Unacknowledged Virtue of The Last Unicorn: 2 The Background of Japanese Subculture And Traits of Monism in The Last Unicorn

2 The Background of Japanese Subculture And Traits of Monism in The Last Unicorn

The metaphysical motif that lies latent in The Last Unicorn can be detected through the structure of superposition of contradictory modes, that is supposed to reflect the archetype in the phase of “non-existence.” (note)

note:
As an interesting example of the primordial state description where every possibility coexists before it is manifested as a phenomenon, the film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders can be referred to, discussed in the author’s study on the film, “Meanings and Ambiguity in Visual Art: Pleroma Motive in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders,” which is included in Existence, Phenomenon and Personality: Individuality in Figurines, Anime and Game, Bokka-sha, (2014). This is a study of the creative attempt that tries to reflect the polysemic richness of the protoplasmic world, achieved in the phase of visual expression.


It is understood in the inverted modal description, as a notation that implies the specific idea represented by “monism” that does not make any difference between what performs the action and what is subjected to the action. Particularly impressive is the description of the inexplicable relationship between the story’s protagonist, the unicorn, and her supposed opponent, the Red Bull. For example, the description of the first encounter between the unicorn and the Red Bull, was described as follows.

With low, sad cry, she whirled and ran back the way she had come: back through the tattered fields and over the plain, toward King Haggard’s castle, dark and hunched as ever. And the Red Bull went after her, following her fear.


The causal relationship that should have been established under the basic connection between the subject and object, in which the pursuer gives the pursued a sense of fear through the act of chasing, is reversed. This monster, so ignorant that it has neither an original purpose nor a will of its own, may be generated by the frightened mind of the unicorn and embody its existence only by following her fear. And the same inverted causal description alluding to Red Bull’s existence is repeated again in the depiction of Schmendrick and Molly following after the chasing bull and the chased unicorn.

Molly and the magician scrambled over great treetrunks not only smashed but trodden halfway into the ground, and dropped to hands and knees to crawl around crevasses they could not fathom in the dark. No hoofs could have made these, Molly thought dazedly; the earth had torn itself shrinking from the burden of the Bull.


Traces of destruction and ravage caused by the Red Bull’s immense hugeness are left in fallen trees and torn ground. However, the sheer ferocity of it is not only difficult to believe that such an event actually occurred, but rather casts doubt on the very substance of the bull itself that causes such a destruction. Decisive loss of the relationship between the subject that performs the action and the object that suffers it, is strikingly manifested here. It might be more appropriate to understand the existence of the Red Bull as a self-destruction of someone else, or the embodiment of the abandonment of a part of an attribute, without a positive presence. Speaking of which, the butterfly that first mentioned the name of the Red Bull when it encountered the unicorn, did not say that the bull “drove the unicorns away.” He just said, “They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints.” (note)

note:
The inseparable relationship between the psychic phase represented by the unicorn and the Red Bull, symbolic mythical being created by Beagle, is discussed from various angles, in the author’s article, “Red Bull: The Shadow of Ignorance and Blindness,” included in Fantasy as Antifantasy 2: A Study of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, Bokka-sha, (2009).


According to the logic of mechanical causality that dominates the modern worldview, a group of discrete bodies are supposed to organize a phenomenon, one of them exerting some action on the other. The relationship between active and passive must strictly exist as a chain of local action. On the other hand, however, the generation of events in the understanding of the ancient world or traditional Eastern thought, for example, is nothing more than a fleeting subjective impression of the individual consciousness of the ever-changing whole, and is only recognized as a relative aspect of each.
It is difficult to give an objective scientific definition of the reality of experiential meaning formation within consciousness, as has been pointed out by researchers of the “philosophy of mind” represented by David Chalmers. This is an issue associated with the scientific elucidation of the effects of mental image formation, which is discussed as the “hard problem of qualia.” In general, qualia are often spoken of as referring to the substance of the senses, such as sight and taste. As for a color, it is a unique hue that cannot be reduced to a numerical value of “light frequency”, and as for a taste, it is a particular savor that can never be replaced by a numerical value of “salt ratio,” for instance. The stimuli that shape experiences, impressions, etc. cannot be quantified and described as scientific perceptual information to tell the full extent of their substance. Similarly, with regard to the complex meanings and impressions of things and ideas, there is no definitive answer as to whether thoughts obtained within an individual can really be transmitted as objective events. However, the sense of separating what performs an action from what suffers its effect did not originally exist under the idea of wholeness represented by “monism.” That objective events to be observed must be established as universal fact is no other than a hypothesis demanded by scientific formulation. However, assuming the existence of an object of observation that excludes the observer is in fact nothing more than a denial of consciousness. (note)

note:
Stemming from the issue of the involvement of consciousness in the process of generating events by the “observational effect,” the problems presented by the Consciousness Study, which aims to gain a new understanding of the relationship between consciousness and time/space or existence/phenomena, which is being re-recognized as a critique of modern scientific thought, are discussed against the background of a comprehensive cosmology on the relationship between fiction and the functions of consciousness. Please refer to the author’s “The Annihilation of Genre Axes in Madlax: Amorphous Fiction of Dislocated Perspectives and Archetypes/Fictional Reality 2” (Journal of Wayo Women’s University English Literature Association, (2018).


The Red Bull hunting the unicorn and the unicorn hunted by the Red Bull are not individual entities that retain their own discrete existences, but seem to be two oppositely separated phases of an assumed existence or phenomenon. So, their bodies will never actually touch each other.

Molly Grue, a little crazy with weariness and fear, saw them moving the way stars and stones move through space: forever falling, forever following, forever alone. The Red Bull would never catch the unicorn, not until Now caught up with New, Bygone with Begin.




Molly’s view point, watching over the fleeing unicorn and the bull chasing it, is suspended as if she is getting a bird’s-eye view of everything from infinite altitude, away from the constraints of actual phenomenality. It is implied that in the subjectivity of a human being, who continues to live as a slave of time at the mercy of phenomenal triviality, a transcendent vision of eternity is momentary possible. This ultimate feeling of detachment from phenomenality is narrated again in the climactic scene of this story.

For Molly Grue, the world hung motionless in that glass moment. As though she were standing on a higher tower than King Haggard’s, she looked down on a pale paring of land where a toy man and woman stared with their knitted eyes at a clay bull and a tiny ivory unicorn. Abandoned playthings—here was another doll, too, half-buried; and a sandcastle with a stick king propped up in one tilted turret.


This could be a description of the perception of wholeness that the height of physical exhaustion and mental tension gave to Molly momentarily, as if it were the result of religious penance. There, the essence of the relationship is grasped in all directions without being restricted by the direction of the time axis and the constraint of causal relationships. It is the formation of an omnidirectional hyper qualia, without distinction between self and others, no difference between past and future, no distinction between substance and idea. (note)

note:
The function of intuition, which transcends temporality and causality enabling an understanding of the depths of all beings and phenomena, was the premise of psychological cosmology asserted by Edgar Allan Poe, in his philosophical poem Eureka. In the perspective of Post Quantum Mechanics (PQM), Jack Sarfatti attempts to construct a teleological cosmology under a new interpretation of primordial consciousness, introducing the concept of “retro-causality” to describe its influence on the creation of the universe, which asserts the existence of intersectional causality that affects from the future to the past, by assuming the linkage of entanglement in all things.



According to the nature of Omnium State that is supposed to lie behind phenomenal world, the unicorn and the Red Bull should actually be in the closest relationship, ever inseparable like the poles of a magnet. (note)

note:
In the animated film The Last Unicorn, this inverse relationship maintained between the harpy and the unicorn, manifested in the opposing phases of an identity, was suggested in a newly added line. Out of the cage, the harpy calls to the unicorn, “Set me free. We are sisters, you and I.” This correctly corresponds to the line told by the unicorn in the original novel, “We are the two sides of the same magic.” These refer to the magic principle, that investigates the ultimate phase of ontology. It seems the author found a new opportunity to deeper express his motif on magic principle here.