Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei Era] Vol. 7: "Thirteen-Machine Defense Bloc" in the Era of Virus Disasters (Part 2)

As the era is changing from the Heisei Era to the 2025 Era, the serial series "Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World" aims to capture the contemporary landscape through reviews of notable anime.

This is the second part of a three-part series of in-depth reviews of the PlayStation 4 game "The 13th Airborne Defense Circle," which was released last year!

In this second part of the series, Daichi Nakagawa takes a stab at this remarkable game released in a time of great change.

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

The Final Solution: Rewriting the "Game" - Tsukasa Okino, 426, and Miyayuki Inaba

As we have seen through the scenarios of the 13 PCs, the stories of "The Thirteen-Person Defense Circle" and "Reminiscence" are based on a vast historical typology of themes, character models, and dramaturgy depicted in Japanese special effects and science fiction robot animation and related genres from the postwar period to the late 2010s. The work has been carefully factorized and assembled by matching these fragments with the precision of marquetry.

The situation that the thirteen members of the final defense battle face is the problem of how to deal with the crisis of the world that has been informationally looped by the "Zegapain"-type mechanism and is finally going bankrupt, while being trapped as the last human in the virtual 1985 (Sector 4 in the play) created with the "Mega Zone 23"-type motif. The question is how to deal with this crisis. The original Ryoko Shinonome's despair is the source of the crisis, and Tetsuya Ida and Chihiro Morimura's Sekaikei-like regret and resignation are the drags on the crisis, thus creating a problem that is caused by the residual "Evangelion"-like mentality.

In other words, the thematic challenge that the story of "Thirteen Soldiers" has reached is how to end the "lost 30 years" of the 1990s to 2010s, the post-Eva era, while inheriting postwar and 20th century history through a return to the 1980s and a collusion with the wisdom of the 2000s. The "Thirteen Kikibyou" story is nothing less than a thematic challenge.

The event that occurs in the final stage of the "Reminiscence," just before the Deimos attack on Sector 4, is the elimination of these post-Eva obstacles. First, Morimura (the teacher), who was finally about to cancel the Kibei Plan and go ahead with Operation Aegis, is murdered (as in the opening situation of the Sekigahara Arc), but it turns out that the murderer was Chihiro (the child), who had regained backup memories of the original Chihiro Morimura in 2188 thanks to Go Noboru. From the point of view of Chihiro (the original Dr. Chihiro Morimura), who implemented the ark project, the clone's shortsighted choice to stop the regeneration function of the real facility in order to subjectively prolong his life in the virtual world up to the current loop was nothing but a radical reversal of the original plan.

On the other hand, for Chihiro, the creator of this world, the 16-year life of Goto and his family in the virtual world was a trivial matter, and it was enough to remove the D code itself in the next loop and return the ark project to its original state. The climax of the Goto scenario is a heated dialogue in which Chihiro's transcendental attitude is challenged by Goto and the others, who are trying to convince Chihiro that they are worthy of taking over the project.

On the other hand, in preparation for the final battle, Juro Izumi, who has been exploring direct choices that will lead to the survival of the PCs living here and now, and Tsukasa Okino, who hacked the automated factory in Sector 1 and successfully developed a Deimos weapon and a machine soldier in the current cycle, were the first to make a move in preparation for the final battle two cycles ago.

Their originals in 2188 were all deeply involved with Dr. Chihiro Morimura. Izumi's original was a soldier who was romantically involved with Dr. Morimura, and her consciousness was overwritten by a five-year-old clone because he had crafted a backup of his lover's memories and personality to be stored in the Ark Project system. Okino's original was a genius engineer who was the creator of the virtual space habitation colony in the Ark Project, where he playfully appropriated the environmental management system of the fully immersive online game "Deimos the Monster" made in 2154. He is also the genetic son born through in vitro fertilization of an egg donated by Dr. Morimura.

In this sense, it is clear that they have been given a mythical assignment to be responsible for putting an end to the situation caused by Dr. Morimura as the causal factor in the year 2188, the true "previous life" before the loop in the virtual world.

That is why the three clones of Morimura, Izumi, and Okino were placed in Sector 1 (2100s), the closest to the year 2188, in the Ark Project, and played a role in discovering the countdown to the Deimos attack in the underground disk two laps ago, the oldest episode in the virtual world retroactively depicted in the "reminiscences" section. From there, a series of stories to get to the bottom of the situation and solve the problem are set in motion.

As already mentioned, Izumi, who was able to cross the loop with his beloved Morimura thanks to Okino's sacrifice at that time, was captured and became a wanted man, prisoner number 426, in the world one lap earlier for his sabotage of Shikishima, initially mistakenly believing that Deimos was an invasion by heavy machinery for space development by the Shikishima Heavy Industry The Deimos attack was inevitable after all. After escaping in the chaos of the inevitable Deimos attack, he discovers that 15 conformists with the nanomachine "Inner Rositor" in their brains are the holders of the control key of the D Code that brings Deimos to the island, and tries to prevent its destruction by killing them all as he walks across the sectors, He tries to prevent their destruction by going through the sectors and killing them all, but is stopped by Morimura, whom he meets again when he is about to kill Ida in Sector 2, and aborts the attempt. Once again, he landed in the world of the current cycle after the reset via Sector 0. He began to realize the truth of this world from his research on the inner locator and was seeking a new path when he was shot by Morimura, who had no memory of the world one cycle ago and was told by Ida that 426 was a vicious killer, and he lost his body.

Thereafter, he reversed Ida's plan to use 426's personality data in Sector 0 by recalling it to the droid, took the Kisaragi droid, and fled. In a roundabout way, she hides in Kurambe Juro's nanomachine in Sector 4, where she reveals her friend Kuta Shibakuta, whom only he can recognize, and also takes the form of Shippo, a cat who speaks only to Yakushiji, giving him a mysterious syringe gun and making her shoot 15 conformists. The purpose is not to kill them and stop the activation of the D-Code, as was the case one lap earlier, but to break the restrictions of the D-Code, which was forcing them to play a "game they would surely lose" while diverting the system of the "monster Deimos" created by Okino in 2188, so that each of them could strengthen their own machine soldiers and fight under game rules that would allow them to beat Deimos This was to inject an additional program to make it possible to strengthen each soldier and fight under game rules that would enable them to win against Deimos. This is nothing but the fictional meaning of the "metachip," the point for strengthening the mechanics that the player handles in the "Collapse Edition.

In parallel with this, Okino also went through that kind of quest, and together with Amiguchi, Minami, and Kisaragi, he communicated with the orbiting idol Inaba Miyuki (the consciousness of Kisaragi Usami one lap earlier), and reached the truth about the ark project and the world. Inaba, who had been transferred to the command ship for terraforming monitoring by chance with the 16th aircraft in the aftermath of the machine pollution incident plotted by Ida, was in a position to recognize the real world ahead of the others (this was possible because the original Usagi Kisaragi in 2188 was the engineer in charge of terraforming for the ark project) and was guided by Inaba, who was able to see the loop of the virtual world and to see the real world. ), a concrete plan is formulated with the ultimate goal of awakening the 15 people trapped in the loop of the virtual world to the real world.

In the process, Okino himself was attacked by a droid left behind by Ida on the disk, and like 426 and Inaba, he lost his body in the virtual world and became only a conscious being, but he was able to communicate with him only with the 12th Kibo, which he took over from Hijiyama, and he faced the final defense battle day on May 27, 1985.

As described above, the giant robots and machine soldiers as "game pieces (means of entry)" developed by Okino by hacking the automatic production technology of the 2100s, the "rewriting of rules/adjustment of game balance (correction)" by the metachip function added by 426 to suppress the D code, an illegal cheat code of the enemy side, and the "rewriting of rules/adjustment of game balance (correction)" by the metachip function, which was added by Okino to suppress the D code, an illegal cheat code of the enemy side. The three NPCs worked together as game designers, and the game board for the "Collapse Edition" was ready for the 13 PCs to fight.

It is a "moderate barrier" from fiction that no longer confronts realism to the 1990s-2000s compulsion of Sekai-kei and battle royale/death game types that excessively deform others and the harshness of reality as "impossible games" and no longer faces the reality of the In other words, it is storytelling that relies on a sense of pride that is unique to game entertainment, and does not fall into the 2000s to 2010s style of "Nichijo-kei" and "Naro" series, in which even the dramaturgy that serves as a "moderate barrier" is thrown away and the game becomes a "null game.

In other words, it is a matter of deciphering the mechanics governing reality and searching for possibilities of intervention to rewrite them into a game that can be conquered by fully utilizing the resources at hand.

In the reality of the 21st century, where the rule system that governs the real world and the virtual system provided by information technology have become inseparable, the story of "The Thirteen Robots" presents an exemplary answer to the history of tokusatsu and science fiction robot animation: "This is the most convincing circuit toward "independence" and "maturity. The story of "The Thirteen Robot Soldiers" is a model answer to the history of tokusatsu and science fiction robot animation.

How "13 Robot Soldiers" Struggles with the Historical Proposition of Postwar Robot Animation

Thus, the battle and drama of the final defense battle in the "Collapse Arc" were sequentially unlocked as the investigation of the truth and preparation of the game board progressed in the "Reminiscence Arc," and the battle reached its final phase.

All the adults who had experienced the loop pulled into the background, leaving only 13 boys and girls on the board they had set up. In order to return from the nightmare of the loop (dreamtime) and acquire a body of their own to mature in the real world, they borrow a makeshift body of a soldier and continue to endure the onslaught of monsters, which are the grudge of the ancient dead (the extinct humans of the earth). The ordeal of enduring the onslaught of the monster, which is the grudge of the dead (the extinct earthlings), is a picturesque rite of passage (or Bildungsroman).

As has been pointed out in critiques of the relationship between postwar subcultures and society, such as Eiji Otsuka's "The Proposition of Atom" and Tsunehiro Uno's "The Dystopia of Motherhood," historical works of manga and anime that have exerted great social and genre influence by embodying the reality of a defeated nation, Japan, have been at least as stagnant as this. In fact, it is very rare for such a story to be told in such a way that the structure of a rite of passage is established without stagnation in the historical works of manga and anime, which have had a great social, genre, and influence by embodying the reality of Japan as a defeated country.

In particular, since "Mazinger Z" (1972), the classic type of science fiction robot animation, in which a boy's desire to grow up is fulfilled by transforming into a giant tokusatsu hero such as "Ultraman," has been succeeded by the composition of "getting into a giant robot created by his father with the power of science to defeat foreign enemies," has become rather delusional and impossible since "Gundam. However, after "Gundam," the anti-bildungsroman theme, which emphasizes the delusional nature and impossibility of the robot, became more convincing in the contemporary era, and was completely deconstructed in "Eva.

In other words, in a society where the ideal order that embodies the idea of community and justice, such as father, god, or nation, is not self-evident (for example, postwar Japan, which has been confronted with the contradiction between the U.S. nuclear umbrella and the idea of a peace constitution), the device of a giant robot is nothing but a "false maturation" that forces obedience to a mission and violence toward others. It is nothing more than a means of "false maturity. Although the catharsis of fighting on it is depicted as entertainment, it is only a temporary vehicle, a foreign object that is disconnected from the protagonist's own true body and existence. Therefore, the "Gundam" mobile suits and later science fiction (real robot) anime are seen as a device that makes possible a modern literary style in which the paradoxical maturity potential (e.g., anti-war ideals or awakening to the new type) is found in the protagonist's innocent struggle to reject giant robots and be skeptical of identification with a false ideology. Robot animation (real robots) has been reinvented as a device that allows for modern literary art to be found (e.g., anti-war ideals, awakening to the Newtype, etc.).

As a result of this thoroughgoing skepticism, a further phase shift in image occurred with "Eva. As a result of postmodernization, in which all normative values are relativized, paternity is no longer denied by default, and instead the metaphor of Evangelion as a giant robot, symbolized by the amniotic fluid-filled entry plug, is transformed into that of a "mother's womb. In other words, it is a return to the mother's womb, a desire to withdraw from human relationships with others and social interaction (politics), and to retreat to a place where one can receive unconditional and total individual recognition. This is a "maternal dystopian" state that occurs when the maturity of consumer society and collusion with the information environment make it possible to satisfy this desire to some extent, i.e., the anomie (disorder) of society and the unconscious fragmentation and exclusion brought about by the optimization of environmental management such as markets and information infrastructure. The image of the old "Eva" film, which climaxed with the "Human Complementation Project," was a transformation of the image of the "Mother" (the archetype of the Great Mother in Jungian psychology), which expressed her anxiety about the uncontrollable enlargement of her desires as an outburst of her own.

In this way, it becomes difficult to find some universal theme in the action drama that relies on the 20th century imagination to link the drama of a boy's growth with his deliberately getting into a huge human-shaped industrial machine to fight (≒ confronting problems at the social and national level). and major hits such as "Code Geass" have barely managed to prolong the life of humanoid robots by using them as avatars to decorate the characters, but in essence, this is nothing more than the deformation of the robot anime genre.

Or, as in the case of "Gurren Lagann" (2008) by Gainax, the company behind "Eva," "Aim for the Top! (1988), which caricatured the escalation of 1970s sporadic emotional expression via Gunbuster, while reinterpreting it through a sophistcated space science fiction gimmick, there was a strategic return to super robot stories before "Gundam," but there was no It is difficult to find thematic achievement beyond a regression to a restoration of stylistic beauty.

There were other attempts, such as "Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven" (2005) and "STAR DRIVER: Tact of Shining" (2010), but at bottom, the post-Eva quarter century was a time when robot anime failed to update realistic themes and images and reached the end of its useful life, It was a period of winter.

It is important to note that "Thirteen Soldiers" inherited the direction of "Zegapain," which I pointed out in the middle section, from the history of such various struggles. Among the many post-Eva robot animation works, this work not only highly sublimated the trend of creating looped works based on the premise of the 21st century digital technology environment, but also did not ignore the difficult issues surrounding the body and maturity that "Eva" nullified, while delving into the semantics of the ride-on humanoid robot (whether it succeeded or not). It is because it is a rare work that not only sublimated the high level of the theatrical flow of "Eva," but also did not ignore the difficult issues surrounding the body and maturity that "Eva" invalidated.

In "Zegapain," the "maternal dystopia" images of "Eva" such as the uterine metaphor and the Human Complementation Project are replaced with the "Beautiful Dreamer" motif of "everyday life in a looping virtual space" expressed in information technology, while the protagonists (who have lost their bodies that can mature and become damaged in advance and become phantoms) are depicted as "Zegapain. The question is how the protagonists, who have lost their bodies in advance and become phantoms (a presupposed "proposition of the atom"), can regain their real bodies and unpredictable futures. The circuit for regaining this maturing body is nothing other than a battle in Zegapain, a humanoid weapon developed as the only tool in the play that can commit itself to the devastated real world.

By redefining the giant robot as a pseudo-body, a science fiction anime version of Dororo's Hyakkimaru, the film seeks to overcome the dystopia of motherhood that has been the target of "Eva" and beyond, and to explore the possibility of revitalizing bildungsroman, which is the key to the dramatic structure of "Zegapain.

In this context, "Thirteen Soldiers" is characterized by the fact that it retroactively subverts genre criticism in its detailed direction, while maintaining the same semantics as "Zegapain" as a "pseudo-body for a data-oriented person to regain a realistic body.

The thirteen protagonists are not, in the first place, cockpits at the time of his design, as Okino divulges in a conversation in the Hijiyama section before the final defense battle: "It's suicide to get into a 35-meter-long fighting weapon. The impact is equivalent to a train accident if you just punch it. Contrary to the convention of postwar Japanese robot anime, none of the 13 protagonists "ride" a humanoid giant robot. In the game, a conversation scene between the characters, who are naked for some reason, is depicted in the game with a cut-in of the cockpit scenery of "Gundam" and other games, but the UI design itself is a misleading attempt to enhance the truth that the cockpit is actually the inside of a nursery pod where the real bodies of the PCs reside. In other words, the womb motif of "Eva" is used.

In other words, while following the womb motif of "Eva" more directly, the motif of the giant robot is meta-reframed from a post-digital technological viewpoint, and is then made into an informational avatar (incarnation). Therefore, the scene in which the PCs activate their machines by sliding on the body markers created by Yakushiji's syringe gunshot is rather similar to the "transformation" scene in tokusatsu heroes, which is a further origin of robot animation.

In this way, "Thirteen Kisai" did its best to resist the conditions of the post-Eva era by drawing on the historical drawings of tokusatsu and sci-fi robot animation.

At the same time, the fact that it is impossible to reproduce a convincing rite of passage without an elaborate literary setting, which clearly does not fit in with the pleasures of animating with images, paradoxically shows that legitimate robot animation based on genre history is no longer in a cul-de-sac where it is difficult to be established as an animation project through visual expression. In this sense, it can be said that the "game" is a game that is created as a "game".

In this sense, "Thirteen Machine Soldiers," created as a "game," may have overcome the difficulties of the post-Eva era by "not" being a robot animation, and rebooted the center of the potential of robot animation in its most dense form.