The first volume of Phoenix offered a bleak portrayal of human nature, emphasizing how we are fundamentally little different from the ants and the beasts, and how our superstitious clamoring for eternal life is ultimately a self-destructive fool’s errand. Though individuals were occasionally able to rise above the small-minded perspectives and fanatical loyalties that defined them, the overall portrait of humanity was a grim one, a detailing of a species too preoccupied with personal glory to even achieve the philosophical unity with nature of animals. The only balm against this scorching condemnation was the assurance that at the very least, the events taking place were far, far before our time, a reflection of a less civilized era of humanity.
Category Archives: Essay
Phoenix – Volume 1
I’ll admit I know embarrassingly little about Tezuka’s life and work, beyond the obvious impact he had as both one of the pioneers of manga and the originator of TV animation. There was short-form anime before Tezuka, but it was the cutthroat bargain he struck in terms of “limited animation” that allowed anime to be in any way financially viable as a weekly television medium. And to be honest, his bargain was itself a pretty loose interpretation of “financially viable,” a labor-heavy yet nonetheless bare-bones adaptive method that still has repercussions in how animators are criminally underpaid today.
Twenty Years Later
Twenty Years Later is the story of João Pedro Teixeira, a leader of Brazil’s rural Peasant Leagues who achieved some notoriety in the early 1960s. Teixeira was vying for more equitable conditions for his town of Sabe’s workers, who were being heinously exploited by the local landowners. Forced to produce cash crops for export instead of self-sustaining food, and constrained within a situation where both their jobs and homes were owned by local barons, Teixeira’s neighbors had no recourse but to come together, using the title of “Peasant League” to avoid the fraught term “union.” This semantic defense did not protect them; Teixeira was murdered on the side of the road while returning his son’s library books, and his league died with him.
Goodnight, Punpun – Volume 3
Goodnight Punpun’s third volume begins and ends in resignation. Its front cover largely defines the drama to come: Punpun lost in a bustling crowd, just one (admittedly bird-like) face among many. In elementary school, Punpun marveled at the infinite wonder of the universe, thinking there might be a destined place for him out among the stars. In middle school, he grappled with a hyper-awareness of his own feelings, lost in the sordid anxiety of first self-consciousness. He was lonely, but he was distinct. Now he doesn’t feel like anyone at all.
Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 17
Rather than referring to some psychoanalytical concept or opaque descriptor of the drama to come, Neon Genesis Evangelion’s seventeenth episode is named, quite simply, “Fourth Child.” It is a name that refers to NERV’s conceptually vague yet tonally specific designations for the Eva pilots – Rei is the first child, Asuka the second, and Shinji the third, implying a fourth pilot has finally been secured. Like the use of “angel” as the designation for humanity’s enemies, explicitly referring to the pilots as children carries a certain implication; it frames their battles as something like a meeting of innocents, the curious yet inherently destructive angels reaching out towards the untested, unmolded fruit of humanity. As the previous episode revealed, it is unclear if these angels even mean direct harm to their opponents, or if they simply lack a vector for expressing their intent. If true, they are little different from Shinji himself, who has so much difficulty finding a common language even with his fellow human beings.
A Pale Mirror: Maborosi
Hirokazu Kore-eda makes somber, majestic films about quietly unhappy people, people whose lives didn’t amount to everything they might have hoped, but who still hold a candle for tomorrow. You can chart a direct line from his work back to the gorgeous films of Yasujiro Ozu; like Ozu, Kore-eda understands that the substance of our lives is captured not in the grand acts of defiance or reinvention, but in the countless, frequently indistinct moments between, as well as the spaces in which we spend these moments. I imagine they find a sort of redemption in venerating these segues and stillnesses; for the lonely and longing and perpetually noncommittal, the beauty both these directors find in our everyday interactions is a profound comfort.
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.
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.
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.
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.