Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Murakami’s after the quake
I was intrigued by Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 because of the Noitamin A timeslot (which has so far also yielded Higashi no Eden, Hataraki Man and Moyashimon) but also because of the promise to portray the events of an earthquake in as realistic a manner as possible. I’m guessing that animation, rather than live-ation, was the most efficient medium to go about this project for budgetry constraints; in terms of character designs and fluidity of animation I wouldn’t say it goes out of its way to dazzle the viewer though. It’s in Bones’ typical MO however: not necessarily groundbreaking but reassuringly solid and consistent.
The visuals do at least show how the events would look without overdramatising things, which is a particular benefit for those of us who have never actually witnessed a major earthquake for ourselves. I have to say there are some nailbiting moments here, mainly because the order of the day is preventing the drama being at the expense of being true-to-life. In the posts I’ve read so far it’s surprising how so many bloggers have found more to say on the drama side of things rather than the documentary aspect…and I can see why.
The symbolism in the fall of Tokyo Tower probably means the most to Tokyo-dwellers but the general message of a national landmark disappearing in front of their eyes is clear enough. Maybe it’s still hard-hitting for me because it wasn’t long ago that I was walking those same streets: the montage of the OP sequence includes places I’ve seen and visited myself, Tokyo Tower and the 1964 Olympic Stadium included.
The trouble with most efforts of this type is that they’re often in the impersonal disaster-movie style: the writers might make a half-arsed attempt in the usual character stereotypes and some hackneyed romance subplot but greater emphasis is on the spectacle of the special effects. In cases like those you get a vague ‘ground shakes, stuff falls over, people die’ impression but don’t get a feel for what it actually means.
So then, the personal trials and dramas of Mirai, Yuuki and Mari are an effective way of grasping the significance of an 8.0 earthquake in meaningful terms. I thought the premise was superb in that it shows a family dynamic that’s not quite the ideal but truthfully that’s how many families are in this day and age. Little details like the subjects of the arguments between Mirai and Yuuki, such as the shape of their mother’s birthday cake, neatly set things up before sending them crashing down.
That sense of change and transformation isn’t compelling just on the “Ooh, familiar landmarks are falling down!” sense but on the emotional journey these two kids are embarking on. Yuuki is too young, really, to show a vast amount of development outwardly it broadens his life experience quite considerably; some of the more shocking moments involve poor Yuuki having to grow up fast. In some ways it’s even more all-encompassing to him because at his age one city is all the world he knows.
Mirai is older and therefore goes through a more complex range of emotions; the variation in fan reactions to her character was interesting too. Again, her brattiness is in keeping with the realism of the show as a whole: her behaviour is of the type that few would approve of but many would understand…a twenty-first century teenager really. It’s a transitional period where you want to act like an adult but don’t know how to; a time of shifting emotions inside and shifting expectations from others. Aside from the usual dramas that we see her go through in the first episode or two, she also has to contend with the fact that not even the ground beneath her feet stands still any more.
What Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 does so wonderfully is show the emotional aftershocks after the initial devastation is over. The school that Mirai attends looks recognisable from the outside but the ‘quake has taken the rug from under her here too: a beautiful stained glass window now forms a backdrop to dead and dying earthquake victims. One of those grieving is a classmate of hers, at which point Mirai realises she cannot find words of comfort to offer.
This is my favourite part of Mirai’s character development so far: she sees this then learns of the background behind the elderly couple who stay in the school grounds as volunteers. The tears she sheds are not born from some selfish tantrum or even directly from a personal loss: she feels empathy for others’ tragedies and cannot cope with that very adult realisation. It’s a very different cause for upset next to the trivial having-a-bad-day variety she faced before.
Mirai’s eyes are opened to a lot of things, many of which are unpleasant and painful. Seeing her classmate and the old couple in their own states of mourning does, I think, also stem a little from guilt; or at the very least, a sense of helplessness that extends beyond the expected adolescent frustration. She feels she ought to help, but can’t. Unexpected events such as this stir up feelings that in more mundane circumstances would seem irrational: Mari’s concern for her own mother and daughter manifest themselves as a brave resolve to hope for the best while at the back of her mind she’s fearing the worst.
Mirai’s frustration at the world in general doesn’t stop her showing concern and responsibility for Yuuki but her declaration as the ‘quake struck was particularly poignant. “The world can just break!” is the typical childish retort spoke without comprehending the ramifications but what if the world DID suddenly break, at that moment? Whether Mirai has yet been taught the theory of plate techtonics in geography class I’m not sure, but if you think rationally there’s no way a juvenile wish could have caused it to occur. Nevertheless, the shock she felt at that point can’t be reined in by thinking rationally.
That moment reminded me of another excellent, albeit stylistically different, dramatic examination of the effects of a major earthquake on the general population. The compilation of short stories that Haruki Murakami wrote after the 1995 ‘quake that hit Kobe is like a literary concept album with All God’s Children Can Dance as its title track; internationally it’s available under the collective title after the quake (non-capitalisation intentional). The story Thailand shows a similar situation in which the heroine wishes misfortune on a certain person in her life, but despite being intelligent and of a scientific background she wonders if the earthquake is a physical manifestation of this selfish desire.
Murakami’s tales in this compilation are not actually concerned with people near the epicentre; it’s instead a portrayal of how even the tiniest ripples of causality affect people many miles away. Although much of Mirai’s, Yuuki’s and Mari’s story is one of survival in the immediate aftermath, both after the quake and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 provide a more interesting commentary on how a literally earth-shattering event affects us on several deeper and more far-reaching levels.
I think that alot of the power of this series arises from the fact that initially most commenters disliked Mirai’s personality because she was acting like a normal self-centered young teen girl. Mirai actions were only based on the premise that the world sucked and the only thing that mattered is how outside events affect her personally.
But, as Mirai travels through the disaster with Yuuki & Mari she starts to changing from a self-centered person to a person that is more in touch with her duties to her brother, parents, friends, and the society as a whole.
So, I think that’s why the events of episode 8 struck some viewers so hard that some people said they were going to stop watching the show, they had come to really like the new changed Mirai and episode 8 was like a kick in the groin.
My favorite part by far (robot episode notwithstanding), is during the episode where the Tokyo Tower fell, but not that event itself: it’s the part where Mirai was having trouble with her shit.
The lack of external conflict in the form of human malice, or human threats in general, allow the show to show different kinds of privations. Here we see the most intimate kind: our own shit, our daily shame. Shit is something dirty and smelly that we have to deal with every day, and more: it’s ours. There’s no going around it, we make that smelly crap.
For Mirai to publicly have to go through all that was more than just a privation of discomfort, hardly. It was the decimation of her dignity itself.
To take otou-san’s cake metaphor even further: if the round cake was the opposite of the fragmented cake of her mom’s birthday: it’s the complete opposite in that the Onosawa cake is fragmented as the Onosawa family is intact but fragmented; but the Kusakabe cake is whole and complete but comes from and is for an incomplete family.
Mirai ate the round cake, and she can’t deal with it. Her very body rejects it, as a kind of conflict within her; like how she couldn’t accept Mari’s praise about being a good sister after she believes she almost killed her own brother by wishing that the world should just break.
To think that Mirai’s shitty day has such far-reaching consequences (I won’t get into these here), it’s just remarkable. And by far, it’s my favorite bit in this very interesting show.
My favorite after the quake story is Super-Frog Saves Tokyo. It was my first Murakami book too and I was rather… jolted by his unique style of writing.
Frankly, the super-Frog story is the one story in the book I can remember, maybe because it’s the silliest of the lot.
I don’t know why so many people bag on Mirai for her behavior in this series. She’s a kid, a realistically drawn one at that! I don’t know what I’d do if I was in her situation when I was that age. And how can anyone say she’s so selfish when, after the main quake, her first instinct is to find Yuuki? Her heart’s in the right place; she’s just at an age where it’s not always cool to acknowledge it.
One thing I love yet dread in this series are the aftershocks. They’re like wild cards of terror. They strike at random and you can’t tell what the result will be.
I understand Tokyo had another mild earthquake a few hours ago, a 4.5. As one blogger put it “Better a series of small ones than one huge one.”
“I don’t know why so many people bag on Mirai for her behavior in this series.”
Perhaps because no matter what many people say, we usually aren’t looking for “for realy-real” realism in anime; we need just enough to input ourselves. So it can be hard to get over the ugly parts of the people we’re watching.
@Chris K: it’s difficult to underestimate character development in shows like this, isn’t it? I haven’t watched as far as episode 8 yet (although I’ve heard it’s very pivotal) but I’m really appreciating her ‘growing up’ as a character as a result of what she’s going through.
@ghostlighting: I can relate to the ‘wandering around Tokyo with stomach cramps’ thing…I think it was the jet lag that did it. OTL And yeah, no matter what situation you’re in, the need to go to the bathroom blanks out pretty much everything else. It sounds like a minor thing to get upset about but damn, when the indigestion is happening to YOU it’s very important indeed. I didn’t get as much out of that issue as you seem to, but it highlighted to me how individuals prioritise problems of various sizes in crisis!
@shneider: it’s one of his quirkier ones, yeah. I love his surrealism but stories like Honey Pie and Thailand are Murakami at his best from a dramatic POV.
@Peter S: I think Mirai is reacting as your typical kid would react, as opposed to how a TV or movie hero would do. That makes it a bit uncomfortable to watch, but I’m sure viewers can relate to someone like her more easily than some fearless heroic archetype. I was a bit worried about being caught in a quake when in Tokyo – there was one in the UK a couple of years ago actually, but it happened at 1am so I slept through it!
@2DT: absolutely. As much as it pains me to admit it, I’d probably be getting stressed out, running around looking for the toilet and generally being very un-heroic in those circumstances as well. When I was Mirai’s age I was probably wimpier still, so an event like this would’ve scared the hell out of me!
Now I wonder if the frogs in episode 7 was made to be an ‘after the quake’ reference. That said, hearing great things about Murakami made me check out ‘after the quake’ on a whim a few months ago, just read the first story and I found myself lost @_@ I guess I owe it to myself to finish reading the rest of the stories (laziness in reading will forever be the woe of me)
As for people bitching about Mirai’s brattiness, well some people tend to be defensive of their own faults (and see the dust in someone else’s eyes instead of the plank in their own eye), no? * grins * :)
@usagijen: I never really paid much attention to the frogs thing, but considering how they crop up in two of the stories maybe I ought to…you’re right on the money about Mirai too, of course!