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View Poll Results: Eden of the East - Episode 6 Rating | |||
Perfect 10 | 11 | 16.42% | |
9 out of 10 : Excellent | 16 | 23.88% | |
8 out of 10 : Very Good | 14 | 20.90% | |
7 out of 10 : Good | 13 | 19.40% | |
6 out of 10 : Average | 6 | 8.96% | |
5 out of 10 : Below Average | 3 | 4.48% | |
4 out of 10 : Poor | 2 | 2.99% | |
3 out of 10 : Bad | 1 | 1.49% | |
2 out of 10 : Very Bad | 0 | 0% | |
1 out of 10 : Painful | 1 | 1.49% | |
Voters: 67. You may not vote on this poll |
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2009-05-16, 07:53 | Link #41 |
At the end of this world
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Hungary, Europe
Age: 39
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Man... Then that's like the worst possible way to die I can think of. She should get some professional psychiatric help...
On a different, more happier note: Am I the only one a bit surprised, Saki and Akira didn't shared a goodbye-kiss at the beginning? Or is that not popular in Japan? Last edited by izmosmolnar; 2009-05-16 at 17:49. Reason: clarification |
2009-05-16, 10:45 | Link #42 |
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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As far as the end of this episode, there's still no accounting for where Ohsugi is at the moment. Not even their circle of friends no where he is and even say they can't contact him, so it's safe to assume he's beyond the reach of communications.
To those asking why the man assumed to be Ohsugi captured by Johnny Taker is only posting shots of the room at some random message board, he's most likely using the Internet capabilities of his phone to upload the pictures of the room through the phone service provider. Believe it or not some people are so good with their phones they can literally do it with their phones behind their backs. It's more or less the only thing he CAN do, not like he can actually use the phone to make a call and talk... And yes, you can die from any sort of open bleeding wound if the flow to the blood vessel is not restricted. The Corpora of the penis is essentially one huge mesh of blood vessels, so if you cut off your johnson you essentially have dozens and dozens of small bleeding arteries in there. @NEET As for the NEET issue, it seems to me more of an attempt to reinvent the meaning of the word than anything else. Hirasawa and the rest of the Eden group seem to suggest that rather than NEET being the typical socially secluded and unproductive citizen, they want to reintroduce the term as a sort of rebellion against established and conformist norms of an ideal "productive Japanese citizen." The Eden program itself is symbolic of this: Finding value in the "valueless" by introducing a new way to look at these things, something Saki herself introduced. Similarly, it is as if an attempt to teach people that in the similar way of seeing objects, their is another way to see the "unseen" value in people, perhaps specifically those labelled by society as NEETs. That there is a way to see, find, cultivate and ultimately bring forth the value in things and people society at large consider to be worthless. That is precisely because the society where they belong in seems to only find value in conformity and establishmentalism. Conversely, Hirasawa and perhaps their own members believe they can find the value in theirs lives without devolving into the ever too typical and expected rat race. Like I said, Eden of the East is itself the aim and symbol of this redefinition of what society refers to as NEETs: that these non-conformists to social and economic norms do indeed have value, perhaps greater, if society would look at them in a different light. I'd assume Akira saw something like this, which harkens back to his comment at the end of episode 5. There he noticed that indeed there was something wrong with society as reflected of their treatment of Saki, and while this might be related to the way he tried to re-educate the 20k NEETs he relocated to the Middle East, he probably believes in the same need to restructure social norms in the way at least Hirasawa seems to think.
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2009-05-16, 10:53 | Link #43 |
NEET
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A lot of good thoughts on the NEET phenomenon. Didn't realize that startup founders were also categorized in the same group that includes the shut-in hikkikomori types. By that measure, Bill Gates would have been seen as a NEET (he did drop out of Harvard to start Microsoft after all).
All I have to say is if creating startup companies is lumped together with our usual perception of NEET-ness, it's no wonder Japan doesn't have a hub of innovation that comes close to Silicon Valley. Startup founders, by their very nature, aren't going to be societal conformists (anyone looking at Hirasawa can see that he's got a gunner's mindset) and for Japan to do well, they've got to urge more creativity than conformity. And the best way to do that is to encourage a sort of intellectual subversiveness that just isn't present.
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2009-05-16, 11:01 | Link #44 | |
uwu
Fansubber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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The show is trying to tell us that there are NEETS who aren't totally skill-less bums, and society has ignored them or cast them aside because the NEETs don't fit in, and Akira wants people to be NEETs so the companies get off their high horses instead of making the NEETs conform to society. |
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2009-05-16, 11:18 | Link #46 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
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2009-05-16, 11:25 | Link #47 | |
At the end of this world
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Hungary, Europe
Age: 39
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But wouldn't it be easier to write down where he is, what has happened with him and send it to someone who could do something about it? Or even if he post it to the very same imageboard, it's bound to find it's way to the authorities, if he write some semi-coherent message with a few typos in it. Regarding the police (though I have no idea how overstretched the Japanese 察 is), if he makes enough background noise, by desperately groaning or snapping his fingers (especially if he could even enable his loudspeaker options on the phone), and maybe deliberately pranking them by recalling them several times etc, they would trace the call and send someone to check it out sooner or later. (At least most countries where I've lived so far in Europe would do that). I honestly can't imagine, what sort of rescue he expects by posting random pictures of a room without any information whatsoever on an imageboard. I'm pretty sure eventually Akira has to use his Juiz phone to locate him, but did Oosugi (or whoever he is) expected such solution? Unlikely. Then what was his plan? Edit. Thanks to Schneizel/Miasmacloud and her blog, I can see the connection with the apple now too. Since the apple is the icon for the group, he most probably pictured that down (and that's the reason he is using pictures in the first place), so whoever gonna see the picture who's already familiar with the club, is going to know it's possibly him. Yeah but how are they going to find him? Just because we know he is really the missing Oosugi, we still cannot pinpoint his location to save him. The background of a random room is still not sufficient enough to estimate his whereabouts. Last edited by izmosmolnar; 2009-05-16 at 12:43. Reason: additional stuff |
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2009-05-16, 12:47 | Link #49 | |
Me, An Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: UK
Age: 33
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I still think it would make more sense to just text his friends. |
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2009-05-16, 15:45 | Link #53 | ||
Gregory House
IT Support
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People saying that this episode was using the "wrong" definition of NEET certainly don't understand the working culture in Japan, and what the word actually connotes (BTW, I find non-Japanese people criticizing Japanese people's usage of their own language pretty funny).
In Japan, the company you work for is an extension of your family. Not only that, it even takes precedence over your family in many cases. Japan's work society has also sold the idea of "life employment" to its members, mainly, that once you get employed in a company, you have cruise control of your life and you'll get some position of more importance as the years pass, until you retire. This has been more enforced throughout the years with the high availability of fresh university graduates looking for white-collar jobs in big companies. Of course, it is a social ideal, and it doesn't dictate what actually happens--though it has a lot to do with the way work is perceived in Japan. If you're not in a company, if you're on your own, you're isolated. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. You're not "helping your country". Anyone who falls out of that may be easily considered an outcast, which is what the word NEET connotes--even if they have a project of what their life should be. It doesn't simply mean "loser" in the Western sense of the word (though it probably means that in a Japanese context, for the reasons previously explained). Before anyone points sticks at me for over-generalizing, I'm just pointing out the prevalent social ideas in Japan. It doesn't mean everyone thinks that way--many evidently don't, considering the amount of doujin artists/game developers/musicians out there. And the fact that something like this is being released in a rather "mainstream" artistic medium (as opposed to obscure literature or left-wing essays on society) means that there exists a sizeable amount of the population who does not agree with this perception of NEETs--at least the younger ones. Now for the episode itself, I believe the line of criticism we're starting to see, with Akira's intentions, is very interesting. It's much more interesting than I expected. The idea of rebelling against the established norms of society in the way Akira pointed out his plan isn't too confrontational (basically, he's just a guy with a bunch of cash funding a startup--no big news here on the way capitalism works), but it is interesting enough to make it a valid means of pointing out the crap in the way things are usually done in society. If I may say so, it's interesting because it isn't too confrontational. Strong opposition against the core rules of society in (Japanese?) fiction usually ends up pretty "badly" for the opposing party, and if it's a happy ending, you usually get a conciliatory arrangement that doesn't really change anything at all. With this, the way of confronting the rules might be calm enough to lead the series to a decent, non-conciliatory ending. Quote:
Kuze's character was, personally, immensely more interesting than Akira's, both intellectually and aesthetically. Quote:
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Last edited by WanderingKnight; 2009-05-16 at 16:00. |
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2009-05-16, 17:21 | Link #55 | |
Member
Join Date: Sep 2006
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2009-05-16, 17:32 | Link #57 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
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To follow-up on what WanderingKnight said above, here NEET is being used pretty much to refer to a class of people (a social/economic group) rather than just a noun. In general it is a derogatory word, though the "Eden of the East" group take a certain amount of pride in it. They're not terribly enthused about becoming an ordinary white-collar worker - looking at all the eps so far, it feels like collage/university graduates are being taken for granted, taken advantage of or basically being looked down upon.
A start-up enterprise is a very interesting way to use money. Potentially, it could make Akira (and the rest) truly rich (without the phone), for example. I wonder just how far this will be developed in the story? Unfortunately, we're progressing just one day at a time in this series, so they might not even get started - unless they do a time-skip I'm not quite sure how this imagine recognition software could start to have an impact at a national level in just a few days. But, you never know, considering what Juiz is capable of. At least, this gives us a better idea of what Saki meant right at the start of ep 1 - of Akira becoming a "prince" for all of them. Though this ep didn't have much action in the conventional sense, it may become highly critical down the line. On the program itself, like others have said, it's not something that would be feasible in our world - considering what was actually demonstrated in the episode. To have something exactly like this would be decades away, I'd say. But then, this is a world setting where you can get a program that can erase specific parts of your memory. I like the originality of the idea though - it's a very simple idea and the power can expand exponentially with the number of users and it has all sorts of interesting social implications. On a side note, personally I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Juiz herself is an AI / supercomputer. She's just a bit too powerful / efficient / fast.
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2009-05-16, 17:46 | Link #58 | |
At the end of this world
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Hungary, Europe
Age: 39
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Anyway, I would have been a bit speechless, if #11 would peck one for her victim before departing . Last edited by izmosmolnar; 2009-05-16 at 18:38. |
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2009-05-16, 18:24 | Link #59 | |
A blast from the past
Artist
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Fortaleza-CE, Brazil
Age: 46
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I'm not disputing its usage or anything - I'm not familiar with japanese working culture, myself - just the language problem part you referred to.
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2009-05-16, 18:48 | Link #60 | |
Gregory House
IT Support
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Which is why I said it's rather silly to dispute the usage of a Japanese word, regardless of its origin, with their natives. (The original word doesn't even talk about young adults--it refers to people between 16 and 18). PS: There are a lot of words like this, which always surprise students in Japanese 101 language courses. I'm trying to think about an example but I can't come up with one, but basically, there are a lot of words that were directly copied from English and then given an entirely different meaning.
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