I really enjoyed this series. Like Lain, it weaves an interesting narrative composed of esoteric ideas from a variety of disciplines, like psychology, parapsychology, technological progress, ecology, and spirituality. However, Miyako’s dad makes a comment toward the end of the series that really rubbed me the wrong way.
At one point, he tells the main characters that climate change/global warming is not significantly impacted by humans, and that this phenomenon is just part of the earth’s natural cycle of mits average temperature fluctuating over time. This idea is presented in the narrative as just another fun, esoteric oddity, like hypnosis or astral projection, even though by the time this series was created in the mid 2000’s, it was clear that humans burning fossil fuels has a significant role in global climate change.
What makes this especially frustrating is that one of the core themes of the story is how the delicate balance of natural systems is so easily disrupted by unchecked human technological advancement, which is destructive to the natural environment. Man made climate change would’ve been a good idea to bring up in the narrative to reinforce that theme. Instead, the idea of anthropogenic climate change denialism is used to reinforce another theme: that nature will find a way to balance itself when thrown out of balance by humans. While this theme is also meaningful and worth exploring, using the idea of climate change to reinforce it, at least in the way it was used here, felt irresponsible.
(A more responsible means of using climate change to explore that theme would be the concept of the earth returning to its natural cycle of temperature fluctuation thousands or millions of years after mankind and much of life on earth goes extinct from the devastating impact of man made climate change, for instance - something akin to the final moment of Final Fantasy 7.)
I’ve now remembered that Miyako’s dad also frames man made climate change as a ploy to sell the public on nuclear power plants. So, the show does take a misguided yet perhaps well-natured environmental approach to its climate denialism, though it still feels like a cynical and conspiratorial view on a subject that the scientific consensus had by then considered a closed issue (even though people still deny the reality of man made climate change to this day).
Anyway, i did enjoy the show, but that particular part bothered me. It was a very short scene, though, and that specific idea is never brought up again, so it didn’t bother me that much - though i thought it might be worthy of discussion.
I vaugely remember him saying something lime that and I agree with you. This kinda reminds me of Boogiepop and others, when that one girl said that multiple personalities aren't real and everyone who has the condition is just acting. Both are otherwise great shows with 1 or 2 strange lines like that.
I honestly don't remember cause it has been a long time, but if that is the case I agree that it does clash with the natural system/technology narrative. When I have the time to re-watch it I will keep it in mind! cause I think it's interesting but without remembering it correctly I don't really want to comment more but I get it rubs you the wrong way
Yeah the climate stuff was really weird, but it's not surprising since we know Chiaki J Konaka can be a weird conspiracy nut like with that Digimon drama that he wrote.
