A Page-Turner for All Seasons

I have a complicated relationship with reading that I think a number of people can relate to. Simply put, I blame school and I blame movies. The latter is straightforward enough. I grew up in a golden age of cinema: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, The Princess Bride, Big, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ghostbusters, Short Circuit, The Goonies, Labyrinth, and too many others to name. These movies were every bit as deep and thematically complex as any book, and all I had to do was push Play on the VCR. As for school, bear in mind that I’m not mad, only frustrated. The biggest problem is on my end; I never got the hang of speed reading. I figured, if someone wrote all this, the least I can do is read all of this. When you’re reading on your own, who cares? With school, however, not only are you expected to read the book within a timeframe, you’re also going to be quizzed on it. Therein lay the problem, you want to get through the book quickly, but you’ve got to retain as much detail as possible, otherwise you won’t do so well on the assignment. It’s simply a skill I never got to develop properly. Some people got it. I didn’t.

In recent years, I feel I’ve gotten a little better at it, and have been able to polish off some books fairly quickly. There’s a caveat to this, however, that the book is between 200-300 pages or, according to its audiobook counterpart, able to be read in 8-10 hours maximum. Even if I only read on weekends, that’s a book a month at my slowest.

When I was gifted an audiobook of Project Hail Mary, I made an exception (and I'll probably make a few more exceptions that I'll talk about later). It’s 16 hours, but there’s a twist. The book switches between the present day plot and a past flashback. It’s rather like reading two books at the same time, which is a surprisingly good way to stay engaged with a plot that might otherwise drag. That may sound like the problem is with my attention span, and that’s fair. Some stories take more telling than others, and a tighter plot doesn’t necessarily make for a better book. 

Someone on social media (I can’t find where now) was talking about the state of television, specifically streaming shows, how there’s so few episodes per season and we have to wait sometimes several years for the next season. They went on to elaborate that sometimes a show would just have an episode in which nothing happens and that this is becoming a lost art. These are sometimes called Bottle Episodes, depending on who you ask. A more cynical person would call them Filler. Bottle Episodes are designed to be self-contained and usually intended to give audiences a breather between longer or more significant plot points. They’re typically confined to a single location and are often more dialogue-heavy than a standard episode. Reasons for a Bottle Episode will, once again, depend on who you ask. Writers like and will vehemently defend them because it's a chance to flesh out their characters. They're also typically born of necessity, like a show going over budget on an earlier or upcoming episode. 

Here’s the thing about streaming versus traditional television regarding filler: There are no time slots to fill anymore. I was thinking about this when finishing off season two of My Adventures with Superman. I never really got into any of the Superman comics growing up, but when it comes to the Man of Steel’s other media appearances, I’m always curious to see how it works out. With My Adventures with Superman, every episode was an absolute banger, not a single moment wasted, not one episode that could be written off as filler. Between the two seasons, the total number of episodes is 20, the first half in 2023 and the second half in 2024 (as of this writing, the third season is about two weeks away). That got me thinking about that old Lois and Clark series from the 90’s, the one with Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. That was a show that felt like it was on forever. When I looked it up, I found it was only four seasons spanning 1993 to 1997, but each season was 22 episodes. Do you remember all of them? I sure don’t. Of course, it’s hardly fair to compare a live-action superhero show from the mid-90’s to a modern animated program nearly 30 years apart; animation is expensive and therefore doesn’t have time for filler. Still, when you’re bringing Superman to the small screen, maybe quality should take precedent over quantity. Sure, watching Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, try to balance is his secret identity with his relationship with Lois is part of the mythos, but peppering in a few breakable sets and props isn’t exactly making the most of said mythos.

As for the time between seasons, I can’t help but suggest to these impatient viewers… maybe read some books. You’ve got time. 

A Prime Example

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Amazon slave. I've been a Prime Member for years, I have several Alexa smart speakers, I use Subscribe & Save, I use Kindle and Audible, and I even watch Prime Video (mostly for the Grand Tour or anything the old Top Gear crew is attached to). I know the company is evil, they treat their workers (especially their drivers) like garbage, their returns are a joke, and Jeff Bezos is dumping tons of methane into the atmosphere with his phallus rockets, to say nothing of that stupid yacht he tried to have a bridge disassembled over. 

Yet... I'm still paying. I can only offer so much in my defense. There's still plenty of small and local businesses I support, and there's certain items that I simply will not buy from Amazon if I can avoid it. If I can get it straight from the manufacturer, I'll go that route (especially if they let me check out with PayPal because that's just as convenient as Amazon). To me, Amazon offers a way to eliminate tedium. I don't have to haul bags of cat food, kitty litter, and sparkling water around in a cart, into my car, out of my car, and into my house. Now, all but that last step has been eliminated. It's one less thing I have to deal with. It's cruise control, not fully autonomous driving, if you follow. The point is if it all went away tomorrow, I'd be only a little bit bummed... for about five minutes, and then I'd move on to something else. 

Is it really an addiction if you're in control of it? 

Anyway, there's still the dilemma of supporting a terrible company, but the awful truth to that matter is that voting with your wallet is kind of a hollow promise. After all, there's no "vote against" just voting for something, and not voting at all. Moreover, if you know anything about how the company is structured, their main money maker is not their retail branch. It's all their web hosting. That's where this gets really scary. I heard once that all of Netflix's servers are owned by Amazon. That may seem like a massive conflict of interest, but it's actually good business. There's a similar sort of relationship between Apple and Samsung. Yes, they're rivals in the smartphone space, but if you were to open up your iPhone, you'd find Samsung's name on more than a few components. In fact, the iPhone camera is actually a Sony component. I find that funny because the camera on my old Xperia phone wasn't all that great, but the little iPhone 5c I got to replace it took damn fine pictures right out of the box. 

I decided to write this entry after receiving an email from Amazon that some of you may have read yourselves or at least heard about on social media. Ads are coming to Prime Video. Although they insist there will be overall fewer ads than television, it's more than a little disheartening that this is what they resorted to in terms of expanding their market share in the streaming space. 

Rather than create a new, lower-priced, ad-supported tier and bring in new customers, they'd rather punish loyal customers who have been paying for Prime for years (seriously, whatever happened to grandfathering?). Instead, they now offer an ad-free version of Prime for an additional fee. Obviously, this is about Amazon making more money. They chose this strategy because simply raising the rates would have deterred many from renewing, so they decide to raise the proverbial temperature of the pot of water instead of dunking us in straight away. As I said, I think they could have done more to draw in new customers than try to tiptoe around existing ones. 

As for what I'm going to do about it... very little. Ironically, most of what I've been watching on Prime Video of late has been through their subsidiary FreeVee, which is ad-supported anyway. There's also that practice of advertising their other shows before the ones I'm already watching. It's frustrating that this is happening, but I'm more mad at myself for not being more bothered. I feel like I should be cancelling my Prime membership as a statement, but I know it's not going to change anything and despite what I said about what I'd do if this all went away, I don't want to be the one to pull the plug. Given the scale, it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Then again, we're also living in a time when a comedy about Wile E. Coyote suing Acme was brought back from a fate worse than death for media. 

Maybe we're reaching a point where it's more than just the bottom line that a business can pay attention to. Yes, Coyote Vs. Acme got a big boost from a number of meetings being canceled, as well as the potential threat of Capitol Hill getting involved (one congressman compared the move to committing arson and insurance fraud), but it's still notable how much of a public outcry got heard. Hell, remember when the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie got delayed because of backlash against the early trailer? No calls for boycotts there, just plain, "Dear God, what is that thing!?" from a few thousand voices on Twitter. Yes, there was still a bottom line ultimately being threatened, but we didn't have to wait until opening weekend for the change to occur. 

Maxed Out

I have officially allowed my Disney+ subscription to lapse following the closing of The Mandalorian's second season, and cashed in a free 30-day trial of HBO Max via my cell provider. Jury's out on if this was a good move, but there's no loss in either case. I'll renew my subscription to Disney+ when the new Star Wars content rolls out, but as far as keeping HBO Max past the trial period, that's less and less likely. For starters, HBO Max is about twice the monthly cost of Disney+. This puts it closer in the Netflix realm of streaming services, but despite having the Warner Bros. shield hovering over the operation, the amount of content present is simply nowhere near Netflix, and even Disney+ offered a pretty decent bang for the buck. To be fair, not all content on Disney's linear/terrestrial television channels like XD are simultaneously available on D+, namely the newer seasons of ongoing shows like The Owl House. I believe Ducktales had a similar arrangement as well, not unlike a movie having a theatrical run before coming to home media. It's intriguing that a show on basic cable can still make more money than a dedicated streaming platform. It's like that supposed paradox about food courts in malls, that while the leasing costs can almost surpass that of a standalone restaurant, the returns more than make up for it because of the location. 

Speaking of movie theaters and restaurants, I think the YouTuber ADoseofBuckley put it best when he said of the lockdowns, "I miss movies the most, and movie theaters the least." Don't get me wrong, nobody loves movie theaters more than me, but you can love something and still not miss it. In fact, although there was a time when I was going to the movie theater literally once a week with my roommate, I would hardly consider our venue of choice to be a movie theater. Rather, it was a restaurant that just so happened to show movies. Actually, that's a slight exaggeration as only two of their screening rooms had the full dine-in experience, whereas all the others were more in the self-service vein. Couple the restaurant experience with the fact that we took advantage of a promotional offer that meant movie tickets for new releases were only 5 dollars due to seeing them on an "off-day" like Tuesday, and this was on the whole a pretty sweet arrangement. We may have to deal with the occasional annoying patron, the kind who use their speakerphone for all their calls no matter the location. Yes, they put their phone away by the time the movie started, but the "call" still continued if that makes sense. Maybe it's a cultural shift or I simply have less patience for people lacking basic self-awareness, but the social experience of movie theaters has become painfully overrated. 

To go off on a minor tangent, let me tell you about the relationship between malice and ignorance. Thinking you're the most important person in the world and nobody else matters is obviously malice, while thinking you're the only person in the world is ignorance. I was on a return flight from visiting family when, as we were about to take off, I heard sounds from the seat behind me. At first, I didn't think anything of it. I figured someone just got messaged a short video or clicked on some ad and in the next 30 seconds or less, all would be quiet in time for the jet engines to kick in. However, it kept going. I realized someone was sitting behind me, laptop out and open, and was watching a movie or TV show using only the built-in speakers of their device. Ironically, if this guy was simply talking to the person next to him, even if a little loudly, I wouldn't think anything of it. You're in a small, enclosed space with people. You're going to talk to them, moreso if you already know each other. I guess it's because of the expectation. I expect people to talk to each other, hopefully at a reasonable volume that most other people aren't bothered by it, but effectively turning your seat and all those seats in a given radius around you into your own personal living room is not what I expect when I take a flight. Much like the previous notion of him simply watching something super-quick before putting his phone away or switching to another activity, I kept trying to give him the benefit of the doubt until the seconds became minutes. The reason I didn't say anything beyond the paranoid possibility of creating an uncomfortable atmosphere I'd be on the receiving end of for the entirety of the flight was because I couldn't find the right vocabulary to arm myself with. I don't mean I couldn't think of how to diplomatically inform this gentleman that I had no interest in hearing his favorite episode of Fargo. What I mean is I was having trouble processing the situation to begin with, much less coming up with a way to solve the problem in a way that wouldn't invite worse ones. The flight attendant came to my rescue, as well as that of everyone in that aforementioned radius. 

She asked, not said, but asked, "Sir, do you have headphones?" 

I love this woman. All these years later, and despite knowing her only through this small exchange within earshot of me on an airplane, I love her. Furthering my fortune was the revelation this one-man living room was firmly in the ignorant category rather than the malicious one. He didn't get uppity or haughty or stubborn. Whether he dug out his headphones or simply stopped the episode, I know not and care as little. I did however remain more than a little baffled at how it would never possibly occur to him that watching a movie on your laptop in the presence of strangers is more than a little bit... off-putting. Again, I don't feel this comes from a place of, "I am entitled to this!" but that's such a small sliver of daylight to navigate and I wish more people could understand that as nobody can read your mind nor travel in time to learn potentially redeeming context about your circumstances, all we have to go by are the results. When you do something that arrogant people do, you'll be seen as arrogant. It's that simple. It's hardly fair, but that's the price we pay for our agency, autonomy, and privacy. 

Going back to the social experience of watching movies, whether it's in a theater/restaurant or on a laptop perched on an airplane's tray table, I was legitimately intrigued to go all in on a full year or even six months (per their upsell that follows signing up for the 30-day trial) of HBO Max despite the cost. The Old Worm recently made headlines by announcing a bold experiment of releasing movies in theaters the same day as on their HBO Max platform. 

Behold, the Conqueror Worm

This sort of "simulcast" has been done before on more than a few occasions, though usually for smaller, independent productions that likely weren't banking on a return for the theatrical portion of their run. The results of these past efforts are largely inconclusive, as most theaters are either unwilling to sign up for this experiment, or are more likely not interested in the small, budget-friendly personal pieces given the deluge of blockbusters they've got to pick from. What's different about this run, besides the fact it was completely unplanned by anyone and everyone outside of the Water Tower's private conference rooms, is simply the scale of the operation. Wonder Woman 1984 is not a small movie. It’s one of their major blockbusters, the kind of blockbuster that needs a theatrical run to make back its exorbitant budget. The same goes for the other pictures on the list, including a fourth Matrix, a third Suicide Squad film (assuming you count Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn as number two), a second Space Jam, and a rebooted Mortal Kombat. That said, a big budget does not equate to a big welcome. 

I've already talked at length my reservations about the third attempt at Dune, so the ability to stream it in the comfort of my own home doesn't sweeten the deal very much. Most of the other films listed in the Dubba-Bee's 2021 vision net a similar reaction from me, with the sole exception of King Kong vs. Godzilla (and maybe The Suicide Squad, if only for a morbid fascination with the first film). However, that release date falls outside of the 6-month window by a few weeks, which I can't help but assume is by design. In fact, even Dune has been pushed back to later in the year. Its first delay was due to the Coronavirus lockdowns, so a delay of a few months was understandable. That's exactly what happened with WW84, previously slated for the summer of 2020. However, with it now being delayed by over a full year, coupled with Home Box Office's push for the 6-month plan, and it's looking like the service may not have as much confidence in their bold experiment as previously believed. 

It's an adequate concern for theaters to be nervous about protecting their investments. At the same time, the promise of an early release and a large screen is simply not enough for many people anymore. The dine-in add-on is a step in the right direction, and its only apparent shortcoming is the unexpected circumstance of a global pandemic. 

I'd say it's high time drive-ins made their best move for a comeback. 

Trix Are For Kids

There's a scene in The Matrix: Reloaded where Neo is greeted by a wide-eyed, nervous kid who thanks him for saving his life. This was brought up in a review at the time as a point of criticism, complaining that albeit this is the first time he's appeared, everyone acts like they already know him. 

For background, between the first and second Matrix films, there was a collection of animated shorts produced, collectively called The Animatrix. One story centers around a teenage boy who is becoming disenchanted with his humdrum daily life, not unlike Neo himself in the first film. Short story made shorter, the kid is freed of The Matrix, thanks in no small part to Neo's team. 

The criticism about the kid's "sudden" appearance strikes me as odd and, were I more of a cynic, was more of a pointed statement about Warner Bros. marketing of the Matrix franchise
I don't recall if I saw Animatrix before Reloaded, but here's how I think I would have interpreted the scene had I not. Neo is The One, a prophesied messiah who will turn the tide in the war against the machines. Obviously, someone like this is going to have fans. This kid is just one of those fans. He approaches Neo, thanks him for saving his life, Neo graciously accepts the thanks and the kid goes on his merry way. Neo is visibly uncomfortable at the adoration, and Trinity comforts him by telling him he's given hope to many.
The point is the kid is a face in the crowd. Actually, he's more like the face OF the crowd, the crowd being all those people who look up to Neo. It doesn't matter who the kid is in the grand scheme of things. That he has a small and mostly self-contained backstory in no way should work against his role in the film proper. In fact, there are several new faces in Reloaded who did not appear in any of the Animatrix shorts, yet everyone in the story already knows who these people are. So, why was there so much scorn and ire for this superfan's 15 seconds?
It's one matter to say a book is better than its film adaptation, that's the nature of the mediums. There are things you can do in a book that don't necessarily work in a film, and vice versa. It's quite a different matter to say that if you don't like a film, find it lacking or otherwise unenjoyable, that reading the book will actually enhance your enjoyment because it will fill in all the gaps left by the mov---

No.

... Just... No.

They're called adaptations for a reason. They adapt a story to a different medium. If the book and film were supposed to be taken in tandem, then the film would be called a supplement. Sometimes I think that's why tie-in novels of movies are called novelizations. Hell, they're called "tie-ins" as well, that should tell you something.

Obviously, this is not to say once you read the book or see the movie, you've reaped all you can sow and never the twain shall meet. I love the film Under The Skin. I read the novel later. Which one I prefer is irrelevant as the film is an "adaptation" in the strongest sense, having virtually nothing in common with the book beyond the barest bones of the premise. 2001: A Space Odyssey has a similar standing with me. The book and the film are ultimately the same story, but told in very different ways. They are separate, but joined.

As I write this, there's one more episode in season 2 of The Mandalorian. It's been fun, but I worry about the longevity of the series. Season 1 played it safe in a good way, each episode essentially being a loving homage to a genre or trope, most notably "The Sanctuary" being 7 Samurai but in a galaxy far, far away. As a wise one once said, every author writes the same book, the craft being in how well you disguise that fact. 

Season 2 has by contrast taken more narrative risks, with a much bigger emphasis on the worldbuilding, calling back to not only the original trilogy, but more recent installments like the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. While familiarity with these shows is not at all a requirement, it may begin to put holes in the "aesthetic before plot" philosophy that made Season 1 work so well. It's easy to upset that kind of balance. While shows are meant to grow over time, there's an old chestnut of wisdom from the late, great Stan Lee that comes to mind, "Every issue is someone's first."

In a way, Star Wars has had a similar history to the arcade industry. Once upon a time, the late 70's to early 80's, arcades were everywhere, and it seemed everyone loved them. A Pong machine was every bit as common a sight in a bar as a jukebox or a pool table. Nolan Bushnell insists he's met hundreds of couples who first met by playing Pong. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, the clock will inevitably strike midnight and the carriage turns into a pumpkin. A series of poor business decisions and an overall change in tastes led to the great gaming crash of 1982, which saw a number of arcades close down.

About 10 years later, two things happen: Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Arcades were back in spotlight... for about a year. They drew in fans, no question, but the nature of fighting games (and more importantly their diehard fans) were largely unwelcoming to the two most important demographics from the pre-1982 heyday: women and casual gamers. Post-1993, the only arcade games that held any sort of broad appeal were either driving games or, at a stretch, gallery shooters.

Star Wars' trajectory went much the same way, right down to the timeline. Post-1983 the main series of films concludes with Return of the Jedi. It's well-received by critics and certainly brought in the fans like previous installments, but between George Lucas' interest in other projects along with a possible over saturation in the market of merchandise and spin-off media, it was clear the series had run its course. Fast forward to around 1991 and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy kicks off with Heir to the Empire. Shortly thereafter, reissues of the action figures hit shelves, catching the attention of collectors. The Extended Universe as it's collectively known goes all the way back to Splinter of the Mind's Eye in 1978, but it's fair to say the early 90's is when it mushroomed into the massive... er, empire we know it as today. Much like the fighting game craze, this was a good thing... for about a year. The appeal was still there, but it was nowhere near as broad.

Interestingly enough, even Star Trek had the same problem. When the original series aired, science fiction had outgrown its reputation as appealing only to adolescent boys enamored with Sputnik and the start of the space program. This was in no small part thanks to Trek's noteworthy social commentary. That is, the sci-fi trappings were an aesthetic. The idyllic world of the Federation was a lens through which the goings-on in our troubled world could be put in perspective. By the time the Klingon Dictionary was published in 1993 (man, the 90's were really divisive times), it was more or less clear that the idea of the "casual" fan had become something of a dirty word. Sci-fi was now for sci-fi fans and anybody else who didn't want to sign up for the lifetime membership had to sit at the kids' table. That's mild hyperbole, but only mild.

This is not to say that having broad appeal to a casual market is inevitably a superior strategy for an intellectual property to take, only that it's different and, as a wise one once said, if you're going to eat tuna, expect bones. For comparison's sake, stand-up comedy has two main branches. There are those who punch up at the haves, and those who punch down at the have-nots. The former has many obvious examples, most with large audiences and whose very best enjoy a mainstream success. The latter is by no means taboo, but those few examples of making it work generally draw in smaller, but maybe more intimate crowds. There's an unspoken contract of sorts between the comedian and the audience that nobody is being put down before anybody else, that even the guy calling you stupid is speaking as much for himself as anybody. There's an overall feeling of, "We're all in this together." with both sides of the coin, but the proverbial "this" is what makes all the difference.

Disney has used The Mandalorian to push its new streaming platform, draw in that larger audience, the kind of larger audience that entails the kinds of returns on investment needed to put together a technically complex show like The Mandalorian. I don't doubt the "volume" or virtual set used for the series will see use by other properties (it'd be a shame if it didn't), but I think it's fair to say Disney may well be taking a loss on the show, probably a bigger one than it did on the Solo movie. The financial rituals of Hollywood are a curious case of byzantine bureaucracies and seedy shell games. I've even heard some factoid along the lines of, "No movie in the history of the industry has ever truly turned a profit because all the blockbusters are offset by the flops that outnumber them." I doubt it's that simple (complex?), but it is curious how a movie can absolutely fail to make any sort of impact, yet rarely hurt anyone involved, even directors, writers, and producers who bear the biggest burdens of all when it comes to the major creative decisions.

Even if the palace Uncle Walt built decides to drop the jet-setting bounty hunting samurai gunslinger with the bucket on his head and the slayer of frogs at his side, that will still leave us with 16 rock solid episodes of a show that will be enjoyed years later, whether it speaks only to the die-hards or pulls in the casuals.

Every episode is an entrance.

Blame My Paranoia

I hope I live long enough to see 3D printers this big.

My formal introduction to the work of Tsutomu Nihei follows a rather common pattern. I saw Knights of Sidonia on Netflix, and from there I found the rest of his bibliography, though I've yet to dive into any of it. I found out about Blame! through Classic Game Room, along with Biomega. Comixology filled me in on the rest. 

I'm currently waiting on the arrival of a somewhat obscure DVD as part of a not-quite review that discusses some oddities in the dynamic of digital versus physical media, a kind of meditation on the unadvertised mission statement of my weblog, discussing examples of media that don't fit broadly established genres or categories and subsequently fall through the cracks. 

I watched Blame! knowing very little about the story of the original manga. I'd read some snippets here and there, either descriptions or reviews, but beyond Kiri (Killy?), his weapon, and the Terminator-like setting of humans against machines, I had no real clue what to expect. This led to a bout of what could best be described as cognitive dissonance. My mind had expectations for the storyline that went in the polar opposite direction, though hardly to my dismay. It simply makes me wonder if anyone else may have the same quasi-existential experience. 

In the distant future, humanity has effectively cracked the post-scarcity economy, allowing us to build and create without any real restrictions. The megastructure that results from all this is maintained entirely by machines under the guidance of a supercomputer called the Authority. Under the Authority, robots called Builders continue to expand the structure while Safeguards enforce security. At some point, thanks to a contagion, humans lose the ability to interface with the netsphere (the internet), leaving the Authority to make like the brooms from Fantasia and carry on as it always has with only the vaguest of direction. Builders now build without rhyme or reason, a la the Winchester Mansion but on a larger scale, and Safeguards kill humans on sight, classifying them as interlopers. Many millennia pass, but small pockets of humanity manage to eke out a living despite the constant threat of extermination. 

Our story starts with a group of upstarts from a village of human survivors scavenging for food against the better judgment of their elders. A veritable Mickey Mouse operation from the start, the plan goes horrifically awry and about half the party is butchered by killer department store mannequins. The remaining few are about to meet the same fate when they bump into a stoic man in black who wipes out the Safeguards with one shot of an otherwise unassuming firearm. He asks if anyone possesses something called a Net Terminal Gene. The kids have no clue what he's talking about, but insist he come with them to meet the other villagers on the off-chance someone can help. 

The old man of the tribe, known only as Pops, explains that Kiri is a traveler, known through oral traditions, like most of their knowledge. Sadly, what they know as far as what Kiri is looking for is extremely limited, almost superstitious. One story stands out, though, that of a ghost that lives below the village in a place called the Rotting Shrine. 

To the surprise of likely no sci-fi fan worth his salt, said ghost isn't a ghost at all, but a holographic projection. It appears to be of a woman, but the message has become distorted and corrupted beyond coherency. Walking right past where the humans fear to tread, Kiri unearths the head and spine of an android and employs what people in the tech industry know as Emergency Repair Procedure Number 1: hit it. 

This is the part where the ignorance of the humans in the story and my own ignorance of the original source material collide and merge into a twisted ladder of not quite dramatic irony and an assumed idiot plot. The android introduces herself as Cibo (pronounced "Shee-Boh" for some reason) and starts telling the story of how she came to be as she is... without really explaining what she is. She says she's a scientist who tried to restore order to the megastructure. The whole time this is going on, all I can think is, "So, she's a human consciousness transferred into a robot? But, if that's the case, how can Kiri perform a retinal scan? Why would that work?" Furthermore, I thought, "Given one of the villagers previously established that there are Safeguards which can take on human forms, do we have any reason to believe what Cibo is saying?" Then there's the villagers, who don't seem to question any of this whatsoever, though to be fair only believe about half of what they're being told. That's when Cibo drops a line I'm going to paraphrase for emphasis: 

"Take me to the automated factory and I'll make anything you want. Even food." 

I dunno. I can imagine quite a lot.

Again, knowing nothing about the source material, tell me that line is anything but a massive red flag billowing in the wind. I mean, there's "Too Good To Be True" and there's frigging magic beans, Hansel and Gretel, Gingerbread Man riding a fox that say ring-a-ding-ding-ding.... The point is, for the next 10-15 minutes, I was almost yelling at my screen, "Tonto! Don't go to town! They're gonna beat y'up again!" I was ready to write off the villagers as cannon fodder and the story as an idiot plot. An idiot plot is a plot wherein the only reason anything transpires the way it does is that the protagonists are total morons with no common sense and even fewer survival skills. Think about it: here's a group of people who hide from robots that want to kill them, and now here's the skeletal head & shoulders of a robot promising them anything they want if they take her to a factory... that's automated... as in, run by robots.  

Where the Hell is Admiral Ackbar when you need him!? Do these villagers really have no concept of what a human being is supposed to look and act like, especially a dead one? Did they see the first Hellboy movie too many times? To be fair, the team that decides to go along with Kiri to this factory have their fair share of doubts. The fact is, given their circumstances, they have no reason not to go. I was expecting a bleak story, but this was starting to get ridiculous, drawing out what seemed like an obvious betrayal in the making. While things do go horribly wrong, Cibo's actually on the level. That's not a spoiler; that's saving you from the embarrassment of energy wasted in anticipation of something that never happens. 

It turns out Cibo is the M to Kiri's James Bond. The story of the manga has very few recurring characters and generally flimsy alliances. Cibo, however, is as much the face of Blame! as Kiri, to the point she takes the trope of Main Character Immunity to almost comical proportions, even in the short span of the film's run time. 

There's a real Ship of Theseus theme to Cibo that I rather dig; that she was a normal human being, then gradually augmented herself, eventually reducing her very "self" to a stream of data, transplanting herself into a completely synthetic body, and even transferring/copying herself from one form to another as needed. We typically apply it to inanimate objects like ships and tools as a meditation on sentiment, but applied to an existential context it becomes infinitely fascinating and equally terrifying. At the end of the day, all "we are", all that "I am" is a string of memories, shaped by experiences, and stored imperfectly in a fundamentally frail physical form. 

Speaking of physical forms, I'd said before I was waiting for a DVD to arrive, which was true when I started writing this a few days earlier. That situation has changed:  

Thanks RightStuf

Things are going to get complicated.