Note: This article is also available at Ideas Without End HERE

There is an ongoing tension by this point in Eureka Seven between the desire for normality – and the concessions that must be made to make this happen – and the repercussions of the traumas that the cast have encountered. Too much has changed for there to be any hope of the life that anyone initially wanted; Holland cannot have the life with Talho and Eureka he desired now Renton has entered the scene, Renton will not get his naïve dream of a fun life spent with sportsmen and rebels. How this has manifested is in an increased sense of responsibility, shown perhaps most clearly in Talho’s change of image. Her more modest outfit and short hair is a simple visual cue of “seriousness” – she is not the casual, figure that she was before but instead a mature adult.

Yet the initial emphasis of episode 31 is not on the Gekko’s crew, stationed as they are in a remote laboratory complex; it is on the Federation’s “sages”, their apparent government who made the unpopular decision to give Dewey power and now apparently regret it. His plan is made a little clearer – it centres on the “Ageha” squadron alluded to in the previous episode by the scientists ordered to construct experimental missiles for it. Yet the other mystery introduced in this scene is by far the more interesting one; the woman introduced is on a space station, looking down upon the planet below. Space travel is not an alien concept in Eureka Seven; much earlier in the series, the Gekko entered orbit to travel quickly across-country – yet the existence of what seems to be a completely habitable space city and space elevator is quite new and something not previously even addressed. Back on Earth, Koda (the woman on the space station) is presented as clearly someone of great importance; a vast honour guard has been assembled for her arrival. This provides a clue to the nature of the Earth government that strengthens the sense that it is fractured and losing control; the previous depictions of its reach suggested it was a military dictatorship with an effective secret police force engaged in action to suppress religious groups – yet Sage Koda’s arrival is met with almost religious ceremony and she is as much spiritual leader as politician. The war on the Voderak sect that has defined early conflicts seems to be a difference of faith, not an attempt to suppress religion as a concept.

When the story subsequently returns to the Gekko crew, the full impact of Talho’s changed appearance is becoming known; Michael provides a cynical view that she “realised her real age” and while he is rightly criticised for his lack of tact it provides a plain and explicit reminder to the audience of what Talho’s motivations were; while it is not quite so simple as her “acting her age” she is using it as a chance for a fresh start and to show her intent to change as a person. Her conversation with Holland, where he explains how unfamiliar she does seem and how this is natural since it encompasses both a change in behaviour and a change in appearance, seems to even bring out a change in him – he questions her decision to tell Renton the truth about Eureka. That scene seemed to be Talho living up to Holland’s legacy in his absence, yet Holland is concerned it might have long-term effects on morale. That this is juxtaposed with Renton and Eureka continuing to get along does suggest that for all Talho and Holland think they know what the right thing to do is, the truth may be far less dramatic than they fear and they are overreacting. Episode 30 showed a development of the friendship between Renton and Eureka born from greater understanding – and episode 31 has this manifest in a moment of accidental intimacy that evokes (coincidentally) the last time space travel was shown in the series. In that past episode, Renton and Eureka ended up physically close by accident and Renton reacted in a way which showed both his immaturity and awkwardness; in this episode, the same thing happens and crucially his response is no different.

Here it is worth considering how Eureka Seven uses accidental intimacy within its story. Renton’s unfamiliarity around women and naivete is an ongoing focus of the core plot-thread of his progress toward maturity; learning appropriate behaviour and coming to terms with social norms within an adult society is a vital part of a coming-of-age story. His relationship with Eureka has been a difficult one in part due to her complex history but predominantly due to his utter inability to comprehend what is appropriate or acceptable. By this point, though, although he is clearly still childish in his response to anything that could be perceived as a moment of human contact and understanding, he is nevertheless “better” as a character; Eureka trusts him in a way she did not previously and he is able to understand what she means. The accidental contact gives way to a genuine embrace in a charmingly awkward scene that reminds the viewer that although Eureka may be a Coralian, and she may have once been a child-soldier, she is still possessed of humanity and it is this which makes her relatable. Similarly, for all Renton’s social inadequacies, he is beginning to understand what the right thing to do is; this has been shown first in his taking a stand and fighting his corner among the Gekko’s crew, and now in his response to Eureka’s need for support. The scene begins with Renton remaining apparently the same as he always has been but, as it progresses, continues the theme of sudden change and epiphany; only now can Eureka really be open about her feelings not only for Renton but about her past. The big changes that the characters are undergoing are moves towards greater openness and honesty, with the intent of putting behind them the confusion and mistrust that invited past conflict. The love story of Eureka Seven is thus as much a story of coming to terms with the flaws of others and accepting them for what they are as anything else.

Yet the culmination of the scene – the completion of the move from awkward adolescent accidental contact to genuine love in the form of a kiss – is interrupted by Eureka having a premonition about the Nirvash. It turns out the machine is acting uncontrollably, rejecting the repairs being done to it. The scientists claim their aim is simply to repair the Nirvash, not upgrade it, while Eureka claims this is what is causing the problems – as the explanatory video in the previous episode showed the machine is sentient and evolves over time and one such evolution is happening now. Past changes in the Nirvash have resulted from the progression of Renton and Eureka’s relationship and here an outsider is trying to interfere with the process. The result is a complete reworking, bringing the story in a new direction still and with it the eccentric figure of Dr Egan. The gross, childlike Egan brings with him new revelations about the setting; he used to be the husband of the ship’s doctor Misha, and he knows Eureka. Yet the biggest surprise is when he claims that the planet on which the story is set, for all its strange similarities with Earth, is in fact not Earth. This has never been made wholly clear previously; the strange landscapes previously assumed to just be results of various natural disasters are in fact alien landscapes. Notably, Egan’s laboratory is inside an abandoned botanical garden and parallels with William Baxter, who lived in his remote farm, are apparent. Isolation and unity with nature are again shown to be condusive to radical thought that rejects what is known; Egan turns the viewers’ (and the other characters’) understanding of Eureka upside-down by claiming she might be a messenger from a nonhuman intelligence; it has been known she is a Coralian, but what implications this may have have been downplayed until now.

Here it is worth noting the use of real-world names in Eureka Seven; it is a series heavy with allusion and references to computing, dance music and extreme sports and this has been clear from the start with references to the “Second Summer of Love” and even the names of the war-machines used (LFOs, the 808 and so on all being references to the theme of electronic music). Many of these are simple references, such as the Gekko’s electronics staff being called Woz and Jobs (references to pioneers of computing) or the pun inherent in Ray and Charles’ names. Yet Dr Greg Egan, the radical expert in extra-terrestrial and nonhuman intelligence, is a character whose referential name is possibly more important. The living author Greg Egan (1961-) is renowned for his works’ focus on transhumanism, rational thought and radical imagined science and his fictitious namesake in Eureka Seven is portrayed as a radical scientist with theories about nonhuman entities that defy received wisdom – both respectively renowned for their reclusiveness.

What the meeting with Egan reveals is a theory that, while it seems initially radical and absurd, holds with the contextual clues the series has provided; beginning with the belief that the corals are sentient and the Coralians (Eureka included) are their way of monitoring humanity, the next logical step is the belief that eventually humanity will be judged based on what the Coralians have seen. While Egan’s theory is limited in scope, it provides a new way of considering the past phenomena surrounding the Nirvash; if Eureka is an observer or emissary from an alien species, and the Nirvash has some kind of symbiotic relationship based on her own friendships and emotions, then how she is treated – and how her opinions of humanity are shaped – may in time affect the Coralians’ response. This interpretation is then again reconsidered as the Nirvash’s new form reflecting Eureka’s own innate desires; Egan claims the upgrade it builds towards is an aircraft form to reflect Eureka’s desire to “fly.”

This first half of episode 31 of Eureka Seven has significantly advanced the main plot via a series of character vignettes; much has been learned about the Nirvash both explicity via Egan’s exposition and implicitly from how that has informed the audience’s understanding of what they have already seen. Egan himself is clearly a driving force of the story, and sits within it both as a parallel to William Baxter (as the radical, almost-spiritual voice that rejects what is “known” for more interesting possibilities) but also as a contrasting approach (in that rather than accepting faith and forebearance as a route to contentment he chases knowledge and new horizons).

Woo!

& thus I unexpectedly embarked upon a multi-post journey through the volumes of Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story.  If you are unfamiliar with the overall gist, here it is: 19th century clan in central Asia sends girl (Amir) to wed boy (Karluk) from another clan in another town.  Amir is eight years Karluk’s senior, which they both discover the day of their wedding.  Life ensues.

I am so happy that I picked this up.  I looked at the cover (“Hey, cool! Wonder if I could make that dress…”), read the description (“Oooo, struggles with identity!”), & then proceeded to lose myself in the awesomeness (YURTS!)

So, let’s take a look at our primary character of the manga, Amir, & her relationship to her new husband & family.

Patterns, patterns everywhere…

Amir is our twenty-year-old bride.  Her upbringing & ways from the Halgal family are similar yet not quite in sync with the Eihon family, the family she has married into.  This is evident in her continuing to wear her own traditional clothes–clothes that mark her out as different from both her new family as well as for the reader–in addition to her actions.  For one, the patterns of her fabric are dissimilar to those around her.  The lines & geometry don’t quite match up to the patterns around her, & as far as I can tell, she is the only adult female in this town who has some of her hair visible.  She has a bow that came as part of her dowry, & she is fully trained & capable of using it.  Overall, she’s pretty awesome.  Some of her actions are seen as “scandalous” by others, but really, while her new family comments on & informs her of their own ways, they never seem purposefully to give her a sense of wrongness, nor do they belittle her for her differences.

Of all the things she could possibly change, though, the one thing her new family picks up on is the one thing that no one can change:  how old she is in comparison to her new husband, Karluk.  & while to people in their culture & livelihood, age is very much an indication of how many children a woman can bear, there is also sense of whether or not Karluk is capable of producing children yet.  At twelve years of age, it is Karluk who seems too young for marriage.  We could even question whether or not he has begun puberty (we can probably assume he has at least begun the transition to adulthood, but we aren’t entirely sure).  Amir slowly tries to introduce him to the world of sex, naked intimacy, & the comforts it can bring, a world that she seems to clearly want, expect, & be comfortable with, but Karluk is the one who appears to be not quite ready, either physically or emotionally.  This seems to be something the family didn’t quite anticipate.

But mostly, for the first volume, I want to focus on time.

In the span of the first volume, a couple months seem to pass.  But we don’t get any of that from the dialogue; it comes from the characters’ work & the art itself.  Since this is set in the 19th century, we can expect that the business of living took up most of a person’s time.  We see the Eihon family, their relatives, other townspeople tending & herding animals (SQUEE LAMBS), spinning fiber, making fabric, making clothes, leather-working, hunting, preparing food, carving wood…the list goes on.  Mori doesn’t always draw attention to how long all of these things take; early in the manga, Amir makes Karluk a long vest out of rabbit fur & the cloth Karluk’s mother had given to her as a wedding gift.  We see only a few panels of Amir working on the garment late at night, as she wants it to be a surprise–dreamy, slightly erotic, elfin images that Karluk sees when he is half-awake.  Even though we get only one page of these night images, this vest must take weeks, from tanning the hide, cutting the fabric down, to hand-sewing it all, & even then Amir is able to work on it for a only few hours each night.  But for the reader, this is still the first chapter, the chapter that begins with their wedding day when they first meet.  This is jarring for me (in good ways) for two reasons: one, most of the fiction I’ve been reading lately has been intensely focused on a couple of days or weeks through the entire piece; & two, some of the activities in A Bride’s Story are given not just multiple panels in succession, but multiple successive pages.

Mori gives particular focus here to hunting & wood-carving.  The hunting scenes naturally create a tension of predator stalking or chasing prey, & the scenes are given pages of opportunity to build & fulfill that tension.  Not only do they remind the reader of the time & effort required for such a task, but they further root the reader in the fluidity, movement, & location of this world–unbroken mountain chains & grassland valleys  don’t just populate the background; they are at the forefront of defining how these people live.  A similar feeling is evoked by the scenes of an elderly townsman carving timber for houses.  When I reached these panels & pages, though, I realized I was simply reading too fast.  I forced myself to slow down, which, honestly, is a little difficult for me.  I’m used to processing text & information in an effort to reach peak efficiency, to find a level where maximum absorption, memory, & feedback meet.  But it was this double-page spread that really made me stop & stare for several minutes.

Look at it all.

I had a similar feeling when I toured a museum in China that focused on architecture, as well as the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian.  There is, for one, the sheer amount of time people spent preparing, carving, &/or painting these materials.  Entire lives & enterprises were devoted to these kinds of things.  & more importantly, to me at least, is that these things are worth doing.  Sure, people could have rough-hewn timber for their houses & buildings.  We could have amorphous, one-color cloth for clothes, something that seems relatively common in futuristic B-movies.  But creating new structure, new patterns, new lines out of fiber or out of wood is something that makes us human.  Well, maybe not “makes us human” so much as how we connect to & define our humanity.  Perhaps, rather, how we find & discover our humanity.

I think this is what Mori wants us to do, or at least, what the manga makes me want to do.  Stop.  Slow down.  Examine every bit of the lines, shapes, patterns of the wood, the clothes, the life of these people, of our own selves & the people we are connected to.  While I’m not really one to advocate “We should return to the olden days!!” *pounds tv tray with fist*, I find myself coming to an ever-deepening appreciation for the artistry & movement of these worlds.  I freely admit that it’s possibly a highly romanticized or perhaps overly humanistic ideal, but at any rate, I feel that attachment to A Bride’s Story.

For further reading on life-slices & the building of worlds:  recent posts by Cuchlann & Pontifus.

But alas, he is not the only one. As much as we try to deny it, the possibility of an alternate Universe, along with its alternate version of humanity, is presented to us. We are faced in the dilemma that we may not be who we think we are, that we may even be a byproduct of the aforementioned alternate reality.

But we are a proud civilization who takes pride in our own achievements and culture, regardless if we are connected or not by the multiverses. And thus, a solution is proposed:

Little did thekittymeister know that by putting a bow on The Beard, she has doomed every human male in the world to be transformed into little girls, who in turn will be recruited by an intergalactic agent hell-bent in preventing the Heat Death of the Universe.

From what I understand Fionna and Cake were pretty popular. They were gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake, the main characters of Adventure Time. They appear in one episode (so far as I know), and then got their own comic, written by the person who originally created the gender-swapped duo. Of course, everyone else in the show is gender-swapped as well, and mostly everything is the same. Cake is a cat, not a dog, because I guess they’re girly? But yeah, most everything’s the same. With a few exceptions.

I find it interesting that in the version where the main character’s a lady and her first love interest is a boy – Prince Gumball – Gumball seems sort of interested. A little more than present-age Princess Bubblegum ever has. I dunno if that’s because the original writer likes the pairing, if it’s ok socially for a boy to be interested in someone a little younger than him, if girls mature faster than boys so they’re “on the same level,” or what. I just notice that it changes a lot about the stories to have a relationship that could work that isn’t beset with the risk of major burn damage over a significant portion of the main character’s body (I’m talking about Flame Princess).

But, you know, there was a reason I decided to write about these comics. It has to do with that… they’re comics…

Have you seen the original episode? I hope if you’re this far in you have, because the episode’s punchline is fantastic and I’m about to spoil it all up in here. Yo. Basically Fionna and Cake are fan comics. Drawn by the Ice King. And he makes Finn and Jake read them when he imprisons them. So the entire episode is a shitty comic drawn by a shitty person and the heroes are forced to read them – forced to read about themselves, but as girls. And every girl in the comic ends by talking about how amazing and sexy the Ice King is – the same Ice King who wrote the comic but does not appear in it, save his gender-swapped version.

So what the hell just happened? Well, first, the Ice King wrote sorta slash fiction, in that girl-Finn is in love with the Ice King. And he slashed himself with his antagonist, which is, you know, what lots of slash fiction writers like to do. But then the comic happened. It was originally a comic, inside a cartoon, and there it was written by the Ice King. Now it’s a comic outside the cartoon you can read, but that perceptual layer is still there. Fionna and Cake are perpetually comic book characters, but now they are in your hands rather than Finn and Jake’s.

So what? Fair question. If you’re reading the comic you’re a fan of the characters (the writing’s ok, but it’s not exactly so amazing that it’ll draw in readers who aren’t already fans). So, like the characters in the cartoon, you like the characters you saw in the cartoon in the comic. Like the characters in the cartoon, you are reading the comic physically the same way, consuming the stories of these characters in the same way. I could make a case for a kind of postmodern shitstorm wherein you are now a cartoon, but that’s less interesting to me than what I’m trying to get at here: you’re consuming the Ice King’s work.

You have become a fan of something dreamt up by the villain of the piece, something that was originally creepy as fuck in the context of that end-of-episode punchline.
Obviously the writer has run with the idea, it is its own thing now. But sometimes as I read the comic this idea intrudes on me, the reminder that this was a thing already, that it existed and was frightening and weird, and now I’m enjoying it just like the dude I think is frightening and weird. It’s like the comic has become an artifact from another world, a fictional world (the sometimes impressionistic art touches, like the dialogue balloons, help with this feeling). It is also as though the space in which I read is blurring around me as I do so. I’ll be honest, I’m pretty picky with monthly comic titles – it gets expensive quickly to get a lot of comics every month – and if it weren’t for this feeling I get I probably wouldn’t keep reading the comic.

This whole thing is exacerbated by stuff like the sweater issue, wherein Fionna’s sweaters are stolen, and the one where Gumball makes an amazing magic sword wand and Fionna’s biggest concern is that she was excluded from guy’s night. This stuff is stories from the depths of the in-between, that world that explores the side stories that never get told in the main plot because they’re too distracting. Normally, now, that stuff is reserved for fanfiction, but this comic gives the writer an opportunity to do some cool stories that couldn’t really ever be episodes.

Oh, and Lumpy Space Prince steals the wand sword and looks like a character from an old manga. That shit is weird.

OK, characters die in video games. Not all the time, but, you know, often enough. The Metal Gear games are littered with the body parts of the slain; Buzz-Buzz doesn’t make it through the introduction of Earthbound; and an entire Garden full of people die in Final Fantasy 8. But really what I mean is the death of characters you play in the game. If there’s only one player character that’s something different as well. End of game, character dies, well, ok. But mid-game, a party full of characters, what if one of them dies?

The most famous example, I suppose, is still Final Fantasy 7 and the death of Aeris Gainsborough. She’s the love interest for Cloud, at least sort of (the game hints that Aeris is just interested because she misses Zack, and Cloud feels responsible for her since he’s guilty over Zack’s death, but never mind). In a cut scene we witness Sephiroth appear from nowhere and kill Aeris. She was a valuable party member, with the best healing and some of the best limit breaks; she was integral to the plot and our understanding of the risks to the planet; she was painfully sweet in a terrible situation (she’s an example of the hopeful flower seller girl on the streets).

Which one of those things sticks out to you? To me it’s the information about her stats. The death of a video game character in a well-crafted narrative accomplishes all the things that a character death in a movie or a comic book does – but it also deprives the player of resources. If you used Aeris a lot in your party your entire game will be different. Every single second will be marked by the death of your friend and companion, because you were relying on her to be there. TV shows actually can get close to this, as well as very long novel or short story sequences, but only in that we come to rely on the character to be there for something else – their sense of humor, maybe. In extreme cases maybe they affect the narration itself and their loss changes the way we read. But in a game you are interacting with the world through these characters, and so the loss is one to you directly. You lost one of your ways into the world.

So I mentioned Mass Effect. If you haven’t played or read about it, here’s the deal: in one of the last missions you have to detonate a jury-rigged nuclear device to destroy a research installation and work with a team of Salarian spec-ops soldiers to get it in place. They assault the front gates of the installation and you lead your team in the back.

So you need to coordinate. Before you leave you are forced to send one of your crew members with the Salarians. They are unavailable in the mission and you will hear them on the radio as you go. It has to be either Ashley Williams or Kaidan Alenko. These are both choices for lover depending on how you play the game – they’re both hetero, for one, so you can only get with Kaidan if you’re a lady character. Ashley is a military brat, looking to make good because her family’s name was disgraced during the war between humans and Turians. Kaidan was experimented on as a youth to bring out his biotic (psychic / telekinetic / something something mass fields) powers. They’re both career soldiers – which sets them apart from the other characters in your “party.” There’s an archaeologist, a cop, a mercenary, and an engineer, but no other soldiers (interestingly, all the soldiers are human, and all the other “classes” are aliens, but let’s leave that for another post).

OK, I guess this is the point where I go through my Shepard’s choices, right, like in any Mass Effect post? I accidentally flirted with Ashley enough to make her mad when I started dating the archeologist, so I was invested in her character more than one might be. Kaidan seemed boring as hell – they improve that later. I guess that’s the reveal, right? I sent Ashley to her death.

Here’s what went down and how it plays out: I sent Kaidan with the assault team, thinking that would get him killed. It was not in combat, but in a camp, and the cold logic of playing a game, being entertained, dictated that I keep the more interesting character. But whoever you take with you volunteers to babysit the bomb once you get it in place. And eventually both of them are under heavy fire, so bad you have to go save them. You can’t save both.

I actually went to save Ashley, but died in the attempt. In a bid to explore a bit I saved Kaidan the second time but didn’t die in the big fight. So, actually accidentally, I let Ashley die. Oops?

So there are lots of narrative-related things that went through my mind, of course. But I was also forced, as both the commander of this military endeavor and the player of the game, to re-assess my team’s strength. Kaidan isn’t very good with guns but has strong biotics – and is entirely matched by another character, at least the way I played. Ashley was actually the only dedicated gun-user on the team. I lost my firepower, basically. And I considered that right after she died.

Which means – just like an actual military commander – I experienced both loss and tactical thinking at once. I was forced to think of how to play my game without the big gun as I was mourning the loss of a character. And remember, I knew about the decision going in, but messed up and actually saved the person I meant to leave behind (as Mass Effect does, this had more repercussions in the later games than simply which one survived – specifically, since I saved Kaidan I saved the spec-ops team, who helped me in the last game).

Well, what the hell, you might ask? That post I linked to above is about world-building. This one is about character building – specifically, yours. Sure, both Final Fantasy 7 and Mass Effect develop the main character through traditional narrative and visual means. Cloud has scenes where he’s angry, broody, what have you; Shepard gives speeches, regrets things alone in his room, so on. But the decisions the game forces the player to make further characterizes these people – anyone capable of leading such a group must be able to make such decisions. To play that character, you make that decision. And live with what it does to your team as well as your own psyche (all those feels).

Note: This Article is Also Available at Ideas Without End HERE

Episode 30 of Eureka Seven seems to be, after so much seriousness and trauma, a return to the endearing oddness and youthful exuberance of the now long-distant first arc. It begins – as, in fact, several such early episodes did – with Renton and other members of the Gekko’s crew on some unspecified mission, completing it in a charmingly amateurish way as they struggle with a large bag of some sort. Indeed, this quite now uncommon style of episode is highlighted as unusual by Renton himself, who talks about how life has returned to normal in a way that he has not seen for some time.

The drama of Eureka being revealed as a Coralian has had surprisingly little effect on Renton according to this introductory monologue; he still sees her as “just a girl,” remembering, of all things, a speech from Holland in the past. That this speech then glosses over a plan to escape the Gekko again – this time taking Eureka – as something he ultimately did not do is then interesting. Eureka Seven continually circles around, in narrative terms, Renton’s growing up – and in doing so raises questions of what maturity actually is, and how adults need to compromise yet also be decisive. That Renton has set aside impulsiveness – after an entire plot arc focused on the consequences of his prior disappearance – and finally set his heart on a duty of protecting and caring for Eureka as she needs him is used to depict a kind of compromise in his character between his memories of Ray and Charles and his relationship with Holland. As this scene concludes with him finally deciding to set the record straight with Holland and put an end to their conflict, it then moves onto more revelations – he meets Talho instead, and more truths of the past are revealed. She is revealing her insecurities; trying to reconcile her fallibility with her and Holland’s memories of Renton’s sister. Again it is a recurring theme in Eureka Seven that reconciliation and true honesty is associated always with the aftermath of a conflict; its setting seems reliant on a number of almost aphoristic associations. Firstly that parental intimacy is to be held under suspicion (Dewey’s perverse relationship with Dominic and Anemone, Ray and Charles’ use of Renton as a tool to attack Holland and Holland’s own cruelty mistakenly considered to be paternal discipline), and now that conflict and confrontation in time leads to true reconciliation.

The episode proceeds into a kind of combination of the past easygoing stuff with the later episodes’ drama. In order to get the Nirvash repaired, the Gekko is landing at a military facility where it was first activated, and its crew are gathering weapons and a plan to take hostages. Renton maintains there is no need for violence, and is reminded the weapons are only a precaution, but crucially here he is being informed about the plan and given a voice. Previously, his being kept ignorant has led to him acting childishly and irrationally and now – even though the others do not entirely agree with his views – he is being kept informed. With this setup section of the episode so redolent of past episodes – yet crucially now informed by the changes to all the characters in this time – the idea that Eureka Seven apparently reflects on its own narrative progress as the series progresses is strengthened. Similar situations recur for the Gekko’s crew as would seem logical when considering the strictly regulated and confined life they live, and so the joy of the series is in seeing how the characters change in approach to these situations.

Even when Holland assumes control of the mission (bringing out Talho’s protective side again – as has been emphasised throughout his period of recovery) Renton is kept in the loop about what is happening, a key part of the team not a hanger-on. His impulsiveness, in fact, becomes a part of the mission’s progress, and not a destructive one as previously. As the scientists hesitate to help the defector and thief Holland, Renton and Eureka appeal to their sense of scientific duty – and this wins out over their duty to Dewey. This in itself is the sort of slight worldbuilding detail that is so commonplace in the series; there have been hints throughout the series that the Federation’s grip on the Earth is not as strong as it seems (perhaps most clearly shown in the William Baxter episode, where an outsider looks in on a world he left) and the fact that military scientists can be so easily swayed to oppose their officers strengthens the idea that Dewey’s command is not universally liked. As things are now going to plan, there is a good-naturedness to events that is if anything reminiscent of the short period on the Gekko where Renton came into his own – in Holland’s absence.

This pause in the ongoing conflicts – both personal and military – allows for retrospection and reminiscence, beginning with the revelation that this installation was the one where Eureka was raised when she was much younger. Almost serving as a crystallisation in Renton’s mind of Eureka’s non-human nature, that it now happens away from the arguments that defined the previous episode’s fraught conclusion and surrounded by welcoming strangers (most notably Sonia, Eureka’s guardian from her time at the base) allows for it to be more acceptable. Although the first of the two thematic cores of Eureka Seven seems applicable here – that Sonia’s friendliness must be tempered by acceptance that she represents the “enemy” – this episode is one focused around openness in all forms and so there is much more of a sense of sincerity in every character’s interactions. As Renton, Eureka and Sonia are united, the action returns to Talho and Holland; her relationship with him now is a kind of compromise between genuine affection and duty to the ship as its acting captain which is quite endearing. She has been an unsympathetic character much as Holland has at times, but while his actions are motivated by selfishness and a general failure as a person, hers are dedicated almost solely to him – and recapturing their past relationship. Here the ship’s doctor weighs in, pointing out that she still dresses and acts immaturely and that this may be a barrier to what she wants to achieve.

While Talho reflects in this way, and the Gekko’s junior crew muse over the nature of the scientists whose job it is to design the war machines that keep the Federation in power, the viewer is given more information about the setting’s progression; Dewey has the engineers designing new and ever-deadlier weapons for some unknown mission and the clues given to its nature – a bomb designed to penetrate the earth’s surface and detonate an immensely powerful warhead deep within formations of the scub coral that plagues the earth – suggest decisive and indiscriminate war. This episode is thus proceeding to carry on mirroring past plot developments – again the Gekko is isolated in a confined space while vital work is carried out, and its crew encounter strange new people and old adversaries. Yet while the Gekko’s repairs following the battle at the Coralian were in a period of confinement that contributed to breaking the crew apart, this installation – and the history Holland and Eureka have with it – seems to be a place for respite and coming closer together. Rather than refusing to co-operate, the characters are accepting their failings and working to resolve them – and the first half of the episode ends with Talho making the first physical change by cutting her hair.

The next sign that this is an arc focused around change comes when Sonia, Misha, Renton and Eureka survey the repairs in progress on the Nirvash, and notice how the machine itself is changing form to suggest potential upgrades. Sonia explains – confirming the viewer’s suspicions if any still remained – that the Nirvash is undeniably designed for two pilots and has been so through all its mutations. What follows is an expositional interlude about the history of the Nirvash, a film made by the scientists who originally worked on it presented in-universe to inform Renton but diegetically to inform the viewer of worldbuilding detail. All of the pieces of the narrative, kept discrete for thirty episodes, finally begin to come together; Eureka was found alongside the Nirvash and was integral to its development – Renton’s grandfather Axel helped build its equipment – and it was the model for all subsequent LFOs.

Yet not all the change in this episode is presented so positively. Maurice, the eldest of Eureka’s three adopted children, has become distant and is now associating more with the older crew members, while Talho’s metamorphosis has become complete and signified by her throwing away her old clothes and finally opening up to Eureka about her past. A third central theme is thus being suggested – that not only does conflict inherently breed openness, the decision to change and take greater control also does. Renton goes on to sort out his own uncertainties by asking for more information about his grandfather’s role in the Nirvash’s creation, and finds out that Axel Thurston used to be a military scientist but resigned after a disagreement. Yet before this can be reflected on for too long, the episode returns to its easygoing strangeness as the chief scientist throws a party for his staff apropos of apparently nothing. Thus, in this strange isolated world where the action is now confined, the characters all in various ways begin to change, cementing their development that has been plain to see so far.

I finally got the chance to see Wreck-It Ralph. For those who aren’t in the know, it’s Disney’s not-so-recent movie about the uncanny quest of the titular videogame character to redeem himself, with a (big) handful of destruction as a side dish. The thing is, I watched it under the pretense that it was a videogame geek’s wet dream, that it had a good cast, a good plethora of advertising schemes, and most importantly, a good story that pays homage to the videogame industry.

Boy, I never thought I’d be utterly mistaken.

The Disney Syndrome

As someone who has watched Disney films since childhood, I know this by heart: Disney likes to make adaptations with little to no back story, explanation, or story flow to justify some of the scenes in their animated family films. I’ve seen a lot of such movies; Toy Story, A Goofy Movie, and A Bug’s Life, just to name a few that I could still remember. The point is, you are directly and suddenly immersed in a world where things aren’t usually what they seem to be, and you are left to your own resources trying to understand what’s going on, or how it came to be that way. Any adult would find a decent explanation that would suffice the curiosity, but would you expect that on kids, who would nag their parents to watch cartoons mostly because they think it’s cool, fun, and awesome? Would you even expect parents to answer their children’s questions and not dismiss them by telling their kids to just watch the movie and leave it to their imagination?

The Game is a Workplace

Let’s take on Wreck-It Ralph‘s case using this mindset. We are, creatively speaking, spirited away into the inner workings of Litwak’s Arcade, where videogame characters are actual people. Really, electronic bits of code and information gaining sentience. There can explanations to that, aside from having them just magically come to life at night and make the story progress as planned. Maybe they have gaps of code derived from their programming that formed into their consciousness, or that they developed it after repeating the same program over and over for more than, say, thirty years or so. Plausible to a point, yes?

But then we see the environment that they live in, where videogames are seen not only as worlds, but also as workplaces. As a videogame character, you need to earn your keep in the arcade by doing your “job” in your corresponding game, or risk getting the arcade box that you call home unplugged, which results with you either being homeless, or deleted forever.

Um, okay, give me a minute. I need that part to sink in. Basically, you wake up, finding you’re doomed to do a job that only you can do, be it eating blinking dots to munch on ghosts, or living in a dump and wrecking 8-bit era crap, and that you need to do it for, like, forever, with no compensation other than your reputation and your supposed home? That just stinks.

Going Turbo

So our little anti-hero of sorts, Ralph, finally decides that he’s fed up from being treated like total shit. He jumps into another game in order to find a medal, seeing as it’s the only way to convince the folks in his game that he deserves better. This, known as the act of “going turbo”, it wasn’t well-received by the rest of his game’s cast, mainly because he’s needed as the bad guy in their game, that they’ll be considered out of order if he doesn’t come back to do his job, and that they instinctively need a guy they can bully because of his occupation, despite his colossal size.

Let’s highlight the words job and occupation on that last sentence. You have someone who “works” as the villain in your virtual workplace, and he only does it “professionally” because he needs to. End of the movie right there, for me. Why? Because it was emphasized, for more than once, that what Ralph is doing is a job, not an evil whim to pulverize things to itty bitty bits. It should’ve been understandable to most that anything that happens after that revelation is irrelevant. But no, the film goes through the trouble of making him go independently ballistic so he can prove to people his worth and making a big mess out of it, only for everyone to finally realize that the guy they’re scared from is just like anybody else if they took the “Bad Guy” label off.

Gameplay Mechanics

This beef, I had with the scene about Double Stripes. Double Stripes were introduced when our characters dove into the gameworld of Sugar Rush. A Double Stripe is a striped candy branch/tree/trunk/whathaveyou, only that it has two stripes and vanishes if you touch it. The film has two scenes that have Double Stripes on them. Plenty enough exposure for a plot device to be used and abused on story-relevant scene, yet you watch the rest of the film without seeing it again. Is it even used on the races? It would’ve been relevant if the game’s racers rode on a giant Double Stripe candy cane that suddenly goes poof into a giant pool of chocolate milkshake-ish quicksand, where they would sink, melt, and explode into sugar cubes and cheaply wrapped hard candy. Plain and simple, can work like awesome, totally unnecessary.

Code Safety

Another thing that had me stupefied is how the so-called “safety” of the characters are explained. If you look at the games from Ye Olde Golden Era of gaming such as Ralph’s game, there is little to no room for uncontrolled activity, and videogame characters’ actions are at their own discretion, thanks to their obsolete and strictly limited programming. But then you see Hero’s Duty, who have these monsters they call Cy-Bugs that even the program can’t control. It seemed that the more advanced the game is, the more volatile and exploitable the environment and nature of the characters were. By way of code safety, the Golden Era one-ups the advanced games of today by another point, but that’s a story for another time.

Reference Dropping

Too much of this. Way too much. You have characters from Street Fighter popping in and out like they have a lot more relevance and character population than any other game, to which in actual realization given their roster of playables, can actually be true. You have Sonic’s face plastered almost everywhere because Ralph stars on the former’s real world kart game. See Metal Gear Solid‘s infamous ! sign, see the growth mushroom from Super Mario, see Zangief’s briefs. Stahp, Disney, reference dropping stahp. Throwing references and putting notable characters on your posters to get film viewership is fine, but you used that card just too much.

In conclusion, this isn’t how you glorify videogaming, people. Wait, what? They’re planning part two, where they plan to explore the world of MMOGs, console games, and portables?

Seriously?

Well, actually, right, do you even know what the show’s about? That might be important information. OK, so there’s a girl with no parents named Yui who steals candy and food from people while being ditzy. She decides to join a school club now that she’s a high school freshman, because she’s done nothing with her life. Except maybe kill her parents? I’m not sure about that, but the clues are there. She’s pretty clearly psychologically damaged, and maybe that’s what did it. She has post-traumatic dreams of a blizzard sometimes, so maybe she had to eat her parents to survive a brutal snow slide or something. Regardless, as the show opens she can’t fend for  herself any longer, probably a reaction to taking the most extreme measures to survive earlier in life. Her little sister takes care of her now, rather than putting her in an institution of some kind.

She ends up joining the Light Music Club, because she thinks it will be easy. She envisions a room full of elementary schoolers, herself among them, playing castanets. The delusions are pretty bad, right from the beginning. She still sees herself as the innocent young child who had parents once, who didn’t do anything terrible to them and just played around with fake instruments all day. But no, to stay in the club she has to learn to play guitar.

The other club members are Ritsu, Mio, and Mugi. Mugi is a sociopath with no emotion or empathy of her own, who obsessively watches other people having fun, presumably to try to learn what fun is and how to do it. Mio is afraid of everything; the show hints it is because of crippling OCD. Ritsu seems remarkably balanced – energetic and forgetful, but generally ok. As the show continues, though, we learn she has a severe co-dependency issue, which is in fact obvious in hindsight in episode one, where she drags Mio into the Light Music Club by force. She can’t possibly go into a club alone.

So that’s the basic setup of the show. Yui tries to use music to get over her trauma but unknowingly creates a support group around her that, in turn, needs support. So everyone is perpetually stuck, unable to really support one another or themselves. It’s like Kafka in high school, a quagmire of emotional baggage weighing everyone down until they swim for themselves or drown.

The first few episodes are fascinating, as they explore Yui’s inability to focus on anything for very long, as concentration allows her bad memories more chances to take over. She constantly wanders from idea to idea and activity to activity. Her greatest focus in the first story arc is her guitar, which she finds at a store and can’t leave alone, despite its huge price tag. I tend to assume it reminds her of her father, especially given that later she pampers it, bringing it to the dinner table for a traditional family meal, nabe. She puts a bib on the guitar and feeds it, as well as sleeping with it sometimes when the nightmares are too much. But in the first episode in which it appears Yui stares, crouched down to protect herself, deaf to the activity around her and her new friends who try to take her to something more practical. So Yui shows herself, too, to have a problem with success, probably, again, stemming from the one time in which she excelled – her early survival. Certainly she doesn’t want to relive that, but it blocks her progress, as with the guitar. She doesn’t refuse to buy one, but instead sets a goal so unrealistic she simply can’t buy the guitar, and so is safe from success or failure. She floats, as she does with everything else.

Of course, her friends help her buy the guitar. Mugi shambles through a parody of socialized behavior, acting as though she haggles with the man behind the counter, knowing all the time her father owns the store and she can do what she wants. There’s another fine touch there, Mugi taking this opportunity to behave like someone else (in this case Ritsu), and in the process revealing that her sociopathy stems at least in part from distant parents to involved in their business to socialize their daughter properly. Mio insists on rules to help buy a guitar – it must be such-and-such a size, such-and-such a length and width, and she is worried that Yui buys a guitar that does not adhere to these standards – Mio’s own, obsessive standards – but of course she doesn’t know the significance of the guitar to Yui’s shattered mind.

I haven’t finished the second season yet, but I have seen the blackmail of a teacher, psychotic breaks concerning eyebrows turning into food – once again highlighting Yui’s difficulty with people becoming food, as her parents did – and the unhinged molestation of a younger girl in an attempt to satisfy the urges for sex that Yui’s body feels but her mind cannot understand. Just as she sublimates her desire for her father into a guitar, she sublimates her desire for physical contact into abuse.

If you enjoyed that, for whatever reason, who don’t you consider checking out my blog?

Note: This article is also available at Ideas Without End HERE

With the death of Ray Beams in episode 28, presented unglamorously and graphically, the second arc of Eureka Seven is over. The allusions to Mobile Suit Gundam that have become increasingly apparent in this section come to a head would appear to have established Holland’s behaviour as driven by a desire for closure with the past; not a perfect act of acceptance of his wrongdoing but instead a desire to drive forwards and move on.

Episode 29 seems to be set some time in the future from this, now in winter; the opening narration, mimicking Renton’s own internal monologue from the very first episode, reintroduces Dominic, Renton’s figurative “opposite number” in the parallel plots of Dewey’s crew and Holland’s. He talks about how the tectonic shifts (explained in a much more spiritual and unclear way in the William Baxter episode) are continuing to worsen and that the Federation – presented as villainous and oppressive in previous episodes – are now ineffectual. His musings on the importance of Renton, framed as they are with his visiting Renton’s father Adroc’s grave, reintroduce a storyline that has apparently been ignored for some time in the series’ focus on Holland – the questionable deeds and mystery surrounding Adroc Thurston, claimed to be a hero and saviour but now a very dubious legend. The episode’s title is Keep on Moving, yet the movement seems very introspective and retrograde. Dominic has returned to Bell Forest, Renton’s hometown last seen dozens of episodes ago before he joined the Gekkostate, and claims it is where the “revolution” began. Even so, the town is quite different to how Renton described it – it is now under full military control.

Dominic’s monologue continues; his journey to the town is apparently a personal one intended to learn more about Renton by retracing his steps – beginning with a return to Axel Thurston’s garage, Renton’s childhood home and the place where the series began. If anything this completion of a narrative circle – a move back to the beginning to look at events from a new perspective – is forward motion, at least for the audience. In the previous recapitulation episode, Dominic’s voice was used to provide the alternative, differently-informed interpretation of what had been seen and now this is combined with hindsight and a chance to reconsider known events long after they happened. Returning to old events like this is something that is possible in Eureka Seven thanks to its length, and presenting an episode from the viewpoint of an antagonist, even in part, is a move which better-informs the audience about the setting and plot in a series based around the unreliability of narrators and the harmful potential of secrecy.

Yet while Dominic’s story is based on revisiting the past and from that divining the future, Renton’s story continues to move forward; he is trying to make amends with Eureka and apologise for his absence. As he goes on, though, he begins revisiting the past, talking enthusiastically about his life on the Swan and the family routine that he had the opportunity to enjoy; the past here, too, cannot be properly moved away from. That the viewer’s depiction of Ray and Charles for most of their episodes was of a properly intimate and loving environment, such that it was made clear how they could entrap Renton, and it is this which makes it clear how moving on will be so difficult. It has been made clear throughout the series that Renton has nobody except Eureka on the Gekko to trust in – yet his giving in to grief and refusal to accept that he was betrayed in the end brings out her true feelings; she can understand that Holland’s actions are intended now to bring the two of them together – and this gives Renton what he needs to move on. He intends to use his good memories of the affection Ray and Charles showed him to shape his relationship with Eureka now it apparently has Holland’s blessing. This is a quite uncommon moment of intimacy between two characters who previously have had no capacity to be close or make each other understood and subtle as it is it shows how much the plot – and the relationships that make it up – have progressed.

As the story returns to Bell Forest, Dominic is reminded he does not fit in; the viewer knows his last meeting with Renton was as an enemy forced to co-operate to survive, but in order to keep his cover intact there is a charming scene where he is interrogated both by the children who led him to Axel and Renton’s grandfather himself, about the Gekkostate and Renton’s private life. Yet the scene is redefined; Dominic has come to Bell Forest not just to get answers but also to reassure Axel that his grandson is getting by. Again an almost familial scene plays out, accompanied by the musical motif that traditionally accompanies Renton’s domestic life, with Axel “accepting” Dominic as someone trustworthy and, in comparison to how he was depicted right back at the series’ start, seeming far more courteous and affectionate.

The musical theme carries over as the action returns to the Gekko, evoking yet being quite the opposite of the pervasive drone of Get it By Your Hands previously – here the music, a track entitled A Long Journey, is accompanying evidence of how everyone really is keeping on moving. Renton has already put his vow to carry on Charles’ legacy into action, cleaning the Gekko and launching himself into chores with a brand new diligence that quite shocks the crew and drives them into action themselves. His acceptance of the need to move on has transformed others by example – a kind of leadership that has been conspicuously absent from any proper authority figures on the ship.

That this scene – of the Gekko’s crew unified in following Renton’s example – is followed by a return to Dominic’s amusing encounter with Axel where acceptance has shifted into being found lacking provides an entertaining contrast; previously the series’ reliance on A- and B-plots within an episode has been used to build tension and contrast action with its consequences. Here the device simply shows how two distant, disparate groups are getting by, contributing to the most complete and relaxed release of dramatic tension yet. Yet another man’s entry on the scene brings the two plots closer together; he talks about Axel’s perfectionism in his work as a mechanic and says this desire to fix everything runs in the Thurston family. In some ways this simply punctuates and confirms what the Gekko-plot has demonstrated with Renton’s cleaning drive, but also for Dominic it raises the spectre of Adroc again.

Yet in time this unity and new co-operation is shattered by the audience being reminded of Holland, still recovering from his injuries. The Gekko has unified under Renton’s determination to move on, but Talho and Holland are unable to and it is perhaps because they are out of action that the ship is able to benefit from a new perspective. Earlier in the series it would have seemed impossible that Renton would be the “leader” of the Gekkostate, with them all indebted to him for his usefulness, but this episode has explained how this has happened – he feels he needs to give something back to the crew, and the work is also serving as a coping mechanism for himself. As a result, when Talho returns – now acting like Holland and using his own words to reassert the proper order on the ship, the military hierachy that the Gekkostate really is not the familial counterculture that Renton wants it to be – it is far more divisive than it perhaps would have been before. Renton’s ignorance is again higlighted as he admits he does not know why the Gekkostate exists, or why he should fight, and at that point this plot suddenly leapfrogs the B-plot of Dominic and Axel with the revelation that Adroc is in some way responsible for or linked to all the problems that have been established.

Talho explains Adroc Thurston was a scientist who claimed the world – and the tectonic formations known as Scub Coral – are all part of a massive Coralian, which is now explained to be a living being. When experiments on a smaller Coralian proved disastrous and the team mysteriously died, he was thus disgraced. As he continued his research regardless the result was proof of the theory that the Coralians are sentient – the child Eureka. Yet despite this, the Federation continue to try and destroy the Coralians with a new armed service, implied to be linked to Dewey – and the Gekkostate’s sole raison d’etre is to keep Eureka, the ambassador of the Coralians, out of their hands and in time prove Adroc right. Thus, in all his resistance to Holland’s behaviour and the Gekkostate, Renton has been actively working against his father’s wishes and here he really does keep on moving – he stands up for what he believes in over any duty. Yet the repercussions of this – the public “outing” of Eureka as not even human – has only caused problems. Previously Eureka’s failed confessions – misleadingly framed as love-confessions – have all apparently been attempts to admit her alien ancestry and now this has been blown wide open without her consent, all the two children can do is patch up the damage. It brings out even more strongly Renton’s new more caring side, as they vow to carry on regardless.

Dominic’s story continues in a far more hopeful way; Axel has fixed his motorbike and as they part he reveals some of his own character. He asks Dominic to continue to look out for Renton, and admits his doubts about Adroc’s reputation and despite their status arguably as enemies, or representatives of the two ideologies, they are above all friends. Yet this has affected Dominic quite differently – he feels he has failed in his mission, with no useful intelligence gathered and his behaviour quite unprofessional.

Yet the episode ends not wholly on a hopeful note; Holland has finally woken back up, Talho has in his stead wrecked the progress that Renton has begun throughout the ship, and Dominic is now doubting what he knows – and under surveillance by others from the Federation acting under Dewey. Episode 29 has certainly progressed the story and quite decisively begun a new arc, but whether or not the positive change will continue remains a mystery.

How was he wrong? Well, in “A Hastily Erected Shrine to Historiography in Hyouka” he claims the show isn’t a mystery, but a slice of life show. Whoops.

Now of course I’m fucking around. It is, to some extent, a slice of life show. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also a mystery.

(I should say at this point like Pontifus at the time I, too, haven’t actually finished the series. So don’t spoil anything in your comments past episode 17. Thanks.)

One would expect a mystery to have conundrums in it – Hyouka does. One would expect a mystery to have people detecting in it, and Hyouka does. I’m being obtuse, but you get the idea. Really, though, there is one thing that might make one think Hyouka isn’t a mystery – its own mystery. What is the big secret in Hyouka? It appears to be the name of the anthology book itself, but that ends startlingly quickly. It isn’t necessary, of course, for a serial mystery to have a single secret behind everything, but many often do. It’s fair to wonder what Hyouka’s is – and possibly even fair to wonder if the show is a mystery at all if the secret remains undetectable.

But, and you’ll love this, you will – Hyouka has a big damn secret, and it’s this: what drives mysteries themselves. Hyouka is a meta-narrative.

This, too, is unsurprising in itself. People in a mystery show talk about famous detectives and authors. Yes, obviously. But that’s metanarrative in the way pop culture jokes are – amusing and sometimes relevant, but at the end of the day simply nods, unless they go together with something else.

Let’s see if you think this is fair: the first arc of the show is the Classics Club detecting what happened in the history of their school and their own club. The second “arc” is really a collection of one-episode “mysteries” that demonstrate that everyone is getting used to Oreki doing his thing. The third arc is the next meaty one, in which the club is tricked into writing an ending, and discover the real explanation too late to help the author, who is curiously effaced from the narrative (something that backs up Pontifus’s claims about death of the author in this series). The fourth arc is about the cultural festival and the series of thefts that lead to a kind of riddle. As I said, I haven’t seen past that.

Well, what happens in each, to the characters at least? In the first everyone learns about one another, Oreki finds his skills are in demand but still believes they don’t mean anything. In the second that continues until it becomes a rhythm – in fact, the show takes advantage of the tropes and expectations of serial anime, appearing to relax into a pattern of small mysteries. The third arc violates expectations suddenly, whipping both the viewer and Oreki around a sudden turn – the show is not necessarily about Oreki solving everyone’s problems with his detective prowess, and his confidence in his skills is shaken to its foundation, just as he, and the viewer through the repetition of small mysteries Oreki solves, started to take it for granted. In the next arc everyone begins to get frustrated with the state of affairs, in different ways: Oreki wants to withdraw because his pride has been injured; Fukube wants to do what Oreki does and is frustrated Oreki doesn’t value his own skills; Ibara wants to be able to make sense of things and has her own small mystery that she solves like a Chandler or a Hammett hero, by bulling through and just asking things over and over; Chitanda gets tired of being the public interface of her group of misfits.

This is, if you will, the Empire Strikes Back of the Soul for these characters.

I haven’t talked about a bunch of stuff yet, just the anime. That’s weird, huh? OK, let’s do that.

AJtheFourth explained some of the mystery intertexts in “Notes on Hyouka as an Explanation of Detective Fiction.” That’s some good background. Pontifus’s other Hyouka post also explores some connections to old detective stories. But, for my purposes, AJ moved in the wrong direction and Pontifus went into particulars. I want to take a big view of things for a moment, show you the lay of the land. So here’s a short and incomplete history of the mystery genre. I promise it’s less boring than it sounds.

OK, first there’s non-fiction, actually. The serialized memoirs of Vidocq are the first mysteries in some histories of the genre; they’re the tales of a former criminal released from the Bastille to help the police in their detection. Yes, that really happened, though Vidocq appears to have exhausted what really happened and then began to just write fiction. That’s followed by Poe’s three Dupin stories (one of which is actually Poe claiming he can solve a real-life mystery to get readers and is unreadable – yes I’ve read it) and his tale “The Gold-Bug” which deals with a treasure map and cryptography. Poe also claimed he could solve any cryptogram sent to him, and solved some in his articles.

Skipping some in-between stuff we get to Sherlock Holmes, the Master himself, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is not the obsessive rationalist people think he is. Yes, he eschews most personal relationships and is generally only interested in puzzles, but he is also very patriotic and loyal; he once freaks out and can’t apprehend the criminal when Watson is shot. The police have to do it for him, though he led them there. Also, the famous bit where Watson says Holmes doesn’t know the Earth revolves around the Sun also includes a reference Holmes misses to Edmund Burke – in the next chapter Holmes, unprompted, quotes Burke. So not much to go on there. Holmes is more likely than not fucking with Watson, something readers know he’s fond of doing.

Now, here’s where I want to focus. People visualize the history of detective fiction as going from Poe to Holmes to Christie, which is a bad visualization. Two reasons why: one, it assumes mystery fiction is defined by Christie and that the Holmes stories are actually not good mysteries. Hyouka itself points to that debate when Fukube explains to Ibara, who has only read Holmes, that it’s not wrong to say the script writer was going to be naïve because she only read Holmes mysteries. This is actually not true, but I’ll try to show you why in a moment. The second reason that visualization is a bad idea is that it leaves out an entire realm of detective fiction: the noir detective as popularized by Hammett and Chandler (remember I mentioned them earlier?).

I suspect one of the reasons that happens is that Hammett and Chandler are American, and their writing was gritty, while British Christie’s writing was genteel and more upper-middle class (people believe the Holmes stories uphold the standards of the upper-middle class as well, but why, then, does he make fun of royalty to their faces and prefer the company of poor actors and disreputable people on the street?).

This is getting long.

There’s a big secret to mysteries. Arthur Conan Doyle appears to have known about it. Poe too. In a letter, Poe mentioned the reviews for his Dupin stories. He says he’s glad people liked them, but confused as to the specific reaction, that he was so clever for being able to work out the puzzles (something people actually said, yes). He said, in turn, that it was no trouble at all to work out puzzles he created. Doyle cited “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” as one of the best Holmes stories in his opinion, and like Christie he did value realism in stories – no bullshit answers or fake science or anything. Without spoiling the story, “Speckled Band” makes no fucking sense. The scholarly argument I think best deals with those two pieces of information is the claim that it is meta-narrative – that it shows to the reader that he or she does not care about the detection, but the detective. That is, we may all say it matters that mysteries follow all the rules, and give everyone all the clues, but that doesn’t matter unless you read them as puzzles and not stories. For people who like mysteries for what they offer as a genre, not a series of puzzles, the clues don’t matter, only watching the detective solve things matters. Effectively the detective is a wizard with one difference – the claim that the detective’s feats are possible in the real world / zero world. Christie et al play the game, but in the end even their fans come to the rules afterwards – if you don’t like Christie’s writing or characters, it doesn’t matter how well she followed the rules.

If you don’t like “watching” Poirot solve things, it doesn’t matter how good everything else is. Conversely, other things can be weird and it doesn’t matter because you got to see an excellent detective.

Now, remember that mention of Noir fiction I promised I’d get back to? They’re mysteries. In The Big Sleep Marlow tries to figure out who killed someone; in Red Harvest the unnamed narrator (who works for a fictional agency much like the Pinkertons) is meant to find out who’s holding power over a tycoon, starts to solve a murder, and then solves all the crimes in town and proceeds to entrap, blackmail, blow up, and threaten everyone, including cops, because he wants to get back at the town that possibly made him kill a woman in cold blood when he was passed out. If you’re like me, that sounds like a lot more fun than Poirot (not to say I don’t enjoy that too, I do). And in a way these stories have more to do with Holmes than Christie’s do. Holmes goes from place to place, looking at things, until he arrives at an answer. The reader is never given his clues. Same in noir detective fiction – in fact, often the detective knows the answer almost immediately, but plays everyone to find out why or because of loyalty (see The Big Sleep). Sometimes the answers don’t matter (see Red Harvest).

OK. Now. I told you that to tell you this: Hyouka is investigating exactly the same thing Doyle was when he wrote “Speckled Band.” What makes it enjoyable to watch someone solve things? Why are people drawn to folks like that and to stories like that? The show depicts people being drawn to a detective, even though that’s not really his day job. So it’s a controlled environment – there’s no mystique, no sultry dames, hard liquor, or shoulder-holsters. And sure enough, people are drawn to Oreki – both characters and viewers. The visualization of the detecting process, through the imagery in everyone’s heads, shows the detective as one who parses information, makes sense of chaos. As AJ points out, each of the characters is an odd sort of archetype. Fukube is a database, Chitanda is curiosity, and Ibara is the “Watson” (possibly a stretch, but the archetype works for where I’m going).

So, in other words, Fukube is a Christie fan and Ibara is a Holmes fan. The former likes details, the latter the solution, the magic. Chitanda likes whatever can get her what she wants, which is answers (different from solutions). Ibara herself takes on the hardboiled detective role in the cultural festival arc, going from person to person, asking questions, until she gets answers. No fancy logic games or tiny details unnoticed by everyone else. She forces her way through. And it works as well as Oreki’s methods. I should point out as we go by, also, that Oreki frequently fakes information and puzzles, as Holmes did. I’ve lost count of how many fake advertisements he put in the agony columns of newspapers.

No matter what sort of detection each character prefers, they’re drawn to Oreki because he can actually do it. Oreki, by the way, presumably developed this skill so he could quickly and easily discern the path of least resistance for every problem. But everyone else values his skills so highly. Why? Now, maybe my answers will change once I finish the series, but here’s what I think right now:

Oreki makes sense of things. But he, himself, proves that things don’t have to make sense. He doesn’t understand life or what he wants from it, even while he answers the puzzles and questions of others. Why does it bother him that he’s successfully tricked in the scriptwriting debacle, if it means the trouble to him is over? He has his own assumptions that blind him, even as he can see through and discard everyone else’s. So it’s not as simple as the detective making sense of the world, as it often is.

What about the allusions to harboiled detective fiction, which often posited the world doesn’t make sense at all, and the detective, as a result, is a depressed alcoholic or a barely repressed bundle of violent rage? Does the world of Hyouka make sense?

Well, Oreki’s sister bangs around the world seemingly magically, with no job. Oreki’s parents are absent, as are all the parents. Fukube decided to be a database with no goal in sight, no desire to learn about anything, or even everything. Chitanda’s uncle was thrown out of school for no good reason. Two high schoolers can become obsessed with who borrowed a yukata, and why it had to be a secret.

That’s actually the episode that gives us the key. Chitanda wants siblings to be partners in life. Oreki doesn’t believe that’s the case, as his sister apparently abandoned him – he doesn’t notice all the letters, which start with the one making him join a club now that she’s out of the country. As soon as she’s gone, she gives him a new support structure. So his sister was doing, and does do, exactly what Chitanda wants. Oreki understands exactly what happened when the one sibling took the other’s yukata, but not the precise dynamic of their relationship. Someone can be possessive of things and still value people. He misses that.

So what do mysteries do, according to Hyouka? This show says that the mysteries in life, the things that apparently hide meaning, are just puzzles.

Meaning and answers are separate. The detective provides answers, but each viewer, reader, or friend has to provide the meaning.

Hyouka breaks apart the mystery and posits that mysteries never hide meaning, only answers – and, at that, answers to puzzles they made themselves. But even though the puzzles are empty games, mysterious because they’re presented as such, they have a wealth of meaning for the reader. Why else would the Holmes stories feature Holmes complaining all the time about Watson’s creation of mystery stories and not textbook cases of how detection should be done? Because it reminds the reader that the meaning is independent of the mystery.

In the solution of the mystery of “Hyouka” itself is implied something else – that is, when Oreki explains to everyone what “Hyouka” actually means (“I scream”), he reminds everyone that no one else knew. The person who knew Chitanda’s uncle didn’t know. But still “Hyouka” had meaning – it wasn’t a void, wasn’t without referent. It was the title of the anthology. That, in itself, is meaning, or at least provides a place for meaning to pool around something. The pain of the individual (Chitanda’s uncle) is not important except as a way for the characters to make meaning around events (Chitanda’s childhood fright, everyone’s exposure to the story of the anthology).

You’ll notice in this post I never referred to what Holmes, Poirot, Oreki, et al do as deduction. That’s because it’s not. They perform induction, never mind what Holmes calls it. Dupin called it ratiocination.

OK, I’m going to fall over now.

edit: I forgot my shameless plug. How could I? If you like this mess, check out my own blog, Wondrous Windows. It’s focused on fantasy and SF, but I get up to a lot of stuff over there.

Note: This article is also available at Ideas Without End HERE

Episode 27 of Eureka Seven was divided into two sections; the tense buildup to the battle which provided the exposition that will become key in the series’ latter half, and the battle between Holland and Charles itself, resulting in the latter’s death and his wife’s escape. Episode 28 seems to continue this story right from the start, but moving backwards in the narrative to contextualise what has happened. It begins with Ray in hospital, telling Charles she is infertile because of “that phenomenon” – yet this becomes the moment at which he proposes to her.

From there it cuts back to Ray as she is now, alone on board their ship surrounded by mementoes of her late husband – an image juxtaposed with Eureka on her own about to visit Renton. He is, despite what has happened, still regretting Charles’ death and seeing himself as responsible. Losing a parental figure – even a duplicitous one like Charles – and knowing that had he not acted the way he did it is likely he would never have caused the battle that has just occurred. It serves as a reminder that this is the first time the series has had Renton see the carnage his idiocy and naivete causes; he was responsible for his uncle’s arrest but was long gone by then and the LFOs he has killed have had gory fates for the pilots but all he has seen are body parts and wreckage, not the personal and emotional results. Even Eureka has no idea how to respond here; in past episodes she has been the voice of conscience, chastising Renton in her own way for his bloodlust and unwillingness to consider the consequences of his actions, but now she is faced, as he is, with genuine loss.

As the previous episode did, and as is proving to be a theme throughout the series, this moment of personal development is set alongside a moment of narrative progression; Jobs and Woz, the Gekko’s engineers, are shown talking about the Nirvash in a scene which confirms many of the implications that have previously been given. It is built around an “archetype”, some kind of semi-sentient core which does – as Holland and Eureka’s cryptic scenes have implied before – rely on the two pilots and the Amita Drive to upgrade itself and activate new systems (like the Seventh Swell). Renton is shown to be coming to understand Eureka’s position, and accepting the Nirvash is alive – talking about it not as the machine to be piloted he used to see it as but now as a living thing to be cared for. Yet while usually the scenes of communion with the dormant Nirvash are serene and neat – with its sudden action or unpredictability a major narrative point – the hangar remains a bloodied warzone, and Renton finds Charles’ wedding-ring, yet another reminder of what he has done. Eureka, too, is uncertain and in a kind of flux mimicking that of the Nirvash; she has lost her ability to empathise on a supernatural level with others just as it has lost its usual vigour.

While the Gekko’s crew, and specifically Renton and Eureka, rebuild and exist in a state of shock, Ray is shown to be faring badly; her ship is now full of junk and unkempt, save for a table set for three and left empty. It is expected imagery of grief but it drives home in a way other mecha anime might not what drives her character transformation – for the nobility and stoicism that began episode 27′s battle is nowhere to be found now.

The Gekko, too, has lost what passes for a male role-model; Holland is still recovering from being shot by Charles and the ship’s medical supplies are low. Much as after the previous grand-scale battle, the toll in material terms is high and it seems the series is to continue to mirror its previous arcs. While it was the Gekko which was damaged and incapacitated after the battle at the Coralian, now it is Holland – the ship has to carry on without its captain. Here, the series does something interesting; Ray’s apparently incoherent humming that has persisted throughout all her scenes carries over in the soundtrack to a scene in Holland’s room, becoming part of the diegetic music. It is a neat way of reiterating the parallels between the two situations of leaderless and broken ships. Holland himself is in his own kind of trance; despite his injuries he is apparently preparing for more combat, stripping down and cleaning his rifle. His conversation with Renton, who is looking for a way of coming to terms with Charles’ death, is not shown immediately; instead the viewer is shown Eureka’s reunion with her adopted children, themselves out of sorts as a result of the battle. Throughout this whole episode, lethargically-paced as it is, everything adds up to show how a personal rivalry let out of hand has shattered everyone’s usual lives; an emphasis on the consequences of war that can only happen when the action is taken out of the LFOs. The Seventh Swell, which has defined so much of the combat, disables enemies apparently bloodlessly and so creates a complacency which mirrors Renton’s own; it is the single combat of episode 27, with hostages and martyrs, that has truly had some repercussions.

While Holland’s conversation with Renton is strained, it is also the most understanding he has been portrayed yet; the upheaval the battle has caused has changed even him. The other side of the flashback from the episode’s start is given; the “phenomenon” Ray talked of also involved Eureka back when she was a child soldier serving under the three of them. In this moment of honesty, Holland entrusts Eureka’s safety to Renton should he die, throwing doubt on his previous maintaining that such a thing would never happen. While it is not a decision he made on his own, at this point in the series – where everyone’s guard is down and they are faced with the truth of their actions – his vulnerability (hinted at with his violence and cruelty) shines through. He admits that like Charles he is too violent and dedicated to fulfilling his duty to have even considered finding a different solution to their rivalry – but before any more revelations can come out the explanation of the blurring of diegetic and non-diegetic music which introduced the scene occurs; the song, Get It By Your Hands, is being played by Ray over the Gekko’s tannoy as if to punish Holland, reminding him of Charles with it. Thus the episode shifts back towards resolving the plot as she launches a second attack – its structure mimicking episode 27′s.

While the previous battle was fought man-to-man in the Gekko’s corridors, this one is fought initially using LFOs and here Renton hopes he and Eureka can do as they have before; while LFOs are the mechanical face of war in the setting and always have been presented as such, the Nirvash stands out in that it ends conflicts decisively. While Holland claims he, Charles and Ray are all to single-minded to avoid a bloodbath, an LFO battle seems the place for Renton to show the alternative. He tries to negotiate as the Nirvash does not move, but it seems a petulant and ineffectual gesture – and as Ray does not listen he finally comes round to Holland’s viewpoint, vowing to fight if he has to. Pacifism and a desire to avoid combat has finally proven ineffectual and in this moment of vulnerability even Renton gives up his usual idealism. Yet he continues to talk, and in so doing proves to be the decisive factor in the battle – that he is alive, and apparently showing sympathy to her, distracts Ray long enough for Holland to shoot her LFO at the point where perhaps she might have been coming round to his viewpoint.

That this turns out to have all been misdirection, and the LFO remotely-piloted, brings the battle into its final phase; Ray is trying to kill herself and the Gekko’s crew by colliding her ship, the Swan, with it. She taunts Renton as she dives towards him, playing on what seemed to be his getting through to her – claiming that they will once again be a family in death. The Gekko destroys the Swan, but Holland’s injuries force him to bail out of his LFO, drawing the focus of the episode away from the battle as the other LFO pilots move to save him. Instead, as a final recapitulation of the theme of this arc – that this is the battle whose consequences will be shown through to the bitter end – the viewer is shown Ray’s final moments. As she lies trapped in the Swan’s burning wreckage, the flashback is finally completed – what rendered her infertile was the first Seventh Swell, which also killed Renton’s father. Her actual death, as she reaches for her severed arm still bearing Charles’ wedding-ring, is lingered on to the bitter end and this sudden use of bloody violence is made all the more powerful for coming after so much bloodless combat whose consequences go ignored.

The episode, however, ends as it begun with both ships leaderless; Ray and Charles are both dead, but so apparently is Holland dying. The Gekko’s already depleted medical supplies are inadequate now his wounds have reopened and the revelation that Renton is needed for a blood transfusion opens up a brand new conflict in the resolution of the previous one; Talho apparently has some kind of grudge against Renton’s sister, who has been always in the shadows of the plot. Yet Renton is now thoroughly destroyed; he has been betrayed by everyone and lied to,and remains powerless. He saves Holland under orders, and emerges at his lowest ebb, but from this comes another revelation that will drive the story forward; finally he is honest to Eureka about his feelings, and she reciprocates. Episode 28 thus packs a lot of narrative development in an apparently slow-paced episode; the actual action, despite being the most intense and indeed violent yet, is the least important part. These two episodes, coming as they do straight after a dramatic climax, form a very different kind of narrative impetus – they dwell intently on the consequences of actions that the genre would usually take for granted.

Note: It is worth noting that Ray’s death, rather than completing the homage to Mobile Suit Gundam’s Ramba Ral plotline, quite specifically evokes two scenes from the series. The first is her suicide run in the Swan, referencing the death of Garma Zabi following his betrayal – a scene where the apparent antagonist Char backstabs his superior officer and forces him into a suicide attack on the White Base, the protagonist’s mothership. Narratively this is a good fit; while to Renton Ray and Charles have been the parallel to Ramba Ral and Hamon, the relationship established involving Holland and their past in the military unit SOF is much closer to Char and Garma’s. Char betrays his own superior to settle a personal score much as Holland forces Ray into a suicide mission to settle his own.

Yet the actual killing blow against the Swan, Holland’s LFO firing straight into the cockpit, is an even closer mirror to a scene from Gundam – Char’s killing of major villain Kycilia Zabi. The main sub-plot of Gundam is Char backstabbing his way up the enemy chain of command to redress a personal betrayal, and by the end of the series when he kills Kycilia he has almost reached the top and the loose ends are all but settled. Again, Holland is put in the role of Char – in a storyline involving unfinished business with his former comrades in the military, and the reasons for his leaving. Thus through these homages it is reasonable to assume that certain implications are being made about Holland’s future role in the plot and the truth of the gradually-revealed plotline about the SOF.

If you haven’t seen this show, it’s set first in a virtual reality MMO titled Sword Art Online and then in another titled Alfheim Online, or SAO and ALO respectively. The creator of SAO is also the creator of the virtual reality headset used to experience it, the NerveGear. It intercepts the brain’s messages to the body and so one doesn’t use a controller to play, but instead their thought of moving a leg or an arm. People get tactile response back when they touch stuff, and can even taste and smell.

That’s the basic setup. The basic plot is that the game’s creator wanted to really create his own world, not just simulate one, so he traps all the players in the game. He effaces the log-out button, and with one’s nervous system interrupted on can’t feel or, more importantly, deactivate the headset alone. The microwave transmitter has a deadman switch that will fry the brain of the user if the headset is pried off without a logout command. The only way for everyone to get out is for someone to clear the 100^th and final floor of the dungeon in the sky. They’ll also die if they die in-game.

Sounds simple enough. And also what .hack//SIGN did, right? Sort of. That show featured a single character who couldn’t log out and who was a locus for a mystery inside “The World,” the name of the MMO in the show. So is SAO a ripoff?

I would say no. It uses a very similar idea, but fantasy novels were being written in the 70s about people being transported into their DnD games, this isn’t a new idea really. The entire .hack body of work – of which I have only experienced some, not all – honestly never resolves its mystery so far as I know. I watched I think three shows, read two novels, played the first four games, and I still have absolutely no idea why the main character of the first game was trapped in The World, or why the characters in the games even fight when they do. The mystery drove the shows, and I appreciated that, but like Lost or even Moonlighting, when the longed-for goal is reached the interest falls away. So I guess the solution is to never reveal the mystery? But that gets taxing pretty quickly.

SAO (the show) doesn’t really have any mysteries. Sure we and the characters don’t know why the game’s creator does what he does, but we know what has happened and how to fix it. And he lives up to his word, logging everyone still alive out when he is defeated.

I haven’t talked about the characters yet, but let’s do that as we talk about what the show is about, and obviously about. The main character is Kirito, a portmanteau of his first and last names. He is a huge MMO geek, probably, by his own admission, because he feels alienated from his family since he’s adopted. He’s also one of the beta-testers, so he has an immediate advantage in the game and fights all the time on the “front lines,” the highest levels cleared by players, to get the best items and experience. He learns over the course of the story that the relationships built in games are the same as those in real life, since both sorts of relationship are, really, just ineffable things between people. The interactions and feelings matter more than any sense of perceived reality. This is pretty much what the show’s about. Kirito says something similar several times, and the progression of the SAO arc proves it, as people settle into their lives in the game. They marry sometimes, some people get “jobs” such as blacksmithing, and one old man just goes fishing all the time, what he meant to do when he retired. Kirito gets married in-game, and has to rescue his wife in the second arc, in which she does not wake up because a developer managed to funnel a few hundred players into his servers when they were logged out, using them for experiments in mind control. I’m glossing over the second arc because it’s not as good as the first, and the one really good part I don’t want to spoil for you.

Now, what about the reaction? I don’t know too much about it, but from what I understand this show is pretty popularly considered bad. I don’t care one way or the other – I’m not trying to convince you it’s good if you already think it’s bad – but I think the reaction is tied to the message of the show itself. People in the anime blogging community already know online relationships are real relationships. One of my best friends is someone I met blogging, and I’ve spent real, meatspace time with him now, as well. Many people in and out of the blogging community likely use twitter or facebook to make and maintain “real” relationships without ever meeting the person on the other end.

That’s probably not the only reason the show is reviled. It is somewhat clichéd; it even gives away its own advantages over time. I really enjoyed that Asuna, Kirito’s wife, was a strong but not “strong female yeah!” character. But as she falls in love that changes until she’s literally a princess in another castle by show’s end. Sigh.

So what about those unstated themes? Well, I think there’s one about simple mental application. People change from “losers” to heroes in the show through brain power (ha ha), simply by applying themselves. People who don’t bother don’t level up. The show, without banging one over the head with stat bars and so on, actually creates a tangible hierarchy of dedication. Whoever’s most dedicated gets the highest numbers. The show also asks questions about place, particularly game place – as I’ve said before, literature, games included, create places for us to go to. MMOs traffic almost entirely in that. We could probably, for the most part, get better writing and gameplay experiences in single player RPGs, since everything could be planned out far better (this of course varies game to game, company to company). But MMOs are places, where you can see friends and meet new people, even assholes. This show creates a place in which there are other places people go, hence the ending, I think, in which SAO’s creator leaves behind a seed of a digital world, the first iteration of SAO itself, and people, including those who were trapped in it for two years (yes two years and change), go to it.