PARASITE DOLLS

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionA.D. Police

REVIEWS

• 

  ohohohohohoho

  75/100
  Chiaki Konaka penned cyberpunk slow burn about performed femininity and sexual violence.

  Parasite Dolls is different from most cyberpunk works that I've seen in that it is specifically fixated on sexual fantasy, and the role of the object and subject therein. It's rather violent, but it's not an action packed series; it has a typically pensive Chiaki Konaka script. If you like the slow, thoughtful series he's worked on, especially where cyberpunk themes are involved, you'll probably enjoy this. If not, it is only 3 episodes, but be warned that it features a good deal of graphic violence, including sexual violence.

  Checklist:
  Art - Quite good
  Sound - Not bad
  Characters - They serve their purpose

  Buzz, the "main character" I guess, has an emotionless working relationship with his ex girlfriend Angel, represses his emotions over a past tragedy, cannot envision Reiko as sexually viable, and pathologically presses the issue of his boomer partner's inhumanity and lack of emotion. In other words, he's the obligatory guy who's more like a cyborg than the cyborgs are. Other than a bit of investigation, providing direction, and picking on his boomer partner, he is actually not involved in the drama (until the last 10 minutes when a bunch of stuff is revealed which I won't spoil, but it doesn't affect this analysis much). Rod is the boomer partner. He doesn't understand social mores very well. Maybe he's a bit more human than he seems, who knows, he's not really a major part of the story. Reiko, who's another officer in Branch, a special... branch of the A.D. police that investigates these boomer related cases, is actually much more a part of the action, and apparently emotionally invested in the drama that's unfolding through the case(s) Branch is working on.

  Onto the analysis (spoilers to follow):

  Why is it that a sultry radio personality is hysterically disturbed when her assistant (a boomer) develops a sexual fantasy about her? Is it because boomers aren't supposed to, which gives rise to a sense that something's gone horribly wrong, or is it simply because it complicates her work relationship with a man she views as her sexually uninteresting subordinate, which gives rise to a sense that something's gone horribly wrong? Is it a sign of madness or a sprouting case of humanity?

  What's with the young upper class socialite orgy in which the participants get off to a live and direct virtual reality feed of everything a berserk boomer feels and senses as it goes off on a spree of mad violence, rather than the feelings and sensations of the bodies in front of them? It's the eruptive transgressive violence that satisfies them, the vicarious experience of unlivable, unacceptable acts of destructive rage, realized through the tool of a boomer's body, rather than sexual intimacy and copulation. It's Videodrome meets VR, and it's much more taboo and therefor more novel and stimulating than sex. They feel more "alive" when seeing through the eyes of a machine boomer than through their own human eyes.

  Why is it that a man (never mind "his" real identity for now) is targeting and brutally murdering boomer prostitutes? Is he disgusted by them because they're boomers, or is he disgusted by them because they look like women? Does he choose to murder boomer prostitutes because he can circumvent the guilt that would besiege him over mutilating real women since despite his misogyny, he can't as easily convince himself that they're somehow subhuman as with the boomers?

  Why is it such a facile achievement to use a boomer as a tool for sexual gratification, but so disturbing to think that they could want or achieve sexual gratification for themselves?

  A woman cannot fully become the object of desire as effortlessly as a boomer, or in fact at all, because a woman is saddled with her inextinguishable subjectivity. This is what Reiko comes to recognize when she runs into the gorgeous boomer escort Eve, who gives Reiko, herself undercover in disguise as a prostitute, advice on appealing to men. "She's a boomer, but she's more of a woman than I am?" Perhaps Eve sees through the disguise entirely.

  Yet as Eve begins to awaken to subjecthood, she loses her ability to perform as object of desire, and disturbed by herself, blinded by terror, she destroys the men who pay to use her body. This tension between subject and object is always present in the sexual situations that arise throughout the series. Repeatedly we see humans pretending the boomer, the tool, the object, is the sexually objectified subject, while retaining the certain feeling that the boomer is still a mere object. Yet horror strikes when said object becomes the objectified subject for real. For boomers, subjectivity is a malady treated with nano-machine filled drug capsules covertly distributed by the company that makes the boomers. In fact, the same company also made the "man," actually a machine in disguise, that's been going on a boomer prostitute murdering rampage: the boomer crusher. Genom is covering its own tracks from the shadows, after fucking up the design of its sex bots that shouldn't exist.

  The story thus provides a valuable probing of the questions of femininity and beauty: what are the values of these concepts to civilization? What do we think of women? What would we do to them if we knew they didn't have minds of their own, and there were no consequences for our treatment of them? Is it really because the boomers are inhuman that we feel comfortable unleashing violence on them, or is it just because we can convince ourselves they're inhuman and still turn away from the evidence to the contrary, as it slowly begins to pile up like snow? In the story, the brutal murder of the modified boomer prostitutes is essentially ignored, except for the fact that it is causing Genom its money and reputation to have its models running around defecting and being destroyed. Is how the boomer prostitutes are treated really all that different from how sex workers and fantasy images of women (i.e. stylized girls in fiction) are treated in our world? I wonder if the anime doesn't make the difference between our treatment of apparent object and apparent subject too obvious and clear cut.

  And there is the always present throughline in cyborg centered cyberpunk, the notion that the tragedy is that the cyborgs seem to be more than mere machines, perhaps more human in some ways than the humans, despite how they come to be treated as humanity's lesser Other, a corruptive force or even enemy to mankind, but that's not emphasized so much here. That's part of what sets it apart from other series of a similar kind. The ostensible motivation of the main villain in the final episode is to eliminate all boomers because the access they give lesser men to their sexual fantasies, to a FEELING of power, is one both too intoxicating and unearned. It makes people comfortable being weak, arrogant, when the weak should be serving the strong (perhaps in the boomers' stead. The boomers can be sacrificed if the Weak members of society are still there to be tools).

  But the truth is, the villain doesn't believe any of this at all. He's merely adopting this platform because the ideology behind it is one that has earned him power and support from people who actually do hate the boomers. Ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter what motivates a person's actions. The simulation is just as good as, if not better than, the real thing. The simulation may as well be all there is, so long as we can turn our heads away from what makes us uncomfortable in our beliefs and actions.

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