Quote:
Originally Posted by Regel
1)
Sure. But she do know about "queen" virus influence.
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Assuming there is any such queen virus...which I doubt. Although observationally, infectees can communicate nonverbally and the viroid will take over their cognitive facilities when they perceive a threat to the host or the community leading to the "taken by oni" phenomenon, there's no real evidence that the villagers love Rika because she's host to a particularly privileged strain of the viroid, instead of because she's Rika, which is surely enough reason to love her. And Takano's totally oblivious to the reality of Rika's spiritually privileged position in the village, that she is actually in communication with and is protected, however poorly, by a genuine spiritual entity, so her theories have a gigantic, totally-unaccounted-for variable in them.
Of course when interpreting Takano's actions, it doesn't matter whether she's
right or just barking mad. Takano thinks there's a queen strain, and will act based on that idea.
As for why watanagashi, well she did bring up the subject of vivisecting one of the villagers to study the organism to the doctor. He wasn't especially welcoming. Watanagashi is vivisection. So she takes Tomitake in to look at the watanagashi tools, lets him make his report and then kills him. The villagers will be blamed by the government, who will fake her death to protect her from them. That eliminates both Tomitake and Oishi who won't suspect a dead woman. Then when she vivisects Rika in a way traditional to the village...well the government will just get more confirmation that the village is in a state of meltdown and needs to be eliminated.