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Apr 7, 2019
Gundam Unicorn represents the plight of people in the U.C. timeline at their best. Thunderbolt represents the plight of people in the U.C. at their worst. Unicorn portrayed war as a tragedy, but not in any capacity did it capture its true essence for what it really is: a horrifying calamity that sweeps myriad lives in its wake and cares not for name, face, nationality, or best intentions. Tomino has written Gundam shows where people often switch allegiances on the fly. A Tomino show this is not: the people here are committed and locked in their allegiances; no character has a chance to switch sides,
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no character wants to switch sides. The forces, both of which we see, are under a soul-crushing weight, like ants in a torrential downpour, being thrown and battered by their own circumstances, including one scene where they're given their orders to defend a sector to the death, to the shock of only one person. The higher-ups acknowledge the "heroicism" of their acts, but the film, in its brilliance, has a tone portraying their acts of war as anything but. It's carnage, it's malevolent, it's unsympathetic, it's macabre. Melodically, the film's music carries with it no melancholy to describe the visions of death it portrays. The battlefield is instead personified through music through Charlie Parker-style jazz: chaotic, improvised, and without solid structure- a sound decision, cemented further by one of the jazz-loving protagonists who feels the unpredictability of the battlefield like he feels improvised jazz.
Thunderbolt is a story of humans utterly ensnared within cruel times, of overblown military budgets and desperation, of those once passive to the times swept into frenzied fever. The spread and escalation of war is a result of the failure of leadership at the highest levels, and Thunderbolt captures failures of leadership at a small scale. Atrocities beget atrocities, unfolding into each respective side's umpteenth measure to snuff the other out, in a tense climax to the action with depictions of bodies upon bodies. Except unlike in SEED, both sides are treated as neither hero nor villain, but as small pawns in a deadly game of chess, the larger scale or outcome of which isn't even depicted or known. Innocence is lost. The soul dies, and the shells of what were once men become beasts that crave only the hunt. What to the protagonists were quests to quell the nightmare of war obliterated their humanity, for now they are the nightmare.
The truth is you, the reader, too, are an insignificant subject of a societal system, the direction of which is far beyond your control. Should civility break down and give you the choice of whether to hide from the fire, or to become that which lights it, will you be the one getting torched, or are you the one holding the torch?
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 24, 2019
This spoils everything, if you can read subtext, which I imagine you're intelligent enough to do, so consider that a warning.
You're going to die. That fact is beyond reproach. You, the person looking at this review, one day, are going to die. Maybe it'll be of disease, or an accident, or hopefully something peaceful, but it's going to happen. It comes, to everyone. Your life isn't threatened today, nor everyone's because life doesn't have some anime plot where the villain threatens the entirety of the human race to destroy it in one fell swoop. Nor will everyone's life end in a heroic sacrifice in a
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display of manliness. Odds are, our ends will come not with a bang, but a whimper, and when it comes, by disease or some other complication, and you see it closing in, you look back. Reflect on the life that is yours.
Yeah, we reflect in life, in ways both small and large, but there's a significant difference when it's in the closing days of life. Even as you read a book, or watch a play, or show, or film, we can see previous events through an entirely new light knowing how it all plays in the end. But life isn't anime, and it doesn't have some dramatic foreshadowing and satisfying payoff later. This is real life, and within its chaos of circumstances, it leads us in different directions, and moments that are ours. An overwhelming amount of emotion comes into, one final time, looking back upon the deeds we have done, the words we have spoken, the things shared, the people we have met, the joys and despairs and all emotions in-between.
The music, the foley, the art as well as animation, encapsulate this feeling. When art is released into the world, it becomes the property of the world, and so I put aside the fandom and creator's regard. If a work can touch you, make you feel something, then it is significant, even if the rest of the world thinks otherwise. And it does.
There is no "and they lived happily ever after" and then suddenly everything stops, in life. Even after the most significant points in our lives, life still goes on. People will live on- like Kenji, and Sanosuke, and Yahiko, lived on. Knowing the world will go on without me is probably one of the few comforts of passing away I can think of. A protagonist saves the world, the story comes to the conclusion, we stop looking, because that's where the narrative ends, but life will continue when the main events of the story have concluded. There is only one ending, one definitive, sure ending to the story of life, and it is death. Seisou-hen is a story of death, a story not of what has transpired in life, but our impressions and perceptions of what has already transpired.
Kenshin's life was one of violence, trust, betrayal, and atonement. To epitomize his self-loathing and to spend his life trying to apologize by doing the most good he can do, even when he feels he isn't worthy of even being given the chance, was his life and legacy. Even a monster, however, has his desire. He used himself to better the world as best he could until his body literally could do it no longer. At the end of the road, what does he treasure, what was his greatest wish in life? We may not go out in a blaze of glory, we may not sacrifice ourselves to save the world, we may not even be remembered 200 years from now in any form at all, but to see that which we most desire, that which makes us whole- in Kenshin's case, Kaoru- is touching in a way no other work has. A happy ending, in an objective sense. His struggles in life, his agony and despair and joys, and hers as well, go to a powerful reunion, with a sweeping and beautiful score that captures this moment perfectly. An atonement, finally completed. His life, completed.
No film or book has touched my soul the way Reflection did. A work can be structurally unsound, or can refuse to line up with our perceptions of what we desired in an ending, but it can also be redeemed in one way or another if something about it reached you, made you feel something. As the petals of the cherry blossoms fell over the credits, I had felt the indifference and apathy of life give way and push me towards feeling raw, overwhelming emotions. It was joy, it was sorrow, it was overwhelming me to tears, and in that moment I felt truly human. We're all human, and death is a part of the human experience, and our experiences are ours, and they are real. We have the gift of being able to live and reflect upon it, and no greater gift could be given. Seisou-hen, to me, was a reminder of this truth.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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