Shortly after I began studying Chinese, I thought it would be interesting to check out some Chinese films. I can’t really understand spoken Chinese well yet, so admittedly, any movie would be more for entertainment and a touch of cultural immersion more than a language learning tool. Nonetheless, I decided to give The Road Home a shot recently since it’s well-reviewed and looked like a film my wife might also enjoy, which is rather rare with movies I like.
We’ve talked about Rankin and Bass’s version of The Hobbit, and you can’t talk about The Hobbit without also talking about The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I know, it’s been three years since that earlier post, but I don’t like to be rushed. So, today we’re going to talk about about Rankin/Bass’s follow-up, The Return of the King.
“Now hold on,” you may be thinking. “That’s the third Lord of the Rings volume.
Over the past year, I’ve read through a lot of academic analyses of anime and anime fandom, some on my own out of curiosity and others for academic purposes (yes, really). The overall state of academia in the anime studies field is pretty similar to what you’d find elsewhere, that is, abysmal and embarrassing. I’d say that Bl. John Henry Newman wouldn’t be impressed, but then, neither would anyone who isn’t fully embedded in the university system.
It’s Halloween night (well, in my time zone, which is the only one that matters anyway), and when I think of Halloween, I think of Christopher Lee. I imagine that most readers will be aware that he made his name at Hammer Studios, starring in films like their Dracula series or Rasputin: The Mad Monk, and though I certainly think he was great as both Rasputin and the second-most famous Dracula (following, of course, Bela Lugosi), the film that comes to my mind first is also the one that he considered to be best he’d ever been in, The Wicker Man.
Time for the conclusion of serial experiments lain.
Layer 13: Ego begins with blue static and Lain saying she’s confused again. Well, so are we. Rather than a voice-over we start with a recap of the last part of Layer 12. Alice doesn’t handle it so well, and we’re then shown a screen with the message, “ALL RESET” and on a second line, “Return.” Rewind!
The next few scenes show us what the different characters are up to now, after Lain presumably fixed things by undoing everything Eiri had done.
We’re coming into the home stretch of serial experiments lain. In Layer 12: Landscape, the voice-over returns. “Oh, okay… So that’s how it works. I had no idea the world was this simple. I always thought the world was such a big and scary place, but once you figure it all out, it’s all so easy.” A second voice adds, “See? I told you it would be.” The episode proper opens at school, with Alice gloomily watching Lain gossip with Julie and Reika.
On to more serial experiments lain. In Layer 11: Infornography, the opening changes a bit. The title screen is made of up screens from the previous episode, and the voice-over is still missing from the cityscape. Instead, we see Lain being tied up in cables. Much of the episode is essentially a recap, going through the events of the series so far in a fast edited series of clips of previous episodes and a handful of other phrases flashing on the screen, but with the largest portion, especially near the end, focusing on Alice.
Back to serial experiments lain. Layer 10: Love starts with our cityscape, but no voice-over this time. Lain and Eiri have a conversation in which they speak in each other’s voices, and Eiri explains how he put his consciousness into Protocol 7. Given his power he’s arguably a god, but to truly be a god he also needs worshippers, so he made himself a cult - the Knights. At school, Lain’s desk is gone and everyone is oblivious to her presence.
Another week, another episode of serial experiments lain. Layer 09: Protocol’s voice-over says, “If you want to be free of suffering, you should believe in God. Whether or not you believe in Him, God is always by your side.” Much of the rest of the episode consists of infodumps about topics such as Roswell, important figures in computer history, and concepts and inventions like Memex and hypertext. An alien in a striped sweater appears on Lain’s doorway.
Ready for more serial experiments lain? Our friend the voice-over says in Layer 08: Rumors, “Do you want to be hurt, too? Do you want your heart to feel like it’s being scraped with a rasp? If you do, don’t look away, whatever you do.” Lain meets with Taro in a computer game world where he’s killing other player characters, telling Lain that nobody knows what’s fun or why. Lain speaks to an artist making models of scantily-clad women, and they speculate on Tachibana’s R&D efforts and whether they’d do anything illegal.