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Noiseman Sound Insect is an anime by Koji Morimoto. There are numerous webpages documenting the production work and crew of this film which a user may find easily through searching. There are no pages currently known that actually describe or seem to understand the subject matter however. The other works of Morimoto have had wide reaching effect within the world of Anime, and his work on the cult film Akira makes an assessment of this far more personal visionary work important.
This is sort of a review, but really it’s a viewers guide. I had to watch this film many times before it really clicked on what was happening. It’s an addictive piece of film however, and the musical score is fantastic.
Beautiful, dense, lush, and filled with metaphorical content, its actual dialogue is cryptic and sparse. On first viewing it would almost seem to be a music video of a very strange Yoko Kanno song. Except that she mostly makes songs specifically for anime soundtracks, not the other way around.
The work is of course in Japanese, and no english dub has been made, most probably because the music and dialogue are intricately linked. Thankfully the subtitles of the work translate the words of not only the characters but the incidental voices of the soundtrack as well.
Because of the subtlety and complexity of the metaporical content, the language barrier to non-Japanese may make it difficult to see the concepts presented. That is why I have attempted to define 2 of the main concepts presented.
The Story and some of its Meanings
{spoiler alert} This anime is predominately about 2 main concepts, different drugs and the types of people who use them, and different styles of music and the people who associate with them.
Noiseman, the strange squeeky voiced alien antagonist, can be seen as the raver kid down your street. He comes home late with his little sporty car shaking and booming as he fills the peaceful neighborhood’s space with his pounding dance music. Noiseman likes Crystals, such as crystal meth, ecstasy, cocaine. Music is almost a weapon to him and he has no regard to his neighbors, he is very selfish and only cares about his Crystals and his noise, he keeps the souls of people captive in his noise machine.
The people of the village mostly love juice, which is analogous to wine and other alchohols. Those who love juice are portrayed as relaxed and fun people, and their music is much more relaxed and human. In fact they actually love simple music that is based on the beauty of human singing. In their pure “soul” form after their escape from Noiseman they are like a choir.
The young people who race around chasing little noises and souls and trying to catch them are at first all about action and speed, but when one of them eats a fruit that flies into his speeder from the lake after a crash he is transported to a new state of mind. The water and the fruit are accompanied by very mellow psychedelic “chill” music. The fruit can be seen as psilocybic mushrooms, or perhaps marijuana, but the hallucinative effects of the fruit are clear and the effect on the young man’s mind, making him stop his speeding around and focusing on the watery environment around him clearly represent psychedelic experiences.
When the Noiseman is defeated, the true voice of the people can be heard and they stand in the calm of a natural glade with the sounds of nature while a simple song “Trees make Seeds” about life, birth, death, and life feeding on life plays out.
I made some wikipedia contributions today to wiki pages that were already going but needed some extra info. I really dig the concept. So here the are:
Ghost in the Shell
{spoiler alert} Another interpretation of the fusion of Kusanagi and the Puppet Master in the film version is more analogous to the concept of Birth where two separate entities create a third entity which is not the same as either of the originating Ghosts/DNA sets but shares common traits. The Puppet Master does not wish to merely save himself from termination, to do so he could simply ask Kusanagi to give him shared space in her memory cores that she could offload later into another robotic receptacle. He quite specifically asks her to fuse her “ghost” or “soul” with his own, a form of marriage/birth in which the resultant being is neither the Puppet Master nor Kusanagi but a new being entirely. This touches upon concepts of birth, immortality through progeny, and the union of two ghosts/people in the creation of progeny.
A very important concept within this work is that evolution is the process of fusing (procreation) two sets of data(DNA) in order to create a 3rd set of data which contains the most vital elements of the original organisms along with some element of chance. the Puppet Master has evolved beyond DNA as a data set and thus to procreate this new organism (a soul not born of dna) a new paradigm of data merging needs to be contemplated for which he has sought Kusanagi out. This is a merger of two operating “souls” or “ghosts” into one mind, which is specifically different than birth while being analogous to it at the same time
Throughout the film the cyborg characters, being more or less a human brain with a manufactured body, contemplate individually and together what being human really is, and how a soul or ghost is truly defined. The Puppet Master is an AI, yet they recognize traits and personality within his mind structure that are clearly analogous to a human soul or ghost image. They cannot discount this similiarity as it is very clearly analysed by their medical scanning tools when they first capture the Puppet Master. The members of Section 9 must re-evaluate their own tenuous hold on the idea of humanity and “I”, when faced with a being who clearly is self directed and has a ghost but was originated as a complex program not a DNA organism.
Although purists of Manga may consider the movie to be inferior, distilling 8 manga issues into the length of a feature, it ranks among sci fi fans as a serious pinnacle of speculative fiction in movies.
One of the first Anime features to “cross over” to the sci fi adherents not typically associated or exposed to manga/anime, Ghost in the Shell managed to convert large numbers of sci fi audiences to the possibilities of Anime as an art form, a feat accomplished by only one other anime feature – Akira. Its deep philosophical subject matter, beautiful textures and backdrops, and subsuming of technology to the emotional/spiritual concerns of the individual characters have earned it a place amongst some of the greatest sci fi movies of all time. Many viewers could easily rank Ghost in the Shell as being at the same level of aesthetic excellence as Blade Runner, the first Alien movie, or 2001.
As a side note regarding Oshii’s condensation of the manga, consider the dense Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” which Blade Runner is based on and see how many of Mr. Dick’s many detailed subplots actually make it into the movie.
Oshii’s adaptation of the manga is filled with awe inspiring cinematic sequences containing depth, detail, focus and perspective previously unrealized in movie Anime as an art form. The musical score, although perhaps grating at first to western ears, is deep and emotional, and the attention to detail in weather/crowds/technological implementations/etc. is far beyond the simplified action sequences and economical guerilla animation style used by anime features previous to this work.
A second feature, Ghost in the Shell:Innocence has been released by Oshii which places the character of Batou in the lead role. A beautiful film, filled with depth and philosophical ponderings, it is unrelated to the original manga and yet stands alone as an evolution of Anime in film and a definitive sequel to the original film feature. It was a nominee at Cannes in 2004 for best picture.
Added to “Levels – computer gaming”
Map design is now commonly known as “Modding” (Mod_(computer_gaming)) in most games.
Originally “Modding” was a specific term to delineate a “pack” (Pak) of custom user created levels that also included some form of programming to change the abilities/weapons/environmental effects of the core game on which the mod was built. A “Mod” was a more sophisticated customization of the game than a “Map” which was simply a new level or set of levels which could be played within the original game’s engine. This distinction has gradually receded and a “mod” can now be simply a map or level with no programming changes to the core game.
Although pure “modding” takes a certain amount of programming ability, to simply create new “levels” for a game a user only needs to access and digest the information and tools available to the modding community for that particular title. Some game titles have advanced support and tools for mapping and modding while others are not open to customization.
