The Hypernatural and Supernatural in Madlax -- continued

Formulaic style and hyper natural representations of anime
Though it is rather surprising, in most anime shows that are created and accepted in a peculiar manner that they are aired every week as a TV program, some particular routine patterns are shared in compliance with strict formality. Their basic structure pattern would be modeled something like the following.
In the majority of televised anime, almost uniformly a skit called "avant", which functions as an introductory part to lead to the day’s episode, is provided preceding the start of the main part. Usually after this avant, series title and the day’s broadcast title are displayed as a “title back”, followed by the opening theme song against the background of the video clip that has an independent structure. After this preliminary formal procedure, the main part of the day is to be developed. The main part is also usually divided into the first half (A part) and the second half (B part), by the insertion of commercials in the middle of the broadcast, at which interruption, still images or short video clips called “eye-catching” are prepared to declare each of the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half. In this manner, the program content of a day’s show is presented in formalized two parts. Even after the main part comes to an end, followed by the eye-catching which declares the episode’s end, another ending theme song follows together with the production staff roll. In this way, the body of the anime is presented sandwiched between two versions of the theme music. Optionally after this, as an additional skit functioning symmetrically with respect to the avant, “ending bridge” part is sometimes attached. Most of the case, “next week notice” skits are added still after that. These announcements of the content of the next week are not only made by a narration performed by the neutral narrator, but often undertaken by one or some of the characters who appeared in the show, often alternately taking the role every broadcast time, commenting with respect to their own behavior and the fate of the people in the show, thus making metafictional statements from out of the world they actually exist.

In theater drama, as they had to provide intermission break in order to perform a background conversion for switching the scenes, they were able to devise peculiar performance effects called “interludes”, by adding unique metafictional twists utilizing the characteristic complex structure of the playing space. In anime works, specific formality of the genre is constructed autonomously out of somewhat different demands from such time and space constraints. This fact seems to provide us with an especially interesting instance to re-consider the specific representation of a fictional work, together with the pleroma nature suggested behind the fictional work, focusing on the method of presentation of the perspectives that intensify the reflexive consciousness of the work’s being a fictional work. Each of those basic units are not only strictly complying with the peculiar style of the televised program, but may function as an opportunity to illuminate the basis of the subject matter of the entire program from a variety of different angles, by devising arrangements of individual expression method for each independent component. Although many of these components that construct the anime work, should be emotionally tuned to conform to the atmosphere of the whole work; it is not at all impossible to introduce some individual parts in a reflexive manner that dare to overthrow the original tone. For example, comical expression can be sometimes picked up in the ending part, in a ridiculed manner to overthrow the seriously grave tone of the work itself. (note)

note:
In the ending of the anime Yosuganosora (directed by Takeo Takahashi, 2010), a dry caricatured burlesque tone is introduced with the characters’ proportion distorted so as to represent their demoniac nature inside, in contrast with the pure and serious atmosphere of the main story. As the anime was based on a game work of the same title, in which several story lines branch off according to the selections made by the player in the process of development, the storyline of the anime also branches off independently in each broadcast time, reflecting the juxtaposed structure of the original game. This style has already established a new category in many anime works, attaining a remarkable innovation in the fictional description.


It is one of the typical representations of anime conventions to deform the proportion of characters having extremely big heads and small bodies in such a case. In some cases, opening parts and ending parts are changed to ones of heterogeneous character, inverting the impression of the latter half of the show from the one assumed in the former half. This way, concomitant part elements sometimes can be effectively utilized as means of realizing ironically complex presentations that can irradiate the main subject matter from different angles. By skillfully utilizing the phase condition that a variety of formal attachments retain the extended semantic association as a convention, but actually there is essentially a break between each of them at the same time; contrivance of effective disposition of these components may suggest that potential reflective function of a fictional work can be achieved, omnidirectionally suggesting the meaning construction axes of the possible world. As a result, a peculiar “hyper-natural” world image can be attained, which one cannot easily incorporate into existing ideological category, being neither a faithful depiction of the natural world ruled by the laws of nature, nor the expression of the supernatural delusion where rational norms are excluded. (note)

note:
Typical example of the innovative directing technique is to be found in another anime directed by Koichi Mashimo. In Phantom ~ Requiem for the Phantom ~ (2009), the main story drops off its genre peculiarity in the middle of the progress of the series, and give the impression that it has transformed into another kind of genre production. This is remarkable evidence of intentionally adopted representation of genre concept dislocation.


But hyper-natural presentations allow the audience to confirm having extremely “realistic” experience of the supposed possible world where everything is nothing more than a concomitant.

The Hypernatural and Supernatural in Madlax -- continued

Fictional world and perspectives
A fictional work contains various perspectives. In a typical SF they might be shown in the arrangement of the star system that provides the stage of the story, or in the physical settings such as undiscovered scientific knowledge and novelties in applied technology. In a stereotypical fantasy they can be expressed in the supernatural condition and mythical relationships linking those beings such as God, demons and sorcerers in the legendary background. As these perspectives are latent behind the story, they can take a variety of aspects. Sometimes they are extracted in the form of an aesthetic norm that defines the meaning of the whole story world as emotional judgment factor of tragedy and comedy, or as potential ethical standards to determine the good and evil of some sort of act. In a speculative notion novel, they can be revealed through the phases of peculiar physical constants and heterogeneous psychic world components, fundamentally different from the ones that regulate the real world, or through hidden variables to imply purely ideological basic axes of another possible world. (note)

note: psyche
In the original Japanese paper, the term “心霊” (shinrei) is adopted to represent the concept “psyche”, as a notion often used when one tries to consider the metaphysical phase of the subject matter of fantasy works applying the Jungian idea “archetype,” indicating the primordial mode of existence that is capable of materializing in various aspects of existence. Please refer to my “Translation and Commentary on Sue Matheson’s study, Psychic Transformation and Regeneration of Language in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn” (2010), for an example of the use of the term in the argument on the pleroma state in which both split personality and transition of personae are naturally accountable.


Readers’ concern and appreciation are not only to determine the placement of the various existences in the fictional world as a spatial disposition, but also to discover the principal mechanism that is associated with all the elements of the fictional world together with the semantic extension behind individual events. In many cases these perspectives are habitually referred to by the stereotypical term “world view”, as achieving important factors that determine the characteristics of a fictional work, but in fact, it is the peculiar metaphysical concept that can be termed “perspective”, that actually reflects the creative strategy of a fictional work and subtly dominate the essential entity of the possible world, beyond the limits of the widely accepted notion “world view”.
While the interest of reading and the evaluation of a fictional work, which is a quite different kind of possible world from the real world, should be precisely sought in the intellectual act of verification of these perspectives, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that quite a number of non-critical viewers tend to expect to have easily distinguishable perspectives offered in advance, whose directions are confirmed as a prerequisite of the act of appreciation. As a result, it seems that the act of reading which should be an interactive creation of a fictional world, has often ended in an immersive behavior in the drug atmosphere caused from the enjoyment of mere passive stimulation, bypassing the perspective validation attempt. It is not a rare case that some mind structures tend to enjoy the storyline of a fictional work as if it were their own simulated experience, accepting the fate of one of the characters exactly as their own experience relying on impulsive “empathy”. This is often pointed out as alarming tendency of typical fantasy works, but actually, genuine hard-core SF works that are usually regarded as the simulated experiments with positive scientific assurance, in which everything should be explained reasonably by the strict laws of science, differ nothing in the fact that an undesirable result is brought about that fictional world construction has been carried out lacking the reflexive awareness of verification of perspectives in the delicate procedure of constructing possible worlds. It is not at all a favorable condition that “SF” and “fantasy” are accepted as essentially such things in terms of genre concepts, when one has to attempt to capture the significance of the concept “fiction”, which should be revaluated as a factor determining the scale-balance of cosmology. Those rigid literary theories that claim “novel” and “naturalism literature” should intend to attain the completion of the picture of realistic natural phenomena confirmed by scientific worldview have entirely missed the speculative significance that is preserved in the fictional world. Truly qualitative fictional work should rather deviate from those typological genre concepts, and contain a specific self-examining vector asserting the importance of its own exceptional existence as a possible world.
A very self-reflective author who contemplates attainment of a highly autonomous fictional construction devoid of rigidly idealistic messages and non-reflective imitation of the real world, may exercise a meta-fictional strategy through a directing technique of subject-concealing presentation, barely revealing the perspectives that may determine the genre peculiarities of the work. Strictly disciplined authors deny being confined in existing stereotypical semantic frames, or being subordinated to any genre concept, promote the description of an independent possible world on the basis of the creative principle that does not confirm the described world on the existing category classification, and avoiding statements that would explicitly applicable to the existing typological concepts, scheme to construct a multi-layer structure world implementing a production of a bunch of parallel worlds retaining various background settings in the possible latency state. It is the genre deviant “fictional reality” endowed with concrete properties of its own, that is achieved by betraying the expectations of habitual audience and by dislocating the fixed patterns of specific conventions, which had been thought as implicitly constructing fictional worlds. Extremely dense, otherworldly sense of dimension is the irreplaceable nature of the “fictional reality”, which is completely different from the standardized notion that has been accepted by the majority of unaware audience. In fact, fictional reality should be attained somewhere beyond the general perception of the real world. The reader or viewer, is expected to commit in the interactive creation of the work and to accomplish further removed alternative creation, Omni-directionally verifying the scope and validity of the purely speculative hypotheses that construct the conditions of a fictional world, in order to confirm the existence of the work in his mind.
Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge called such reflective awareness to be held in the mind of a reader “willing suspension of disbelief”, and argued the nature of the principle of Romantic philosophy. But in the critical mind after the rise of fantasy literature, the idea has come to be interpreted as the act of speculation on possible worlds deployed through interaction with the thoughts of the viewer, reflecting the principle of the quantum physics’ mechanical interpretation of existence and phenomenon. Oscar Wilde argued the ontology of an artwork as a possible world generated through personal mental effects, in his essay “The Decay of Lying”, ahead of his age. But in his art theory, “art” was based on the particular perspectives that are independent from the real world, and his art was an ideological abstract world defined by definite concept axes. That is why art was deemed as a model to be followed by Nature in his art theory, and as expressed in the stunning paradox “life imitates art”, an artwork was an ideal world dominated by uniform consistency embodying pure natural laws. But along with the penetration of the 20th century knowledge of quantum mechanics theory, our life “just as it is” has come to be understood not as an orderly cosmos which is under the control of the Logos and can be described as a chain of strict causal relationship based on the rule of natural laws, but something of rather chaotic appearance showing a significant deviation from ideological consistency. It was Susan Strehl who evaluated the new act of fiction making, which is conscious of the interactive effect of the fluid and unstable “real world” to be confirmed as continuum superimposed with consciousness of the individual, introducing the appellation “actualism” in her Fiction in the quantum universe, (1992). (note)

note:
Susan Strehl discussed the influence of the findings of quantum mechanics gained in the second half of 20th century, that brought about great deal of change in the recognition of reality, in her literary study Fiction in the Quantum Universe. Strehl proposed to establish a new genre concept “actualism”, acknowledging the revolutionary shift in worldview that quantum mechanics triggered and eventually imposed the necessity to reexamine the concept of fictionality itself. I have further discussed the relation of the era spirit and the transformation of genre concept in my research of fantasy literature in the following two volumes, Fantasy as Antifantasy and Fantasy as Antifantasy 2. For more details of the argument on the relationship between quantum theory and fictionality, refer to “Quantum logic—Paradox—Impossible worlds: Actualism and Antifantasy” and “Supernatural System Theory and Antifantasy,” included in the latter volume.


However, it seems that sufficient cognition is not gained yet as for the metaphysical function of a fictional work that may enable us to irradiate the nature of the “pleroma” state, which is supposed to lie latently behind what we call “reality”, and is expected to be materialized in myriads of different forms of possible worlds. But I propose to point out the existence of a work based on the excellent creative strategy that establishes a viewpoint to gain the clue to a speculation on the potential field, taking in its perspectives the fictionality of a fictional work itself. Anime Madlax directed by Koichi Mashimo (真下耕一) has achieved a unique method of fictional world creation provided with a splendid property that may be called “hyper-natural presentation”, by way of perspective operations to take full advantage of the chaotic aspects revealing through the real world, using them each as basic axes of the work. (note)

note: hypernatural
A new concept “hypernatural” is here proposed in order to characterize the peculiarity of a fictional world that transcends both the concept “natural” which reflects the scientific worldview and the concept “supernatural” which has been posited as an opposing concept against the norm of scientific view accepted with the term “naturalism,” reflecting the factor “impossibility” which functions as an axis notion of fantasy literature. As for the process how Newtonian mechanical view of Nature has been modified along with the penetration of the knowledge of quantum mechanics, and lead to the inception and further transformation of fantasy literature, I have tried to develop a synthetic argument in Fantasy as Antifantasy (2005) and Fantasy as Antifantasy2 (2009).



In Madlax, unspecified information that does not disclose the deployment range of the background is folded up in multi-layered condition, and the work’s characteristic elements that are to be the cornerstones supporting the meaning linkage are located in ambiguous side relationship, making it difficult for the subject of consciousness who has the authority to determine the outline of the fictional world as a definite phenomenal world, to judge the characteristics of the work. As a result, this anime has achieved a methodological playwriting skill in its representation, where casual details are piled up to function as subtle under plots that are not easily detected until reexamined afterward. It is necessary to carry out a tentative application of conceptualizing the detailed scenes that might be sometimes overlooked, and dare arbitrary interferences with the visual representations of the pleroma quality to read out the hypothetical meaning, in order to reprocess this artwork that achieved a splendid visual representation, as a specimen to be analyzed as the subject of discussion. Maybe it is based on such a demand, that quite often extremely subtle subculture works are talked with affectedly elegant expressions and treated with over-polite manner, reflecting the autistic intellectual attitude of a connoisseur.

The Hypernatural and Supernatural in Madlax: Disrupted Genre Concepts, Manipulation of Perspectives, Intuition, Fictionality and Implicate Order in Anime

Abstract
A fictional work has various perspectives that are indispensable to construct a particular possible world. The reader is supposed to infer the principal mechanism that is associated with all the elements of the fictional world, together with the semantic extension behind individual events portrayed in it. In some speculative works those world axes can be quite different from ones that establish our own phenomenal world. But authors with very reflective turn sometimes attempt to create a peculiar fictional world that will not directly disclose its genre peculiarity, by means of presenting only limited number of information that may suggest the existence of world axes, in order to give the audience the feeling that they are witnessing just only partial phase of an unknown world. Such is the directing strategy adopted in the anime show, Madlax.
In Madlax, the audience has to gather information through the characteristic property of the minutely detailed descriptions portrayed just as coincidental phenomena. A fictional work has the creative demand to be adopted as constructing a peculiar “fictional meaning” through a series of events that scientific world view might just dispose of as “mere coincidences”. The claim of detecting the fundamental meaning that has been orchestrated in the contingency in fictional description, reversely suggests the existence of a comprehensive global solution formula to be accepted by introducing an unknown mechanism, that enables us to comprehend the organic continuum of the whole universe where matter and mind are inseparably linked.
But the fictional world Madlax presents, is densely organized with rich “hyper-real” concrete details, so as to avoid being determined mechanically as the semantic projection incorporated into existing conceptual category, and establishes the sense that the work must belong to some unknown category with the basic axes loaded with uncertainties of another possible world. The audience is forced to continue to check the fictional specific phenomena full of contaminants revealed one by one, without being able to corroborate the coordinate origin, in search of unified meaning all the way through. But one is never sure whether the show is attempting to present a meta subject overthrowing the conventional commitments of reading the implicit meaning in the work, or to establish another kind of meta subject in which integrated meaning construction of further high-dimensional perspective is to be disclosed.
In Madlax, genre axes are dislocated so as to annihilate the distinction of existence, phenomenon and individuality. This anime surprisingly innovates the motif of division of personality and generation of shadow adopted in many fantasy works since 19th century, in a manner very reflective of contemporary worldview infused with the ideas that construct the quantum mechanics.

Contents of Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn

Chapter 2 Synopsis
This document is one of the internal documents related to the production of the anime The Last Unicorn created by Topcraft. It was written by Toshiro Ueno, who was in charge of translating the scenario into Japanese. It seems to be the abridgment of the original story, but it has unique contents that cannot simply be said to be a simplification of the original novel. In addition to mentions of visuals and sounds, it includes some descriptions of scenes that are not present in the finished anime. It is characterized by multiple instances that indicate the existence of another preceding anime work.
I was able to include all the 45 pages of this material in Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1776078571452473550


Chapter 3 Storyboard
A storyboard describes a draft that tells the whole picture of a video work by expressing the camera angle and the composition of the screen with drawings. The storyboard for The Last Unicorn is accompanied here and there, by pieces of English scenario attached to it, together with Japanese translations and notes on the production, making it an interesting document for verifying the process of the creation of the animated film.
Most of the storyboards are included in this book, but there are some storyboards that are not included. It is desirable to have a platform that can publish all storyboards as materials that can be enlarged and verified in detail so that they can be used for research on the anime The Last Unicorn.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1776080390102642938


Chapter 4 scenario
There is a Japanese translation of the original scenario written by the author, Peter S. Beagle, translated by Toshiro Ueno. It testifies that there are some parts that are faithful to the original novel but omitted in the actual making of the anime. The alterations and omissions of these parts indicate Topcraft’s own judgment on the adaptation from the original novel.
All the translated scenario is included in Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn, afforded with notes that points out the differences from the original novel.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1776081724319187004

Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn: 4 Storyboards and Notes on Japanese Scenario concluded

According to the synopsis account, the collision of the Red Bull against the castle wall is mentioned as causing the castle to collapse. (synopsis no. 35)

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775771807414644926

However, the text description of the original novel implies a completely different generation principle of existence/phenomenon. No direct physical contact between the unicorn and the Red Bull is described, and it is noted that the change in consciousness of the unicorn on the verge of Prince Lír’s death is directly linked to the disappearance of the Red Bull, the collapse of the castle and the release of the trapped unicorns.

The scenario translated in Japanese by Toshiro Ueno is an interesting document that allows us to examine the process of the formation of Topcraft’s anime expression concept. The difficulties and hints of the solution in visualizing the speculative ideas that were in the heart of the original author Beagle are left in the scenario.

He is standing across the passageway, not simply filling the tunnel from one BURNING wall to another, but somehow extending into and through the walls themselves. like a terrible rainbow or mirage. Yet he is no insubstantial phantom, but the Red Bull still, steaming and SNUFFLING, his jaws CHMPING over his breath, his pale horns menacing….
(storyboard no. 311) (note)

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775771807414644926

note:
The contents of the Japanese scenario are first published in this data book, Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn, Gento-sha, (2019). As they are written in Japanese, passages from the original English scenario are cited from the notes on the storyboards. This is cited from the storyboard no. 311.


Literary expression of a script is not necessarily premised on the actual performance, but has also been flexibly adopted in the creative world as one of the unique styles of writing. In fact, there are quite a few examples of tome writing about impossible tasks that make the director cry when planning an actual performance. The scenario that Beagle was in charge of also has traces of such unbridled written expression. Rather, one is able to see some opportunities in these parts that suggest the idea of a unique visual expression for the anime adaptation. There is also a description of shadow in the scenario that was not directly mentioned in the original novel.

The huge shadow of the Red Bull falls across him as he lies there, and then passes away again, driven by the dancing, attacking hoofs of the unicorn. (storyboard no. 333)

The result of using such suggestive parts of the scenario as a clue to a rare visual expression was the achievement by Topcraft.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775851036437328325

After the fall of King Haggard’s castle, Prince Lír is revived by the unicorn. The counter-poison ability and purification power of the unicorn, which have been passed down in romance lore, are exhibited here. Again, it is definitely told in Schmendrick’s words that the Red Bull was responsible for the destruction of the castle, in the synopsis. An alternative interpretation was made in the synopsis, and without adopting it, Topcraft followed the description of the original novel.
The storyboard shows how the castle collapsed by itself in response with the liberation of the unicorns by the attachment of the parts of the scenario.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775851701335191990

The four men-at-arms described in the original story are also mentioned in the scenario, but they are not depicted in the finished anime. Since the scenario was created by Beagle himself, it is difficult to determine whether their dialogue here was originally written but later deleted, or was only added to another version. The parting scene in the synopsis, between Lír who is now a king and the unicorn, is not described either in the original story or in the anime.

The closing part after the release of the unicorns gives the impression of a digest of the original text. The unicorn, who has regained her original form, returns to her home forest, and Lír, who has been reborn as a hero, becomes a king, but the story ends with the hero without being able to fulfill his wishes.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775853463676813772

The crow that persistently followed the unicorn after Mommy Fortuna’s death was her alter ego, which arose at the instance of the release of the witch’s soul. Although there was no explicit mention in the description of the scenario, this new character in the anime provides an excellent example of visual expression that attempts thematic transcriptions. In the scene where Lír and Schmendrick bid farewell, a crow is also seen perched on the tree, but there is no mention of it either in the scenario or in the storyboard. In the final scene, when everything is over and the unicorn returns to her home forest, there is the description of “Magpie” written in the storyboard. (note)

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775854951392317591/photo/1

note:
The person who pointed out the existence of this crow, which was newly introduced in anime, was Ayano Masuda, a seminar student who the author had the opportunity to deepen the understanding of the anime The Last Unicorn together with, guiding her graduation thesis. Masuda’s study of the anime The Last Unicorn is available at the following link.
“Crow in The Last Unicorn”: https://www.academia.edu/34418731/Crow_in_The_Last_Unicorn_docx


https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775854951392317591/photo/1

The animated film The Last Unicorn seems to testify how a psychic phenomenon, usually referred to using the term “supernatural harmonizing,” actualizes as a series of meaning configuration, through contrasts between the original novel, the scenario and storyboards. This is a spontaneously synchronous phenomenon that occurs without intervention of communication or information transmission, which exemplifies the concept of “synchronicity” that Jung postulated as a kind of psychic law. The magic introduced in The Last Unicorn, which must be acknowledged as a fictional speculation on the function of archetype, suggests the principle mechanism hidden in the Nature that acts as the governing principle of the universe, in way similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which is said to govern the diffusion of information beyond the scope of the effects of physical thermodynamics, and the ubiquitous deviation cause of Clinamen advocated by Lucretius.

Interestingly, the princess who appeared asking for help in the epilogue of the original story is mentioned at the end of the scenario. This is the part that Beagle did not dare to cut as an additional episode that concludes the speculative theme of “story”. This passage is interesting in relation to the theme of fictionality as a description of the original text, but it was judged by Topcraft that it was not suitable as a visual expression in the perspective of anime presentation. In the end, although this part was produced as a part of the anime, it was cut when it was screened. Beagle himself was unable to cut it from the original, and the parts that were left in the scenario were eventually deleted in acceptance of Topcraft’s decision. The cels and gengas depicting the princess’s appearance have been carefully preserved by Mr. Sazen, one of the devoted appreciators of The Last Unicorn. It would be interesting to review this part of the epilogue as a reference for study, but given the cohesiveness of the anime, the decision that it should have been cut seems to be shared by the Topcraft staff. This is a particularly suggestive example of the way in which phenomenalization occurs in various separate interfaces of fictional archetypes, which is not manifested in the original novel embodied as a phenomenal existence or in the anime as its derivative creation.

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775878620592112032

https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1775879654152585430