Vampire Princess Miyu Episode 15 Discussion

"Please come down like an angel"

Haha I watched half of Mermaid Forest before I watched this episode but it seems that this episode tackles the matter with more nuance than simply "immortality sucks". The opening song kind of describes this episode:

I watch the morning throng of people
as I sip on my cup of coffee
I may appear to others
as though i haven't a care for the world
but I know for certain
that now time is moving right before my very eyes
and I can't turn it back

When I try to live
like there's no time like the present
what will be the first thing I see?

Oh please come down like an angel
I don't care even if you're only a little glimmer of light
I just want you to show yourself to me

Another day gone without accomplishing anything
I don't want to go putting the blame on other people now
that's why I want to set my mind
to walk against the current of people before me

Oh please come down like an angel
I want to meet someone
to whom I can speak my mind

Oh please come down like an angel
I don't care even if you're only a little glimmer of light
I just want you to show yourself to me
Oh please come down like an angel
I want to meet someone
to whom I can speak my mind


With that being said, the whole "projecting your thoughts onto others" thing confirms my suspicion that the earlier episode with the mind reading kids was made deliberately ambiguous as to whether they could read minds or if they were just projecting their own thoughts, as the writers seem to have the capacity for that extra layer of thought (that the first episode of Kino's Journey was not capable of).

This one is complicated and they're doing a lot more telling than showing because they're cramming two storylines into one episode so they don't have time to show the immortal's side of the story.

My question is, what is the relationship between the two stories?

For the sad boyfriend, it's obvious that his story is about the selfish nature of his love, echoing this recurring theme of what people do out of loneliness. Some people, like the shinma who collected people as animals, the shinma who collected cats as flowers, the woman who took a cat as her son, and the guy whose best friend was a cat, want to take possession of things to fill the void in their heart. In this case, the guy is similarly drawn to beings of lesser intelligence because it gives him a sense of control. He gets to feel like a savior which makes him feel good. He says, "I will be the one to free her", not "She will be freed". At the same time, it seems like he smothers the object of his affections not just because he wants to feed the hunger of his own loneliness but because he thinks that everyone else is as lonely as he is, so he tries to give them what he would want for himself. So he's not entirely selfish.

Then there's the mermaid. At first the guy looks at fish and empathizes with fish (in the scene where his gf breaks up with him they were sitting in front of fish). In the scene where his gf breaks up with him, the atmosphere has an underwater feel to it. When his gf says it's over, all the fish are gone. The camera zooms out and fake palm trees frame the scene, reminiscent of the tropical paradise of the mermaid's dream. Then he looks at a half human half fish hybrid, which mirrors the previous episodes' motifs of higher and lower life forms (humans and animals, animals and flowers).

Miyu's take on the fish also reveals something about her character. The fact that she thinks the fish have it good because they're in a quiet, peaceful, undisturbed place might be an indication that she's seeking some kind of peaceful home. Perhaps the fish being alone since the beginning of time and not waiting for anything is her saying that she's so used to the loneliness and darkness by now.

"It's so quiet here. Nothing moves. And yet the long roots underground are all intertwined... Before we know it, bamboo chutes will sprout from the ground."

"It's because her home no longer exists. Beautiful clean oceans, hidden beaches free of human contact just can't be found on Earth anymore. You see, what she dreams of are just memories. The paradise of illusion"

"That is not true. I will prove it and find it for her."

When the mermaid is burned, the shot switches to that of the beach paradise erupting in flames, indicating that either the dream or the real paradise is gone.

From this evidence, the show seems to be saying that an undisturbed paradise doesn't exist and/or only exists in our dreams. The restaurant where they broke up is a kind of simulated paradise, as is the aquarium because the coral environments behind the glass are man made after all. At this point I'm not sure how an isolated paradise relates to the theme of loneliness, because it seems that you'd be lonely in such a paradise, right? So why would it be something to be desired? Because it's peaceful?

When Yaobikuni has her flashback, it's in a bamboo forest. What does this have to do with what Miyu said about the bamboo roots? Why are lost young men attracted to a dream about a tropical paradise? Is it just because they want to be the rescuer or is there something about the idea of a tropical paradise? How does rescuing the mermaid make them rescue themselves? Is it because they see themselves as trapped fish in an aquarium, longing to escape?

So mortality brings suffering because of the fear of death, but it also allows for happiness while immortality doesn't bring suffering but it also doesn't bring happiness? I don't see how that holds true. Perhaps with no end in sight, Yaobikuni can only "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" as Dory says, with no idea of what she's swimming for or towards.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Perhaps the dream is likened to death and happiness is achieved from mortality because it provides a release from the suffering of life. Miyu did say that she might want to die in the future in order to break the cycle of destiny. The eternal happiness that Miyu grants her people is a form of death, isn't it? A sort of paradise of illusion, one which she can't grant to Yaobikuni because she's chosen immortality.

In the end the girlfriend comes back for the guy, right after Miyu wonders who was the manipulator and who was the manipulated. So the mermaid preyed on her fear of death to keep on living while Yaobikuni planned to eat the mermaid to prolong her life. Maybe the girlfriend just wanted him back because she knew she could depend on his clingy nature to get love and affection.

Miyu says, "I don't think he's coming back here anymore, but I believe he is happy now". This further indicates to me that the mermaid's dream represented the sweet embrace of death. The paradise in her dream doesn't exist cannot be found on Earth, only in death. Looking back, I think Miyu's comment about the roots in the bamboo forest speaks to the inevitability of one's destiny despite the illusion of a peaceful place, as in the roots of her destiny are already there. Is she expecting impending doom despite her peaceful situation at the present? It is also clear that Miyu views her death as the only escape from her own destiny from previous episodes because she wants Larva to kill her when she tells him to. She says that she keeps living out her destiny because she's not human, which means that her immortality forces her to be constrained by her destiny whereas humans get to be freed from it through their eventual death.

Did Chiaki Konaka write this episode? Because I think all this talk about humans having a destiny and death being a release is a load of bullshit. The whole destiny thing only makes sense for Miyu because I'm assuming there's still some prophecy or whatever that's yet to be revealed but for normal people there's no such thing as destiny or fate unless you're a Calvinist. Either way it's just not set up well because I don't see how any of the human characters in this show were predestined for something. They all made mistakes because of their own choices.

So many questions and this time I don't have any solid interpretation. It could just be me overthinking but to the show's credit, it consistently does a great job making thought provoking episodes so that the ambiguities of each episode no longer feel like coincidences.