when the show opens with Nao's obsessive photographing of the clouds, and she explains that she's not really photographing the clouds, but the wind, the first thing it made me think of was Monet, not really painting the haystacks, but the light. light is the medium that activates visual representation for the human eye. what we're seeing is not the thing itself, nor interlocked fields of solid colors, but a frenetic play of light. what is the wind here?
it's some kind of interstitial, permeating and supportive element to daily life. Iyashi-kei always has a kind of animistic, spiritual element to it (hence i've always thought
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Aug 17, 2021 Recommended
Harmony is a work of speculative fiction in a very traditional mold, one that engages heavily with philosophy and social theory in developing the world of the text, and framing the events that occur within it. It presents itself as predictive, but really it's much more about the present than the future. Meanwhile, the theory its engaging with, elucidating and expanding upon is 30+ years old; namely, I suspect, the work of Michel Foucault (quoted by Miach at one point) and Gilles Deleuze, discussing discipline, surveillance and control.
I can understand why people don't like this film. It's no world-building masterclass. The exposition feels heavily condensed, ... and the writing is a bit dry at times. These are problems Genocidal Organ suffers from, too. It's much too short to present everything the novel seems to contain, and it's full of examples of dialogue that sound a lot more noticeably stiff and unnatural when you're hearing it out loud than when you're reading it off the page. Also, I personally am not a big fan of the art and character designs, though I'm sure I differ with many there. In my view, the promotional art and posters don't give an impression of what the tone and world presented are going to be like at all. This is not just some saccharine-somber, diaphanous (b)romance between two elegant bijin. It is a rigorous, bleak cultural and socio-political critique, and at times it's shockingly violent. The main thing I want to stress is if you approach anime like it doesn't mix with intellectual discourse, if you get mad at shows for "trying to be smart," please just put that ridiculous bias aside if you're going to watch this. In the first place, I don't get what's wrong with "trying to be smart." The theory this film is engaging with, most people probably would not hear about outside of a University setting. There's nothing good about that. Complicated, challenging ideas, especially social critiques, shouldn't be sequestered to these gated communities where no one can see them. Popular fiction by all means SHOULD engage with theory. Michel Foucault didn't spend his lifetime writing and lecturing just because he was "trying to be smart." He took his views and the world seriously. I think Itou takes his and Foucault's views, and the world, seriously, too. He's not quoting him and engaging with his ideas for credit or to pat himself on the back, but so you know who Foucault is if you didn't before, and perhaps see society with a new, clearer perspective. Itou just wants to try to illustrate his views and his concerns through a compelling story. Whether he succeeded at making something compelling or not is up for debate, obviously, but please don't scoff at this film just because it's "trying to be smart." It's not trying to make you feel stupid and it definitely isn't insincere. Overall, I think this film is a bit more clear in terms of its intentions and vision than Genocidal Organ, but they're concerned with basically the same things and make use of similar tools. Dark research transforms harmless disciplines like linguistics and cognitive science into bastions of mind control techniques (though when you consider the impact media theory and psychoanalysis had on marketing, advertising, and psy-ops, this isn't exactly farfetched... It's just exaggerated a bit for effect). People have HUDs (Heads Up Display) implanted in their eyes. Bodies are controlled and tampered with "for their own good," a sort of totalitarian transhumanism. The rest of the review will contain spoilers. 'These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing the disciplinary societies. “Control” is the name Burroughs proposes as a term for the new monster, one that Foucault recognizes as our immediate future. Paul Virilio also is continually analyzing the ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control that replaced the old disciplines operating in the time frame of a closed system. There is no need here to invoke the extraordinary pharmaceutical productions, the molecular engineering, the genetic manipulations, although these are slated to enter into the new process. There is no need to ask which is the toughest or most tolerable regime, for it’s within each of them that liberating and enslaving forces confront one another . . . There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.' - Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control (1990) Miach is the figure at the heart of Harmony. When we're first introduced to her, we recognize that she (and Tuan, her lover and the protagonist) takes issue with the social order of civilization. Well, lots of people feel that way. People give up a bit of their individual freedom to benefit from civilization, but everyone has their own views, needs, desires, standards. Sometimes we're a little dissatisfied with how civilization is organized, and we think it could be a bit better. So far, so good! The exemplar for civilization is Japan. Japan is run by "admedistrative bodies," now. It's a nation hinged on values of social obligation and compulsory wellbeing. Its citizens proudly chime about how they offer themselves as social resources for the benefit of others around them. Meanwhile, everything about citizens' bodies is monitored and protected with a substance called WatchMe. WatchMe keeps them healthy and sane, but it's administered before individuals are capable of consent, when they're children; and the tradeoff is their freedom and privacy. People are not ALLOWED to "get fat or die," Miach explains with her characteristic cool fury, echoing Kierkegaard's idea that despair is entangled with our inability to die. If we could die from despair, it wouldn't be so miserable. A server records and beams back directly into your field of vision your mental state, heart rate, bmi, temperature, medical advice, diet advice, and so on. Citizens of Japan are willful, enthusiastic participants in the panopticon that monitors them. But who monitors the people that monitor the public's information and wellbeing? Therein lies the trouble. WatchMe's use becomes pervasive after a briefly described cataclysm puts the fear of God into the civilized world. For western viewers, this may immediately remind you of the Patriot Act's passing following 9/11 and the beginning of the "war on terror." Itou seems to hold the view that underlying every social contract is this transaction of freedom for security. When people are afraid, they view their security as a much more precious and precarious treasure than when they already feel safe. By that logic, fear can be sown and manipulated in order to barter with citizens, buying their privacy and freedom in exchange from protection from threats which may or may not exist. I don't know if Japan has had its own Patriot-Act/War on Terror, I'm not that knowledgeable about Japanese politics, but at the very least, it's clear that WatchMe is just an exaggerated, speculative riff on the sort of devilish exchange that can and does happen in contemporary society between citizens and their governing bodies. The real life parallels don't end there. Think of the scandals that arose around social media platforms like Facebook and Tik Tok in the past couple years. That "enthusiastic participants in the panopticon" line is one I think I nicked from Byung-Chul Han, from either an interview or documentary about the Burnout Society on youtube. He was talking about our use of social media and services like Amazon. The internet is populated with massively profitable websites that mine our data and use it to shoot back curated content. Is this not reminiscent of how harmony (the protocol that supplants our will and decision-making processes via WatchMe) replaces consciousness in the film? Everything we consume is decided for us, and catered to us. Perhaps we are already living in Harmony, or in other words, unconscious and not really living. And simultaneously, we're happy to let people monitor what we're doing if it frees the innocuous daily tasks like socializing and buying products of the minimal conflict and strain they could sometimes present. Little do we and Tuan know, Miach takes issue with Japan not just because it's a dystopian control society. She takes issue with it because she thinks she sees through the spectacle. Everyone in Japan is so fake, pretending to be happy with the social order they grow fat and lazy on (though not literally, thanks to WatchMe monitoring their diet and activity levels). They don't really care about one another more than they care about themselves. Human beings are savage. Miach knows because she is a war orphan and a survivor of military sex trafficking. She knows how savage human beings can be. The error in her reasoning though, which is perhaps distorted by her trauma, is that it's not really one or the other. Humans are not savage or civilized. These traits coexist. Civilization isn't phony just because people are monstrous at times. We are equally beholden to our impulses to love and cooperate, as we are to our impulses to destroy, to take, and jealously protect what's ours. The question is, can we channel our impulses productively, and recognize them for what they are? That's where our control society comes into play. Foucault delineates how institutions like family, school, and the factory function as disciplinary and regulatory spaces, and connects a person's power in society to their access and control of knowledge. Deleuze revamps this picture. It's no longer about knowledge, it's about information; and we're not disciplined by outside forces, we're disciplined by the imagined/real presence of regulatory bodies watching us wherever we go. We seek therapy and medication to regulate our mental activity. We work from home and perpetually educate and train ourselves to remain up to date. We've already discussed phones and the internet. First the government tapped our phones to keep us safe from terrorist threats they invented, then private companies tapped our phones to keep our eyes locked on their ad-driven websites and buying products they invented. In Harmony, the HUD is in your head, via a high-tech contact lens, connecting you to a governing body at all times (although Tuan, as an employee of the World Health Organization, can sometimes turn hers off). Ordinary citizens are locked out of access to information based on their social score, which seems tied to their behavior and profession. Tuan can switch the locks at a moment's notice, as when she blocks Miach's foster parents from accessing information about the WHO's investigation, just before she probes Miach's foster mom's memories. Tuan is an agent of control, who's using her exclusive access to information for her own private ends, and for no greater purpose than that. She might be the protagonist, but she's no hero, per se. Miach's formative experiences draw attention to another problem that is a common thematic thread through both Harmony and Genocidal Organ: one country's peace depends on imperialist conflict and strife elsewhere. The meaning of this is twofold. Japan's peace is relative to horror elsewhere, i.e. the old notion that light is defined by the presence of darkness. Additionally, though, every developed country literally flourishes on the back of war profiteering, unethical outsourcing of labor, conquest of resources, and so on. I don't know that Itou believes this to be a universal, necessary truth, but it's certainly true right now. Liberal civilization depends on the suffering of others outside of our purview. This doesn't necessarily mean we have to give up, or destroy civilization, because it's all been one huge failure and sick lie. It just means that civilization has huge problems and must be reorganized. A final, important point: We really don't know what Tuan would be like if she never met Miach. Tuan is hopelessly in love with and obsessed with Miach, and Miach becomes her conscience, her Big Other. She judges good, bad, right and wrong by asking herself what Miach would think. She never even knew the true motivation behind Miach's ontology until just before the climax of the film. What makes Miach a living, conscious person is her madness, and what makes her special and magnetic to Tuan is her madness, even while Tuan is unaware that what she's seeing is madness. Miach's goal becomes to force the initiation of Harmony, which is this films version of the Human Instrumentality Project. One way to look at it though, is that she is eliminating her own madness. Miach's gambit, the casting off of her madness, is one she's ostensibly making in exchange for the free will underpinning the savage behavior that scarred her as a youth. Meanwhile, Tuan's first and final acts of madness are from the moment she disobeys WHO to the moment she disobeys Miach by murdering her, because she loves Miach too much to see her give herself up to the society of control. By then, it's too late. By the beginning of the film, it's too late, judging by the emotional markup text cascading along the face of the giant iPod. I don't think Harmony is a film that provides answers. It is offering a bleak rendering of how things are, and perhaps how they might become. Critique is one of our weapons, the weapons Deleuze is talking about, but it's not enough to depend only on the critiques of others, like Foucault, Deleuze, or Project Itoh. I think this is something Itoh wants us to do. At the risk of madness, look hard at the world in our own way. Miach's fascination with printed books takes on a different significance when you acknowledge that Harmony was originally a novel. Yet she still burns them, and then Tuan shoots Miach.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 29, 2021
Macross: Do You Remember Love?
(Anime)
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Macross: Do You Remember Love? is like a future fairy tale. You have to have a cold heart, a jaded soul to not be touched by this glittering lovers' fantasy. It's as cool and stylish as it is hopelessly romantic. It has some of the best traditional animation you'll ever see, and a truly classic look to everything from the machines; to the settings; to the abstract, dreamy, ephemeral backdrops that the characters sometimes sing or talk in front of when emotions are running high; to the characters themselves. The battle for love takes place among the twinkling stars that guide and cross the characters'
...
fates. I'll admit, I first tried to watch this film years ago after giving up on the series a few episodes in. I gave up on the film, too, feeling a bit incredulous toward the on the nose representation of a battle between the power of love, embodied by humanity, and the force of unfeeling, unconscious war and conquest represented by dorky, monumental green aliens, one of whom has a giant pulsating brain-head. The aliens are horrified by the fact that human (aka miclone) men and women live together, and even more horrified by the fact that they hug and KISS. Don't make me yack de culture!
I mean, although it gets to be a little more complicated than that, the premise is a little silly. No one can really deny that. But it wouldn't be such a great, modern, scifi fairytale if it were otherwise. Isn't the moral of the story equally obvious in, say, Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast? A work of art, which as far as anime go, this one undeniably is; isn't meant to be flawless, but to carry something inside it that transcends its flaws. So when I returned to this film for the second time with a few dozen more anime under my belt, and growing weary of approaching everything with a calculating, serious critical eye all of time, I came back to Do You Remember Love? with a bit more patience, and a rather more open heart. By the end of the story, my heart was fully in bloom. I'll keep my analysis short this time, but there will be some spoilers as usual. Although I have been pretty firm so far about my characterization of this story as a fairy tale, I think it's worth noting that even though the day is seemingly saved and everything is ostensibly reconciled with a fairytale conclusion, at the end of this story, what it seems to say about the future of the human race and the power of culture is not all that tidy, and not without any traces of suspicion. The premise of Macross reminds me in a few ways of Evangelion, though obviously, it predates Eva by quite some time. Whereas Adam is the progenitor of humans (indirectly) and Angels in Evangelion, the Protoculture generates the Zentradi/Meltrandi and humans alike in Macross. Like in Evangelion, the humans in Macross do battle with a species that, little do they know, is not totally Other, but a mirroring of itself, despite how incomprehensible or hideous they may seem. Then, ultimately, the tool used to "defeat" the Zentradi and apparently end warfare is a popular love song from deep in the Protoculture's past. But what is the actual effect of this love song? The climax of the film, which takes place during Minmay's rendition of the song, is a battle. The song unites the Zentradi, Meltrandi and humans against a faction of the Zentradi that is resistant to acceptance of "culture," culture being, defined by the Zentradi themselves, "productive creative acts not related to warfare." Minmay's music is an example of culture. Yet the love song that saves the day is merely a call to arms that unites once quarreling forces against a common foe. It's a battle cry. The Zentrandi remark at the end of the film upon how there are 1000s of fleets left to destroy, but one says to the other "Still, look at what one song was able to accomplish?" What the song accomplished was the utter annihilation of their foe. Culture, according to the narrative, is a powerful weapon. Earlier in the story, Minmay uses her music to help her fans forget their sorrow. Later, she uses a forgotten pop song to unite everyone's hearts against those who refuse to join in the union. Music, for all the good it seems to accomplish, seems nevertheless to function as a kind of analgesic mind control tool. What does that say about the fact that the song that had the immense power to turn the tides of battle was just a pop song, of the type of music that comes a dime a dozen on radio broadcasts and streaming platforms that we, the viewers, listen to without a second thought day in and day out? What does that say about this movie, a piece of pop culture itself? Do we take what we take in for granted? Should we be as careful as we are grateful with regards to how we let the cultural artifacts we embrace affect our hearts? After all, the humans at the end of the story haven't eradicated war. They haven't eliminated lovers' quarrels. A sometimes bitter love triangle is at the heart of the story. They've survived the apocalypse, but conflict remains. Minmay is love that cannot be hidden, but she is pure performance. She cannot articulate the words for herself. Hayase has the heart of love beating inside of her, but she cannot present herself as a woman, as affectionate. At the end of the story, they've reconciled. They restore love to its rightful place by reconstructing an old forgotten song together, content and performance. But as they do, the Zetrandi fly off to eradicate anyone else who would stand against Culture. Content and performance. The "protoculture" world has, in essence, been restored, and while it's a beautiful, triumphant moment, that's really all it can be. The city has risen from beneath the earth. We remember love. But what we remember, we can easily forget again, and perhaps we are doomed to. Then we'll remember again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 27, 2021
Space Adventure Cobra
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings
An 80s psychedelic sci-fi spectacle. It's really amazing looking, and features some stunningly creative layouts, choreography and animation for its time. Miyazaki and Dezaki (along with a spry Ryuutarou Nakamura!) are working together here, so it should come as little surprise.
I feel it's an appropriate time to say that I personally watched this film out of an interest in Osamu Dezaki's work, expecting to see a fun and visually spectacular piece of anime. That's truly what I got, and I can't say I'm at all disappointed. However, I watched the Ace wo Nerae film with similar intent, and while Ace wo Nerae is a bit ... older and not as awesome in the visual department as this is, I rated them about the same because I am far more interested in checking out the story of Ace wo Nerae beyond the film, than I am in the story begun here in this introduction to Cobra. That's just me, though. Back to Space Adventure Cobra: It's kind of like an 80s Redline without any trace of the latter's tongue-in-cheek self awareness as an inheritor of the fun sexy action anime tradition. If we put Cobra on Freud's couch, the first things we'd have to note is that he is constantly playing around with a cigar (dick) and has a massive magical gun (dick) growing out of his elbow. His penis arm is called the psycho-gun. He's an utterly silly picture of outmoded masculinity and his life is a ridiculous juvenile fantasy. The hottest babe in the galaxy and the Queen of Miros (who's actually three babes in one, scattered in 3 different locations) is in love with him and he has to save 1/3 of her from an evil crystal man named Crystal Bowie (or boy?) with a skeleton made of energy (or something). Crystal Bowie's skeleton doubles as a sort of devastatingly powerful armory that he can access by reaching into his own body and pulling his bones out, and he's brainswashed the 1/3 of space babe in his possession, Catherine, to be in love with him. Is it not equally suspicious that whenever Cobra makes out with Jane or Dominique, he starts tripping balls and finds himself hopelessly enamored by her? I guess perfect, unearthly beauty is supposed to have that intoxicating effect. The scenarios and characters here are as dweeby by design as the scenery and action are visually dazzling, though they aren't totally without a certain cheesy, boyish charm and cutting-edge style. In any case, it fortunately works out that devil-may-care Cobra's hidden feelings for Jane/Dominique that he himself doesn't seem aware of coincide with "doing the right thing," e.g. destroying the guild before they destroy the galaxy, and preventing Crystal Bowie from ruling the 3 in 1 space babe's special home planet of Miros. All this means Cobra gets to fulfill the role of casually disinterested hero that we so love to see. I tell you, the ending I would've preferred would've been if Catherine had been pretending to be under Crystal Bowie's control, seeing as how the power of Love allowed Cobra to resist being brainwashed toward the beginning of the film; in turn allowing Catherine to be the one to save the 7th Galaxy. But what are ya gonna do, eh? The story is far more conventional than that, not that it's a surprise. I don't want to spoil things too badly, but let's just say, despite what the characters explicitly say about Cobra's feelings for the Triple Waifu Queen of Miros, he doesn't really act like he feels all that strongly, even through the very end of the story. Also, I think it's pretty clear that the Cobra character "works better" as a sort of womanizing space ruffian, and in that sense he certainly doesn't undergo a major arc of character development over the course of the series (as a side note, would people remember Kamina as fondly if he lived to love Yoko, or would he have changed too much? I wonder... TTGL is another series this one reminds me of). Fair enough I suppose, since there's a lot more story (in the TV series and manga) left to go by the point this film leaves us. In short, you can turn your brain off for this one (and perhaps you should. jk, never turn your brain off. critique everything you see!!) and just enjoy how cool everything looks, and how hot the space babes are if you're into those.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 22, 2021 Recommended
Stardust Memory is a Gundam OVA that takes place between the One Year War of Mobile Suit Gundam and the events of Zeta, taking place 3 years after War in the Pocket.
Operation Stardust is a plan spearheaded by Anavel Gato, a notorious spectre of the One Year War known as The Nightmare of Solomon, alongside the head of the Delaz fleet, Aiguille Delaz. These are ostensibly the antagonists of the series, but they are also the reason that there's a series at all, the engineers behind the events unfolding, and the necromancers behind the resurrection of warfare in Universal Century 0083. Resurrection, rebirth, memory. The meaning ... of these words is probed throughout this series as they echo in the vacuum of space. Other than the protagonist Kou and his closest friend Keith, essentially every other character in the series is a veteran of the One Year War, or at least has experienced the repercussions of it firsthand. Whereas Kou and Keith are only indirectly familiar with the nature of war, which one could say is as good as not being familiar at all. Their fear is palpable as they're first thrown into combat. When Anavel Gato attacks the Albion and seizes a Gundam and a nuke at the beginning of the series, there's a shot of Nina Purpleton shaking as missiles rain down on the base. Mora Boscht asks if its her first time seeing a battle firsthand, and Nina continues to shake in silence, her eyes wide, as we get a great cut to Kou shaking in fear in his cockpit. With this wordless exposition we realize, though he may be a mobile suit pilot, this is his first overwhelming taste of battle. All Kou and Keith know of the One Year War are the spectres and legends that continue to haunt, like that of the Nightmare of Solomon, whom they initially conceive of as a foe whose legendary powers they couldn't possibly contend with. So far on my journey across the Universal Century, I've seen Mobile Suit Gundam, 08th MS Team, and War in the pocket. Stardust Memory is the series that takes us back into space, and it's got a bit more action up its sleeve than those other two OVAs. While I preferred the look and feel of War in the Pocket, where the style and direction all feels a bit more purposeful, Stardust Memory certainly looks great, and takes the combat up a notch. Scars and spectres are everywhere in Stardust Memory. Yet rebirth and resurrection are as much about rewriting history, trying to ignore the parts we'd rather forget, as they are reestablishing its continuity with the future. Kelly Layzner sees the resurrection of the war as a chance to redeem himself, and he intends to fight as if he never lost his arm in the first place, ignoring the scars wrought by battle. It costs him his life, when he could've taken the opportunity to live a peaceful life with Lateura. Dazel is bent on making up for Zeon's humiliating loss at A Baoa Qu. On the Feddie side, Monsha can't accept that he's not the hero who wins the war and gets the girl in his narrative as he may have been during the One Year War, and relentlessly takes out his insecurity and frustration on Kou. Stardust Memory is an inspection of the ways the past haunts the present, the way our scars, legends and memories linger, and even seem to control our fates as we struggle against them. Gato harps on the value of his/Zeon's ideals, and the fight for independence for all Spacenoids; Delaz delivers a televised speech about the totalitarian rule of the Federation, echoing some of the Zabi propaganda from 0079, and the need for Zeon's fight to carry on; but are they not blatantly overlooking the self interest, racism, greed, and internal rot which caused the collapse of Zeon in the first place? How easy it is for one's ideals to get lost and drift by the wayside in the heat of war, as others within your own faction vie to seize control of the armed forces and the narrative. As one character says in Gasaraki (another amazing mech anime), it's much easier to start a war than to stop one. Will the ills of Zeon's past not haunt its rebirth, once the plot is set in motion and it's too late to turn back? Does success in the present ever pay for the past sacrifices and missteps? Does it transform a failure into an act of heroism? The other side of this, the haunting of the past, is the far more trying task of learning from experience. The older characters in Stardust Memory, for the most part, live in, or try to reenact the events of their past, perhaps trying to get them right the second time. Yet inevitably, they fail again. Rather than learning from one's own experience, experience is something passed on to the next generation, as with Lieutenant Burning and Kou. Burning is a sort of mentor and father figure for Kou as Kou acclimates himself to becoming a soldier, and a man. (Spoilers to follow) The event that the series is leading up to is a return to the Sea of Solomon, a sector of space drenched with history, for another battle. This is where the blood was shed and metal was rent and torn that earned Gato his nickname, the Nightmare of Solomon, and the legendary status that looms over him along with it. The Nightmare of Solomon is more than just his nickname though, it's a nightmare which continues to pervade the lives of all the characters involved in the series. It's Gato's nightmare as well. In the episode where the combatants rush back into the sea, we see Gato staring out the window of his spacecraft, second guessing whether he should really return, anticipating the potential repeat of history, and the loss of more of his Zeon comrades' lives. A Sea of stars washes over his reflection in the window. Elsewhere, gazing out the window of another ship into oblivion, Haman Karn asks herself how long they'll be trapped in the cold of space fighting for the sake of "ideals." Shortly after, Kou returns from a sortie, having just lost Lieutenant Burning, and says to himself "The sea [of Solomon] is hell" through gritted teeth. He doesn't even have time to mourn before the combat picks back up. There's a feeling that the continuation of war is compulsive, inevitable, unstoppable. Once the Gundam is stolen, there's no turning back. Once the nuke is deployed, there's no turning back. Because people died for what they believed in years ago, because people continue to die, the surviving characters must put their lives on the line and fight, too. Gato must continue to test the righteousness of his beliefs until he's stopped, and Kou must stop him. That's the only way, Kou tells himself, for the hell to end. It's time to put everything Lieutenant Burning taught him on the line. And yet, does it ever really end? How will the memory of operation Stardust haunt the future? As they prepare to battle, the lingering debris and bodies, zombified mechs and soldiers from the first battle in the Sea of Solomon, obscure the Zeon troops. The scars, spectres and memories of a past clash; yet even beyond the grave they are in a sense involved in the combat. Perhaps Lieutenant Burning has become a piece of floating debris just the same. With no burial, no memorial, he's become a fact of the terrain of space. Anonymous but material. The man forgotten, his corpse and mobile suit preserved frozen in place. What threshold separates the dead and destroyed from the living? "We'll use them for cover, and that's why we'll win" Gato explains. Gato's nuking of the Federation's Naval Review is, it turns out, just the beginning of operation Stardust, and more of a symbolic victory. The reenactment of the One Year War doesn't end here, as after smashing two space colonies into each other, Cima and Dezal intend to smash a third colony into Earth itself, repeating the "most terrible tragedy of the One Year War." This isn't a mere matter of history repeating itself, it's an almost pathological compulsion to repeat history on purpose. As this war disease starts to take hold of Nina and Kou, Nina warns Kou that she wants them both to back out while they have the chance, now that the two Gundam units have been destroyed. But it's too late, there's a third unit, and Kou is the only one who can use it, with Nina's technical support, to stop the colony from barreling into Earth. And this is where the series really tips its hand. Up until now we've seen Kou go through a typical coming of age arc, embroiled in this world haunted by its past, full of soldiers with codes of honor, allegiance to ideals, thirsts for vengeance and glory. Unfortunately, while Kou does become a man, everything he learns about being a man comes from these haunted soldiers, so he's trapped in the same exact mindset as them. By the end of the anime, Kou doesn't accomplish anything. He doesn't retrieve Unit 02. He doesn't kill Gato. He doesn't stop the colony from crashing into Earth. If everything he's learned isn't enough to save the day, to protect humanity, to stop the endless war, then how DO we get out of this mess? Well, the answer WOULD be Cima and Nina. At this point in the story, Cima reveals that she's been colluding with the Federation to stop Dezal. Nina reveals she had a romance with Gato between the One Year War and operation Stardust. These women have no sense of allegiance, and that's the key that allows them to step outside of the narrow viewpoint shared by the soldiers and see that the bloodshed is leading nowhere. Just like Haman Karn and Lateura, Nina and Cima are skeptical of the male soldiers' obsessions with their ideals. At what point does the violence bring their vision into reality? Will it be when the colony strikes Earth? Is that when the Spacenoids will be free? Kou is utterly unable to grasp why Nina won't let him kill Gato, and thinks it is simply a matter of her having stronger feelings for Gato than for him. But she simply is brave enough to ask: what is actually gained by killing Gato, if the mission is already over? However, Nina fails to protect Gato because he won't allow himself to be protected. He sacrifices himself by ramming his mobile suit into a Federation Ship. Like Kelley, he insists on dying an "honorable" death in combat, while trying to reach Earth to pass on the legend of their battle to the future generation. Cima is similarly foiled by Gato and Delaz, and she's brutally murdered by Kou, right after she asks him "Who's side are you really on?" Ironic, coming from her, but it goes to show that this battle is not really between Zeon and the Federation, it's between those in allegiance to senseless murder in the guise of heroism, and those in allegiance to protecting innocent lives. The tragedy is that the few individuals (all women, mind you) who are capable of examining things from outside the soldier's perspective, are incapable of doing anything about it because they're horrendously outnumbered by haunted soldiers on all sides.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 19, 2021
Parasite Dolls
(Anime)
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Parasite Dolls is different from most cyberpunk works that I've seen in that it is specifically fixated on sexual fantasy, and the role of the object and subject therein. It's rather violent, but it's not an action packed series; it has a typically pensive Chiaki Konaka script. If you like the slow, thoughtful series he's worked on, especially where cyberpunk themes are involved, you'll probably enjoy this. If not, it is only 3 episodes, but be warned that it features a good deal of graphic violence, including sexual violence.
Checklist: Art - Quite good Sound - Not bad Characters - They serve their purpose Buzz, the "main character" I guess, ... has an emotionless working relationship with his ex girlfriend Angel, represses his emotions over a past tragedy, cannot envision Reiko as sexually viable, and pathologically presses the issue of his boomer partner's inhumanity and lack of emotion. In other words, he's the obligatory guy who's more like a cyborgs than the cyborgs are. Other than a bit of investigation, providing direction, and picking on his boomer partner, he is actually not involved in the drama (until the last 10 minutes when a bunch of stuff is revealed which I won't spoil, but it doesn't affect this analysis much). Rod is the boomer partner. He doesn't understand social mores very well. Maybe he's a bit more human than he seems, who knows, he's not really a major part of the story. Reiko, who's another officer in Branch, a special... branch of the A.D. police that investigates these boomer related cases, is actually much more a part of the action, and apparently emotionally invested in the drama that's unfolding through the case(s) Branch is working on. Onto the analysis (spoilers to follow): Why is it that a sultry radio personality is hysterically disturbed when her assistant (a boomer) develops a sexual fantasy about her? Is it because boomers aren't supposed to, which gives rise to a sense that something's gone horribly wrong, or is it simply because it complicates her work relationship with a man she views as her sexually uninteresting subordinate, which gives rise to a sense that something's gone horribly wrong? Is it a sign of transgressive madness or a sprouting case of humanity? What's with the young upper class socialite orgy in which the participants get off to a live and direct virtual reality feed of everything a berserk boomer feels and senses as it goes off on a spree of mad violence, rather than the feelings and sensations of the bodies in front of them? It's the eruptive transgressive violence that satisfies them, the vicarious experience of unlivable, unacceptable acts of destructive rage, realized through the tool of a boomer's body, rather than sexual intimacy and copulation. It's Videodrome meets VR, and it's much more taboo and therefor more novel and stimulating than sex. Why is it that a man (never mind "his" real identity for now) is targeting and brutally murdering boomer prostitutes? Is he disgusted by them because they're boomers, or is he disgusted by them because they look like women? Does he choose to murder boomer prostitutes because he can circumvent the guilt that would besiege him over mutilating real women since despite his misogyny, he can't as easily convince himself that they're somehow subhuman as with the boomers? Why is it such a facile achievement to use a boomer as a tool for sexual gratification, but so disturbing to think that they could want or achieve sexual gratification for themselves? A woman cannot fully become the object of desire as effortlessly as a boomer, or in fact at all, because a woman is saddled with her inextinguishable subjectivity. This is what Reiko comes to recognize when she runs into the gorgeous boomer escort Eve, who gives Reiko, herself undercover in disguise as a prostitute, advice on appealing to men. "She's a boomer, but she's more of a woman than I am?" Perhaps Eve sees through the disguise entirely. Yet as Eve begins to awaken to subjecthood, she loses her ability to perform as object of desire, and disturbed by herself, blinded by terror, she destroys the men who pay to use her body. This tension between subject and object is always present in the sexual situations that arise throughout the series. Repeatedly we see humans pretending the boomer, the tool, the object, is the sexually objectified subject, while retaining the certain feeling that the boomer is still a mere object. Yet horror strikes when said object becomes the objectified subject for real. For boomers, subjectivity is a malady treated with nano-machine filled drug capsules covertly distributed by the company that makes the boomers. In fact, the same company also made the "man," actually a machine in disguise, that's been going on a boomer prostitute murdering rampage: the boomer crusher. Genom is covering its own tracks from the shadows, after fucking up the design of its sex bots that shouldn't exist. The story thus provides a valuable probing of the questions of femininity and beauty: what are the values of these concepts to civilization? What do we think of women? What would we do to them if we knew they didn't have minds of their own, and there were no consequences for our treatment of them? Is it really because the boomers are inhuman that we feel comfortable unleashing violence on them, or is it just because we can convince ourselves they're inhuman and still turn away from the evidence to the contrary, as it slowly begins to pile up like snow? In the story, the brutal murder of the modified boomer prostitutes is essentially ignored, except for the fact that it is causing Genom its money and reputation to have its models running around defecting and being destroyed. Is how the boomer prostitutes are treated really all that different from how sex workers and fantasy images of women (i.e. stylized girls in fiction) are treated in our world? I wonder if the anime doesn't make the difference between our treatment of apparent object and apparent subject too obvious and clear cut. And there is the always present throughline in cyborg centered cyberpunk, the notion that the tragedy is that the cyborgs seem to be more than mere machines, perhaps more human in some ways than the humans, despite how they come to be treated as humanity's lesser Other, a corruptive force or even enemy to mankind, but that's not emphasized so much here. That's part of what sets it apart from other series of a similar kind. The ostensible motivation of the main villain in the final episode is to eliminate all boomers because the access they give lesser men to their sexual fantasies, to a FEELING of power, is one both too intoxicating and unearned. It makes people comfortable being weak, arrogant, when the weak should be serving the strong (perhaps in the boomers' stead. The boomers can be sacrificed if the Weak members of society are still there to be tools). But the truth is, the villain doesn't believe any of this at all. He's merely adopting this platform because the ideology behind it is one that has earned him power and support from people who actually do hate the boomers. Ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter what motivates a person's actions. The simulation is just as good as, if not better than, the real thing. The simulation may as well be all there is, so long as we can turn our heads away from what makes us uncomfortable in our beliefs and actions.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 18, 2021
Gatchaman Crowds Insight
(Anime)
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If you're here, presumably you've already watched season one. Gatchaman Crowds Insight is a suitable extension and an improvement on what's established in the first season.
As in season one, Hajime is privileged as the character with the perspective that seems to be "correct" in the end, but it takes her a lot of time, deep consideration, and input from the people around (or... inside of her), whose views conflict with hers at times, but she values nonetheless, in order to figure out the correct course of action. Gatchaman gives us a character to look up to in Hajime. Her admirable traits: her open mindedness, thoughtfulness, sense ... of responsibility; her belief that views that contradict hers have their own merit, that conflict itself is good (as long as it doesn't lead to unnecessary violence); her belief that the sides of people that they're ashamed of, their darker thoughts, their ignorance and stupidity, their fears and selfish desires, also have a place in the intricately woven fabric of human social and psychological reality. These views represent a complex ontology that her can-do, optimistic attitude and charming, goofy sense of humor totally belie. Or maybe it's not all that complex. Maybe it's quite simple. I don't think you need to read Republic or Phenomenology of Spirit to believe in the value of having a dialogue, or of the confluence of and struggle between clashing opinions; or even of finding some kernels of truth buried in discarded or disproven ideas. Her creativity and optimism let her stare humanity's darkness, foolishness and misery in the face and come up with a productive solution to the problem she faces, one that doesn't merely try to ignore those facts of human nature or sweep them under the rug. Hajime embodies a formula for having a true sense of self worth, self awareness and personal responsibility, and it's through everyone trying to be a little bit more like Hajime, a little more aware and honest, that the experiment of democracy is most likely to succeed. Speaking of "the experiment of democracy" that's just the type of apparently boring and stuffy, but deeply pressing subject that Gatchaman touches on and dissects with its vibrant cast of characters, each with a unique voice and contribution to the conversation. The viewer hardly realizes as the series progresses that they've waded knee deep into the conversation, too. The show asks: should technology be banned if it can be used for evil? Can't all technology be used for evil? How can we regulate its use? Should we regulate its use? Does democracy work at face value, or in this post internet, media saturated era of information inundation and political propaganda, do people need to be more conscientious about how they act on their political concerns? What are the responsibilities of politicians and media entities? Maybe we have to be the ones to take some responsibility, instead of casually leaving it up to others with more power or authority to decide everything for us. Gatchaman Crowds (Insight) offers truly piercing insight into the nature of our social reality, the power of the Image, and how our relationships with each other and to images are mediated by increasingly powerful communications technology. How easy it is to just take the path of least resistance, give into peer pressure and marketing, and create a dictator or a hegemony through our passivity and willingness to let others decide for us. In this regard, in its cultural critique, it belongs somewhere in the lineage of Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, and Paranoia Agent. Few series characterize our problems and conditions so plainly, and manage to make a compelling story around them, to boot. Insight contains refreshing suggestions about how we should approach this bizarre life at its core. (Spoilers ahead) The climax of this season features a simulated battle between humanity's chosen heroes, the Gatchaman (I mean humanity literally voted that Gatchaman should save the day however they so chose) and a "villain" they've created, a supernatural dictator humanity inadvertently granted permission to commit unwitting genocide by constantly choosing the path of least resistance and voting thoughtlessly based on whatever the popular consensus was in their immediate social circle. The spectacle of the villain's defeat is enough to satisfy humanity, but the violence of its defeat disturbs them, as they recall that their "dictator," a kind, sensitive alien named Gel, has really just all along been doing exactly what they asked for, and at his heart is just a boundlessly generous and optimistic being with no ego of his own. The fascinating thing about this climactic battle is that to some extent, though we are clued into what's really going on at moments (as we don't have reason to really believe the Gatchaman squad would kill Gel if they could avoid it; we last saw them seeming to prepare to hatch a scheme, the details of which are unknown to us; someone in the audience during the fight says "Where's Hajime?") we really have no idea if we're really watching Gel's ruthless, violent assassination at the hands of Gatchaman. Because of Tsubasa's love and allegiance to both Gel and Hajime, when she loses resolve and defends "Gel" in the middle of their fight, it could just as easily be Gel or Hajime. In this scene, we are in the same position (more or less) as the spectators watching the fight on TV or on the internet. WE are watching this fight on TV or on the internet. We also are wondering "Isn't this going too far," perhaps second guessing if "Gel" is really Gel, feeling that there's something unnatural about the violence the Gatchaman are dishing out, but of course not anymore capable of learning what's really going on than the audience in the anime. It turns out just the simulated battle, the apparent assassination of Gel, is enough to force us to confront our true nature and think more deeply what we really want, what we really think is best for humanity beyond our immediate fears and desires. As the audience in the series wakes up to this realization, perhaps the audience watching Gatchaman Crowds Insight wakes up to it as well. This sophisticated manipulation and involvement of the viewer is another one of those things that makes Gatchaman Crowds and Insight so special in the field of contemporary anime, and makes Kenji Nakamura such a standout showrunner.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 17, 2021 Recommended
In my timeline journey through the Universal Century, I've decided to take a detour after Mobile Suit Gundam through the OVA sequels and sidestories, before jumping into Zeta. First stop is War in the Pocket (though 08th MS Team seems an equally reasonable choice, since it focuses on operation Odessa from MSG, while War in the Pocket takes place sometime later or possibly after the events of MSG, but has little direct relation to any of the main series' plot).
Something that's clear about War in the Pocket right away is that it's for Gundam fans. Not to say that you won't be able to enjoy ... or follow it if it's your first foray into the series (I think you certainly still will), but there are places where the narrative assumes our knowledge about the series for its subtle introduction of expository details. For example, before we KNOW Chris is a Feddie because she tells us, there's a shot of her taking her uniform out of her suitcase and placing it on her bed. This lets us know that as Gundam fans going into this series, we are in a privileged position when it comes to knowledge about the characters and world, and potentially that there are elements of the drama that are aimed specifically toward us. The latter part proves to be true as we come to understand that the kids at the heart of the story are huge fans of giant robots themselves, which surely countless Gundam fans can relate to. Knowing as we do that Zeon is no longer fighting the righteous war for independence it initially set out to, Alfred's fascination with the Zaku in particular immediately plants a seed of worry in the heart of the viewer. Does this kid know what he may be getting himself into if he takes his obsession too far? And just how far is too far? When is a fan blinded to the ethical implications of a drama by their enthusiasm for its aesthetics? Before I get into the spoiler-filled summary and analysis, I'll tell you just how good the series is. There really isn't an aspect of the series to find much fault with. Other than that Chris' character is a bit underutilized, the characters are distinct, interesting and sympathetic. The art, direction and animation are amazing, especially having come off of just watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It's a great pleasure to be able to see the action, which was naturally a bit stiff in the original, depicted so beautifully and with such tremendous detail. As far as action goes, it's not loaded with it, but there's a good balance between how much time is devoted to the story and how much is devoted to robots blowing things up. The story and characters are the focus here, and the styling and direction of the action sequences actually further the tone and message of the narrative. The story takes place on Side 6, which we know from Mobile Suit Gundam is a neutral territory where abetting either side of the conflict is prohibited, and whether Zeon or Feddie, carrying out any form of attack, combat, training, or building, testing, stockpiling of weapons breaks the Antarctic Treaty. The bright pallet chosen to render the scenery and characters immediately stood out to me when compared to art I've seen of the other in-between MSG and Zeta OVAs. This pallet suits and emphasizes the innocence of the main characters, and the (deluded) feeling citizens of Side 6 seem to have that they live in a sort of safehaven or Eden. The first taste of action we get is the battle that introduces Bernie and proves to the children that the Feddies do, in fact, have mobile suits. The way the action is shot, primarily from street level, with lots of upward facing, and wide shots, showcases the preternatural, menacing immensity of mobile suits. They are shown towering over citizens and buildings like. While the GMs and Zakus are going at each other, their battle is simultaneously framed as if they are teamed up in a clumsy attack on the city itself. The citizens' delusion about the safety of Side 6, their distance from the front lines, is torn down as massive mobile suit arms and legs crush cars and crumble buildings like unwieldy wrecking balls. Notice that when the mobile suits' bodies are shown in full, when the focus is on their combat against one another, the movement is smooth and dynamic. When the focus is on the mobile suits' mutual destruction of the city, their limbs move with tremendous slow, lumbering weight. Just some examples of how the series masterfully uses visuals to tell its story! I won't tell you War in the Pocket is one of the best anime of all time, perhaps it's too soon to even say it's one of the best Gundam series (I suppose I'll find out), but it's definitely a more than solid installment that bears the essence of what a Gundam series is supposed to be in every sense. Spoilers to follow. Showing the havoc the meaningless tragedy of war wreaks on innocence and innocent lives is the penchant of the Gundam series, or at least those offshoots that remain aligned with the spirit of the original. War in the Pocket is a moving, concise story that gets that point across in a special way. I already have the feeling that it is going to stand out as a stop on the timeline I'm going to be drifting along from now until I run out of U.C. Gundam to watch. Chris as a character is a little underdeveloped, but Alfred's relationships with Bernie, and to a lesser extent with Chris, are touching. He admires them both, but he learns what difficulty that entails when the figures he admires are fighting on two opposite sides of a war, fighting battles with real consequences and real lives at stake. Alfred's enthusiasm and innocence resonate with Bernie, who probably was much like Alfred himself not too long ago, and Bernie knows exactly what to say to Alfred to get him fired up and paint himself as a hero to his young, naive companion. Alfred thinks of war as a dramatic, exciting story, and now Bernie is his main character. Bernie keeps the fantasy of war alive, both to relish in Alfred's admiration and companionship, but perhaps also to protect Alfred from learning the truth for as long as he can. Then ultimately, he does have the chance to be Alfred's hero and save side 6 from the ruthless machinations of Zeon itself. But it's a lose/lose situation. We as the viewers know what they don't: Chris is the Gundam pilot. And as it turns out, neither side had to die because Zeon's plot was discovered, while Bernie was in the process of carrying out his one man operation to destroy the Gundam. When all's said and done Alfred truly has a glimpse of what war is about, how a soldier's hopes and good intentions can become twisted and stifled, and to the extent that they're carried out, they're never worth the lives they cost. He can no longer really relate to his school friends who fetishize the artifacts of power that makeup warfare, like bullet shells, military insignias, and giant robots. Even though his home is saved and his family and friends don't die, in a sense he is trapped and alone with his new, troubling, burdensome experiences, and his grief over his friend the Zeon soldier. Bernie tries to be the hero in Alfred's war fantasy narrative, but he fails; the hero dies, apparently for no reason, and so Alfred's innocent fantasy with him. He loses all that, and a friend and surrogate brother in Bernie.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 7, 2021
Warau Kyuuketsuki
(Manga)
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I have been a fan of horror manga and eroguro, via Junji Ito and Shintaro Kago, since I was a high school student. They were, along with Naoki Urasawa, the mangaka that got me interested in reading manga. Although I've also been acquainted with Suehiro Maruo's work since around that time, due to a friend's recommendation of The Strange Tale of Panorama Island, it wasn't until about a year ago that I first read Warau Kyuuketsuki. That was after quite a long hiatus from reading manga and watching anime, and it actually rekindled my relationship with these media in the past year, and started me
...
on a binge of Maruo's manga, which led me to Shuuzou Oshimi, and onward.
I've always been fascinated by Suehiro Maruo's manga, sort of hopelessly enticed by it, but any solid understanding of what it is that grabs me about it has always eluded me. What is it about the macabre subject matter and his visually, kaleidoscopically beautiful and disorienting investigation of it that I can't seem to turn away from? What is it that seems to be lacking in those works of Shuuzou Oshimi, which are clearly tremendously indebted to Suehiro Maruo? In rereading Warau Kyuuketsuki, I've realized my fascination with its characters and images has subtly guided my thinking and my reading over the past year. After acquainting myself with some of the writings of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva I have a clearer idea of what I love about it, what it means to me. Suehiro Maruo was a friend to Saeki Toshio (who died last year, RIP) and Terayama Shuji. Ultimately I think these three men were interested in and bonded over the dissection of our subconscious apparitions. That is where the horror and drama takes place. This story isn't frightening because of the vampires, but because of the nihilistic violence humans dole out onto one another, out of fear or out of desire. The erotic elements aren't physically arousing, they're sublime. The horror elements aren't fist-clenching, they're heartbreaking. These stories show how the unspeakable, taboo contents of the human mind, of collective unconsciousness and human behavior, keep humans caged in perpetual misery. What we desire we can never have, and what we fear and hate is the hopelessness of our aspiration to get what we desire, the absence of hope and meaning in our lives. These feelings, and society's provocation, its stoking of the flames of our desire and consequent anguish, cause us to lash out. Yet our struggle in this cage, the drama of it, even while we are taking out our misery on ourselves or those around us, is somehow both horribly sad and beautiful. This story starts out with a series of panels that strike me as an allusion to the bombing of Hiroshima (although in the Crying Vampire, the final 10 pages of the series, which serve as a prequel, Onna is already a vampire in the Taisho period). Rakuda Onna, the monstrous source (by way of the bomb, which is the real source) of all the other characters' vampirism, is, in a sense, born from the rubble of this horrific event, much like the deranged artist from Panorama of Hell by Hino Hideshi. It cannot be underestimated what an astonishing impact the dropping of the atomic bombs had on humanity's collective identity, and obviously, especially Japanese consciousness, as borne out in countless works of fiction by Japanese writers and artists from all walks. I mean, Godzilla for fucks sake. Recently I have started to wonder if the world didn't end in some way when those bombs dropped. In the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, the impact in the bomb on Hiroshima was described as the entire city being lifted into the sky and falling back to Earth in the form of ash. This was an act of violence committed by men against men; by men who were somehow undaunted by the visceral, unfathomable consequences of their actions on a staggering number of distant, innocent people. This event makes concrete the obliteration of meaning, and the birth of a perpetual fear of living in a world ruled by no principles, where this type of mass murder could occur on a whim at any given moment. Life couldn't ever be the same. H.P. Lovecraft wrote to capture the horror of living in a vast, uncaring cosmos. Warau Kyuuketsuki is the horror of living amongst humans who all subconsciously share that insight that H.P. Lovecraft wrote about: an awareness that we live in a universe wherein there is no God, no meaning, no eternal consequences. Yet, tragically, we have to live our lives as if there IS meaning. Some of us try to do good, to treat each other well, while surrounded by ever piling evidence that humans don't have any inherent kernel of goodness. Our innocence is gone, and our attempts to be good people and find things worth living for are in fact inhibited by those countless people around us who take advantage of this newfound paradigm of relativism and nihilism to justify their gluttonous selfishness and disregard for the lives of others. In Warau Kyuuketsuki, we see characters become acquainted with this horrific truth about the nature of human life one by one. Their innocence dies and they seek revenge, but there's no object for their disdain except life itself. They transfer their animosity onto people who have wronged them or strike them as immoral. Luna, as Sotou drowns, asks in a soliloquy of sorts if Sotou (who is the titular Laughing Vampire, actually) was mentally ill, or if it's just life that makes people this way. Earlier she explains to Mori (or is it the other way around? Difficult to say who's speaking in this scene, but worth noting that Luna's name is, well, Luna) that she thinks that the moon is a hole in our black evening sky into another world filled with light. Light no longer exists in our world, it is always somewhere else, some place we're locked out of. Vampires are alive yet not alive. They survive off of the life force of humans (which they both are and aren't, as well) like parasites, regardless of what suffering they may incite. In this story, they're born from the destruction of innocence, the shattering of the illusion of idealistic possibility. When Luna is overwhelmed by loathsome reality, after she's been raped and after she's witnessed the mutual manipulation and self-abasement that goes on between her peers and the elderly: the mutual sacrificing of self worth and dignity for the satisfaction of pitiful and disgusting desires (an exchange of money for the young girl's pure, innocent body, the two things we're culturally instructed to seek after as the ultimate sources of satisfaction), she tells her mother she's been bitten by a vampire (though of course, even though, unbeknownst to her, there are literal vampires lurking around in this story, she hasn't literally been bitten by one of those. She's been "bitten" by her social reality). She gives herself a tattoo that's reminiscent of the Batman symbol (her adolescent trauma, which shatters her reality and spurs her transformation, is actually similar to that story of Bruce Wayne, though Batman and Warau Kyuuketsuki seem to operate on quite different wavelengths otherwise. Is Luna any sort of hero?) The only liberating possibilities in this sort of world are death or ecstatic pleasure so powerful that it momentarily dispels subjective consciousness and reason. For these characters, death is no longer possible, and sex has been replaced as a source of ecstasy by the ingestion of untainted blood, which entails the harvesting of the most innocent forms of human life the main characters are capable of getting their hands on; including, or perhaps especially, infants. Yet the more they kill, the more their bodies are ravaged by age and weakness. Pleasure requires suffering; they are two sides of a coin, just like sacred and profane, freedom and imprisonment, transgression and limit. This story makes those notions manifest plainly, through metaphor. Vampirism is all around us, and the light is always somewhere else, only accessible to us in brief glimpses amid our most frenzied, inhuman states, and always at a cost.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 15, 2021 Recommended
Genocyber is old, and it's grindhouse gory. You're probably watching it in 480p. When I sit down to watch it on my laptop, I feel like I'm watching a video I rented from Blockbuster; although now that I think of it, when I was a kid, we rented from a store called Family Video. It was around the corner from my house, owned and run by a Chinese family. It closed down over a decade ago. As far as I can tell, this store had no affiliation with the chain of video stores with the same name that recently closed all of their physical locations.
...
The Family Video on the corner of Beach Street has long been swallowed up by time. Without some foresight, some money, and some luck, no one can anticipate and keep up with progress. Humanity's technological advancement, a quest that has no end and offers profit without end, is the focus, and humanity itself is in the periphery. Grab onto whatever hunk of metal is drifting nearby and hope it keeps you afloat while the chemical contaminated water rises. Destroying ourselves means nothing if we learn how to make new, better selves in the process.
Perhaps this melancholic, grainy nostalgia which watching a "dated" anime like Genocyber conjures has only added to the experience of watching it, like it's only 30 years later, after sitting around in a state of neglect that the anime is really finished. Hopefully it'll never be a candidate for digital restoration. Genocyber is anti-capitalist revenge porn. It is actually thematically quite similar to Patlabor 2, but whereas Patlabor 2 is quiet and refined, with a staid, thoughtful, melancholic beauty, Genocyber is furious and vital, and kind of a piece of shit sometimes. It is a story in three parts, a triptych of anguish and violence. The middle story is the weakest, a somewhat typical anti-war diatribe with a big monster. The last story, which is clearly intended to be the redemptive arc, where we're shown a path forward, feels a little truncated, ultimately not tying together too neatly after an admirable start. Much of the visual experimentation peters out after the first, extended episode, which suggests that time and money constraints impacted the latter parts of production. It was, of course, cancelled after episode 5. Part one introduces us into a world not too much unlike our own (other than the psychic powers and advanced, weaponized prosthetics, but who knows what the future holds 10 or 20 years from now), except that we are unable to avert our eyes from the violence at the heart of progress. Creative energy is converted into destructive energy. There's an obsession with "upgrading," maximizing the potential of the brain through scientific intervention, destroying and replacing the flesh with machine. Once one person becomes upgraded, that becomes the standard to which everyone else has to rise, or else become ripped apart by time's march forward. Transhumanism is compulsory. You HAVE to upgrade if you want to keep living, to be seen as productive, whether you're happy about it or not. It's like trying to live without a smart phone, except the cybernetic upgrades in Genocyber are not only contained in artifacts we carry around, they must be applied to our own bodies. Is it really so different, though? Everyone is in a constant state hyper-competition, both to invent the new human, and to avoid obsolescence. This hubristic desire to shatter the limitations of the human body goes awry when it comes into contact with the equally delimited empathic, spiritual dimension of Elaine's consciousness. Her mind's potential is unlocked, but she is still a child, with an "animalistic" nature. She's innocent, uncorrupted by the perverse impulses of capitalism and progress which place their own goals over the wellbeing of individuals and communities. She values life, and feels for people, which are the natural impulses of human consciousness. The opposition between the spiritual, naïve, empathic human and the selfish, power-hungry, "progressive" technocapitalist is set up in the first episode, and is returned to in episodes 4 and 5. The "progressive" aspires toward God-like power, and the empath is inherently more God-like because she retains the capacity to love. This capacity is seen as endemic to the enlightened mind in Buddhist traditions, and it's no coincidence that Elaine's conscious potential, her "Vajra," is unlocked via the use of a technological "Mandala." The Kuryu group hoped to create an unparalleled weapon, which they termed a Vajra to symbolize the ascent of humanity to god-like status, but what they created was a weapon that, like the actual Vajra of myth, was turned against the sinners and the ignorant, the enemies of love; in other words, adherents of this unforgiving, inhumane system of capital, progress, and destruction such as the Kuryu group itself. In episodes 4 and 5, the focus becomes sight as a metaphor. Blindness is another form of naivety, but it is one that is counterintuitively liberating. Mel is incapable of seeing the physical world, which allows her to see things others can't. She has insight, and empathy, and comes to be fetishized as a prophet by desperate cultists. Blindness is also a source of levity. It provides Mel with the space to resist "the Spectacle," the illusory world of the capitalist monolith Grand Ark city, wherein happiness is something bought and sold. Meanwhile people who have no money either suffer or kill one another to attain it. Misery is hidden away, poverty is an indication of personal weakness and depravity, of failure. Mel cannot see the illusion, so she isn't distracted by it, while Ryu cannot help but be tempted. He voluntarily, temporarily blinds himself when he commits his selfish act of violence for money. The city of the Grand Ark is like Tokyo in Patlabor 2, or Macross Fortress in Macross Plus. Many of the promises of capitalism and technological progress aren't real, but their costs to human life are. However, all we focus on is the illusion, the promise. The story ends suddenly with the destruction of the Ark, hopefully destroying the illusion and giving humanity a chance to start over from a state of innocence. While a little roughshod and uneven in its presentation, I think the story of Genocyber is actually far more intelligent than it's given credit for. The hyper violent veneer is a distraction for some viewers, or even all that some viewers seem to see, but for me, it is essential for representing the diffuse violence of the systems Genocyber is criticizing. This critical narrative is both vital and at times, gripping. If you think you've got the stomach for it, give it a chance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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