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At the end of the summer, I was discussing with my friend Miyako about the end of NAUSICAA and the parallel that could be made with the end of EVANGELION. She brought to me many interesting points. When Kaoru Nagisa, the seventeenth angel, asks Shinji to kill him in order to give back to humanity control over its own destiny, he was acting as a kind of christ, giving up his life not to free men from their sins, but from God. It was time for men to escape the destiny predetermined by God, by religion, time to take control, to assume responsibility. When Nausicaa used the God Warrior to destroy the Crypt of Shuwa's "computer" that was taking care of "cleaning up" the world and restoring the old order, she did exactly the same thing as Nagisa. She gave back to humanity its destiny, its free will. Why try to go back to an order that already failed? It is time to change. The world is a mess, but the toxic jungle is there, it will not go away, so let's deal with it right now. It will be hard, we might fail, but at least we will have tried, with our own free will. That's what Nausicaa could have said.
What those stories really want to say, I think, is that men's destiny should be in their own hands not in the faith of gods. This is part of the original message of Buddhism. There is no god. Man must make his way through life with his own virtue and wisdom, improve himself through trial and error until he succeeds. That's a concept that we might be unfamiliar with in the West, since our Judeo-Christian upbringing has shaped the base of our philosophy. We expect an outside intervention, we hope that problems will solve themselves, that someone will take the right decision, we believe that we will be saved by a messiah or even by extra-terrestrials. We never get our heart to the problem and get lazy, sloppy. No wonder that Eastern civilization generally has a better social order.
If we look at our world, we see that it is a dark, dirty place, filled with violence, wars, pollution: our own toxic jungle, with its multi-faceted corruption and poisons. We must forget about the hope of redemption, stay deaf to those preaching an old order that failed. Let's claim the freedom for our body and mind. The world out there is dying, something needs to be done about it. Let's do it now.
To update on the EVANGELION controversy, nothing really came out from Anno-san at Anime Expo. He seemed embittered, and quickly lost patience with the fans. "If you don't understand, it is your problem", he said! He made many comments in such terms that our reporter on location couldn't put them on paper. For more details, check our report on Anime Expo in the next issue. Anyway, someone who worked on EVANGELION did confirm that the last episodes (from 19 and on, but mainly 25-26) were censored following pressure from the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association; but no mention of any legal action) and that they had been botched. To be continued.
A last comment, on the promotion made by US Manga Corps for PATLABOR. They present it as full of "heavy mecha action"! I see there a great risk, because if fans approach this series expecting heavy action, they will be quite disappointed, even angry. It was either done out of ignorance of their own products or simply to attract the attention of the mecha fans. But PATLABOR is quite far from being a mecha show. Mecha are only accessory to the story. And that's what make this show so interesting. At least they mentioned the "story-driven character development" in their promotion. It is exactly the disappointed expectation of mecha and action fans that so harmed the success of the show in France. Let's hope that this marketing faux-pas will not have a negative effect, because PATLABOR is such a great show.
In this issue, we are offering you a feature on two great releases from U.S. Manga Corps: PATLABOR (of course) and VOTOMS. It also contains the synopses for the last two episodes of BLUE SEED (oops!), the reports on two conventions (Project A-Kon and Otakon), and on one movie festival (Fant-Asia). It is still full of news and reviews of all kinds. There are also a few color pages (Don't mind them, it is just a test, but there might be more in the future). Ah! So many things to say, and so little space and time!
Enjoy it (and don't forget to give us some feedback -- see the poll on page 57)!
Claude J. Pelletier