Belying the earlier awe and horror of society and the supernatural world in Moonlight Syndrome, The Silver Case, and the other earlier titles, Travis is the most important person alive. He does what even Kamui, Kurumizawa, and Harman Smith do not though they exist in his world: saving Earth from an alien invasion and therefore saving Kamui, Kurumizawa, and Harman in turn. Then Travis’s children do the same thing again. Travis’s family drama is at the root of yet another alien invasion in the future and, as GhenryPerez observes, possibly whatever organization Aoyama and Akama serve. Newtype Kamui watches this chaos unfazed.
Kamui is no longer a reincarnating terrorist seeking recognition, redemption, and justice through assassination or a dense metaphor for social and economic phenomena. He is a wacky magical boy who nerds out as just one more in Travis Touchdown’s colorful cast of side characters in No More Heroes III.
The 25th Ward and killer7 ultimately flow to Travis, who is so cool and powerful he beats Kamui and reveals him as a child. Kamui often talks to his girlfriend about how fascinated he is with Trav. In “Modern Observation,” even Kurumizawa wistfully reflects how if only Travis had been on his side, his revolution could have succeeded. Badman, former protagonist of the novella Killer Is Dead, recalls thinking when he first saw Travis, “[H]e really had this unique… presence. Travis Touchdown was a kind of hero.” Former main characters become adoring side characters when they meet the real star of the show. Kamui, Kill the Past himself, is irrelevant in 2021, yet this might be his liberation from the curse that haunted him since 1979 (socioeconomic metaphor is left behind). The “cycle of crime, dehumanization and death” continues but with a new focal point: the ending of each installment of No More Heroes sees Travis in an absurd escalating “hell of battle” that he must “go round and round and round again.” All the world does is turn, and it turns around Travis.
The fact is that Travis Touchdown sells more video games than Uehara Kamui. So if the story was going to continue in any way, perhaps this outcome was inevitable.
