For those disappointed by Texhnolyze, why?

Is rubbish at everything he tries to do. Not even the creators liked the result of the anime.

no absolutely not. In fact Ergo Proxy is way better in both style AND substance.

so is Ergo Proxy. The points are hinted all over the show. Some of them are subtextual. You just need to deduce and connect them all.

Btw i just finished rewatching Ergo Proxy two days ago and Texhnolyze last month so my memory is quite fresh.

@TRC_Randy Alright, then maybe you can help me understand.

Can you please explain to me what the message of Ergo Proxy was ?

@Moonspeak It tells you to understand the complex allegories (with sociologal, political, philosophical and religious themes used throughout the show) that show the reality of the world

@TRC_Randy Alright, then maybe you can help me understand.

Can you please explain to me what the message of Ergo Proxy was ?

@Moonspeak this is the full explanation to Ergo Proxy
https://cureclover.livejournal.com/759.html

But to sum up

@TRC_Randy Thank you.

That, my friend, is a plot.

Not a point.

You know, even the Pokemon movies have plots.

My question was :

Does EP have a message, a point to make, or is it just like I said, all style no substance, like a Pokemon movie ?

What is the view of EP, what is the art trying to show us through this plot ?

Does it judge that punishment in a certain way, or does it just enjoy showing emo eyeliner with post grunge music ?

You guys have yet to show me any kind of direction or intent, sorry to be obtuse.

Edit :

Alright, there's something in your link worth mentioning :


So, in short, EP says humans need meaning in order to live ?

That's pretty boring and unoriginal compared to Texhnolyze if you ask me, and you could have put it in a way simpler fashion...

But here you go, not so complex after all, you don't need christian philosophers like Descartes or Pascal to have this opinion, it's the base of religious mindset.

Opinion largely discredited in modern philosophy btw, Sartre would say one thing or two about the fact you don't need meaning/purpose to live.

@WitherThrakh Well, that does not seem super clear to me.

In fact, your word salad means nothing.

"Understand the complex allegories that show the reality of the world" ?

Sounds like a 90s new age guru who's just avoiding to explain himself.

In short, a mystic, not a thinker.

A show whose point is just "ooooooh seeeeee I'm complex, I'm quoting ancient authors" without a clear message is not deep, it's just void and pretentious.

You want authors ?

Here's Horace on this kind of behaviour :


What is clear in your mind is simple to say.

You want others ?

Here's Nietzsche :


Or


When you have something of worth to say, you WANT to be understood by others, so you try to make it simple.

When you just want the image of intelligence, you disguise your void of thought under useless "complexity".

So I say again :

Ergo Proxy is all style, no substance.

It has nothing to say.

The point of Texhnolyze, on the other hand, is clear as day : humanity is doomed, no matter what we do.

It's nihilism in pure form, it shows that you can try to be violent, non violent, turn yourself into machines, believe in gods... there's no hope of escaping that.

You can find value in the friends you meet in this journey, but it will hurt anyways in the end.

As I said, I don't agree with this perspective.

But at least it's fucking CLEAR.

EP and its matrix-style-post-grunge "duuuh just understand complexity" mysticism is just bollocks compared to that.

@TRC_Randy Thank you.

That, my friend, is a plot.

Not a point.

You know, even the Pokemon movies have plots.

My question was :

Does EP have a message, a point to make, or is it just like I said, all style no substance, like a Pokemon movie ?

What is the view of EP, what is the art trying to show us through this plot ?

Does it judge that punishment in a certain way, or does it just enjoy showing emo eyeliner with post grunge music ?

You guys have yet to show me any kind of direction or intent, sorry to be obtuse.

Edit :

Alright, there's something in your link worth mentioning :


So, in short, EP says humans need meaning in order to live ?

That's pretty boring and unoriginal compared to Texhnolyze if you ask me, and you could have put it in a way simpler fashion...

But here you go, not so complex after all, you don't need christian philosophers like Descartes or Pascal to have this opinion, it's the base of religious mindset.

Opinion largely discredited in modern philosophy btw, Sartre would say one thing or two about the fact you don't need meaning/purpose to live.

okay then, when you say "substance" what do you exactly mean? How does Texhnolyze have it while Ergo Proxy and Pokemon don't?

@TRC_Randy An intent, a message.

You can make art for art's sake, because you enjoy doing it.

Like Pokemon.

It's alright, you don't have to have a message everytime you draw something, I get it.

But you can also have an artist vision, something you want to show to others, and use your art to do it, be it movie making, poetry or animation.

Classic tragedies worked this way, Racine for example wanted to shame human passions.

You can see this in manga and anime as well, in Berserk Miura had his own vision of existentialism (life is worth living and fighting for, even the darkest one), expressed through his story.

Art is subjective of course, so we can read something different in the same pieces, it's fine.

But what I don't like in EP is this :

Taking the symbols of "deep thinking" (quoting authors etc) without having actually anything deep to say.

It's just a pretentious show.

Saying humans need meaning is what any priest preaches since hundreds of years, it's not a novel idea.

It's nothing deep, but it wants you to think it is.

So the show compensates with quotes and aesthetic to cover up this void.

That is what mystics do.

Boring conformist messages, hundreds of years old, dressing up as super deep masterpieces.

On the other hand, Texhnolyze brings something new in my eyes.

It's not just a slow sad show, it explores the options humanity considers to survive in the future, and says all are fated to fail.

It's almost the reverse of EP : it says no matter where you think you can find meaning, there is no salvation ahead.

It does not quote any fancy authors, but has more subtle references, like the kind of artwork used :

https://guriguriblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/texhnolyze-2/

It's not in your face, but you get the message the same : the land you see shows that believing future is full of hope is a lie.

If you stop focusing on future and its false promises, you may start to enjoy what you already have in the present, like friends such as Ran.

(or even the slow pace of the show, the first episode with its silent atmosphere for example ;p)

In my view, this is a way more interesting idea and view of the world ;)

Edit :

@WitherThrakh Maybe so, would you be so kind as to enlighten me then ?

You can say "complex" and "allegories" a hundred times more, this will not advance my understanding further I fear.

Ce que l'on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément

then maybe Ergo Proxy's message is about futuristic mankind's organic intelligent creations desiring for their Creators' redemption or sth like that? Would that be what you're looking for?

Besides, i think that's a bit of a narrow idea on "substance". I mean the word itself also means the subject matter of sth. It also means importance, validity or significance. So yeah, in essence even Pokemon can have "substance". Just maybe not as great as others.

nah i'd go even further than that. Art has creativity and imagination at its core which both of them are forms of intellectualism - the very thing that drove every thinker in existence.

i understand but you'd have to bring examples directly from the show first before saying the show as a whole is pretentious.

not really. Like you said it's nihilism in it's purest form which i like what it does. It goes a bit further by saying mankind is doomed no matter what alternatives they try but that's all of it.

Kino's Journey (2003) for example tackles nihilism as well (in its own way ofc) but takes only one episode to do that (it was ep 5 i think).

And then there's Ergo Proxy. I found the aesthetics way more appealing than Texhnolyze. I found the themes of solace, redemption, purpose, false utopia etc it explores more interesting and significant than Texhnolyze.

oh i honestly disliked it. The first couple of eps generally with the unnecessary focus on heavy breathing and all.

@TRC_Randy You tell me : is that really a message ?

Saying "here are characters doing something totally unrelated to our world, enjoy" is not it in my opinion.

An artist having a message is simple : It means they tell something to you, directly. It means to convey an intent, an idea they want to persuade you of.

EP can be cool art, but it never speaks to me, I do not see an author's vision, or in such a convoluted way it loses me.

If you tell me that EP is trying to say the following :

"That story is about you : the lack of meaning will make you suffer the same, you are that creation longing for redemption."

I'll grant you that this is indeed a clear message.

But I'm often getting the feeling it's lost under layers of distractions, like the fancy authors name drops.

Here's an example of such pointless quotes :



(at 8:00)

What purpose does it serve in the episode, or even the rest of the show ?

None.

Watch it again if you don't believe me.

But it sounds pretty and fancy to quote 20th century french poets, so why not do it.

Here's another one :



Wow, italian now, getting crazy fancy over here. Still no point, but sounds amazing.

Do you get why I'm telling all style, no substance ?

EP is a 2000 teenager made anime.

It wants to rebel, but only quotes authors of conformity. It doesn't understand itself.

It wants to dive into themes it has little to say about.

Don't get me wrong, you guys can enjoy EP, it's fine.

But it only repeats what every religion has been saying since the age of Socrates, nothing more.

Nothing deep, nothing new.

Just emo eyeliner, guns, and a banger OP.

@Quanda1eDing1e
maybe they are entertained by different things than you are and they are actually entertained by it and not watching it to just show off or whatever imaginary hidden motivation you've come up with

@witherthrakh
i dropped it after 3 episodes the first time i watched it, then i rewatched it after some recommendations from friends to give it another try.
never found it boring, i actually like the first arc of the series quite a bit. however i still think the first few episodes are pretty shitty.

tbh i don't like this "he's like a dog who only knows fighting..." kind of character, i think it's hard to buy and kinda lame.
then there's yoshii who sees himself as some kind of accelerationist provocateur or whatever. also lame.
i found the show pretty "edgy" and overly pessimistic the first time. ichise getting cut up and grunting forever still strikes me as more funny than harrowing or whatever, it's just too over the top, and it's not clear why we're sitting through a lot of this early material other than to be convinced "this world is extremely brutal, everyone is violent and selfish and sucks," but why? if it's a "this is what human nature really is" kind of thing (which i don't think is the case, but that's how it seems in the beginning of the series) i'm not really interested. i still don't like yoshii that much, but on the whole i think the series does have much more to offer than how i initially pegged it.

@Quanda1eDing1e
maybe they are entertained by different things than you are and they are actually entertained by it and not watching it to just show off or whatever imaginary hidden motivation you've come up with

@witherthrakh
i dropped it after 3 episodes the first time i watched it, then i rewatched it after some recommendations from friends to give it another try.
never found it boring, i actually like the first arc of the series quite a bit. however i still think the first few episodes are pretty shitty.

tbh i don't like this "he's like a dog who only knows fighting..." kind of character, i think it's hard to buy and kinda lame.
then there's yoshii who sees himself as some kind of accelerationist provocateur or whatever. also lame.
i found the show pretty "edgy" and overly pessimistic the first time. ichise getting cut up and grunting forever still strikes me as more funny than harrowing or whatever, it's just too over the top, and it's not clear why we're sitting through a lot of this early material other than to be convinced "this world is extremely brutal, everyone is violent and selfish and sucks," but why? if it's a "this is what human nature really is" kind of thing (which i don't think is the case, but that's how it seems in the beginning of the series) i'm not really interested. i still don't like yoshii that much, but on the whole i think the series does have much more to offer than how i initially pegged it.

@TRC_Randy You tell me : is that really a message ?

Saying "here are characters doing something totally unrelated to our world, enjoy" is not it in my opinion.

An artist having a message is simple : It means they tell something to you, directly. It means to convey an intent, an idea they want to persuade you of.

EP can be cool art, but it never speaks to me, I do not see an author's vision, or in such a convoluted way it loses me.

If you tell me that EP is trying to say the following :

"That story is about you : the lack of meaning will make you suffer the same, you are that creation longing for redemption."

I'll grant you that this is indeed a clear message.

But I'm often getting the feeling it's lost under layers of distractions, like the fancy authors name drops.

Here's an example of such pointless quotes :



(at 8:00)

What purpose does it serve in the episode, or even the rest of the show ?

None.

Watch it again if you don't believe me.

But it sounds pretty and fancy to quote 20th century french poets, so why not do it.

Here's another one :



Wow, italian now, getting crazy fancy over here. Still no point, but sounds amazing.

Do you get why I'm telling all style, no substance ?

EP is a 2000 teenager made anime.

It wants to rebel, but only quotes authors of conformity. It doesn't understand itself.

It wants to dive into themes it has little to say about.

Don't get me wrong, you guys can enjoy EP, it's fine.

But it only repeats what every religion has been saying since the age of Socrates, nothing more.

Nothing deep, nothing new.

Just emo eyeliner, guns, and a banger OP.

@TRC_Randy

What about episode 15 then ?



Here's a good way to waste 24 minutes of my life indeed.

It's cool they wanted to copy the Cowboy Bebop episodic thing, but it's hard to take the deep complex allegories of the show seriously after this, don't you think ?

At least Texhnolyze was consistent, in tone and vision.

Also the names are such obvious references it hurts : Cogito, Ergo Proxy, Daedalus...

I mean come on, we get it Mr. Anime, you've read Meditations... what's the point to repeat it all again, with nothing more to add ?



It's got teenager show written all over it, just surfing on that sweet post Eva wave where everything must be about pretending to question oneself.

Makes me think of weebs who believe NieR:Automata is deep because the big robots have philosopher names while you shoot rockets at them.

Just look at the autoreiv names in EP : Derrida, Lacan, Husserl, Berkeley...

Point in the story ?

None, again.

But it sounds smart, so we'll put it in.

New kind of marketing, but marketing still.

Same as grunge ;)

@TRC_Randy

So, a plot device episode to solve the impossible Mc Guffin quest.

You know what I believe ?

The writers had 0 idea where they were going with that escape from the city, aside from looking cool.

They lost their creative steam, and stuck themselves in the plot, so they took the easy route :

"Oh fuck it, let's finish this in the same city from the start and have a nonsense TV quizz wrap this up"

This whole series reeks of mediocrity to me, just look at the dialog.

As I said, it's fine.

You can enjoy your show the way you want, I can enjoy mine.

We don't have to agree there.

@Moonspeak ofc we don't have to. Just in a discussion such as this you have to tackle it objectively first and foremost.

@TRC_Randy Objectively... when talking about art ?



This isn't rocket science my friend, there is no absolute objective truth behind our own experiences of this medium.

@Moonspeak "objective" as in personal feelings aside not "inherent truth".

@TRC_Randy An intent, a message.

You can make art for art's sake, because you enjoy doing it.

Like Pokemon.

It's alright, you don't have to have a message everytime you draw something, I get it.

But you can also have an artist vision, something you want to show to others, and use your art to do it, be it movie making, poetry or animation.

Classic tragedies worked this way, Racine for example wanted to shame human passions.

You can see this in manga and anime as well, in Berserk Miura had his own vision of existentialism (life is worth living and fighting for, even the darkest one), expressed through his story.

Art is subjective of course, so we can read something different in the same pieces, it's fine.

But what I don't like in EP is this :

Taking the symbols of "deep thinking" (quoting authors etc) without having actually anything deep to say.

It's just a pretentious show.

Saying humans need meaning is what any priest preaches since hundreds of years, it's not a novel idea.

It's nothing deep, but it wants you to think it is.

So the show compensates with quotes and aesthetic to cover up this void.

That is what mystics do.

Boring conformist messages, hundreds of years old, dressing up as super deep masterpieces.

On the other hand, Texhnolyze brings something new in my eyes.

It's not just a slow sad show, it explores the options humanity considers to survive in the future, and says all are fated to fail.

It's almost the reverse of EP : it says no matter where you think you can find meaning, there is no salvation ahead.

It does not quote any fancy authors, but has more subtle references, like the kind of artwork used :

https://guriguriblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/texhnolyze-2/

It's not in your face, but you get the message the same : the land you see shows that believing future is full of hope is a lie.

If you stop focusing on future and its false promises, you may start to enjoy what you already have in the present, like friends such as Ran.

(or even the slow pace of the show, the first episode with its silent atmosphere for example ;p)

In my view, this is a way more interesting idea and view of the world ;)

Edit :

@WitherThrakh Maybe so, would you be so kind as to enlighten me then ?

You can say "complex" and "allegories" a hundred times more, this will not advance my understanding further I fear.

Ce que l'on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément

Okay, I'd agree that Texhnolyze is trying to present a cast of characters who each have a take on how to address the problems in the world. Texhnolyze tries something very ambitious -- laying out these responses to meaninglessness and showing how they're "all fated to fail". But I'm interested. Did Texhnolyze have any influence on your worldviews? Like, are you convinced that all of these approaches "failed", truly?

Just want to say that yes, for sure, I currently think that they "fail" inside the boundaries of Texh's world. But I'd argue that Konaka and Co. wrote their world, and by extension, the ideologies of its inhabitants, to self-implode. These are not charitable representations of 'transhumanism' (Doc), 'absurdism' (Yoshii, I think he's absurdist? lol correct me if I'm wrong), 'order maintenance' (Onishi).

Hell, even fans of the show label these characters as 'fatally'/'tragically'-flawed. That's what makes it 'good'/'powerful'/'poignant'. I agree with this idea in some ways. As characters they're fatally flawed, but I'm unconvinced that their ideologies are fatally flawed because the ways in which they're executed are slapdash and heavily influenced by the flawed characteristics of the character upholding and executing the view, or the totally abject state of the world. If Doc's scientific innovation ultimately leads to a paradise-like state where everyone is an apathetic ghost then I don't see why I should care (i.e., the surface world; btw, the show just says that scientific progress will lead them to that sorry state with no elaboration; it's 95% implication. I'm not arguing that this is 'bad art', 'bad storytelling', or anything bullshit like that, it's just undetailed as a critique of transhumanism/technological innovation, and we're given cliff notes as to how the surface world came into being -- all the juicy details are IMPLIED). Whether I see Doc as a character caring or not is another conversation.

Basically, I'd currently argue that Texh doesn't have that much bearing on our world because I can think of examples in favour of its conclusions, but also numerous counterexamples. Also, the show uses implication to explain a lot of stuff, which is fine, in fact, I kinda like it, but it's not what I would call detail.

Also for the thread topic, consider these some of my reasons why I'm currently disappointed with Texh.

@sheaswee it didn't convince me entirely indeed, but it made me consider its perspective at least.

Yes, no one, in art or reality, is a perfect example of ideas they defend.

Because humans aren't ideas, thankfully.

That does not mean flawed characters can't represent and understand ideologies.

And yes, I agree with you, the world was written so that the imperfect representations of those ideas would lead to death.

Which is why it's nihilistic.

It says no matter what you choose to believe in, you're doomed.

What is our world made of, if not imperfect representations of ideologies held by each of us ?

Trying to paint perfect characters would be the unrealistic story, in my view.

Comparing transhumanist's dream to a bunch of dudes giving up their bodies to become a bunch of robots that die as soon as they're out of battery, it may be a bit too absurd to you, but so are today's transhumanists projects.

Today, there are people seriously thinking we can all live forever as some kind of data uploaded on a cloud.

Does Doc still sound the craziest one compared to that ?

She's insane because those ideas are insane.

PS : I see Yoshii as more of a moral relativist in the nietzschean way, he wants to change the values of the world to try to save humanity, which means using violence and chaos instead of order and control like in the surface. The story shows both leads to death anyways.

@Moonspeak

I held Texh in high regard after I first watched it because it eventually got me to think about its perspective. But I now think that I was won over by the tone and EoE-esque spectacle of everything falling apart.



I didn't and would never ask for 'perfect' ideologies in media (I don't know what a 'perfect', 'pure' version of a given ideology looks like, ESPECIALLY one enacted in the world as some kind of large-scale reform or something). But, yes, I agree with you -- on your point responding to a demand that I never made -- that no one is a perfect example of the ideas that they defend. Sure.

I would also never claim that "flawed characters can't represent ideologies". In fact, I made a stab at attempting to define what I thought some of Texh's characters seemed to promote (with Yoshii, clearly I'm admittedly vague on his views; I guess I was going off of the whole "meaning can't lean on anything" sentiment he has going on for my absurdism label -- I'm not well-versed in existentialist philosophy).



The fandom seems pretty split on Texh as to whether it's hopeful or nihilistic overall. There are tons of interpretations out there. Personally, I currently agree that it's nihilistic overall. But I'll also say that, yes, of course it is. These ideologies, as filtered through the personalities and behaviours of these characters, are so obviously flawed that they were always going to fail.

The world that Texh set up is purely fucked. To put it very simply, our world is a mixture, it's nowhere near as perfectly dire as Lux's bowls or as apathetic like the surface world. Lux and the surface feel like abstractions of people living under the worst conditions (examples picked from horrors in history). I don't have a problem with this. If Texh's writers want to build a world like that, that's okay, and taken on its own terms as fiction, Texh is markedly better in my book.

I'll go into Doc real quick:

Doc takes immense pleasure (literally) in her studies. She's committed to the goal of evolving humanity moreso than being a morally upstanding doctor with responsibilities to her patients. There's not much nuance or mixture here either. Someone's life improving after texhnolyzation is definitely a happenstance bi-product of her grander projects. Helping individuals isn't her goal. Addressing the problems humanity is facing is. So when she decides to take her own life in the surface world after confronting -- what is apparently -- the logical endpoint to her narrative (total and complete apathy for everyone: no struggle), we see her ideology fail. "Texhnolyzation is completely alien to us". Clearly, these people have gone too far. They don't want to live or die. They don't want or need anything full stop. They just run on autopilot. Doc fights this notion in vain. Her ideology shatters, and because of how she's characterised, she has to go down with that ideology.

We don't get too much info on how the surface world came to be. Tyranny? Onishi's methods? Raffia? Are people becoming sterile? Texhnolyzation? Immortality? How did the removal of all the people with the 'monster' inside of them fair specifically? Why would that cleansing lead to what we see on the surface world?

It's very vague by design. And I'll always say that this isn't a problem for Texh as fiction.

So, Doc just seems to be defeated by a simple ideological foe. To us, it's a hypothetical. I'm just interested that fans seem to go down with her and her ideology. Maybe it really is the tone?



It might say that. The fandom has arguments suggesting that Ichise is presented as this 'honest' picture of a human being, but he dies some kind of meaningful, hopeful, death. I need to trace back over Ichise's character arc if I'm being honest; I'm seriously unclear as to how this ending can be seen as hopeful, but I'm open to being convinced. He smiles? (Onishi also dies with a content expression -- interesting). He's comfortable in a way that mirrors his escape from the sewers in episode 5 visually. There are tidbits, but I'm currently rewatching the show to get the full picture.

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that Texh is saying we're all doomed no matter what we believe in. I've never seen Ergo Proxy, but you were criticising it for not having novel ideas. This message that Texh has -- ascribed by you -- isn't that novel either (?). Whether it's 'more novel' or whatever than Ergo Proxy, I have no idea. To be honest, I don't personally care whether a story has an original message or not. The devil's in the details for me. The characters. The presentation. Just how this message manifests. "Everyone dies". Yes, I agree. "All these ideologies have been suplexed now that Konaka's finished with them". Idk about that. "All these ideologies, as made manifest by the characters and world, made by these writers, have been defeated". Okay, I'm interested, let's see if that's true. Let's see if they are defeated within the confines of Texh's world and see if Texh works as self-contained fiction.



Not asking for perfect characters. And yeah, it would be an unrealistic story because no one is perfect. Never mind a boring one.



Small thing. The dudes giving up their bodies. I think that was Kanno's project. He turns everyone into biomechanical plants thereby allowing them to evolve (because he's a solipsist and likes bumping uglies with Lux, or something, idk). Yeah I heard of some of these ideas. Tbh, I'd still call Kanno's project crazier lol. He's literally mutilating what we already have: our bodies. He's also doing this with footsoldiers. Living forever in data form is still a pretty insane idea though.

But this doesn't matter. As you said Doc is "insane because those ideas are insane" (except obviously we mean Kanno's project). Doc's project was more grounded, even if her motivations were skewed, she was helping individuals. She was promoting partial texhnolyzation, not this full-body I-WILL-TURN-YOU-INTO-A-SCROTUM-WITH-A-HEAD crap.

Edit, Texhnolyze is apparently a new idea:

"But what I don't like in EP is this :

Taking the symbols of "deep thinking" (quoting authors etc) without having actually anything deep to say. It's just a pretentious show. Saying humans need meaning is what any priest preaches since hundreds of years, it's not a novel idea. It's nothing deep, but it wants you to think it is. So the show compensates with quotes and aesthetic to cover up this void. That is what mystics do. Boring conformist messages, hundreds of years old, dressing up as super deep masterpieces. On the other hand, Texhnolyze brings something new in my eyes. It's not just a slow sad show, it explores the options humanity considers to survive in the future, and says all are fated to fail. It's almost the reverse of EP : it says no matter where you think you can find meaning, there is no salvation ahead."

@sheaswee You did not understand Ergo Proxy then, it is less edgy and less dark than Texh but it's more complex for many reasons

@Moonspeak

I held Texh in high regard after I first watched it because it eventually got me to think about its perspective. But I now think that I was won over by the tone and EoE-esque spectacle of everything falling apart.



I didn't and would never ask for 'perfect' ideologies in media (I don't know what a 'perfect', 'pure' version of a given ideology looks like, ESPECIALLY one enacted in the world as some kind of large-scale reform or something). But, yes, I agree with you -- on your point responding to a demand that I never made -- that no one is a perfect example of the ideas that they defend. Sure.

I would also never claim that "flawed characters can't represent ideologies". In fact, I made a stab at attempting to define what I thought some of Texh's characters seemed to promote (with Yoshii, clearly I'm admittedly vague on his views; I guess I was going off of the whole "meaning can't lean on anything" sentiment he has going on for my absurdism label -- I'm not well-versed in existentialist philosophy).



The fandom seems pretty split on Texh as to whether it's hopeful or nihilistic overall. There are tons of interpretations out there. Personally, I currently agree that it's nihilistic overall. But I'll also say that, yes, of course it is. These ideologies, as filtered through the personalities and behaviours of these characters, are so obviously flawed that they were always going to fail.

The world that Texh set up is purely fucked. To put it very simply, our world is a mixture, it's nowhere near as perfectly dire as Lux's bowls or as apathetic like the surface world. Lux and the surface feel like abstractions of people living under the worst conditions (examples picked from horrors in history). I don't have a problem with this. If Texh's writers want to build a world like that, that's okay, and taken on its own terms as fiction, Texh is markedly better in my book.

I'll go into Doc real quick:

Doc takes immense pleasure (literally) in her studies. She's committed to the goal of evolving humanity moreso than being a morally upstanding doctor with responsibilities to her patients. There's not much nuance or mixture here either. Someone's life improving after texhnolyzation is definitely a happenstance bi-product of her grander projects. Helping individuals isn't her goal. Addressing the problems humanity is facing is. So when she decides to take her own life in the surface world after confronting -- what is apparently -- the logical endpoint to her narrative (total and complete apathy for everyone: no struggle), we see her ideology fail. "Texhnolyzation is completely alien to us". Clearly, these people have gone too far. They don't want to live or die. They don't want or need anything full stop. They just run on autopilot. Doc fights this notion in vain. Her ideology shatters, and because of how she's characterised, she has to go down with that ideology.

We don't get too much info on how the surface world came to be. Tyranny? Onishi's methods? Raffia? Are people becoming sterile? Texhnolyzation? Immortality? How did the removal of all the people with the 'monster' inside of them fair specifically? Why would that cleansing lead to what we see on the surface world?

It's very vague by design. And I'll always say that this isn't a problem for Texh as fiction.

So, Doc just seems to be defeated by a simple ideological foe. To us, it's a hypothetical. I'm just interested that fans seem to go down with her and her ideology. Maybe it really is the tone?



It might say that. The fandom has arguments suggesting that Ichise is presented as this 'honest' picture of a human being, but he dies some kind of meaningful, hopeful, death. I need to trace back over Ichise's character arc if I'm being honest; I'm seriously unclear as to how this ending can be seen as hopeful, but I'm open to being convinced. He smiles? (Onishi also dies with a content expression -- interesting). He's comfortable in a way that mirrors his escape from the sewers in episode 5 visually. There are tidbits, but I'm currently rewatching the show to get the full picture.

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that Texh is saying we're all doomed no matter what we believe in. I've never seen Ergo Proxy, but you were criticising it for not having novel ideas. This message that Texh has -- ascribed by you -- isn't that novel either (?). Whether it's 'more novel' or whatever than Ergo Proxy, I have no idea. To be honest, I don't personally care whether a story has an original message or not. The devil's in the details for me. The characters. The presentation. Just how this message manifests. "Everyone dies". Yes, I agree. "All these ideologies have been suplexed now that Konaka's finished with them". Idk about that. "All these ideologies, as made manifest by the characters and world, made by these writers, have been defeated". Okay, I'm interested, let's see if that's true. Let's see if they are defeated within the confines of Texh's world and see if Texh works as self-contained fiction.



Not asking for perfect characters. And yeah, it would be an unrealistic story because no one is perfect. Never mind a boring one.



Small thing. The dudes giving up their bodies. I think that was Kanno's project. He turns everyone into biomechanical plants thereby allowing them to evolve (because he's a solipsist and likes bumping uglies with Lux, or something, idk). Yeah I heard of some of these ideas. Tbh, I'd still call Kanno's project crazier lol. He's literally mutilating what we already have: our bodies. He's also doing this with footsoldiers. Living forever in data form is still a pretty insane idea though.

But this doesn't matter. As you said Doc is "insane because those ideas are insane" (except obviously we mean Kanno's project). Doc's project was more grounded, even if her motivations were skewed, she was helping individuals. She was promoting partial texhnolyzation, not this full-body I-WILL-TURN-YOU-INTO-A-SCROTUM-WITH-A-HEAD crap.

Edit, Texhnolyze is apparently a new idea:

"But what I don't like in EP is this :

Taking the symbols of "deep thinking" (quoting authors etc) without having actually anything deep to say. It's just a pretentious show. Saying humans need meaning is what any priest preaches since hundreds of years, it's not a novel idea. It's nothing deep, but it wants you to think it is. So the show compensates with quotes and aesthetic to cover up this void. That is what mystics do. Boring conformist messages, hundreds of years old, dressing up as super deep masterpieces. On the other hand, Texhnolyze brings something new in my eyes. It's not just a slow sad show, it explores the options humanity considers to survive in the future, and says all are fated to fail. It's almost the reverse of EP : it says no matter where you think you can find meaning, there is no salvation ahead."

@sheaswee Great points there.

I like your take on it, so I'll just answer on a couple of things for the pleasure of the discussion :


That may be just my mischievous self talking, but I think some people are a bit too used to happy/satisfying endings in modern stories, they may have trouble dealing with the fact there is nothing really earned at the end of the journey. So I still think it's nihilistic. You can hope for a new life to grow eventually, but I don't think that's the point of the show.


I'd rather live in Lux than in any part of my country during WWII (or in Yemen today), so I think it's not that far fetched to use it for our reality.
The surface world could be an extreme version of the future of Japan on the other hand : a place that knows little violence, runs smoothly, but is slowly losing its will to live and procreate. The message that the desire for life is bound to violence seems clear to me, and it's critical of modern societies who are trying to control and secure everything. It's not something you see in art often ;)

Lastly, about the novel idea thing...



The need for meaning/purpose is what religious people have been saying for thousands of years. That's why the point of EP is nothing new, and even obsolete if you ask me.

On the other hand, trying to imagine a future for humanity without meaning or gods is precisely what modern philosophy has been about since the end of the 19th century.

It's a challenge.

"God is dead, beware of the nihilists" says Nietzsche, and he then tries to find new values to worship.

"A man who doesn't believe in anything is close to a monster" warns Camus, and he tries to stick to some kind of morality.

"Who cares about meaning, we exist and experience life first, meaning comes later" offers Sartre.

(that are super simplistic and flawed version of what their thoughts are about, it's obviously not exactly that, but you get the vibe of the question they considered)

Soul, meaning, dualism, free-will... those are notions of the past, pretty much dead for many modern thinkers.

We're trying to guess our existence beyond that now, at least in philosophy.

The absurdist movement you were quoting made it a joke :



(not just silly Monty Python, Ionesco and Beckett had a similar take for example)

The mindset that's trying to cling to meaning as some sort of feel good plush is just wasting our time in my view.

What's interesting is : what do we do without it ?



That's why Texhnolyze is the better show to me, it explores the crossroads humanity now faces, without the simple religious answer of the past.

So far, it answers none hold salvation for us, despite their promises, where religion would free you from those considerations with some kind of afterlife.

When afterlife isn't an option, and you still have to face a bleak future, what path do you take ?

We can either try to guess and adventure ourselves in those new horizons, or crawl back into illusions of meaning like some scared children.