Wilhelm: "The preciousness of limited life, the beauty of death. You're intoxicated by that narcissism. It's such an incredibly human choice."
(Xenosaga Episode III)
This is a very interesting topic and I'm glad I have come back to find it before it fell away. Perhaps it's because I have always had unhealthy temptations towards authoritarianism but I've often wondered at all these anime where "we gotta fight and preserve our fighting because fighting is what makes us who we are!" morality tales.
Some villain offers a magical cure to a problem that cannot be fixed in any other way and the narrative inevitably says they are wrong. Why? Because Shinji Ikari is better off being a miserable little shithead who masturbates over comatose girls than he would be if he and all the other suffering, lonely people were one? Sorry, I've been reading some Schopenhauer and all this stuff reeks of pure egoism. ""I" must remain "I" and to Hell with the rest of the world!" But what is I? What is the Self? It's nothing, it's an illusion and that illusion is why there is strife in the world.
Now, earlier posters talked about how utopia is impossible because not everyone wants the same thing. I am one of those people who craves order, stability and hierarchy. I feel better under someone else's control and guidance. Some anarchist would balk at everything I just said, their very soul rebelling at the things that make my soul calm. This is all true enough but, and here's the kicker, maybe some people are just wrong.
And maybe that person is me. I have no idea. But the point is, we have societies where certain things are forbidden for the greater good. Why can't a utopia just take that a step further? A fictional utopia with magic or super technology in particular could accomplish this.
But the reason for all this existential self-congratulation in anime where the people trying to make a utopia are the villains is because we live in a Postmodern world. The optimism of the Enlightenment - of the Modern Age - collapsed thanks to the two World Wars. I recently listened to a series of lectures that called the 20th Century a hundred years of "Utopia" - oh and "Terror." From the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany to Maoist China, there were all these grand visions of Heaven on Earth; a manmade Heaven, a triumph of the will. The result was hundreds of millions dead and the complete opposite of Heaven. The conclusion? No matter how sophisticated and advanced human beings become, they will still be human beings. We have nuclear weapons now but we're still just squabbling cavepeople deep down. That is our postmodern belief and why only bad guys talk of utopias.
First character who crossed my mind when seeing this thread was Light Yagami. Death Note is sort of a great case study in this whole discussion given what the series itself says and also what its fans say. Plenty of people were rooting for Light, including the director of the DN anime. The series itself says Light's reign of terror was working. Of course it also shows that Light was a narcissistic loon. It reminds me of that idea of a "bad person, good king," Of course Light wasn't a good king by most definitions but maybe in some utilitarian viewpoint he wasn't so awful.
Jumping off on a tangent based on this line, but I've also been rummaging through my vague recollections of previously-seen media, and it does seem like a lot of villainous utopias get rejected because the narrative says so.
As in I've seen a lot of the same type of utopia, both in form and method (usually "let's connect everyone into one consciousness, absolutely mandatory for all"), presented as heroic and villainous, all depending on whether it's the heroes presenting it as a solution to the problem posed by the villains (usually "co-existence is impossible, conflict is inevitable"), or the villains presenting it as a solution to the problem posed by the world in general. And how the audience is meant to see it depends on whether the background music when the plan is explained is in a major or minor key.
There was that debate about the Synthesis ending of Mass Effect 3, but I do recall that the "merge into techno-organic beings" thing was also done before in Beast Machines as a heroic thing.
FINE
@Ford Prefect @BobTheNinja @Grimnir @Avernus @SneakyKitten also in here since none of you seem to have a clue in one way or another on this topic.
Lets start with Shinji Ikari and the Instrumentality. First off all off the Children (Rei, Asuka, Shinji, Toji, Kaworu) and the Instrumentality are themselves a criticism of the ending of another anime called Space Runaway Ideon wherein both Humanity and the alien civilization known as the Buff Clan kill each other and then have their souls follow an unborn hybrid child of the two races known simply as Messiah to a new planet to be reborn there as a new race at peace with each other.
Rei is a hybrid of Human and Lilith (Humanity's Progenitor Angel), a girl and also a representation of purity and as such she is treated as a replaceable shell for men to fill in. Asuka is a hybrid of Japanese and German, a girl and also a representation of the exotic and as such she is treated as a devil woman who is left more and more lonely in this land that sees her as nothing but a warrior to be used in defense of the land. Shinji is the kind Heir Apparent to the Shogun (Gendo is the military leader of Japan against barbarians which was the original purpose of the Shoguns before they just started ruling Japan outright) and is nothing but a tool to his father in the political games of the world. Toji is the down to earth peasant that joins his friend the Heir to the Shogun in the fight against the Angels because the Shogun offered to take care of the well being of his family if he did so and is then possessed by an Angel and then "killed" by his friend the Heir who was forced to do so by his father in order to kill the Angel. Kaworu is the hybrid of Adam and Human and also the representation of the cursed that is sent to infiltrate and then betray the defenders in order to have his curse lifted and he start to do so, but not before falling in some form of love with the Heir and then discovering that his curse won't be lifted with the betrayal and begging the Heir to end his life as release. Then comes Instrumentality where the Shogun is betrayed by the Pure who instead sides with his Heir and gives him the power to decide the fate of mankind and in his lowest the heir chooses death to all, but then relents as he realizes the hollowness of such an action.
Needless to say if you ever see an Instrumentality scenario it will be done by some Nobleborn son who wants people to stop being shit by removing what he sees as their flaws. And that's where the catch is. It is a single man deciding what the flaws of humanity are and how to remove them. It will never be a good result morally speaking, because it is done by a solipsistic despot to everyone else. That is why Instrumentality is bad, because it turns everyone else around the person doing it into a version of that VR AI that exists to make a perfect world for them. There is still a supreme I left at the end.
Now onto the more general terms:
Utopia originally means no-place and is a word invented by Sir Thomas Moore to describe a place that embodies an Ideal. Utopia is a neutral term. It has no moral value and is more an idea for a society and not a description of a possible or desired reality. Dystopia is a Morally Bad Utopia. Eutopia is a Morally Good Utopia.
So second off your arguments are in and of themself wrong because you are constantly comparing the Idea with it's morally bankrupt execution. You can't compare a Utopia to a Dystopia and expect to reach any kind of valuable conclusion. You have to compare the execution of a Dystopia (a failed attempt at an Utopia) to an execution of an Eutopia (a flawed success of an Utopia).
So Bob? Nikkolas? Instrumentality won't give you your Utopia because you will either be the PC and as such have your every whim catered to which won't fix/remove your pain because you would have already done so if you knew how and without the advice and critical perspective of others you can not advance in healing the deepest pains that cause everyday suffering. If you are one of the masses that becomes an NPC then you won't have your problems solved because the PC doesn't care and/or is even aware of every pain and injury you have and as such won't fix/remove them.
Ford? The difference between the two types you've mentioned is in the fact that in the first the person doing it doesn't have a magic button to change everyone and so must settle for conquest. In both cases it is a solipsistic enforcement of their own will and vision, not a well thought out action for improving the world.
Adloquium? In Beast Machines the Transformers become techno-organics to survive a virus. They don't exactly make that choice of their own free will or force it on anyone who isn't infected by the virus.
Grimnir? Avernus? This is an argument about what even a Utopia to strive for is, not a drunken pub argument about one's mother undergarments. Address the actual point made that people like to use the idea of Individualism as an excuse to be selfish pricks instead of snarking to show us how actually smart you are.
SneakyKitten? You have repeatedly said that you just want the pain to end and for life to not hurt. Fair enough, but do you even understand the sources of your own pain (let alone another human being's) well enough to put an end to it? What hurts? And why? And when? And where? What soothes the pain? Temporary? Permanently?
