Anime and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  When Tetsuo has his chance encounter with Takashi on the deserted highway, humanity is no better prepared. Instead, as the Colonel puts it, Neo-Tokyo is degenerating, a “garbage heap made up by hedonistic fools” dancing “to the tune of corrupt politicians and capitalists.” When Tetsuo’s powers begin to manifest, the whole situation becomes a powder keg. The government’s Scientist wants only to study him (consequences be damned), the terrorists want him, Kaneda wants revenge, and Tetsuo himself wants more power.

  Against this backdrop, the full significance of the decision of the Numbers becomes clear. Realizing that Tetsuo threatens to become, in effect, another Akira, they decide to extricate Tetsuo from our universe. The original plan appears to have been to send Tetsuo to somewhere beyond this world, but they end up traveling with Tetsuo into that great elsewhere in order to send back Kaneda, who is trapped inside the imploding Tetsuo.

  The Numbers reason as follows. First, they had survived the destruction of old Tokyo by Akira thirty-one years before. They knew the consequences of Tetsuo fully unleashing his abilities (what we see is devastating enough). Second, while the Numbers imply that they could seal Tetsuo away without traveling elsewhere, they decide to effectively sacrifice themselves to save Kaneda. As Takashi puts it: “But none of this is his fault!” Of course, the Numbers will also get to see Akira again, which they look forward to. Lastly, the Numbers realize that humanity is not ready for this sort of power. To return to the troublesome analogy, Tetsuo was at a stage like an amoeba possessing nuclear weapons when he disappears, utterly unprepared for his powers. One day perhaps humanity can accept such abilities with out destroying themselves, but not now. Faced with this anxiety-ridden situation, the Numbers take responsibility.

  One Last Anguished Existential Scream

  There are two lessons we can learn from Akira and Eva. The first is that given the perils humanity faces, both from the natural order and from society, a certain degree of anxiety is reasonable. We face daunting challenges on all sides. This should be a call to reflection on the human condition. Between the logic of the evolution, the way technology can extend human evolution, widespread social alienation, our impoverished relationships to other people, and what we have done to the planet in terms of resource depletion, pollution, and habitat destruction, there is much to be concerned about. When we can take these altogether, we too, perhaps for reasons akin to Shinji’s, should give an anguished existential scream from time to time.

  With all of the promise of contemporary science and technology, we do well to remember that it is not simply positive. There are many serious challenges, one of the more extreme being the possibility of a “posthuman future.” There is good reason for anxiety. But we must not flee from that anxiety and return to more comfortable, fatalistic narratives of letting evolution or the Market determine what is best for us.

  The second lesson is that once we embrace this anxiety, we must accept both the freedom to determine what we should do and the responsibility this freedom entails. These anime always foreground the significance of human agency, our ability to choose. Needless to say, the plot SEELE hatches may not be a healthy resolution to such anxieties. It culminates in the utter destruction of anything resembling human existence as we know it. We can also note the rather undemocratic nature of the Instrumentality Project, in which a group decides what is best for all of humanity. This choice by SEELE is not responsible, if for no other reason than that many of those affected had no say in the decision.

  Yet, for whatever their problems, one thing SEELE does demonstrate is that it is ultimately up to humanity (or a self-selected cabal acting on behalf of the species regardless of whether others want it) to decide how to face the anxiety created by evolution. Even if the human species has reached an evolutionary dead-end, human agency still remains. We retain the ability to decide how to respond to these existential challenges. Eva demonstrates the catastrophes that happen when people abandon any hope for humanity and throw in the towel on being human in any conventional sense.

  In the world of Akira, there are several possible responses to the anxiety produced by the evolutionary leap to psychic mutants. The initial response of the Japanese government, and also the Colonel’s Scientific Advisor, is to try to understand and control the power, the future of our evolution. This amounts to trying to turn the anxiety into something productive and profitable, while avoiding the ugly existential questions. The Numbers, and in a different way the Colonel, accept the challenge that Akira and Tetsuo pose for humanity in some of its existential glory. They realize that there is genuine danger here that humanity is not prepared for. Their response is then to forestall the inevitable until everyone else is more prepared.

  The decision that the Numbers make at the end of the film is more responsible than that of SEELE. Unlike the resolution of Eva in which only two individuals apparently survive, the Numbers allow humanity to continue to be anxious. The events in Neo-Tokyo serve as a potent warning about where the future might take us and allows for the preparations that were not pursued after the 1988 disaster. The Numbers’ decision opens up possibilities for human agency. After Tetsuo leaves, those who survive might continue to remain with “the They,” ignoring the dangers. But they had been warned.

  While we may face far less menacing possibilities at this moment in time, this is no reason to repress our anxiety. One trouble with the fall into fatalism is that it often results in an abdication of responsibility. If the future is determined by forces beyond our control, then there is no room for meaningful human agency. But even if our unalterable fate is destruction, these anime remind us that it remains within our power to determine how we will face such a future. The same is true with the less bleak but still transformative possibilities that contemporary technology and science might provide. As Kiyoko remarks: “But when the power is awakened, you must choose how to use it, even if you weren’t prepared for it.” We might be right to scream when we encounter this, but we also must be ready for what comes next.

  ALTERNATE ENDING:

  Bide Your Time, and Hold Out Hope

  TRISTAN D. TAMPLIN

  The moment that I truly fell in love with anime occurred sometime after the film that I had been watching ended. In fact, that rather unexpected moment had almost nothing at all to do with the film itself—or any film, for that matter. No, I fell in love with anime while watching the bonus material. It was during the interviews with the cast and crew that my heart was lost to an artistic style that many grown-ups in the West think is primarily for children. But I couldn’t help it. I was entirely caught off guard by their enthusiasm, their sincerity, their dedication, and what appeared to be a complete lack of cynicism about what they were doing. They seemed to care very much about their work and how it was received. They said, more than once, that they hoped I enjoyed what they had created, and I believed them. Completely. And I still do.

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I haven’t found the content of anime to be extraordinarily rewarding and worthwhile in its own right. From the epic narrative of Twelve Kingdoms, the aesthetic innovation of Gankutsuou, the deeply unsettling tone of Paranoia Agent, the compelling character studies of Perfect Blue, to the intellectually challenging conception of the future in Stand Alone Complex, anime certainly has a lot to offer and a lot to recommend it. But over and above all of this, what really draws me and, I suspect, so many others to anime is its willingness to engage with its audience. Watch a few sets of DVD extras and that willingness, that orientation toward connecting with the viewer, will be readily apparent. And the very book that you’re holding in your hands right now is evidence of just how successfully their audience has been engaged. The significance of this degree of interaction between the creators and viewers of anime is that it opens up a unique set of possibilities for the evolution of the genre.

  Wide Eyed Wonder

  In the first episode of Fooly Cooly, the young male protagonist is smacked in the head with a vintage Rickenbacker
left-handed bass guitar by a manic, Vespa scooter-riding woman who we’ve already begun to suspect is an alien. The resulting lump on his forehead, which began as rather normal-sized, starts to swell. And it keeps on swelling, ridiculously so, until, eventually, a television-headed robot (and what appears to be the left hand of a much larger robot) emerges from it. There are, unfortunately it seems to me, far too few truly unexpected moments in our media-saturated culture. Somehow it feels like we’ve seen it all before. Not so with anime. Episode one, and a robot sprouts from a lump on a boy’s forehead. 27 I certainly did not see that coming (Oh, you bet I watched the rest of the series). And this sense of the (not always pleasantly) unexpected extends well beyond the merely bizarre and seemingly random. I was shattered (and, frankly, made a bit unwell) by the narrative developments in the final episode of Berserk, impressed by the impossibly seamless fusion of Japan’s Edo period with contemporary culture and hip hop music in Samurai Champloo, and I’ve still not completely recovered from the jaw-dropping, wide-eyed wonder induced by the stunning visual imagery of the ongoing dream parade in Paprika.

  What matters about encountering the unexpected is not simply that there’s a certain, often deeply felt excitement involved. While the unexpected always immediately affects us in this way, it also affects us in a more subtle but no less significant way. It confronts us, and by the very challenge it poses to our expectations, it causes us to become aware of them and, quite possibly, to rethink them. This potential to challenge our preconceptions and upset our ordinary way of looking at and thinking about the world is, oddly enough, fundamentally the same potential held out by the best sort of philosophic inquiry. And this affinity with philosophy is, at first glance anyway, perhaps the single most unexpected thing about anime. Of course, the challenges posed by anime aren’t always entirely intellectual in nature, but that doesn’t make them any less profound—quite the contrary, in fact. To be unsettled by what we see, to be confronted with new visions of the future and new conceptions of society and technology, to be challenged by unconventional depictions of the body and personal relationships, actually prepares us for philosophic inquiry in a way no strictly intellectual activity could. When we hold a bit less firmly to our expectations in general, then we are much more open to the possibilities of genuine reflection, sincere reevaluation, and authentic change. And that is no less true for anime itself than it is for the individuals who watch it.

  Like any fairly well defined genre, anime has its share of recurring themes, familiar motifs, and often used concepts. But even within this realm of the conventional, anime has a tendency to shuffle these elements around, to present them from unusual perspectives, to combine them in new in interesting ways, and not infrequently to subvert them entirely. In this way, anime can make even the familiar and comfortable seem novel and just a bit odd. If you’ve seen one giant robot, melancholy vampire or teenage misfit, you most certainly have not seen them all. While anime clearly revels in the unusual and tests the boundaries of the expected and the acceptable, it also explores the conventional and even the mundane. In this sense, nothing is exempt from the probing and playful scrutiny of anime, and nothing is outside of its transformative realm. As with the possibilities inherent in the art form itself, the scope of subject matter that anime seems willing avail itself of is potentially limitless.

  So what should we expect to see in the future? Nothing, or perhaps everything—I have simply no idea. But I’m definitely going to keep watching, because I can’t wait to find out.

  Credits

  SHANE ARBOGAST designs book covers, websites, and will draw just about anything if asked. His main means of transportation in New York City is not the subway but his trusty, beat-up mountain bike. Considering that he has feasted his eyes on everything from sick and twisted animation to Film Noir movie marathons, an anime book jacket assignment seemed just the carrot to keep him off the streets for a while. Ahh, those dicey New York streets—Shane enjoys fantasies of being Ichigo Kurosaki when those Hollow cab drivers hog his bike lane.

  Evenings spent reading her host brother’s copies of Tezuka’s Black Jack manga while living in Japan not only did wonders for her Japanese medical vocabulary and slang, it also set CHRISTIE BARBER on the path to where she is today. In her research she is looking at the representation of gender—in particular masculinity—in Japanese popular media, especially manga and anime. She teaches at Macquarie University.

  ADAM BARKMAN is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Yonsei University. He is the author of C.S. Lewis and Philosophy as a Way of Life and Through Common Things, and co-editor of Manga and Philosophy. Despite his initial scepticism, Adam has ever since been grateful to his brother Joe for introducing him to anime; indeed, there are few things Adam enjoys more than cracking a bottle of cheap, dry red, smoking an even cheaper cigar, and talking (somewhat) intelligently with his bro about why the ending of the Kimagure Orange Road OVAs is so painfully perfect, which Shakespeare Kuno is quoting from, and why so many guys enjoy watching Sailor Moon.

  MIO BRYCE has a wide range of interests in Japanese language—both classical and modern—ranging from literature to history to manga-anime, and she has developed and taught a number of units at Macquarie University. Her particular interest is in historical, socio-cultural, and psychological issues depicted in fiction, especially representations of issues related to individual identity. Mio is involved in interdisciplinary research into youth cultures and has established a manga-anime research group, in conjunction with the English Department at Macquarie University.

  CARI CALLIS has felt Shinto all her life and never knew it. So that explains the love for coral reefs in the Caribbean, the Costa Rican Cloud Forest, and thunderstorms in Negril. Those kami are sneaky, they can be everywhere you listen. Now she’s building a torii for her garden and talking to trees just in case they show up. . . . She teaches screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago, and has learned from Miyazaki-san that no matter what age we are, the desire to tell stories originates from our nostalgic longing to recreate our own personal lost worlds.

  BENJAMIN CHANDLER holds a PhD in Creative Writing. He researches Japanese and Western heroism, so he gets to watch a lot of anime and call it “work.” He was first drawn to anime by its weird and wonderful characters. The first volume in his Japanese inspired fantasy series, The Voyages of the Flying Dragon, is due to be published in September 2010.

  How many cyborgs does it take to change a student’s mind about the philosophical value of anime? JASON DAVIS researches this question at Macquarie University, and students’ wide-eyed incredulity at having to read about anime makes him re-boot and augment ever more metaphysical questions about human identity with cyborg bodies. As he reminds online students, reading about anime is like seeing movement through words—reading slows down the philosophical velocity of anime bodies. As a result Jason dreams in anime. And he’s beginning to think these dreams are not his own. The silver origami unicorn he once found at his Megatech Body workstation makes him suspect as much.

  While he waits to download his mind into a computer housed in an immortal robotic shell, DAN DINELLO works as an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and runs shockproductions.com website. He wrote the book Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Post Human Technology and contributed a chapter to Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? He has written about pop culture and science for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times , Salon.com, and Manchester Guardian. An award-winning independent filmmaker, Dan also directed episodes of the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy.

  Having once been violated by the tentacles of a randy space monster, ANDREW A. DOWD is dismayed to discover that the courts are slanted in favor of randy space monsters. He works through his rage and pain by writing about our mixed-up movie culture. His musings on classic and contemporary cinema have been published in Screen Magazine and Film Monthly. He also served as Assistant Editor on Battlestar Gal
actica and Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? When not working through his tentacle trauma (one day at a time, friends) he toils as a wage slave and scrounges for freelance assignments in the mean streets of the Windy City. He will write for food or best offer.

  ANDREW WELLS GARNAR is currently a lecturer at Clemson University, where he works mostly on science, technology, values, and American Philosophy, and resists the urge to constantly use anime for illustrating his points. He has a longstanding interest in anime, dating back to seeing the first American release of Miyazaki’s Nausicaa on cable in 1987. Even though the dub was bad and the film truncated, he knew it was something special and has spent the last two decades trying to find more. Andrew misses when anime was a bit more of an underground thing, but appreciates that what he finds these days has been translated.

  ALICIA GIBSON holds a law degree from the University of Colorado and is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation project, “The End, or Life in the Atomic Age: Modes of Subjectivity and Aesthetic Form” focuses on the experiences of American, Japanese-American, and Japanese in the atomic world as expressed in post-World War II literature, television, and cinema. She has had her heart stolen by Nausicaa’s squirrel-fox, Teto. Her love of anime springs from the same place as her crazy cat lady instincts..