Many, many apologies for how late this is this week. I went into work on Sunday for something that was supposed to take an hour, and ended up leaving around midnight after many issues cropped up. Never underestimate the ability of real life to interfere with one’s ability to enjoy anime!
This week, I’m in a mad dash to finish this post before I get called into work for some weekend stuff that I (*ugh*) volunteered to do. I don’t know if this is true for others, but when I volunteer for that sort of thing I always justify it by telling myself “oh, it’s just for an hour” or whatever, but as the time approaches I get grumpy about my weekend being chopped up into smaller segments. I was also up very late last night watching a truly epic speed run of Final Fantasy VI live for SGDQ; the run finished up a little bit past 2am CST, which for someone of my age and sleep requirements is very, very late. Definitely worth it to watch it as it happened, but now my brain feels like oatmeal and my body feels wrecked.
Enough about my physical and mental composition, though. I hope everyone has been having a good week, and that you’ve been enjoying (or at least had some mentally-stimulating thoughts about) Kino. This week will mark the halfway point of the series. Related to that somewhat, next week will be a break from the watch-along, since I will be at CONvergence, a local sci-fi/fantasy/media convention. But don’t fret! I’ll put up a discussion post so people can catch up and share their thoughts and opinions on the series to that point.
Previous Weekly Discussions
Episode 5 – Country of Liars – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation
This episode is comprised of a couple of shorter vignettes, both of which are broadly centered around the theme of lies.
In the first, Kino passes through a country which owes its peaceful way of life to the intervention of a traveler who visited many years ago and eventually settled down and ousted the corrupt government. Kino visits a small museum dedicated to this traveler, located in the traveler’s former home. Kino and Hermes are immediately struck by how much of the information about the traveler’s supplies is grossly misinterpreted – a “gardening trowel” would have been used to dig toilet pits, and a “lucky knife” was actually a cheap souvenir from another country. The tour guide is enthusiastic and misinformed, which seems fairly innocuous until Kino is brought to a back room where the traveler’s motorrad is displayed in its own display. Kino and Hermes ask for some privacy, and they begin to speak with the motorrad. Being stored in a museum is no place for a vehicle that was created to travel the world and the motorrad now exists in its own personal hell, begging Kino to take it from that place or to dismantle it, both things that Kino cannot do. There is a small ray of hope, though, when a little boy asks Kino how he could become a traveler; Kino suggests that he go to the museum and ask the motorrad there the same question.
In the second story, Kino arrives at the gates of a country which recently underwent a revolution. They’re met by a strange man who’s asking after his lost lover; he only settles down when a young woman, his housekeeper, comes to take him back home. While in town, Kino learns the story of the man’s situation. During the time leading up to the revolution, the man had a lover – a young farm girl living on the outskirts of the country. When the time came to oust the corrupt royal family, the man threw a grenade that destroyed the royal family’s escape vehicle. In that car was the women, actually one of the princesses who enjoyed spending time outside the palace. Rather than tell the man the tragic truth of the situation, his cohorts made up a lie that his lover was just traveling, and that she would return someday. The only person willing to put up with this and help him in his mental state was the housekeeper, a traveler who was hired to fill the role.
Soon Kino learns that the layer of lies goes even deeper when they stop for tea with the man and the housekeeper. The housekeeper is indeed the former princess; the people in the exploded vehicle were merely body doubles. She doesn’t mind the arrangement she has now; she gets to be close to her lover until the end of time, and she’s happy even if the man will likely never be able to see her as who she truly is. But perhaps the man is simply another liar; he races after Kino and explains that he wants things to be the way that they are.
Episode 6 – In the Clouds – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation
Content warning: Physical and mental abuse. Suicide-by-firearm.
High up in the mountains where the clouds make it difficult to see the path ahead, a traveling group of several families sets up to make camp. With the group is a girl dressed in rags and led along on a chain; in a previous country the citizens didn’t have enough money to trade this group for supplies, but they did have an orphan girl whose services they offered in place of currency. Now the group treats her like a subhuman slave, not only tasking her with chores, but beating and harassing her. In the girl’s former country challenges of this nature were considered a spiritual test and it was forbidden to hate, harm, or wish ill to other people. She takes this to heart, despite plenty of ridicule from her “masters,” and continues her thankless job of carrying supplies, setting up camp, and preparing ingredients. She’s given a pile of herbs to wash in the stream, and this seems to trigger something in her, but for now it’s just a passing thought.
As the group sits down to eat their meal, the girl suddenly realizes something about the herbs; the ones growing at their altitude are poisonous, and the poison has likely infused every ounce of the stew that was prepared. When she tries to warn the others, she finds herself unable to speak. They’ve already started to consume it anyway. Without hesitation, she starts to eat her share as well, intending to die alongside the others. One of the children throws a rock and knocks the bowl out of her hand, then ridicules her for not using a spoon. The situation escalates and she’s knocked unconscious by another rock. When she wakes up, the meal is over. Soon enough all the members of the group begin to drop, the poison taking effect. Her last effort to die with the others is thwarted when the owner of the gun she tries to shoot uses it to kill himself.
In the silence, the girl hears a small voice, and finds a small, scrappy motorrad in the back of one of the wagons. Like most motorrads, this one longs for the freedom of the open road. It also talks the girl out of her death wish and convinces her that the deaths of the others weren’t because of her; their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to listen did them all in. As the only survivor and the “luckiest” one there, it’s the girl’s duty to continue to survive and live her life, or so says this talking vehicle. In the end, the girl takes this opportunity to become a reborn person with a renewed sense of purpose.
Discussion Thoughts and Questions (feel free to share additional ones in the comments!)
The first time I watched episode 5, what struck me as most important or worthy of thought was the situation with the motorrad in the museum. There’s a concept in Japanese folklore of a tsukumogami, an object or tool that, once reaching some old age (traditionally a hundred years but I don’t think that’s always taken literally) acquires a spirit of its own (or becomes a youkai if it gets thrown out for some reason, uh-oh!). Whether motorrads are imbued with some consciousness upon their creation, or whether they operate somewhat like tsukumogami and come alive once they’ve been used to travel the world and maintained in good condition, is something worth speculating about. The fact is, though, from what we can tell they’re some sort of sentient existence that is only really fulfilled when being used for their intended purpose. At best, the people of the country Kino is visiting drastically misunderstands a motorrad’s purpose, and in search of a way of demonstrating respect for their traveler-turned-leader, have inadvertently been causing harm.
Upon revisiting the episode, though, I became more focused on the concept of lying, specifically how misunderstandings, wrong interpretations, and the desire to create a mythology all contribute to the series of lies we all tell ourselves in order to feel good about the groups to which we choose to align. It’s almost comical how the tour guide explains the uses of the various tools kept within the glass cases in the museum; I assume she either doesn’t know the truth about the commode-trowel and the cheap knife, or has some vested interest in making her country look good to an outsider (depending on many factors, it could easily be either). It got me thinking about all the goofy little myths we have in the US, some of which are based on complete fabrications and are even harmful to certain groups of people. We talk about the “first Thanksgiving” as if it was truly the breaking of bread between Native people and European settlers around a long wooden table, and they all had turkey and stuffing and had a great time, when in fact the majority of that image was a happy little fabrication to create a new holiday and which we continue to use to make ourselves feel good about invading a land where people were already living. We fool ourselves into believing that George Washington was beyond reproach – he was a slave owner for essentially his entire life. We use the “I Have a Dream” Martin Luther King Jr. to berate people who are demonstrating and fighting for their civil rights in the modern day, when in fact they are only carrying on Dr. King’s tradition. And don’t even get me started on blond, blue-eyed Jesus Christ (I prefer Japanese Jesus and his BFF, Buddha). My point is that history is written by the privileged and is tainted by that point of view to some degree no matter what. We don’t really know what the traveler did in the past to change the government of that country and get rid of its corruption; who’s to say that it isn’t just differently-corrupt in the time that Kino has come to visit?
I suppose that this does indirectly advocate for Kino’s way of life – the only way to see the truth of the world is to travel and see it for yourself.
The second half of the episode was interesting in how it directly featured a complete web of lies that ultimately seemed to have reached an equilibrium. I think I’m still trying to interpret if all the parties involved were truly happy with their situation, or whether they were, in fact, also lying to themselves.
- This is maybe more opinion than interpretation, but what are your thoughts about the country from the first segment and how truthful or not their history might be? Did you catch any evidence that I may have missed that gives more perspective into the situation? Do you think the traveler/president was actually such a great person, or do you think he may have replaced one form of corruption with another.
- As mentioned, the second story is so full of various lies that it becomes difficult to tell whether anything about it is really truthful. It seems as though much of the lying is done to preserve the feelings (or the tenuous sanity) of others. do you think this is better than the alternative (telling the full truth and facing some kind of consequence)? Are these kinds of lies as bad as those created to deceive or dupe other people?
- In the end, it appears that both the man and the housekeeper are lying to one-another and are aware of it, since they both reveal that to Kino separately. What reasons do you think there are for revealing this to a total stranger?
Episode 6 is a bit of a different beast, but to continue with this week’s theme, it also features a pretty large lie-by-omission; the poisonous nature of the herbs growing at the high altitude campsite. Moreso, though, I’d say the episode is about a kind of rebirth. I found it interesting that the slave/Photo was so adherent to a particular religion, especially to the extent that it guided the way that she carried herself and accepted the actions of the others who were not only keeping her in captivity, but additionally treating her especially terribly. As someone who isn’t religious in that way, I find it difficult to relate to that situation. Of course, the concept of rebirth in that context becomes very important – Photo (or proto-Photo?), through finding a new perspective (the wisdom of the motorrad), becomes essentially reborn into a new way of thinking, a new purpose, and a free existence.
Another thing I liked about this episode that only really occurred to me later on was something stated at the beginning and pretty visible in the opening and ending moments – the clouds at that altitude are so thick that it makes it difficult to see the road ahead. I think lack of sight (or foresight) and knowledge is definitely a concept that plays heavily into what happens here, whether you’re talking about the cooks not identifying the poisonous herbs, or the fact that the slave who they mercilessly mistreated would turn out to be the person who could have prevented their deaths. I found it interesting that Kino laments their lack of knowledge, and acknowledges that they might find themselves in a similar situation somewhere down the line someday.
- For those of you who are religious, or believe a set of teachings that you use to help guide your actions, I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this episode and your feelings about Photo’s mode of existence before and after.
- Photo feels responsible for the deaths of the others because she can’t bring herself to warn them in time. I think most of us can understand why this might occur. Do you think a lie-by-omission that results in harm to others is as bad as raising a hand to them directly?
Thanks again for the leeway this week with the timing of the post. Remember, next week is a week off, but I’ll have a placeholder post for people to discuss the show so far.
3 replies on “Anime Book Club: Kino’s Journey ~The Beautiful World~ Week #3”
e5p1: This vignette did seem to be a rare break from the tension and difficulties (or horrors) caused by people kind of sticking to one perspective that seems to be the overall theme or uniting idea of the Kino series. But I think the point of the little bit of lying we do just to preserve a positive image of a dead cultural hero is pretty interesting. I don’t see a lot of evidence to think the traveler cum revolutionary didn’t do a pretty good job, the country seems pretty stable, and as Scott pointed out, retiring to an ordinary existence in the country rather than assume command does suggest a comforting lack of tyrannical ambition. Of course, the unintended consequence of the modern people putting his motorrad “in hell” does hit that classic Kino theme. I think what Conor suggested, that truly no one does know what motarrad’s would need is true, and it is interesting to see the choice Kino, who I think it is safe to say is considered by the show to be generally a good and moral decision-maker, doesn’t try to appeal to the townspeople generally or the dedicated tour guide, but rather trusts one young person with travelling ambitions to try to undo the wrong, instead. I wonder if this isn’t highly irresponsible, since a real life child may not ever follow through on their purported goals, and Kino would be taking a pretty big chance on saving the motorrad if the child we see is the only one they drop their hint to. Still, I have remarked before that the Kino world seems to be one in which the audience is meant to infer that other action takes place that is not on screen, so perhaps we are to assume that Kino might put the idea of removing the motorrad into a few different people’s heads, and trust that sooner or later someone will come to the rescue. One of my kind of running thoughts throughout these two episodes is that the show’s perspective might be running a bit libertarian. The show definitely believes in people solving their own problems, and does have something of an unconcerned feeling towards characters that don’t in fact save themselves. This is a thought I’m going to have to come back to.
e5p2: This vignette may have frustrated me more than any other so far. It became pretty clear as things went that the housekeeper would reveal who she was and that she was aware of the situation, and then it was kind of a matter of just waiting for that to be confirmed. Then the after-stinger with the “crazy” revolutionary admitting he also really knew everything: I don’t know. I think this is where that libertarian concern above started to really bother me. For one, this outcome does kind of underplay the effects of trauma, and suggest that “crazy” people may just be pleasing themselves. It’s also very confusing why the arrangements that each character has come to would really make them happy. Maybe we weren’t supposed to take that at face value? I don’t know, this definitely wasn’t my favorite.
e6: This episode hit both a lot of what I love about the show and also what I was talking about above. I read proto-Photo’s desire to wish no harm on others, no matter how awful they are to her, as absolutely genuine, and something she very much tries to adhere to. I also take that to mean she does and will continue to experience incredible feelings of guilt for not being able (or perhaps to a small degree choosing not to) keep the caravan from dying. The great problem of the religious teaching proto-Photo had, and what I believe to be a great problem in many of the strict religious societies of the real world, is that while they encourage people to have great respect for others and never do them harm, something I certainly support as a force for good, they ignore the notion that people also need to have great respect for themselves. Proto-Photo has little to no interest in herself, which is why she is so ready to accept slavery and mistreatment, and is so ready to die at repeated times afterward. This is the great damage that he upbringing has done to her. Frankly, I felt like putting a character like this through an experience where her world view is going to cause her to blame herself for the deaths of this caravan of pretty awful people (interesting that we sure didn’t see any good points from any of them except the rifleman who freed proto-Photo) was perhaps over the line. This show has never been nice, but again I have to feel like this is underplaying the effects of trauma. A real person in this situation is very unlikely to ever recover from the combination of the religious upbringing and the mass grave, no matter how many scrappy and wise motorrads they come across. At the same time, I suppose the whole point of watching something like this is so that people who have maybe gotten lighter doses of training that causing them to undervalue themselves can watch the rebirth, and see how being too bent on being good to others and never doing them harm can and perhaps is fated to stop you from actually taking care of yourself. Revisiting the concept of whether proto-Photo being enslaved was a “test for her future” was pretty interesting, as I think the answer should be that no, it was nothing of the sort. It was awful, random things happening to a vulnerable person, who survived something awful essentially by luck, and then was lucky enough to come across a good influence, Sou the motorrad. The rebirth part of the story was convincing, as Photo didn’t allow her trauma to consume her. She didn’t seek revenge, or become a protector of others, or anything that would suggest she was still defining her own value by the religious standards she was raised by, or by anything relating to her mistreatment by the awful caravan. Instead, she lived well, and did something simple that she became well known and well respected for. That is a very convincing rebirth, and really encapsulates the notion of “the best revenge is living well” in a way that media rarely actually tries to portray. So, like I said at the top, kind of a problematic episode for me, but one that I also like a lot in some ways.
You know, when I started to write this, I thought I didn’t have that much to say. So much for that.
A few barely organized thoughts:
(page expired last time, so this is my second time writing this. Hopefully, I don’t forget what I said.)
In the first story, we see a few interesting things. When the motorrad is revealed, Kino says that this is the only other one that they have seen, asking if it can speak. The guide states that it did, sounding like it is mostly just a story. This seems to suggest to me that motorrads are rare enough that the majority of people do not know how they work. Whether the motorrad made an attempt to speak to people in the past or not, the current people seem to not know that motorrad need to run. They assume that the motorrad just needs to be kept in good condition. At this point, the motorrad seems to assume that the villagers will not listen to its desires. It speaks to an outsider, since they might be able to convince the populace that they are incorrect with their assumptions.
This whole vignette made me think of “fish stories”. Whether through purposeful elaboration or mistaken memory, the story of this traveler has been changed to the one we see now. People could have easily forgotten what the shovel was used for. Upon being asked by a visitor or anticipating such a question, they reasonably guessed that he might have liked gardening. The traveler was probably a good person to this country, but his reputation grew and the story grew to fit that reputation.
In the second vignette, I have very few thoughts on the situation. I feel like the couple’s situation would be improved by them telling each other the truth, but there are reasons why they might not. The woman might not want to tell the man for a couple of reasons. Either he might experience too much pain from remembering the true result of the grenade, or she might feel like she would be in danger if she revealed her identity, especially with the revolution being so recent. Similarly, he may not want to tell her that he recognizes her because he thinks she might have a reason that she doesn’t tell him, possibly for fear of causing problems with her revealed identity. Likewise, Kino doesn’t make the couple tell each other since they feel like they don’t know the full story and worry that telling the couple will cause unwanted consequences. While it is a tenuous situation, it might be the best one.
In the second episode:
This isn’t quite a religion-style set of teachings or anything, but I can relate to Photo’s thoughts on her captors. Asking them to treat her nicer would be a reasonable plan, but whether she has or not, it seems pretty clear that that wouldn’t make them treat her better. The best she could hope for would be that doing her job well would gain her a sort of respect at least. While there is definitely not a consensus, many people (religious or not) would agree that killing someone is never an acceptable result of ‘justice’. She should still plan to find an escape, but most of that would involve keeping her head down to prevent further harm.
Her lack of hate toward her captors is an interesting subject. There could be reason for her to think that hating them would cause no good. On one hand, their feelings toward her as a slave are likely more systematic and based off of their own teachings and ideology rather than anything that could be easily changed. Due to this, hating someone for something that their deeply ingrained worldview will do no good. On another hand, it is reasonable to believe that hating anyone is too much effort and merely promotes letting emotion take over your actions without fully thinking them through.
While I cannot personally relate to this, there is a sort of logic to her attempted suicide. She felt that she was the root cause to all of their deaths. Regardless of her intentions regarding their fates, she feels that she needs to atone. It makes me think of guilt vs shame culture, particularly relating to Japan’s “honor suicides”.
One thing that muddies the water a bit is the fact that she did not loudly try to stop them from eating before she attempted to drink the soup. This can be easily be explained away with a few reasons. For one, it was a frantic realization. She noticed the poison after most people had started eating and panicked before she saying anything, so when she started to talk, she didn’t bother to raise her voice after her initial fearful warnings because everyone was probably already going to die. Her momentary feeling that she wanted them to die can almost not be even taken into account as most people have at least occasional strong violent feelings toward those that have wronged them, particularly as badly as she had been. Any additional hesitation that that caused was probably irrelevent in terms of stopping their deaths. Her attempt to stop the young master from eating, following her failure to drink the soup, was likely the only thing that she could think of to make the situation any better (in terms of fewer deaths on her hands). Altogether, Photo’s thoughts and actions seem completely rational given the tense situation and don’t seem to be purposefully malicious.
Ultimately, the question comes down to whether Photo should be blamed for what happened to the caravan’s inhabitants. Since she made her attempt to stop them and it was clearly an accident (at least from our viewpoint), we can call it accidental manslaughter. In the US, we punish that crime relatively lightly (about a year). On one side, the punishment is a pretty good deterrent, promoting conscientious thought in situations that could cause harm to others. On the other hand, theoretically, the prison sentence would be a forced situation to encourage the convicted to reflect on their actions/consequences and on ways that they might prevent them in the future.
On a small side note, I only speak only about inferences and about probable reasoning for the US’s penal system. I do not speak about the efficacy of said system or even rationale behind it.
The first vignette does seem like the country wanted to mythologize their hero, but other than his role in the revolution, he was just some guy, and like Cincinnatus, chose to retire to a humble home in the country rather than take power. So they have to make do with his ordinary belongings and make up fanciful stories to impress themselves.
Having seen Hermes have independent thought and knowledge, my first thought at the news of the motorrad was–wait, you’re keeping it in a closet?! It’s not clear if the people who built the museum ignored the motorrad’s attempts to communicate or if it decided that they weren’t going to listen.
Kino, it would seem, is one of those folks people just naturally open up to.
I can see why the situation in the country of liars is seemingly stable, as no one wants to face the unpleasant truths about themselves. But it’s a very fragile stability, that will be ruined the first time someone decides not to go along with it.
Not knowing much about the series, I thought the slave girl might be a young Kino–up until we saw the other motorrad. (Evidently motorrads are rare, as Kino has spent years before seeing a second one–and yet we have a third in the very next episode!)
While their culture allows slavery, and definitely supports treating sentient beings as property. it is pretty obvious that no one in that caravan has ever owned an individual slave before. She’s badly supervised, randomly mistreated and is allowed to have philosophical discussions while working.
The young master’s proposal is something that some slave-owning societies used to do to “toughen” their rookie warriors, but usually a old or sick slave, so as not to waste resources. And here, it’s obviously just a way to show that he’s an evil little ____who deserves to die like the older merchants. The parents should be worried that he’s so precocious about killing, rather than jolly.
Even the best religious folks have their moments of weakness, and it’s a lot easier to obey commandments to refrain from doing something, than those that require action. Photo’s hesitation is momentary, and understandable, and she does try to make up for it only to have the merchants silence her. Would I have tried to warn the merchants? I would hope so, but I might very well fail God’s test.