Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20190119003858/@comment-14909251-20190223225355

Jyzuru wrote:

and why not have Weiss meet him, see the branding, and start to feel the guilt that her father created the monster that haunted her friend for years This is really the big problem with killing off Adam. How can they justify having a villain with the namesake company of one of the main characters literally burned into his face and not once have that villain interact with the character? In Haven he was literally just like a hundred feet away from Weiss. As I've said, the implications of that scar are far darker than anything we have seen hinted at with regards to Faunus mistreatment in the era of Remnant covered by the series. Everything else was just minor meanness or unsafe working conditions leading to accidental deaths.

What really makes it so dark is that it is only one side of his face. If he were some saboteur who was captured, why would they not burn both sides? Does it even make sense for a company logo to be branded on a criminal attacking their facilities? The thing that makes sense is that he did work at some SDC operation and was branded in the face as punishment for some offense against the people running it. Hence why only one side of his face is buned. They needed to make sure he still had at least one good eye so he could keep working.

However, the timing factor is what makes this really dark. It is fair to say he was not working at the SDC during his time in the White Fang and we know he was with the White Fang before the transition to violence around five years prior to the end of Volume 1. His estimated age at the end of Volume 3 was around 23. That means he was likely at most 18 or 17 at the earliest point we saw him in the character short. He was already wearing the mask at that point so he likely already had the scar. Given he was already fairly proficient in fighting, which is unlikely to have been the case when he was a laborer, I imagine he had been involved in the White Fang for at least a year.

In other words, the oldest he probably could have been when he got that brand is 16 years old. Not much chance they jumped right to that as a punishment, so he was probably being punished in other means, including other violent means, before his minders resorted to branding. Adam was almost certainly being worked as child labor by the SDC for a year or longer. Our least dark scenario is that Adam in his mid-teens had been forced into labor somehow by the SDC and was branded in the side of his face for some form of disobedience. Darker scenarios basically involve him being in early teens or younger.

Now, think about how Adam should feel recognizing that a member of the family whose company did this to him is currently one of Blake's good friends. Imagine Blake trying to defend Weiss for her association or family. Consider the emotional impact of Adam bringing up what was done to call out Blake with Weiss present. This would permanently seal the audience on the Faunus being treated horribly and allow everyone to see plain as day that Adam's not just a deluded lunatic, but a badly traumatized man acting out his revenge. It would also put his abusive tendencies in a very different light. Not to mention we would be able to see exactly how well Weiss knows what has been done in her family's name and how she feels about it.

Unfortuantely, all of that potential got unceremoniously chucked into a river.