LogFAQs > #969013811

There's also a fundamental difference in what he was doing vs the phantom thieves.

The phantom thieves wood go to work on their target's shadow, ultimately swaying it and causing it to return to its host. The final change of heart would then be catalyzed in the palaces collapse. The shadow, however, was intrinsically a part of the person in question; they are, at the end of tge day, reflections of the deepest part of the person's psyche. All the phantom thieves were doing was appealing to and stimulating qualities that already existed in their targets. It stimulated change from within, without controlling for who the person would be on the other side. It also didn't change the world around them. If they did bad shit, it was still there when they hit their point of revelation, and they'd have to own up to it. All the thieves are really doing is breaking down the mental blocks people put up to dissociate themselves from their actions. What they do afterward is up to them.

Maruki's work was both external and artificial. He's not waking people up to who they are, revealing their inner potential, or inspiring any actual growth. He's changing outside circumstances so things just... work. He's not teaching anybody to be strong or move on after the death of a loved one; he just gives them back. He's not actually solving for any corruption, so much as hiding the circumstances in which it might appear.

And he does it in really convoluted ways. Some struggling artist would make a better archer? Rewrite their whole life, against their will. Futaba blames herself for her mom's death? Give mom back. Smile blames herself for Kasumi's death? OBLITERATE HER LIFE AND TURN HER INTO HER DEAD SISTER. Hos methods have nothing to do with who these people are, what's good for them, or even what they actually want; it's about just giving them what they ask for in the immediate moment, damn the consequences.

And it doesn't work. The fact that Sumire still exists under the Kasumi mask is proof positive that all he's doing is painting over shit that still exists underneath. And Akechi, that bastard makes it abundantly clear that he'd much rather be dead than reduced to some saccharine smiling puppet; but guess what he gets in the bad ending.

There's enough differences for me to pretty positively differentiate the Thieves and Maruki, and say pretty definitively that Maruki was wrong.