After half a season of rambling episodic tales with diverse thematic takeaways, Kaiba’s eighth episode finds itself falling victim to that enduring foe of metaphorical fiction: narrative continuity. With our protagonist’s fate uncertain following Vanilla’s heroic sacrifice, our story turns to the planet highlighted in the show’s opening, the planet of rule and rebellion. Here, the tyrannical Warp rules from on high in a body that’s strangely familiar, while Lord Dada foments rebellion below, aided by his chief accomplices Popo and Neyro. The course of this episode resolves as so many dominoes tumbling into place, the falsehoods of both Warp and Dada breaching the surface as the friends Kaiba has long grasped towards make their final stand.
But even in this episode more preoccupied with narrative answers than thematic questions, the cruelty and senselessness of this capitalist-transhuman future is cleanly articulated through a variety of fresh horrors. After an opening detailing the humble origins of Popo and Neyro’s rebellion, we cut to the tyrant himself, the Warp who allegedly stands astride this world and dictates its fate. Warp is not happy; harassed by robotic caretakers even as he showers, he screams that “your invasive caretaking is causing me to go mad!” The symbol of order is itself a prop or false prophet, as lost within this self-perpetuating servitude as its architect Quilt.
The lights dim at Warp’s command, but it’s clear this is just an illusion of privacy. We in truth have no time alone in the modern world; confessions we make in alleged secret will find themselves reflected in our next set of offered advertisements, hidden cameras and microphones forever probing for more data, more secrets that can be fed back into the algorithm. In Kaiba’s world of proprietary bodies, even our underlying flesh undoubtedly records our behavior for its true masters, the companies that constructed it. Behind every “are you tired” offered by our allegedly kindly overseers lies an inherent question of “are you becoming so tired that you cannot perform, consume, and purchase more goods?” We have made ourselves slaves of convenience, abandoning any hope of true privacy or freedom in the bargain.
“Damn it all. I’m alive. I live!” He scratches hopelessly at the company brand on his current body, unable to wash away this acknowledgment that he lives and thinks at the mercy of his masters. Their urging to take care of himself is the same wish we’d extend to any useful machine; but if a useful machine no longer serves its purpose, it is swiftly discarded. So too are our own “unusable people” discarded, whether they fall into debt or physical disrepair. In modern society, it is considered shameful to live but not produce wealth and consume goods; in the world of Kaiba, that shame is swiftly answered by the requisitioning of “unproductive” bodies, that they might be commandeered by souls more willing to slave for society.
Having demonstrated that even the alleged king of this world has little control over its systems’ propagation, we then dive many levels below, where the rebel forces of Lord Dada plan their next strike. Rising in chorus, the crowd cheers “value the living, and send the people of the past to the void!” It’s a sympathetic rallying cry; after all, the eternal life offered by this system of body transfer is possibly its most nefarious aspect. As powerful as any tyrant or titan of industry can become, they are always limited by mortality, by the limits of their physical frame. Our own cruel overseers do everything they can to avert this process, whether it’s through the traditional passage of hereditary systems and training your children to act in your image, or through more modern systems like our current-day billionaires’ efforts to halt aging or literally inject themselves with young blood.
Even alleged democracies like the United States are ruled by creaking elders, people who cling to power in spite of existing in a world that has long since moved past their values and insights. The inevitability of decay is our only consolation, our only shield against the threat of society consolidating under the rule of eternal masters, who might through long eras entrench their sovereignty all the more deeply. In the world of Kaiba, this consolation is denied – as a result, it is this promise of immortality that must first be attacked if any better world is to be realized.
However, even Lord Dada’s allegedly lofty values can be bent for the sake of convenience. We see the hypocrisy of his words in his private praise for Neyro, who succeeded in her mission by adopting a new body, a direct violation of the society’s principles. Then the lights go up, and Popo announces a traitor must be punished.
Takehiko stands, guilty of the crime of employing body transfers for the sake of his family. “But if my sister didn’t change bodies, she wouldn’t have lived another day,” he protests. In this society’s strident opposition to the modern system of transhumanism, they also abandon all of the good things this new paradigm could offer. Cases like this are precisely what Quilt imagined his inventions might be used for: helping people whose bodies failed them before their time, restoring the sick and injured, allowing people to truly be their most authentic selves. In their hardline opposition to the misuse of mind-body transfers, Lord Dada’s Society abandons the possibility of alleviating biological injustice.
To this defense, Popo replies that “the money you used will go to fund the enemy’s armies!” He is not wrong. By participating in the commodification of bodies, one necessarily supports the propagation of that system. Where can a line be drawn regarding the concessions we must make to living in a society built on cruelty? Are we all guilty, or must we all accept such stringent measures as the Society has apparently taken? And yet even the Society is clearly hypocritical in this belief, as their own secret agents switch between bodies freely in order to accomplish their objectives. Clearly they have decided some objectives outweigh the general cause of avoiding body transfers – so again, where is the line of how to live a moral life, pursuing a better future while accepting you cannot entirely reject the world in which you live?
“I wish the Society’s goal would come true,” sobs Takehiko. “I’ve been working hard towards that every day! Isn’t the goal of the Society to make everyone happy? Is my sister not allowed to live?” Takehiko’s words speak to a general truth of rebellion against an all-encompassing social order: the fact is, we simply cannot live on righteousness alone. Life must first in some way be worth living in order to inspire our spirits, to raise our strength as we strive for a better future. We have to make concessions to everyday happiness, if only to keep us from falling into despair. And if that means accepting some degree of immediate complicity in an unjust society’s propagation, then we must forgive ourselves that failing, or risk abandoning first the lust for life that drives us, and consequently the hope of ever toppling our true enemies.
Lord Dada does not see the wisdom in such concessions. “Discipline,” he preaches. “Bundle them tight or they quickly fall apart.” Rather than creating a revolution based in moral and intellectual allegiance to the cause of freedom, Dada has instead created a religious cult, where fervor and unity are their own self-perpetuating purpose. Even Dada’s loyal lieutenant Popo seems horrified by Takehiko’s remorseless execution, as the “One Mind Society” reveals its true values. Not just “one mind per body,” but “of one mind” – a culture where everyone adopts precisely the same obsequious mindset. Can only the blind loyalty of religion push back against the hedonistic amorality of this world?
With this crack established in Popo’s dedication to the cause, his resolve is further weakened by a visitor: a broken-down robot, come to bring him his favorite childhood snack. The guards claim this is Popo’s mother, to which he rages “my mother is already dead!” Just as Neyro was forced to adopt hands that cannot hold in order to fulfill Dada’s ambitions, so must Popo abandon all that is kind and worthwhile in our nature in order to become an instrument of revenge. But we simply cannot live thus; if we are not hope and love and earnest sentiment, we are nothing, simply machines. Popo is not a machine; in the wake of his grand display, he rushes back out into the rain, cradling his mother’s gift. Though his body may be borrowed and his will bound to Dada, his soul is his own.
Even Dada is not so austere and high-minded as he might seem. As the paths of Warp and Dada converge, we learn the truth of Warp’s nature: that he is simply one of many, a vast assembly line of potential god-kings, most of them without the power to truly rule this world. The Warp that reigns in heaven is an imposter, lacking the command crest of the true body – and the Dada that rules in hell is just as false, another would-be Warp hoping to claim the throne. Amidst this maelstrom of deception and desperate striving, all that holds fast are the connections Popo has wrought, the kindness and dreams shared by his childhood companions. With his mother’s chip in hand and true allies at his side, Popo rises to the king’s pulpit, the summit of his technology and power. This world has stagnated, generations of kings claiming rule over a society that promises only endless repetition. All things must die eventually; if a new world is to be born, Warp’s kingdom must be destroyed.
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