This review on decadence contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the chapter, we recommend that you do it and then go back to read the review.
Chapter 6: “Cooler”
decadence records his story for another week. Kaburagi is not dead, but he will be executed very soon. At the last minute, the Solid Quake manager is interrupted by high-level commands and sent to a social reintegration program.
The cyborg is sent to an underwater platform where defective workers have to collect the “gadoll” droppings that are deposited on the ocean floor in order to reuse their energy. There he decides to make an effort to stay alive, but his companions give him no hope. Nobody returns and even less manages to escape. All seems to be lost until his cell friend Sarkozy confesses that there is illegal gambling. Kaburagi convinces him to introduce her to the players and to meet his old friends Donatello and Turkey by surprise. However, they are not pleased to see it.
Due to a grudge, Kaburagi gets into a fight to the death with Donatello if he wants to get into the game. During the fight, the latter falls to the ground, but Kaburagi rescues him and they recognize their mutual respect. Before returning to Deca-dence, warn him that his avatar will be different. Meanwhile, Natsume is concerned about the disappearance of her teacher.
analysis:: Prisoners and feces
decadence in its sixth installment, it reaches a new level of action. In it, Kaburagi intensified his rebellion against the system. In this frontal opposition relationship, we learn more about how Solid Quake works and consequently have room for a deeper analysis of reality and cyborg society.
On the other hand, behind the huge curtain of colors and basic emotions of the series, there are perhaps even the most insignificant details that symbols suggest. An example of this is the names of the characters, especially the cyborgs, who make obvious cultural winks, like Donatello with certain martial arts turtles. Another example is “Natsume”, whose “Natsu” could refer to the summer and thus to his optimistic, energetic and intense personality. Referring to names and personality is a common trend in anime and oriental culture. There are other suggestions that add keys to the plot for its interpretation. Most are related to Solid Quake, so I’ll try to review the most obvious on the subject that concerns us today.
In this episode we travel into the bowels of Solid Quake, a prison where prisoners try not to be crushed by the feces.
Solid quake and people
decadence he wanted to reverse the order of fantasy and reality. The virtual dominates the physical, and humans belong to a group of cyborgs, perhaps in the style of matrix. Hence, man lives the dream of Plato’s famous cave, which is controlled in a protected environment and almost extinct because, according to Solid Quake’s policy, they are not trained to govern themselves. History would have proven that they are prone to self-destruction.
In an extreme setting, Solid Quake designs missions and a common enemy, the “Gadolls”, so that people can fraternize with one another and not fall into the lack of goals that would allow undue freedom. In other words, in Decadence Fortress we are protected for our own good so that we can gain advantage for the company that we belong to. Free will is not allowed, it is wrong.
Solid Quake and his cyborgs
Would that mean we are in the service of cyborgs? The fascinating thing about this story is that cyborgs don’t have free will either. The only difference between them and humans is that they know the missions are stories written by Solid Quake.
Solid Quake designs a child-like, friendly virtual world and exercises a paternalistic mandate on individuals. It’s a bold contrast; If instead we had androids enslaved in gray tunnels, the rawness would be clearer, but less twisted and original. And it is the cruel denial of the individual when there is something remarkable about the cyborg corporation’s system and politics.
Advertising campaigns, executions and the multi-colored party are false images. The real is an imposition where it is more important to exist as society than as free beings, and anything that transcends the boundaries is a flaw to be fixed. In today’s episode, we appreciate Solid Quake’s grip on the individual down to the strangest and most humiliating details. The scene in which the cyborgs are forced into the “Oxycon” tube appears twice to warn the viewer that there are no privacy plans for the prisoners. Its analogy is obvious, uncomfortable.
Solid tremor: evil utopia
I confess I am in love with the allegory of Solid Quake. The company’s orders come in functional and pleasant voices because their world is stable and happy. They allow themselves to be ethical and wonderful, they preserve and care for people – an endangered species – they have an ecological ethic in the processing of the feces of the “Gadolls”. But it is “right” that these feces destroy one or two prisoners in reintegration programs that are in reality concentration camps for dissidents!
Solid Quake is an evil utopia, and I think its message is too important today.
Finally
In this sixth chapter of decadenceKaburagi is fighting for his life while openly rebelling. It was a chapter devoted almost entirely to the cyborg world and thanks to it we were able to examine the gut of the system and the politics of Solid Quake, a perverse utopia that suppresses the will of cyborgs and humans.
If the company is functional and harmonious, it is the dysfunctional and wounded person, the mistake, that cleans up their feces. An allegory that warns us of the dangers of a system that tries to guide our thoughts.
