Please Save My Earth (Post-Recording Random Notes not covered in the other posts)

Anime Dream Team

Well, I mean, now that someone is maybe animating Dengeki Daisy, maybe this is more possible.  (It's not.)

 

Anyway, I didn't have a ton of time to really think about this question between seeing it for the first time and recording, so I wanted to give it some more thought.  I do think Production IG did a really good job of many things at the time.  I find myself wondering if Madhouse could do some of the cloth magic that makes everything seem alive (per Frieren ssn 1) and a really great Paradise setting.  It might actually be kind of trippy if they had a completely different studio in charge of all the Paradise stuff, the Earth stuff, and the non-Paradise alien world stuff, so it would really feel like another world . . .

 

I stick by my Yoko Kanno music ask.

 

I might be curious what Nobuteru Yuki could do with character designs.

 

As for writers/directors, I kind of wonder what Mari Okada could do with this source material.  Between her very unflinchingly honest (and painfully hilarious) portrayals of complicated young women in O Maidens in Your Savage Season and her meditations on people raised in a kind of paradise crashing into the regular world a la Maquia, I'm curious.

 

The Telltale (?) Kiche

As for the meaning of the persistent kiche: I think it was a sign that Sarjalim still had work for her to do with her powers, even if she didn't want to do.  Mokuren is so complicated.  I don't always understand her, but I recognize her, and her flaws call to me. 

 

Sarjalim

Sarjalim is kind of a fascinating mystery to me.  When her chosen ones choose other people, she removes the responsibility / blessing from them, so they can go live with their beloveds.  But when she's down to her last believer and there are things that still need to be set straight, she won't let them escape that blessing / responsibility until things are set straight.  And there is still more to be redeemed by the end, when Alice said the kiche comes and goes. 

 

Ugh, Alice, Why?

In the end, I understand why Alice did what she did.  It is profoundly dissatisfying to me.  I don't like it, and I wish she hadn't for reasons that are mostly separate from the world of the story itself.  

I wanted better for Alice.  I hate seeing her potential (flaws and all) as Mokuren and then seeing her reduced to someone who's insecure and always worried her younger fiance will want someone else even though who could he possibly choose who understands what he's been through and still chose him?  It just feels gross and uncomfortable and like a waste of a life. Maybe because it's not something I can bring with me out of the work?  It's something so specific to the story that, even though it logically makes sense, feels wrong?

Then again, most of the hardest hitting literature I've read has had me agonizing over situations and decisions I hate.  I don't read to come away approving of everyone's life choices, and I'm not looking to literature to only provide me with situations and decisions I 100% agree with.  I don't feel like it was a waste of time to read or reread this very long redemption story that provokes some deep moral wrestling (along with suspense and entertainment).

But still, I wish it could have ended differently.

The thought that it really couldn't have is both gratifying and terrible.  The author did her work of world creation in a specific time and place well and solidly, and this is the logical and emotional outcome.  

Ick.  Especially because of the sequels.  I didn't know anything about them when I first read this, so I could imagine they lived platonically and chastely until Rin turned 20 or something.  I want that ignorance back.  : D

Please Save My Earth: Even More Post-Podcast Theology Edition Part 2: Shion and Mokuren

 One of the things we didn't talk about on the podcast much was those deeper religious/faith aspects of the story.  (We covered a lot of ground in the 6 hours of talking about it that we did, but there wasn't room for everything, and this was not a theology podcast.)  The reason why this story stuck with me since I first read it back in 200mumble was because of the questions it left me asking and contemplating.  

Recently, Beth at Pantsuit Politics was trying to articulate a similar question: How do I reconcile my concept of karma with my concept of grace?  I don't want to be judged forever for my worst day/act.  But how long is long enough to be punished?  How do we atone?  I want to take some time to think through this for a couple sets of characters.

(SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES AHOY!)

 

Shion raped Mokuren.  He lied to her, and she gave consent based on that lie, then she revoked consent when she realized he had lied to her, and then he raped her.  He knew exactly what he was doing (even if he didn't have the whole story about Mokuren and Gyokuran), and he chose to do it.  It was a vile act.  It was cruel and stupid and destructive and completely aligned with the scared/angry/traumatized/hurting/spiky person that he was.  It was an inexcusable, evil thing he did.  On his own, he realized that he harmed her and even started to regret it. 

 

(I'll have to check if he actually apologized for it. [Checked.  He didn't.  He came about as close as he probably could, but no I'm sorry and no please forgive me.  Beginning of volume 11 is intense, and it just feels more real and complicated and messy every time I read it.]) 

 

Then Mokuren said she forgave him, and that forgiveness changed him.  Further complicating this, he thought that she forgave him and saved him from exile and stayed with him even though/because (he thought) she really loved someone else.  Aside from the rage from the people in his community, it seemed he received no punishment at all for his heinous act.  He saw Mokuren's stated forgiveness as the miraculous and unearned gift that it was, and he turned his (very strange at that point) life around and started seeing the other people around him and not punching them all away at every opportunity.  As they all started dying one by one, now trapped on the moon base for the rest of their lives, he was able to act with kindness and compassion that he had never shown before in his craptastic life.  He was able to spend time alone with the woman he loved, even if he thought she was still just playing along for . . . ???  (I don't think anyone was particularly sane at that point, TBH, so I'm not going to try too hard to nail down that reason.)  Until she died, and he was the last one left.

 

And then he lived alone for 9 years, going fully insane until he died a natural death because he promised he wouldn't kill himself and take himself out of the cycle of reincarnation established in the world of the work.

 

When Shion was being a jerk (most of the moments he was breathing) whether we understood why or not, before the flashbacks and after, I wanted karma.  I wanted him to be punished for the pain he inflicted on others.  I wanted him to be punished for raping Mokuren and misunderstanding and hurting everyone around him. 

 

And then I wanted him to stop doing those things.  I wanted him to be a better version of himself, someone who could care for other people and SHOW it.  Someone who didn't always do the absolute worst thing in any situation, someone who wasn't always pushing people violently away while longing to connect with them.  Someone who wasn't sabotaging himself all the time.  Someone who could love and be loved and exist in community.

 

I wanted karma and then grace.  And because I didn't get the karma that felt right to me (Mokuren forgiving him for her own sake but then never having anything to do with him again), I felt . . . cheated? 

 

The grace felt too easy and cheap.  Even though it was so complicated by what was really going on with Mokuren inside in parallel. Even though the forgiveness wasn't even real, since she was only putting on an act to keep up her pride (even when everyone else was dead, which is just another heartbreak to add to the pile).  And even though I have seen real life young women put up with abuse and keep forgiving and going back

because they love him even if he doesn't love them back

because they need him or think they do

because being kind-of-wanted-sometimes seems better than never feeling wanted at all

because of all the complicated and heartbreaking reasons

so I know that this pattern is not unrealistic.

 

But, friends [ME], he lived alone for 9 years surround by the dead and locked inescapably away, watching the wars of the 60s and 70s ravage the Earth.  He suffered unimaginably.  He suffered MORE because he actually DID love her in the end (I think).  If he hadn't loved her, he could have killed himself in a heartbeat.  He wouldn't have made that promise to her, and he wouldn't have kept that promise to her.  If he hadn't promised to watch over the Earth for her, he wouldn't have had to see those things.  He watched and went mad because he loved her and he wanted desperately to see her again, maybe to have the opportunity to have her love him, too.  9 years alone with the dead and the wars and the power you couldn't use to save anyone or anything out of love and faith and a promise to someone he didn't even think actually loved him.  If that's not enough punishment to atone, what is?

 

Would I only be "satisfied" with the punishment of death?  Well, he did that.  With a slow, messy, torturous death?  Yeah, he had that.  He cause suffering, and he suffered.  Karma?

 

So why does it still feel "wrong" that in the end, when Mokuren realized that he did love her back for real, she really did forgive enough to want to go be the atmosphere and the clouds and the sky with him forever?  Didn't he "earn" a happy ending?  And that's not even a good question.  It was still, after all that punishment and atonement, a miracle of grace that she was willing and able to offer him forgiveness and love and togetherness.

 

And then there's Mokuren's guilt (mostly felt by Alice, who had a fuller picture in the end).  How do you live with and forgive yourself knowing you at least in some way caused someone you maybe loved sometimes to live alone for 9 years, slowly going insane, and then torturing his next incarnation because you two just couldn't really be honest with each other the first time around?  Mokuren was not responsible for her rape.  Mokuren may have been responsible for her (understandable hatred). Mokuren did not knowingly condemn Shion to that torturous fate.  Not that exact fate.  And when she realized the karma he suffered, she believed it was enough and that he HAD atoned, (and so did he) and they could be honest with each other, and they could both find grace together and leave behind hate and guilt and karma.  And there is something really beautiful about that.

 

But it still feels very uncomfortable.   And I think that's fine.  The good stuff, the stuff that lasts, challenges you and invites you to watch decisions you wouldn't make in situations you would never be in and come away feeling like the world is complicated and huge and contains multitudes and what it needs more from you, for you, always is grace.