MM! is outstanding. It's a terrific series, really. It is an universally aknowledged fact, or it should be. But it is already, since who you are today is not the same as who you were yesterday. Life is Becoming. Nietzsche knew this, Hegel knew this although in a different way since it was finalized somewhere, inscripted in the Spirit. . . and this series, MM! tells you this pretty well. Allow me to explain, commoner! (Citation needed).
The story sure looks lame. A boy has mental problems, on the verge of retardation, and so do his fellow partners. Specifically, this boy here likes it when
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you kick him in the balls. But as said, he's not the only feller quite on the slow side. For example, his best friend is gay, a classmate of his (exploited for some free fanservice) has been raped and abused, the president of the club he joins is a loner who copes on the down-to-the-ground self esteem by faking a really high self esteem and confidence and finding ways to help others (kind of like Kierkegaard), the protagonist's family is incestuous, and so on. So this guy joins a club to cure his masochism and he finds other people who also want to cure their problems, his best friend included. But nothing is accomplished.
This is where the real shit comes.
You know that all the protagonists sit near the window in class? Well, imagine if there were snow outside such window. It covers everything. A symbol of paralysis. Well there is no snow at any point of the series if I recall correctly but a good series or work have to tell you something in a not-so-obvious way, if there were snow, it would have been so obvious that society is suffering (James Joyce, Dubliners, The Dead). The West is in a great decay since the beginning of the XX century. And why? MM! works bùoth in a opposed way and in a parallel way to the progress, progress being the triumph and blind faith (which is upmost ironic) in science and so on, you know it already. Let's start in the opposed way, meaning, the protest against the Progress.
MM! shows you characters that are very typical. These characters start with a mission, an objective (Hegel's Spirit). They talk and talk so much, but at the end, it's only mere sound, loud sound, nothing gets accomplished (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Robert Musil). It's The Man Without Qualities: multidimensional, fragmentary, without the possibility of a narrative end. And the series clearly shows this by going little to nowhere in 12 episodes. Moreso, it should be called The Qualities Without Man! Lol, but jokes aside. In trying to accomplish something, the characters of the series are keen (or not, depending what way you view it) in noticing that humanity's - the West's - vital pulsation is long gone. Everyone is born with no God. Everyone is "thrown", Heidegger would say, into the world, with no project. They are so free. If God doesn't exist, Mankind is free (of course because God, omniscent and omnipotent, knows everything and created us: if so, we would be created with a project in mind. If so, we have to attain to our destiny, hence, not free, but this is obvious). The characters BURN, they are BURNING from the begierde, where the FUCK has humanity gone? Where? At such a primal state, not being free, its God being money, or the market, or science. Everyone is born free, but instantly thrown into a context, a situation. For example, a black kid born in the favelas has different possibilities than a Hollywood star's kid. About the characters in this series? They are born with the same possibilities. They know they can still kill themselves, but they won't, Sartre tells you this in L'Être et le Néant. Free, but blocked, unable to be fully human. Mankind, you see, was once primitive, you see. The begierde was that to seek food and shelter. But in everyone burned inside a fire: the fire of freedom. The aknowledgment of being human, to everyone. Now, after the french revolution, in a post-historic era, we downgraded to such step, seeking freedom. We are not free. THOSE CHARACTERS are the avatars of Pirandellian Masks. Cages. Everywhere you go you wear a mask. The mask of the student to your teacher, you're a customer to the seller and so on . . . in this series of course the mask of the sick in the mind masochist, the deranged homosexual, the non compos mentis rape victim: we don't know who we are. We are blocked. Luigi Pirandello fully agreed with Bergson's view on life and time, everything being Becoming: but then WHY, WHY everything feels so blocked? An eternal stasis. Someone said God is dead. This series says that the SPIRIT is dead, there's nowhere to go because there's no way to do so. Those little characters are waiting for a young, full-of-symbolism culture to surpass them and eventually make out a syntheisis. This because the West has lost its Will, the Old Continent is like a giant elephant, clunky, slow, unable to move, lazy; the New Continent is a corrupt system of self-righteous cancer. The series is set in Japan? 1-Who told you that. No one. The names? And your point is? 2-We're all living in America. So, ironically or not, I don't want ot make a melting pot out of this, but, as I was saying, the Spirit is dead, nowhere to go. Life is becoming, the masks always change and no one knows who he is, besides, their masks. Hell, some characters barely know what their masks are, let alone their identity! The original pulsation is lost! Now we are bound to are job! But we are not our job. We are not our clothes. We are not out salary or money. We are humans. We have to find our original vitality, long-lost. The characters don't talk about it but they show it. A conservative revolution, going back. In the episode where Sado Tarou turns gay instead of being masochist, the characters try everything to turn him back masochist instead of gay, because they think gay = unacceptable, against the laws of nature. Yuuno says it CLEARLY. These little and silly characters crave the view of the happy family sorrounded by an uncontaminated nature, where everything is balanced. An ideal world.
Now the view parallel to progress. We saw (kinda since I got kinda full of fervor and passion while writing that, to prove my point even in the way I was writing) how the series denounces progress, and what it brought to us. Now we see how it doesn't. I told you, feller, how humanity was primitive. A pure world where mankind could be considered as such. But . . . this might not be the case. I lacked historical sense. I've been foolish. Look, me, you, we know this review is getting really long. But hang on there. In short words. If someone refound history with modern reason, he would see that reason was always present. Even if primitive, still assumptions. Still judgements. Still, use of reason. Even at the beginning of mankind's existence. So one, even going back, would be certainly disappointed, because he would still find a world where reason reigns supreme. Primitive? Yes, but it still is reason. This is why the characters, knowing this, just follow themselves. They seek no God, no Spirit. Why? They don't need it. They are Overmen. Following THEIR way. Because THEY are THEIR way. THEY light up their way, they don't need any other superior position's truth or perspective. They build their perspective and understand each other so deeply that one would call them idiots. Like Prince Mishkin, The Idiot by Dostoevskij. A "Messiah" of the XXI century. Everyone understands eachother, everyone forever happy, doing what they want, but still recognizing everyone's human nature. So the characters do not have to rant or cope on some ideal world of the past. Their world is what happened and SO it was what they wanted. "Così fu, così volli che fosse" (Also sprach Zarathustra).
This said, truly a stunning reflection on modern society. D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? WATCH THIS AND REFLECT UPON THIS. COMMONER! (citation needed).
Jun 15, 2022
MM! is outstanding. It's a terrific series, really. It is an universally aknowledged fact, or it should be. But it is already, since who you are today is not the same as who you were yesterday. Life is Becoming. Nietzsche knew this, Hegel knew this although in a different way since it was finalized somewhere, inscripted in the Spirit. . . and this series, MM! tells you this pretty well. Allow me to explain, commoner! (Citation needed).
The story sure looks lame. A boy has mental problems, on the verge of retardation, and so do his fellow partners. Specifically, this boy here likes it when ... 
Jun 8, 2022
Tenshi no Tamago
(Anime)
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One would say that if the novelist is more intelligent than the novel, he should change job. That might be a true and wise statement. I've seen that Mamoru Oshii, the director, also doesn't know what this movie really is about. This is misleading. It is not that the movie is too deep or mysterious, but it is rather stupid. Disappointing? Depends on your expectations. A lazy movie? Yes, for sure. But why? Hold your sorry ass. Just because you got nothing out of this movie it doesn't mean it's deep. But because people like what is positive, I shall start with the positive
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