Many, many apologies for how late this is this week. I went into work on Sunday for something that was supposed to take an hour, and ended up leaving around midnight after many issues cropped up. Never underestimate the ability of real life to interfere with one’s ability to enjoy anime!
This week, I’m in a mad dash to finish this post before I get called into work for some weekend stuff that I (*ugh*) volunteered to do. I don’t know if this is true for others, but when I volunteer for that sort of thing I always justify it by telling myself “oh, it’s just for an hour” or whatever, but as the time approaches I get grumpy about my weekend being chopped up into smaller segments. I was also up very late last night watching a truly epic speed run of Final Fantasy VI live for SGDQ; the run finished up a little bit past 2am CST, which for someone of my age and sleep requirements is very, very late. Definitely worth it to watch it as it happened, but now my brain feels like oatmeal and my body feels wrecked.
Enough about my physical and mental composition, though. I hope everyone has been having a good week, and that you’ve been enjoying (or at least had some mentally-stimulating thoughts about) Kino. This week will mark the halfway point of the series. Related to that somewhat, next week will be a break from the watch-along, since I will be at CONvergence, a local sci-fi/fantasy/media convention. But don’t fret! I’ll put up a discussion post so people can catch up and share their thoughts and opinions on the series to that point.
Previous Weekly Discussions
Episode 5 – Country of Liars – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation
This episode is comprised of a couple of shorter vignettes, both of which are broadly centered around the theme of lies.
In the first, Kino passes through a country which owes its peaceful way of life to the intervention of a traveler who visited many years ago and eventually settled down and ousted the corrupt government. Kino visits a small museum dedicated to this traveler, located in the traveler’s former home. Kino and Hermes are immediately struck by how much of the information about the traveler’s supplies is grossly misinterpreted – a “gardening trowel” would have been used to dig toilet pits, and a “lucky knife” was actually a cheap souvenir from another country. The tour guide is enthusiastic and misinformed, which seems fairly innocuous until Kino is brought to a back room where the traveler’s motorrad is displayed in its own display. Kino and Hermes ask for some privacy, and they begin to speak with the motorrad. Being stored in a museum is no place for a vehicle that was created to travel the world and the motorrad now exists in its own personal hell, begging Kino to take it from that place or to dismantle it, both things that Kino cannot do. There is a small ray of hope, though, when a little boy asks Kino how he could become a traveler; Kino suggests that he go to the museum and ask the motorrad there the same question.
In the second story, Kino arrives at the gates of a country which recently underwent a revolution. They’re met by a strange man who’s asking after his lost lover; he only settles down when a young woman, his housekeeper, comes to take him back home. While in town, Kino learns the story of the man’s situation. During the time leading up to the revolution, the man had a lover – a young farm girl living on the outskirts of the country. When the time came to oust the corrupt royal family, the man threw a grenade that destroyed the royal family’s escape vehicle. In that car was the women, actually one of the princesses who enjoyed spending time outside the palace. Rather than tell the man the tragic truth of the situation, his cohorts made up a lie that his lover was just traveling, and that she would return someday. The only person willing to put up with this and help him in his mental state was the housekeeper, a traveler who was hired to fill the role.
Soon Kino learns that the layer of lies goes even deeper when they stop for tea with the man and the housekeeper. The housekeeper is indeed the former princess; the people in the exploded vehicle were merely body doubles. She doesn’t mind the arrangement she has now; she gets to be close to her lover until the end of time, and she’s happy even if the man will likely never be able to see her as who she truly is. But perhaps the man is simply another liar; he races after Kino and explains that he wants things to be the way that they are.
Episode 6 – In the Clouds – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation
Content warning: Physical and mental abuse. Suicide-by-firearm.
High up in the mountains where the clouds make it difficult to see the path ahead, a traveling group of several families sets up to make camp. With the group is a girl dressed in rags and led along on a chain; in a previous country the citizens didn’t have enough money to trade this group for supplies, but they did have an orphan girl whose services they offered in place of currency. Now the group treats her like a subhuman slave, not only tasking her with chores, but beating and harassing her. In the girl’s former country challenges of this nature were considered a spiritual test and it was forbidden to hate, harm, or wish ill to other people. She takes this to heart, despite plenty of ridicule from her “masters,” and continues her thankless job of carrying supplies, setting up camp, and preparing ingredients. She’s given a pile of herbs to wash in the stream, and this seems to trigger something in her, but for now it’s just a passing thought.
As the group sits down to eat their meal, the girl suddenly realizes something about the herbs; the ones growing at their altitude are poisonous, and the poison has likely infused every ounce of the stew that was prepared. When she tries to warn the others, she finds herself unable to speak. They’ve already started to consume it anyway. Without hesitation, she starts to eat her share as well, intending to die alongside the others. One of the children throws a rock and knocks the bowl out of her hand, then ridicules her for not using a spoon. The situation escalates and she’s knocked unconscious by another rock. When she wakes up, the meal is over. Soon enough all the members of the group begin to drop, the poison taking effect. Her last effort to die with the others is thwarted when the owner of the gun she tries to shoot uses it to kill himself.
In the silence, the girl hears a small voice, and finds a small, scrappy motorrad in the back of one of the wagons. Like most motorrads, this one longs for the freedom of the open road. It also talks the girl out of her death wish and convinces her that the deaths of the others weren’t because of her; their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to listen did them all in. As the only survivor and the “luckiest” one there, it’s the girl’s duty to continue to survive and live her life, or so says this talking vehicle. In the end, the girl takes this opportunity to become a reborn person with a renewed sense of purpose.
Discussion Thoughts and Questions (feel free to share additional ones in the comments!)
The first time I watched episode 5, what struck me as most important or worthy of thought was the situation with the motorrad in the museum. There’s a concept in Japanese folklore of a tsukumogami, an object or tool that, once reaching some old age (traditionally a hundred years but I don’t think that’s always taken literally) acquires a spirit of its own (or becomes a youkai if it gets thrown out for some reason, uh-oh!). Whether motorrads are imbued with some consciousness upon their creation, or whether they operate somewhat like tsukumogami and come alive once they’ve been used to travel the world and maintained in good condition, is something worth speculating about. The fact is, though, from what we can tell they’re some sort of sentient existence that is only really fulfilled when being used for their intended purpose. At best, the people of the country Kino is visiting drastically misunderstands a motorrad’s purpose, and in search of a way of demonstrating respect for their traveler-turned-leader, have inadvertently been causing harm.
Upon revisiting the episode, though, I became more focused on the concept of lying, specifically how misunderstandings, wrong interpretations, and the desire to create a mythology all contribute to the series of lies we all tell ourselves in order to feel good about the groups to which we choose to align. It’s almost comical how the tour guide explains the uses of the various tools kept within the glass cases in the museum; I assume she either doesn’t know the truth about the commode-trowel and the cheap knife, or has some vested interest in making her country look good to an outsider (depending on many factors, it could easily be either). It got me thinking about all the goofy little myths we have in the US, some of which are based on complete fabrications and are even harmful to certain groups of people. We talk about the “first Thanksgiving” as if it was truly the breaking of bread between Native people and European settlers around a long wooden table, and they all had turkey and stuffing and had a great time, when in fact the majority of that image was a happy little fabrication to create a new holiday and which we continue to use to make ourselves feel good about invading a land where people were already living. We fool ourselves into believing that George Washington was beyond reproach – he was a slave owner for essentially his entire life. We use the “I Have a Dream” Martin Luther King Jr. to berate people who are demonstrating and fighting for their civil rights in the modern day, when in fact they are only carrying on Dr. King’s tradition. And don’t even get me started on blond, blue-eyed Jesus Christ (I prefer Japanese Jesus and his BFF, Buddha). My point is that history is written by the privileged and is tainted by that point of view to some degree no matter what. We don’t really know what the traveler did in the past to change the government of that country and get rid of its corruption; who’s to say that it isn’t just differently-corrupt in the time that Kino has come to visit?
I suppose that this does indirectly advocate for Kino’s way of life – the only way to see the truth of the world is to travel and see it for yourself.
The second half of the episode was interesting in how it directly featured a complete web of lies that ultimately seemed to have reached an equilibrium. I think I’m still trying to interpret if all the parties involved were truly happy with their situation, or whether they were, in fact, also lying to themselves.
- This is maybe more opinion than interpretation, but what are your thoughts about the country from the first segment and how truthful or not their history might be? Did you catch any evidence that I may have missed that gives more perspective into the situation? Do you think the traveler/president was actually such a great person, or do you think he may have replaced one form of corruption with another.
- As mentioned, the second story is so full of various lies that it becomes difficult to tell whether anything about it is really truthful. It seems as though much of the lying is done to preserve the feelings (or the tenuous sanity) of others. do you think this is better than the alternative (telling the full truth and facing some kind of consequence)? Are these kinds of lies as bad as those created to deceive or dupe other people?
- In the end, it appears that both the man and the housekeeper are lying to one-another and are aware of it, since they both reveal that to Kino separately. What reasons do you think there are for revealing this to a total stranger?
Episode 6 is a bit of a different beast, but to continue with this week’s theme, it also features a pretty large lie-by-omission; the poisonous nature of the herbs growing at the high altitude campsite. Moreso, though, I’d say the episode is about a kind of rebirth. I found it interesting that the slave/Photo was so adherent to a particular religion, especially to the extent that it guided the way that she carried herself and accepted the actions of the others who were not only keeping her in captivity, but additionally treating her especially terribly. As someone who isn’t religious in that way, I find it difficult to relate to that situation. Of course, the concept of rebirth in that context becomes very important – Photo (or proto-Photo?), through finding a new perspective (the wisdom of the motorrad), becomes essentially reborn into a new way of thinking, a new purpose, and a free existence.
Another thing I liked about this episode that only really occurred to me later on was something stated at the beginning and pretty visible in the opening and ending moments – the clouds at that altitude are so thick that it makes it difficult to see the road ahead. I think lack of sight (or foresight) and knowledge is definitely a concept that plays heavily into what happens here, whether you’re talking about the cooks not identifying the poisonous herbs, or the fact that the slave who they mercilessly mistreated would turn out to be the person who could have prevented their deaths. I found it interesting that Kino laments their lack of knowledge, and acknowledges that they might find themselves in a similar situation somewhere down the line someday.
- For those of you who are religious, or believe a set of teachings that you use to help guide your actions, I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this episode and your feelings about Photo’s mode of existence before and after.
- Photo feels responsible for the deaths of the others because she can’t bring herself to warn them in time. I think most of us can understand why this might occur. Do you think a lie-by-omission that results in harm to others is as bad as raising a hand to them directly?
Thanks again for the leeway this week with the timing of the post. Remember, next week is a week off, but I’ll have a placeholder post for people to discuss the show so far.