/jp/ - Otaku Culture

The most interesting thing I found about it was the frequent and deliberate dissonance in how the world is setup. There's a buildup to a festival celebrating world peace, but when it's finally shown it's paradoxically revealed to be a grand display of military might. The same military that's responsible for these grandiose displays is shown to treat human life as cheap for the sake of creating self sustaining propaganda that's difficult to differentiate from its peacetime festivities.

There's also mention of a great wall that exists as a monument to peacetime, with portents of its fall heralding the start of war. But typically walls aren't associated with peace or unity, and most walls in history are associated with some conflict or segregation. The quote that gives us this information is also from someone with allusions to John. F. Kennedy, who was famously assassinated during the tenuously peaceful period paradoxically called the Cold War.

The dissonance appears in other, seemingly less important aspects of the setting. The world is obviously set in the future, with innovations far beyond what seems fathomable today, presented as technology rather than as magic. But there's a return to old things in other aspects, with the cityscape being dotted with billboards and 19th century European architecture.

Yet the only old person we see in this narrative, that's otherwise populated by improbably young characters, is the senior ranking military officer. Despite his apparent seniority in an organisation known for its clear hierarchical structure, his existence seems irrelevant, with junior officers and staff declining to take his recommendations and another officer feeding him lies to prevent his involvement or knowledge of a situation.

The most important part of the scenario are the Gauntlets. With the many references to the military, and to a peacetime set on shaky foundations, it's difficult to not suspect these wartime weapons of ultimate power will end up being positioned as deterrents to war, a weapon that if most successfully deployed would never have to be used.

All of this was just from the first hour of the episode, but having read Ryukishi's other works it's interesting to guess how much foreshadowing might be in just this small slice of the full game. But I wouldn't be surprised if I'm completely off base, especially since he seems to be teasing us early in when the game basically says 'we need to put in lots of explosions into an early scene to hook the reader' - and then has a scene that does exactly that. Either way, based on what I've seen I'm excited for the rest of the episode.