Well... sort of, in a meta kind of way, I guess. It's sort of an extreme form of the "undercover villain heel turn", except that instead of turning out to be a bad guy who was just pretending to be one of your favorite characters,¹ Maya turned out not to be a character at all. Kongō seems to have taken it personally, though, so I'm certainly not saying it was ineffective. (I do kind of wonder how the Evil Sub Sibs managed to make her so wacky when they themselves lacked even the most rudimentary understanding of wackiness. Same way Tesla managed to program Atomic Robo to know what an attractive woman looks like, I suppose.)

Also, I have to say, the production team did such a good job of making Kongō unlikeable that her face turn at the end kind of fell down for me. Most of the others who turned, I was rooting for (in particular Haruna, who is pretty much my favorite on the show), but when she did I was just kind of, "Eh, another mouth to feed." :)

>It also made your comment in the episode 5 thread about her
>not being all there somewhat . . . is there a word for "that's funny
>and wince-worthy at the same time"?

Heh, yeah. Whereas when they did that reveal, my immediate thought was, "Oh, that's why she acts like one of the insane elevators from whichever Hitchhiker's book that was." :)

--G.
¹ The Legend of Korra people actually had this planned for Asami Sato. I know, right? The one thing they did right in Book 1 (apart from "design the protagonist"), and they originally intended to do it as wrong as possible. What is the matter with you people? Fuckin' RISD grads, man, I don't know.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.