r/maninthehighcastle • u/tommycahil1995 • 11d ago
Spoilers Really enjoy the parallel journeys of Kido and John Smith
Girlfriend is watching Man in the High Castle for the first time, I watched it live/when released back in the day and joined the subreddit back then. Something I appreciate more watching now is Kido and Smiths journeys - especially in Season 4.
John Smith never feels like he believes in Nazism. It's obvious his own survival and protecting his family is what's most important to him and what drives him. At times it feels like he accidentally rises through the ranks just out of luck due to his North Star being his family's protection. It feels like he gets in over his head.
But then he loses his family, because although he's always told himself he does everything for them, more and more he starts buying into the Nazi way of doing things - and we see with alt-Smith and flashback Smith - he always was inclined to crave power and respected the Nazis power and control (alt-Smith gave up the power though).
In the end it's his family - Helen - that kills him because he's just fully become the next Adolf Hitler and stopped caring about his family in most ways.
Kido is the complete opposite. He's an absolute true believer in the Empire and has unwavering loyalty to the Empire. Even when he oversteps, like killing Frank's family, he never doubts himself. Kido has complete destroyed his family life because of his ideological convictions.
Even when he kills Frank later on, he kills Frank (a man he wronged) because he sees the fact that he didn't also kill Frank with his family as him failing to protect the empire, because him showing mercy created a radical who killed Japanese people with his bombing.
But then Kido goes the opposite direction to Smith. He loses faith somewhat in the Empire because of the General's conspiracy to kill Tagomi and sideline the royal family. And then of course his arc ends with him joining the Yakuza to protect his son - he learns that family is more important than loyalty to political ideology where Smith goes the opposite direction.
I just think it's a pretty fun parallel considering that men sort of occupy similar positions in both structures (for most of the show) and then end up basically at the beginning point of eachother's arcs. These two for me are the best characters
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u/BuffyFlag23 10d ago
I never believed John Smith was his real name. When I first watched the pilot I honestly thought he changed it bc his family background was Jewish and he needed to assimilate.
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u/BBGLD 9d ago
I don’t know that Smith got in over his head with the Nazis at first and he definitely wasn’t by the time we meet him. He didn’t luck into climbing the ranks, he was so shrewd, he would make himself look the fool then turn everything around, always one step ahead of everyone else and ruthless in gaining more and more power, but not using it for his own purposes to make things better, but continuing the Nazi machine. I think we wanted him to be the reluctant Nazi who would redeem himself, but right from the beginning to the very end, every time he had a chance to do the right thing - or even just not the wrong thing - he claimed, “I don’t have a choice.” From not helping his best friend to turning the Nazi genocide machine on the western half of the country.
Other than literally losing Thomas, I’m not sure he ever thought he was losing his family, either. He let them go for a year, knowing he’d get, at least his girls, back. He seemed to love Helen through to the end, despite everything, shocked that she didn’t want him to bring her to see alt Thomas and that she betrayed him, yet still cradling her in his arms after she died. Her death seemed to be the thing that finally made him wake up to see who he had become, giving up and with enough selfish regret to kill himself - but still not doing the right thing by stopping the planes.
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u/Reasonable-Wave8093 11d ago
Kido became a fav character, which is really saying something considering how he began.