First off, let me get my fanboying out of the way.
Now and Then Here and There is one of the greatest, depressing anime titles I have ever seen. Its look into the nature of war, ambition and human nature is fantastic, the set pieces are detailed, ranging from the industrial complex that is Hellywood to the grassy, earthy, tree-lined expanse that is Zari-Bars, and the characters are all well-developed, each standing for some seperate part of the human psyche and the effects surroundings and treatment can have on different people. Beginning with the tale of a young boy in a strange world and ending with the fall of a horrid dictatorship, it, in my opinion, is truly EPIC in every sense of the word. If you haven’t seen it and aren’t bothered by depressing anime titles, go out and get it NOW.
Second, I have realised that this topic is going to last a lot longer than I thought it would. Such is the complexity of the child characters in Now And Then, Here and There that I think I’ll be going deeper in my analysis than I intended, so I ‘ve decided to seperate the posts by each character.
Okay, now onto the topic at hand. In the initial post, I tried to find examples of killer children in different anime, all the while glazing over the series which pretty much epitomizes each of the traits and examples I gave. In fact, though it is a fantasy anime title and doesn’t completely remain within the bounds of reason (at least by the standards of the world we live in), it is likely the most accurate representation of the nature of children who are forced, or even compelled by themselves, to kill. The series revolves around the children and their reaction to a world at war and one man’s mad dream, and as such, I’m going to take a look at every major child character in the show, which, if you have seen the show before, is essentially most of the cast.
Shu
Shu could be considered to be the most “normal” of all the children. I shall establish him as the “control” character, by which I mean he is the most adjusted, and by modern day society’s standards, least disturbed of the group. When he arrives in the world of the future, the question “Where am I?” plagues him from the point he looks at an unfamiliar horizon.
But it’s not just about his location; he is slowly shown the nature of the horrific world he has stumbled upon. Child soldiers bearing arms, prisons and war is everywhere; he himself watches a man bleed to death, shot by fellow (though not willingly) soldier Nabuca. He’s thrown in prison and tortured at least twice, and even dumped down into the depths of a waste pit. He manages to escape with Lala-Ru but faces the dangers of the desert and even when he finds haven in Zari-Bars he cannot forget the first death he has ever seen. The fragile respite is destroyed with the arrival of the flying fortress Hellywood and her soldiers, he sees two people who he cares about die in front of his eyes, and even Nabuca, his unlikely friend, ends up literally dying in his arms.
But what gets me about Shu is that despite all of the crap that happens to him within the space of a few weeks, possibly even days, he never, ever gives up. Every time a bad situation is thrown at him, he finds a way to deal with it and keeps going. Where could a child get that sort of determination? I’m sure that most other kids would’ve either died or given up somewhere along the line, either due to the initial shell-shock of a new environment or succumbing in to the hopelessness of the situation.
One thing that sets Shu apart is his stubborness. Even in his own time, he wished to climb to the top of the chimney stack despite all naysayers. He, who has lived a life of relative peace, sees some something so inherently wrong with the place he has ended up in that he cannot, will not accept it; it’s such a far cry from his own lifestyle and such is his nature that he simply fights for what he believes in, which would be his promise to Lala-Ru to save her. The way he’s grown up has fashioned him as such a boy, and it’s surprising to see him have such a defined sense of self at such a young age. He knows that he does not want to kill people; even if this crazy world says he must while embroiled in the midst of a war, he knows that he does not wish to fight.
This in no way means he isn’t prone to times of doubt, though. While hearing the story of a Zari-Barian man who had had his town, friends, family and parents burtn and his sister kidnapped, only to be left to die in the desert as she was sickly, he questions if his way of thinking is the right one. The man plans to kill Hamdo, as everyone in Zari-Bars has gone through some measure of the same thing. Who would deny that the man is warranted some form of vengeance for his sister, or that Hamdo should be held accountable for his cruel ways? But at the same time is it right for him to seek such a bloodthirsty solution?
When Shu finally does come face to face with Hamdo in a position when he himself has the upper hand, he still does not kill him. He beats the crap out of him with his trusty stick, yes, but he doesn’ t kill him. Shu clearly empathises with other people and realises that Hamdo is what the problem is. He, the mad dictator who has forced countless soldiers to their death, sacrificed his own subordinates if it meant destroying the enemy, the cause of the absolute hell that thousands of people, including those who has seen die, have been through. Why does he not do something that so many others would have done if they had been in that same position?
I believe it’s because it’s not in his nature. It’s not how he was brought up and it’s not how he has lived until that point. His life before he came to this place is too deeply rooted in his character for him to simply break his core values like that. Though he is clearly angry at Hamdo (hell, probably the entire, strange world) for being so very wrong, he can’t just discard his humanity and kindness, something that is as deep a part of himself as stubborn nature.
Shu is the only major child character to not kill anyone in the show. He does not become a killer child as he doesn’t have a tragic past, malicious intent, is not insane and does not have a large capacity for violence. He is by no means innocent any longer, but a combination of at least two of the factors from the first post seem to be needed in the creation of a young murderer.
This is a good anime that touches many issues. It starts on a very lighthearted note, but quickly descends into war drama and exploration of human nature. I know that some people were unable to finish this film due to disturbing content. Blood and overt violence are present in this anime, but some of the scenes are implicit, making a powerful impression.
Here is an AMV that captured many themes of this anime quite well:
http://celestialkitsune.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/now-and-then-here-and-there-hope/
SOLID POST.
I think you’re right to point to Shu’s life before he travelled to Hellywood. Leaving the nature vs. nurture thing aside, the first episode established how he has a (boringly) normal family and school life, and how he’s stubborn in the face of his own inadequacy at kendo. And the ending credits after each episode are images from our/Shu’s world, not from the world he travels to – like, as you say, a ‘control’ standard. (Because in Hellywood everyone thinks it’s normal for children to be raped or press-ganged into military service. That was one of the things I think I found most hard-hitting.)
@Kitsune
That is a very good AMV which pretty much encapsulates the main themes (tragic thouh they are) of the show.
@The Animanachronism
It would have been informative to have had an episode somehow demonstrating how Hamdo came to power and what type of place Hellywood, or in fact the world before it, had been like. To what extent must society fall to end up in such a horrific condition? Then again, look st the nature of Hitler in the Second World War…
You’re right, that kind of information would have been interesting, and it was deliberately left rather vague in ths show. But as you say, at the time of the Second World War dictatorship wasn’t considered abnormal or necessarily bad in Europe (parts of the press in Britain saw Hitler as a good thing, a bulwark against Communism), and within Germany ideas which would horrify us seemed everyday, acceptable thigns.