SEL, Kairo, NGE
TW: Disturbing imagery, Violence, Suicide, depression
Spoiler warnings for Kairo and Evangelion
So I want to start this section of the analysis with an apology. I think throughout these analyses, I've only tried to shoehorn in western and Indian views and have not really unfolded the depth of Japanese Culture being commented on in SEL. To do justice to this, I will try to not pose conclusions but rather open ended questions and leads here.
SEL, Kairo and Neon Genesis Evangelion all share very strong similarities, being products of the late 90's/early 2000's, being Japanese media exclusively made for the Japanese and having strong commentary on Japan's cultural alienation and fragmentation during that period.
Yet I think collectively on the internet, we really don't try to examine these issues from a Japanese lens, preferring instead to use western or pseudo eastern lenses and conveniently forgetting the core essence of these shows, namely that they were primarily aimed at a a Japanese audience. This is something that is glossed over and not taken seriously online. Unfortunately, neither am I Japanese nor would I like to speak for them.
But before this, a short intro on Evangelion and Kairo. Evangelion is a mecha-robot anime dealing with 3 young highschoolers who fight gigantic monsters known as the angels, and Kairo is a japanese horror movie that deals with the idea of ghosts entering the real world through the computer screen. This analysis will not make sense if you have not watched the other two, so please do!
What do female gun suicides imply?
Lain iwakura holds a gun and is pressurized to die in layer 11, in front of Chisa and the Accela kid
Harue chooses to die after seeing the "entity" in Kairo in front of Ryosuke and Michi
Ritsuko holds a gun in End of Evangelion threatening to kill herself
The framing expands to show us Gendo and Rei...
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..whose positions also mimic Ryosuke and Michi when Harue shoots herself
The idea of gun suicide by a young woman is peculiar imagery to be used in Japanese media. A gun suicide implies a sort of violence, which when you consider that it's by a woman, is even more striking. While it may seem normal to an international or westernized audience, this image is probably more striking to one of Japanese descent.
In Japan, personal firearms have been outlawed for a very, very long time. The idea of a personal gun is a very foreign concept and one that makes no sense to the Japanese. Additionally, its use is by a Japanese woman, one who is meant to uphold the ideals of gentleness, demureness and submission to a patriarchal society in all aspects of life. Therefore, when a Japanese woman takes what is arguably a very violently self assertive and selfish move, there is an amplified shock factor there not being considered. Suicide by gun is statistically a very masculine route even in the West, so there is no real analogue to this in reality.
A gun suicide is also far from the normal way Japanese people usuallly take their life Suicide in Japan is characterized by a slow, silent death by honour: Slowly killing themselves in the silence of their rooms or a forest like AokiGahara.
Conversations with my brother seem to point to two things: This is most definitely a reference to some famous media or incident in Japan, or this is a modernized caricature of seppuku/Harakiri. However the very specific framing and context across all three media seems to imply that they're all deriving from one common source material/influence. This makes sense because all 3 are very different Japanese media that deal with the same topics and express them mostly the same way and mostly unaware of each other.
What exactly is this imagery trying to communicate? Is it referencing something?
What exactly does a tortured collective Godlike being symbolize?
In layer 9, it's implied that Lain is the result of the neural network formed by the Wired's flow of information.
In End of Evangelion, Rei/lilith returns all souls to the black moon, making her a custodian of a single, unitary collective mind
In Kairo, we find out that the cries for "help" through the phone lines were from the "entity". Judging from the use of static, I believe this entity represents the"internet"
Let's break the similarities one by one.
In SEL, Lain arises as a neural network hivemind from all people on Earth communicating, and in the end according to Eiri and the Knights plan she almost fuses every single person on earth into one global collective mind without bodies. Throughout the show, Lain is repeatedly abused both physically an mentally, and is helpless by the end of the show.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei fuses with Adam and Lilith to become the ancestrl god, whereby she opens the doors of Guf and returns all human souls to LCL, losing their physical forms. Rei has been repeatedly subject to experiments, abuse and cloning by Gendo Ikari, and in the end while she is the active agent that creates the conditions for this happening via the steps taken in the human instrumentality project, she is happy to die with Shinji rejecting instrumentality at the end of the movie.
At this point, it can be argued that these are just direct influences from Science fiction, such as Childhood' end and the Instrumentality of Mankind. However, Kairo puts this into question, making it seem that the idea of a collective entity arising has some meaning to Japanese society specifically in 90s Japan.
In Kairo, we repeatedly across the movie hear the cry for "help" through the phone line, and an entity reveals itself to Harue when she returns to her home, after which she promptly declares "I am not alone!". Ryosuke meets this entity as well but dismissed it as death or an illusion, to which the entity, which pleads for help but physically manifests his time, responds with "I am not an illusion". Seeing this entity forces people commit the big S and to go to other side, which for a while now has been merging with this current world.
It's important to bring up the fact that animism features heavily in Japanese shintoism, and it believes that objects, living or nonliving, have a soul or spirit. Iwakura iteslf is a reference to a Japanese tradition of rock worship. In SEL, this living entity is Lain Iwakura. Similarly in Kairo which translates to "The circuit" in Japanese, the plot seems to imply the collective manifestation of a horrifying entity beyond one's own grasp via the internet acting as a gateway to the other side.
What is being said here? What happened in 1990 's japan that gave the idea of such a frightening "overarching entity"? It's almost lovecraftian in its conception.
What is the root of the deep conflict between individuality and collectivism?
SEL's commentary on the nature of love seems to imply that distance in some degree is a part of it. If Lain assimilates Arisu, she cannot love her. The Knights and Eiri are trying to force the borg where people lose heir individuality to arise.
In Kairo a simulation is programmed on computer screensaver with a lot of floating dots. The implication is that it's a mirror of the ghost invasion of the real world
"If the dots are too close they die, but if they're far apart, they're drawn together". In the movie,the dead replace the living until there's no difference between this side and the other
The Hedgehog's dilemma is a theme that routinely affects every character in Evangelion, which human instrumentality is trying to solve
Previously, I've also fallen to the trap of exoticism or orientalism, where I've simplified a complex commentary down to "individual versus society", but now I am not sure if that is the message being sold here. It seems that there is an argument against pure individualism and pure collectivism.
In all 3 media, some "hidden evil" or secret force is trying to create a collective idea where people lose their physical bodies and henceforth their individuality. The root cause of this is the pain that comes with being unable to connect to other people, and thus an extremist position is reached. In all 3 cases, the main character ( Shinji, Lain and Ryosuke) decide to keep living in the real world and reject this grand convergence and choose a world where one keeps on living in this physical form, and physical boundaries are maintained.
This fine balance is probably a commentary on multiple things happening at once during that era (disillusionment due to the lost decades, alienation from cultural foundations due to a fast-changing society, the mental health stigma of Japanese society, the internet being an escapist fantasy in many east asian societies).
However, I think this fineline is more-so a product of specific cultural traditions and understandings, which I believe are most probably from Shinto/Taoism/Buddhist understandings of society and how the world will end (as well as East Asian beliefs of the afterlife). In all 3 cases, the world simply doesn't die but enters a new cyclic reincarnation, one whose future is hopeful yet uncertain.
Again, my overall answer to this is "I do not know".
What exactly surrounds death, suicide and mental health in Japanese society?
Chisa tries to coax as many people into suicide in Layer 1, but by layer 5 the other side is too crowded for anyone. Multiple ghosts appear in Lain's perception due to the fusion of the wired and the real world, as a result of the many subtle suicides happening in the backdrop of the show
In Kairo, around the 1 hour mark, there is a conversation surrounding how the "other side" or nether world has become full, and ghosts have begun to return to the word of the living simply because of how lonely it is there, despite the initial reason being the loneliness of the human world .
In episodes 20 and 21, Shinji demateralizes into th LCL, which is symbolcally an afterlife where he meets the spirit of his mother. He only returns to the real world because Misato needed him, whereupon he rematerializes and becomes a physical person again.
There is a huge theme of the interconnection between the worlds of the living and the dead, whereupon the spirits of the living and the dead can interact with other realms (This is probably because of Shintoism). But a lot of these core ideas are difficult to make sense of since a large part of what is being said only makes sense if you are a Japanese person familiar with all these things, such as the late 90's, suicide norms and mental health etc.
There are a couple of things we can establish for sure:
1) In Japanese customs, ancestor worship is real
2) Suicide is a difficult topic because due to seppuku, there is an element of honour in Japanese suicide versus western "shame"
3) There were multiple group suicide pacts arising on the Japanese internet in that time period.
4) I believe a lot of this has to do with either Shinto or Buddhist death rituals/cosmology/eschatology. Otherwise, these themes make little to no sense to someone outside that cultural conversation.
Conclusion
Hopefully this part two provides a lead into answering some critical questions as to making sense of these media. I believe that if we take a stronger emphasis on eastern commentary being made here, a lot of their "weirdness" starts to fall apart and become clearer and hence they become a lot more appreciable. If you are Japanese or have a strong scholarship/understanding of these conditions, please write to me @edmersenne@gmail.com so that we can have a discussion and I will duly credit you :)