"Arnold," a manga work by illustrator Hideyasu Moto, is a story about a fictional war in a fictional country. Dr. Mutou, a key military figure, deserted the army taking a new weapon named Arnold with him. As his name suggests, Dr. Mutou is a genius with six brains. The protagonist, Mr. Uchiyamada, received top-secret orders directly from the colonel and set out to search for him in his beloved aircraft, Tori-go. (Tori-go is an intelligent swan-shaped fighter plane built by the doctor.) (Arnold is also a humanoid combat robot with intelligence, built by the doctor, which obliterates enemies with the Arnold Cannon.)
Considering every possibility, the colonel had kidnapped five robotics scientists. Mr. Uchiyamada proposed a devious plan that exploited the trusting relationship between Arnold and the doctor—a plan that would supposedly make Arnold, the doctor, and the military all happy.
The doctor and Arnold were hiding on a remote island. Mr. Uchiyamada easily found them and proposed rewriting Arnold's conscience program, but the doctor threw a tantrum, whining, "I don't want a nice Arnold! I raised Arnold myself!" (Fearing the destructive power of the Arnold Cannon he invented, Dr. Mutou had strengthened the conscience program as a safeguard.) (As a result, even though he was a robot, Arnold developed a sense of guilt, meaning that firing the Arnold Cannon would short-circuit his circuits and cause him to self-destruct.) While Mr. Uchiyamada was trying to persuade them, a Tricopter (a bird-shaped transport aircraft) dropped Arnold No. 2. Targeted by No. 2, Arnold destroyed it with the Arnold Cannon, which naturally caused his circuits to short-circuit.
Mr. Uchiyamada switched everything off, narrowly avoiding self-destruction, but the doctor cried out, "Arnold's personality has been stolen. My Arnold is gone," and tried to shoot himself in the head with a handgun. Right before he could, Mr. Uchiyamada shot the doctor straight through the heart. To the shocked Tori-go, Mr. Uchiyamada explained while dismantling the doctor's head parts: The doctor was actually a robot developed by the military, whose artificial brain operated five real brains transplanted from scientists. This system was created by accident during an experiment, and a duplicate could never be made. Mr. Uchiyamada's true mission was to recapture this system.
Tori-go thought to itself: *Mr. Uchiyamada kept saying things like, "For some reason, even though Arnold is a robot, we can connect on an emotional level,"*—well, of course they could connect...
The colonel erased the island's memories from the artificial brain, transplanted the brain of one of the kidnapped scientists, and switched the doctor's personality program to "ultra-evil mode." When it was all over, Dr. Mutou—having been implanted with the false memory that he had just woken up from a nap—proceeded to mass-produce Arnold units with their conscience programs locked in ultra-evil mode. Operation Arnold was a massive success, winning battle after battle. As the colonel and the doctor drank a toast while watching footage from the front lines, Mr. Uchiyamada and Tori-go wore complicated expressions.
"…Aren't you glad, Mr. Uchiyamada? The doctor looks so happy…" "Yeah, I'm glad…" "…And Arnold has lots of friends now, and the colonel is delighted…" "Yeah, exactly…"
The lingering bad taste came from the contrast between the two of them cheering, "Yay, go kill 'em!!" and the gloomy, depressed expressions of Mr. Uchiyamada and Tori-go. The whimsical, fancy art style only doubled the unsettling aftertaste.
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