Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World] Vol. 5: The "Thirteen-Machine Defense Bloc" in the Age of Virus Disasters (Part 1)

As the time period is changing from the Heisei Era to the 2025 Era, the series "Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei Era" attempts to capture the contemporary landscape through time reviews of notable anime.

In this article, we will take a look at the PlayStation 4 game "The Thirteen Soldiers Defense Circle," which was nominated for the Nebula Award for the first time in 20 years since the PlayStation game "High Mobility Fantasy Gunbarade March" was released last year and created quite a stir among core game fans. An in-depth review!

In this article, Daichi Nakagawa takes a stab at one of the most notable games released in a time of great change.

(There are many spoilers, so please be aware of them before reading the article.)

Anime Film Situation in the Second Half of 2019: The Landscape Before the World Changed

In this series of articles, we have been slowly reviewing the most talked-about domestic theatrical anime films, focusing on the issues of man-made and natural disasters that have befallen modern Japan in the post-Heisei era. In the more than six months since we last reviewed "Weather Child," which depicted the reality of a Japan where natural disasters have become the norm, our world has undergone an incredible transformation due to a pandemic of a new virus that is a mixture of natural and man-made forces.
⇒ Summary: "Weather Child" - From the Perspectives of Tokyo Theory / Weather Fantasy / Post-Disaster Film [Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World, Vol. 4

As has been much talked about on social networking sites, this ongoing disaster, which unexpectedly fulfilled the "prophecy" of the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics as depicted in "AKIRA " (1988), is now threatening the production base of cultural arts such as animation. What will be the impact on human society?

As of May 15, when this article was published, the spread of the virus in Japan has entered a lull, and the state of emergency declaration is gradually being lifted, but whether what lies ahead is an era of after-corona, in which the crisis is overcome, or an era of with-corona, in which damage from the new virus becomes endemic on a constant scale, is a matter of debate at various levels. The question of whether this is an era of after-corona or with-corona, in which damage from new viruses will become endemic on a constant scale, is still a matter of debate at various levels.

In order to be prepared to face the transformation that will eventually become clearer, let us recall once again the context in which the world was before it became this way.

If we turn back the hands of the clock to 2019, it was a bumper year for domestic theatrical animation, especially in the first half of the year, from "Promea," "Kaiju no Kodomo," "Kimi to Naniwa no Norareta" to "Weather Child," which I have already discussed in the previous two articles, as works that illuminate our society in the same period, there was barely any room for expressive or thematic reading worth mentioning. There was room for expressive and thematic reading of these works as works that shed light on the state of our society in the same period.
⇒The current state of anime films in 2019 as indicated by " Promea," "Kaiju no Kodomo," and "Kimi to, Nami no Norareta" [Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World, Vol. 3].

Unfortunately, however, this tension seems to have ceased in the fall, as the human-caused outburst from the KyoAni arson incident in July to the Aichi Triennale fiasco, combined with the extremely gloomy and bleak atmosphere surrounding domestic culture during the summer and fall of 2019.

Flow-wise, it was "Hello World," released in September, and"Who Knows the Sky is Blue," released in October, that should be taken up in the context of this series.

Let's look back at just a few brief points.

The former, directed by Tomohiko Ito of the "Sword Art Online" series and produced by Graphinica, utilizes the characteristics of 3DCG-based expression to create a mirror world-type virtual reality world that records the past reality as a mirror image, while the scenario design by Mado Nozaki is based on a twist of fate. The latter is a variant of the "generic Makoto Shinkai" work with a science fiction style that attempts to enhance the strength of the classic juvenile love story.

The latter is the last film of the "Chichibu Trilogy" by the "Super Peace Busters" trio of Tatsuyuki Nagai, Mari Okada, and Masaga Tanaka, and is a gender-reversal of the composition of the first film, "We Still Don't Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day," in which a girl protagonist and the ghost (living spirit) of a former lover of over 10 years who became an unsuccessful band member have an encounter. The encounter between the protagonist, a young girl, and the ghost of a former band member who became an unsuccessful band member more than 10 years ago (a living spirit) is a coming-of-age drama in the style of a light fantasy that poignantly revitalizes the tired family relationship with her older sister and the local community.

While each film is oriented toward a different production context and fetish in terms of expression, the casting of regular actors and the use of popular singers for the younger generation, such as Official Hagedan-dism and Aimyon, are all indicative of the "What's your name? The film's planning style is similar to that of "Kimi no na wa" (Your Name) in 2016, which follows the "coming-of-age" love story line and aims to expand its target audience as a theatrical exhibition.

However, the discrepancy between the hit-oriented packaging and the creator-oriented approach of each film's filmmakers is also a common feature of both films, and is expressed in the theatrical motifs they focus on.

In both works, the main male character, who has lost his girlfriend or broken his dreams and has become a jaded adult, is healed when he meets his past self of about 10 years ago, who has the pure boyishness of an adolescent, and who gives him a thirst for healing.

In essence, this is not a genuine juvenile story, but rather a story in which middle-aged people who spent their impressionable years in the 1980s and 2000s are nostalgic for their "youth that used to shine" (whether in truth or in fiction), and the creators and the anime fan base that supports the market are both engaged in self-pity. The creators and the animation fan base that supports the market are in a mode of self-pitying collusion.

The problem of too many Japanese anime that "appear to be aimed at young people but are actually aimed at middle-aged people" in comparison to the global trend was pointed out in a controversial interview with Sunao Katabuchi, the director of "In (many more) corners of the world," which was released in December.

Whether or not this is a refrain of the "12-year-old boy" (MacArthur's description of postwar Japan's immaturity) that frequently appears in the context of literary criticism, it must be something that this writer, a member of the baby-boom generation, could not help but feel somewhat guilty and embarrassed about. I am sure that the development of information technology has made it possible to supply content to a much greater extent than before. With the development of information technology, the supply environment and repertoire of content has become so saturated that it is impossible to imagine a pioneering imagination that will open up the new era so easily. However, as for global content of the same era, while "Spider-Man: Far From Home" sheds light on the relationship between the innocence of youth and realism, and "The Joker" sublimates the sorrows of middle-aged and older people who are aging in a corner into entertainment, the breadth of nostalgia is being shown, In the face of such a narrow range of creativity in Japanese animation, which is so obsessed with the design of "youth" that it only shows a wise defense against its own aging, I felt a sense of distress.

Despite such refinement and evolution in terms of expression techniques, there is no way to see the renewal of the story content that has been told from the end of the Showa period to the Heisei period, and I would like to highlight some works outside the anime content at the end of 2019 that have highlighted the 20th century style of Japanese animation to the point of being devious. I would like to take a look at a work outside of anime content at the end of 2019.

The title of the game is the PS4 game "Thirteen Machine Defense Bloc, " which was released on November 28, 2019. It is the latest work developed by Vanillaware, a company that specializes in the craftsmanship and beauty of side-scrolling 2D action expression, such as "Odin Sphere" and "Dragon's Crown, " and is based on the story of a group of 13 boys and girls who fight an invasion of unidentified "monsters" by controlling giant robots called "Kibyou" (soldiers). The game is a juvenile science fiction game based on the story of a group of 13 boys and girls who fight against the invasion of unidentified "monsters.

The context of tokusatsu and robot animation inherited from "Jusankibei Boueiken" - connection with postwar Showa history secured by the "Collapse Arc".

First, let us review the position of "Jusankibei" in the context of the game.

At that time, the domestically produced title that attracted worldwide attention was "DEATH STRANDING," Hideo Kojima's latest work, which was also released in November. While quietly released in the shadow of this title, word of it spread by word of mouth, especially among core game fans and people in the industry, and it broke out on the Internet after several media outlets, including Denfaminico Gamer, gave it enthusiastic endorsement reviews. The game was selected for the "Japan Otaku Grand Prize" and was recently nominated for the Nebula Award (media category), the highest award in domestic science fiction fandom.

This attention is a déjà vu for old-school gamers in their 30s and 40s, and is often compared to the "High Mobility Fantasy Gun Parade March " (Ganparade March), which was released in 2000, at the beginning of the Internet's popularization.
If you are not familiar with video games, please refer to my book "The Complete History of Modern Video Games," but if you focus on the relationship with anime, at the time when the influence of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (1995) was still strong, the main characters were leading their daily lives at the school (school mode), while the military forces of a strange enemy whose identity is unknown attacked the town. The game system incorporated the format of the story, in which the protagonist characters lead their daily lives at school (school mode) while using humanoid robot weapons to fight off an unknown army of deformed enemies (battle mode), appealed to the fetish of the otaku demographic at the time, and "Gunpare" became a smash hit among those in the know (in fact, the developer of "Gunpare," Alpha Systems, followed a similar game system). (In fact, the developer of "Ganpare", Alpha System, also produced "Neon Genesis Evangelion 2", which followed a similar game system.)

Therefore, "Jyusankibyou," which uses separate game mechanics for the "Reminiscence Arc," which traces the drama of the adolescent characters' lives at school during non-combat periods, and the "Collapse Arc," which lets players experience robot battles when the enemy attacks, was also rebooted less than 20 years after "Ganpare. It can be positioned as the latest form of the post-Eva era robot anime imagination.

As is well known, robot anime and video games have a close relationship. In particular, the "Battle Mode" of "Gunpare" and the "Collapse Arc" of "Jusankibei" are represented by so-called simulation RPG-type mechanics, which have been developed as a format for recreating the dramaturgy of domestic robot anime in video games since the "Super Robot Wars" series in the early 1990s. This follows a method that has been developed as a format for recreating the dramaturgy of domestic robot animation in video games since the "Super Robot Wars" series in the early 1990s.

The reason for this type of game expression is that, especially in robot anime since "Mobile Suit Gundam" (1979), the robots in the works have been given the reality of "weapons," and can now be expressed as units in tactical war simulation games (SLG) without any sense of discomfort. In other words, it has become possible to represent them as units in a tactical war simulation game (SLG). In other words, units, which in a pure war SLG would be nothing more than functional pawns on the board such as tanks or infantry, were given a personality and RPG-derived characteristics that grow in performance as they gain experience in battle, thus creating a "robot anime" that matches the theatrical characteristics of Japanese-style robot anime, in which many characters unfold in ensemble dramas on the battlefield. This is a good match for the Japanese style of robot anime in which a large number of characters take part in an ensemble drama on the battlefield.

In addition to simulation RPGs that allow players to experience the battlefield drama of boarding robot weapons, the non-combat character drama is reproduced using other game mechanics, such as adventure games (ADV) that use images and text to progress, and integrated as a series of story experiences. Titles such as "Sakura Taisen" (1996) have also become common. This can be seen as a variant of the unique format of monster special effects such as "Godzilla" and "Ultraman," which are further ancestors of robot animation, and which have been transferred to video games, as if the scenes performed by live actors were called "the main story" and the action scenes expressed by stuffed animals and miniatures were called "special effects" by the special effects director. It is also possible to see this as the origin of the "special effects" of robot animation.

In retrospect, the expressive characteristics of "Eva" animation were to combine the visual fetishism of special effects dramas such as the "Ultra" series with the juvenile ensemble storytelling pioneered by realistic robot animation since "Gundam" (Gundam). Gundam" and later real robot animations. Hence, after finishing "Evangelion" up to "Q" (2012), Director Hideaki Anno went on to produce "Shin Godzilla" (2016), "Shin Ultraman" (to be released in 2021), and the exhibition "Director Hideaki Anno: Special Effects Museum: Showa and Heisei Techniques in Miniature" (2012). Through activities such as the establishment of the ATAC (non-profit anime special effects archive organization) in 2018, he appears to have found his role as an archivist of the visual century, reminding future generations of the historical continuity of 20th century Japanese special effects and anime.

In the same way, "13 Kihei" as the first post-Eva work since "Ganpare" can also be positioned as an attempt to experience the visual memory of special effects and animation accumulated in postwar Japan through a detour in the form of a game at the end of the 2010s. As mentioned above, the war strategy mechanics in the "Collapse Arc" of this work are a variation on the "spectacle of war" originally created by monster special effects and robot animation, which had their roots in the technology used in war-motivated films during World War II (for more information on this history, see Ryota Fukushima's "Ultraman and Postwar Subculture Landscapes" and others). (For more on this history, see Ryota Fukushima's "Ultraman and the Postwar Subculture Landscape").

Viewed in the context of the adjacency between tokusatsu and robot animation as Japanese war literature, "Ganpare" of the early 2000s is almost the last remaining version of Japan in 1999, when most of the world was being conquered by "phantom beasts" that suddenly appeared in the midst of World War II in 1945, In this pseudo-historical setting, a squad of school soldiers operating a humanoid tank "Shikon-go" (about 9 meters tall) as their main weapon defended Japan in 1999, which was almost the last remaining version of the human race.

This is because Japanese anime under the postwar democratic era was not allowed to depict "Japan's war" openly, and therefore, like "Space Battleship Yamato " (1974) and "Gundam," the space science fiction setting and mobile suit-like fetish designs were used as a means to wrap up militarism in an oblique manner. In light of the deformed development of space science fiction settings and fetishistic designs such as mobile suits as a means of masking militarism, we may look back on this as evidence that the underlying spirit of science fiction robot stories was secretly turning a corner.

This shift was possible because "Ganpare" was a game that was based on the war SLG genre, in which the use of real military history as a subject matter was considered a matter of course. It is also true that we can detect traces of the center-right spirit of the times that emerged in the middle of the Heisei era, which sought to "mature" our understanding of the assumptions surrounding politics and war after the end of the Showa era and the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union ten years ago, the Gulf War, the formation of a non-liberal coalition government, and the history textbook debate.

From this point of view, what kind of historical phase is engraved in "Jusankibei," which opens as the Heisei era itself ends as a "failed project" after repeated setbacks by reform forces and as Japan's political and economic decline becomes definitive?

To describe in more detail the basic setting of the robot battles depicted in the "Collapse Arc," in 1985, when Japan was enjoying peace, a group of deformed giant mecha, collectively called "Deimos," ranging in size from several meters to several hundred meters, suddenly attacked a fictional city in Japan out of nowhere and invaded the underground "terminal," a central hub of the country. The main characters fight a defense battle for a few days with the only "machine soldiers" of about 35 meters in height to stop the invasion toward the underground center called the "terminal".

The size of the robots and the fact that the "Deimos," which are clearly designed as machines, are referred to as "monsters" in the film, make it less military in tone than "Gunpare," which is set during a time of war. The film is also strongly oriented toward a return to the special effects-based imagination of "Eva," "Ultraman," and the reboot of the same series, "Pacific Rim" (2013).

In other words, like Hideaki Anno in the 2010s, he is very consciously aiming for a comprehensive archiving of the imagination of the postwar Showa period or the 20th century. This orientation itself has been seen in NHK's morning TV series, in which the contemporary dramas that dominated the 1990s and 2000s have declined and have become mostly period dramas of the recent past centering on the period of high economic growth; in the new trilogy since "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015), which is an official adaptation of an older work; and in the "Bohemian" series, which is a pseudo-experience of a legend from the recent past. Bohemian Rhapsody" (2019) as a pseudo-experience of a legend from the recent past, and many other major domestic and international contents are heading in the same direction.

The question is, therefore, to what extent, based on the awareness of this premise, have there been any attempts to return to the past or to critique the past, without merely reproducing homages (as was the case with the autumn animated films mentioned earlier). From this point on, I would like to examine the content of the story and the worldview setting, which are revealed in the "reminiscences," the "main part" of the film that forms the bulk of the gameplay, on the assumption that spoilers will appear in this section.