19 May

The Hypernatural and Supernatural in Madlax -- Conclusion

Conclusion
In Madlax, the divided shards of a personality have not been united in the end, both the original self and separated shadows continue to exist being allowed to sustain each phase of substance. In many literary works created in the 19th century, the division of personality used to be deemed as disease or degeneration. It was the decisive opportunity for the sick soul to desperately acknowledge and accept the loathsome image as his own, which decision might only enable him the quality to be led to salvation. The failure to construct the vision of uniting divided selves to recover the original has been often described as a tragic incident experienced by the subject of consciousness. In Hans Christian Andersen’s “Shadow” (1847), the protagonist’s detached shadow had usurped the original figure and taken away everything a human existence had been granted. In both Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” (1842) and Feodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Double” (1846), a shadow had been generated while the protagonist was not aware, and plundered him of everything that had constructed the person’s individuality, entirely ruining the being. Shadow, or the double often called “Doppel Ganger”, was a new kind of evil spirit, which was revived in the modern age where people were suffering from the severe conflict between self and society. Division of personality was deemed as an obstacle to be overcome, and the process starting to gaze at one’s own shadow that one had been rejecting to see, definitely constructed the metaphysical frame of meanings, which should determine the perspective of a fictional work.

Culmination of the pursuits of these shadow motifs would be found in George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858). The protagonist Anodos, the name meaning “who knows not his own way yet”, tries to carve a woman figure out of a mass of alabaster, believing it to be his ideal bride like as Pygmalion did, who obtained his eternal soul partner, Galatea. But as soon as the image had been completed and incarnated in the form of a living woman, the creature sneeringly escaped from her lord. Moreover, a shadow appears from a quite unexpected place, and possesses the protagonist, not only turning him into a most miserable creature but also transforming everything that touched the shadow into unbearably formidable shapes, to his uttermost dismay. The moral of the encounter with one’s own shadow is obvious; the rediscovery of the raw reality full of pollution in the prosperous Empire and in his own humble figure, at the opposite side of the ideal, that a gentleman of enthusiasm and reflective turn had to confront.

Following these serious literary works that bear the dark subject of shadow, after the turn of the century, James Matthew Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) depicts a shadow cut away from its original form enacting comical scenes, and Peter Pan has his own shadow sewn to him with a needle and thread by Wendy, ignorantly having failed to stick it with a lump of soap he had found in the bathroom. On the other hand, cleverly camouflaged true theme of the philosophical work was represented in another shadow personified by Peter Pan himself. This fairytale is written focused on the shadow existence whose attribute is ignorance and childishness, materialized by the process of polarization generation out of austere Captain Hook, who lives a life of spiritual prisoner fettered by severe self-reflection, representative of modern intelligence. And the ruthless conclusion of the work is worked out by the shadow that does not understand even the identity of himself, and slaughters the original figure heartlessly. As all the lost boys return to the real world owing to the intervention of Wendy, Peter has to fly away from the mind of people together with Neverland, their soul paradise. The reality modern men have found out is not a strained spiritual realm anymore, where a cruel God had dominated. The actual circumstances of our world are a flaccid comedy space swung by the make-believes begot out of the fancy of a childish god who doesn’t even care to rule the world.

note:
The arguments on the twisted arrangement of the metaphysical subject in Peter and Wendy that introduces disguised shadow and the aftermath of the extermination of the original caused by the shadow, are developed in my fantasy literature study Fantasy as Antifantasy, Kindaibungei-sha (2005).


Though the reality recognition of the author of Peter and Wendy had been extremely stern and his attitude no less severe than any other examples that took up the shadow motif, and there was the prerequisite of lofty will burdened upon the awareness that has to survive hardships present world supplies, conspicuously portrayed in the tragic figure of Captain Hook, who had chosen to be a revel against the sovereign state; the childishness exhibited by Peter was precisely the negative of the prominent model of self-accomplishment. But in Japan from late 20th century to early 21st century, where “Otaku” culture has been flourishing, the existential problem of a man that had to be faced with serious determination has become no more than a sterile self-portrait of an obsolete hero. The sensation acutely felt by a noble soul in the base reality that strains for the spiritual has thoroughly disappeared. Early 21st century Japanese people have summoned up a Goddess out of their collective unconscious, in the appearance of a cute girl that makes people turn on. Haruhi Suzumiya is the outstanding example that has substituted the position that the symbolic figure of Peter Pan had once occupied. Though Haruhi had created the entire universe by her tremendous energy out of nothing as a closed space in her mind, she is quite unaware of the extraordinary performance. Her ability to live her everyday life with indefatigable gusto led by wild impulses is the accurate portrait of Peter Pan, with the sex transformed reflecting the age’s desire. Lost boys had been able to enjoy their everyday life full of wonder always supplied with new opportunities of adventure introduced by the whims of Peter Pan, though quite often perplexed by their leader’s selfishness. Peter Pan was a new god revived in the early 20th century Britain, who unceasingly contrived novel games and plays following his careless desire, instead of patronizingly meddling with his people as the God of Old Testament had used to. The deity 21st century Japan has found out is transformed in a shape of a cute girl, who is quite unconscious of her own superhuman ability, never exhaustible in her impulses or vitality, and extremely full of sexual charms besides. The idea of “sublime” that had reminded of the majestic creation has been substituted and accepted with its new phase of “Moe”, enfolded by the erotic attraction. The harsh reality does not exist anymore that should be denied as the infringement of the ideal, because we have learned how to accept the world and enjoy the pleasures it grants us. We have come to understand the world just as it is, actually not so cruel but satisfying enough in the course of our interaction with the deepest psyche, as long as we know how to play it as a game, even though full of contradictions and inconsistencies. Our collective consciousness “Otaku” mind that acknowledges no distinction between fictionality and reality, has developed an intriguing Neverland phase space in the overlying psychical area among many possible worlds through its activity of make-believe; while intellectuality oriented by austere reason had generated the particular phase space called “reality” crammed with strictly defined characteristics.

note:
The anime The Melancholia of Haruhi Suzumiya was aired in 2006, the same year as Madlax was, but the original novel of Haruhi series had started its publication in 2003. The interactive relationship of consciousness and phase space seems to have formed the common ground of Japanese post millennium subculture movement.


Everything is the shadow of divided shadows that have been generated out of the primordial state through the process of various phase shifts between stages of force and matter transformation, according to the cooling down process caused by the loss of energy that the tremendous explosion of Big Bang brought forth, which had been caused essentially purposelessly and accidentally. Against this typically dysteleological cosmology model scientific worldview had advocated, the one Post Quantum Mechanics posits would be understood as working like the complementary system to the former, where the purpose of self-contemplation of Fundamental Awareness is presupposed in its teleological perspective of autonomous evolution. Both division and fragmentation are nothing other than direct result of the universal principle that rules everything on temporal dimension just in the same way as Entropy Increase law does. Modern cosmology has accepted everything as fragment severed from something. We don’t have the justifiable reason anymore to deny the reality on the basis of its being immature, warped or away from the ideal. We accept the self-portraits as shards of shadow, just as we accept the image of a creator as a cute girl like Haruhi Suzumiya, who is not aware of her profound creatorship. Life, whether interpreted as experience or idea, is nothing other than modes of phenomenon in fragmentation process revealed on the temporal dimension. The reflections of this reality recognition are also detectable in many self-reflective visual works such as the comic Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind and the anime Ergo Proxy.

note:
The manga Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind had been started its serialization in 1982 on the anime information magazine Animage, but it was not until 1994 that the story was completed after several intervals of break periods. The anime Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was produced in 1984, in an altered story from the one original spectacular manga had been conceived in.
Ergo Proxy was produced as an original anime series by studio manglobe, and aired in 2006. Concerning the subject of the speculation upon existence, phenomenon and personality pursued in this enterprising anime, please refer to the author’s study “Science, Science Fiction and Speculation: God, Man, and Self in Ergo Proxy”, included in Existence, Phenomenon and Personality: Individuality in Figurines, Anime and Game, Bokka-sha (2014).


Nausicaa finds out that she and her people are all clones manufactured in order to be the specimen to survive the destruction of natural environment just temporarily, but she decides to undertake the world as one of shadow existences, exterminating the original species that had been preserved in order to be the ruler of the world when it has recovered purification out of the global pollution. In Ergo Proxy, the man-made god or Proxy Ergo, who has been equipped with the ability to confer death like Thanatos unto the other immortal “proxies” after their missions are over, who have been burdened with the task of creating new worlds according to each propensity; decides to live a life of shadow as a created being reveling against his creator, following the lead of a human girl Re-l Mayor, who had been produced as a clone out of another man-made god named Monad. In accordance with the course these works have taken, Madlax (2004) has chosen a protagonist in the form of a young girl who is endowed with the function similar to the one Greek Deity Thanatos possessed, to develop its peculiar motif where the depiction of the actual world consisted of fragments is perpetrated through the directing strategy of taking up disguised imitation of typical fictional conventions, and ensuing annihilation of them, not only overthrowing the meaning configuration axis which must construct the metaphysical fictional subject of division and reintegration of personality, but also the convention of fiction-making to present a meaningful subject and to express a unifying perspective.

But in this utterly disrupted psychical mode where logical standard of division and reintegration has grown meaningless, and both self and consciousness has been completely disintegrated according to the judgment of reason; the possible potentiality intuition retains is suggested following Poe’s bipolar principle, that enables the mind to secure the psychical stage of ultimate self-realization in the phase-shift mode of emancipation where primordial ambiguity is liberated at the far end of evolution. Intuition allows the formation of qualia that contemplates all the universe in its every process and mode, with no distinction between self and others, not as a determined result of cause-and-effect procedure, but from the infinitely aloof standpoint that commands the synthesized view liberated from the restraint of temporality. What Madlax suggests is not the division and reintegration of personality, but the ultimate phase of event horizon where everything exists as a shadow after the annihilation of individuality. It is the exhaustive depiction of the combination of meanings and expressions, generated through the power of intuition as “the farthest sublime truth that unifies individuality and diversity on ‘the other side of terror and despair’, where dichotomy of reasoning and existential idea generated after its process retains meaning anymore”.

note:
Concerning the argument on the relation between Poe’s philosophical view on intuition and his actual practice following the drive of “the imp of perversity”, please refer to “Red Bull: The Shadow of Ignorance and Blindness” included in the author’s study, Fantasy as Antifantasy 2: A Study of The Last Unicorn, Bokka-sha (2012), where the consideration on the contrary identity unicorn and bicorn exhibit is developed. Above citation reflects the universal intuitional grasp of the fundamental cosmological principle, which seems to precisely apply to the argument on the relation between consciousness and unconscious depicted in Madlax.


The subject of consciousness has sometimes been able to perceive vaguely the projection of archetype, but fictionality only exhibits the function to describe the abundance of the primordial in the phenomenal world.