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| I think a lot about the anime I watch and here I will tell you about some of the ideas I've developed. I will try to date this up as much as possible but don't keep your hopes up too much. Thos who know me from one or another forum might already have read some of the stuff in here. |
Jin-Roh (Symbolism and stuff) Symbolism is mostly found in the "in between" scenes. The transitional stuff. People traveling from one place to another. Jin-Roh also includes a lot of this. The first time we see Fuse travelling is on a tram. He looks around him and sees a multitude of people. He tries to think about what these people’s lives must be like and stares at each of them in turn. He finds out he’s around all kinds of people yet alone at the same time. Wolves are like this too in some way, group animals yet loners at heart. The second time we see Fuse on the tram the girl (Kei) is with him. The two of them sit next to each other, ashamed, lost, alone. The third time (when they travel towards the location of the very last scene) they truly find themselves alone on the tram without anyone around. The playground also forms a stark contrast to the locations of the rest of the movie (military base, desolate waste, museum), all the other locations are dead serious places. The playground symbolises the escape from the harsh realities of Fuse and Kei’s lives. The fact that it is in the middle of a half wrecked part of town and that bulldozers are grinding everything around them into the dirt shows that escapes or hideouts like these are all disappearing. On the playground there are two things. The first is the swing, which always had an air of indecision about it if you ask me. A swing goes back and forth, taking you no further but also not dropping you back into the past either. The other thing is the slide. Kei steps onto the slide, almost trips and falls/slides down. This part reminded me of the slide effect, meaning that the smallest mistake could cause a seemingly controlled situation to escalate. The other not serious location is the fair on the roof of the building. This fair symbolises the illusion of a good time. The facts that it is fenced off from the rest of the world and at a remote location like a rooftop helps bring out the idea that this illusion is not easily found. The falling kid who loses his balloon further amplifies the idea that the fairground is an illusion of happiness. Illusions can be easily destroyed. In the end, before Fuse and Kei go to the sewers, Kei tells Fuse that she wants to go back to the fairground once more. That desire obviously refers to the need to live in an illusionary happy world. On to the dream. The wolves represent Fuse’s own dark side. In the beginning of the movie he says that he wanted to kill the girl but didn’t know what stopped him. The wolf inside him (that is his true form) wanted to kill the girl yet his human side stopped him from doing so. The dream is all about his struggle with his own (true) dark side. It also represents the guilt that he is feeling and that’s eating him alive. Obvious references to Fuse’s wolf side: The fairy tale of Red riding hood is read out to us with Fuse being the wolf and Kei being the little girl. After Kei ends a sentence with the words "what big teeth you have" we see Fuse at the shooting range. Fuse (the English word) means merge. Jin-Roh could be translated as Man-Wolf. Fuse is the merger of man and wolf. Fuse (Fusée) means fire (or open fire). The really alert people amongst you might have noticed that the title of the book in which Fuse hid his gun is "Tristan und Isolde", which is a drama written by Richard Wagner in which two lovers end up dead. Fuse doesn’t take the gun with him when he goes to the museum. He truly wasn’t planning to kill Kei or die himself. The nickname of the little girl who blows herself up is "Kurtze Haren", which means short hair and the nickname of Kei was "Lange Haren" which means long hair. What exactly I should make of this I don’t know but it could refer to their life span. Ending quotes: "Even clad in human skin and living among them, a wolf remains a wolf." "End this tale of animals living like men while you are still an animal yourself." What I found funny was the fact that Yoko Kanno played a piece on piano written by Mizoguchi while Mizoguchi herself performed her own stuff on cello. This all while Kanno is the more famous of the two... |
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