So I wrote the following “essay” in-order to make it into a video. But it turns out that someone else has already made a similar enough video, warranting my script sort of unnecessary. It does have new and personal stuff in it but I don’t think they’re enough to justify such a video existing. So I’ll dump it here. Let me know what you thought about it… I may still end up making a video on it but then again, I find it to be probably the worst thing I’ve wrote so far. But I should probably let you decide for yourself now…
Well into the plot of a 2003 madhouse anime Texhnolyze, in fact by episode 19, our main characters venture into a city. This city, at first glance, seems to be quite a pleasant one. Mirroring 50s American suburbs, there are these brightly-colored houses and a path way lit with countless street lights. Just for some, mildly spoiler-y context, so far in the anime, we have only seen the city Lux. Well.. the city fits the name Lux as much as the slums from the movie city of god, fit the name city of god… which if you haven’t seen the movie… well… terrible analogy but basically, not somewhere you’d wanna visit for a vacation to put it lightly. But as we discover more of this brightly vibrant city that sharply contrasts the grimy and dark Lux that we’ve seen so far and have become used to in the anime, we slowly start to realize that this city too is not as happy and bright as it seems. For starters it exudes a certain sense of loneliness… just look at these shots. But then, more importantly the people of the city are no longer people.They have completely given up in life. So much so that they have turned grey and appear translucent. They repeat an already set in stone routine over and over and over again until they finally… fade.
The first time we see the main character of Texhnolyze, is him, a teenage prizefighter named Ichise, recalling his violent victory over his opponent in a match where he gleefully pummeled him down, leaving himself covered in the blood of his opponent. Ichise is a citizen of the man made underground city of Lux. A city divided between 3 political groups among which, the one in power is this Yakuza-like high crime, dudes in suits and prosthetic limbs called the Organo. Ichise has sex with this older woman who… tries to.. Poke his eyes out… and that leads to him punching her and this enrages the Organo who cut off one of his arms and legs.
Texhnolyze is one of those shows that’s hard to recommend to people. I mean, yeah for one thing, it’s incredibly pessimistic and should be avoided if you are neurotic, but on the other hand, it’s not like your conventional anime. Firstly we have the characters. Designed by Yoshitoshi ABe, who’s worked on Serial experiments lain and Haibane Renmei, the other “what in the name of god is going on in here” anime, the characters of Texhnolyze are people who can be, at first glance, understood to be of nowhere else than this very grim world. The characters wear mostly washed out colors like Onishi, the head of Organo’s off white suits or even Ichise’s T shirts and jackets of grimy and awkward blues and greys. ABe himself has stated he took most of the time working on creating unique designs for the various middle aged men in the show as it is full of them (That’s how you know your story’s depressing as fuck, It’s full of middle aged men). One such middle aged man being Yoshii, a mysterious figure that we see descending into lux during the first episode is adorned in orange, painting him as an alien to this depressing world and yet still his orange is still unsaturated and washed out. On the other hand, this anime is not FUN. Dialogue is used sparingly in the show, with episode 3 having barely any at all. Most of the emotions felt by the characters are portrayed through grunts and groans and also body language. The sound design is fantastic. Ignoring the way how the voice actors communicate through not speaking dialogue but through articulating the emotion through “aaaaaaugh” instead of “I feel hurt” that I just mentioned, there is a constant use of industrial sounds and noises, making us aware of the city’s artificiality. Speaking of the city, it is designed like a real purgatory. The grey and beige buildings, slowly breaking apart as the city stands surrounded by the roaring deserts. The people in it are poor and suffering from disease. Everything, everywhere, slowly approaching the end of its decay. The pacing is slow and deliberate, with each of the events in the anime, slowly building up this atmosphere of total misery and helplessness. Just look at the beginning sequence, where Ichise sleeps with the older woman. Her animal-istic breathing and moans inter-cut with harsh sounds of railway tracks and also of Yoshii as he descends to the city. There is quite a lot of imagery depicting a post industrial society. A society that’s already passed the innovation of industrialization and now looks back at it with eyes of pity. Along with this atmosphere of pessimism that the show builds, violence is also used in the show in a unique way. Unlike most anime, violence in Texhnolyze feels desperate. There are many, seemingly random acts of violence all throughout the show, from those assassination attempts by the anti- prosthetic technology group, the salvation union, to Ichise acting on his impulse for violence to Organo’s own men doing some nasty stuff. Adding to this fact, each and every shot, every slash of the blade or blow of the fist counts as characters in the show don’t move on from injuries. An arm being cut off may be a mere inconvenience for Denji, but here, it’s devastating. (Chainsaw man is a masterpiece. I love it. Please don’t hurt me).
My conception of paintings is quite limited. Yeah there are works of Van Goh that I really enjoy. There’s the world famous painting called The Scream which speaks to me at a level of emotion that I cannot express in words. Then there are some other paintings that make you think how people can even create such larger than life images of utter brilliance. But in my admittedly limited experience with paintings, there stands the works of one man. A polish man by the name of Zdzisław Beksiński.
Inspired by the rising surrealist movement of his time, Beksiński, a man who’s dabbled quite a bit in photography, architecture and sculpting, made over 700 artworks of the same caliber. When I look at Beksiński, like most people, I’m rather perplexed. Covered by the deeply unsettling dark muddy browns and deep red, Beksiński’s works portray what the man himself has claimed to be, dreams.
A creature, down on all fours, its face covered with white cloth, like a mummy with what seems to be, blood dried on to the cloth down to the edge of its face. Behind it, a group of buildings and man made structures, burning in that deep brown, as the colors slowly envelopes what’s remaining of it.
Another, the same deep brown coming out of a cosmic being, wearing a jacket, inside which, I can only describe as utter cosmic chaos. Beksiński was a man who had a life that’s less than desirable. Born in 1929, his early years were filled with the terrors of the second world war, which of course as you may know, Poland lost over 5 million of its people during it. His life continued to be rather tragic with the death of his wife in 1999 and the suicide of his son later that year and later, his own murder resulting from a conflict over a petty sum of money. Although the man himself is said to have been a pleasant person to talk to with a sense of humor, it’s hard not to look at his paintings with a sense of sombre hopelessness. There is nowhere to latch onto in his paintings, that doesn’t unsettle us. His use of grim and agonizing colors, his uncanny depictions of the human body and how he portrays these impossibly colossal beings and objects that don’t quite resemble anything in particular but seem to tickle some part of you that actively rejects what it sees. To me, his paintings are complete and utter hopelessness (although the man himself says it’s supposed to be optimistic… yeah he’s… like that). Even themes like love and togetherness are twisted into something uncanny and disturbing. Like this painting of two humanoids in a hugging position, which the more you look at them, the more you begin to think that this is not a scene of love and passion but one of agony and desperation, as if they are clinging on to each other of fear of having their already decaying organic bodies slowly rot away.
I think you can easily see why I brought up Beksiński in this video. Texhnolyze, like Beksiński’s works, provides us with an experience that smothers us in this dreadful world. One where no matter where you go, there is nothing but this misery that follows you. Even later, when we get out of the main city of Lux and visit the above ground, instead of a more vibrant and sprawling city, what we get to see is the city I mentioned during the intro of this video. Vibrant, yes. But the people have lost their will to go on. The visuals of the city are vibrant and bright as it is designed specifically to contrast the city of Lux. Lux’s design is the extreme opposite of that of this city above ground.
What I mean is that Lux’s buildings weren’t designed with aesthetics in mind like how the city above ground was built. But rather to fit as many people as it can with it having more long apartment buildings than houses. Similarly, most if not all of Lux’s buildings are completely naked of any paint or decoration. A total jungle of concrete and exposed piping. Unlike the city above ground which is, again, designed to keep up a face of beauty. The visuals of this city (it’s named Hades but I forgot to mention that here) are also based on the American painter, Edward Hopper’s many incredible oil paintings. What’s interesting about Hopper’s works is that they are absolutely stunning to look at but at the same time they possess this quiet poetic sadness to them. Just look at some of his famous works such as Nighthawks or Pensive Lady In Pink, the latter of which is recreated directly in the show.
They are, at first glance, a striking contrast to Beksiński’s grim and frightening worlds, with their pastel and vibrant bright use of colors and how they depict everyday scenery such as a night cafe in the street corner or a woman sitting in her bed and staring outside her window. But on the other hand, they are intricately painted in order to evoke within us a subtle sense of loneliness. The woman sitting, what is she thinking? Where is she looking? Who is she and why is she here and not outside or doing something? Hopper creates spaces and people who have nothing to do with us or our world. A world that’s so perfect that the people themselves no longer feel a need to really live. And in Texhnolyze, this feeling of loneliness is brought to another level as the people here are beings who are literally no longer there. Beings who are as good as dead, but not quite. This place is introduced to us in the episode “heavenward”. This is as close to heaven to the people of Lux. This is why I say that I find Beksiński’s utter hopelessness in Texhnolyze. Even the most vibrant and colorful places in this show is one that’s filled with loneliness and so devoid of life.
The question of “what’s the point?” is probably the biggest one to answer when talking about and recommending this show to anyone. It’s a question that I’d imagine Beksiński was asked quite a lot as well. Whereas Beksiński followed the trails of people like Susan Sontag and insisted that art was made to be felt and not analyzed, the creators of Texhnolyze are in a wholly different wagon. The producer Ueda had once said that if his audience were to analyze his works and find meaning in it, no matter whether or not the meaning was intended by him or his co creators, he’d be happy as he feels that that’s the very reason why he works. In a paper written by Nolan Boyd for an academic journal “science fiction studies”, Boyd provides a look into Texhnolyze and how it examines a society built upon this distribution of power among classes. Ghost In The Shell by Mamoru Oshii is an INCREDIBLY popular anime film that came out 8 years before Texhnolyze did. While it used its themes of trans-humanism and prosthetic bodies to explore the complex themes of identity and the self, Texhnolyze uses similar themes to explore what a society built upon the distribution of this power would be like. As the aforementioned paper says, Texhnolyze came out at the dawn of the 21st century, just in time to look back at the atrocities done by humans, namely their obsession with eugenics. You see, we humans have a tendency to generalize and put things into rigid boxes. When the idea of god was born, we put every bit of the ideal into him. We made him what we want to be but never can achieve. All powerful, All seeing, all knowing, you know… But as things developed and science and thought improved, the ideal started to come back to the realm of what’s possible. Now the ideal which once was an all powerful god, was now just a rich, smart and shredded man. That’s when the concept of “the normal” came into the common consciousness. Since most humans share qualities such as shape, figure, height and weight, we began to generalize even that. And so, anyone who did not or was not able to achieve the ideal was labelled “deviant” and was shunned. Even today in Advertisements and media, there can be observed these ripped handsome straight dudes and thin and feminine women. This stuff I’m talking about here dwells in the realm of eugenics and was practiced in Eugenicist societies, just look at the Nazi obsession of the idea of an “Ubermensch” (Overman) or a superman, a man who would uphold the so called purity and superiority of the Aryan race. Ichise getting his limbs cut off is the inciting incident of the whole anime as it leads him to encountering the Doc. The doc is a woman who’s responsible for most of the texhnolyzation in the story. She’s actually a member of the class, which is the higher power that exists above ground. She’s a doctor and a scientist who studies Texhnolyzation and actually Texhnolyzes people herself. There are two different instances of SA that occur in the anime. Both committed by the Doc on Ichise. Both painting the same picture of oppression of the disabled body by the “over-human”.
In earlier times, cutting people’s limbs off was a common practice used as punishment just like in the anime. A human with their arm and leg gone is like something that’s viewed as inferior to the normal human with their arm and legs intact. There’s even a scene where Ichise painstakingly struggles to climb a set of stairs after his mutilation where he sees his old self, the self with his arm and leg intact, looking back at his present apparently “sub human” self with contempt and pity. It’s an unsettling scene just like how most of the anime is. On the other hand we have the Doc. She is the symbol of Texhnolyzation. A person with prosthetic limbs in this world is a person that’s considered more than human. Especially superior to the weak “subhumans” of the city. It is by no mistake that she’s a Prometheus like figure. One who’s brought this new power into the decrepit city of lux. According to Michel Foucault, knowledge is a sort of power by itself. Not in that knowledge allows you to do as you please but in that it gives you authority over people. Think of how your teachers have power over you. This is made literal with the aforementioned SA scenes where the Doc literally abuses her power over Ichise. In that sense, this practice of Texhnolyzation is a sort of biopower. A means that’s used to oppress certain people. The world of the anime is uniquely split into classes due to the distribution of technological power and knowledge of this technology. There are the people in Lux whose lives are incredibly bleak and miserable. There is The Class who, I will not spoil, have the most concentration of power and knowledge and essentially politically opress Lux. There’s Organo who have some contact with the class and knowledge of Texhnolysation and therefore holds power over Lux. But the very surface world as I described earlier has essentially lost the will to live on. With all of these classes, fighting for power through violent and terrifying means, accelerating the already bleak future the world is headed for. Then there is this girl named Ran. She’s revealed to be a being capable of seeing the future in the first episode. This factor of being able to see the future, adds to the utter helplessness the show is trying to convey to the audience. And this is why Texhnolyze is so goddamn depressing. Because it puts us in a world and a society that’s formed as a result of this rapid pursuit of progress. It depicts a post industrialist world where everyone is suffering under what seems to be an oligarchy. A complete domination of most by some that’s achieved due to the aforementioned drive to achieve a “perfect being”. And what’s more it tears away all masks from humanity, leaving us with the ugly animal-istic agents of destruction, fighting for power that we are. And it’s this pent up frustration of knowing the future, but being unable to stray from one’s nature even though one knows what this will lead him to that’s so powerful in this anime. I will not spoil any further, but just know, there is no light at the end of this tunnel. Just like Beksiński’s paintings, This is all there is. Nowhere to escape to. Nowhere to distract yourself from the misery. Just an utter and complete hopelessness that’s reacted to by the throat splitting, agonizing screams of Ichise.
If you’re anything like me, you have seen movies after movies, anime after anime, video games after video games, always ending with a familiar tone. Hope. Life sucks… is a phrase that’s unanimously agreed upon. Since the beginning of life, humanity has always been in conflict. With nature, with existence, with each other. And in between this conflict, we have always had stories. Stories which transport you into a different world. A world where your worries just fade away. Even if the world is not a heaven, You meet people of that world fighting for what they believe in. You build connections with them as if they were your friends and you find inspiration in their tales. And as their journey comes to an end, you are pushed back into our decaying world but what’s changed is.. You. You are renewed with a new sense of hope. Weather that be through the sweeping shots of a field of the endangered silent princess flowers at the end of Breath of the wild, signifying a new hope for the future of the broken kingdom of Hyrule or the disembodied voice of Tetsuo at the end of Akira, after the boy’s body had been utterly destroyed, giving us a glimmer of hope that even death is not the end. Hope is the primary product of the artist. As art is escapism, art should give you hope that even your world and your life CAN and WILL change for the better.
I don’t believe that humans are ugly, animalistic agents of destruction fighting for power. I don’t subscribe to the Hobbesian idea of how humans act only on self interest, there’s more than enough proof to why that’s not the case. But not long ago in my life, I did.I was sick and tired of all these media trying to tell me that everything will be alright. And that’s when I found this anime and that’s why I built a good connection with it. It’s by far the only anime I’ve seen that stares into the Abyss and doesn’t flinch. And I think that there’s beauty in that. We need art like this that’s willing to not comfort but hurt you. I think that sometimes in our darkest days, what we may need more than someone who will encourage us, is someone who will cry along with us. And that’s why I think everyone should watch this anime. By that I absolutely don’t mean that this anime is flawless. The latter parts where it goes into Ichise’s character backstory feels sloppily written and the pacing can be painstakingly slow during the earlier episodes. That along with the overall bleakness and style of the show warrants a specific mindset to approach it with. A mindset that I hope I’ve provided with this essay.
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