Wolf's Rain

[branchandroot]

What a tangle.

Wolf's Rain leaves us with the kind of ending that drives many people nuts. Nothing is explicitly tied up, bunches of things are inferred, and we have to go fish back through the entire show to try making sense of it. But I will hazard that the underhanded message is that the world we see at the very end, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the present day, is Paradise. Or, more properly, Paradise-moving-on.

The key phrase that keeps coming back to me is "let's meet again in Paradise", which they seem about to do as the curtain falls. And what Darcia said about the Paradise he wanted to open, the one Kiba said would be only darkness, was that it had no happiness because it also had no suffering.

And that would have been paradise for Darcia, wouldn't it? Someplace he could be assured of not being in pain any longer. But he's too aware to believe that this could be had along with happiness, which is what the Noble's Paradise was supposed to be, I think. Just happiness, and just for the Nobles, with no world winding down and being used up; Eden forever. Which could only ever be artificial, of course. That, I think, is the curse of the Darcia family: to always attempt to reach the natural by means of the artificial, which seems to be what began the world's end; to be aware; to remember the wolf within but not be able to reach it. Darcia only ever reached a chimera. Not Wolfness, which is a very spiritually loaded thing in this story, and all about instinct.

But back to the Paradise thing. What we see at the end is a real world. One that has both pain and joy. In addition, the nature of Paradise, here, seems cyclical. Paradise is the new beginning, the rebirth. And, eventually, the world will die again. Paradise is supposed to be a world ruled by the wolves, and that gets us back around to the spiritual thing.

Wolf, in this story, seems to be a signifier for spirit, instinct, purity. Harmony, both with the world and with oneself.

Nobumoto Keiko has a real thing for the more romanticized view of Native American spiritual practice, I must say.

Anyway, the world we see at the end is, I think the story is saying, one in which the spirit has the potential to act in freedom. One in which it is possible for the spirit to rule, for actions to be pure. Paradise, where the wolf rules.

At the same time, what is born dies, and each cycle falls; the wolves die out/forget themselves. Artifice is chosen, in hopes that it will permit the things that harmony doesn't get you: flying without wings, instead of running on the legs one has. And that, I think, is what the Nobles are: the ones who choose artificiality. And, again, that is what brings the end. The Nobles claim that the wolves will bring the end of the world, but Darcia notes at some point that it isn't simply that the wolves desire Paradise/rebirth, but that Paradise calls to the wolves. The Flower, which strikes me as the counterpart of the Wolf, the agent and reminder of the cyclical nature of existence, calls to and is called by the wolves. But that does not cause the end of the world. The Nobles have already done that. They created Cheza, and she says in the end that her form is not her true one because of that. They blocked a true rebirth by sealing the tree, and would have consumed the last of the world in order to create a static Eden for themselves. If anything is opposite to both the Flower and the Wolf, that's certainly it.

I'm waffling a bit over whether the end implies that it is possible to escape the fall that artifice brings. It seems possible that, if spirit could overcome the greed that leads to artifice, if the Wolf could overcome the Noble, then a different cycle would come to be. One in which the Flower blooms in her true form to bring about rebirth when simple age has ended the world. Even so, I think darkness would remain; Darcia is an example that it is possible for a wolf to be... corrupted. Possible for nihilism, a desire for an end to pain, to override the harmony of Wolfness. I think that's why he keeps trying, in the end, to destroy Cheza; he wants there to be no rebirth, but only darkness and stillness and no pain because there is no joy. And that darkness seems to be carried with the rebirth, also, in the form of his eye which releases darkness into the water and colors that flower.

I did find it interesting that a show which seems, visually, to be so much about the pretty is written in such a demandingly metaphorical manner.

Starting to ramble, I think. Chemicals are probably kicking in.

Comments

[bluedelirium.livejournal.com]

Nobumoto Keiko has a real thing for the more romanticized view of Native American spiritual practice.

In the one episode where they meet the Native Americans, I remember thinking- that is the exact same old guy. It IS. I never bothered to make a connection beyond that, sadly, so thanks for bringing that up.

WR is very hazy to me- it was hazy while I was watching it, and time has not helped- but I think Darcia's shift in motivation after his girl dies is interesting. I would try to explain further, but I just got back from Mississippi and a long drive, and my coherency is somewhat impaired.

[branchandroot]

The same old guy, with the same handful of sand...

[bluedelirium.livejournal.com]

Same voice, too, really. At least his presense in WR makes more sense than in Cowboy Bebop. Frozen Russian dystopias mix with Native Americans much better than space noir does.

Um. >_