How a Japanese Otaku received the end of Evangelion in 2021. Part.3
In part3, I will introduce star creators and their masterpieces after the original EVA, Your Name. by Makoto Shinkai, and Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto to my readers. They have succeeded artistically and commercially in Japan, so the English versions are readily available. Moreover, they are appropriate for people who finish watching EVA without Otaku contexts because we can understand their masterpieces under the context we mentioned before.
(To Japanese Otaku readers: Of course, I want to introduce many works from various fields. Still, I had to limit them due to the English version availability, reading time, and contexts to understand those works.)
Your Name.
in 2016
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Production: Toho, CoMix Wave Films
Running time: 107 minutes
rental available on many streaming services
Your Name., a juvenile love story with an SF idea that a boy in Tokyo and a girl in the countryside suddenly swap bodies, is appropriate for everyone interested in Japanese Anime movies. Shinkai Makoto can be the most successful Japanese anime director in 2022 because this movie is more widespread than even the cinematic EVA series. Although he was recognized as a talented creator before 2016, this movie’s massive success in every social segment surprised otakus because every aspect of the movie suggested it was the latest version of the 00’s movements otakus used to love. Makoto Shinkai, from the PC game market after EVA and started his movie creation from his only MacBook in 2002, clearly shows that he is a legitimate successor to that movement. His latest movie, Weathering with You(2019), expands this tendency hardcore with the commercial success again. Therefore, his movies are good digests to quickly understand the works after EVA.
For example, in this movie, we can find a variant of the ‘the end of the world’ structure, inspired by Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. The novel contains two worlds — — a hard-boiled detective story and a symbolic space ‘ the end of the world’. At first, the two stories go on parallel with the implication of the relationships, but ‘ the end of the world’ eventually absorbs the first story. In other words, ‘The end of the world’ is ABOVE ‘the hard-boiled story.’ The meta-structure is frequently used in the 00"s movements in a reinterpreted way as an SF gadget to modify simple love stories with metaphorical expressions. It is for mainly two reasons. First, Haruki Murakami is not the writer in the ‘pure literature’ salon, although most popular. Second, it is convenient as a metaphor for the relationships between art itself and consumers. We players are in ‘the end of the world’ and above the main story that we are now consuming. Anyway, this gadget was an invention that helped to express symbolic themes without detracting from expressions of everyday youth life Japanese manga culture loves. (If you want, you can google Jun Maeda as a pioneer of this idea.) Shinkai adopts this system by reconstructing it to match the movie media.
You will find a similarity to Cristopher Nolan’s movie plotting in Shinkai’s movies. It is reasonable because the Nolan brothers are likely to understand the context mentioned above, if not core readers, as one of the valuable tools to narrate their story efficiently. Many Japanese critics reviewed Interstellar(2014) under the 00’s movement context, considering Nolan mentioned Voices of a distant star (2002), Shinkai’s debut short film. Hiroki Azuma, one of the Otaku opinion leaders, twittered that he was glad that what they thought in the movement was connected to the big-budget Hollywood movie. Anyway, watching Shinkai’s filmography will also be helpful to appreciate Nolan differently.
Chainsaw Man
in 2018–2020
Written by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Published by Shueisha. Inc
comic, all available on Amazon.com
Shueisha. Inc, the biggest manga publisher such as Dragon Ball or NARUTO, recently seems to have successfully managed the relationship between creators and producers. Weekly JUMP, also the most famous magazine, sells relatively gorier than in the past but impressive titles. I want to introduce Chainsaw Man (2018–2020) by Tatsuki Fujimoto rather than his fascinating colleagues like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2016–2020) by Koyoharu Gotouge or Jujutsu Kaisen (2018-) by Gege Akutami. We start to regard Tatsuki Fujimoto as a meticulous, humorous but severe, up-to-date identity storyteller for young Japanese generations as Anno was 20 years ago. Although the creators mentioned above incorporate the young generation’s frustration against the Japanese social situation as a prerequisite to expanding their story, Tatsuki Fujimoto especially does not hesitate to illustrate their negative feelings as they are.
In Tokyo in Chainsaw Man world, fatal and vicious devils flourish. A young impoverished boy Denji granted a devil power, is hired as a Devil hunter by Makima, a mysterious woman agent. Soon after, he realizes Makima and her devil hunters are the Japanese government’s secret force and Makima intends something dangerous. Still, he does not hesitate to work for her by slaughtering devils with his colleagues because of his falling in love with his boss. As the story goes, Makima reveals her true nature as the devil queen and devastates innocent people and his colleagues, which makes him turn against Makima’s conspiracy in the end. Denji eventually realized that there is the only neat thing to save the world and fulfill his mad love affair at the same time: killing Makima and cannibalizing her flesh.
The relationship between Makima, the femme-Fatale, and Denji is intriguing. Makima is an anthropomorphization of the theme like Tyler Durden in Fight Club (2000) rather than a fascinating heroine. Makima, the ruler of the characters, is also the ruler of the theme of Chainsaw Man itself: ruling and being ruled. Makima is a supreme power symbol in violence, sex, and even politics we cannot defy. So there is no longer equal communication we usually need in a love story. Instead, to solve the plot, Denji (and we readers) have to become Makima herself through identification by cannibalism.
Vital is Tatsuki Fujimoto’s understanding of manga media, such as framing sense in the pages. However, rather than his seasoned techniques, I believe that Chainsaw Man fascinates the young Japanese generation more than other masterpieces because its theme, ruling and being ruled, is actual in this era. Economically and politically, many young people in Japan believe that they cannot defy their problems: Economically, they experience the meritocracy connected to money-consuming education, as Sandel points out in the US. Since the bubble corruption, they have suffered from the economic recession, but they have to pay more taxes because of the disruptive demographics. Demographics matters. Japan is a hyper-aged society never seen before in history, with the elderly outnumbering the young by far. Although Japan is a democratic country, elections can be meaningless for young people just because of the minimal number of the young population. They believe that no politicians care about them despite being on edge. On this point, Fujimoto is clever because he overlaps these negative emotions constructed by politics and economics with sexual and violent frustrations that teenagers easily accept. Even if the young readers cannot understand the social origin of their negative feelings, they will quickly realize what Fujimoto depicts is crucial to them. It was what Anno did in the past. And Anno can no longer do the same thing because of the historical and political background we mentioned in Part 2.
Afterwords:
This essay, made of three parts, is written for unfamiliar people with Otaku culture. Especially, It is for my English teacher Mr.S. Our class for 18 months under the COVID-19 era will finish. I wanted to write a formal essay to wrap up because I could not coherently explain the current Japanese culture during the lecture, considering the primary purpose of learning a foreign language: telling a story about our culture to people who do not have the same contexts. Thank you for your persistent instruction, and I am convinced about your success in your new career. See you again!
