During the 90s, Japan had one of the most interesting outputs in its pop culture. The country was going through the shitter, the bubble had burst and the economy was falling down the drain, many elders resenting modernization, as they saw it as the harbinger of ruin for the traditional values of the nation, and many young people blaming the so-called baby-boomers for causing the economy to, inevitably, shift this way. Technology, Japan vanguard’s industry and pride and joy for many years, was now a symbol of a world hurrying towards its demise; authors across many media between Kurosawa Kyoshi, Okazaki Kyoko, Oshii Mamoru and so on, all lived through this period on a wave of pessimism and skepticism toward the future. Humanity was going to end, and humanity was to blame for it.
Enter stage left Suda Goichi, dropping The Silver Case just at the turn of the century, in the year 1999, as the ultimate side-note of this societal decline. The world of the Silver Case is bleak, unsettling, sad, weird, oftentimes the characters will talk and make little sense to each other between slurs, asides and weird mental lapses (the subpar translation not really helping with this one), and the whole cast seems completely lost rationalizing what’s going on.
The plot revolves around a murder case (plus several other investigations) that slowly unravels into a much more complex web of intrigues and twists, so convoluted that, whenever a character appears to know exactly what has happened and why, it sounds almost farcical. Everyone simultaneously understands and ignores what is actually going on at all times, the mood is made of pure confusion and people sounding absolutely sure of what they are talking about, whilst to the players is conveyed the feeling that nothing ever makes sense. It really oozes the confounded angst of living through a decade of dark age and social isolation. The cast ultimately doesn’t matter, they might share cute, poignant and touching vignettes between them but there is no singular central character that ever shows any emotion or growth; most of them are passive actors in a play that has to be acted for the sake of the world having to keep turning around.
Young people find solace in their shared loneliness and turn to the internet to feel accepted and comforted while the elderly fight to handle the strings of a wooden puppet they once built but it’s already rotten and fallen to pieces. There is a lot to unpack in The Silver Case and how much of its despair was subsequently answered, by Suda himself, in Flower, Sun and Rain a couple of years later. If The Silver Case reads like the societal collapse of morality and reason seen in the post-apocalypse of Eden: It’s an Endless World, then Flower, Sun and Rain is the peaceful twilight where life matters in the here and now of the post-apocalypse in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
Kill the past, it will never make much sense the more you think about it, once you acknowledge it it’s already time to move on.
Enter stage left Suda Goichi, dropping The Silver Case just at the turn of the century, in the year 1999, as the ultimate side-note of this societal decline. The world of the Silver Case is bleak, unsettling, sad, weird, oftentimes the characters will talk and make little sense to each other between slurs, asides and weird mental lapses (the subpar translation not really helping with this one), and the whole cast seems completely lost rationalizing what’s going on.
The plot revolves around a murder case (plus several other investigations) that slowly unravels into a much more complex web of intrigues and twists, so convoluted that, whenever a character appears to know exactly what has happened and why, it sounds almost farcical. Everyone simultaneously understands and ignores what is actually going on at all times, the mood is made of pure confusion and people sounding absolutely sure of what they are talking about, whilst to the players is conveyed the feeling that nothing ever makes sense. It really oozes the confounded angst of living through a decade of dark age and social isolation. The cast ultimately doesn’t matter, they might share cute, poignant and touching vignettes between them but there is no singular central character that ever shows any emotion or growth; most of them are passive actors in a play that has to be acted for the sake of the world having to keep turning around.
Young people find solace in their shared loneliness and turn to the internet to feel accepted and comforted while the elderly fight to handle the strings of a wooden puppet they once built but it’s already rotten and fallen to pieces. There is a lot to unpack in The Silver Case and how much of its despair was subsequently answered, by Suda himself, in Flower, Sun and Rain a couple of years later. If The Silver Case reads like the societal collapse of morality and reason seen in the post-apocalypse of Eden: It’s an Endless World, then Flower, Sun and Rain is the peaceful twilight where life matters in the here and now of the post-apocalypse in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
Kill the past, it will never make much sense the more you think about it, once you acknowledge it it’s already time to move on.