Cruel Angel Theses

It’s too easy to write this off as just another simple arc. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward, right? Rocks fall, everybody dies There’s a girl with family problems, her uncaring, distant, aloof dad, Hei as some sort of Ginko-cum-Medicine-Seller-cum-X-Man; something’s gotta give…

… only that what went unsaid was more powerful that what was said in the episode, if you ask me.

“The New Star Gleams in the Dawn Sky”

“Twinkle”, “Sparkle”, and their ilk sounded wrong. But nothing really sounds as wrong as this:

Or, when coupled with his expression, this:

I mean, har har, it’s pretty obvious how Hei approaches his relationships with women if we look at it in the framework of the relationship with his (yet-to-be-revealed) younger sister, right? But no, I wasn’t talking about the semi-creepy pseudo-incestuous angle. I was talking about how Mai-as-a-Moratorium made perfect sense when viewed in the context of the episode’s content, and how it was almost allegorical.

Mai’s parents were divorced till her mother passed away, reverting the custody back to her father since she’s still a minor. But what’s a girl to do when all she wants is her dad’s love, when she returns home to an empty home day after day? I found the irony in this to be pretty painful; he’s working to save her life, when all she wants is his attention. That’s not all to it, though.

Consider this predicament: Mai-as-a-child’s household situation seems pretty deep-seated in its emotional problems considering how divorces generally go, and the divorce that happened ages ago would seem to be rooted in problems no little girl could possibly solve. What’s a girl to do in that situation? Obviously, the best bet would be to gain Contractor powers of the Moratorium kind.

First of all, it seems like something someone of that age would do: Parents arguing again for the umpteenth time? Why? Why are you doing this? I know, let’s set things on fire and get their attention! I hate it when Mum and Dad fight, so I’ll do something that’ll make them shut up and do what they’re supposed to do–give me lots of love.

How the hell was that possible, you say? Well, Mai made a contract within Heaven’s Gate, obviously. Who said that flashback of her childhood had to be in Japan? Heaven’s Gate (again, something that doesn’t appear in this episode) is in that continent, after all, and Mai even gives us clues as to it!

All in all, she didn’t really want anything but affection, something due to her, and this is the tragic part–her chicken-and-egg dilemma in which she started the problem of her being a Moratorium, which led to her father’s attempts to prolong her suppressed powers through his extensive horticultural research, which in turn led to him abandoning her, which led to her becoming a Moratorium once more through her distress.

With this awareness of cause-and-effect in mind, the firey climax was all the more painful. I cried.

It also made the usage of the word a lot more sensible, too. It was a period of traumatic delay that she was experiencing, a period of uncertainty between undivorce and divorce that drove her to seek powers that allowed her to randomly burn things–a sense of power during a duration where she must have felt pretty powerless, or so I’m told. The effects of divorce on children are pretty well-documented after all.

So who says that there’s not much to DtB? It’s heartening to see how a closer viewing of things reveal themselves so naturally and effortlessly with just a pinch of subtext added to it. It’s a popular belief, I know, that there is depth in anything if you care to look for it, but in the case of this show I’m utterly convinced that weekly digestion wasn’t really meant to be since it feels like Okamura’s left secret messages in this work of his. Only a rewatch can do this proper justice, if you didn’t get it the first time. I know I didn’t.

This shot also made me wonder: Is there visual significance in the blue outline coupled with glinting red eyes, when some Contractors have it and some don’t? Or is it just a visual quirk that Okamura decided to throw in there for the heck of it? Aside from added contrast, the red tint does seem to fit in with the theme of pupils and how Contractors don’t have them, while Dolls tend to take on a decidedly glassy look. Or it could just be related to the power itself.

There’s something about the contrast between water-based powers, destructive powers, and pyrokinetic powers that I can’t really seem to put a finger on, but maybe I’m reading too much into things. It’s just as well that I’ll figure it out in a bit if I’m lucky.

~

Hige says:

Like Owen I’m picking up on the visual minutia this time around, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the eyes of the characters. The deadening of Mai’s eyes (like Chiaki before her) is a signifier of a lapse in consciousness, a change from her normal self to something less alive. But what about Hei? His eyes are permanently without pupils and I can’t work out if it’s symbolic or just a design choice. The series obviously uses eyes as a symbolic device, but it’s difficult to fully understand the rules of their use. Definitely a motif I intend to pay more attention to in the coming episodes.

Storywise this is an intense arc that has a lot of nuance beneath its conventional strained parent-child dynamic. Contrast is subtly employed, notably between Mai and her friend, Yuka. Mai’s neglectful father is compared against Yuka’s stable loving family and particularly her compassionate father, and we’re initially meant to hate the man who causes Mai so much sorrow with his neglect. Ultimately we find this pain is inflicted out of love (and somewhat out of fear) and our hearts sink when Mai, no matter how unconsciously, tells Tahara she loves him. It validates his efforts and finally paints him as a misguided hero, as dedicated and loving as any real father should be. How genuine this declaration is, with her obvious lack of lucidity, is questionable to the audience but it’s enough for her father and he tries one last time to free her from her curse. From a functional standpoint, just to ignore all the humanity of the story for a moment, this arc acts as a wider consideration on how Contractors resolve themselves with their previous lives as normal people. How would the change affect those that surround the person? Really bloody messily, it seems.

This was a horrifying set of episodes. They’re purposeful, giving us lots of new information on Hell’s Gate, the political relationships relating to it and the Contractors, but emotionally difficult with a complicated father-daughter relationship weaved into the mix. And the two plot elements clash with shockingly graphic violence. People are burnt alive in front of our eyes, bodies are cut apart, and the camera lingers when it might otherwise turn away. We see the horror Contractors are capable of, unintentionally or otherwise, and the series makes it clear they are not to be messed with. We understand why Tahara tries so desperately to save his daughter from this kind of life and again it accentuates the debased existence it is to be a Contractor. There were a lot of red herrings – Mai’s wrist bandage, and her father’s intentions – all of which are hopefully resolved but quickly swept away with a characteristic sense of nihilism. I never remembered DtB being this bleak, perhaps misled by its colourful, cheery aesthetic, but there’s definitely a genuine darkness there that I’m getting a perverse amount of enjoyment from.