Duvalier's assistants

Petrushka's introduction to the manga didn't just provide us with a new fratello, it also gave us an opportunity to indulge in a spot of worldbuilding. The course of Elizabeta's rescue and conversion established some of the actual mechanics of business at the Social Welfare Agency; it also fleshed out the boffins at the Technology Development Department, who previously had had only had bit-parts, despite them being the ones who make the cyborg magic happen in the first place and who oversee the regular testing and service that Claes and the other cyborgs undergo.

One of the TDD's scientists that we meet in Chapter 30 is Louis Duvalier, who has responsibility for the cyborgs' appearances. He's an undoubted technical wizard, and like all magicians he has beautiful assistants. I'm bringing up these two here because they're a peculiar pair - they're physically identical, both in appearance and dress, and they copy each other's movement and play off each other's speech and finish each other's sentences in a way which suggests an especially close harmony,if not a sharing of the very same thought process. They're not just there to be decorative, either - evidently they have some responsibility in the conversion process, as Duvalier instructs them to "put some real work into her body design". Their faces also are not too far removed from Petrushka's own, suggesting that they provided the base model for Elizabeta's redesign, or that these assistants have actually undergone some modification themselves; when Louis asks Alessandro to list his physical preferences for Petrushka, he comments that "if you don't put something, I'm making her into my first love". Are the assistants replicas of that too?

The only subsequent appearance of the assistants that I'm aware of is a quick two-panel glimpse in Chapter 32 (when Alessandro is talking about Petrushka's conditioning to one of the scientists after her vomiting episode), so my curiosity is piqued. There's an odd confusion of detail surrounding these two and what we see of them tugs in different directions. Do they grace the pages again after Vol. 6, and is there any further indication of what exactly they are - former test subjects, or just close twins (or who lnows, maybe even an outside chance of their being robots )?

Common belief amongst many of us are his "assistants" are figments of his imagination that he "talks" with to pass the time while he is working.

Louis Duvalier (may) have been around for a long while not never seen until recently, and not throughly used in this aspect until now. Yeah- he maybe responsible for etching a human face on a cyborg skull, but all the past Type 1 girls are seen as unchanged (or changed very little) in their appearences from their before and after shots.

As for his assistants...
Many of us are in the mind set that they are figments of his imagination or fragments of a split personsa. At worst- Shoulder Angels. Most Geniuses are flawed in that their talents shines to cover a very hidden thing.

I say they exist in his mind only, i.e. imaginary girlfriends. Note that nowhere in the story have we seen his assistants interact with anybody besides himself. Thus far, at least.

Whatever they turn out to be, they sure are creepy. (not physically mind you )

The apparition angle honestly didn't even occur to me...! Looking back on it, I can see where it comes from, and it's an appealing idea from a purely characterful and dramatic standpoint... but I don't think that it's conclusive. For instance, when the assistants first appear they're preceded by a panel showing two empty desks. Maybe Duvalier's alone in the office - or maybe his assistants got up and went over to him. Although the assistants don't appear when Duvalier is speaking to the other boffins the next night, maybe it's because they simply went home to sleep!

There's also the fact that the assistants don't just loom over Duvalier's shoulders, but are seen to be interacting with the environment - whether it's just holding up papers when talking to Duvalier or one of them sitting down and working at a keyboard when they appear in the background during Alessandro's telephone conversation with Belessario. I'm not confident that they're Duvalier's personal imps if they're not dismissed by the presence of someone else in the same room!

Having the assistants be just figments of Duvalier's imagination is an attractive idea, but in objective evaluation I wonder if the idea just comes from looking too hard for patterns. I think that they're genuine people.

As with so many things in GSG, we just only get the barest hint of things which is not enough to really make any firm comments on.

Of course, if we'd just enjoy the story like we're supposed to, and not try and analyze it to the Nth degree...

hes crazy!!! and thats why they let him work there
or they could be identicl twins who work next office over

Think... HOW MANY LAB ASSISTANTS WORK IN THEIR SKIMPY LINGRIE NIGHT GOWNS?!!

None, ElfinMagix, because neither do these two! :p

Admittedly I'm no fashionista, but they just looked like ordinary clothes to me - they're even wearing heeled sandals, not slippers. Also, I don't know any girls who go to bed with all of their jewellery clanking off their wrists...!

I can name a few

I've always wondered about them. When I first read Volume Six, I didn't consider that they were figments of Duvalier's imagination. I guess I don't pick up on things like that very easily.

I kind of hope that they are real, though - they seem like they could be the Priscillas of S2.

tsundere9kagami2 wrote:I can name a few

same here

It'd be disappointing if they were real, I say. 'Cause they'd lend this hokey air to the SWA that would totally ruin all the series' serious/tragic atmosphere.

Louis Duvalier seems to be the type that plays with himself too damn much, and they seem to be the kind that he faps too...

Duvalier spanking it to the Doublemint twins, huh? I think Yu needs to work that into vol.11 somewhere.

:lol!:

I assumed the twins were a rather unusual addition to the SWA staff. They don't seem hokey so much as a little unsettling and weird, like characters from a circus.

They're likely real, and as mentioned earlier, geniuses are often strange and tend to collect a motley crew around them. Louis is gifted. So is almost everyone else in the tech department. And like the rest of the SWA, they are people that were elsewhere, but didn't fit in for one reason or another, so they ended up in the Agency.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but how many serious doctors have you ever seen or known, that are giftedly skilled in plastic surgery? All I've ever known or seen have been quirky and eccentric in their own ways.

The Twins are likely such a pair of individuals. Their skills are incredible, but they just aren't the serious type. Their skills outweigh their quirks, so the agency uses them.
When you're a secret government agency, you can't balk at who you pick, you just get the best you can and then silence them with the threat of death.


As an addendum, you guys really need to relax and enjoy the story a bit more. You're starting to sound like those Star Wars nuts that insist on every pictured and mentioned droid having their own forty volume back-story.

I suppose they could be real. Honestly, it doesn't really matter to the story.

maverick375 wrote:As an addendum, you guys really need to relax and enjoy the story a bit more. You're starting to sound like those Star Wars nuts that insist on every pictured and mentioned droid having their own forty volume back-story.

To us, this is part of the enjoyment.

come on guys When Yu finally draws some older women you think theyre fake but when he draws Cyborg Lolis They are the realist things eva?!

........lol I just thought of them standing in a hall saying "come play with us!"

V6/CH32/P159 has 2 small framed in pics of them listening in to Dr. Belaruso's conversation about Petra's conditioning with 'Sandro.

This either adds up to Duvalier having an over active and vivid imagination or they are real people. I say its the former and not the latter.

tsundere9kagami2 wrote:come on guys When Yu finally draws some older women you think theyre fake but when he draws Cyborg Lolis They are the realist things eva?!

Pris and Olga have been around since Season One. And we haven't dismissed them as fake, because there's plenty of indications that they are real. They interact with and are interacted with by plenty of other characters both physically and verbally, for instance. The twins fail to meet this criteria.

Nachtsider wrote:

maverick375 wrote:As an addendum, you guys really need to relax and enjoy the story a bit more. You're starting to sound like those Star Wars nuts that insist on every pictured and mentioned droid having their own forty volume back-story.

To us, this is part of the enjoyment.

And a great source of new GSG conversation - something we’re always looking for.

Nachtsider wrote:

tsundere9kagami2 wrote:come on guys When Yu finally draws some older women you think theyre fake but when he draws Cyborg Lolis They are the realist things eva?!

Pris and Olga have been around since Season One. And we haven't dismissed them as fake, because there's plenty of indications that they are real. They interact with and are interacted with by plenty of other characters both physically and verbally, for instance. The twins fail to meet this criteria.

After Jean's Erica hallucintions nobody is safe. Maybe Pino was a contagious delusion manifested from Christiano's subconcious need for a protege, Franco and Franca's frustrated desire for a child, and Triela's fear of failure...I'd say it was like Fight club if it wasn't more like Palmer Eldrich.

Well if you're going that far Ghost, why not just say Pino was real-booted ala Chaos Head, since there were others who interacted with him. Of course, then that would make Christiano, Franco, Franca, and Triela all Gigalomaniacs, which makes me wonder where their Di Swords are.

This gives new meaning to Mass Hysteria!

Jean had been drinking.

Maybe Duvalier is consistently drunk at work...

I can see that happening.
I have known drunks at work in many jobs, and they cant function when they are sober!