SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
The word “apocalypse”
originally connoted an unveiling of the reality underlying the illusion of
ordinary life. For several generations, the Japanese people lived in the shadow
of a real-life catastrophe, that of nuclear devastation brought on when scientific research uncovered the titanic powers hiding beneath physical phenomena. With the cessation of war, the
nation eventually returned to the lesser rigors of daily existence. Still, in
Japanese cinema normalcy was
periodically menaced by an incarnation of chaos in the form of a dragon
breathing atomic fire.
DEADMAN WONDERLAND takes
place in a fictional future, though for the most part the world looks almost indistinguishable from that of modern-day Japan.
However, the world of viewpoint character Ganta Igarashi does have its own
apocalyptic shadow: that of the patently fictional Great Tokyo Earthquake.
Ganta, like most of his middle-school peers, knows nothing about the cause of
the cataclysm, which occurred when he was a small child. In his innocent
existence—going to school in a rebuilt Tokyo and enjoying a mild home life with
a father who’s barely seen during the entire series—Ganta doesn’t know of the
link between the disaster ten years ago and Deadman Wonderland. Like most Tokyo
citizens, Ganta doesn’t know anything about the Wonderlannd, except that it’s a
private prison that broadcasts gladiatorial contests between its incarcerated
residents. Certainly Ganta doesn’t know that the bizarre edifice just happens
to exist at the former epicenter of the quake.
Innocent Ganta soon gets
an education in hard knocks. One fine day, all of the students in his class are
slaughtered by a weird, super-powered being whom Ganta describes as “the Red
Man.” Ganta alone survives the massacre,
and since no one else beholds the spectre of the true killer, the authorities
find it expedient to condemn Ganta as a mass murderer. In no time, the young man is sentenced to the
life of a prisoner in Deadman Wonderland, the first step in his journey to
knowledge—not only with regard to the prison’s relevance to Tokyo’s apocalyptic history,
but also to the youth's own familial background. As is often the case, children suffer
for the sins of the previous generation.
On Ganta’s first day “in
stir,” head guard Makina tells him, “Absurdity is your new reality.” To the
reader, one patent absurdity is the way the prison operates. Though Ganta and
his fellow inmates wear collars that can stun them if they rebel, the
Wonderland doesn’t otherwise restrict their movements. Though some areas of the
prison are off limits, inmates are allowed to wander from cell to cell, much as
if they occupied a college dormitory. But this freedom is perhaps explained by
the fact that though not every prison is termed a “deadman,” all of them
receive periodical doses of poison from their collars, and so will perish if
they don’t labor to earn an antidote called “candy.” The gladiatorial games, which citizens on the
outside believe to be fake spectacles, exist to make money for corrupt warden
Tamaki, though even his strings are being pulled by a darker mastermind.
The real meaning of
“deadman?” For reasons relating to the
cataclysm ten years ago, many inmates have mutated, acquiring a weird
super-power called “the branch of sin.” In essence, the deadmen (and deadwomen)
have the ability to make weapons out of blood from their opened veins. Spikes, whips, flames—deadman-blood seems as
malleable as the energies of a Green Lantern’s ring. Ganta himself proves to be
a deadman, and finds that he can shoot blood-projectiles from his fingers like
bullets from a gun. Ganta must use this new talent to preserve his life in
various contests, even while trying not to become corrupted by the perverse
indifference of both convicts and officials.
But the prison’s greatest
absurdity is Shiro, who seems to come out of nowhere and doesn’t occupy a cell
like the other convicts. Shiro, a teenaged albino girl with white hair and red
eyes, displays immense strength and agility, though she doesn’t initially show
deadman-abilities. She acts as if she knows Ganta, though he does not reoognize
her, at least initially. Shiro usually
talks like a small child, though she can sometimes speak in more adult tones,
and not surprisingly it’s eventually disclosed that the two of them did know
each other as children. Warden Tamaki and his overseer know all of Shiro’s
secrets, though, and these villains aspire to use the convicts of Deadman
Wonderland for insidious purposes.
Like many “new fish”
sentenced to prison, Ganta is an uncorrupted innocent who seems doomed to be
overwhelmed by the evil of both the prison and its prisoners. Most of the
support-characters whom Ganta encounters have manifested their deadman-powers
in line with suffering various personal traumas, and they essentially embrace
the Wonderland’s horrors rather than confront their own demons. But Ganta,
despite his apparent “everyman” nature and comparative weakness, becomes a
rallying-point for his fellow trauma-victims. Minatsuki, a vicious,
foul-mouthed patricide, initially scorns Ganta for his bleeding-heart empathy.
But after she’s been exposed to his relentless purity, she finds herself
seduced by the prospect of hope. Ganta’s loyalty to one friend even leads his
temporary inmate-allies to reject him for a time. Yet Shiro, in one of her rare
moments of eloquence, brings the lost sheep back to the fold by telling them,
“If bad memories are stronger than you are, don’t blame it on Ganta.”
This and other lines
evince the common theme of WONDERLAND: the uniquely Japanese take on Nietzchean
self-overcoming. I’m tempted to the belief that no one but a Japanese author
could have a hero rage, “I want to become strong enough to beat the crap out of
my weaker self.” Ordinary life is seen to be an illusion, and yet a necessary
illusion for all that. Ganta and Shiro are linked by the sins of the older
generation—in particular, of Ganta’s deceased mother, one of the scientists who
unleashed both the earthquake and the “branch of sin” mutation.Yet through the
efforts of her children, real and adopted—through Ganta’s persistence and in
spite of the the monster hiding behind Shiro’s seeming looniness-- it turns out
that even deadmen can resurrect themselves. WONDERLAND’s many wonders cannot be
explicated in a single blogpost. However, in contrast to many of the narratives
that pretend to evoke the lunatic spirit of Lewis Carroll, authors Jinsei
Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou succeed in creating a world no less governed by
insanity. Yet they also manage to show how, in the vein of Dante, one must
descend to the deepest circles of hell before one has any hope of returning to
the world of light and comparative sanity.
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