lateen

In my log for Taipei Story I mentioned how the movie continues the theme I don’t see in a lot of Western media of homesickness for adolescence. Sure, there’s Western coming-of-age stories that end with a “After we all go to college will we still visit during summer?”, but there’s something more to it that I couldn’t really put my finger on with East Asian media. Now, after watching 5 more months of movies I think I have a better idea of it.

It isn’t really a homesickness for older times, I think its deeper than that. I get the feeling that the East Asian outlook on things is that after awhile you get sort of /stuck/ at some point, and you can’t really change as a person, almost to a painful degree. That point is usually somewhere at the end of adolescence. When you’re a kid you get to do whatever, trying to experience all that life has to offer before you become a boring adult with a job, with a personality that reflects what you experienced as a kid.

Different East Asian media explore this very differently, too. Taipei Story was about people reconnecting, realizing they’re different people now. In the Heat of the Sun was about kids being as carefree as they could, to their detriment. Tampopo was a bit different, having a man who messed something up once and didn’t believe he could try it again. Gundam, Ideon, and Dougram (and MANY other mecha shows, I’m sure) all have kids have their innocence stolen from them by war.

Evangelion however, takes a different approach. Yes, you may believe that you can’t change who you are and you may be happy with it, but you CAN change. It’s painful, and you may end up destroying the majority of the world’s population, but you CAN do it. Evangelion has a more ‘complete’ picture of this pain, but that doesn’t mean its approach is better or anything, it’s simply a different approach.

Evangelion of course isn’t the only story that I’ve seen use this approach. Ping Pong the Animation is also very similar, for example. While I’m writing this I’ve just thought of the only piece of Western media that I think gets close to what I’ve been talking about: season 1 of True Detective. I’m not sure to what degree though, I’d have to rewatch it.

After I’ve experience certain media, I get a sort of pause after watching it. Very few things I’ve read or watched do this, but Evangelion is one of them. The only thing that I experience that is similar is when I’ve been hanging out with friends for a long time, then the day after I’ll feel a similar pause. The only way I think I can describe it is a certain melancholy, its very reflective. I’m not really evaluating the movie at all during this pause, and I’m not even really evaluating myself or the movies affect on me. I’m just letting the movie sit with me in a way that’s more profound than other movies normally would.

I have other thoughts more specific to the movie itself, but I don’t feel its right to write about it. I feel like it wouldn’t work well with the previous paragraph.

With Shark Skin Man, the characters were up front from the beginning about being themselves. But with this movie things take a bit longer, and the characters have to keep interacting with each other to reveal more of their… ahem… character. I feel like I keep comparing Katsuhito Ishii’s stuff to Shark Skin Man a little too much, but I think its fine considering how much of his stuff I’ve seen and how stylistically written it was. Despite that difference Party 7 still manages to have Ishii’s character writing I’m finding myself enamored with.

The opening animation hit me like a freight train, making me baffled by what was going to happen for the next 90 minutes. Despite taking place in basically two (2) rooms, I still think the movie delivered on what the opening showed. I enjoyed the weird comedy and people getting angry at each other for the smallest things, and I thought the ending was cute.

The first time I watched this was in my freshmen year of college. Stuck with a roommate I hated, movies were one of my few respites. On Fridays he would go out drinking and other frat bs, which meant I had a pretty consistent quiet ~5 hours to myself every week. I didn’t really know what to expect other than stop-motion animation so I was awestruck by the beautifully disgusting world unfolding before me.

When I went to watch this again, I was in a very bad point emotionally feeling like I didn’t have I place to call home. I didn’t want to watch something comforting or normal, it would feel patronizing. I knew I felt like shit, and was only going to feel like shit for the foreseeable future, so the only thing that felt appropriate was something grotesque. Instead of continuing to feel like shit, watching MAD GOD comforted me and I felt better. Looking back to when I first watched this, I remember feeling a similar sense of comfort, but I probably didn’t realize it since I was also happy to not have to listen to my roommate. I still don’t know why this movie is comforting, it isn’t exactly cathartic, it’s different from that. I might never know, and I’m ok with that.