Of course this is work that needs to be metabolized. And even longer. It is almost a year since I purchased and is on the shelf months have already read. But, as I said, Types of love ghost needs to be digested well, no matter how long it takes.
The work has certainly complex: its complexity creates a form that can help us enter into an entirely fictional narrative and outside the norm, and its complexity, and it sucks it takes the reader within a tunnel with no exit if not those at the same time, they are also revenue. In a nutshell it is a short circuit.
The mix of complexity and mental experience led me first to make associations. Recalls or purely cinematic references. In fact, it is clear that Type is a work steeped in cinema. Are exactly three associations: the color theories of SM Eisenstein, Hero by Zhang Yimou, David Lynch's Inland Empire.
things first.
Types of ghost is a love story about two characters, a man and a woman, that run between a sequence and the other; the two are at the core of loving relationships are difficult and painful, full of pain, violence and blood. Each sequence is changed to the color theme and the situation, but the characters remain the same.
start from the thing "easier." Zhang Yimou's Hero is in one of the deception of the viewer more interesting in recent years. In the film, each frame has a color and each color corresponds to a truth of the story that makes the hero. But it moves forward in the film, it turns out that the previous theme is denied or adjusted from the next. And speaking of the theme in all its facets, both those that indicate the color theme that those showing the significance of the sequence. The colors are extremely varied: there is the black "container" of the film, the story of Hero and the red of a false argument between lovers, and the gray of a duel that is staged, and the clear-water a fake funeral. In short: Yimou associates a color to a fiction, a story. Types of love ghost follows the same principle. Each sequence has a color and each color / sequence you find a little truth about the two characters, that truth may be lies, imagination, madness. Yimou not relate colors and themes based on popular views in the sense that red is the passion and green is not hope. If anything, his work is more complex and finer: black representing the sequence of the film container means may be, in fact, the basis of the story, that from which everything begins and where it all ends. What better color / non-black color to represent this? In subsequent sequences the relationship with the color of the clothes of the characters is in close symbiosis with the surrounding environment. The struggle between Heaven and Hero, for example, is gray as is the weather and rain. The commemoration of snow that flies and blue-water as is the surrounding landscape. However, this is to say that the use of color follows the intrinsic motivation more than anything else in history, maybe sometimes you need to convey the emotion better suited to tackle the scene. I think this has been the will of those who work behind the types of love ghost. Choose blue or yellow or gray to highlight the scenes does not mean that the sequence must have a precise meaning, but rather that the color should convey an emotion. The dark shades of blue of the first sequence communicate an unbearable heaviness: blue is the light that emanates television (what the protagonist is watching and it appears the object of his desire), and blue is unable to nell'irraggiungibile every action, but that which shows itself as an end in itself (and in fact the protagonist is masturbating in front of the tv). The question of color is not so simple. The yellow never release any connotation, there is, for example, no relation to the sun. The yellow becomes unwatchable, disgusting, to say the least odious. Red is psychedelic. Purple is crazy. The gray is between dream and reality impalpable. Unable to make sense of individual colors, easiest and most direct is to use them to give the sense, though indefinable state of mind of the protagonist.
is at this point that sneaks Eisenstein. It is perhaps the most visible, but there is everything. Eisenstein wrote very intelligent words about the color, studying it for most of his life. The director wants to keep the discourse within its color clean installation concepts, form and content pages, and yet writes a pure fantasy and unreal. Following several studies and collecting material from disparate corners of the various disciplines, Eisenstein came to the conclusion that it was not possible to find absolute correspondence between color and emotion. The color was to be used at will, giving it each time a different meaning but must be treated at work. He made the famous example of "Rhapsody in Yellow": there were those who saw the yellow as the color of the unexpected, who like the color of sin, who like the color of mysticism. Nothing is more intelligent: this, in fact, allows free association between lines, words and colors and, above all, to use the color not only for its "content", but mainly because of its shape, ie that element which together with the formal composition of the scene, music, installation and director can give the ultimate meaning of the film, the concept, the four-dimensional, the image, as he called it. From here, Eisenstein, in his later life, will jump very interesting: in his words you will hear the echo on the color of pure nonsense. Will the example of the horse of Vyatka, whose green and red dots to go off to color objects. The color, well, loses his vehicle required and can convert in other items - other feelings, in the case of Types. Without getting too complicated in a speech, these words are sufficient to give a precise reading of the key comics. Ultimately types of love ghost uses color to go well beyond the design. It creates a kind of bubble wrap when you enter and from which we can no longer go out, you are full of colors that saturate the individual sequences as it is full of suffering of the protagonist and his own inability to love. Some sequences use the same color (red twice, two gray), but the feelings are eviscerated that are very different.
Finally I could not see a certain affinity with Inland Empire (Lynch strongly recommend the film, and once I get to spend a lot of mental energy to write something about it). In the film, Lynch emphasizes one of the reasons are always present in his films: the spaces. Lynch mutual spaces set in concrete filmic spaces linked together by the assembly and, ultimately, in mental spaces. Inland Empire in the study of film space that becomes a mental space is definitely the key to the movie: the doors that open and lead to another spatial continuity, the first steps that led to a room now it leads to another, corridors that are mixed and confusing and can give out now in a time in another fiction. Lynch creates a closed universe, whose doors and doors that lead to other roads, other roads, and especially with other films. It is trapped by the fiction and fiction - the movie - is the only universe in which they establish. Unable to find the truth. Now, type a love ghost does exactly the same thing. Narrative construction means construction of spaces, whether images or words. The concrete space in the picture or word leads to the mental space. In the transition between the sequences of types there is always overlap, between the first and the second sequence is the overlap that is perhaps more indicative of the other: the last image of the first sequence, in blue, shows a hand leans to the TV, which featured a woman. The first image of the second, in gray, shows the same thing, only that the hand is that of a painting and the woman is the observer of the painting. We have entered into another situation where we were taken from the image above. It is a secret passageway, a tunnel, whose evocative and powerful. In these two vignettes are all types of meaning, that is where the sorrow for the impossibility of love and union of two people: love is a trap, is a closed universe, self, and when you suffer for love there is no other way out but to build an illusion, a sham that can find an outlet in endless images. There is no ready recipe for love, nor is there only one kind of love. Often it is not known, but love means sweetness, violence, madness and even hatred.
Love is a ghost, as are the pictures - they're there, very close and yet distant and elusive. Phantom is what you see but is not. It is shot, the separation of two cartoons. You are reading the comic. It is the form that focuses ourselves what we want to hide. It is a palliative, a guard.
Yet, the drawings and the story comes to the core. Other than protection. Adriano Barone, on my copy of the book, wrote: "I hope that you'll see the blood with which it is written." Mauro Cao has opted for a design that digs the page as it digs into the player as you go along in reading. The blood you see and feel, thanks to color, broken lines and marked, the labyrinthine spaces, the words of desperate people. A feeling of horror. It is an all round training which makes the soul and at the same time consuming. It is an experience you do, because you can see things in another way: he knows penetrate the illusion.
The anime ended in Japan at the end of week Embree and based on a manga still continuing, contains a series of genera whose stereotypes are taken to the extreme. The result is the explosion of an "already seen", but, reflecting on itself, makes the work original and extremely enjoyable.
The first kind is traced the horror. Because of a pandemic, the dead become zombies, the zombies bite the living and in turn become zombies. As the world is filled with walking corpses, the living must not help but crack heads and survive death.
Then there is the kind that easily could be called teen drama: the usual dynamics and the usual relations between girls and boys, friendship, love, misunderstandings and confessions. Then again, the kind that surrounds the winds around nicely, and that Japan has a word, perhaps untranslatable, specify: ecchi. In short: buxom girls, far too naive and provocative, making generous show of panties and bras, and our protagonists forget deliberately to wear clothes or why not fight the undead in thong and apron kitchen. But when the chips are really nothing is explicit and erotic scenes are completely hidden.
The characters are the "usual" types fixed. There is the enigmatic senpai, relentless champion of kendo, the otaku is a bit 'in the flesh a victim of abuse and harassment, there is the haughty and self-centered little genius, is the school doctor, a blonde doll , a little 'childish and full of twists, and then the two main characters, Rei Komuro and Takashi Miyamoto, the typical adolescent tormented and complicated. In addition to this the child and the pet. In short, there everything. But everything is so sharp that nothing is trivial and obvious. Whether the genre that the characters are aware of the role they played and why each element becomes self-referential. Hotdiva reveals the rules, show the mechanisms and, in its excess, plays with reality and fiction. Indeed, he entered the tunnel that connects these two entities, creating a circle from which it is difficult to escape. Hence, rather, it is impossible to escape.
The story opens on a really calm and flat. And when the reality is far too calm and flat, it becomes surreal. Takashi Komuro is sitting on the terrace of the school to watch a motionless world. He thinks to himself, as be inconclusive because his character and his friend, Rei, he preferred to another. It's all too perfectly normal. It's a classic scene in a classic Japanese school. And here comes the plot twist, that reality becomes alienating and all pretense crumbles. At the gate of the school a strange man who is not stupid slamming against the railing. Some teachers, on this side of the gate, trying to remove him. The man rushes against one of them and bites him. Blood everywhere and screams of terror pierce the silence professors bite with each other. Start the infection. The school is populated by zombies soon.
Our young players and still unwitting heroes see the scenery change dramatically in front of their eyes. It must be organized on the spot not to succumb. Everyone at the service of their livelihoods what it does best: those who use a kendo sword, another a baseball bat, another a stick to wash the floor and who, with material collected here and there, suddenly a gun with high precision. From different sides of our high school players, including zombies and dead comrades, they manage to get together and decide to make the group. They grow fast and it's up to them to decide the moves. For this reason, within hotdiva not miss the "Bildungsroman".
As usual, the reality Crash, crash all certainty and all the rules. No longer makes sense the name "senpai" or called by surname. Neither makes more sense to maintain the required respect for a professor who has never deserved respect. Conventions and social rules, facing the unexpected chaos, are revealed in all their futility. The company is a sham. The world, as it is, quiet and controlled, is a fiction. But there is a risk that, in an attempt to survive, falling even moral rules that hold back the evil and the spirit of altruism and aggregation to dissolve. Who is not human? The zombie or live just to survive giving up one's humanity? The problems faced creep almost silently between an action scene and the other, but left dumbfounded.
The interesting thing is that the questions on the rules of society as they move forward to the anime, in its form, becomes self-referential. Playing with the topos of fiction takes place on several levels.
For example, are wasted during every episode, phrases such as "looking like a movie," "looks like a horror," "looks like a video game," "I learned how to shoot video games" and then start again , "just as happens in the movies", "just as happens in horror." The survival of children is paradoxically guaranteed by their immense film culture and video games. The little otaku mistreated, because the epidemic that has affected the whole world, can redeem himself: he knows all the details of each weapon created by man and trained to console him a target infallible.
addition, the images we are presented disorienting. The certainties are denuded of their normality and security that should be infused. In this way, the images reflect on themselves and the viewer looks closely he sees no let it flow. Among the most impressive scenes, there's probably one that focuses on a mother alive who holds daughter fainted in his arms, the woman, desperate, calls and asks for help when her daughter suddenly wakes up and pounces on her, eating and sucking the blood - what's worse than a pure and innocent little girl who nell'assassina becomes the mother?
What is episode after episode is a festival of spectacular actions and gender stereotypes blatantly exhibited. There's the exit just in time by a road tunnel in which they were a tremendous explosion, succeeded in beating the blast, there is the arrival of flying with a bike that serves Komuro standing to changes in some 'erotic girls in the fight against the zombies. In short, do not get bored. And everything is repeated continuously. Chaos, calm, fighting, chaos, quiet. It soon enters into a narrative pattern simple and effective, able to prepare the viewer to moments of high tension.
Repetition is crucial and is perfectly in keeping with the catastrophe.
A story to hotdiva is not just a horror, but it sinks in that genre that you can define catastrophic. The disaster movie - the ones where the whole world is affected by a situation of chaos and apocalypse - they something more than simple horror. The horror can easily spill on the individual viewer, focus on his innermost fears and maybe make it go to sleep with the fear that there is something under the bed. The disaster movie secures. The viewer can rest easy because he knows that a catastrophic situation at the global level (which is not banking on the inner fears of the human) can occur with a very low probability, if any. To enjoy this free of fear he can prove in front of certain scenes.
Repetition and bring disaster to secure after only a few scenes the viewer understands that, although the world is collapsing, the fighting be repeated with the same outcome. Will be the only mode of fighting to change, to go beyond and have fun.
repeat disaster and lead us to one of the most interesting patterns of the soul. The video game. Whether you have a complex history, and who do not have, the game the tip almost exclusively on repetition. Every game, in terms of internal structure, alternating moments of calm and moments of tension is very high exploration and combat. In addition, the game - and a demonstration of this whole saga - it can last indefinitely. Rarely brings such a title, then you pull off prequel, sequel and prequel to the prequel. There are also video games that underlie most marked in a repeat: the shooter and fighting games. Finally, at the foot of a game can easily be a catastrophic situation and danger, from which it must necessarily out, chapter by chapter, or the game will not go forward.
hotdiva not only offers a history that reveals the mechanics of the genre and tells us that "this is a fiction," but also uses the style of narrative which is a virtual world of video games.
Acquired this stylistic feature, the story becomes more dramatic. As the characters grow and mature, their equipment improves and becomes stronger, just like in the game: powerful weapons, but illegal, guns of all types, bazookas, tanks and amphibious vehicles, harnesses the latest fashion always combined with lace for ladies' underwear, and finally to the sacred katana which blade can pass through the bone without scratching. The boys now know they are heroes and they are fighting for their own sake and for that of the world. Become a well organized team and fully autonomous. They no longer need the protection of adults, or they want: they are now all too aware of their ability, their maturity and that the game you are playing can be continued only by them. As the real heroes of fiction. This leads to the collapse of another rule, that of the traditional relationship between adult and young: the age and life experience does not guarantee the survival and the wisdom nor the ability to decide fairly.
Right on the end is the fun part: now it is understood that the structure is circular and that, if you will, hotdiva could go on forever, just like a game. As the anime than the manga seems to truncate the story goes that, in reality ends. Or rather, we understand that it is right to put an end, to make a work about meaning, because its general meaning lies in the infinity of its gaming facility. Is to tear apart the fictions in the world become aware of and manipulate reality at will.
Thanks to youtube here's the first part of the first episode complete with opening theme, which always helps make the idea of \u200b\u200bthe soul as a whole.
