Self-Erasure and Existence in Serial Experiments Lain and Metropolis

The two films that I shall be exploring in this paper are Ryutaro Nakamura's Serial Experiments Lain and Rintaro's Metropolis. Lain follows the story of a young girl named Lain who is in junior high and starts experiencing increasingly strange events. She meets "alter egos" of herself, and as she becomes more and more enmeshed in the world of the Wired, which is an imitation of the Internet, she starts questioning her own identity and existence. As people start dying around her, she attempts to find out who is behind these events, while at the same time the boundaries between reality and the Wired are falling apart. In her search, she meets the 'God' of the Wired, who, as it is later revealed, tries to convince people to give up their physical bodies and so transcend their earthly lives to exist in the Wired. After Lain destroys the God in a final confrontation, she is able to reverse the strange events that have been happening since the start of the series in a sort of "All Reset." By erasing memories of herself from everyone else's memories, she ceases to exist to them and to herself.

Metropolis on the other hand is set in the future, where robots are constantly present as servants, or more precisely slaves, of humans, and are kept strictly in their place. Tima, created as a super-robot for the purpose of sitting upon the throne of the Ziggurat,[1] meets Kenichi, the nephew of the detective from Japan who was sent to capture the mad scientist that had created Tima. Rock, Duke Red's[2] sort-of-adoptive son and leader of the Malduks,[3] attempts to kill Tima out of both jealousy for his semi-affectionate regard for her[4] and prejudice against robots.[5] Nonetheless, Tima is able to escape his attempts with the help of Kenichi, though Tima eventually ends up in the Duke's grasp. In the final scenes, Tima loses her memories as her "robotic side" takes over, and seemingly fulfills her purpose by sitting upon the Ziggurat. However, she proclaims an apocalypse to punish the humans for their mistreatment of the robots. Kenichi is able to pull her from the throne and save her from completely merging with the throne. Seeming to have lost her memories, Tima attacks Kenichi. As the city crumbles around them, Tima regains her memories towards the end of the anime and unfortunately falls to her death from the great height of the Ziggurat to the ground below. Metropolis ends with Kenichi deciding to stay in Metropolis rather than go home with his uncle in the hopes of helping to rebuild Metropolis and create a better future, where presumably humans and robots can coexist.

Serial Experiments Lain and Metropolis are both very different, in subject matter as well as style. However, I feel that the importance of memory with identity and self present in both works are of interest, and I would like to explore the characters of Tima and Lain in particular. I intend to explore the concept of self or subjectivity and what that means when that self is erased in the figures of Tima and Lain. I claim that, despite their self-erasure, there exists identity within that erasure, rather than a lack of a self. Their self-erasure results in questions of identity and existence for these characters, and I shall attempt to prove that a new self is created, allowing for existence within erasure. Defining subjectivity in Lain and Tima however is problematic, given that one is possibly a computer program and the other a robot, therefore I believe that it is necessary to first define the self that is being erased.

In Lain, the series leaves the question of whether Lain is a computer program or not unanswered. One theory, according to The God of the Wired, is that Lain is a computer program, designed to break down the barriers between reality and the Wired, and that her physical body is one that he has given her. This theory would allow us to reconcile her apparent agelessness in the last episode.[6] The other theory would be that she has given up her body to "live on" in the Wired. Although this question cannot be definitely resolved, nonetheless in either case Lain has a self, the real-world self, one that exists or existed in what the anime presents as the real world. At this point I would like to mention that there are three Lains, her "alter egos", that make up Lain but cause problems in defining who Lain really is. This is a question that Lain, the real-world Lain, struggles with, as she is unable to connect who she thinks she is and what she knows and experiences as her existence, with the actions and character of Wired Lain that she only hears about through a second-hand source.


(Figure 1)

This image, taken from the artbook for Lain, is an attempt by the artists to differentiate between the three Lains. Their names are written differently[7] and as the image shows, there are certain expressions, postures, as well as speech characteristics unique to each Lain.

While these Lains present another problem in defining Lain's selfhood, the point is moot when in the end all of Lain is erased. However, although the different Lains are distinct, there is a merging of the Lains, at least of Wired & real-world Lain, that is shown by contrasting the behavior of Lain in episode two, "Girls", and episode seven, "Society". In "Girls", she has just received her Navi, which is basically a computer, but she is still shy and withdrawn, "unconnected".[8] Some of her classmates take her along to a club called Cyberia, but she does not know how to dress for the occasion and has clearly not been to a club before, a fact that a couple of them tease her about: "You're usually in bed now, aren't you, Lain?" says one, followed by, "Lain, don't you have anything better to wear at night?" This is also the first instance in which we hear about Wired Lain. As the anime progresses, real-world Lain seems to be incorporating Wired Lain, showing a merging as she becomes more confident and dresses a little differently. This merging culminates in "Society" in which there is a scene where Wired Lain sort of "takes over" real-world Lain's body.[9] The immediate contrast between real-world Lain and Wired Lain is shown clearly, as well as the struggle with identity that Lain faces.

During the series she increasingly questions who she is, and tries to reconcile her own memories, experiences, and who she thinks she is with her alter-egos. The climax of this struggle is shown in episode eight, "Rumors", in which all three Lains make an appearance following a certain rumor about Alice that Lain apparently spread on the Wired.[10] In these scenes, real-world Lain is shown buried under wires and cables, crying and helpless, while Wired Lain confronts Lain of the Rumor. "Who are you? You're not me. I'd never do what you do," Wired Lain says to her, as Rumor Lain laughs continuously. "Stop it! Why are you acting like the part of me that I hate? You--" With Wired Lain's hands wrapped around her throat, Rumor Lain laughingly cuts her off saying, "I'm committing suicide!" and continues, greatly amused, "Hey, I'm Lain, aren't I?" Both Wired and real-world Lain emphatically deny this, however that is not to say Rumor Lain is not a part of Lain.

This struggle in identity is resolved in a way in the end, though rather bittersweetly when Lain must erase memories of herself, and therefore her existence, from other's memories. "When you don't remember something, it never happened... If you aren't remembered, you never existed,"[11] says Alice, repeating Lain's words. Without the recognition of others, Lain ceases to exist in the real world. The disconnect in identities that Lain experiences is addressed by Scott Bukatman in Terminal Identity: the virtual subject in postmodern identity, in which he says,

The newly proliferating electronic technologies of the Information Age are invisible, circulating outside of the human experiences of space and time. That invisibility makes them less susceptible to representation and thus comprehension at the same time as the technological contours of existence become more difficult to ignore...There has arisen a cultural crisis of visibility and control over a new electronically defined reality. It has become increasingly difficult to separate the human from the technological...as electronic technology seems to rise, unbidden, to pose a set of crucial ontological questions regarding the status and power of the human...the Information Age, an era in which, as Jean Baudrillard observed, the subject has become a "terminal of multiple networks." This new subjectivity is at the center of Terminal Identity. (Bukatman 2)

Bukatman argues against the idea that cyberspace is a null space, and instead is a narrative space, a site of action and circulation that sets up for a new identity. This new identity is termed "Terminal identity: an unmistakably doubled articulation in which we find both the end of the subject and a new subjectivity constructed at the computer station or television screen" (9). It is this terminal identity that is created in Lain's self-erasure. I also argue that it is this terminal identity that is created, and exists, within the Wired that is more wholly Lain, and where she is able to resolve her struggle in identity, or at the very least comes to terms with her self-erasure and ceasing to exist. In the real world, the life that Lain leads is monotonous, and the world that she lives in is routine and life-less. As Susan Napier notes, "Increasingly in Japanese culture, the real has become something to be played with, questioned, and ultimately mistrusted" (421). She goes on to analyze Lain in its ability to portray the "fundamental concerns at the turn of the twenty-first century, most notably our sense of a disconnect between body and subjectivity thanks to the omnipresent power of electronic media" (Napier 431), and calls Lain a representation of the world of the Wired/Internet where reality and truth are constantly questioned (431).


(Figure 2: The same series of montages (like the one shown above) are shown in the beginning of every episode.)


(Figure 3: The above images are, left to right, from episode 1 and episode 2.)

Repetitive scenes and montages like the above screenshots signal Lain's life as lacking in some way. She is not completely free to be who she is as her different personas are segregated and it is not until the end with her self-erasure that she exists wholly in the Wired. In a way then, the cyber world has surpassed the real world.

Bukatman also mentions that vision is a "means for being absent from [oneself]", according to Merleau-Ponty, and allows through simultaneous projection and introjection the presence of self. Vision itself "is not a mode of thought or presence of self", but it allows for it (Bukatman 136). Despite Lain's self-erasure, she is able to appear in the real world and visit a grown-up Alice, who is able to see her and acknowledges her presence, though she does not remember who she is, only that Lain looks familiar. Evidence of traces of Lain that are left behind, in that sort of déjà-vu moment, are encouraging and allow for an affirmation of self for Lain according to Bukatman.

While Lain presented questions of identity in a human figure, the figure of Tima in Metropolis is presented from the start as robot. Despite this, she is made human from the very start of her existence; it is from her "birth" [12], where her first encounter with another being is Kenichi, that she starts her existence as human. I shall argue that Tima has essentially two identities: the human Tima given to her by Kenichi, and the robot Tima that is her design, what she is made for and to be. I find the character of Tima interesting in her divide between human and robot. She is made in completely artificial ways, with completely artificial organs and body parts,[13] yet, she claims, or at least wants, to be human and that she has human emotions, can love like a human and therefore she is not a robot.[14] Her attempt to reconcile her robot and human self is an interesting struggle that ultimately ends in tragedy; however, the question I ask then is whether Tima has created subjectivity for herself between the two given identities, when her human self is erased along with her memories in the final scene[15]. First however, I shall examine her claims of humanity.

Since her "birth" into the world, her focus has been Kenichi. He is her first contact with another being, and so she sort of "imprints" upon him, and follows him around, imitating him. Their first dialogue is evident of this. Kenichi attempts to find out who Tima is, and after a few attempts in which Tima simply repeats what he says, he moves on. "Who are you?" Kenichi asks. "'I' am who?" Kenichi enunciates for Tima, and, interrupting him, Tima says, "You are I." "No, no, no...you call yourself 'I'," Kenichi corrects. "'I' am who?" Tima asks again, a question that she repeats at the end of her life. This repetition of the identity question, a question that continues to be unanswered through the end of the anime, suggests she has never found the answer, and perhaps, neither will we.


(Figure 4: Her conversation with Kenichi at the beginning of the film.)


(Figure 5: At the end of the film, when her body is broken and in pieces, all that's left of her is the ghost of her consciousness in the form of her recorded voice.)


(Figure 6)


(Figure 7)

Her preoccupation with Kenichi can be a little creepy, and shows that Kenichi is her world. She only cares about Kenichi, is constantly asking after him when she is separated from him and taken by Duke Red, and even the clothes she wears are picked by Kenichi, her appearance is shaped by Kenichi, and finally, he is the one that I would argue gives Tima her humanity.


(Figure 8: When she first meets Kenichi. He hands her his coat.)


(Figure 9: Kenichi gets her clothes)


(Figure 10: Tima seeks Kenichi's approval)

Duke Red also bestows an identity upon Tima, one that is an amalgam of robot and human. Tima is an imitation of his dead daughter, but also designed to be a deity, one meant to sit on the throne of the Ziggurat and rule the world. Despite her robotic body, Tima acts as a child would, and grows as a child would, albeit rapidly, and develops into something more adult-like as she learns to read and write, and is able to speak by herself outside of simple imitation. Undoubtedly she is still child-like through the end, but her development cannot be denied. In this development is a similarity to how humans develop. Tima might have been "born" physically developed into the world, but mentally she develops through the course of the movie as a human child would, placing her outside the category of her fellow robots into a limbo between robot and human. Her humanity, it can be said, is in her questioning of who she is.

However, two things complicate this assertion. One is the literal formation of Tima's identity by Kenichi. The words "You are I" that Tima says are innocent, but at the same time resonate with Tima's behavior and her obsession with Kenichi, and it is Kenichi that shapes her He is also the one to assert her humanity.[16] With the influence that Kenichi has over Tima, it is difficult then to see Tima as a separate entity, when so much of the "human" Tima is made up of Kenichi. The second complication is that although she might assert that she is human instead of robot, she succumbs to her design at the end of the film and sits upon the throne, becoming the "super-being" Duke Red has had her created to be. In the final scenes between Kenichi and Tima, she acts as robot, attacking Kenichi as if she does not know him, and treats him as a vengeful robot towards a human.


(Figure 11)

However, the divide between human and robot remains, made literal in the careful split of Tima's face, half robotic and half human. Despite her turning into the "super-being" she was created to be, she surpasses what Duke Red meant for her to be, in becoming judge and God, deeming humanity unfit to live beside robots. Her self-erasure comes as a wipe of memory, the loss of the Tima that is arguably "human" and recognizes Kenichi, and as destructive as her self-erasure is, Tima has created for herself a new self, one complicated by both her erasure of self and lack of control over what she is doing,[17] and her subversion of the Duke's designs for her. In the end however, the two sides of her, robot and human, seem to be presented as incompatible when, she asks, "Who am I?" looking up at Kenichi as he urges her to hold his hand, trying to pull her up and save her.


(Figure 12: It is her robot hand that he is gripping, and unable to reconcile her robot and human self, she is unable to grip his hand back and save herself.)

Even though Tima perishes in the end, her consciousness transcends her physical being[18] as Lain's does, shown in the way Tima's voice still lingers like a ghost in the radio. Her memory lives on, she is not forgotten and, she is the impetus to Kenichi staying in Metropolis, giving him a reason to try to build a better future where robots and humans can coexist.

In examining subjectivity in both Lain and Tima, I found Sharalyn Orbaugh's article, "Sex and the Single Cyborg" of interest, despite the fact that neither Lain nor Tima are cyborgs. Cyborgs as Orbaugh defines them are, "that embodied amalgam of the organic and the technological—confounds the modernist criteria for subjectivity” (436). She explains her particular interest in cyborgs because of the complication in subjectivity that they present, as part machine and part human. She also discusses the fear present with the figure of the cyborg, a fear of the overtaking of the individual subject by the machine, and the complete abandonment of the organic body to advance to the next level of evolution. In my reading of her article, there is an assumption in her arguments, which is that there is a problem of subjectivity in cyborgs because of the mix of organic and machine. She implies that the organic is necessary in order to consider subjectivity, and the machine encroaches/problematizes that subjectivity. She does say however that ,“Cyborgs, which are by definition not naturally occurring, serve in a new but equally significant way to mark the borders of modern(ist) subjectivity and simultaneously to reveal the ways those borders are breaking down and being redrawn in postmodern, posthuman paradigms” (439). While cyborgs do present a new sort of subjectivity, they still problematize subjectivity according to Orbaugh. However, I argue that it is not necessary to have a physical/organic body in order to have subjectivity, proven in the characters of Lain and Tima.

Regarding the problem of memory loss with Tima and Lain, Frederic Jameson in Postmodernism, or the Logic of Late Capitalism[19] seems to suggest a possible rethinking of self-erasure and the resulting loss of existence (16). In dealing with subjectivity, Jameson presents a loss-of-self view that at the same time still recognizes the existence of the feelings that make up the self, but are not connected to the self (Frederic 15). He proposes a different sort of existence, a "mere existence" that does not carry purpose, rather than a complete loss of existence. While this somewhat agrees with my idea that the consciousnesses of both Lain and Tima are still present post-self-erasure, I cannot agree with his assumption that the lack of feelings or apathy is what characterizes self or subjectivity, and consequently that there must be a presence of feelings in order to obtain subjectivity. Instead, I believe that apathy can characterize subjectivity just as well as what Jameson counts as "true" feelings.[20]

In constructing a self within self-erasure, the characters of Tima and Lain, despite the resistance to losing the self in Lain or the confusion of existence for Tima, nonetheless are able to create some sort of existence for themselves that transcend their physical bodies and are affirmed by the other characters in a way, regardless of deaths or loss of memory. I conclude that there cannot be a complete loss of existence then since this is the case, and despite the erasure of self, the erasure of existence, there can be a creation of existence within that erasure. While we are not robots nor do we have the ability to erase memories, the questions of identity Lain and Tima are subjected to allows us to rethink our own ideas of self and subjectivity, and how our existence is situated and defined, whether it's on the "Wired" or elsewhere.


NOTES

1. The only information given in the anime about the Ziggurat is that it is the pinnacle of human technology, and that whoever sits upon it will rule the world, though how this is and whether the public is aware of the Ziggurat's power and purpose is unknown. However, I find it curious that despite the celebrations of the completion of the Ziggurat the anime opens with, it seems that no one asks questions about it or what Duke Red plans on doing with it. In fact, for the majority of the anime the Ziggurat is out of the picture despite its capabilities.

2. The de facto leader of Metropolis in the sense that he is popular with the people and holds power and influence. Boone however is the President, who is later usurped and betrayed by his own military by Duke Red's hand

3. The Malduks are portrayed as Duke Red's personal military group led by Rock, though they also act as vigilantes in policing the robots.

4. Tima is made in the image of Duke Red's dead daughter.

5. Rock believes that it is Duke Red who should sit upon the Ziggurat, not Tima, a robot.

6. She appears to a grown-up Alice looking the same as when they went to school together, after she has wiped the memories of herself from everyone's memories.

7. From left to right: kanji (Chinese-based characters) for the real-world Lain, katakana (characters typically used to phonetically spell out foreign words or non-Japanese names) for Wired Lain, and English for Lain of the Rumor. I would like to note here that it is interesting the artists decided to use English instead of hiragana (phonetic characters used for Japanese words, but also to spell out kanji) for example (Japanese writing system consists of kanji, katakana and hiragana).

8. Here I refer to what Lain's father says in episode one, "Weird", to Lain after she asks him for a new Navi: "I keep telling you that you should use a better machine. You know, Lain, in this world, whether it's here in the real world or in the Wired, people connect to each other, and that's how societies function."

9. In an important plot development in which men from Tachibana Laboratories speak to her about the situation of reality and the Wired merging, Lain is asked questions about who she is, whether she knows her parents' birthdays, etc.--questions designed to make her question her own existence. Lain is unable to answer these questions and is visibly shaken, having a bit of a mental breakdown when suddenly Wired Lain takes over, and acts completely opposite, uncaring and unimpressed.

10. Alice, the person Lain is closest to, has a crush on a teacher, and Lain, or more specifically Lain of the Rumor, reveals this secret to everyone through the Wired.

11. Episode 13, "Ego".

12. Refers to the scene where the laboratory in which she is made is burning down after Rock sabotages it, and she stumbles out, naked and out into the world for the first time.

13. Refers to the scene between Duke Red and Dr. Laughton in which Red goes to Laughton's lab to check on his progress with Tima and asks if she was made with real organs. If Laughton is to be believed, and for the purpose of this paper I do as I see no reason he would lie (Being that constructing Tima itself is illegal, and he also follows with, "Real organs are quicker, but they don't last as long"), then Tima is completely artificial.

14. Refers to the conversation between Duke Red and Tima at the top of the Ziggurat, after the truth of her robotic body is revealed. While it might seem like Tima does not know that she is a robot, I argue that she does not accept her being a robot for the reasons stated.

15. Reacting to the call of the Ziggurat, her design/robotic self is "activated".

16. Tima does not assert her own humanity at the beginning; it is Kenichi that assumes she has simply lost her memories, and that she'll regain them soon, of her family and her name--details that make up a human's life and starts to construct for her her humanity.

17. She was built to sit on the Ziggurat and so it is not really by choice that she does so since the human Tima is gone at that point.

18. This brilliant observation/idea was kindly contributed by a fellow peer, and was a great help in moving past the pessimistic end of Tima to a new way of thinking about her death, for which I am very grateful.

19. Jameson presents postmodernism as a waning of affect, where the problems of modernism, that of alienation and anomie, are no longer applicable, arguing that there is no self to cut ties from, due to the depthlessness and fragmentation of self. There is no complete whole subject, which modernism assumes in its discussion of alienation from self, and instead offers two-dimensionality, a loss of a center, and rather than no affect, there are "free-floating and impersonal" feelings.

20. I use Michel Gondry's film "Interior Design" in which a young lady transforms into a chair in order to live her life the way she wants, and not necessarily conforming to people's expectations of her as well as what and how her dreams and ambitions should be realized. Here, the individual is still there, but perhaps not recognizable in the traditional sense.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Print.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Logic of Late Capitalism. (1990): 6-16. Print.

Napier, Susan J. “When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ and ‘Serial Experiments Lain’.” Science Fiction Studies 29.3 (2002): 418-435. Print.

Orbaugh, Sharalyn. “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity.” Science Fiction Studies 29.3 (2002): 436-452. Print.

"Interior Design" segment in Tokyo. Dir. Michel Gondry. Perf. Ayako Fujitani, Ryo Kase, Ayumi Ito, Nao Ohmori, and Satoshi Tsumabuki. 2008. Film.

Metropolis. Dir. Rintaro. Madhouse, 2001. Film.

Serial Experiments Lain. Dir. Ryutaro Nakamura. Triangle Staff, 1998. TV.

Media(tion) and Trauma in Serial Experiments Lain

If trauma has come to the forefront as a prevalent concern in contemporary culture, it is because trauma studies has come to realize the ripple-effects of trauma. The proliferation of media images is, for some, an inappropriate appropriation of the traumatic event; nonetheless this intersection between trauma and media has become the dominant mode of representation between thing and images, event and reportages. Thus, contrary to Adorno's acute formulation that “[writing] poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Adorno 34, quoted in Luckhurst 5); it has become necessary to ask why “poetry” – and its inverse, pornography – has only become more rampant after the Holocaust. By reading Lain as the site where media (as communication) and trauma (as responses to shock) converge upon one other, the first part of the essay elicits examples where an anime's mediation of its own medium – i.e. a mediation of the anime's own already mediated “reality” – points towards a space of “transmissibility” between media accounts and catastrophic events.[1] In the later parts, the essay briefly examines media outside anime and argues for media's possible mediation of itself. In other words, how trauma moves from a question of retrospective, aesthetic representability to one of temporal and spatial “transmissibilty”.

Serial Experiment Lain begins with the suicide of Lain's schoolmate, Chisa. Soon students receive e-mails from Chisa, telling them how one can exist in the Wired (i.e. digital) world alone. Lain, too, receives Chisa's posthumous e-mail, and is haunted by Chisa's phantom throughout the anime. There are myriad struggles in-between the 13 episodes: the dissolving boundary between online games and reality, Lain's amnesia of her doings in the Wired, rumors and conspiracy theories spreading across the internet. Lain, initiated into the Wired world, soon becomes a god-like entity (a “software”) who transcends the boundaries between reality, the Wired, and other media. In turn, Lain is mediated as an omnipresent “media-figure” in the Wired. Lain's self is correspondingly split into three (largely discontinuous) identities: 1. Lain of “reality”, amnesiac and exposed to traumatic experiences, 2. Lain of “Wired”, aggressive, transcending media boundaries and 3. Lain according to rumors and conspiracies, i.e. a third Lain rejected by 2. and 3. as not-same.[2] Increasingly aware of the porousness of identity and memory in the Wired, Lain decides to go through an “all-reset” process wherein events throughout the 13-episodes are reversed; and only Lain retains knowledge of what has happened. The suicides which acted as catalysts for the story-line are undone; and people of the Lain universe live in blissful ignorance of Lain.

The anti-realistic visual representation of Chisa's suicide – together with the posthumous emails – anticipates a rupture that operates on multiple levels. On a visual level, the suicide is split into a gesture and a consequence, a death-act and death itself. The juxtaposition of typographies (“I . . . don't need to stay in a place like this”) both before and after Chisa's death,[3] coupled with the extreme close-up of Chisa's muttering mouth (fig. 1), suggests a communicative and even performative dimension to the suicide.


(Figure 1)

This rupture can be further developed on a narrative level, where Lain is further exposed to the split dimensions of Chisa's death. While her schoolmates gloss over Chisa's emails as if they were pranks, Lain alone recognizes the communicative gesture. Out of this curiosity, or desire, to know and communicate with the dead, Lain is initiation into the Wired world. Yet, while the communicative and traumatic converge, they do not displace the other; Lain remains haunted by Chisa's ghost made manifest in Lain's own psyche, even after talking to Chisa in the Wired world. In other words, while most schoolmates mourn the death of Chisa, it is Lain who is exposed to the dual specter of trauma: the desires to mourn (the trauma) and communicate (with the dead); but, at the same time, the incongruity of these desires.

That the two desires are incongruous is made apparent when, asked in the Wired how suicide feels, Chisa replies: “[suicide] really hurts :)”. Here, the established context of suicide works against the emphatic use of “really”. The suicide reminds audiences this conversation is occurring in the Wired – as opposed to a reality – and displaces the apparent subject (of genuine “reality”) asserted by this speech-act. Moreover, within the statement itself, the smiley – an ostensible expression of happiness – corrodes the expression of pain immediately preceding it. Juxtaposed together, the irony within this sentence points towards a more general incongruity: that post-traumatic gestures of communication must acknowledge its trauma, which nonetheless undermines what is said by underscoring the singularity of genuine expression.

It would seem that the above incongruity stems from a deferred relation between trauma and a retrospective attempt at representation, thus communication. In this sense, all mediation of trauma, whether it be media accounts or aesthetic representations, always appears post-mortem. Irony, as a challenge towards sincerity, becomes inherent in this attempt at communication, because we think of trauma as a primary event that precedes the secondary, and subsidiary, act of representation.

Yet, recent trauma studies increasingly formulates the affects of trauma as a ripple-effect,[4] i.e. how secondary trauma can be as immediate as what we conventionally consider as “primary” catastrophes. In his essay, “Trauma as Representation”, Wallace raises this question provocatively:

In other words, is representation's connection to trauma always a function of representation's capacity (or incapacity) to illustrate? Is it possible that representation's relation to trauma is not a matter of representation's ability to present again, that it is not a matter of trauma's assimilation or inassimilability as facilitated or precluded by the representational act? . . . After all, isn't it by now clear that certain representations are, in and of themselves, traumatic events? (4)

By italicizing “again”, Wallace suggests that we cannot construe the trauma-representation question in purely temporal terms, that we cannot understand (media/artistic) representation as purely secondary, because it increasingly contains part of the primary that is trauma. E. Ann Kaplan, extrapolating from Martin Hoffman's concept of vicarious trauma,[5] suggests that we can consider an over-exposure to media-images a potential kind of vicarious trauma: . . . some of the responses given by clinicians to Hoffman and Friedman's questions would suggest that visuality links cinema, victims' accounts, and therapists' responses to those accounts. In reporting their work with trauma patients, for example, therapists use language that sounds as if they were creating a film in their minds of the events people narrate . . . the border between television or movie images and the “reality” of her patients' experiences is blurred for the therapist. The comment also confirms the power of visual media to trigger symptoms of vicarious trauma, at least when the viewer is primed by treating trauma victims or by having been a victim himself or herself. (89)

Although far from conclusive, Wallace and Kaplan are formulating a reciprocal relation between media and treatments of trauma. Kaplan, through adopting the idea of vicarious trauma, asserts a continuity between trauma and media. Similarly Wallace, through denying that the trauma-representation question is always one about assimilability, asserts that there is something beyond a linear question of retrospective reference. As opposed to earlier discussions of trauma, which focuses on the impossibility of communicating trauma, recent discussions thus focus more on the overlaps between trauma and representation, and points towards the deficiency in seeing trauma as (primary) and media formulations of trauma as secondary, i.e. a linear account that reduces the trauma question from one of “transmissibility” into one of retrospective reference.

It is, then, important to understand “transmissibility” not only as what can be transmitted – which would re-invoke the question of reference – but to understand “transmissibility” also as an open space where what we conventionally think of as the secondary (the communicative, what can be meant) slips towards the primary (the traumatic, what can only be experienced), and vice versa. An understanding of “transmissibility”, then, should be reformulated in terms of this problematic temporality between media and trauma. If media does not merely seek to make sense of the catastrophe retrospectively, can a mediation of trauma by media – what I would call a media(tion) – anticipate, thus dissipate, to an extent, future traumas?

That this understanding of “transmissibility” opens up a contesting space could be better illustrated by linking two related scenes from the 1st and 11th episode of Lain (Layer 01: Weird, Layer 11: Infornography). Both scenes stem from – but also reformulate – Lain's experience of Chisa and Masami Eiri's suicide.

In layer 01, minutes after she communicates with Chisa on the Wired, we see Lain in a smoke-filled realm. Standing beside train tracks, Lain spots a girl dressed in school-uniform, with a ghastly and ever-morphing face (fig. 2).


(Figure 2)

The train rushes on and soon runs over the girl. Visual-wise, this spatializing posits Lain into a realm that is neither real nor digital. It represents, and is only representative of, a re-enactment of Chisa's death in a realm that is neither memory (because not a flashback), nor action (because nothing is done, only witnessed). This scene (among a line of other similar scenes) is what Freud would call a compulsion to repeat, a futile attempt driven by desire “to master the stimulus retrospectively” (37) – in this case, the trauma of death. With respect to the immediate visuals, then, this scene formulates a rather conventional understanding of trauma; a response-mechanism that always seeks to mediate retrospectively.

By bringing in the question of narrative and temporality, however, this scene anticipates the suicide of another individual that is yet to be narrated. In Layer 09, we are told that Masami Eiri, a god-like entity in the Wired, is also run over by a train years before Chisa's suicide.[6] Yet, already in this scene – with the juxtaposition of Chisa/Eiri's double, shifting face upon a crashing train – Eiri's suicide is anticipated and superimposed upon Chisa's. To further complicate matters, Eiri's death precedes Chisa's in the plot, but occurs after Chisa's in the narraive. In the same scene – indeed within the very image of Chisa/Eiri's unstable, shifting face – a flashback and flashforward is achieved in the same figure.

In his discussion of Resnais' traumatic cinema, Luckhurst suggests that the flashforward, as opposed to the flashback, links it “to the (im)possibility of narrating trauma in film” (190). Further on, Luckhurst observes an “intrinsic transmissibility of trauma in Resnais' work: one site seems to invoke another” (190). Temporality, then, works similarly between Resnais' works and this particular scene in Lain. First, there is indeed a “transmissibility of trauma”, in which both suicides are juxtaposed to form one traumatic image for Lain – and, implicitly, the audience. Time – as history, present experience, and future recognition – is here inter-mingled and mediated without differentiation. Chisa and Eiri's double face at once effaces and covers up the other – but they are, paradoxically, one of the same face. Lain's experience of the two vicarious traumas – one before and one after the narrative plot – thus at once repeats, anticipates and is combined. The two traumas (as external events) here accumulates and constricts upon Lain (who experiences it personally).

We hence reach this alleged “(im)possibility of narrating trauma”, precisely because it is the point where the very concept of temporality is localized and fractured. Instead of positing trauma as an event of pre-defined time and locale, it is experienced (by Lain) inversely as a compressing of such. This (im)possibility – in brackets – does not relish in any ambiguity; rather, it points towards the very transmissibility of the traumatic, propagated across time.

If in Layer 01 trauma is constricted into a single image, by Layer 11 Lain experiences trauma through mediated lenses. The episode opens with a MV-style juxtaposition of scenes from earlier layers. While devoting an episode to recap earlier footages is not uncommon,[7] Nakamura stealthily juxtaposes previously unseen (but similar) images and typographies upon other recycled images, thus at once rehashing and reformulating previous plots and narratives.

In the train-sequence in Layer 01, we see Lain imagining herself the witness of a suicide. A very similar transmission of trauma is done again in Layer 11 – but the two episodes depart in their very method of representation. Where the train-sequence signifies with its anti-realistic aesthetics, in Layer 11 the sequence questions the very reality of presentation. For the sake of analysis, I will break down the sequence into three major scenes, and illustrate by stills:

1. Cyberia Suicide

Here, the suicide of a Wired criminal (a scene from Layer 03) is recapped somewhat authentically, with Lain of “reality” being the witness of the man's death. Yet, between the scenes there are two close-ups upon Lain's eyes that do not belong to the original sequence found in Layer 03. The first image is a side-shot of Lain's left eye (fig. 3),


(Figure 3)

while the second image concludes the sequence with a slightly arced shot of Lain's right eye (fig. 4).


(Figure 4)

Not only do the two shots emphasize Lain as a first-hand witness (something which the original scene does well enough), they break down the very act of witnessing into two partial – left and right – angles, suggesting vividly the highly subjective and aporetic nature of Lain's witnessing. These two shots, then, function in a different realm – as commentaries – against the linear sequence that they interrupt.

2a. Chisa's suicide

After a brief sequence of montages that combine Lain's cityscape against wires, Chisa's suicide in Layer 01 is re-enacted, albeit with two major discrepancies. In the first, a reverse-shot of Chisa's hands show Lain standing in the scene of suicide (fig. 5).


(Figure 5)

Not only does the shot upset the established narrative, the positing of Lain into a reformulated “reality” – as opposed to an imagined realm in the train-scene – suggests a fundamental repositioning of Lain's experience of trauma. Linking scenes 1. and 2a., we can perhaps suggest that a transference has occurred where Lain's first-hand exposure to one suicide has led to her being exposed (retrospectively) to (all) other traumas. In other words, a re-exposure, that is as real as any “primary” event.

2b. Chisa's hands

There are two continuous closeups of Chisa's hands (fig. 6 and 7). Continuous, because they proceed within the same zooming-in shot.[8] This apparent continuity works in tension against the two when we realize that the


(Figure 6)


(Figure 7)

first close-up emphasizes on the “real” (i.e. the normative) style of Lain as anime. The second close-up, however, imitates a “media” (i.e. televised) version of the self-same hand. The loosening – death-embracing – hand of Chisa thus remains constant across two media; a conclusion all the more upsetting when we realize that, on the roof-top, there is no “first-hand” witness – nor any captured footage – of Chisa's suicide. Within this animation, this continuity becomes one without witness.

What these scenes in Lain do, then, is to show how media functions as different levels of discourse that converges around the issue of trauma. The portmanteau “infornography” – the name-sake of Layer 11 – thus departs from pornography in that while the latter is an excess that is nonetheless caught in a single-dimension (a visual fetish), the former is an excess that overflows through different levels of discourse. In other words, “infornography” is the basis for which a media(tion) across various media can occur. Specifically for Lain, we see 1. a media as discussed within the context of the animation, which encompasses questions like the blurred boundary between the real and Wired world, 2. the media that the animation imitates (thus mediates) on a formal level, which includes questions like the splitting and layering of different imitations of other media.

There is a parallel relation between these first two levels of “medium”. Taro, the self-proclaimed boyfriend of Lain, remarks in Layer 03 that “[m]ost people take on a different identity in the Wired than the real world, but [Lain is] totally opposite”. He acutely observes how Lain of “reality” is completely opposite to her “Wired” self, and that the third Lain exists – conceived by others' rumors – precisely as a necessarily mediated version of this split-identity. In this sense, the split between these two levels of “medium” parallels the split of Lain's first two identities. By offering a third level to Lain's identity, Nakamura thus explores a level of media(tion) which links up the first two levels, i.e. the question of what we can locate between the communicative blur (on the first level) and the traumatic split (on the second level).

In this sense, the operation of media(tion) becomes a direct critique of certain aspects of media-culture. The inverse of media(tion), or infornography, is perhaps pornography. To justify this, we can briefly contrast animation against the popular genre of “torture porn”. In her paper on trauma and the rise of the “torture porn” genre, Hallam traces the rise of torture porn “[along] cultural fears and traumas resulting from 9/11 and the subsequent incident at Abu Ghraib” (231), and argues that “[g]raphic violence is used in order to heighten the engagement with reality and with the experience of trauma” (234). Here, Hallam formulates the cathartic effects of torture porn, which finds its cinematic precedence in directors like Sam Peckinpah. Yet, this formulation sidetracks the major concern of trauma – precisely, how a victim cannot frame the overwhelming after-effects of trauma that repeatedly haunts him/her, possibly, but not necessarily, in the form of visuality.

Torture porn series like Hostel and Saw, with their over-arching focus on (“realistic”) visual representation as trauma, mis-equates the traumatic experience to the visual traumatic. Here, while one may argue, as Wallace does, that representation itself becomes a form of trauma; the problem of “transmissibiltiy” is sidetracked. In other words, trauma is mis-taken as a one-dimensional experience; which, as we see in Lain's operation, is not quite the case. There is no inherent intersection between, say, a cutting off of a person's torso in Hostel to 9/11. Representation, in this specific case, can indeed become traumatic; but this does not imply that all representations are traumatic, nor does it engage on the problematic relation between trauma and representation in any way. This trauma becomes un-communicative, is empty, a mere over-exposure of a single level of discourse (visuals, in this case) without any context or consideration for causations, situations, and the post-traumatic. Without, in other words, addressing the foreignness of the foreign, which ultimately begs the question of communicating trauma.

At risk of stigmatizing genres, we may nonetheless formulate a certain opposition between “torture porn” and animation.[9] Anime, as a drawn-out and mediated version of reality, potentially offers us a mediation of traumatic experience. If we contend that (a part of) trauma is always located outside (a narrow, represented version) of reality, then anime – formulated as a site of mediation – points precisely towards the mediated nature of what we call “reality”.

It is precisely the multiple discourses raised by Lain's media(tion) that culminates in Lain's final decision to go through a “all-reset”, where events throughout the 13 episodes of Lain is reversed, and the Lain universe starts anew without being traumatized. This return to apparent innocence, where the events are erased; nonetheless confers no change upon Lain's identity. In other words, we cannot understand the gesture as a simple erasure of memory, for erasure of information about the traumatic suicides does not entail the erasure of the traumatic as experienced by Lain. Rather, we raise questions like what (if not memory) is forgotten, why Lain's erasure of herself from others equates with the erasure of (traumatic) events, why we are only shown how Lain is being forgotten, but not how people forgets Lain, and ultimately, how this forgetting transmits to our society.

In his chapter on the Holocaust, Jean Baudrillard formulates a reverse-process of forgetting that is eerily tangential to the “all-reset” in Lain. In this brief section, Baudrillard argues for an “artificial forgetting” that is effected by a cold medium:

Forgetting extermination is part of extermination, because it is also the extermination of memory, of history, of the social, etc. This forgetting is as essential as the event, in any case unlocatable by us, inaccessible to us in its truth. This forgetting is still too dangerous, it must be effaced by an artificial memory (today, everywhere, it is artificial memories that efface the memory of man, that efface man in his own memory). This artificial memory will be the restaging of extermination - but late, much too late for it to be able to make real waves and profoundly disturb something, and especially, especially through a medium that is itself cold, radiating forgetfulness, deterrence, and extermination in a still more systematic way, if that is possible, than the camps themselves. One no longer makes the Jews pass through the crematorium or the gas chamber, but through the sound track and image track, through the universal screen and the microprocessor. Forgetting, annihilation, finally achieves its aesthetic dimension in this way - it is achieved in retro, finally elevated here to a mass level. (49)

What Baudrillard provokes here, through the term “artificial memory”, is a continuous relation between a forgetting of what is traumatizing – i.e. a psychological process of repression, deferral and, transference – and a forgetting that is “within” the medium, mediated as a “system” that, while having its psychological basis, is inherently “cold” and dehumanized. Here, it is important to note how “artificial memory” departs from memory. This forgetting by the medium is systematic, and by arguing for its prevalence, Baudrillard seems to suggest that this collective forgetting effaces and ultimately over-rides the personal trauma experienced. In other words, where the gas chamber sums up individual deaths, the sound/image “track” is inherently conceived for and through a “cold” collective.

I would argue that an understanding of this “forgetting”, stemming from (an aporetic) memory – but soon achieved via the media as a systematic erasure – is the crux to understanding Lain's “all-reset”. Significantly, Nakamura frames Lain's erasure from Lain's privileged but partial perspective; in other words, instead of showing how the collective forgets the personal – i.e. how people forget Lain – Nakamura shows how Lain effects her own forgetting. This shift of perspective parallels Baudrillard's transition from memory to artificial memory. Moreover, the typography in Layer 11 – “No, it's nothing as ambiguous as memory” (fig. 8) – further echoes Baudrillard. There is, in other words, always other “systems” at work that is beyond the summation of personal memories.

While Baudrillard and Nakamura share similar concerns, I would argue that what Lain does is essentially accounting for Baudrillard's argument in reverse. Through assigning Lain the split-position of a human/software, Nakamura re-orients (i.e. mediates) the medium through a personal lens. Where Baudrillard discusses (the televised) media from a markedly analytic and elevated position – e.g. “you are the screen, and the TV watches you” (Baudrillard 51) – Lain is the medium that “watches” herself, as a person. Since ultimately Lain does not lose either her memories or body, we could perhaps better understand Lain's process of “artificial forgetting” – not as amnesia – but as a disconnection. Any traces of trauma are effaced when the one who experiences it (i.e. Lain) is disconnected from Lain's society at large.

Although Lain is disconnected from her society, we still see a Lain questioning herself through the TV screen (fig. 9). Lain is not so much effaced as repressed by a society that has already mis-construed her unique traumatic experience as rumors and conspiracies. Lain's incessant questioning of her self, is hence a viscious corollary to the society's apathy towards, and misconstrual of, her concerns. It is this apathy that effects the “all-reset” as a total repression; it is this repression that brings in a temporal rupture between the collective and the personal. Privileging Lain's point of view, we as audiences become a witness of how collective, artificial amnesia cannot sufficiently do away with personal trauma. Instead, the personal (as victim) is left behind – is repressed to a different “time” – in relation to a society that has “moved on”, precisely at the cost of leaving behind the victim. Thus, even when a grown-up Arisu meets Lain – who has not aged – in bodily form, i.e. in the “real” world, she cannot recognize Lain. The forgetting of trauma comes at the cost of forgetting the traumatized.

Through an animation that personifies the media, Nakamura opposes media(tion) – as a possible form of multi-discourse within the medium – to pornography, a sensationalist but always partial account of trauma. In other words, while Baudrillard sees TV-culture as a system of visual traumatic, proliferating one-dimensional images “which suggests nothing, which mesmerizes, which itself is nothing but a screen” (51); Nakamura posits Lain as an alternative media, a media(tion) – which suggests many things, which mediates, which itself contains multiple screens. Through framing the “all-reset” as a reversal, Nakamura thus points out the costs of undoing (traumatic) extermination, how this erasure is not forgetting, and how society at large – having repressed the trauma – runs the risk of re-experiencing this trauma as it once did, without knowing that what it takes to be the traumatic is, perhaps, a forgetting of previous traumas.


NOTES

1. An idea increasingly formulated by critics after Caruth's idea that different traumatic events could be transcribed with a renewed concept of history-writing, with emphasis on the psychological affects of trauma (see Caruth, also Luckhurst). Kaplan also discusses the idea of “transmissibility” in the context of a “translation” of trauma across cultures.

2. The tripartite split of Lain's identity is already planned in the early stages of Serial Experiment Lain, as drafts of three separate Lains can be found in Lain's concept art-book. There are, interestingly, certain biblical overtones in the narrative of Lain, in which Lain's initial position as a powerful being conceived by Masami Eiri (the “God” of Wired), and ultimate sacrifice of her real-world identity (the “all-reset”), parallels the Bible's narrative. But this discussion is beyond the scope of this essay.

3. Chiaki Konaka, the writer of Lain's screenplay, cites Godard's use of typography as a heavy influence. For details, see Nakamura's interview published in the Asian Movie Technical Journal HK in France. http://www.konaka.com/alice6/lain/hkint_e.html

4. I chose to compare the breaking-down of trauma/representation as primary/secondary to a ripple because, while the initial waves of a ripple stem from an “origin”, waves rebounding from the edges of the frame would in turn interfere with the said “origin”. The ripples (of trauma) are always framed because it always occurs within specific cultural contexts, and is propagated through some media.

5. Vicarious traumatization (VT), is a psychiatric formulation which describes the transference of trauma between patients and psychiatrists. Vicarious trauma can be transferred by the communicative acts like patients' recounts of the traumatic event. Symptoms of vicarious trauma include insomnia, emotional lability, sexual difficulties, among others. (See Kaplan, especially 87-91, who borrows from Hoffman's work, Trauma and the Therapist).

6. Not coincidentally, Eiri also committed suicide in order to “live” completely in the Wired realm.

7. It is, in fact, one of the dominant traditions unique to Japanese animation. Some of its conventional functions are: i) to reiterate the plot, ii) to provide a brief hiatus between two episodes, and iii) to introduce the anime to new audiences. Nakamura, however, already goes beyond this conventional mode when he includes new events and images into the sequence. The framing of this recap as a MV – with its rhythmic use of montage, jump-cuts and speeding up in accordance to the rhythm of the background music – also calls into attention the double media (a MV within an anime) of presentation.

8. There are, of course, no “zooming-ins” for animation in the filmic sense. I would argue that this is another instance in which Nakamura mediates across media through animation.

9. I am here taking torture porn as its own category instead of, say, as an example of cinema. As illustrated by recent films which include, but are not exhausted, by torture porn elements (e.g. Von Trier's Antichrist), media(tion) is by no means something restricted to animation alone. Nonetheless, a cinematic engagement of the traumatic must always be something more than the visual traumatic.

WORKS CITED

Baudrillard, Jean. “Holocaust”. Simulacra and Simulations. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. 49-52. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961. Print.

Hallam, Lindsay. “Genre Cinema as Trauma Cinema: Post 9/11 Trauma and the rise of 'Torture Porn' in Recent Horror Films”. Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives. Ed. Mick Broderick &Antonio Traverso. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 228-36. Print.

Kaplan, Ann E. “Vicarious Trauma and 'Empty' Empathy: Media Images of Rwanda and the Iraq War”. Trauma Culture: the Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 87-100. Print.

Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Serial Experiments Lain. Dir. Ryutaro Nakamura.Triangle Staff, 1998. Animation.

Wallace, Isabelle. “Trauma as Representation: A Mediation on Manet and Johns”. Trauma and Visuality in Modernity. Ed. Lisa Saltzman & Eric M. Rosenberg. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2006. 3-27. Print.

The Virtual Frontier: Social Organizations Redefined

Durarara!!, a 2010 anime series directed by Takahiro Omori, explores the Ikebukuro district of modern-day Tokyo and the subcultures that emerge within its boundaries. Chief among these subcultures is the presence of an internet gang known as the Dollars, a group that ostensibly serves as a coping mechanism for those at odds with commodity-driven societal norms. Unlike traditional organizations, members of the Dollars rarely engage each other in reality; rather, they utilize an online forum in order to exchange ideas. Because the internet serves as their medium of interaction, members of the Dollars tacitly share a code of anonymity among themselves, challenging the notion that virtual associations provide a viable alternative to those created in reality. However, anonymity also sets virtual organizations apart from their physical world counterparts in that a single overarching ideology is much more difficult to force onto a group comprised of anonymous individuals. Throughout the course of Durarara!!, the associations of the Dollars, created in a virtual space, have significant ramifications for the physical world. Groups of people physically segregated by norms of conventional society create a new social organization based in the virtual world; in this way the new method of social organization that circumvents norms and constraints of the physical world manifests itself in order to redefine what constitutes a society and its divisions.

Within the universe of Durarara!!, members of the Dollars not only provide a haven for the alienated but at times actively seek to alter their surroundings, moving the internet gang from the realm of simple internet communities into that of social movements. Marxist suppositions regarding alienation found in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the quintessential text for explaining revolutionary motivations, provide a useful contrast with which to analyze the modern-day forces which draw social divisions between the individuals within a given population. The fragmentation of individuals in traditional Marxist theory revolves around access the means of production, giving rise to two distinct parties: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, also characterized as the working and ruling classes, respectively. The distinction between the two groups is remarkably clear-cut: those who own the means of production are members of the ruling class and those who must borrow temporary access are members of the working class (Tucker 474). The fact that one group dominates the means of production and thus restricts the livelihood of the other is an important consideration to keep in mind. Naturally, the proletariat's aim is the dissolution of the bourgeoisie's monopoly and hierarchical structure, while the bourgeoisie wishes to maintain its dominant position in the social hierarchy, drawing the two classes into conflict.

While this class-conflict model has traditionally commanded enormous respect in academia, scholars have debated the merits of its application to the modern setting. At times, the world of Durarara!! seems to adhere to Marx's and Engel's divisions between the haves and have-nots, but closer scrutiny reveals a new method of distinguishing populations. The characters of Durarara!!, specifically the members of the Dollars, exemplify a new approach, utilizing societal norms as the driving force between societal divisions. Social movement scholars refer to individuals who have been pushed away by societal norms as the "disaffected", an apt description for members of the Dollars (Edelman 289). Main characters within the universe display certain physical or personality quirks that serve to highlight their separate state of being from the so-called normal passerby. In Figure 1, Heiwajima Shizuo, a character notorious for his displays of superhuman strength when he is enraged, lifts a car over his head while trying to play the socially acceptable role of a gas station attendant.


(Figure 1: Ikebukuro-ers are terrorized by Heiwajima Shizuo's penchant for violence)

Omori deliberately exaggerates his penchant for violence and his destructive abilities, which are showcased numerous times throughout the series, in order to further emphasize the heightened degree of separation between Shizuo and society created by fear. This is apparent in the dialogue between extras during numerous episodes: "Sh-Shizuo! That's Heiwajima Shizuo!", they exclaim, generally with an air of panic ("Transcending Oneself"). Visual cues are provided as well; the extra characters, who are supposedly integrated into mainstream society through adherence to its norms, are deliberately left without color. Shizuo and the rest of the Dollars are purposely given multiple colors by Omori in order to further label them as members of the disaffected group. Societal norms hold no sway over members of the Dollars either by each member's individual choice or by circumstances outside their control.

Because they do not fit into the Marxist model of alienation, the disaffected members of the Dollars require a new type of mechanism in order to offset their sense of societal disconnect; as a result, they come to rely on the internet forum of the Dollars as their medium of interaction. Within this virtual space, the characters benefit from anonymity, which negates the individual quirks which explicitly separate them from the rest of Ikebukuro. Omori intends for the name "Dollars" itself to be understood as a Japanese pun on the English word "wanderers"; in an early episode, one of the characters, a schoolboy named Kida Masaomi, points out the likeliest origin of the group's moniker in a conversation with his friend Ryugamine Mikado: "Yeah, 'dollars' from 'one


(Figure 2: The Dollars website login screen)

dollars'", to which Mikado replies "What are 'wanderers'?" ("Opening"). Through this rather obvious pun, Omori intends for the Dollars to be understood as a space to serve those wandering aimlessly through society, represented by Ikebukuro, without the ability to form associations with others. Figure 2 shows the Dollars login screen. While the connection between the coin-shaped logo can be easily discerned, the symbolic value of the screen is far more important: it serves as a tangible cue for the viewer to understand that the characters are entering into the virtual space, coming under the veil of anonymity and thus removing the barriers of societal norms that hindered them in a physical setting. In this sense, the alienated characters cease being "wanderers" whenever they enter this virtual safe space.

However, the pun also contains a second, more revealing purpose behind the group's naming that centers around the idea of being able to exchange currency. The creation and perpetuation of mainstream societal norms gives rise to numerous different subcultures, spaces in which individuals experiencing similar forms of alienation can associate with each other; the Dollars community differs from these in that the group has no single defining characteristic, encompassing all forms of alienation. Thus, all members of the community share an important commonality: a desire for a space of acceptance where the sharing of countercultural ideas will not lead to persecution. The Dollars satiates this desire to an extreme by foregoing any form of hierarchy and advocating that individuals continue to adhere to their own belief systems once integrated into the community. Indeed, the Dollars appeals to the alienated Ikebukuro-ers primarily because it lacks a status quo to which its members must conform. Kyohei Kadota, a member of the Dollars, notes that "since there's no top [to the Dollars' hierarchy], I don't feel like I've been placed under anyone" ("Run Around"). Members of the gang retain their own independent doctrines and beliefs but at the same time their virtual association as Dollars. This raises the question of whether or not the term "equal" may be used to describe the relationship among members of the group. Researchers contend that "'average citizens' do not exist" within the space of the internet due to inequalities in resource distribution among the population (Warf 161). However, use of physical-world privilege in a virtual setting assumes use of real-world identity in order to utilize those privileges. The anonymity inherent to the Dollars' internet identities negates any physical-world advantages members might possess; all one requires to enter the Dollars website is the password that all members share. The dual conditions of anonymity and freedom of ideology coupled with its internet medium distinguish the Dollars as a subculture vastly different from anything that might be achieved in the real world.

Surprisingly, the Dollars sometimes forego these privileges and clash directly with the mainstream social organizations in order to elicit some measure of change in the physical world, becoming a progressive movement in


(Figure 3: Members of the Dollars reveal themselves and gain color in the process, much to Yagiri Namie's chagrin)

the process. The most prevalent example of this phenomenon occurs with Ryugamine Mikado, the founder of the Dollars, as he call a gathering of his online companions to challenge, Yagiri Namie, an antagonist who serves as a representation of corporate greed in Japan. Prior to the scene, Mikado asks all the members of the Dollars to meet in front of Sunshine City, a public space in the physical world; when the antagonist refuses to give into his demands, he uses his cellular telephone in a dramatic fashion to send a text message to all the Dollars to reveal themselves and intimidate the enemy with numbers. Again, the extras characters are grey in color to indicate their status as normal, integrated members of society, non-participants in the Ikebukuro subculture. During Mikado's confrontation, however, the camera pans out to show the entire crowd changing from grey to gaining color as the Dollars reveal their identities, illustrated in Figure 3. In this instance, a remarkable event transpires: virtual associations formed in the Dollars' online community spill into the physical world. Moreover, ordinary, seemingly non-alienated citizens reveal themselves to be part of the movement; associations between the disaffected and the integrated are demonstrated to be impossible to form in the physical world because of the presence of societal norms, as evidenced by the disaffection the characters experience. Omori seems to comment on the apparent superiority of the virtual over the physical for forming associations.

Real-life similar flash mob protests paralleling Mikado's have been conducted against corporate Japan, the most high-profile of which denounced then-Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's neoliberal policies and Japan's involvement in the war in Iraq (Hayashi 90). The protest organizers usurped public spaces in the pop-culture heart of Tokyo, Shibuya, with a combination of new media technologies in order to overcome the cultural and societal norms preached by the government. Utilizing "rave demos", spontaneous demonstrations of loud, raucous techno music, protestors "and other participants in rave demos...reject the geometry so admired by militarized right-wing organizations" (107). In a setting similar to the virtual space created by the Dollars, the protest organizers were able to overcome the government's constricting norms and give a voice to those who disagreed with Koizumi's actions. Another interesting case presents itself in China, where the government contends with the Telegraph protest, in which Chinese citizens silently protest oppressive government practices by walking in a predetermined location on Sundays at 2pm ; the organizers' purpose is to usurp public spaces, closely monitored by the government, for their own revolutionary purposes (Hsieh). In both instances, organizers utilize the internet to generate protest actions that spill over into the physical world, allowing the disaffected to participate in physical displays of discontent with social norms exclusive to the physical world. Mirroring the actions of the Chinese protestors, the Dollars transform from alienated refugees looking for a subculture to shelter them into a social movement capable of evoking alterations to the physical world through virtual action.

However, while the model of virtual association acts to protect members of the Dollars from societal norms, it also makes coordination of real-world activity difficult as it allows individuals to forgo creation of physical


(Figure 4: Celty and Mikado make peace over their earlier misunderstanding regarding Celty's head)

associations. In fact, Omori addresses the characters' lack of physical associations on more than one occasion through their interactions with each other in the physical world. Indeed, most members of the Dollars inadvertently impede each others' progress towards their goals throughout the course of the series. Celty Sturlson, a headless motorcycle courier who is also a member of the Dollars, often falls victim to other members of the group who mistake her intentions, believing her to be a monster out for blood. Celty's end goal is to reclaim her missing head. In Figure 4, Celty, having been foiled by a misguided Mikado in an attempt to finally reunite with head, finally acknowledges that she must rely on building an association with him in the physical world in order to gain his cooperation; thus, she shares her unbelievable past with him. Mikado's inner monologue regarding Celty's revelation indicates Omori's stance on the matter: "Normally, every part of [Celty's] story would be unbelievable. But, mysteriously enough, I believed every single word of it" ("The First and Only"). In this situation, Omori's desire is not to elevate virtual associations above physical associations in terms of effectiveness; rather, the director's message is that each type has its strengths. While virtual associations allow disaffected individuals to circumvent societal norms that would otherwise hinder the formation of associations, physical associations are important in fostering understanding among individuals. In terms of fulfilling the role of a social movement, the consequences of placing anonymity and virtual associations on a pedestal appear to hinder the Dollars' ability to efficiently execute any strategy.

Ultimately, once the virtual associations are revealed in the real world, the anonymity that protected the disaffected from persecution at the hands of societal norms disappears. For the Dollars, revelation of members' identities have a significant impact on the characters' lives in the physical world. For example, in Figure 5 Celty finds herself pursued by the police while trying to make her deliveries, and other members of the gang are attacked by rival factions looking to gain dominance over the previously hidden group ("A Sudden Turn").


(Figure 5: Celty is cornered by traffic cops, who are unafraid of her otherworldly nature and powers once she reveals herself as a member of the Dollars)

Of note is the camera angle Omori chooses, which leaves Celty cornered with no hope of escape. With the removal of its anonymity, the subculture that is the Dollars suddenly becomes a tangible target for those looking to gain power through enforcement of societal norms. Literature helps to explain this occurrence; The Coming Insurrection, a manifesto written by the Invisible Committee, states that "Visibility must be avoided...once we become visible our days will be numbered. Either we will be in a position to pulverize [the state's] reign in short order, or we'll be crushed in no time" (Invisible Committee 76). Clearly, the Dollars' removal of anonymity creates vulnerability because physical associations now exist whether they want them or not; society as a whole may now apply a standard born from societal norms to the disaffected, who have lost their hiding place.

Omori also contends that the veil of user anonymity derived from virtual associations is not always beneficial even when it does exist, as malcontents may usurp control of these virtually-run social communities for their own purposes. In Durarara!!, one such exemplar is Orihara Izaya, an information dealer and member of the Dollars who


(Figure 6: Orihara Izaya demeans Kamichika Rio's life choices and reveals human nature as petty, encouraging her to end her life)

copes with his disaffection from society by manipulating the actions surrounding other gang members. In one instance, he capitalizes on the self-destructive tendencies of a girl named Kamichika Rio, coaxing her to jump off the top of a building: "No matter what sort of worries you have, everyone's just a simple splotch. Splotches. No exceptions" ("Between Truth and Lies"). Izaya's demeaning behavior illustrates the risks to particularly vulnerable disaffected individuals who rely on "back places", communities where self-destructive behaviors are condoned as their mechanism for coping with their inabilities to adjust to mainstream society (Adler 40). As before, virtual actions result in some occurrence in the physical world; however, in this instance, the virtual association between Rio and Izaya almost leads to her physical demise, as shown in Figure 6. Of particular note in this scene is Izaya's dominant position over Rio. Both in the virtual world and now in reality, Izaya holds Rio's life in the palm of his hands. Throughout Durarara!!, Izaya encourages infighting, manipulates individuals and ultimately usurps the Dollars for his own purposes. Omori intends for Izaya to represent the dangers of allowing virtual associations to dictate one's actions in the real world, as the anonymity intrinsic to mediated relationships can be as much a hindrance, if not a danger, as it is an advantage.

Technology plays a pivotal role in the interactions of the Dollars and also illustrates some of the dangers that stem from extreme reliance on it. In some instances, characters within Durarara!! completely forgo traditional forms of association, choosing instead to focus solely on virtual associations. Though she eventually learns the error of her ways, Celty's early appearances are


(Figure 7: Celty's cellular telephone, her only means of communicating with others, as she cannot speak.)

rife with examples of this complete reliance on technology. Because she cannot speak, she must always carry her cellular telephone in order to use the text functions to communicate as shown in Figure 7. However, she takes this habit to an extreme in a later instance by instant messaging her roommate, a mob doctor named Shinra, from different rooms within the same apartment ("Beyond Truth and Lies"). One might interpret this action as a slight to Shinra, as Celty openly admits that she cannot stand his presence; however, Omori purposefully sets the two characters apart. Celty chooses to distance herself from Shinra for the same reason that Rio associates herself with a like-minded self-abuser, though he turns out to be the false Izaya: she believes that she can survive exclusively with virtual associations. As with Rio, Celty soon comes to the realization that she needs physical associations as well in order to achieve her goals.

Clearly, the characters of Durarara!! experience something special as they move through Ikebukuro. Despite their lack of adherence to society's expectations, they are able to go through their days because of their involvement in the Dollars. For these individuals, society now has two interconnected spheres. Omori's work illustrates the dual nature of associations as well as the increasing power of virtual associations over events in the physical world. In this way, a new social organization emerges, rooted in both physical and virtual reality, where the actions taken in can have an impact in the other. Thus, the question arises: can virtual associations provide a truly viable alternative route for physical associations? Perhaps not, but they can certainly aid the disaffected finding their way into a new mainstream society, one that they have the potential to redefine for themselves in ways never seen before.


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