Oshii lets time unfolds differently in Patlabor 2 like a linear narrative; actions are seen as either responses or reactions to previous historical events. The film is introduced with Tsuge, an officer of the Japanese Defense Forces, surviving a failed U.N. mission. Tsuge fails to receive an order in time from his superiors. He is in shock when his team dies as a result of this perceived failure. This sets in motion so called “terrorist” actions from the perspective of the State, but what serve as his active response to what has become in his point of view an ineffective global policing system. The film then refocuses to 2003, four years after the failed mission in Cambodia to Japan. Tsuge forms a “rebel” group that bombs a bridge, hacks defense networks, and sets a full-scale attack against Tokyo. His actions pinpoint weaknesses within Japan’s security structure .In addition, they incite State fear or even paranoia at the prospect of unrest or possible civil war. Tsuge’s actions expose the weaknesses of Japanese police, defense, and international relations. His actions compete against the state’s message that wishes to maintain a sense of peace and control. The film progresses by following two police officers Nagumo and Gotoh, who are sent to capture Tsuge with the aid of an intelligence officer named Arkanawa, using unilateral power to capture Tsuge and end the threat of “terrorism”. In the Patlabor 2, a general says Japan “does not exist in a vacuum”. His quote ties together different understandings of agency and movement within a local, national, and global context. At the global level, this represents Japan’s relationship to other “post war” nation states. At this level, action and movement are influenced by external powers such as the U.S., exposes’ Japan’s dependence on foreign nations. However, in a local context this dependence plays out in various ways, through Tsuge’s actions and the state’s response to his action. Tsuge’s actions are seen at the global level as “terrorism”. Yet, Tsuge sees his action as a way to disrupt local patterns of movement that state and global powers govern.
In Sky crawlers, time is less linear than a narrative and leaves you hanging in a vacuum of hyperreality: there is no general sequencing of events or plot progression. All growth or development occurs in the confines of a closed space. As a result, time acts according to corporate control. Characters such as Yuichi and Ksunagi define life as “meaningful” or “productive”. They self identify in corporate terms because they are “kildren” or pseudo humans bred by the corporation as adolescents, designed to live for brief periods. As a result they perceive time as either irrelevant or unimportant. It’s as if their lives amount to continuous labor cycles. Their proximity and awareness to time acts to heighten their feelings of alienation and dislocation. These feelings are the foundation of their desire to end their own lives, which amounts to breaking the ultimate rule of trying to defeat the “undefeatable” ace pilot. The Kildren’s continuous identity follows the same capitalist logic of destructive regeneration, each accumulating the crisis of their ahistorical existence.
Oshii’s lens into Sky crawlers functions to intensify the continuous time structure by slow pacing, repetition, and sparse dialogue. The sparcitity of verbal interaction indicates the lack of meaningful or significant social interactions. The lens follows kildren, like Yuichi at his unceremonious welcoming into the corporate compound .At the welcoming, he is received with an attitude of disinterest. Yuichi flies into the compound and to be briefly introduced to his mechanic, General Officer Kusanagi, and several other pilots. The film begins by grounding what he will be doing for the remaining cycle of is life. When he lands not a single onlooker appears seems interested in his arrival, instead he receives an apathetic reception that the viewer has no way to contextualize. He must find his own way while later Officer Ksunagi, herself a kildren, later, welcomes him tiredly into her dark office space that appears to contrast the natural sunlight which streams through a window. Yuichi questions Ksunagi about the status of the pilot he is replacing and asks whether she is a Kildren. At this point Ksuangi’s expression suddenly changes and she refuses to answer Yuichi’s questions. His cold dismissal suggests a nihilistic interpretation of his arrival, where the closed-ness of daily life on the compound is repeated in every social situation and exchange. Each day the pilots fly airplanes cut from contact for the most part with the “outside” world except for limited opportunities explained later. The film asks the viewer to accept the strange world of Sky crawlers as it is, closed off and without an understanding of history.
The kildren’s own understanding of their historical connection to reality can be interpreted by what Jameson refers to as a postmodern “psychological status” in his essay Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Because the Kildren have no clear recollection of the past and are unable to attach any significance to their present moment of being or their creation or description is similar to Jameson’s schizophrenic who “suffers a breakdown of the signifying chain” (6). The fact that the dialogues between characters do not divulge details or have personal histories to tell signifies their forced to interpret their own histories for themselves. Kildren depend on material markers such as matches, repetitive movement as proof of their own “historical residues.”[1]
History is a record or memory of previous experiences When a Kildren dies, they are reborn with only vague recollections of their previous life. Literally “killing children”, their continuous life for the corporation is without the aid of historical memory. Kildren feel confused and disoriented by their surroundings. Kildren only have limited evidence of their previous lives. The film creates a sense of déjà-vu by concentrating on small details and moments of memory; the return to the same dinner, fold of a newspaper, a match thrown on the ground. These material objects function as memory devices in their repetitive and minute details offering clues without direct answers. Focusing on these moments also the viewer to interpret what objects such as a cigarette, meat pie, newspaper, or a match means to the kildren enforcing the idea that their understanding consists of by routine, control, and repetitive order (ref to images 1,2,3 below). The repetition of actions coincides with the military conflicts occurring continually in the film without a sense of purpose, reason, or an end. Only a female pilot Mitsuya summons the nerve to tell Yuichi that he is a reincarnation of Jinroh, brought back to life because of a unique “skill set”. Mitsuya is also the first person to tell Yuichi that he is indeed the reincarnation of Jinroh and that the other kildren were only “pretending” they did not know. The lifeline of a Kildren is set only to determine the needs of the corporation, replacing his sense of self for a “unique skill set”.
(Figure 1)
(Figure 2)
(Figure 3)
This lack of historical connection may also explain internal conflicts and provide a reason for their inability to form individual or collective political consciousness. Ace pilot Mitsuya suffers from this type of ahistorical crisis and cries “Why? When? And how in the world did I end up like this?” She further explains that her lack of historical understanding makes her feel as if she is “floating further and further away from reality”, rooted in intense malaise for everyday life. Jameson refers to a similar type of stress and refers to it as “wanning of affect” where a loss or lack of connection to historical purpose forces them to interpret their lives differently. Like Yuichi, Mitsuya tries to establish some frame of reference by asking the pilots, “How many flight hours have you logged? or “How many years have you been working as a pilot?”. Mitsuya is also validates Yuichi’s own feelings of confusion and disorientation when she asks “ How do you reconcile the memories with your life if it is just an endless repetition of the present? “. Although Mitsuya is the only character to express these feeling of uneasiness, there is an implication that Ksuanagi’s desire commit suicide stems from a similar “wanning of affect” her chain of signifiers is unreliable she feels “no past and no future”.
Kusanagi describes the kildren as part of a game that involves “fighting a never ending war”. By referring to “war” as a “game” Ksuanagi is also saying that their violent actions are for the interests of capital. Kusanagi understands the conditions she and her co-pilots work in and does not see an alternative to their state of detached violence. She interprets “”fighting” as a critical element of human society” but she herself is not a human or historical being. Her explanation is vague and does not justify violence. Kusanagi’s own intense feelings of hopelessness drive her towards an existential and psychological crisis. She considers suicide and assisted suicide as the only means to escape her condition, exhibiting self-destructive tendencies in her desire to kill Yuichi and herself. Part of her anxiety also comes from dealing with her agelessness and responsibility of being a mother. Because she does not physically age she doubts her own capabilities and the ethics of raising a daughter. This crisis solidifies her status as an ahistorical subject, where neither nor her body nor labor has any significant impact. Kusanagi’s daughter also functions as a trace of her material existence, a living piece of herself reminding her of her nonhuman condition.
Yuichi and his fellow pilots have peripheral connections to the outside world with limited media access, exposure to tourists, and brief encounters with other women living on the outskirts of town. Even though these exchanges and encounters happen they only operate as with brief distractions emphasizing their mundane lives. These contacts also provide kildren with clues about their previous lost self. A woman Yuichi meets through fellow pilot Tokino, tells him “The fact that you’ve come means Jinroh’s dead, isn’t it?”. Even though Yuichi does not exactly know whom she is talking about, she is suggesting that she had sex with kildren before. Their conversation also proves that different kildren have underlying levels of emotion. She also tells him that she has asked Jinroh “Where do you keeping leaving your heart?” and that he did not respond. This is because many kildren have difficulty interpreting their own lives as meaningful to maintain stable feelings of attachment. She explains she was worried about him because him because he often looked like “he was at an impasse”. This information illustrates the point that although Kildren can have sexual experiences they still feel trapped by their work. They cannot find their selves without their work. The woman thinks maybe he left his heart “in the sky” emphasizing how after sexual encounters, she could not emotionally connect with a kildren.
When tourists come to visit the compound and “support” the corporation, the Kildren express desires to “kick their faces in,” showing a general indifference towards their presence. Their visit is clearly propaganda with Yuichi putting fake smile and cheerful demeanor. These moments emphasize pure spectacle of the corporate structure . It is not until a plane crash interrupts their visit that the Kildren stop putting on a show. Kusanagi loses restraint and yells at the tourists, she yells with hypocritical pity for a pilot they did not even know, further exposing the absurdity of funded violence.
The “world” or “reality” of Kildren may be interpreted as a “real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (Baudrillard 1). What is “real” for the kildren is that they essentially have no origin and use referential signs to simulate their own “reality”. The Kildren use these “signs” as substitutions of substitutions or simulacra as the means to understand their life as machines at war. Although Ksunagi reasons that their simulation of war is for some human historical purpose that brings war to “life” the way textbooks cannot, the news treats their battles like a spectacle. Yet the humans in the world of the Sky crawlers, such as man who works at the dinner the pilots visit, does not look interested in the television reports of the battles visible in his restaurant. Oshii’s camera shows a scene where he steps out of his dinner to sit by an anonymous man. The lens focuses on his blank and bored expression, perhaps suggesting that his own life is as boring and monotonous as the kildren. Yuichi perceives killing Teacher, the undefeatable flying ace, as a possible way to break the structure and he sacrifices himself trying to do so. The major change in the film does not come until the very end, after the viewer is left abandoned staring out into the sky, the lens returns again into Kusanagi’s office, where a she warmly tells a new pilot (assuming it is Yuichi brought back to life) “ I have been waiting for you”. The end of Sky crawlers ends the same way it beings and its cyclic structure is unattached to time unlike in Oshii’s earlier film Patlabor 2. Patlabor 2 provides a more realistic presentation of time and deals with similar issues of war, resistance, and struggle in a broader historical context.
In Patlabor 2, a general says Japan “does not exist in a vacuum”. His quote ties together different understandings of agency and movement within a local, national, and global context. At the global level, this represents Japan’s relationship to other “post war” nation states. At this level, action and movement are influenced by external powers such as the U.S., exposes’ Japan’s dependence on foreign nations. However, in a local context this dependence plays out in various ways, through Tsuge’s actions and the state’s response to his action. Tsuge’s actions are seen at the global level as “terrorism”. Yet, Tsuge sees his action as a way to disrupt local patterns of movement that state and global powers govern.
Throughout Patlabor 2 Oshii brings his lens into the public sphere of Tokyo to show the inconsistencies between the Japan Defense force’s panic and insecurity and the public’s apathetic responses to the “terrorist” attacks. Security forces and police respond to Tsuge’s “terrorist” attacks by ensuring “public safety” by increasing paramilitary presence and installing surveillance equipment throughout Tokyo to prevent more attacks. The lens shows Nagumo watching in shock as the bridge explodes; perhaps never imaging such an action was possible in her city. On the contrary, regular civilians seem undeterred taking pictures with tanks while children wave at military labors, giving the event the quality of a spectacle (images 4,5). Different factions of military and police forces are also seen prepare for a “worse case scenario” by deploying tanks, military machines, and hoarding provisions.
(Figure 4)
(Figure 5)
Oshii’s pauses his lens at a wall painted with the words “Lumiere et ombre” meaning “dark and light” in French like dark military figures standing in front of reflective corporate buildings (10,12) . These words suggest a distortion between “light” and “shadow” like the duality between “truth” and “untruth”, simulation and reality. These words in a public space allude to the influence corporate media and how it shapes public conceptions of the evolving cityscape. The media interjects into the public’s everyday life with giant television screens visible in public squares and by commuting stations and news reports audible across space (7). Oshii moves his lens to emphasize the omnipresence of the media and how it operates to naturalize military presence. The media also functions as an intermediary between the public and the state as the only source for the public to gather information. Oshii’s moves his lens through the city as a news report announces, “All provisions for martial law were dropped from the legal code. The general consensus has been…” while the “camera” shifts from the inside of taxicab, the streets, into passing traffic, and an armed helicopter flying over Tokyo (images 13, 14, 8,9,11). This screen illustrates how the state projects its authority across space and is represented as democratic, prepared, and rational.
(Figure 6)
(Figure 7)
(Figure 8)
(Figure 9)
(Figure 10)
(Figure 11)
(Figure 12)
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(Figure 14)
The news report is also ironic, because the defense state is represented as a democratic and methodical structure where sound decisions are made based on a “consensus”. Yet the films shows that the state does not function democratically and that Gotoh and Nagumo are discharged for challenging its ineffective hierarchal structure. The viewer can also infer that the information the media provides is as important as what it omits. The film shows the Japanese state making decisions that includes conflating their own national interests with submission to US control. This affects Japanese citizens abilities when it comes to making public safety decisions against “terrorist” attacks. During these times of crises Gotoh and Nagumo argue for putting aside political relations in order to ensure “law and order”, but their demotion forces them to work autonomously. They form a vigilante group to capture Tsuge and take paramilitary actions against a perceived threat completely outside of public view. This proves that the media functions to legitimize a state structure as compliant with U.S. interests. The media provides the public with images of a bridge blowing up without any explanation or commentary, thereby ignoring and delegitimizing any discourse of the event.
The tensions between the local police, defense and intelligence forces erupt when different state factions start working with and against each other. They do so because they do not want the U.S. to intervene or undermine their power. Because Nagumo and Gotoh recognize these tensions as problematic they are also in a position to realize that these structural problems are not new. Initially, Tsuge’s actions are perceived as a war-like threat, but Arkawa assures Gotoh that a war has been going on for a while. Gotoh begins to interpret Tsuge’s actions as a response to the global violence of U.S.- Japanese relations.
It is also significant that even officer Gotoh attributes relative “peace” as a part of U.S. military occupation of Japan, even though he has not experienced the war preceding the occupation. Gotoh also sees any participation in global violence and capitalism as supporting the cycle of “civil war, armed conflict, and ethnic strife” and that “our economic prosperity is created by demand for those wars”. Gotoh acknowledges that Japan benefits and legitimizes it power by keeping violence out of view. If anything, Tsuge aims to challenge state power by bringing violence he is personally affected by into the public eye. Tsuge creates war like conditions to disrupt any “illusion” [s] of peace by shutting down the communications systems, bombing major bridges, and turning a fake gas attack into a spectacle. Tsuge’s blimps release a faux gas over Tokyo causing panic amongst the soldiers until they realize it is a hoax.
By staging the attack as a spectacle, the actions also take on a symbolic purpose. In contrast to “state violence” Tsuge does not intend to gain anything from his exploits other than disruption. Whether or not Tsuge intends his actions to inspire a more democratic or autonomous state is unclear. The news reports only provide the public with ambiguous or false information, such as citing the bombing as a “terrorist attack” without further explanation of who the terrorists are and why they bombed the bridge. Even when Tsuge’s clever actions give him an advantage over the state, he does not hold anyone hostage or make any kind of demands. Instead he lets the actions produce whatever potential effect on the people without concern over how it is represented. His actions are completely intentional and he does not struggle when Nagumo arrests him. Yet, when asked why he gives himself over to the state, he replies he wanted to see Tokyo’s future, implying a desire for change without indicating what that change may be.
To sum up the analysis of Patlabor 2, it is useful to reference the Gulf War as one of Mamoru Oshii’s influences for the film and particularly the work of Mark Anderson’s "Oshii Mamoru’s Patlabor 2: Terror, Theatricality, and Exceptions That Prove the Rule." In this article he analyzes Arkawa’s argument as “given the brutality that defines the international status quo, the defense of “peace” constitutes a particularly dangerous illusion” that works by “banishis[ing] war to the realm behind the [television] screen” (89). Anderson also references the U.S. state of exception in international relations with Japan, in which the 1951 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty granted the U.S. unilateral discretion in positioning U.S. military forces in Japan (89). Anderson provides interesting context of U.S. –Japan relations as an influence in Oshii’s work but I am not certain if I can agree with his argument that “ the film’s main characters nevertheless remain centrally concerned to reinstitute effective Japanese national boundaries and sovereignty” (91). Although the characters desire a more independent state, it’s not clear that arguing for a sovereign nation was the point the film was trying to make. Instead, Oshii could create these fictional characters and world to illustrate how “post-war” nation-states have benefitted from global capitalism, often imposed with violence, by intervening in foreign wars and justified by media misrepresentations.
Anderson also cites a history of internal state conflicts that includes Naomi Klein’s point that “postwar neo-liberalism is ultimately a political project grounded in destruction” (93) which is also useful for looking at Sky crawlers. The fictional world of Sky crawlers is an extreme where semiotic reductive subjectivity and disturbing ethics of war and capital is the central crisis. If Patlabor 2 did not raise questions over the ethics over “inclusion through exclusion” in international wars (89) than Sky crawlers offers an even more extreme representation of war as simulacrum. Not even the characters in the film provide a coherent argument as to why a simulated war is in the interest of corporate capital, but perhaps Oshii intends to extend Klein’s argument on neo-liberalism where the project of destruction becomes the goal. Destruction, or violence becomes the ultimate goal used to maintain a public idea of purpose and peace. Oshii seems to purposefully distort the idea of war as ultimately appropriated for the interests of control and capital. Any other interpretation in this film is propaganda as illustrated by the visiting tourists who believe the kildren are actually doing some kind of public service. Overall, Oshii creates fictional worlds to raise questions and dramatically emphasize contradictions in the ethics of violence as legitimized by state structures and media propaganda.
NOTES
1. “The exposition will take up in turn the following constitutive features of the postmodern: a new depthlessness, which finds its prolongation both in contemporary “theory” and in a whole new culture of the image or simulacrum; a consequent weakening of historicity, both in our relation to public history and in the new forms of our private temporality, whose “schizophrenic” structure (following Lacan) will determine new types of syntax….” (6)
WORKS CITED
Anderson, Mark P. D. "Oshii Mamoru's Patlabor 2: Terror, Theatricality, and Exceptions That Prove the Rule." Mechademia. 4.1 (2010): 75-109.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York City, N.Y., U.S.A: Semiotext(e), Inc, 1983.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
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