「テトロク」 (Tetoroku)
“Tetrok”

Something of an interlude this week, a vacation, as the Wam-pocalypse is averted for now due to, shall we say, production difficulties. And here we were thinking, finally, a plentiful source of environmentally friendly energy—nope, we’re still killing all the trees. Turns out, Wam is not quite as democratised as we were first lead to believe; only those with a feel for the ‘magic’ area able to make the n-dimensional origami, in the same way, apparently, that only children can see faeries. So it turns out Wam is basically pixie dust, and Za is in truth just an overwrought sci-fi Tinkerbell here to grant to the wishes of all good little boys and girls.

Surely, though, any Wam production rate > 0 is already a huge development, considering the infinite energy thing and all. And this is just reported Wam successes. Since the Wamming instructions have been released publicly, and all you need to make a pair is scrap paper and a dream, I’m sure all sorts of people are having a go in private. And if I managed to make a limitless power source in the comfort of my living room, I don’t think I’ll go around publicising it, at least not until I’ve incorporated my new phone recharging company, or finished my death ray. Point is, who knows how many Wam are out there? For now, though, we don’t have to worry about it right now, because it’s more of a spectacle episode this week as Kado is once again on the move. At this point I’m not really keeping track of which laws of physics Za and his cube are allowed to freely ignore, so all the fuss they were making about squishing hapless civilians felt fairly arbitrary. Perhaps I should really have been paying more attention to the technospeak, but I was actually hoping this entire exercise would turn into a Katamari Damacy parody. Alas, it was not meant to be, and the operation was played for drama instead. Not too much drama, though, since thus far all the protagonists’ plans have gone off without a hitch and this one might as well too, but there was at least an appropriate soundtrack for making the journey of the giant alien monolith across Tokyo sound impressive. And the entire affair also plays into what is perhaps the main theme of Kado, the celebration of effective bureaucracy, which may be refreshing for a cynical audience who are sure that if real aliens visited Earth a diplomatic bungle would have reduced the planet to space dust within the week.

So, a breather, and a reflection on family this episode (because Za doesn’t seem to have been primed with knowledge of even our most basic social units). Back to the Wam fallout next week. Or maybe not, because Za is moving on to another staple of speculative fiction: giving humans four to eight more hours a day via better brains. This one may be a bit trickier, because while I can accept the average person being on board with trying out magical Wam origami, letting an alien rewire their brain seems like a more sensitive issue. How would Shindou respond, having been ‘improved’ already? Would he be offended at having his private persons tampered with without consent, or will he be, ‘Oh, this was what I always wanted, Merry Christmas to you, too.’. I mean, there’s always someone who vehemently does not want to upgrade to Windows 10, and perhaps we should respect that.

Notably, no preview this week, just old dialogue and old shots. Is there something big in store and they’re hiding the juicy parts? Or did Kado just hit a production snafu? I hope it’s the former, because the plot is bound to become even more interesting as we learn about Za’s ambitions. Nothing has actually gone wrong yet, but perhaps that’s just a matter of time.

36 Comments

  1. – Why do he move his Cube?
    – there we have it, the hook of this Wams in paper form (perhaps even these murmurs)
    – now we left the “wams” and entering Human Brain, Ego or Soul?
    (important is, that it is not forced, they need the free or own will, all other are just “rape” the mind)

    Its like an Open World Games, give the player the FREEDOM to use it or not

    or my try: Show these Humans the Door and Windows, but the humans must want to open the Door or Windows on their own Will

    Worldwidedepp
    1. Eliminating sleep not being an improvement? I’d say it would be a tremendous improvement, whether you were a student, a worker or a NEET. Wouldn’t you love to never feel tired again as a result of lack of sleep? And damn it all, never dropping off halfway through an episode of something would be a great boon.

      Additionally, although perhaps this wouldn’t affect Japan as much as some countries, you could make houses half the size because the standard architectural paradigm of the ground floor for living and the upper floor for sleeping would no longer apply.

      Angelus
      1. Scientists recently discovered that during sleep (in rats), the brain changes and allows the cerebral spinal fluid to openly flow and flush the brain of it’s toxins. It’s presumed this helps fight dementia and other issues.

        Camus
      2. If sleep were no longer necessary. Human productive time would increase.
        Whilst this appears to be good on paper, that would also mean human productive time expected out of you would increase as well.
        i.e. Longer work hours.
        I ain’t taking that.

        On a slightly more serious note. This makes cramming those last minute projects that much harder. Quite a feel people rely on caffeine highs to give themselves extra time to cheat their schedule.
        If humans no longer needed to sleep, the work schedule would have been adjusted to near maximum efficiency, gretly reducing the ability to chuck these “extra” cramming hours in.

        Nicro
      3. He did say remove the need for sleep which means you probably can still goto sleep if you felt like doing it for fun. Overall most of the world has a sleep deprivation problem so having no biological need for it would be a big improvement. Realistically though you don’t really need extra-dimensional magic powers to do it either and there are plenty of mechanisms in nature that allow animals to stay awake while resting parts of their brain on the fly.

        a2222222222
    2. I understand that you have been irk for “japanese exceptionalism”, but you would be irked by any nationalism: Japanese exceptionalism, jingoism, …

      Nothing good has come from nationalism and, that I call, navelism. That’s, think that you are superior.

      Kinai
    1. no, i use win 10

      but i also keep the patches up to date.. your talking about the Wannacry. This all happen, because these PCs did not apply an Patch from March

      Worldwidedepp
  2. You know there are legit times where i can tell what is CGI and what isn’t. Especially on the background characters, who are less detailed and have wavier outlines.

    starss
  3. I don’t really understand why anyone thinks in the show that the wam things are dangerous if you can use them as a AA battery or a powerplant they clearly have to be extremely intelligent objects which means you also can’t really say they are just amoral tools. If you had an oil filled electric heater with wam power it could either explode into a fireball or get comfortably warm even in extreme conditions. To do this the magical electric balls have to be able to instantly analyse intent and need which likely means not only are they clean energy they are intrinsically safe.

    If you hooked it up to a bomb it likely wouldn’t explode. If you tried to short them out with a superconductor it would likely just conduct at a safe current to make a strong magnetic field that doesn’t cause any damage. If you tried to kill yourself with them it would likely just tingle. They are literally just magic energy sources that adapt to anything touching them to provide a safe level of power. You probably could grab a WAM powered high voltage electrical circuit and have nothing happen. Dangerous fires caused by wam sourced electricity would be impossible, overloads, surges would get magically suppressed and all sorts of non-real applications would be trivial. The wam objects are literally self omniscient energy sources that magically determine what is the right amount of energy for anything connected to it.

    Similarly making them requires “understanding” which likely also means even making them requires magical understanding which would prevent terrorists or bad actors from even making them. It all looks like it is basically non-technological reality breaking magic that only responds to the right people (wam are apparently not able to be machine produced because they require magical “understanding”). With the rules they have shown about the wam it would have made much more sense to prove they are magically safe instead of showing the world how you could make them if your a wizard.

    a2222222222
    1. “if you are an Wizard”

      What will the other humans do, that are not Wizards or not capable of produce them? They need to buy them… do the ones that can produce them, give them away for free?

      Thats the point

      Worldwidedepp
      1. Za restated anyone can make them. I will take this to be true but the amount of meditation and mental training to get say the elderly to use them might be a lot that many would not want to put the effort into.

        RedRocket
    2. That’s a lot of optimistic assumptions to be making about the Wam, no? Even if all I did with the Wam was to charge an arbitrarily large amount of batteries, there’s still much that can be done with all that energy with but a little application of creativity. I can’t say I really blame some people for being wary of a power that has huge potential but that they neither fully understand nor fully control.

      1. That’s one of the flaws in the story. He implies that it can accept any load. What happens if you put a dead short across the Wam? How would it know to limit the power or for that matter how does it know what the voltage and Hz rate a device is expecting? It would have to “know” what the device needed to provide the proper voltage, frequency, and current.

        Bear
  4. Don’t like the idea of no sleep. It would lead to me going crazy for sure….you would be forced to have to fill every minute of every day with something. IF however this was an option..meaning that I can stay up if i want but if I wanted to sleep and take a break from thinking and feeling for a while then I would take it….Its always down to choice….not this way or the highway….

    Kurik
  5. As stated elsewhere .01% success rate multiplied by millions of people who have tried still gets you a lot of Wham. He He I like that did not report till death ray completed idea.
    At the end I was expecting Za to drop the other shoe and totally obliterate the worlds economic system by introducing a replicator you could plug your wham into. Infinite power which can make anything could be “fun”.
    As an American I do not feel like I can comment on any other country making it self center of the universe in media. But yet I do want to mention the Japanese have proved that they are really stable and cooperative in disasters thus making huge cube movement not that difficult.
    Guess they decided not to ask for the plane back, not like humans going to need anything but will power to travel soon anyway 😉
    This has been a great merits of the Prime Directive discussion show.

    RedRocket
  6. “Wam-pocalypse is averted for now due to, shall we say, production difficulties.”

    LOL XDDD

    Apart of a few errors, as the UN depiction, I think that this anime has a point.

    If sometime we would find a cheap, easy energy source, the world powers are going to want to monopolize it. Human nature isn’t going to change if we won’t change.

    On the other hand, if we find another more advanced civilization, it would be the same as with the America Discovery, but we would be the indigenous.

    Kinai
  7. If Humans would no need of Sleep anymore, then shift operation work need an redesign. How much work hours you get out of them? They just need breaks for eat and drink.. They do not need sleep anymore

    But is the Brain still capable of concentrate 24/7 365 Days? or the muscles? the Bones? and so on.. Sure, no need of Sleep could have their pros, but also have a lot of contra if you need hard labor work.. The body needs a rest, you can turn around what you want.. Or do you think you heart can work always in high gear?

    So, take away the need of sleep, is only a little pebble in the giant pool of possibility

    also, look at Star Trek: TNG (i think first season, with testing a new Warp drive), where they stranded in a Dimension where no sleep was possible.. they began to run amok because of lack of sleep…

    Worldwidedepp
    1. Also, if the Humans do not sleep anymore, the earth still spinning around into Night and Day cycle.. the Energy Company’s would cry in Joy.. always 100% capacity 24/7 365 Days…

      and other things

      Worldwidedepp

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