Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita – 09
“Oh mai Goddo…”
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On an amnesty mission in response to fairies’ overpopulation, the main character finds herself the queen of a startup fairy society on a deserted island. Predictably, things turn sour quickly, but not before she and her sweets-fueled fairies produce some amazing things. Breaking the 2-episode-arcs formula, this was a standalone episode, a very good one that hit all the right notes for this show. |
Saucy! Will Humanity Has Declined be the newest addition to MetaFap?
Now that was a fascinating episode. The character-becomes-god-of-little-people episode is a fairly common trope in American animation – notable examples can be found in The Simpsons, South Park (which was actually a sort of a parody of The Simpsons), and Futurama. And it’s been in anime as well, with the beard episode of Dennou Coil a well known example. Almost invariably, these serve to teach some lesson about the difficulty of playing god and the fate of society to destroy itself (in the case of South Park, the lesson was probably more that sea men and semen are different things – and you shoulnd’t try to get the former from a hobo in an alley way like Cartman did).
Humanity Has Declined seems to be uniquely appropriate for such an episode, given its setting and premise. It’s already got the population of simplistic but fast acting little people in the fairies, and the main theme of the show is society’s downfall. It fits it like a glove. At the same time, they fit so well that it almost feels a waste to have only one episode. Shouldn’t a story that manages to distill the show’s main points like this get more time? Or get featured in a climactic arc instead of in a single side episode? Also, this meant that the end result was rather predictable. The moment the main character was declared Queen, we knew that the island society would crumble. We could even infer how it would happen based on the fairies’ actions in previous episodes.
I might sound critical, but I honestly think this was a great episode, one I’d liked to have seen stretched farther. And though it certainly didn’t throw at us any surprises like a giant mecha cat or talking chickens, it provided more than enough entertainment with the unique development of society on the island. It continued its world building by teaching us more about the fairies, and it did it in an organic way instead of having the main character read out loud from a manual. This was exactly the kind of episode I have expected from Humanity Has Declined after its opening episode, and I mean that in a good way.
Truth be told, this scene of the episode reminded me of another bit from Futurama.
Electricity from pineapples and sugar from radishes. The fairies are magicians.
One thing this episode had the opportunity to showcase was the mish mash of the old and new in technology. Instead of engineering solutions, the fairies spent a lot of energy replicating their modern technology, like building (normally glass or plastic) bath faucet dials out of wood or creating a train system to give tours… with the cars being pushed on the tracks due to a lack of coal. And what exemplified that behavior better than the exact copies of actual monuments that didn’t do anything other than suck up valuable resources? Even at the beginning, unemployment was an issue, a concept that feels entirely too developed for a startup civilization on a deserted island.
The fairies were pleasant to watch, at their most adorable yet. And they were interesting, too, in how they found a work ethic once they were on the island, and they were more attached to the society than the main character was. Of course, they were the ones who put in all the hard work into making it what it was, but they had never shown signs of having pride in their work before. Perhaps it’s showing us another glimpse of hope in this world; the fairies are not irreparably lazy, they just need to be put in the right environment, and they’ll be motivated to channeling their energy into productive things. Of course, they still spent far too much energy on leisure, leading to their downfall – I especially loved the one in the purple suit doing narcotics in front of the Queen. A little curious that the main character would be that quick to arrest him. I see restrictions on recreational drug use lessening in our future, so her 20th century response felt out of place. Of course, when you can do the incredible things a fairy can, like summon rain clouds above your head when depressed, taking drugs seems a little excessive.
That puddle just makes this joke. Characters peeing themselves is almost always funny.
This episode was a lot of fun, and I was pleased that it brought some things back at the end, such as the fairies’ gloom clouds or the 3 kinds of spiders native to the island. The show so often mentions things only to ignore them – what was the point of the reverse “milk coconut” or “ffee-co” leaves and tea beans – it’s nice to see it keep threads alive. If we see more of that in the remaining episodes, especially threads from early episodes, then I think Humanity Has Declined could end up a truly special show.
Ohohoho, the main character dodged taking responsibility once again~
About lvlln
A math/science geek and a self-dubbed cynical optimist. I don't care if it's deep, if it can make me feel something or laugh, it's fine in my book. @lvlln
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 23 comments
How did they know that i had a foot fetish? A mysterious anime indeed.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
They knew because you watch anime, and it’s a well known fact that all anime watchers have foot fetishes.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Werewolf Chaser with 1270 comments
I don’t. XD
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
I don’t either.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
The main character isn’t the only human who doesn’t take responsibility. Remember the guy at the factory in the first arc and nobody in the village wanting to kill the chickens while complaining of hunger and her grandfather shoving jobs that should be his off on her? That may be one big reason why humanity has declined. Just look at politicians today. I’m sure Japanese politicians dodge responsibility and don’t make the hard choices just as much as ours do.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
Definitely, the failure people to take responsibility for anything is a major theme in this show. The Human Monument Project which has come up from time to time is another example, as this important work gets passed on from person to person with no real progress. There’s a feeling of accepted mediocrity, as the humans are largely inept, and they think that’s fine – like the 3 level grading scale from the 2nd episode whose lowest grade was “good” (if memory serves).
Certainly we can see this as a possible CAUSE of society being in the state that it’s in in the show, though I also wonder how much of it is the RESULT of the state of things. Regardless of the reason, this attitude of humans certainly acts to keep humans where they are instead of progressing.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I enjoyed the episode enough at face value, but found that it opened up too many questions. For instance: why do the faeries run roughshod over the ecology of the island, yet they don’t do that in the rest of the world? Were these faeries significantly different from others? I didn’t get that impression, just that they were different enough to be bullied. So what keeps the faeries from despoiling the world the same way as the island? Do we blame the island’s misfortune on Watashi’s irresponsible leadership? But she doesn’t seem too much different from the rest of the people in the world, so who is actually standing up to the faeries if that’s the case.
Again, we do see some of the characteristics of ‘humans’ in the faeries: entrepreneurship, resiliency, persistence. We also see some characteristics of ‘humans’ in the humans: laziness, blame shifting, but also things like conciliation. I wonder if the point of the show might be that the faeries are some sort of split of the human mind, like the id has been split off from the rest of the body, and is now embodied in the faeries, while the ego and super-ego stay in the humans, but because there is the disconnect, there is far less cross-control.
I’m not much for philosophy, so that’s probably really rough approximations, but might be worth thinking about.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
At this point, I’ve no doubt that the fairies and humans represent different ways humanity fell. I don’t think splitting them into those Freudian concepts necessarily works, because the humans don’t really represent the ego or superego that well. They’re not terribly disciplined and can (literally) fall into manga distractions easily, after all. It seems to me that the split was that fairies lost motivation, while the humans lost ability. Which is what made the twists in this episode so interesting.
I think the inconsistency of the island fairies is due to the special circumstances they were put into. Perhaps being on a deserted island isn’t all that different from being in civilization considering the state of things, but they turned the main character into the queen early on and took ownership of making the island something good. They ended up taking pride in their work. I suppose you can draw a parallel to evolution like Darwin’s Finches where a given population becomes different due to geographical isolation.