When you first come to Japan, someone will teach you how to use their complicated recycling system. This one is for food waste. This one is for things that can be set on fire. And this one is for recyclables, such as ペットボトル PET bottles.
"What the shitting fuck?" you may ask yourself. It's clear from context what they are, and you kind of assume it doesn't have anything to do with pets (unless??), but you have no idea why on earth they would be called that here. Maybe you actually take five seconds to look it up, or maybe, like me, you just file it under "stuff I don't really get yet" and then never bother to find out why for years and years and years.
It turns out, as with most of life's deepest questions, the answer is deceptively simple.
PET is actually short for polyethylene terephthalate, also known as Dacron, as in "Toscanini, Dacron, Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock." It's actually used in a variety of other contexts, such as fibres for clothing, interestingly. But basically it's a type of plastic. That's it. Nothing obscure, no tricky parametres for what does and does not constitute a PET bottle. All this time, when I was being confused by people saying "PET bottles," literally all they were saying was "plastic bottles."
I think there's actually a wider point in there somewhere.
If
you can't watch the video, it shows a young man in a stylish leather
jacket driving a Lexus IS through a mountain pass. “How do I
explain it?” he wonders. “It was...exhilarating. Nimble.
Responding to my every touch. Moving faster than the wind. That
feeling of pure...driving. It was amazing.” The steering
wheel disappears beneath his hands and suddenly he's sitting in a
spacious self-driving orb, decades older, entering the outskirts of a
major city (Toronto?). And then words appear onscreen:
“Enjoy
the thrill of driving. While you still can.”
Yeah.
Pretty much.
*
Reading
the news today, it's hard not to come to a depressing conclusion:
Self-driving
cars will likely be commercially available within our lifetimes.
The Weeknd in his all-red Lamb...borghini Aventador SV
Ok,
so depending on who you are, that might not be depressing. It could
even be damned exciting. I appreciate that not everybody loves
driving like I do, or even particularly enjoys it, or thinks about it
at all unless they're currently doing it. They're not against the
concept, they just don't care. They don't don't spend all their
disposable income on vehicles they don't need. They don't analyze the
specs of cars old and new, calculating dollars-per-horsepower or
power-to-weight ratios. They don't discover the entire library of The
Weeknd because they saw an ad for the Starboy video and clicked on it
to see what the car was.
That's
fine. Self-driving cars are made by and for these people.
Some
people, given the choice, would rather relax and enjoy the ride.
There are people who are technically skilled, but so nervous and
lacking in confidence that in practice they are a danger behind the
wheel. And then there are people who should never operate a motorized
vehicle under any circumstances. I'm actually hesitantly in favour
of developing self-driving cars, especially if they could communicate
with each other, dramatically improving safety and even alleviating
congestion.
The
only reason I'm ultimately against self-driving cars is because I am
deeply afraid that if they become normalized in the public
consciousness, real cars will be legislated against, and that if that
happens, I'll never drive again.
I
mean, Jesus, we practically have self-driving cars already: They're
called BMWs. And grocery-getters aren't much better. Automatic
transmissions, lane departure warning systems, fucking
backup cameras, the entirety of
automotive history has described an arc of human beings having to
know less and less what the hell they're doing, to the undeniable
detriment of their driving abilities. The new Civic Type-R, in spite
of being standard-only, will actually fucking blip the throttle for
you on a downshift, so that you don't have to learn to heel-toe.
Because the last thing you want to do while driving is drive,
apparently.
Kylie Jenner in her burnt orange Lamborghini Aventador SV
But
Elon Musk, Waymo, Nissan, and everybody else researching autonomous
vehicle technology don't care what I think. And one of my firm
beliefs is that you can't fight the future: It's coming, and your
only choice is whether to smile and hop on board or watch it leave
you behind. I'm talking social justice in the 60s, the advent of the
Internet, you can see it everywhere. I choose to get on board. I
would even work for a company developing self-driving cars, if that
came up. I'd hate to know that I helped sound the death knell of real
cars, but if it's happening anyway, I might as well be a part of it,
profit from it, and help make history. So I guess it's time to at
least get comfortable with the idea.
*
There
are, however, some alternatives to full autonomy.
Vehicle
autonomy is currently categorized into four levels. Level 1 is what
we currently have everywhere, and Level 4 is the long-term goal of
zero driver input, ever. Level 3 is basically where the car can
drive itself in any situation, but the driver still has the option of
driving themselves if they want to.
Level
2 is where it gets sticky, and it's where we're stuck at present. At
Level 2, the car drives itself, but it requires constant supervision
from a human being, who must be as alert as they would be if driving
themselves, ready to take over at a second's notice should the car's
AI find itself embroiled in one of the numerous situations it is not
equipped to handle. Do you...do you see the problem with this?
Instead,
is there a way to make Level 1 safer? What Japanese automakers, in
contrast to their American and European counterparts, seem to have
arrived at is a broad swathe of features that help a human driver
operate their vehicle more easily. In other words, the computer
becomes not a chauffeur but a copilot. You gotta like that kind of
lateral thinking from a business, filling a need we never knew was
there.
Here
is where we have to pause to acknowledge that the Prius is an
absolutely terrible car. The only car I've driven, so far, that was
worse than the Prius was the Smart Fortwo (fingers crossed I get to
drive a Lada someday!). Well, ok, Prius is surprisingly peppy in
Sport mode. But in addition to being auto-only, on account of it's
electric, the throt...um, gas ped...the accelerator isn't
attached to anything, and feels like it. When you depress it, you
aren't pulling a cable that operates the engine, you're asking
permission from the computer to torque the drive axle a few extra
times each second. Really stupid. (Although the Fortwo still wins the
worst because its torque converter shifts like someone learning
to drive standard, and not making a lot of progress with it either.
Although it was shockingly peppy and oddly fun to wheel around...)
But
you also have to acknowledge that the Prius is kind of an amazing
piece of engineering, developed at a time when Toyota was on top and
certainly didn't need something new and surprising, but chose
to develop something anyway in order to avoid becoming stagnant. It's
therefore fitting that it was chosen as the test bed for innovative
developments in driver-assist technology, in partnership withresearchers at MIT.
The
research project uses what the article calls “parallel autonomy,”
human drivers assisted by a computer's detailed analysis and
superhuman reaction times. These Priuses use what is quickly becoming
a fairly standard combination of GPS, cameras, and LIDAR (light-based
radar – so, “eyes”) to facilitate emergency automatic braking
and emergency automatic steering. The researchers assert that people
become inattentive when riding in a Level 2 vehicle, so instead they
sought to augment Level 1.
“If the [self-driving] car hits
black ice, it's in charge of staying on the road. But [human
operators] can help out when the car encounters conditions it's
unsure how to handle. A human operator would look around and use the
car's cameras and other sensors to issue new instructions. The
teleoperator is there to make sure the car doesn't just shut down
when it's too dumb to know what's going on.”
I guess this one's cheating, but
it's still an interesting unexpected solution.
For example, the 2018 Accord will
“match speeds with the car ahead, nudge the wheel to keep you from
straying out of your lane, and it'll even bring the car to a stop if
it detects an impending collision. It can even recognize traffic
signs and display them to the driver. A multiangle backup camera is
also standard on all trims. Blind-spot monitoring, front and rear
parking sensors, rear cross traffic alert and a driver awareness
monitor are optional.”
This is hardly an exhaustive list
of all the developments in self-driving technology, or even just the
Japanese sphere of it – that'd be a topic for a whole blog on its
own – but it's a representative sampling of what's coming out of
the country in that area.
*
And
I kind of hate all this shit.
Elon Musk with a Tesla Model 3.
Tesla
has actually recently included an option to allow their cars to go up
to five klicks over the speed limit while in self-driving mode, which
is unbelievably fucking stupid, because how the fuck did you not
understand what you were getting into? Either accept that your car is
going to restrain itself to the legal limit, or learn to drive it
long distances yourself. Fucking rich people, hey?
And
this actually speaks to my wider point: So, so many motorists are
overwhelmed by their own sense of entitlement. I mean really. It's
why they drive like complete dipshits on the highway, or send Mission
Critical texts while driving, or drive while drunk or high. Traffic
safety is one of the only things I take seriously. Because I love
driving, I respect it.
“Oh,
haha, but I actually drive better high, man.” Fuck you.
Fuck. You. “But I only text when it's really important.” It's
never important. You know it, I know it. It's certainly not more
important than what's happening around you. When you say shit like
that, what you're really saying is, “I think I'm more important
than everyone else.” Oh, you literally think you are? Fuck you. We
already went over this.
*
What's
wrong with driver assist?
Takumi (AE86) and Keisuke (FD) race through the twisties.
Let's
start with lane departure warnings. This is unbelievably stupid. How
can you not notice when you're drifting out of your lane? Just pay
attention to what the fuck you're doing! I'm annoyed this is even a
thing. Besides, I intentionally drift out of my lane in the twisties,
because that's where the best line is. Of course I never do it faster
than I can see, because that's fucking obvious. Well, maybe this
system could help wake somebody up if their attention starts to drift
on the highway. Maybe that's legitimate. Alright. Alright.
Backup
cameras? Well, OK, but the problem here is that people think that
having a backup camera means they're free to just stare at a display
on the dashboard, letting the beeps tell them when they're done. Um,
no. You have to look all around the vehicle to make sure that
pedestrians, other vehicles, etc aren't staggering gormlessly into
your path, as they do. And you need to actually angle your car into
the stall you want. And avoid knocking into anything outside the
camera's extremely narrow viewpoint as you do it. A backup camera can
be a handy tool. But like any tool, it's only effective for its
intended use.
How
about dashboard lights that indicate when there's a vehicle in your
blind spot? Again, fine, as long as you remember that they're just
tools. You still have to shoulder check and be certain the space
you're moving into is clear, this is just one more safeguard in case
you make a mistake. But that's not how most people will use them, is
it? They will now trust the car to do their job for them, because no
computer has ever had a glitch and no lighbulb has ever burned out.
And by the way, when you have a spare moment, learn to adjust your
mirrors correctly. Then you might not even have a blind spot.
If you can see any part of the vehicle, you're doing it wrong.
Cruise
control is bad enough. This stupid thing where it will now accelerate
to passing speed without you touching the accelerator is even dumber.
But I've already complained about this in another post, so we'll move
on.
And
now the worst one: Automatic braking. What the actual fuck? Excuse
me. I am driving the car. I will decide when we brake. Full stop. No
pun intended. Sorry, no, I am just fundamentally against anything
that takes control and specifically decision-making out of the hands
of the driver.
Yyyyyyeah.
So
what happens the first time the feature malfunctions while you're
doing 120 on the highway with an F250 tailgating you? Right.
On
top of that, have you ever had your car do something unexpected,
perhaps while moving at speed? It's not a great feeling, is it? Do
you think it would be improved if it occurred as, say, a drunk driver
ploughed into the back of a bus up ahead? Rather than thank their
guardian angel, I think the average driver would be so startled by
the car taking action without their input that it would actually
hamper their ability to perform any other manoeuvres that might be
necessary to avoid becoming involved in the accident – manoeuvres
which would already be harder to perform under braking, by the way.
Besides
which, setting aside how much I've slagged off the average driver
throughout this post, how bad do you think people's hazard
identification skills are? Most people's kneejerk (heh) reaction when
confronted by any kind of driving situation is to hit the brakes
anyway, even and maybe especially when the best response would be to
accelerate, so the extra half-second is just not worth it.
“So,
Rude Boy, I suppose you hate ABS too.” Actually no. ABS is
acceptable because it genuinely improves safety, is fairly reliable,
and – and this is critical – behaves consistently, generally
activating under the same combination of conditions (speed, load,
brake input, and so forth), thus becoming no more than another tool
in the driver's toolbox, augmenting her abilities and contributing to
the driving experience rather than detracting from it. Yeah, you can
grow to depend on it, but the average person will never again drive a
car without ABS (most people under, like, 30 never even have), and
for a majority of people, in a majority of situations, ABS is
superior to no ABS. (Yes, you can, and indeed must, learn to balance
the brakes right on the edge of locking up in a vehicle without ABS,
but does that shorten your stopping distance relative to if it DID
have ABS? No.)
*
Now
there are, last time I counted, roughly a hundred billion companies
competing in this space. Tesla is doing it because Elon Musk is
forward-thinking as hell, hence the electric cars (OH MY FUCKING GOD
ELECTRIC CARS UGH.) Uber is going for it because, presumably, they
imagine a future in which they offer a fleet of self-driving taxis
rather than contracting service providers. Google, via Waymo, a
subsidiary of Alphabet, is in on it too, because since the day it was
founded Google's business strategy has been “try a bunch of random
bullshit.” And then there are the various startups focussing on
just this one particular issue, many of them formed of refugees from
some of the companies I just mentioned.
The
significant thing here is that each of these companies has slightly
different reasons for pursuing this goal – meaning their vision of
the future of autonomous driving may actually vary more widely than
you'd assume – and that they bring vastly different strengths and
capabilities.
Because
it's not just tech companies who are in the game – traditional,
non-Tesla vehicle manufacturers are having a go at it as well. It
would be like if instead of getting Bill Gates to make Windows, IBM
not only attempted to make their own software solution, but were
actually competing against his at the same time. Toyota even
partially funded the MIT project mentioned earlier. It's a new
frontier in business, and in some ways it doesn't even make a lot of
sense, but here we are.
I
wonder if this is the beginning of a bigger trend? If it's good
enough for Prius and Spider-Man: Homecoming, what other intersecting
markets could benefit from collaboration between semi-competing
companies?
*
The
Prius article shares some words from the team lead: “I think we
share the vision with Toyota that driving can be fun and people want
to continue to drive.” And an unrelated researchers says, “Everyone
thinks it's going to be super exciting to be in a self-driving car
but it's actually going to be super boring.”
I
still hope I never have to give up driving. If the Japanese
government grandfathers in currently insured vehicles, I will keep
all my current cars on the road until I die, probably in a
spectacular traffic accident caused by human error and safety
standards that are decades out of date. If they give everybody a hard
deadline, say ten years, then my motorcycle will become my new daily.
(Unlike most motorcyclists, I actually prefer driving to riding, but,
if it comes to that, ten times out of ten I will choose to ride a
motorcycle over being chauffered inside a robot.) If they take away
our motorcycles – and they haven't so far, incredibly, so it's
possible they never will – then I guess I'll just be hitting the
track every weekend. I'd still be having a huge part of my identity
ripped away, but at least I'd be able to get that comforting
sensation of controlling a vehicle every once in a while. And I'll
also, uh, play games like Grand Theft Auto, I guess?
Here's a post that has little, if anything, to do with Japan. Sorry. Sometimes you have to follow your heart.
So,
Wonder Woman, you guys. There's this scene where she's in a WW1 trench, looking out across No Man's Land (get it? GET IT?), where a small village held by the enemy is slowly starving. She wants to cross, but her male partner is like, "But bro, you can't, because you will literally die." And then she's like "BUT I'M WONDER WOMAN" and she fucking SPRINTS across that shit, and suddenly her allies are backing her up, and angry Germans are shooting hundreds upon thousands of bullets at her and she just pulls out her shield and is all "I'M WONDER WOMAN THOUGH." It's pretty great.
I really liked this movie. Maybe more than it deserves, because I badly wanted to, but it's still a good movie. The pacing and editing could use some work, especially the interminable front-loaded exposition scenes, but things pick up once we hit the comic relief detour in London. The fight scenes don't have a lot of tension, but that's endemic to the genre, and at least they're brief enough to at least feel exciting. Characters' abilities are telegraphed fairly well, that is to say, they don't suddenly develop new powers as the plot demands. Wonder Woman gradually manifests her strongest abilities over the course of the story before finally getting a grip on them for the final confrontation, rather than having them come out of nowhere at the end. When Chris Pine has to fly a plane at one point, we don't blink, because we've already been shown that he knows how. The WW1 setting is cool, as well (opening up comparisons with Captain America: The First Avenger, but that's a topic for another blog and another blogger).
Viewing
the movie as a man, it seems like the Chris Pine character was
supposed to be our audience insert. I was prepared to be annoyed by
this, because like, why can't I envision myself as Gal Gadot instead?
I want to be Gal Gadot. Everyone wants to be Gal Gadot. But it
actually ended up being really well-done. They could have played him
as a boorish horndog who only finally comes to acknowledge Wonder
Woman by the end, but no, they had him be respectful from the start,
not to mention intelligent, funny, and moral. He treats her as an
equal partner, if not more so, giving credit where it's due, and
admonishing any card-carrying member of the Old Boys' Club who
suggests she may be anything less than capable for being a woman. In
other words, he's a fine role model for young MEN, which I wasn't
rea;;y expecting from this movie. UPDATE: Here's a column that says everything I just said, except articulately.
Also,
Diana gets to have sex! And again, it's done really well! It comes
off as a sudden but natural development in their growing
relationship. She doesn't “give in” to his advances, and it
doesn't devalue her as a woman or in any way whatsoever diminish her
power as a feminist icon. She goes for it because she wants it, has
fun, and doesn't regret it. Fucking perfect.
I
don't know yet what the reaction has been from Japanese women, but
women in the English-speaking world seem to be psyched about this movie, and it's
awesome. Will Wonder Woman signal the beginning of a new era for
women in action movies, or cinema in general? Will we FINALLY get a
Black Widow solo film? Wait, does this mean Gal Gadot will get a larger role in
future Fast and Furious movies?! Because that would be fucking sick.
By
the time I was done, I felt like I'd glimpsed the future.
In the final part of this
long-ass series, we're going to tackle the main point I was going to
structure it around, back when I was envisioning a single post of
maybe a thousand words. As I played through these games and read
through the Metro books, it occurred to me that, sometimes without
even meaning to, each one in some way embodied its country of origin.
Yeah, every work of art is the result of a certain person living in a
particular place at a particular time, and could have turned out
radically different with but a nudge. But I still contend that
Fallout is uniquely American, Metro is uniquely Russian, and Fragile
is uniquely Japanese. I will now explain!
A
sense of place
The town of Goodneighbour from F4
One
of the coolest thing about Fallout is that everything in its world is
based on the state of the world in the 1950's. Communism is still
regarded as the greatest threat to world peace, although
it's now China rather than the Soviet Union, or was right up until it and
the United States wiped each other out. The science, too, seems to be
based on what was generally understood back then, so wasteland
denizens find radiation poisoning fairly inconsequential; it's true
that they have spent generations building up resistance, and it's
natural for any wasteland doctor to be well-trained in the matter of
curing radiation poisoning, but on top of that, radiation was once
thought to be far less dangerous than we now know it is, allowing
your character to shrug off a dose of rads that would be fatal in our
universe. Regarding the retro-futuristic laser guns, the physical
appearance of alien grays, the focus on nuclear power to the
detriment of computer development, and other relics, we can see that
Fallout basically looks like how people of the 1950s imagined the
future.
And
it follows culturally, as well. Like any truly great work, Fallout
draws inspiration from all manner of sources, but the little details
of people's everyday lives, particularly as they were before the
Great War, is clearly based on classic Americana: the attitude that
America is Best and would only keep getting better, that the worst
was over and it was only a matter of time before technology solved
all of humanity's problems. I think that's probably an exaggeration
of the American mentality of the time, but just comparing their media
with our modern media it's pretty clear that we're a lot more jaded
now. Well, considering how that worked out in the world of Fallout,
you might be able to draw some interesting parallels with our own
disillusionment...but anyway, the point is, the series could not have
been made anywhere else but America, or more accurately, it would
look very different if it had been. That is, it wouldn't be Fallout.
Fallout
is as American as cultural imperialism or gross ignorance. F3 takes
place in Washington, DC, for Christ's sake. It's not just window
dressing, either. The theme of what
is America and how do we find it runs thick throughout the main
storyline. The Enclave, the remnants of the American government,
still claims to hold jurisdiction over the original borders of the
United States, but in reality, they're fooling themselves, as their
authority has long since been supplanted by new governments such as
the New California Republic, the state of independent Las Vegas, and
small groups of humans long cut off from civilization who have
reverted to tribalism. Hell, even the military swore off its corrupt
parent and reformulated itself into a neo-knightly order, the Brotherhood of Steel. But while
the United States may be gone, America
and the values it believed it stood for may still be hiding somewhere
out there in the wastes. Ulysses, a tribal whose people were
forcefully absorbed into the expansionist Caesar's Legion, stumbled
upon an old US flag and decided to dedicate his life to resurrecting
the country, and while I think it's a fool's errand, I can't help but
admire his principles.
And while Ulysses's story is the
only one that's fleshed out properly, others aspire to rebuild the
United States as well. The Enclave's Colonel Autumn wishes to restore
it because he believes in the righteousness of the cause, and is
willing to go to despicable lengths to achieve this goal. Part of
this entails wiping out all mutated beings in the Capital Wasteland
and presumably the rest of America after that, but everybody
has been affected by radiation at this point, so his plan seeks only
to garner his organization a greater share of nothing. Van Buren and
Fallout Tactics both introduce us to AI protocols designed to take
effect should the worst happen, but both go terribly wrong.
Metro, too, derives a sense of
place from its set pieces. It does a good job of painting the city
overhead as a sort of Necropolis, frequented only by well-equipped
adventurers and the sometimes literal ghosts of its former
inhabitants. And, at least in Metro 2033, it's encased in ice and
snow, which, you know, tracks with my understanding of Russia.
I somehow feel like there's
something uniquely Russian, and Moscovite, about Metro's metro. The
defining feature is that the Moscow Metro was explicitly designed
during Soviet times to double as a massive nuclear shelter. It is so
much deeper underground than similar systems for this exact reason.
It also has its share of legends owing to this, most notably D6, an
even deeper, most likely fictional secret line that supposedly
connects important points of interest such as the Kremlin and the
national theatre, should high-ranking political executives ever need
to be evacuated while at a function. And I only say “most likely”
fictional because it's totally absurd, but a) it would make perfect
sense, and b) if anybody could keep a construction project of that
magnitude a secret, it's the Soviet government. By the way, Metro
2035 was first published in Metro, a free magazine distributed
only in the Moscow Metro. I was just thought that was amusing, and kind of brilliant marketing.
The character of each station is
evoked beautifully, whether it's a local station with a handful of
tents scattered across the platform or a relative metropolis built
throughout the shell of a former transport hub. From what I can tell,
each station was realised by a different architect rather than a team
of city planners, giving each one a distinct flavour (here's a sample). The creator
might have slapped some ornate columns or controversial murals up in
there. Even those that were the result of a Soviet-era relentless
pursuit of function over form end up being unusual simply by
comparison to their neighbours. The result is a series of stations
that stand as works of art – or maybe the entire Metro is one big
work of art. (Oddly enough, thanks to constantly referring to the
maps while reading the books, I now feel like I know Moscow's public
transit system better than some places I've actually lived in.)
Polis
Much of this beauty has been lost
by 2033, but history is a continuum, and new traits have popped up to
replace the old ones. Some stations have had their art preserved, to the
ambivalence or even derision of those who pass through them, where
others have come to stand for something else entirely, like the city
of Polis, a conglomeration of four different stations now dedicated
to the preservation of knowledge and nobility. And, generally, the
reason for the evolution of a particular spot is clearly explained,
and somehow rooted in its past.
There is also the fact that
Ghlukovsky wrote Metro 2033 as a veiled evaluation of Russian
society. Knowing this, the portrayals of, say, the Hanseatic
money-grubbers, Communists driven mad by ideology, and exaggeratedly naiive and illogical Christians, suddenly seem a little less
gratuitous. And the Nazis aren't really Nazis, but anti-immigration
conservatives and racists. Maybe some characters and their
motivations could do with a little more nuance, but at least it makes
sense as an allegory. Dissecting all of modern Russian culture would
be a mammoth task, but the author brings it down to a manageable
scale. The Metro is a microcosm of Russia itself.
F3's Meresti Station, where, if I recall correctly, your
character murders a troublesome journalist by
pushing her into the path of an oncoming train.
Of course, other cities certainly
have their own metros, so could you do a Metro-alike in another city?
Sure! In fact, the wider Metro universe includes books set in
locations like St Petersburg, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and even
as far afield as London, which is, after all, known for “the Tube.”
Paris and New York come to mind as well. For that matter, both
Fragile and Fallout 3 spend significant spaces of time in their
cities' subway systems! (Shinjuku Eki is a major location in Fragile,
and in F3 much of DC's streets are impassable due to rubble, making
many downtown areas accessible only through the subway tunnels.)
Vancouver might not work, since a SkyTrain station is a little less
insulated, but you get the picture.
Speaking of Fragile's subway, the
first real level takes place within Shinjuku Eki, famously the
largest and busiest in all of Japan. Except, of course, that it's now
deserted, save for a smattering of wild dogs and other monsters. Not
saying that train travel is unique to life in Japan, but it's
definitely an inextricable part of it, and one of the things I
noticed most when I did my high school exchange.
After exploring a platform and
concourse, the stage moves farther underground, to the 地下商店街
chikashoutengai,
literally “underground shopping district.” I have no idea if
they have these in countries other than Japan (surely China and Korea
at the very least?), but I love these places. Narrow, crowded, and
confusing, in another post I said that navigating them is like trying
to play Pac-Man in first-person. The steet-like halls are lined with
restaurants, clothing stores, all kinds of stuff really. The shops
are densely packed and it's impossible to find what you're looking
for. You might think that they cater to people in transit, but that's
not true at all. Actually, it's just that their accessibility makes
them terribly convenient. It's not uncommon for someone to head for a
major station just to shop, then head on home. I've always
loved train stations because they are the intersection of so many
lives, shared alone; chikashoutengai are all of that PLUS the
socializing of a mall. The energy is infectious, and I always end up
leaving with that feeling you get when haven't accomplished anything
of any great consequence, but you have experienced a slice of life.
But even if these aren't found
elsewhere in the world, they are all over Japan. So, sure, Shinjuku
Eki puts in an appearance, but it could be replaced with any other
major station in Japan with little impact; for the most part, the
city of Toukyou does not assert herself. The exception here is
Toukyou Tower, an omnipresent neon presence off in the distance, not
to mention your ultimate goal and the site of the final battle. It
demands your attention when you first leave the observatory, it
frames the background when Ren first appears, and whenever you
venture indoors, almost forgetting about it, it's the first thing you
notice when you reemerge, slowly but surely drawing closer.
Does it say anything that Fragile
includes an amusement park level? Probably nothing significant about
Japanese society, but the fact that the developers picked this as a
stock setting (alongside the more universal train stations and
hotels) might. I could be wrong, but I feel like not a lot of
Westerners would.
For what it's worth, the choice
of art style is undeniably Japanese. I mean come on now, it's
freaking anime. If you were deliberately trying to make something
Japanese and you picked an anime art style, people would tell you it was too on the nose. Flat cells,
detailed textures, bright colours, exaggerated features – yup,
that's Japanese animation.
And then there's the themes.
Whether or not I'm right about the global warming angle, we have the
scenes of nature to go off of. There's the northern lights scene we
talked about earlier, visible through a smogless sky, and of course
the hotel, slowly being reclaimed by the forest. The moon, as
beautiful as it is cold and implacable. No less a person than
Miyazaki Hayao has based many of his works on environmental themes,
and he's regarded as one of the finest creators in Japan. Plus,
what's the overriding emotion throughout the game? Loneliness.
Various characters complain of the pain. Humanity is nearly destroyed
in trying to eliminate it forever. Seto loses one person after
another until he finally finds one who sticks around. Even the player
may share in his distress, wandering a hostile environment without
company. To paraphrase Hitching Rides With Buddha: “In the West, people fear irrelevance; in Japan, people fear loneliness.”
As with Fallout and America, I
have to conclude that Fragile could not be made anywhere other than
Japan – or that if it had been, it wouldn't be
Fragile as we know it.
(Additionally, I resisted
watching the Mad Max movies until after I'd completed this post,
because I didn't want to be influenced except by the works I was
actually writing about. There were a few reasons for this, number one
being that the Mad Max game hadn't come out yet, and I thought I'd
keep things consistent by following the gaming thread. Three is also
a nice number. But more significantly, while I'm far from an expert
on Russian or American culture, I know next to nothing about
Australian culture. I've since watched the films and can safely say
that – unsurprisingly, since it invented half the tropes
that Fallout, Metro, and Fragile are drawing on – Mad Max would
have been a good fit for this series, so expect an update eventually.)
Conclusion
By now it's probably pretty clear
why I play these games and read this books (and watch these movies,
and...), and why I wrote this post: I love thinking about this stuff.
That, to me, is the real heart of philosophy: Taking extraordinary
situations or seemingly impractical thought experiments, and finding
a way to relate it to your real life. By asking us to confront
questions about technology, the place of humanity, and what you the
reader would be capable of in exceptional circumstances,
Post-Apocalyptic fiction not only succeeds in provoking contemplation
but delivers it in an entertaining package to boot.
We're
back and talking about three great works in one of my favourite
genres! Before we conclude, here's some stray thoughts that don't fit
anywhere else. Together though, they kind of do.
The
supernatural
When
I started playing Metro, I was briefly surprised by the prominence of
an unexpected supernatural element. It doesn't jar, in fact it's
enmeshed in the world extremely well, and in a manner that
contributes to the plot and atmosphere. But you wouldn't normally
think to go that direction in a post-apocalyptic story. You might
think that the seriousness of the subject matter would funnel you
towards “realism,” and Fallout, after all, didn't really have
anything like th—oh, wait, Fallout had ghouls and Super Mutants.
Oddly,
none of the properties is satisfied to bank on interest in the
post-Apocalypse alone; all three decide to introduce a supernatural
element to the proceedings.
Fragile
features robots and woodland creatures as enemies, but also contains
plenty of supernatural enemies, such as ethereal jellyfish. More
significantly, of course, is the Glass Cage, whose entire premise is
on technology unavailable in the real world. The impact of this
decision is very large, given what it allows the creators to do with
the story, as only a select few humans are spared, and they're located far from one another. Seto also encounters several ghosts, one of
whom is his main companion throughout the adventure. Another is the
main antagonist, and others impede his path in various ways. There's
even an old woman who projects the residual self-image of a small
child. Many more appear as weak enemies, including banshee-like foes
and little kids playing hide-and-go-seek. It's unclear what causes
someone to linger after death, but it wasn't the failed human
instrumentality attempt per se, otherwise there would be millions of them
stalking the streets of Toukyou, rather than a few dozen.
It's
hard to say what's behind this interest in blending the serious and
supernatural, but it may be to make technology a little more
mysterious. We use it in our everyday lives, our dependence upon it
increasing by the second, so we tend to assume we have a pretty good
handle on it, and yet in these stories it has nearly destroyed us. By
introducing unpredictable effects, the creators point out how little
we really understand about
our own technology, and, indeed, the world around us.
The
place of technology
What's the most important piece
of technology you're going to need to survive the post-Apocalypse?
Your trusty gun, right? Of course not, don't be daft.
"Millions...perhaps even billions, died because science
outpaced man's restraint!"
By far the most valuable
technology is anything that can help you grow or acquire food or
water. Even Fallout knows this. Tons of major characters devote their
lives to seeking out powerful relics of the Old World. The
Brotherhood of Steel, a neo-knightly order of technophiles, jealously
hoards its knowledge, even placing the value of its retrieval over
that of human life (“After all, everyone knows how to make another
human, but the secrets to making a P94 Plasma Rifle are all but
lost”). Despite warnings from some members, the Brotherhood gets so
wrapped up in locating bombs and weapons schematics that it neglects
more useful technologies like aeration or securing the safety of the
populace. This difference of opinion tears apart one chapter and
nearly destroys another. Plus, the whole plot of Fallout 1 is kicked
off when your Vault's Water Chip fails, threatening to leave its
residents without potable drinking water and forcing the Overseer to
open the Vault early so that you can go look for one.
Metro takes this to a whole new
level. Sure, people value weapons maybe a little more than they
should, but they focus on the fundamentals of survival, tracking down
or reinventing the most primitive, unsexy technologies available.
We're talking water purification. Gardening. Domestication. That kind
of stuff. They don't talk about it, but I imagine electric sewing
machines fetch an outrageous price. And don't forget medicine! Some
medical textbooks have survived in Fallout, but in Metro we only ever
see two infirmaries in all of Metro, one at Polis in Last Light,
and one in I forget where in 2034. I'm sure I don't have to explain
why doctors would be highly valued. The gaudiest stations in the series are described as having medical facilities, hot running water, and adequate lighting.
The antagonist in Fragile
believed that technology would solve the world's problems, but
instead it nearly ended it. And all the everyday technology that once
made life possible now sits unused and decaying. Surely the writers
don't mean to suggest that we need to get some global genocide
happening pronto, but they may be trying to tell us that we'd do well
to get back to nature from time to time. Technology makes our lives
possible, but it can also end them. A sickle can sustain life, or it
can kill, depending how it is used. In these stories, we used the
bounties available to us to destroy ourselves. Hell, you could even
argue that we're doing that today, with problems like global warming.
Some creators may even have had this is in mind when making the
games. Nuclear bombs as a stand-in for global warming – well, the
latter is slower and less exciting, but just as deadly. And just as
avoidable.
What is the place of technology
in our world – and in theirs? What technologies should these people
pursue – and what should we? These stories are not necessarily
anti-technology, but they do seem to warn against its misuse.
Sex
and sexuality
Fahrenheit, an ass-kicking woman from F4
In
Fallout, conventional racism has given way to an equally insidious
prejudice towards the irradiated, nigh-immortal ghouls. Sexism,
however, has all but been obliterated. Oh, you still have the odd
old-fashioned gender roles type cropping up here and there, but for
the most part, except as it pertains to whether or not you want to
sleep with somebody, sex and gender are a bit of a non-issue. When
your camp is assaulted by raiders, nobody cares what's between your
legs – they only care how well you can fight. (The exception to
this is Caesar's Legion, in which women are childbearers and
caregivers and literally nothing else, but even this is more part of
Caesar's ruthless division of labour than actual sexism – the same
as how his veteran soldiers are never the first into battle not as
some kind of privilege, but because it's more effective to hold them
in relief until the enemy is already fatigued from fighting the
grunts.)
On
a related topic, homosexuality in the world of Fallout is a-ok.
There's only one instance where I can remember it being frowned upon,
and only because it was among a group of isolationists who felt that
it was their peoples' duty to procreate lest they all die out, so it
was more of a practical issue than actual bigotry. Basically you're
free to bang whoever you want; I always play a woman and try to be as
slutty as possible, and everybody's fine with it, and they give equally few fucks if you're a blushing virgin. Which is partly down to
freedom of player choice, but there are plenty of non-hetero
relationships between NPCs as well. It makes total sense that people
would have more pressing issues on their minds than who's sleeping
with whom, but there's also the fact that danger is a powerful aphrodesiac, and Post-Apocalyptia is nothing if not dangerous.
Biology drives them to panic procreate, and perhaps they also realise that every chance at a good hard pounding may be their last,
so they pretty much just take whatever they can get, whenever they
can get it.
Also,
Fragile features a totally out of nowhere boy-on-boy kiss, in a game
from a country not exactly noted for its social progressivism, so
wrap your head around that one.
Ammunition
As
described above in the section on economics, both Fallout and Metro
feature interesting substitutes for money. Metro uses pre-War AK-47
casings, now impossible to counterfeit. The underground inhabitants
still make bullets, but they are vastly inferior to the industrial
products manufactured for use by the actual military back when there
was one.
Similarly,
the people of Fallout use Nuka-Cola bottle caps as currency, as their
veracity and scarcity are guaranteed because no one knows how to make
them anymore. However, as soon as people started cobbling together a
semblance of society once again, one of the first things they
relearned how to make was high-quality weapons and ammunition. I
think that says a lot.
(And
by the way – in Mad Max, people don't
ever figure out how to mass-produce ammunition, leading to the
emphasis on melee combat.)
Glad you could join me for
today's session! I've got one more point to make, so I hope I'll see
you again next time. Keep Reading
You
probably haven't noticed since it hasn't really been mentioned in the
news or on social media, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens recently
hit theatres. Plenty have been showing Star Wars and only Star Wars
for several weeks running. They are going to make a lot of money.
Meanwhile, I, a longtime Gundam fan, am currently watching the
original Mobile Suit Gundam for the first time. For its age, it's an
incredible show; the quality of the animation is astounding, and the
story is pretty timeless. Still, I can't help but notice that it came
out in 1979. Know what else came out just two years earlier? The
original Star Wars.
Creating
the “space” genre, or merely repackaging it?
A
lot of the Star Wars pre-game analyses I saw in the weeks leading up
to the new film's release claim that Star Wars launched the space
genre. Before Star Wars, commercially viable, intellectually
accessible science fiction simply did not exist.
Bullshit.
I'm
not just saying that because of Gundam. Gundam launched after, not
before. I just explained that like two paragraphs ago. Jesus, please
try to pay attention. No, I'm alluding to something interesting I
read in a recent Cracked article:
“George Lucas, hot off the enormously successful American Graffiti, tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon to turn it into a big-budget film franchise. They couldn't come to terms on a deal, so Lucas just decided to just write his own version. That's all it was. ... The rough draft of Star Wars was an incoherent rambling mess, borrowing entire scenes from other movies, mostly Akira Kurosawa samurai films (then again, Kurosawa had borrowed his from American Westerns). ... For the space dogfight that would mark the climactic battle at the end of the film, Lucas literally stitched together footage from war movies and documentaries, then just re-filmed them with spaceship models, shot for shot. In other words, Santa Claus isn't real."
Space Captain Harlock
Flash
Gordon, "Buck Rodgers, Kurosawa, Westerns (Tattooine!), old WW2 footage. Sounds
like Lucas had a lot of good material to draw on. But don't think
that Japan was devoid of material at this point, either! It had its
own “swashbuckling space adventure,” the 1970s anime Space
Captain Harlock. It was popular enough to merit a revival a couple of
years ago. And there's plenty more where that came from. 2001: A
Space Odyssey, both book and movie. Or how about The War of the
Worlds, an HG Wells story from fucking 1897. The decade preceding
Star Wars even saw the rise of another space-themed series of TV
shows and movies, an obscure property called “Star Trek.”
Metal Gear REX
Everything
new steals from everything old. Harry Potter draws on centuries of
mythology. Divergent mashes up Harry Potter and The Hunger Games,
which in turn probably took ideas from Battle Royale. Metal Gear is a
mixture of old movies, whatever is currently on Kojima's mind, and,
inevitably, Gundam, because you can't tell me the series that
launched the mecha subgenre did not in some way influence the
eponymous war machines. Hell, even Gundam itself mercilessly
cannibalizes its own plotlines to new purpose. Gundam Seed is just a
repackaged Mobile Suit Gundam; 00 is just Wing for a post-9/11
audience.
Neither
franchise “created” the space adventure. That door had already
been slowly dilating open for decades. What they did
was put an interesting spin on established conventions and make their
own contributions to the cultural landscape. Which, given the flood
of boring, derivative fluff we're inundated with every day of every
year, is a huge accomplishment anyway.
Legacy
A steam-powered Oobu machine from Sakura Taisen. This one in particular is piloted by the character Sakura.
Supposedly,
less than 1% of people (English speakers?) have never seen any of the
Star Wars movies. I was actually surprised it was that high! That's
the power that these movies have. And besides Dragonball Z and
Pokemon (in that order), I can't think of any other cultural treasure
that has had a stronger or more enduring impact on the modern
Japanese popular consciousness than Gundam. Final Fantasy? In Japan,
Dragon Quest is bigger. Dragon Quest? Nice try, you sarcastic twit,
because Dragon Quest is kind of only for nerds, while the other three
are widely known by everyone. Sakura Taisen? You know what, now
you're just annoying me.
I've
heard that when making Sonic 2, Naka Yuuji wanted to pay tribute to
the most popular things in America and Japan at the time, which he
determined were Star Wars and Dragonball Z, respectively. Hence why
Sonic collects seven Chaos Emeralds to transform into a golden,
super-powered state, and why Eggman/Robotnik's latest creation is the
planet-like Death Egg. I'm not completely sure if that's a true
story, but it sounds credible.
The
point is that both series have had such a – what? Oh, you think
Gundam's not that important because Dragonball Z beat it out for a
reference in Sonic 2? Go plan a day trip to Odaiba, tell me if you
see anything interesting.
Close
to 40 years later, both Gundam and Star Wars are huge, at least in
their own countries. In case you forgot, The Force Awakens has just
dropped. 2015 saw the beginning of a new Gundam continuity, the
Iron-Blooded Orphans, which I haven't watched yet but is most likely
far less silly than the English title makes it sound. Both have been
the mother of sprawling franchises encompassing everything from
physical toys, books, comic books, video games, all kinds of shit.
Merchandising
“Lucas,” notes the Cracked article, “knew that he was, in part, making a series of toy commercials.” Once you
see it, you can't unsee it. Why are there so many variations of
Stormtrooper? Because then you can make a separate action figure for
each of them. Ayla Secura gets an action figure. Lando's co-pilot
gets an action figure. You can buy a goddamn Lego Death Star. The
Expanded Universe is/was so successful because it explores
intersting, in-depth stories within a compelling universe, but also
because it allows for a nearly limitless number of concurrently
developed products, with a huge install base, across every creative
medium known to man. They had these novels about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan
pre-Phantom Menace, I thought they were just about the pinnacle of
literature when I was a little kid. RIP Expanded Universe.
GAT-X131 Calamity Gundam
Now
Gundam is an interesting case, it wasn't designed with the
possibility of merchandise in mind, rather the プラモデル
plastic models were
designed first, and then
Tomino was called in to create the anime in order to market the toys.
When I first found out that Calamity from Seed was originally
supposed to be 1.5 times the size of a regular Gundam, but this was
changed because it would mean the scale model would have to be bigger
and thus more expensive, it absolutely blew my mind that something so
seemingly trivial could actually affect, no, constrict the creator's
vision. Of course, back then I also didn't know that a lot of the
best moments in movies were born from blind chance, that the stories
and settings of video games are crafted in response to the gameplay
mechanics and not the other way around, etc. Well, I was a child.
Which,
while I'm on the topic, is why it always amuses/frustrates me when
people complain that in making the prequels, George Lucas took Star
Wars and “made it for children.” Uh, have you fucking seen
the first three movies? THEY ARE
FOR CHILDREN. Look at Luke – he is a hero made for children. His
robot buddies are hand-made for children. And I'm sorry for treading
well-trodden ground, but come the fuck on:
Star
Wars is for children and always has been. And actually, so is Gundam.
It's sophisticated enough that you can see it for the first time as
an adult and still appreciate it, but let's be realistic, here, we're
talking about giant robots fighting each other. It's only that Japan
is a little less moralistic about its entertainment and coddles its
youth a little less. (Broad strokes. Obviously.)
Themes
Char Aznable, fan favourite and one of the key characters of Gundam's "Universal Century" continunity
Psych! The two couldn't be
farther apart. Gundam tells a nuanced anti-war tale in which there
are no clear good guys and bad guys; the antagonists in the first
series, the Principality of Zeon, want nothing more than independence
from the oppressive Earth Federation (and I spent much of the series
trying to figure out why the Federation didn't just give it to them).
Later series continue the story from their perspective. As things
develop, Mobile Suit Gundam scratches topics such as ecology (decades
before An Inconvenient Truth) and transhumanism. Star Wars,
meanwhile, is about how war is awesome, violence solves every
problem, the good guys not only always win but always survive, and
your enemies are all irredeemably evil.
Hero's
Journey?
You
could say that both Luke Skywalker and Amuro Rei follow a fairly
typical Hero's Journey, one of the recognized plot structures in
literature. Luke has humble beginnings (a moisture farm), gradually
comes into his abilities, and finally destroys the Death Star in the
climactic action sequence. It works even better on a trilogy-wide
scale, with blind luck leading the way to victory in A New Hope, Luke
screwing up and battling his inner demons in The Empire Strikes Back,
and emerging in Return of the Jedi as a confident, skilled combatant.
Similarly,
civilian teenager Amuro Rei is thrust into a combat role by
circumstances, and initially depends heavily on the capabilities of
his machine to achieve victory. Understandably, he develops (a fairly
believable depiction of) PTSD after a few battles, stops eating and
sleeping properly, and lashes out at the people trying to help him,
including his closest friend. At one point he even deserts his ship,
White Base, and absconds with the Gundam, which is military property
in the first place. Eventually he comes to terms with his fear,
achieves his potential, and becomes a truly skilled pilot bent on
protecting White Base and its inhabitants.
Of
course, I'm not sure this actually says anything substantial about
these two series. It probably just indicates that the Hero's Journey
is a good fit for a space opera. Which I guess is interesting in
itself, actually.
Accidental
retro-futurism
This
is a common pitfall of science fiction: By the time the real world
has caught up chronologically with the one you've created, it may
have actually surpassed the technology you were envisioning, or gone
off in a completely different direction. Early cyberpunk had
conceived of the Internet before the Internet was the Internet, but
it didn't occur to people back in the 80's that we would eventually
be able to access it wirelessly.
"These days its design seems completely inadequate." Source.
Again,
even today I find Mobile Suit Gundam relevant and immensely
enjoyable, but one does notice the occasioanl hiccough in
technological progress. I think this is most noticeable in the
viewscreens used by crewmen on White Base and in their mobile suit
cockpits, which is to say they look like an old TV your father has
stored in his basement because he hasn't bothered to throw it away
yet, not like modern monitors and certainly not like anything we'll
have by the time we're living on the moon.
Meanwhile,
control panels on the shiny, just-finished Death Star look as though
they're best suited for operating a Magnavox Intellivision.
Cutting-edge computer technology in the world of Fallout.
This
can injure suspension of disbelief, but I actually really dig this.
It's kind of like a fingerprint left on a work by the era in which it
was created. You can always think of it as an alternate timeline,
like in Fallout, where humanity pursued nuclear technology instead of
computer technology, so that even computers manufactured circa 2077
intentionally look like they came out of 1950.
Destruction!
The
Death Star destroying Alderaan is the cayalyst for sections of plot
in A New Hope. Mobile Suit Gundam kicks off with the destruction of
the protagonist's home, the space colony Side 7. Huh.
Laser
swords
Lightsabre
– beam sabre. Even the names are similar.
If
there's one thing East and West could agree on in the 1970s, it was
that laser swords are just plain cool. Or “totally radical,” I
guess.
But
all of this pales in comparison to...
Amateur
mechanics
As
a young boy, Anakin Skywalker built C-3PO...
...and
as a budding scientific prodigy, Amuro Rei created the purely
decorative robot Haro.
Anakin,
of course, becomes Darth Vader. And in some Gundam series, Amuro
occupies the role of villain.
Coincidence?
The crossover section of Fanfiction.com thinks not.
