First Impressions / Seikai Suru Kado

「ワノラル」 (Wanoraru)
“Wanoraru”

I was half joking when I talked about Seikai Suru Kado being a JRPG now, but… well, I guess the results speak for themselves. The convenient super-metal that episode 00 spent all its time setting up is finally in play (let’s call it, say, orichalcum) and it’s time for our hero to forge the ultimate gear with which they can seal the evil god! Meanwhile, the evil god in question is having a grand ol’ time with his soliloquy and, er, making clones? Murdering clones? Wait, why did we need so many Shindous? Doesn’t the current just have a bit more knowledge about Za’s plans than the others? Is the original special in some way? In any case, there can only be one, I guess, so perhaps Za is just cleaning up the loose ends before we get to the finale. I would love for the final showdown to be a Shindou vs Shindou’ negotiation; it would have given more dimension to his character, and highlighted that even reasonable minds can differ (with itself). Alas, it’s probably going to be Link vs Ganon instead. Oh well.

Thankfully, violence is not the only solution, as there are hints that Za may be amenable to doubt now. I’m assuming that this is the first time he’s managed to dream, and as we’ve been taught by fiction everywhere, dreaming is a fundamental part of what makes us human. Let’s ignore questions about how dreaming works with the Sansa and believe he can reasoned with before he—what’s he doing?—eats the world. Shindou believes that negotiation should be about every side getting what they want (which presumes that there’s enough available to satisfy everyone and it’s not a zero-sum deal, but let’s set game theory aside since Kado doesn’t seems interested in it). Perhaps that’s still possible? Maybe Za can be satisfied with only some human volunteers, not all of them? What Shindou believes Za really wants, though, is a surprise, but is that the same as craving information? It doesn’t feel exactly right to me. Surprise is more like when information you already have turns out to be false, no? Like, if you were expecting no party, but suddenly, a party! That’s a surprise. To use a metaphor, needing more information vs needing a surprise is like being hungry vs being bored with food. It’s a quantity vs quality thing.

Well, no point thinking about it too much at this point—who thinks things through on this show anyway? Instead, let’s look forward to the big showdown, which should be an exciting moment of puny humans managing to reach the height of gods (or maybe flies too close to the sun, this parable goes both ways). In particular, I want to see what the grand scheme involving Hanamori. As a character, his main use has just been to handwave away all the paperwork that Shindou would need to do, and his supposed fast friendship with Shindou doesn’t have much flesh to it, so it’d be great if he manages to do something interesting. In a similar vein, I hope Tsukai manages to end up as a more impactful character than being plot grease/girl who cries. What I most want, though, is for Za to be a bit less hung up about his ‘right answer’. When someone gets so tunnel-visioned about their one true direction for humanity, when they approach population reform with such zeal, when they talk about ‘solving’ it, I get worried. No, I’m not saying he’s Hitler. I’m just saying he may need to work on his messaging.

 

Preview

12 Comments

  1. Imho, the “supermetal” was out of place, but the gear they created not. He needs it to not get killed in a splitsecond and it shows their progression of understanding the anisotropic.

    Is the original special in some way?

    It’s not a copy and thus special.

    What Shindou believes Za really wants, though, is a surprise, but is that the same as craving information?

    A stream of information without a surprise has no information. If everything is happening as you expect it to, the information you gain is almost zero. If you want to know more about this, read the wiki article about “shannon entropy”, the introduction paragraph has some good examples.

    About the right answer:
    I think Shindo is on the right path, Za gives humanity all those toys to create unexpected outcomes which in turn generate much more information for the anisotropic beings than letting humanity progress on its own.

    Shio
    Reply

    1. Exactly!! It is like with experiments in biology… If you expect something base in what happens in other models and it happens the amount of information that you gain is limited. It doesn’t set a discovery just proof that under those circumstances that phenomenon takes place.

      But if something different happens… Then you have made a discovery…

      Its like Einstein said: Discovery doesn’t happen when you said “Eureka”. It happens when you say “uh?”… (He didn’t literally said that but it is the idea).

      Asoch
      Reply

  9. Lol love reaching the comments. The series started going downhill since about episode 4 and now it has hit rock-bottom. This series likes to toy with our feels and expectations.

    PO
    Reply

    1. Yeah lol I realized this was going to be garbage at episode 3/4 (after episode 3 I gave it a second chance and was like NOOOOOOPE after it was done) and just been reading the blog posts since then. . .Turns out, I was right, Jesus.

      a1saucer
      Reply

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