HOLLYWOOD FILMS / JAPANESE FILMS

Memory is A Requiem for the Dead Neurons (Part 1)

  You are talking about memories. Rick Deckard, Bladerunner.   William Gibson’s most controversial work to date, “Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)“, was supposed to exist only in the memories of those who experienced it. The work would not be physically accessible after its initial encounter with a reader. I mean, you cannot read it twice. And this needs a little bit of explaining.   This work was originally released in two forms; a floppy disk and a physical book. On the floppy disk, there is an executable program, which, upon execution, scrolls the poetry titled “Agrippa” on the …

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JAPANESE FILMS

Evangelion after Fukushima (Part 5)

This is final installment of the series. Part 1, 2, 3 and 4. They told me I was going to be in one of the Ultimate Secret Weapon. I didn’t know what it was. I was excited. Then I found out it was the Human Torpedo. – A Japanese Imperial Navy ex-trainee, who stationed in the secret Navy base near Hiroshima during the last days of the Pacific War. The image of Shinji (and Asuka or Rei) in Eva may bear little resemblance to it, but it is the image of a suicide weapon nonetheless – Kamikaze fighters, Human torpedoes and other atrocious machinery …

 
JAPANESE FILMS

Evangelion after Fukushima (Part 4)

This is Part 4 of the series. Part 1, 2 and 3. There is a vital difference between the empty streets of ULTRAMAN or EVANGELION and the empty streets in Fukushima. In fiction, these empty streets demand you to kill your imagination. Don’t think about them. They act as bits of the propaganda, which coerce you not to contemplate. But, the empty streets in Fukushima demand us to imagine the absence of the society – lives destroyed, families torn apart, businesses crumbled, promises crashed, smiles forgotten, and hopes demolished. Parhaps we should remember, – as Hiroaki Koide pointed out – …