In all fairness, Keiichi didn't get a sprite until a couple years later with Meakashi-hen in late-2004. Ryukishi probably scrambled to put a design together and came up with Generic Anime Look--which tbh Keiichi had always come off as your typical Generic Anime Protagonist if he was thrown into a murder-mystery plot.
Yeah, this is probably a lot of the reason I hate Keiichi. Most anime protagonists are some sort of author insert fantasy, but with Keiichi it feels especially over the top and unearned somehow, especially since a lot of what he does in this franchise is just retarded and yet we're supposed to think he's Super Special Awesome.
On that note, one story part I've come to hate is the whole Satoko Abuse thing in the second anime. I've had so many arguments about that, and have come to the uncomfortable realization that most fans don't seem to question the logical or philosophical premises of their favorite fiction at all.
So Satoko is being abused and CPS can't do anything because Satoko won't admit. Keiichi's answer is.... get a bunch of people to swarm with him to their offices to "show how much they care." When that fails, he rallies MORE people....
And like.... this is retarded. Because the problem isn't that CPS doesn't realize how much you care, the problem is Satoko won't admit to the abuse because she's scared of Teppei. Indeed the story proves my point for me: the final turn around comes when Rika finally convinces Satoko to stand up for herself. Satoko, up to this point,
didn't even know of the efforts being undertaken on her behalf.
And nobody but me seems to see the issue with this. It's maddening.
And of course, whenever I suggest an alternative way the story could have played out (maybe they find some clever way to get Teppei arrested for some other charge--he's already being saught by the police in this chapter)... or hell, even just
act like you're gonna kill the guy even if you have zero intention of following through with it.
But for some reason fans are always like "those would never work!" Even though this arc has Keiichi threatening to kill that old mafia woman (and also has him blatantly insult people, but this being anime this somehow gets people on his side rather than turning them against him).
Probably my favorite comeback is people saying "Wow, you must think child abuse is easy to solve." Its like wow, you guys must think rallying an entire town is easy to do, by that logic. But god the fans of this franchise are retarded.
Sorry for the sperg. I shall accept my autistic ratings.