Free Fall into Japanese Anime

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At a booklovers convention a mother told me she was trying to understand how her teenage daughter could be into animated weekly shows, “anime,” from Japan. She asked me: ‘But aren’t cartoons merely a series of gags for little kids?’

There will be a time (another essay) for suggesting practical titles for a mother to see, but not now: Now’s the time for explaining some of the theory of anime, because the mother’s problem was obvious: years of television brainwashing that cartoons were for children. How to help her break free?

Here’s what I could have said:

Actually, it’s Yankee adult TV shows that are for children. For example, I watched a song and dance show where each dance act was followed by another immediately: coming out of the wings and dancing to stage right, then immediately another out of the wings to stage left, and then another group immediately appearing to do their set at center stage—There was never even one full second of stillness, ever, for me to catch my breath. It’s as if American adults have attention deficit disorder, let alone their children.

Oh, their poor children: If you are in the kitchen washing dishes while the Teletoons channel is on, then all you hear is yak-yak-yak. Even if someone from the Scooby gang pronounces with great awe the mystery is solved… there won’t be a “full second” for the gang to draw a big breath and silently take it in—someone will immediately yak.

But not in anime… not from the land of people contemplating cherry blossoms. For them stillness is OK. And so in Serial Experiments Lain the camera will often hold on a humming telephone pole transformer, or repeat a silent long shot of 13-year-old Lain walking to school past blood red shadows. (See footnote)

A few years back, at an anime convention, I previewed the beginning of an anime with scenes where the camera kept holding still… to show waving grass. There was only a footpath where I presume a wide road used to be. No ray guns, no monsters, and no thought of an audience being on Ritalin. Just a quiet beauty, where a girl goes shopping for supplies in a peaceful world, long after an apocalypse. The anime is finally out on shelves now, according to Wikipedia, translated as Yokohama Shopping Log or Quiet Country Café or Café Alpha. I could recommend it to any mother, even though I barely remember the beginning after all these years. Still, the spell has stayed with me for years, enough to compose a piece this morning at my Friday Freefall class.

(Now I can remember, I just looked it up: Notice how the minute and a half opening (link) does not have the hyperactivity of a Hollywood children’s cartoon)

In a future essay, I will make suggestions for anime for viewing by aging grownups. For now, my Freefall piece suggests how anime is not for small children. (Instructive footnotes will follow)

Freefall prompt: Forget Me Nots

Flowers waved amongst the waving grass from a clean wind in a silent land. Once there were people. Some had said there were too many people, but they aren’t around now to change their minds.

Once people had been of a mind to have progress, progress and more progress. And all the while bees went along their business, aphids crawled up plant stems, and the flowers blew. Now they were blowing still. A lonely bird crossed the sky. Then the sky was empty again. A few clouds, of course, but no condensation trails of jets carrying bubbles of life. Far, far overhead, beyond the atmosphere, a few satellites continued in their decaying orbits, ever closer to death by friction of rushing atmospheric molecules, one last glorious flaming ride for the sake of humans who would not be around to see it happen.

What’s the use of a falling star if no one sees it to make a wish? But I was there. Don’t call me 9819-C; call me Peggy, for I was made to look like a human female. I had braids and a bonnet and a dress to my knees. But I knew little of humans and women. There were books in the library, but I seldom went there. I liked the out of doors. The grass rustled, billowed like the sea where once there had been a road and road shoulders and a road boulevard. All back to the world now. ‘No use crying over spilt milk’ I said. 'It’s a wonderful world of nature’ I said. Having been activated only weeks before The End, I had few memories, and what memories I had were being pushed down into the quantum soup by newer memories. I don’t suppose the humans had thought that forgetting would ever be a problem. I don’t suppose they could conceive of someone living longer than they did.

I am someone. I am Peggy. Not 9819-C. Sometimes I think it would be nice to know more. I once met a fellow named Ralph. He claimed to be human, Ralph did, and maybe he was. He told me no one knew why all the progressive lands were the ones to have cancer, why childhood allergies had appeared and then skyrocketed, why people began living less long, shorter life styles, shorter and fatter. Ralph said they’d rush to the TV every time there was a plane crash, but they never rushed to each other. The flowers blow, saying, “Forget me not.”

Sean Crawford

Calgary, May

2016

Footnotes

If you watch Lain, then be advised it isn’t a franchise where the episodes can be shown in any order, as with American cartoons or the original Star Trek. The best way to watch it is without “giving in” to your logical left brain or your ADD; instead, watch it like you would watch cherry blossoms: Just enjoy each of 13 episodes separately, each on it’s own terms.

Lain was made back in the 20^th century, before school kids had any tablets or handheld devices. But in Lain they do: that was science fiction.

Be warned: In America, kids normally like to read stories about kids a year or two older than them. Not for this one: Lain is a thirteen-year-old girl, but the DVD box says, “for ages 16 and up.” And rightly so. I don’t think, as a western mother, I’d watch it with my son, only with my daughter. (Maybe I’m out of touch)

I wrote of Lain in my essay Silence and Three Nerd Heroes, archived May 2013. Here’s a link to the opening song in English: Note how the cartoon music is not frantic; the show is not from Hollywood.

Read Before You Comment

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You see, I was once a Boy Scout— So there I am, trying to be chivalrous like the knight who do a good turn for somebody every day, going onto the Internet, and then… I find myself feeling not-so-noble. This happens when I am reading a non-chivalrous comment. Yuck.

They say a Scout is observant. What I have observed, all too often, is people posting replies, comments, when it is excruciatingly obvious they haven’t been alert to what the other person wrote. How could they be so mistaken about words that are resting motionless, right there on the screen, in black and white? Clearly, they have read without seeing.

Call it the human factor. One of my favorite Internet blogger and essayists, Scott Berkun, once wrote with a smiley face, after enduring a long series of irresponsible replies on his blog post, “It is hard to defend myself against something I didn’t quite say.”

As for me, whether it’s commenting on what I saw on the World Wide Web, or reporting on what I heard at a community center meeting last night, I try to be responsible. I like to think that, as a housewife once said of me, I can be trusted to “give an even handed report.” Others, at least on the web, seemingly give in to their human factor. My poor auntie, for instance, although too proud to prevaricate, was pathetically blind to her propensity to exaggerate past the point of dishonesty. Poor Auntie Pam. Some people just won’t try for self-control. Some don’t try to be ladies or gentlemen.

Of course some people genuinely don’t want to be gentlefolk, or wholesome clean-cut Boy Scouts. In fact, I can imagine happily going over on a Saturday afternoon to hang out with a man who is happily uncombed, unshaven and wearing a rumpled shirt. He’s comfortable. But if we decide to go out to the mall? He shaves. Similarly, if he and I are sitting at our tables in a community of on-line computer users, or on chairs in a church basement, or gathered around a communal campfire, then we have a responsibility to be pro-social, to reach for the stars of our better nature.

By now, in modern times, here in the western world, everyone knows the classic sin of the censor: to attempt to censor others from something you yourself haven’t bothered to read, or can’t bring yourself to read—allowing your self-righteousness to overshadow your self-responsibility. Also harmful is: when you reply to something on the Web without first reading it with due diligence. That’s when a shadow falls onto all the screens of all the other people in that temporary community of readers, a shadow that does not nourish those people. If you won’t read, then don’t type.

On second thought, I suppose a few people, not like you and me, aren’t merely lazy or uninformed about their social responsibility, but truly enjoy being shady people. So it’s no wonder Alain de Botton (from last week’s post) won't allow comments on his news site. No chilly shadows allowed.

Naturally the “human factor,” so prevalent yet so wrong, has been addressed by others before now. I myself, mindful of the Boy Scout motto, once attempted to “be prepared” by coming up in advance with some feedback we citizens on the Internet could use to help keep our public square civilized. That was in an essay archived back in August 2010 called Polite Blogs. Two years earlier computer expert Paul Graham, one of my favorite writers of original web essays, in March of 2008 noted, “The web is turning into a conversation.”

Graham tried to raise awareness on How to Disagree by categorizing levels of reply. The second-lowest, second-most despicable level, (after name-calling) is the ad hominem reply (Latin, from ad “to the,” and hom “man”) where a person avoids honestly and logically facing an issue by instead attacking the man. Although this wimpy avoidance-attack defies common sense, it would seem many people wanting to join the cyber forum are, sad to say, without good sense.

As a Boy Scout I cared about my community, and I still care today. Call it a lifestyle choice: I will gladly pick up old litter that has blown into the forum. And every summer Boy Scouts and Girl Guides revisit the issue of how to avoid starting forest fires, because we know that some people, long after Smokey the bear cub has died of old age, still haven’t learned. Today I am feeling a need to revisit the issue of how to democratically disagree in the cyber forum.

This week my brain is jolted, like taking a cold-water camp shower in June, at seeing the aforementioned Paul Graham being “replied to.” He’s now being attacked through articles on the Web after posting an essay called Economic Inequality. His essay has sure started a fire. I see Graham being attacked by a writer (link) as being a “self-described essayist” (He is an essayist) and as a “robber baron” (Some of his essays are explicitly against “robber barons”)

Over the weekend I’ve read three flaring attacks on Graham, and I suppose there will be more out there. Twice he has replied with an essay to defend himself, that I know of, without feeling a need to file his essay-replies onto his essay site, no doubt because he feels a tad undignified at stooping to reply. Life, he says, is too short. (“No filing” means if you are reading this a year from now, then you might not find his replies without extra searching, so here’s a link)

Graham’s explanation for the ignoble responses is interesting. He hypothesizes that writers have read his essay title, expanded the title out to what they imagined such an essay would be about, and then replied to what they imagined. At first I lean back—that sounds too laughable, too original—but then I curl down sadly to admit, “Yes, that sounds true.”

For one of the pieces refuting Graham, Graham writes, “I agree with almost all of it.” I’m sure the writer, whom I think was writing against an imaginary bad guy, would be surprised to hear that.

As Graham explains, the hypothesis implies the remedy: Don’t attack the man, but do quote the parts of an essay you disagree with, and refute those quoted parts. I guess doing so helps you focus, helps you read word for word, helps you make any of your stupidity plain, even to yourself.

Is such “imagining” a shadow cousin to skimming? Well, something surprising I’ve learned from the Internet, very surprising, is that so many people go through life skimming their screens. Perhaps they skim their pages too. It could be they have never read carefully any pages that could develop their careful thinking. Maybe these folks genuinely prefer TV to reading, being folks who only “read” the screen because they “have to.” Think so? Well, live and let live, says I. It’s OK to skim if you want to, I guess. Maybe. Yuck. But I am sure of one thing: If skimming the screen is your habit, and if you choose to be negative to someone in public on the Web, then you have a responsibility to STOP—and scroll back up to the top, read down word for word, and only then compose your reply.  

As for me, I guess the most lasting part of my Boy Scout years was the encouragement to be “observant” and “alert.” Not blindly skimming through my precious time on earth. As a young teenage Boy Scout I was encouraged to be kind to animals, gentle with the weak, and patient with the stupid. It was a lonely thirteen-year old girl in Japan, Lain Iwakura, who said, “We are all connected.” Yes. Let’s all read, and let’s all think, before we type.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

January

2016

Footnotes:

~Today I made some deliberate links, not like last week. Given the topic, I thought some people might be too stressed to wait until they got to the footnotes, or type in their own search term.

~Since I've written about poverty before, I thought I would include this slightly related link.

~After an essay a couple summers back, a reader laughed and suggested I print up a T-shirt with my phrase,

“If you skim

you’re dim.”

~Poor Lain. Thirteen years old. Even though children normally like to read (or view) about a kid a year or two older that they are, the anime (Japanese animation) series about Lain is labeled “for ages sixteen and up.” For good reason.

Some folks say Lain is 14, but since she seems so young, I think that is a translation error, since the Japanese count time in the womb as part of their first year.

If you are a North American parent, raised on Saturday morning cartoons, and if you hear from people that Japanese animation is excellent, far above the level of ordinary Hollywood cartoons about superheroes, students in the shopping mall or Daffy Duck, and if you are wondering how the heck such excellence could possibly be true, then a good place to start exploring anime is a show with only thirteen TV episodes and a final ending: Serial Experiments Lain. I found it very moving. Here’s the opening theme song. (link) 

The series was made back in the 20th century, back before there were handheld tablets and devices. So the creators had to imagine a futuristic world.

~I wrote about Lain and two other nerdy main characters in my essay Silence and Three Nerd Heroes, archived May 2013.

Silence and Three Nerd Heroes

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Silence

(May 2013) 

I've attended another yearly Victoria Day "Otafest," the weekend festival for otaku: fans of Japanese popular entertainment. We all had a good time. Usually I will write a whole essay afterwards; this time I have only a few remarks.

I continue to be struck by how Americans, unlike the Japanese, are so weird: They can't handle silence. For example, I was amazed last year to catch a clip on Youtube of the beginning of the British dubbed version of the Japanese feature film The Secret World of Arrietty. Having already seen the American version I could compare: I learned the poor Americans, just as they will rush to fill silence in a conversation (a rush that visa students have been warned about) had rushed to gratuitously add dialogue. Such a pity. I've heard the Americans really screwed up Kiki's Delivery Service—When I go to Britain, I know what I'll buy!

On Sunday I enjoyed some episodes of the animated Yokahama Shopping Log, subtitled Quiet Country Cafe, or in Japanese Yokahama Kadashi Kiko. In the twilight of the human race, the camera lingers on silent vistas of clouds, trails in tall grass, blowing signposts... with no humans visible, let alone talk-talk-talking... So beautiful.

Years ago I was delighted as the camera kept showing young Lain Iwakura walking the same stretch of sidewalk, and kept lingering on humming (internet) street wires. Lain is one of my three nerd heroes.

Three TV Nerd Heroes

America loves its TV stars. Here's three: There's that handsome cop my girl watched every week, that starship captain, and how about that crazy redhead? "Luuucy!, I'm home!" Here's my three favorite nerd stars:—but wait! Nerds can't be a show's main hero. Or Can they?

I recall a high school TV movie, from over a decade ago, where the hero is clearly one of the smarter kids. The show opened with chemistry class. Within the first few minutes some other nameless kid in glasses was briefly on stage and then never seen again. This "four eyes" was shown to be the smartest in the class and then was laughed at by everyone when a cupboard slammed on him. The kid's brief role had a purpose: He was to be a foil to prove the star, although smart, was not a nerd: Because the star always has to be a "regular guy." Except for this past decade.

In the old beach movies the foil was a suave ladies man. I suppose Archie has his Reggie. I see a continuum: At one end is the suave guy, always glib and easy, while in the middle is the regular guy, mostly relaxed and friendly, and at the far end is the nerd: unconfident, stiff, both physically and socially awkward. This "stiffness" is what I focus on to define "nerd" although, of course, that is not all there is to it... For further information, there is a long list of nerd characterists recited near the end of a modern beach movie, Revenge of the Nerds II. 

(Growing)

Happily, once we leave school, or so it seems to me, nerds start vanishing like soap bubbles. I suppose getting out and rubbing shoulders in the real world quickly smoothes out the rough spots noted in the aforementioned list. Besides, as the nerds are growing their peers are growing up too—and swiftly becoming too confident to worry that someone is "too smart" with computers. Growth is good.

I remember an episode of Angel. The folks at Angel Investigations are only a few years out of Sunnydale High when a spell makes them regress: We see them once again as they were during their nerdy Buffy days. Oh, how far they've come! ...My three favorite nerd stars, unfortunately, are challenged by more than mere items on a nerd list, items to be easily noted, fixed and checked off... For those three heroes rubbing shoulders is no remedy, not when their stiffness comes from a much darker place, a place still too dark for today's TV viewers.

My three favorite nerds are a girl, a boy and a man.

The DVDs for the girl are unique: Although they are, appropriately, marked for "age 16 and up," the heroine, Lain Iwakura, is only 13. Call her a "quiet loner," or, "a nerd with no friends." As a fan on the web wrote, "She is a nice kid, too bad she's so messed up." Lain's complete story is told in Serial Experiments Lain over one season in Japanese animation. (anime) I watched it dubbed on VHS. At first I wondered if there was a "translation" error for the voice of Lain's mother. She is so bizarrely unmaternal: dry, detached and unaffectionate. No error—Surely this is a clue to explain poor Lain's demeanor. I like Lain because even after she receives criminal child abuse she is still like a selfless car accident victim, still thinking compassionately of others.

(Hiding)

The boy, Maxwell Evans, is 16 with spliced half alien DNA. Once an orphan, today his adoptive parents don't know he is one of the alien teens passing for human. The town of Roswell is small enough to still have angle parking and it's surrounded by desert. This means it's very hard, if the kids are ever discovered, to hide or run. The series Roswell lasted for almost three full seasons. On the DVD pilot commentary you can hear Ronald Moore, years before he made the dark Battlestar Galactica, laughing to say something like, "Look, he's almost smiling—hey, there's a flicker..."

Imagine: A teen hero who doesn't smile! Not like a popular student. It's understandable: Max is carrying a lot of weight because the children's real parents, after their saucer crashed, were hidden away by the government, experimented on and killed. The other alien kids say Max is the leader. As with Lain, the result is a certain stiffness. I see Max as the flip side of an angry blond anarchist, Grace Polk, on Joan of Arcadia. Grace actively pushes other students away to keep the secret that her mother is an alcoholic. Maxwell is so quiet because his secret means life or death.

One of my favorite episodes is Toy House where a girl says she wants to tell her adoptive mother. A boy responds, "You can't. What if she turns us in?" (to the government)

"But she's my mother!"

"How do you know know she'll still be your mother?"...silence, a tear... I am reminded of how so many defenceless girls with allegedly "nice religious mothers" have to wait until after they are adults before they dare tell a single soul they are homosexual.

(Playing)

In one episode an alien boy sneaks off with Max to Vegas to have fun. Soon they get into a big fight because Max just won't lighten up... I like Max because he never escapes into clowning or drugs or denial of how they are in danger. He just never quits.

An actor from Alberta plays the adult nerd. On the DVD commentary for Firefly he explains trying to tell creator Joss Whedon that he couldn't see himself playing the part, saying (I forget) something like,"This character is a hollow man, with no plans or dreams, nothing springing up inside, no joy. He is just going to just...keep on going." The character of Malcolm Reynolds, captain of a tramp freighter, is unique: Although he used to be a regular guy, now he is a nerd.

In the opening credits, in a flashback, he kisses his religious medal; now he is a hard atheist. Once he learned the social skills for dancing and mingling; now he wouldn't care to go to a dance, not even if one were held right beside the port.

Something happened: he was a sergeant at the lengthy famous battle of Serenity valley. Every single officer was killed while Malcolm led the remnants to fight on... Only to have their idealism betrayed. When Malcom finaly left that valley of shadows he left his light behind.... I am reminded of a Vietnam veteran who cried out in the night.

(Burned)

The series lasted less than half a season, which makes it sound like a real bad show. But since then? The DVDs have been "flying off the shelves" at amazon due to word of mouth... leading eventually to funding for a feature, Serenity. (The name of his freighter) However, the movie failed to re-launch the series. Why? Perhaps because the film was a compromise, being written, I think, partly to appeal to fans who had seen the TV series. Never do that.

I like Malcolm because, unlike a timid middle-aged man, all of his inner conflicts have been burned away: He is very clear. When he strides to do something even a big muscular criminal steps aside.

...This past decade of TV has probably been a fluke. I don't expect to see any more nerds as TV stars. Still, I am awed at my good fortune to have known the glory of Malcolm, Max and Lain.

Sean Crawford

May 2013.20

footnotes:

~ I put a link at the end of Silence (music is from the ending of Wreck-It Ralph) partly because I like the patches of Calgary snow in the background. No other such camera work (for a cosplay music video) in any other city would show such snow—"you gotta love your hometown."

~ It is no coincidence that the old Enterprise transporter room was made for only six. I remember seeing the opening credits for Young Riders, where they ride abreast, and groaning, "Oh no" after counting six (or seven) people. The problem? I think six is the absolute maximum number of main characters for a story- unless you are doing an ensemble piece. Better to use five or three.

For Firefly to get away with nine characters they needed A) a gifted writer like Joss Wedan and B) a two hour pilot. Which was done.

Then the Fox "suits," unfortunately, A) made Joss improvise a one hour pilot giving him a deadline of a single sleepless weekend to write it and B) aired the episodes out of order. The real pilot was shown dead last—too late!

Critic Roger Eibert said, "What a crock" saying Fox should have given Joss, because of his success with the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the benefit of the doubt and gone with his intended order.

~ David Gerrold, in his book about Star Trek, portrays a clear understanding of how a movie is a different animal from a TV show. I thought that Serenity had a very blurred understanding which I interpet as being due to a compromise.

~ Sometimes I joke that I am a nerd, but no one ever believes me. (I was not always the man you see before you)

The Anime, Elfen Lied

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The Anime, Elfen Lied
A Meditation on Child Abuse


Os justi meditabitur sapientiam
(The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom)
- Iilium (lily), words and music by Kayo Konishi and Yukio Kondoh


I am watching the adult animated Japanese series Elfen Lied, despite, or because of, having been warned that it was sad...The boxed DVD promotional cover sticker (over Klimt pictures) reads, in part, "Gleefully nasty and incredibly stylish"-DVD Verdict; ... "Nyu is a babe in the woods, Lucy is a viscious killer; if only they didn't share the same body!"

I remember being self conscious, about fifteen years ago, during a breakfast with about a dozen people including science fiction author Lois McMaster Bujold. I decided to take the plunge: I said I knew a few people with multiple personality disorder (MPD) and so I was touched that Lois didn't exploit a major character in her Miles Vorkosigan series. The character had been purposely tortured as a child into having "split personalities" so that he could be a spy. I relaxed as Lois told us she had received three fan letters of thanks from persons with MPD. At the time my best friend had the first stage of MPD.

While society thinks that MPD is extremely rare, that isn't my own experience. There is an other world out there, a world that writer Lynn Okamoto of Elfen Lied knows about. When Lucy, her main character, has a vicious personality I thought at first this symbolized how in Japan homicidal rages are not unknown, partly due to the everyday repression of anger. But no, when I saw she had more than one personality I knew then she symbolized child abuse.

In this thirteen episode series a boy and girl who are newly adult move into an abandoned inn which includes a bathhouse. There they take in runaways, survivors of abuse and neglect. One of the kids has never even seen a hot bath—let alone a Japanese bath house. At her place they always washed her down with a hose of cold water.

I am thinking... of how, early in the process of women's liberation, a woman might go through a phase of avoiding all men. Similarly, I'm sure, child survivors, even when legally adults, may have a natural phase of seeing all parents, or people over 30, as the enemy. A big safe house of young people with a big safe bathhouse, in Elfen Lied, is the children's first ever place of happiness. Here they can converse in the kitchen and share things like, in the subtitled version, (not in the dubbed) a girl saying in despair she will never be good enough to be a mother.

In Elfen Lied (EL) a young lady in a lab coat says to other adults, sweetly, "every girl needs a mother." This same lady, from a child's point of view, is evil: she manipulates a young orphan to kill. The grownups in EL—smaller eyed and lacking the hair color variation of the kids—are not pretty inside.

From my adult point of view I can see how in real life many parents who do indeed, at one level, love their children, don't seem to do so. They may be over stressed and lacking in coping skills. Many years pass. After they exchange the harsh sprawling ranchhouse for a nice cozy condo, after they go from overworking to retirement, then at last they may seem to be, and actually are, sweet grandparents. But in the growing years their children may find them baffling and infuriating. It's understandable, then, that many episodes of EL have lots of blood flying around. This symbolizes—well, maybe it just symbolizes a good plot.

Another good plot detail is memory repression. It occurs to me that some viewers may have trouble believing that people could "forget." I believe it: our society barely knows the concept of "denial." In the film The Great Santini, played by Robert Duvall, there was a scene (later satirized in an Austin Powers spy movie) where the father, Santini, repeatedly bounces a basketball off the back of his son's head saying, "Are you going to cry now?" In the mass media version, safe for society to see, the mother talks to their son afterwards, defends Santini, and sincerely reminds her son that Santini has never hit her. How nice. The semi-autobiographical novel, by Pat Conroy, doesn't stop there: the boy immediately goes to his dresser drawer and takes out a T-shirt he has been saving for a year. He tells her that she always says that, but look, here is her own blood... I like that scene because I can refer people to it as an example of denial. I would feel foolish trying to tell of real life denial. Society, just like the mother—"No, no!"—doesn't want to hear it.

Unlike other anime, EL cannot be categorized, except to say that compared to other anime it has a lot of blood, and a lot of nudity. An internet site tags EL with a really long list of categories, but declares, in the end, EL is "not classifiable."

For me Elfen Lied is a meditation on child abuse. I really enjoy the series and the opening song.

EL is like "apples to oranges" compared to my "favorite" child abuse anime. In my Silence and Three Favorite TV Nerds (May 2013) essay I said I liked the anime Serial Experiments Lain (SEL). EL portrays a far, far grimmer universe even though it was SEL, with an explicit child suicide, which required special permission from the Japanese censor board. The opening song for 13 year old Lain goes, "I am falling, I am fading, I am drowning, help me to breathe."

It's different for the opening of Elfen Lied: The camera pans past nice pretty anime versions of modernist paintings by Klimt. The characters are still, with closed eyes. The lyrics are sung in ...distant... sad serene Latin. And rightly so, as the kids are so cut off.

Cut off.



Update: I am so excited: I found an intense "review," written as a "reflection" for those who have already seen Elfen Lied. It reads like an essay; it refutes reviews that "don't get it," and it validates my own opinions.---Update-Sorry, the site got all changed, so the link is no good. (Maybe it's still in there, but so far I can't  find it) The writer said the stopped clock symbolized how the damaged characters had stopped growing, had their lives on hold—I would never have guessed.

Update II: I see that since the song Lilium was composed in 2005, for the anime, there have been live action versions. Here is an in-church choir version that for me is sad.

Angry update II.5 I just tried the link. It seems a choir in church upsets "community standards." In a church! And so Youtube won't show it. I wonder if a pedaphile child abuser had complained to Youtube, only because the shoe fit him or her too tightly.

So let's try again: Here is a trio of young people, anime fans, doing the song in Latin. (link)

Update III: (August 2015) I was watching the final episode on Youtube and I thought, maybe, I saw postures from the opening song credits. I don't plan to re-watch it to check. But what I did find was an explanation of how the Klimt inspired art is modelled from actual priceless paintings. (Link)


Sean Crawford
feeling tired one evening in December,
2008
Tired Afterword:

Here in town I once knew someone who's mother knew about her being molested by the father but the mother angrily told the daughter it had to continue, to save the marriage, rather like on Elfen Lied.

When I was a boy, children in institutions were hosed clean as a group; I have seen it on film. I think the water was warm, I know the practise has stopped. (National Film Board, 1969, Danny and Nicky)

In Elfen Lied the mutants can sense if another mutant is near. In one scene an especialy vicious one approaches. A girl's face changes to utter terror. "She's come to kill me!" Utter knee trembling terror. She kneels, curls over and whispers, "It's only a matter of time. She's going to kill me!"... I wonder what it is like if you are a girl in a European immigrant Muslim family, trained through violence to have obedience, and then to know, fearfull, it is only a matter of time... as you are ordered to go on a family vacation back to the country of origin, a country where you may be murdered, honor killed, to ease the family's shame.

I mentioned honor killings in Europe of women and girls in a previous essay (July 2012) entitled Intentions and Default Behaviors. In Holland the police were apparently ordered to cease recording statistics on honor killings. Now "no systematic record is allowed" by the Department of Justice. I don't get it.

In Europe they will prosecute individuals who take holidays overseas to go be pedophile sex offenders. However, they will not enforce the law when families take a vacation to have younger daughters genitally mutilated, or to have older daughters left overseas, and put into virtual slavery, with their passports ripped up. Or be murdered.

This according to a former interpeter and Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali as documented in her book The Caged Virgin (copyright 2004) subtitled An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam.

Update: Story by Henry Chu, L.A. Times, London, dated Dec 20, 2008- of a woman, Humayra Abedin, being ordered back to Britain under the new 2007 Forced Marriage Act. The British high court also ordered her family not to harass, threaten or forcibly remove her from Britain to Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). She had lived for six years in Britain before being allegedly held against her will and married off in Bangladesh. A local Bangladesh judge agreed with her return saying her family's behavior was "unacceptable."

Update: (July 2019) I guess a forced marriage can happen when people immigrate "on paper" but "in reality" feel no respect or love for their neighbors, as with this family in Britain. Happily, love for the daughter eventually built a bridge.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48949483

Update: Canada, too: Friday Nov 9, 2012 Calgary Sun p 20, "Edmonton-Police rescued a 21-year-old Edmonton woman who was found forcibly confined in her home as she awaited an arranged marriage outside of Canada, say cops who have charged a man and woman."

Sorry to be too tired to give advice today, but at least I can be a witness.