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MM23: Through A Glass Darkly - Simulated Realities of Mamoru Oshii feat. Felix Biederman (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-05 11:00:14
Edited:
2025-08-12 21:26:19
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Felix joins Will and Hesse to look at two films from director Mamoru Oshii, Angel’s Egg (1985) & Patlabor 2 (1993). Both films explore Oshii’s fascination with navigating simulated and detached realities, with Angel’s Egg offering a mysterious dystopia laden with religious and symbolism and allegories for birth, and Patlabor 2 addressing suppressed emotions around Japan’s political situation in the 90’s. The crew unpacks the filmmaker's metaphorical storytelling with a fair bit of discussion of Japan’s unique social and political context post WWII.

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Comments

Rob

Amazing! I only found Angel's Egg last year, looking forward to watching Patlabor 2 for the first time.

Rob

This is now the Grey Wolf Brigade - Haiiro Jin-Roh!

Mr Tu Damn Quoque

If any of you see this, please, pass on my sincere appreciation for the steady stream of "slop" (content). I feel very satiated. Thank you.

corey krajewski

movie mindset :| movie mindset, Japan :D

Zach H.

Okay I can’t argue with Oshii. But next time should be Satoshi Kon.

g$

where can i watch these?

Joe

OMG-LFG

etienne

I had a fun experience watching Ghost in the Shell, i had seen it a while ago and had a great memory of it and great expectations and sat down to watch with a friend and by halfway the movie had sailed clean past my expectations, i was just astonished. clean 10/10 no notes

LandonVanBus

Season 3 needs to have a Felix Michael Haneke episode!

Kyle Cassidy

I am a true sicko who prefers Patlabor 1 to Patlabor 2. I respect the chilling martial law montage, the frustrated romantic tension between Shinobu and the bad guy, etc., but I much prefer the "goofy guys in serious trouble" tone of the first to the unleavened bleakness of the second.

waterbird

angels egg is so fucking pretentious and unwatchable. patlabor 2 goes crazy tho

Enoch

Felix watch 1994 anime film Pom Poko

Not a Doctor

Seems like they're not streaming... To the torrents!

Justin Racine

Weeb episode and Felix collab? Fuck Yeah!!!

JD Nonce

I’ve been living in Japan two years and counting and I’m still baffled by the political and cultural landscape caused by the 90s

Professional Chud Watcher

Angel's Egg, at least, was on YouTube (for free) several years ago when I first watched it. I believe it's still there.

D

Why is everyone doing these movie podcasts now, who seriously gives a fuck about these movies

etienne

this is like one of those opinions that children form right after that phase of development where they try out having an individuality

Brent

Its movies all the way down bruh

Blank

Felix who?

Lucas Kahn

Talking about art is like dancing about architecture. -Thelonius Monk!

John Swan

You can find an English sub of Angel’s Egg pretty reliably on YouTube. Patlabor 2 otoh is only intermittently available for streaming in any service YT or otherwise and looks like it’s only available on DVD rn

Evan Pitkin

Is Ghost in the Shell too mainstream for you fucking hipsters?

chapotraphouse

check out the most recent Blank Check miniseries, they just did Satoshi Kon, it's good.

Zack Burke

Can you guys point us to where you found these to view?

Miles_B

Great stuff!

Zach Young

Angel egg is on YouTube. Zax solidarity

Porpoise

Awesome episode! I love the angels egg segment. I thought that the terracotta army are people who have achieved nirvana or some similar faith based state. when we see the girl there with them I believe that we are meant to assume that her faith has been rewarded and she has been granted a place among the faithful. and considering that we saw statues reanimate in the movie she may have something resembling life in her future.

emalco

Beyond the fact that movies are one of the best things to podcast about, it’s really enjoyable to listen to the hosts talk about art that they sincerely like and find profound. It’s nice to hear their analytic skills be put to use by discussing artists who produce something important and insightful. A nice break from unpacking the endless churn of horrid, vapid opinion pieces and tweets.

C

Pretty sure angel’s egg is on the youtubes

Peter Fobian

Angel's Egg was just acquired by GKIDs in the US who are going to be distributing a 4K restoration in cinemas this year.

NYCM&AHole

The first half was way too serious for Chapo.

Zach G

You can find them on archive.org as well

Zach G

also easy to find on archive.org if you wanna download. (3x zax combo)

Zach G

I like both which is why I am now downloading the entire 1980s anime series like a true psycho

Zach G

"why do so many people like this thing that nobody likes"

Zach G

check archive.org! lots of great quality copies of both of these to download

Zach G

Gotta send a big thank you to you guys - I've never so quickly become a fan of a director, but Oshii is dope as hell. I'm already planning on watching his other stuff, starting with the Red Spectacles + sequels

NLC

I think Patlabor 1 is better for a general audience, but 2 is better for someone who is a political junkie who really is interested in such topics. Both are good movies though and some of Oshii's best.

NLC

There's actually been some controversy over the statement that Oshii went to seminary, a Japanese user on twitter feels that it was a mistranslation because he never saw reference to it in any Japanese sources but sees it all over the place in English language ones: https://x.com/htGOIW/status/1604041254937202688

D

Hey, I've got no problem with the genre. In fact, I pay a movie podcast on here for this kind of content. That's the issue. It's not just Chapo though, it's all these podcasters out here. Also part of the issue.

brodie

Other insane Aum Shinrikyo thing is the theory that they accidentally set off a low yield nuclear bomb in the Australian outback. I think trueanon mentioned it in an ep randomly.

Zach G

also - Hesse said that Oshii only directed two live-action movies but he's made like 10+

D

You're right, I'm not even paying for this. Tell your mom I said thanks 🙏🙏

Sam

The Adam and Eve reading is very interesting. I also want to add, if you have seen Madoka Magica, or any magical girl anime, you won't be stranger to the concept; but there is, in many of these genres as well as Angel's Egg, a motif of "end of girlhood" as death. Kumiko Saito has written about it in an essay called "Magic, Shōjo , and Metamorphosis": womanhood as erasure of identity and a flattening into an image of a "mother" archetype can be seen in many of these animes. In magical girl animes it usually manifests as the loss of the magical power into the maturity, most of the time as a sacrifice for others. In madoka magica, every magical girl is doomed to turning into a witch, which is the monsters they fight throughout the entire show. The metamorphosis happens when the hope that fuels girlhood runs out. When I saw Angel's Egg, I thought of this. Especially in the death scene. Her behaviour is childish most of the time, too trusting of this man that eventually breaks into the egg as she is asleep in the pedestal. When she falls into the water, she has a kiss of death before she is fully submerged. When she is in the water, for the first time she is drawn with a mature body, caressing her hand across her body. She is drowning, but her reaction is orgasmic. This is a very weird motif that once you start seeing you cannot unsee in many japanese media. Loss of innocence and girlhood being equated to losing life and personality in some cases. It is puritanical in a non-american way, so I sometimes am not sure what to make of it.

Sam

Also in the first scene the hand is not just turning, it is acting as though it is interacting with an egg. First turns it around, then cradles it, then crushes it in the grasp.

Tvvvv

ME, BITCH! I LIKE IT! I WANT IT!

Dick Van Sexel

Another good animated episode would be the hobbit and the last unicorn

D

You guys like movies so much why don't you just watch them lmao this is just slop I will die on this hill idgaf

Bob Chappell

see a lot of Patlabor in the Front Mission games

Sam

I also thought that the ark looked like a seed at the end. When the boy talks about the tree of life, he talks about how it grew out of nothing as if to grab something. The ark in the nothingness reminded me of that.

buttface

Movies are boring

buttface

I'm tired of the movie shit too. I don't sit around on my ass watching 3 hour movies all day. Must be nice though!

buttface

It's a movie podcast by people who don't actually know anything about movies but think they do

Kinetics Video

Alex Jones grew up in an exurb of Goblintown

Tvvvv

Yeah, bitch. You will die on this hill! After I strap you to a chair with a big ole widescreen in front of you and a tub of buttered popcorn and 64oz soda. Because I’m watching movies, bitch, and after that I’m listening to podcast that talk about the movies I watch. Bitch.

jack

just want hesse to know we recognized when will didn’t listen and repeated what you just said

K H

The thing about the vessel already being full because they are submerged in some way is wild. Like...bruh? 🤯

Wildly Absurd

Will understands trans women are women that’s why he wasn’t listening when Hesse was talking about the Bible

NLC

Including a very underrated (though still not as good as this one) followup to Patlabor 2. Shame its only got english subtitles that are a bit rough.

K H

Hahahaaaaaaa "I'VE SEEN EM!"

K H

Interesting read of Madoka Magica. I only ever interpreted it as some weird expression on the futility of resisting the Dao or Samsara. Weird. That makes it much more on the nose and I am also not sure what to make of it.

K H

Kys?

Randy

I fucking loved this

Last Years Man

One of the best parts about Patlabor 2 is how realistic its portrayal of Tokyo is. It's easy to forget this is sci-fi about giant robots, because the way infrastructure is portrayed is 100% accurate to the time. It's not just that the Rainbow Bridge is real, as are a lot of the shots of narrow streets covered with signs. It's also the way the infrastructure functions in Tokyo and what would happen in a city that spread out and densely crowded if all forms of transportation were suddenly cut off. You'd be completely stranded and at the mercy of whatever military force was pouring down on you, just like you see in the story.

Last Years Man

I definitely picked up on the puberty thing in this too, especially with all the talk about shattering the egg. It's almost as if she has to lose her innocence to restore life tot he world. Another thing that is one of the major theses of postwar analysis is that Japanese pop culture, particularly anime, has been obsessed with apocalypse and rebirth since the dropping of the bombs.

Last Years Man

Re: the god destroying the world thing in Angel's Egg, I sort of had the sense that things paused after the floods and it wasn't necessarily God that did so - that humanity was supposed to start over but was afraid. So things are kind of in stasis until they finally break the egg, which is where all the forces of creation were trapped inside.

Last Years Man

Oops, just heard WIll make the exact same point.

Last Years Man

It's worth remembering that Bandai is a toy company, so the entire nature of "mecha" anime is that it's designed to sell toys, which themselves play on the fantasy of how "cool" it would be to fight in a giant robot. There's something almost perverse about using that process to create a movie like this.

Last Years Man

Will: Even weirder than calling them the self-defense forces was what happened when Abe was trying to amend the constitution in recent years. He claimed that Japan would still be a pacifist nation, even if it had the right to attack enemy territory, because they would be engaging in "pro-active pacifism" (積極的平和主義）

Dylan

Read a letterboxd review quoting Oshii and he apparently wanted the infrastructure to seem 100% real so the terrorism and destruction felt real. He said works like Akira made him upset that Tokyo was destroyed so easily and there didn’t seem to be a palpable cost to it.

Last Years Man

Yeah, mentioned by Will in the ep. But it's still freaky watching it and recognizing it, because he accomplished it in an almost eerie way.

Dylan

Regarding the seminary thing: I remember reading somewhere he thought about going when he was young but later realized he just liked the christian mythology and biblical imagery and was glad to not have gone. He’s apparently a fan of the stories and themes of the bible and rereads it often but doesn’t consider himself religious.

etienne

and then some guy committed an act of Aggression-Style Pacifism by doming his ass with the Gadgetron 3000 Deluxe right? I guess it was more about the moonies but still

Last Years Man

It's still hard to wrap my brain around that happening. And it's incredible how eager everyone here was to forget about it once the facts were revealed. One day the LDP is trying to make hay out of it, the next day, crickets.

Nicholas Needham

Delighted to see Oshii’s work get much deserved recognition AND for Felix to get on movie mindset. Love the episode everyone

江戸 ねビル

YES YES YES YES FUCK YES THANK YOU FOR THIS EPISODE

NLC

Yeah this is also correct at least from everything I've read. Just from watching his films its also clear that he has a significantly better understanding of Christianity than most Japanese people do. A lot of anime just borrow the aesthetics of Christianity as a cool way to make things seem exotic, but Oshii legit dives deep into it.

NLC

You're an all-star

auf die Welle

I appreciate the shout out to Shin Godzilla -- really a perfect film. Great episode.

Jones Kolbinsky

That quote about dancing for architecture Hessa mentioned was by Frank Zappa

Antipaganda

That's okay, Hesse wasn't listening to fucking anyone.

etienne

soooo is Time For My Stories going to be reissued or do i need to keep skimming it in semi complete form from youtube channels named like The Covfefe Chronicles

Chris

This was great y’all thought of these movies in ways I hadn’t thought of or hadn’t noticed. The thing hesse said about the jug not looking full despite being full is like if the jug is submerged in water was an interesting thought. Really enjoyed watching these movies

luffa

i was so excited for this one. shout out to action channel for exposing kid me to all the patlabor movies.

Regular guy

So Angel's Egg is literally "Can I offer you an egg in these trying times"

ElverG

Ofc Felix gets invited to weeb appreciation day

J.P. McD.

I got the Patlabor Blu-rays from the library and they’re gorgeous

Y.L.

One quote I’ve heard before and still find intriguing is “Koreans got what Japan deserved (as punishment).” I hope I get to listen to discussion involving films like The Host (Bong one) or Joint Security Area, which touch on themes like Korea-US relation or longstanding division of Korea, someday.

Chris T

Should I watch Patlabor 1 before 2?

Ricardo

You dont have to watch patlabor 1. They're standalone tbh. First one is good but its def more mecha based then the second one.

NLC

No need to, but if you do want to know who the whole cast is, watch the "Early Days" OVA series (its like 7 episodes 30 mins each). It even has 2-parter "SV2's longest day" that is like a dress rehearsal for Patlabor 2.

Michael Austin

anyone who dogs angels egg should check out texhnolyze or chiaki j konaka in general

Kevin Spicer

Really wanna see these. Thanks for this.

Kevin Spicer

Thank you so much, was crying in the car listening to this.

kallampero

James Cameron called Oshii's Avalon (2001) "the most artistic, beautiful and stylish [film] in Science Fiction history"

Cardboard

This was my first MM episode, great ep everyone

Pantato

i didnt know you guys covered actual good content

Adam Foster

I wouldn’t agree that “Akira” is nihilistic, I think perhaps the movie can be read that way but certainly not if you have the context of the manga. Without the manga I agree that nihilism is a valid potential take-away. In the manga Akira is clearly (and all but explicitly) a buddhist story about how we exist in a never ending cycle of destruction and creation, each leading to the other. Oshii may not have become a priest in the end but I feel like his Christian background may have influenced his reaction to Akira on some level, because Akira isn’t saying destruction is good (and in the manga there are several explosions and people keep on living) it’s saying destruction is just a thing that happens and that we all react differently when we face it. As much as Japan is influenced by the bomb and the destruction of WWII we’re talking about a country where you lose count of the earthquake warnings and how many things of yours have been broken by earthquakes. I think the mindset that destruction can bring something positive is maybe necessary in a place like that just to get by day-to-day.

kee

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" -Frank Zappa

Taz

I would love a whole run of the mindset view of anime movies

Sam

I understand the urge to read the underlying subtext of media but when its the parody of an established genre I think its also helpful to engage with the text in a straightforward manner as well. Not a lot of media depict the horror of mundane girlhood/womanhood that well. Also art can contain multidutes and two readings can exist at the same time.

Cardboard

I keep returning to this ep months later. The theme of loss of faith is resonant with me on the left, as the world is gets worse. The 1 Corinthians 13:11 verse cited by the hosts effected me deeply. For me, childish thoughts was idealism/moralism and thinking like an adult is historical materialism and engaging with the world as it exists. I miss Michael Brooks' view on left spirituality, it's sorely needed in these dark times

Mikey

When I read Oshii’s quotes on Akira I thought he was trying to describe how his protagonist was different from Akira’s. If Akira is about a cycle of destruction and rebirth, Patlabor 2 is about hovering your hand over the delete button and the thoughts and feelings that give you pause and make you want to keep going.

David Royer

Now that movie mindset is entering into anime it’d be cool to get your guys take on Redline directed by Takeshi Koike. It’s insane. Like the fury road of anime.