Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 3/52 | Anime
We aren't men disguised as wolves. We are wolves disguised as men.
In this reality, Nazi Germany wins WWII and occupies the Allies’ member Japan. The Era of Economic Growth begins, amplifying the economy through coercive polices that leave many unemployed. Armed anti-government groups create a constant state of social unrest, as the police are ill-equipped to deal with them. The government does not send in the fragile military, nor do they equip the police to become a national force. They form a new force called the Capital Police Organization (CAPO). Armed with advanced equipment and weaponry, the CAPO disperses several guerrilla groups, which then coalesce into a unified group known as The Sect. Instead of lowering violent crimes, the explosive and destructive warring between CAPO and The Sect turns the city into a war zone.
Riots in the street as 3000 civilians throw rocks, bricks, and Molotovs at the Self-Police. Through the back alleys and to the storm sewers below travels Nanami, a courier for The Sect. She delivers a satchel charge to a Sect member near the frontlines of the riot. She heads down to get another delivery when she hears all-too-familiar footsteps of the Kerberos, a sub-group of CAPO armed with exoskeletons and heavy artillery. Kerberos decimates the Sect members. Nanami runs, believing she has escaped, when a Kerberos member named Fuse corners her. He hesitates to shoot her despite the order, giving her time to pull the fuse on her satchel charge, killing her and knocking out power throughout the city.
Fuse survives, but the Self-Police lose control of the situation. As punishment, CAPO demands that Fuse go through training. The film follows Fuse as he grows disillusioned with the organization for which he works and the government that controls it.
Writer Mamoru Oshii was already stretching himself thin with the Ghost in the Shell movie, so he brought the script to a frequent collaborator, Hiroyuki Okiura. The only significant difference that I’m aware of is that, under Okiura’s direction, the film was entirely drawn by hand. Oshii would likely have utilized computer animation, as he had in Ghost in the Shell. Still, the film underwent digital scanning to enhance texture and cinematography.
Aesthetically, it’s impossible to find much fault — the images are immaculate and the compositions are cinematic and striking. The opening scene in particular hits hard. The story leaves something to be desired. It loosely structures itself around Little Red Riding Hood — the couriers are Riding Hoods, and the Kerberos are the big bad wolves. Similar to Ghost in the Shell, the movie is more drama than action, with many dialogue-heavy scenes.
That said, I much prefer the drama to the action movie I was worried this might be. Thematically, the film explores cultural forgetting — the way seismic shifts alter our collective perception of the world, causing us to lose sight of what once united us. New assumed defaults take their place, and we forget how we once lived and view our world.
If a building can disappear in a day, it's like it was never there, just like when people die.
The film also explores how oppressive governments create fractured identities. As the government limits, restricts, and defunds more social programs, people start to fight not just from a political identity, but a social and psychological one — it’s not just my rights as a political citizen, but as a gendered and sexual person that comes under attack. How many US citizens dream of defecting to a different country, where they can have a new and holistic identity?
Why do people join ICE, MAGA, or the military? Because they see a world of fractured identities and a desire to belong to something more than themselves. These individuals are often undereducated and propagandized, such that they cannot conceive of an alternative reality. They are fed stories of surviving bloodlines and the threats posed by outside groups to their survival. That is the ultimate power of oppression: to eliminate the imagination of something other than this is possible.
It's not a human being you're betraying.
Fuse’s journey begins when he sees another possibility. As long as we believe that this shift is possible for individuals, the fight isn’t over. Whether this film agrees is left for the viewer to discover.