Kino's Journey Episode 5 Discussion

Flaming said:
Beautiful episode.
But I have one question left, why did the last survivor need four bullets to kill himself?

Funnymrbunny said:

Something that was hard for me to wrap my head around was that, after the seeing the three men, i took comfort in the fact that "at least the first mans work is still intact, it is still a polished railroad and so he has done his job (in contrast to the other two who are basically undoing each other's work)" But when I looked at the railroad, it was UNPOLISHED? I was so confused. If it was a polished railroad, that was taken apart, and put back together again, then why were the rails unpolished towards the end? (THIS HAS NO PHILOSOPHICAL MEANING, I AM JUST NITPICKING CONTINUITY ERRORS HERE)

Well then again, I guess the wear that goes into taking apart a railroad and putting it back together might wear off the polish :

meh

Funnymrbunny said:

The man who polishes the railroad however, is a lone factor because even without the 2 other men, his story works on its own. He has been polishing a railroad that has obviously been taken out of commission for 50 years. No one will ever use it and nobody benefits from the railroad being polished so his work is pointless.

Ilike69 said:
It doesn't make sense that a didactic episodic anime like this would try to tell two different stories with one episode. There has to be some connection between the two parts.

I attempted to connect all the dots. Here's my interpretation of the episode:

Futuristic City - the workers here didn't have to work, but they did it voluntarily. Their work was meaningless, but their society functioned.

Train track workers - The anime was very specific in delineating reasons each one was required to work. Unlike the futuristic city civilians, they didn't work voluntarily but out of necessity. Nevertheless, just like the futuristic city workers, their lives functioned. They had survived 50 years and looked hale and healthy to go many more.

The irony, of course, is that the train workers believed they were different from the workers in the futuristic city, as evidenced by their reaction to hearing of the city, "Oh, I'd never work if I didn't have to!" They valued their work solely because they believed it served a purpose, while the work in the futuristic city did not. This contrast between train track work and redoing robot work is used to make a point that I'll explain next: that it doesn't matter whether your work has a perceived purpose or not.

A recurring line in this episode with the train workers was "Where are you going?" The answer was never given, indicating that despite believing their work had a purpose, the train workers' work was equally as pointless as the workers' from the city. The first time the question was posed, the camera zoomed in on Kino's face (notably instead of the first worker's), suggesting that the question had broader implications for everyone, no matter their occupation in life.

Ultimately, everyone was toiling away with no meaningful purpose: in the futuristic city, they were rerunning calculations already perfected by machines; for the train workers, everything they accomplished was subsequently undone; and Kino's "hobby" as aimless wanderer similarly had no end goal or promise of leaving a lasting footprint in the eternity of time.

This is a metaphor for life, that we work and work and fill our days for seemingly no purpose. In the end, we just die anyways, and whatever we have built eventually falls down or is forgotten, persisting in our short-term human perspective, but inevitably erased in one way or another by the grand, eternal passage of time. The most important thing is that despite the futility of it all, the human race -- in the episode, the futuristic city, train workers, and Kino -- perseveres in its survival. And that is what matters -- not what you do, for in the end it's all the same, but that you do something.

Enter the final part of the metaphor - the monarchy and the democracy.

Life in the monarchy was harsh, but at least people survived. Then the people overthrew their king and established self-rule. A key detail here is the episode very conspicuously stated that no one in this new democracy had time to work anymore, for they spent the entirety of every day voting. Thus, the connection can be drawn that as soon as everyone stopped working, they turned on each other and the nation with its people perished.

Moral of the episode:

Humans need some kind of directive to fill their daily schedule. They need something telling them what to do to keep their days busy, and it doesn't matter if it's unnecessary (futuristic city), pointless (train track workers), or under duress (monarchy). As soon as you remove this organization from people's lives, human nature bogs itself down with unimportant details and fighting with each other, and life ceases to function as the uncompromising expression of individual wants begins to distract from and suppress the fulfillment of human needs.

The episode's use of a failing democracy as its example underscores the fundamental role of this concept in human nature, that even the most ideal state of living (by our Western standards - democracy) is not immune to this basic human instinct. There does not exist a utopia where no one has to work. In this regard, advanced, comfortable people are as humble as train track workers.

That's the best I can do to connect the stories and derive a cohesive meaning out of them. It's about the intrinsic value of work as a way to distract ourselves from our own dangerous, human impulses. In this objective, all work is equal, it doesn't need to have an illustrious purpose. The important thing is that humans have some kind of daily occupation.

tl;dr don't be lazy and hedonistic ;) Applying ourselves regularly is good for us.

Also, someone asked about the 4 gunshots at the end of the episode earlier in this thread (probably posted like 3 years ago now). I figured that was just the gunshot echoing off the rows of tall, silent buildings lining the streets.

north1085 said:

Well, the reason they told them both in one episode is because this is actually an adaptation of a light novel written back in 2000. They had a restriction of 13 episodes, and they didn't have enough content with the railroad workers to fill up an entire episode, along with the Democracy/Tyranny story, but they were able to combine them together to fill an entire episode. It's entirely possible that they've also tailored the stories together to create the meaning that you describe, but this anime hasn't actually done anything else that is 'anime original', per se. Most of it follows the adaptation pretty closely, the only difference being the reduction in detail. I believe it's a coincidence, but that's just me.

Aurali said:
If machines do not have sentience, then they are unable to produce works of creativity. The people of that country could have invested their time in innovative career paths such as literature, art, design, filmmaking, music, etc. Said work is mentally challenging and satisfying. Instead, they ironically chose to redo the jobs that the machines had already flawlessly completed...

It was only after a majority vote by Swanage residents in 1975 – wanting the railway to be rebuilt – that the local council gave the Swanage Railway Society a lease of the station.

It was in 1976 that determined volunteers gained access to Swanage station for the first time. Slowly, track was laid – by hand. It was heavy work and very slow.