#I may be forgetting some plot details. I'll come back to these cds after a rewatch

[magnoliawaltz]

Talking about Fafner Exodus drama cds: The Follower 1 and 2

Spoilers for both Exodus and The Beyond ahead.

(I had some details wrong the first time I wrote this, I'm reposting with those details corrected. As this drama cd hasn’t been translated I didn’t want to spread wrong info with my half-assed report)

I thought I would have a lot less to talk about these cds, because in Exodus the character’s intentions and interactions felt a lot more obvious, if not shallow, to me. The thing with Fafner is that the more it expands the scope of the world, the more the individual characters’ writing suffer -- it becomes more about how they embody their duties towards said world.

Even little Miwa already had the sacrificial mentality at age 5. It’s just so sad. But the extended sequence where Michio appears as a memory of the mir and they walked together and talked was so emotional, I had tears in my eyes. I don’t have much to talk about the first cd besides the fact the family reunion between Yumiko, Michio and Miwa was great.

The concept of the Mir appearing as the parent they can’t see anymore was very interesting. It’s at times like these that the sekai-kei aspect of the narrative really shines. In the second cd, only when the three key characters make their personal choice is when the path to the island’s future opens. More on that later.

Maya seems to have come with an understanding with her father, already having seen too much of herself and her hate in him and his actions. And Kazuki is still in that vague state where “mom” is both mom and not mom since he doesn’t remember her much (I remember Fumihiko clearly stating “that” is not Akane, in Gone/Arrive but the concept was evolved, and it is the mir after all). I got taken aback with how curt Soushi was with Kouzou. I knew their relationship really was not good at all (with good reason, since his dad raised him to be a “tool”), you can really hear the strain in his voice -- At the start he is using keigo but by the end has stopped. Only to use it again when saying good bye. How very Soushi. It just left me wanting to know more on their family situation. Need me a whole spinoff about that, specially when it comes to Soushi and Tsubaki’s mom.

So the three choices they made were to overcome the willingness to sacrifice, ask for further dialogue and decide to leave the old world. That’s how Kouzou resumes the choices. I had got this wrong the first time I wrote, as I was trying to much to fit it into my theory without listening again, because oh my god I really can’t stop seeing the Hegel influence everywhere now. 

So in Exodus these three concepts that derivate from this same word with contradictory meanings (aufheben) become manifest as the mir’s blessing. It’s is the same as Kouzou said, just changes the order of things. They choose: 

1. to negate the old ways of Tatsumiyajima, an island hiding from the world, only preoccupied with maintaining it’s own people’s subsistence; 

2. to preserve its essence, the mixing with the festum which possibilites the dialogue between them, here symbolized by the Esperanto; 

3. to elevate itself, which I think means to overcome the need to sacrifice themselves and other people to let their loved ones live.

It’s the whole elevating of the vessel thing -- the show has used pottery as a metaphor for this whole process since the start. How The Beyond is going to do that is what I’m curious about now.

The thing is the trio's choices here, in turn, becomes their destinies in The Beyond.

Soushi has his old existence and old way of thinking “negated” and he is reborn, most likely repeating the process forever. Maya has her existence as a human “preserved”, accepting a mind that will continue to change and a body that will continue to age as parts of herself. And Kazuki has his existence “elevated” to something less than festum and more than human, more akin to a god, losing part of his human heart in the process.

(　ﾟдﾟ)ﾎﾟｶｰﾝ

Everything makes sense now, even the push and pull between the trio, that I couldn’t understand at first and thought was flimsily written in Exodus, specially the interactions between Soushi and Maya that left me ? at the time, makes sense when I think of the characters as both embodying these qualities and going through that sublimation process themselves. Even the initial estrangement The Beyond caused is more understandable.

However, I have to say, it sure is still frustrating to see these characters I love so much become mere puppets of fate at the hands of the writer. Must Soushi suffer so much like that forever????? (Edit: oh I was so innocent about this. “Soushi” is “fine”, the other two? Not so much). Sure, I’ll see how much of my opinion will change when I finally finish The Beyond. I need to get to that before BTL’s BD comes out. We’ll see.