I have no idea what just happened. But it was bloody awesome.

Layers and Layers

As I’ve mentioned before, I love how this series is wrapped up in layers upon layers of meaning. Or in this case, layers and layers of confusion. The scene where Shinjuurou left his meeting with the prisoners showcased this perfectly.

He leaves the interview room, clutching his head in pain. All is darkness. He looks up, and sees the stars. The stars transform into bombers as Shinjuurou relives the war. Then the bombers are revealed to be the set of a movie, where Shinjuurou is a cameraman.

So this episode took place on multiple levels, a mystery within a mystery. On one level, we are trying to figure out what is going on with this movie (or perhaps, within the movie would be more fitting) while at a higher level we are trying to figure out what in the world Shinjuurou is doing as a cameraman.

What are they talking about?

That one conversation with the three actresses really confused me, when they’re talking about their lines from the movie:

“War is a toy. It isn’t just me. It’s you, too! And you! We’ve all made war into a toy!”
“We should’ve sucked off war more. We should have wrapped our legs around war and ridden it until it was worn out. Sucked it more, gotten more tangled up with it…”
“Those are the lines we say when we hear that the war is over.”

I thought this meant that through distance and brevity, the war didn’t affect them much and they treated it like a toy. Such as with Predator drones in the modern era. It all just seemed like a game. Instead, they should ridden war longer and harder and gotten all tangled up with it until they hated it.

It’s the three girls interpretation of these lines that completely baffles me, however. Here’s what they think:

• We’re happy the war is over and we can return to our normal lives. Um, what? You just said you should’ve “gotten more tangled up with it.” Fail.
• There’s a war and we’re all caught up in it, but we finally realize that we’re alive. We’ve become just like beasts that think only of survival. But there’s still the one precious to us, whom we love. Um… I thought war was a toy? People with toys don’t think only of survival. Fail.
• That we’re going to be put on trial by the war, good people, bad people, all the same. Maybe that’s what he meant by saying we’re criminals. At least this reaction is based on something someone actually said. Unfortunately it’s not what the conversation was about. And I’m pretty sure he meant that literally.

So… any ideas what these people are talking about? Or are they simply incapable of reading comprehension?

Speculation

At first I thought we were in Shinjuurou’s past, since they were talking as if the war hadn’t happened. But they built up some hints, like the director calling the actors criminals, that led me to believe they were actually in prison. They also mentioned in passing how they weren’t free to go and didn’t remember who they were. Like when the one girl mentioned her dad but didn’t seem to remember him. Then with Inga sitting outside the prison at the end it became obvious that they were indeed trapped in the prison.

Last week I speculated that Inga’s counterpart with the novelist had the power to make people tell a lie. Now I’m going to revise that hypothesis to guess that he has the power to make people believe a lie. Shinjuurou and the other prisoners appear to have been brainwashed into believing they belong on this movie set. Kazamori seems to be trying to rescue him, and perhaps Rie and Izumi are trying to help as well (but were brainwashed too?).

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