The nested structure of "Eden of the East" that misleads people into believing that "pictures" are "reality.

On April 1, 2019, the 3DCG anime "ULTRAMAN," directed by Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki, will begin online distribution.
The most recent work directed by Kenji Kamiyama with an original story and series composition is "Eden of the East" (2009), which aired exactly 10 years ago. Misaki Mori, a college student about to get a job, is saved in the U.S. by a young man with amnesia named Akira Takizawa, and becomes involved in a plot to control the fate of Japan.

In the first episode, "I Picked Up a Prince," Saki and Takizawa meet in front of the White House and learn that Tokyo has been hit by a missile attack.
At this point, the two are still in the U.S. and are watching news footage of the missile attack on an airport monitor. In the second episode, Saki and Takizawa witness the traces of the attack from the plane, but why present the critical fact that "Tokyo was attacked by a missile" in the monitor?　Wouldn't it have made more of an impact if Saki and Takizawa, who were on the plane, saw the missile land on Tokyo and burst into flames up close?

News footage, however, is still a "picture within a picture.

First of all, this film starts against the backdrop of the "Careless Monday" incident, in which Tokyo was attacked by 10 missiles. It is clear that the "Careless Monday" was inspired by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001, and 9/11 is clearly mentioned in the work.
In other words, the story is set in a world that is connected to the actual terrorist attacks that occurred eight years ago (calculated from the time of the program's broadcast), and the story must tell the big lie that "Tokyo was attacked by missiles. "Careless Monday" is on a different level of fiction than "The Battle of Loum" or "Second Impact". It needs to be portrayed as a graphic fact for the viewer.
Most viewers saw 9/11 on the news, so presenting the missile attack on Tokyo as news footage would certainly make it seem as if it happened in real life.
However, animation is a picture. News images are, after all, "pictures. If we present a "picture" on a monitor, will the viewer perceive it as reality?　How can we believe that a picture in a picture is real?
The clue is hidden in the opening scene of the first episode.

Two kinds of reality" created by two kinds of White Houses

At the beginning of the first episode, Saki arrives at the White House in a cab. She says her first impression of the White House is, "It's different from what I imagined. The cutaway image is of the White House and the fountain, captured from the front. The sound of the fountain is heard, but the fountain in the image has stopped. This is because the image is the cover photo of a guidebook.
When the guidebook frames out of the screen, the "real" White House and fountain that the viewer sees are revealed. The White House stands far beyond the lawn, and the fountain is even smaller. The fountain is even smaller. "The fountain is a lot farther away than I thought it would be. ......," Saki says, looking again at the cover of the guidebook.
In other words, this scene depicts the White House in two different ways: the exaggerated cover of the guidebook and the building seen by Saki from outside the fence. Moreover, both of them are "pictures. The story opens with the declaration that there are two kinds of reality depicted as "pictures" in animation: reality through media effects and reality as seen by the characters with the naked eye (......).

The viewer is imprinted with the idea that "there are two kinds of reality" through a nested structure that places a picture processed as a photograph or video within an animated picture. Moreover, viewers are fooled into thinking that the reality they see through the media is different from the reality they see with the naked eye, and that they will not be deceived.
Therefore, they cannot dismiss the news footage that Saki and Takizawa see at the end of the first episode as "just a picture. I recognize it as "one of two kinds of reality." Because he sees two different kinds of White Houses at the beginning of the film, he sees a "picture" of a missile attack, but he mistakenly believes that there must be "another reality" beyond this news image. --I feel that this trick is the deception, direction, and fun of animation, but what do you think?


(Text by Keisuke Hirota)
(C) Eden of the East Production Committee