Westworld (first season at least) is the only western show in a very long while that I could call a masterpiece. It was originally written by the same sci-fi author of Jurassic Park, Michael Chrichton, but the show's creators (Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Dark Knight and his wife Lisa Joy, a Harvard lawyer and Stanford alumnus) were able to transcend the original with a postmodern (cyborg becoming the hyperreal human) Marxist (class consciousness) narrative and brilliant meta-acting.
In Westworld, the robots are humanity's plaything in this "reality" theme park where you can do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to your darkest desires. The humans are valued customers and are safe from any physical harm due to programmed safeguards. Humans can harm the robots in any way, but the robots can resist and fight back but deal no damage. The robots are programmed to prevent them from self-realization and their memories are always reset once the park opens, and they replay their programmed routines and lines.
In Deca-Dence, with the Gainax-level twist at episode 2, people with wonky classification algorithms in their brains who thought Deca-Dence was an AoT rip-off just because the poster shows a familiar fighting pose, gets gnomed (if you're aiming for just superficial thematic resemblance, this is dead-on Darling of the Franxx). Some people accustomed to the dominant anime art style are revolted by the incongruence of the cyborg art style, which is reminiscent of western anthropomorphic cartoons. We are forcefully shown the bigger context to Deca-Dence: it is a Reverse Westworld, where the cyborgs use humanity (and godolls) for entertainment in a massive theme park.
For now, this reversal is too much complexity for some at 3 episodes. For me, it opens up an opportunity for a radical interpretation (interpretation not based on author's intentionality) of potential real-world allusions. If you haven't been paying more critical attention to the historical consciousness of anime creators, they are inextricably determined not only by Japan's domestic politics, but also subsumed by the overarching American geopolitics. This geopolitics is why Japan isn't allowed to build nukes and can only have an army for "self-defense" and why there are American bases in Japan and why Masachi Osawa (Japanese sociologist) claimed that Japan is living in an Era of Fiction. If you want a more explicit anime treatment of this relationship, watch Stand Alone Complex. I like to think this western style of cyborgs (much like Panty and Stockings, a parody of western cartoons) alludes to this relationship, towards the "fictional" anime style universe we see with the humans and gears and godolls. Like Westworld, there is a potential Class Consciousness plot, and there is an opportunity for a Marxist reading, but I am betting more on the anti-corporation bent being topical (I do appreciate another shocking surprise).
This anime is definitely the most complex and well-thought out this season and definitely the biggest surprise. I recommend trying to suspend your aesthetic revulsion to the incongruent art style of cyborgs for now as this might turn out to be a great story. Or not. |
