Forum - View topicREVIEW: Dusk maiden of Amnesia Blu-Ray
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
Mass hysteria doesn't work that way, which is why the episode is so bad. Those teens had literally just heard of this legend from a rumour, then one person spoiler[purportedly gets attacked with a knife or whatever and suddenly everyone is driven to try and rape a girl because of course that makes perfect sense. That episode did two things. Firstly, it makes Japanese people look like a bunch of gullible morons who still genuinely believe in monsters and ghosts even when they should know better. I know Japan has heard of and experienced slasher maniacs, so the teens' first thoughts shouldn't have been to turn to superstition, especially not in this day and age. And secondly, the episode was a black mark on what was otherwise a fairly solid show. It was just so stupid.] The scenario where spoiler[the villagers killed Yuuko because of the plague was infinitely more plausible. First off, they had been properly driven into a corner; their lives were in danger, they didn't know what was causing the plague. Secondly, the method they came up with to stop the plague - human sacrifice to appease some spirits - is logically sound under the ignorant superstition system they were using at the time. A system which modern cynical teens would not be using. It would be like if a student was supposedly shot in an American school and then everyone blames some civil war ghost rather than a deranged gunman. That would never be acceptable to an American audience, so why the Japanese author thought the similar thing would be buyable from a Japanese perspective is beyond me.] |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18178 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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And that's why I still think that some kind of supernatural influence was at work there. Otherwise the writing quality there is incongruous with the rest of the series. And besides, the artistry used at that point definitely suggested an altered state of mind.
Either way, that scene is an effective stage-setter for episode 10, so I'm willing to give it a bit of leeway. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9834 Location: Virginia |
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@dtm42
Again I don't see where you got the sexual reference. spoiler[I think they intended to kill her and were working themselves up to it when Yuuko intervened.] As I said above 1952 was not the dark ages. spoiler[They were not using a superstition still in effect. I doubt that even in remote villages Japan had practiced human sacrifice in the last one or two hundred years. Certainly not since the modernization of Japan in the late 1800s]. @Key I think you are correct that some supernatural influence was in effect. If it took place in a small community here there would have been an Indian burial ground or residual curse from a witch burning in the area. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
You're right about spoiler[the lack of sexual motive, I went back and watched the scene again and they weren't trying to rape her. I got confused because I (correctly) remembered that she did have her top cut open.] But I still disagree with you about the village. spoiler[It was clearly some hick village in the middle of what was then nowhere, and they were being pressured by something a plague that no medicine could cure. So their being ignorant and resorting to superstition rather than science to explain the plague is not too unreasonable. It was certainly more plausible than modern teens blaming a slasher attack on some ghost.] And I mean really people, blaming the students getting hysterical on a supernatural force - i.e. "a wizard did it" - is pretty pathetic, a cheap way to explain things that weren't done well. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9834 Location: Virginia |
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No, not that a wizard did it. It is clear in the anime that the second Yuuko provoked the hysteria and it turned on her. However if you accept the existence of a ghost, it is not to much of a stretch to believe that a unpurified or inadequately purified shrine destroyed in the war had a malevolent influence both in 1952 and 2012 which predisposed people to hysteria. If you remember, this was a concern in the village in 1952. If you want to attribute it to bad writing, be my guest, but I disagree. I think the hysteria scene worked in the context of the show.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Looks like I have an apology to make to the show's creators. It seems Japanese teenage girls really are so moronic and backwards as to suffer mass hysteria over a supposed ghost attack. Link NSFW.
Truth in television I suppose. |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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How curious. |
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hpulley
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