Chainsaw Man and the Country Mouse

Late in Chainsaw Man’s fifth volume, Denji and Aki are each presented with a brief parable, the story of the country and the city mouse. “The country mouse gets to live in safety,” they are told, “but doesn’t get to eat delicious food like they have in the city.” On the other hand, “the town mouse gets to eat delicious food, but runs a higher risk of getting killed by humans or cats.” It’s a dichotomy so simple it could apply to almost anything: risk versus reward, stasis versus progress, or the more obviously applicable choice between living in Makima’s devil-haunted world versus running with all your might. Of course, in order to fear the city enough to desire the country, you first require something to lose.

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Suspension: Kubitsuri High School

And so we return to the archives of the nonsense-using quasi-detective Iitan, who begrudgingly solves the murders that always seem to darken his doorstep. I’ve generally had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with this series, as while I love Nisio Isin’s prose, characterization, and thematic inquiry, I simply do not care for mysteries and puzzles in the way he does. As such, my experience of these stories involves a lot of sorta halfway nodding off as they detail some convoluted murder mystery scenario, only to snap into focus when somebody starts talking about their feelings.

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The Aesthetics of Grief in Goodbye, Eri

Tatsuki Fujimoto is a connoisseur of what you might call “dirtbag compassion.” Though his works explore complex and difficult topics with elevated nuance, his perspective always hangs near the muck – dicks getting kicked, toilet jokes, unrepentant, gleeful acts of deviance and perversion. There’s an honesty in that; rather than maintaining the soapy, reverent tone often employed for difficult topics, he talks about grief and hunger and oppression in the way they are experienced, in the context of our messy lives and allegedly “incorrect” emotional responses. His work is essentially the opposite of a Very Special Episode, wherein the harsh aspects of life are framed in slow motion and soft lighting, accompanied by a pensive indie rock ballad. Life is rarely so tonally accommodating – and as imperfect, ever-struggling human beings, our reactions to life’s troubles are rarely the ones you see on television.

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Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 16

After a season and change of cloaking its personal inquiry in the trappings of a more or less traditional, episodic giant robot anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion’s sixteenth episode represents a formal casting off of its genre pretensions, in favor of directly interrogating the psychology of its forlorn protagonists. This is less dramatic of a transition than some might argue; given the overwhelming focus on cast psychology that has characterized these writeups, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn I see this process as more fulfillment of the show’s lurking ambitions than a genuine shifting of its trajectory. But premeditated or not, this is undeniably the moment when Evangelion fully strayed from its design document, embracing a prioritization of psychoanalysis that to Anno seemed the only way to fully respect the characters he’d conceived, the audience he was seeking, and the hope of happiness he still carried for himself.

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Seeking This Moment in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

You could describe our passage through life as an accumulation of regrets, of opportunities missed and promising roads not traveled. We rise through youth bearing dreams of becoming astronauts or rock stars, or at the very least not disappointing our parents; we ultimately settle for smaller victories, savoring financial independence or whatever slice of happiness we can find. We compromise and forgive and compromise again, as the once-open canvas of life is weighed down by responsibilities and disappointments, a thousand thousand doors closed forever behind us. And slowly, what once seemed like active choices become the terms of your imprisonment, the endless cycles that define your journey from unhappy adulthood to the grave.

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Witch Hat Atelier and the Confidence of Youth

We find Qifrey bound in herbs as we return to Witch Hat Atelier, ensconced in the tools of his trade on the title page. He is at peace, and why wouldn’t he be? Though we often see practice as an imposition or chore, it is the only route through which we can achieve mastery, and mastery is the font of confidence, self-knowledge, and self-determination. In this world where our efforts are so often abstracted from our results, where the interconnected complexity of modern society robs us of tangible accomplishments, the mastery of a craft is a route back to an honest, immediate connection with the world. What’s more, it is like the cradle in which Qifrey is suspended – it provides us shelter and security made of our own hands, the skills that no changes in external fortune can steal from us. When we have nothing else, we still have all that we’ve learned – through practice and mastery, we make a hearth of our hearts, a smith of our hands, a library of our minds, and an atelier of our bodies, our burnished instruments working in marvelous unison.

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Fragments of Romance: In the Mood for Love

“I keep what I can of you; split-second glimpses and snapshots and sounds.”
– The National

In the Mood for Love begins with a title card, a tidy explanation of the drama to come. “It is a restless moment,” the film informs us. “She has kept her head lowered to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.”

It is an odd description of a film narrative, odder still in its inclusion before the film it describes. The words seem to describe a slight, likely inconsequential interaction, a momentary meeting of two bodies in transit. And indeed, attempting to describe the overt drama of In the Mood for Love almost necessarily results in such a dismissive summary, for the film is largely about things that almost happen, futures that might have been. In the Mood for Love is a film of lingering feelings hanging in narrow hallways, of dreams unspoken until their hope of fulfillment has long passed, of words that flash in the eyes but never pass the lips. It is precisely measured in its form, achingly romantic in its substance, and ultimately ephemeral in its passage. It is the essence of love unfulfilled.

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The Leaf and the Giant: The Astonishing Animation of Akihiro Ota

So, goddamn Wano, huh? It turns out I caught up on One Piece at an exceptionally good time. Over the past several years, the team at Toei have endeavored to make One Piece’s latest arc a landmark in the genre, a towering feat of animation offering film-tier feats of fluidity and scale on a nearly weekly basis. From the moment the Straw Hat crew set foot on Wano’s long-awaited shores, it was clear something was different; the arc immediately dispensed with One Piece’s traditionally thin linework and limited shading, offering instead bold splashes of ink and color emulating audacious works of traditional calligraphy. Yet at the same time, one of my favorite things about Wano is how loosely it treats its new art design mandate; its aesthetic is a suggestion, not a demand, and individual animators frequently stray far beyond the models and linework of Wano’s standard mode.

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Misadventures in Dungeons & Dragons: Part Two

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m still in the process of unpacking the diverse refuse of my life into my new apartment, and thereby admiring the mix of grids, maps, borrowed miniatures, plastic dinosaurs, and legos with which I’ve been furnishing my playing party’s D&D campaign. That in turn got me thinking back to how all this nonsense began, with a handful of sample quests and vague aspirations of some eventual regional conflict. I wouldn’t be able to sustain my writing output this long if I weren’t translating my every idle thought into Content, so I guess what I’m saying is to take a seat folks, as we once again delve into the triumphs and tribulations of my dubious dungeon mastering!

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Humans, Devils, and Chainsaw Man

What is it that separates Chainsaw Man’s fiends and devils from its human characters? Figures on each side of this divide seek glory and happiness, mourn their loved ones, and employ devilish, supernatural powers in the pursuit of their desires. It is no wonder that Denji sees this distinction as arbitrary; all that this hierarchy has ever provided him is an assurance of injustice and suffering, as he is punished for factors entirely outside his control. And though Aki might claim humanity is some quality intrinsic in certain beings, the only significant difference between him and Denji is likely their personal comportment, the sense of dignity and pride with which Aki carries himself.

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