upon further reflection, as a person with a self-insert bounty hunter OC, i have to respect Kensuke Tanabe's deep, unyielding commitment to his silly little pet character of 18 years
i mean, yoshio sakamoto scrapped whatever federation conspiracy plot he was setting up for dread after other m's critical failure, but even with zero people having ever played federation force tanabe is still ride-or-die with having his personal scrimblo bimblo be the main antagonist. if that's not true auteurship, i don't know what is.