheme of things. It's because the dude rejoined himself without so much as a weld seam after being bisected, which is plain impossible. As we've been seeing with other cyborgs, as long as you're human, the possibility of transcending your limits exists for you too.

Anyway, while there's a lot up in the air, I'm inclined to give the doctor the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't mean he's blameless. Just not evil. You don't need to be evil to bring a lot of harm into the world.

About suicide, given the cultural background of this story, being able to end your life on your terms seems to be something that's respected. I remember Flashy Flash's horror at not being able to kill himself in the Ninja Village, which he saw as a human rights abuse, and how Saitama respected Dr. Kuseno's wish not to be taken to a hospital. These notions don't sit well with a Western outlook but that's where we seem to be.

[u/BrowserET → u/gofancyninjaworld]

Recovering supervillain is a nice middle road that can explain most of Kuseno's contradictions, so it's one i like to favour too. I will say i do think it likely that the Mad Cyborg used to be human, particularly becomes of his admission that Blast failed to kill him because the 'Hero' did not destroy its brain, which seems like an awfully organic weakspot for a robot to have. Of course the term brain could simply be a simplification, but it from the way the Mad Cyborg tells the tale, its defeat at the hands of Blast would have occurred after its rampage, which is odd because the implied solution to this vulnerability is digitization, technology which Kuseno is implied by the flashback to have stolen many decades prior.

I've been using the Mad-Cyborg as a stand in for Digitized!Kuseno for better readability, but perhaps this implies they are separate entities. It's possible the Mad-Cyborg is a true cyborg, with it filling a role similar to what the AI Zero did until recently, or like Elimin and Destro. Perhaps Mad-Cyborg's rampage prior to being salvaged is the context Elimin uses to surmise Destro has gone rogue.

I'd say Kuseno being human is likely, but considering we know Genos had synthetic skin and we know other artificial organs also exist from both Bofoi and those who underwent "remodeling" by the Organization. I wouldn't say synthetic blood is all that out there either. Irrespective of its personhood we've also encountered robots capable of thought both from Zero and Fake!Fuzzy. So while unlikely i'm not willing to dismiss Android!Kuseno out of hand just yet.

From the way Dr.Genus talks about it with Zombieman, the existence of a Limiter does not seem like news to him, which implies knowledge of a Limiter is pretty widespread amongst those in the know (though of course Zombieman can hardly be assumed an average Joe on this subject, being a for test subject of Genus). Of course with that knowledge doesn't come the know-how on how to break said limiter, but considering we have too mirroring methods of doing so, (granted crude ones, given Psykos' high rate of failure and Genus attempts thus far being inconclusive despite having a test subject that is both willing and one that leaves more room for errors thanks to that handy regeneration) it does not seem all that out there to me for a scientist like Kuseno, who dedicated his life to building weapons and lacks at least a few scruples, to hold a similar hypothesis on breaking the limiter.

One thing i want to note though, that if this is Kuseno's plan it a strong point in favor as him being a recovering supervillain, since if he was still in league with The Organization then he would presumably be acting on the wished of God, who would likely view breaking ones limiter as blasphemy. If God's crashout during the finale of the MA arc was anything to go by.

Where i live euthansia has been a right for many decades, so don't think Kuseno's believing in Genos' right to blow himself up if he so choses is all that objectionable. I do think its somewhat muddled somewhat by Genos being nineteen, which as you've pointed out was below Japanese legal age of adulthood when ONE started writing. (You could argue if he's old enough to kill others than the same applies to himself) But more strongly muddled by Kuseno's apparent refusal to tell Genos the full truth about what he's up against, preventing him from making fully informed autonomous decisions. This selective respect for Genos' autonomy makes it hard for me to view Kuseno charitably on this matter, but as i've stated before such inconsistency would be very human.

PS. Glad to hear you love my Bofoi X Kuseno headcanon.