I Watched Den-noh Coil

 

Internet, Grief and Depression:

I'm a big fan of a site called Anifem, where a bunch of people get together to write and produce podcasts about anime and how they fare within feminist views, everyone is really amazing, and I highly recommend checking them out. Since I found the site somewhere last year I've been going through their backlog, reading and listening to all of their content, and that's what led me to find Den-noh Coil, a show about young kids living in a reality where augmented reality glasses are a thing. 

This also correlated with the announcement of The Orbital Children, a new project of the same director, Mitsuo Iso. I already knew him as a great animator but knew little of his experience as a writer and director, so hearing all his praise on Twitter made me even more excited to venture into this marvelous work. As a side note, I already did a review of the show for my friend's blog in Portuguese, so I won't be really reviewing it here, rather simply talking about the themes on the show with spoilers and how I felt watching it. 

Starting with the first topic on the title, Internet. The show mostly focus on the augmented reality perspective and that might be a topic we might have to revisit to approach once that technology starts to develop more in our reality, meanwhile I would like to compare the kid's reality to how the internet took over our world, especially around the 2000s where most kids ended up knowing more than the parents that should be protecting them from it. 

When I was listening to the podcast on Anifem someone brought up how the kids couldn't really just stop using the glasses and leave behind that part of their lives because it simply wasn't possible, the glasses were completely engrained on how they live and interact with each other, simple things as calling someone had to be done through them. This is pretty much what we already have with the Internet, especially now more than it was in 2007, this day's we use the Internet for everything, work, interacting with other people, playing games, shopping, you name it. It doesn't matter how much we might be affected negatively by it, there's just no escape, it's almost impossible to keep a normal life without being connected to it somehow. This is particular noticeable now after the pandemic where most of our lives were resumed in front of a computer, or the recent problems with game preservation where even to play single-player games we must constantly be online. 

If you look into Social Media, a topic well brought up in the podcast, it's even more scary, how many times didn't we get upset or almost sick with certain interactions be it discussions online or cyberbullying, and yet we just couldn't imagine the idea of simply going away, turning off our devices and forget it happened. If you take into account that some people income depends on it, it's even more impossible to decide to turn away and chose to not be affected by it. This train of thought helped me better understand why even in the chase scenes, the kids didn't simply turn off their glasses, I still find them idiots though. xD

Another topic on the Internet that I think the show showcased well, was how the parents didn't grasp at all about what was going on with the kids inside their virtual world, only once someone got hurt did they understand that they should regulate how much time and what activities their kids we're doing online. This is exactly how it felt to grow up in an age where technology was starting to be a thing and no one really knew it's full potential and dangers, I have lost counts of the stories in school where kids would get in trouble and the parents we're confused because they thought the internet was harmless.

Moving now to the next topic, Grief was a very prominent feeling through the show, be it Kenichi with Kanna, Isako with her brother or Yasako with her dog. They all have different resolutions and emotions behind them, having in common the fact that no matter the situation we all need closure, It's very common to be stuck in the past and memories we have of them, and especially hard to let go and move on. The anime showed well how refusing to heal can be problematic, as we could see through Isako storyline, where she was so obsessed with reuniting with her brother that she completely overlook how that affected others and her own well-being. I believe there's more to discuss in this department, but to be honest I don't think I have the capabilities or experience to make it justice, so I would like to focus on another perspective. 

That perspective is Yasako and Densuke, the amazing dog that followed her through the show. Personally, I think the anime captured perfectly how it feels to lose a pet, someone that was with you for so long through so much that no matter if it's an animal, you almost consider it a brother. Seeing Yasako lost and confused about why she didn't cry and how Densuke's death didn't seem real, brought me many memories to when my own dog died. Back then, I too was in shock and spend most of the day acting like normal, just to end brawling my eyes out in my moms arms at the end of the day wishing I could have played more and pet her again. In the end, Densuke was the best boy and I will miss him dearly. 

Now before we reach the final topic, there's a quote that I would like to showcase:

"Do you really think you can throw me away? We both know that's not what you want. You can never part with me. It was you who gave me life. I'm an extension of you, born to eat your sorrow and suffering. No matter how many times you kill me, I will always revive."

This quote from episode 26 was told by Michiko, an extension of Isako, to her, and it was probably the part that resonated the most with me cause it encapsulated perfectly how it feels to be depressed and Isako is depressed. Depression is a feeling that is part of us, that our brain creates and eats us alive, no matter what one does it's always there in the background waiting to consume. Michiko was the recreation of Isako's depression, she was always there from the beginning, making it impossible for the poor girl to escape her fears and stopping her from moving forward and creating connections with everyone else. Having Yasako going all the way down to the other side to rescue her friend, also shows that this is a sickness that one just can't face by themselves, it's important to have people that ground us, that reminds us that sometimes the monsters in our head are just that, monsters that don't exist outside of thought. 

In the end, this show might have been about some kids facing some science fiction threat, but if we dare to maybe look deeper, we might see the story of a girl too depressed to escape her own world that just needed a helping hand.