Parallelisms between Elfen Lied and Frankenstein (a very long part 2)

One would be mistaken, however, to label them through-and-through villains because Lucy and the Creature do vacillate between their moral extremes, and there is much to show for the good in them, however little left there may be at the conclusion of the novel and show. Lucy’s foil, Nyuu, who emerges after a critical gunshot injury to her head incurred from her escape from the Facility, marks a stark contrast to her heartless-killer persona whereas the Creature’s last deed of kindness- saving a girl from certain drowning, occurred right after the rejection by the DeLaceys. Moreover, however steeped in bloodshed they may be, the Creature and Lucy have certain people they will never kill- namely Victor (the creator) and Kouta (the first person to have shown prolonged care and concern for Lucy). The debt of gratitude that Lucy holds and the Creature’s inability to murder his father endues them with a sentience and humanity of sorts.

Ironically, it is also Victor and Kouta who are partially responsible for the misdeeds of the Creature and Lucy. Victor’s abandonment of the Creature when “the beauty of [his] dream (experiment) vanished” and his non-compliance to the reasonable request of providing a mate drives the Creature into an abyss of despair, which his marriage to Elizabeth only serves to aggravate, so much so that the Creature is determined to desolate Victor’s future and fill him with the same miseries he underwent. Similarly, Kouta’s benign lie to Lucy that about the gender of his festival companion, and Lucy’s surge of jealousy and wretchedness when she discovers otherwise, leads her to wrongly conclude that he had never liked her from the start and toyed with her as a person might an amusing, exotic animal. This extinguished her only source of hope and resurrected the malice she incubated upon the death of her pet—she murders Kouta’s father and sister in cold blood , and the psychological ripples return to haunt her and Kouta for years to come.

Revenge is a dominant theme in both works. Lucy gains a thirst for killing after Kouta’s act of betrayal in her eyes, as she finds herself no longer able to trust agents of the human world, and sets about to create the world in which she alone and her kind can live in peace, acquiescing to the suggestions that her devilish id (to borrow a Jungian term) presses upon her. She increasingly kills without hesitation, with greater efficiency and frequency when she comes to terms with her power to create pain and serves payback to humans for the torment she suffered in her formative years. The Creature, too, after his symbolic asphyxiation of William (Victor’s younger brother), discovers with devilish delight that “[he]… can create misery”, that man is as mortal as he is, maybe less, and proceeds to wreak havoc in his fiendish excess. Yet, just as Lucy is able to revert to Nyuu, her innocent child-like identity redolent of untainted past self, the Creature offers a pact of conciliation to Victor, to “quit the neighborhood of man” and cease being the scourge that he is, in return for a mate that Victor eventually refuses.

In a crude sum-up, Frankenstein and Elfen Lied portray separate but not dissimilar stories which offer a thought-provoking rebuke of man’s tendency to self-harm. Whether it be diabolical experiments that reek of unethical meddling and misguided hubris or the alienating xenophobia particular to an arrogant species named homo sapiens, readers are challenged to reconsider the tenuous assumption of man as ‘good’. Not always so, it seems. At times, it appears that man’s capacity for compassion is severely suspect—who’s to blame then, when works of evil return to plague their author? As the adage goes, treat others as you would have them reciprocate. If nothing else, at least take this away as a valuable lesson.

Parallelisms between Elfen Lied and Frankenstein (Part 1)

To detractors of anime who brand it as a childish field of theatre, who scorn at the supposed intellectual want of people hooked on it, who dismiss any said production as undeserving of inclusion in the great literary pantheon, Elfen Lied, and other works of worthy literary value proves otherwise. A thematic and clinical diagnosis of Elfen Lied and upheld classic ,Frankenstein, would throw up palpable similarities which resound through them– for so much are they alike . For one, they are very much Gothic productions, steeped in the same dark, grey constructs that characterize the genre, speckled with loss, pain and unhallowed inscrutability.

Thematic analogies abound. Social alienation is an evil that runs unchallenged in the works, shaping subsequent malevolence in the “villainous protagonist” who emerges as he/she is, not so much as an inherent by-condition of birth or existence, but the multitudinous social experiences that teach them to abhor the perpetrators. Physical traits differentiate Lucy and the Creature from their human counterparts; whereas in the case of the former, the distinction is minor enough to be cloaked, the Creature has no affordance of such ‘luxury’, his deformity being obtrusively conspicuous. Either way, revelation of their physical abnormalities evokes generally disgust and revulsion, socially conditioned responses that drive them to despair and eventually vengeance.

It is noteworthy that Lucy and the Creature begin as essentially benevolent characters, and it is society that instructs them in ways which eventually “plague [their] inventor (Macbeth)”. Lucy is a willing scapegoat who bears the brunt of the other children’s bullying and harassment at the orphanage, believing stoically that unhappy victims must require unhappier sufferers to efface and plaster over their own pain. The Creature’s first contacts with humankind resulted in his being grievously injured by projectiles and the like. Both protagonists/antagonists experience their fair share of social exclusion and marginalization, being outcasts and “abortions” that have no place on Earth, the Creature having no biological parent while Lucy’s were never shown, both accursed to wander kinless. The protagonists also undergo a snapping point in their transformation into cold-blooded antagonists- for the Creature, it is the ultimate act of rejection by the DeLaceys while for Lucy, it is the callous butchery of her pet.

A Psychoanalysis of Higurashi

If Higurashi were real, it would certainly generate interest in a great number of psychoanalysts and make Freud's curative diagnoses of patients a boring affair in comparison. And why not? Higurashi portrays the failing of the psychological person in so diverse a manner and in terms of intensity that it would be beyond the means of this post to cover its aspects comprehensively. Nevertheless i shall try.

In Jungian terms, all the characters suffer a failure of "individuation", the process of psychological maturity, which leds to regrettable circumstances. The collapse of the psyche and drive into derangement is accompanied by the breakdown of first the "superego" then the "ego". Lexically, the superego disintegrates first as the character is seized by paranoia and a nagging suspicion. Eventually, the case of schizophrenia becomes so bad that outward symptoms manifest on a more current basis; the character exhibits acts of aggression more frequently and the curbing influence of putting on a pretence is discarded eventually en route to full fledged violence. This is most exemplified in the case of the Shion arc, as her feelings of vengeance take on a character of its own, inducing her to afflict pain on all she incriminates and holds responsible for the death of her beloved Satoshi. In a most chilling end, she breaks down after her cold-blooded murder of Satoko, when she recalls Satoshi's last words to her: "Please take care of my little sister". Her self-righteous sense of justice which becomes increasingly warped and incomprehensible throws everyone around her into the pit of tragedy, which she falls into at the end. The same holds remarkably constant for her loli companions, all of whom, under extreme circumstances, manifest a disturbing side of humanity that shocks with its detached parades of sadism. A story in the mould of "Lord of the Flies", Higurashi uncovers the human potential for carnage that is so often suppressed under layers of conformity and deliberate reason which society sets up to protect against itself. Yet, as the 2nd season goes to show, there is always hope at the end, and once the in-fighting is directed against an external enemy, good gains ascendancy.

Higurashi no naku koro ni - An Analysis (Part 1) by: Loli Paizuri

Much of this animation is steeped in the concept of duality, somewhat like a dichotomy between light and dark, with the uneasy blurring of demarcation rearing several times throughout the series. A shocking anime in its own right, with no apparent precedent nor plausible successor in terms of brutality married with moeness, it is distinctive in that it contravenes mainstream anime’s unspoken laws by showing the mutilation and murder of girls by EACH OTHER. What is chilling about this is the cyclic nature of the series, which intersperses gore and grisly occurrences with typically innocent behaviors and mannerisms matched by no less kawaii characters to boot. The duality of human nature is skillfully played out through this scheme of playback and loop, which, like a magnifying glass, penetrates the externalities of everyday behavior in the first two episodes of each arc to highlight the deep insecurities and paranoia that are flashed out to viewers in gritty detail in the following episodes, before culminating in a “bad end” and moving back in time to explore the mental landscapes of other characters—in the first season.

The second season is inherently different due to its undertones of hope which serve as a contradistinction to the gloomy first installment, in a brilliant manner that again showcases the myriad levels of duality that permeate this work. Due to fatigue, I will probably stop at the (very) short thematic synopsis of duality- on the next post I will be providing a psychoanalysis of higurashi in general. Only, don’t expect too much from a 16 yr old student.

"Inter-textualities" and Cross-references in anime by: Loli Paizuri

Konnichiwa readers- today, on a purely whimsical basis, I have decided to pen an article on cross-references in anime as the precursor to my subsequent analyses. Why this particular foci, one might ask. To the unaware few, there is something innately gratifying about noting and recognizing an element from a foreign anime injected into a completely different one that is the subject of the viewer's current attention. To paraphrase the last sentence, it simply means one feels good when he discovers a point of cross-reference in the anime he watches.

Why so? I believe this psychological pleasure is derived from the quintessential otaku's pride of knowing. As any otaku would have you know, he is fully informed about the vital statistics of his favourite anime characters, is able to recite the catchphrases of the said peoples backwards, and has probably sung the OP and ED too many a time in the bathroom. And therefore his otaku ego is satisfied when he feels that his grasp of anime is comprehensive enough to detect traces of cross-reference. This explanation is scarcely exaggerated, when one considers how academicians revel in the cognizance of their intellectual capabilities (like a smug political scientist who ably discerns classical liberalism and neoliberalism); similarly an otaku is convinced of his NEET prowess when he spots a glimpse of anime cross-reference, and the harder to spot, the greater his satisfaction.

For interested people who seek to scrutinize cross-references in their extremity (and have not done so), watch Hayate no Gotoku, which brings in the distinctive cicada sounds from Higurashi, imports Gundam bots from er... the Gundam franchise, incorporates Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordstyles from Runouni Kenshin, makes explicit allusions to The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and does much, much more.

(hayate loves the haruhi girls. very much)

Now excuse me, it’s time to enact my role of a shallow anime fan and indulge myself in the excess of fan service.

Yours truly, Loli Paizuri

An introduction of etc etc Version Two!

Greetings from an average-looking person who lives an average life,

I am, as you would have probably have guessed by now, none other than the unheard of lonely figure, RyuuUsagi (aka DragonBunny). Technically, i am not unheard of, as my partner has already introduced me in his post, thus nullifying my above sentence. However, that is besides the point. The point is, why am i beating around the bush in a desperate attempt to make up for the lack of content in this post?

In all seriousness (as serious as i could ever attempt to be), I would be posting manga reviews and miscellaneous rants, as well as anime reviews as and when i feel like it (so sue me, loli paizuri!). This blog would be updated frequently, so be sure to check back in a while.

Regards, ecchi lover, RyuuUsagi

An introduction on the establishment of this blog by: Loli Paizuri

Greetings to all readers:

This being the first post of my humble blog, let me begin by contextualizing the circumstances behind its creation. Anime and Manga Retreat, AMR, for short, is created for the sole purpose of reviewing noteworthy anime and manga, and occasionally, trumpeting the inviolable virtues of YURI. AMR is a joint project managed by me (Loli Paizuri) and some other person by the moniker of RyuuUsagi.
I will be offering my personal and highly professional opinions (somethings philosophical, at other times, nonsensical, most of the time, fanatical) on anime while my counterpart undertakes a drawnout commentary on the world of manga. Expect discourse, intellect and light-hearted rubbish in our writings.
Should fellow anime/manga/yuricrazy bloggers wish to link us on their blogs, please inform us by mail: animemangaretreat@gmail.com and we will reciprocrate the honor in action. I look foward to your heartfelt comments on our subsequent posts.

Regards, chief editor, Loli Paizuri