Nicola Micheletti sent in the following perspective. Ordinarily I do not edit items before posting them but on this occasion I have reformatted the text and corrected the more distracting errors to a native English reader. I have tried to preserve the original piece as much as possible, so it may still read a little awkwardly in places. Persevere – it’s worth reading…
Hi, I’m an Italian fan of Japanese anime, and very fond to Mamoru Oshii works in particular way, since I saw Ghost in the Shell years ago.
First of all I want to excuse in advance for my awful writing, hope you can understand the general sense in spite of my errors in writing…
I saw Avalon 3 days ago and I was very very impressed by the complexity of this film, by its deep meaning such a criticism of our society, and in general for the sense of wonder and mystery that pervade the entire film.
Have a lot of problems at the end ’cause …I’ve said “what the hell means the whole thing?”, but I was lucky ’cause after a bit of searching I’ve found your nice site on Avalon.
After reading the many opinions, I’ve worked out my opinion on the meaning of the film…
I agree with many guys who have written that both the wargame and the life in the apartment of Ash are in VR.
There are many particular that suggest this point, the more important, in my opinion , is the strong meaning of “fake” you feel seeing the scene in the apartment, or whatever scenes outside the wargame.
It could be that this sense of freeze of the people, and the feeling of sadness are only “stylistic” means for suggest the disillusion with the world in which Ash lives, but in my opinion the key for understanding the film is think about it like a film on computer and technology, and how they can change (in a better or in a worse way) our world.
In this perspective it’s clear that the apartment of Ash is a kind of virtual lounge, in which player rest after a mission, write to other player, and simply take rest and relax. But what is Class Real?
I’ve taken my opinion mainly from 2 very famous videogames, The Sims and Grand Theft Auto…I’m sure that Mamoru Oshii is a fan of RPG, but I suppose that, writing a film on videogame, he took inspiration from the videogames he could play.
The fact is: in these videogames you have to create an avatar for playing. The computer hardware nowadays is enough powerful to let us set an enormous number of options, like the colour of the hair, the muscular mass, the clothes, even the general behaviour (you can create a peaceful , a furious, a romantic avatar, e.g. The Sims).
My assumption is: in the future world of Avalon you create your avatar in a VR reality world, and you feel on your skin the result of your choice, so you can be very accurate on setting the characteristics of your avatar, from the simple one (clothes) to the more complex one (behaviour).
The computers are more more powerful that nowadays ones, so you can set a higher number of options, for example the latency of fear in a scary situation. More you can set this parameter, more your avatar can stand and play in a danger situation.
For the advance of level, in the wargame of Avalon you have to be a perfect soldier, for sure, but maybe you have to develop your avatar in a more complex way…you have to shape him more an more like a real person.
But in a VR world you couldn’t shape an avatar with a mouse and a keyboard, you have to live and react in some way to achieve some results.
In conclusion, people in Avalon world create their own live in the game, instead of in the normal world.
When you achieve to 12 th level, you have created quite a perfect avatar. He reacts, behave, feel in a way similar to the human way…he fear, he has some ambition, some love, has a house, cook for himself and for the dog.
I think that way it dangerous for the human brain…actually, sometime a people become an unreturned, but I suppose that this long process of create an avatar could impair the brain, in the way of spoil it, because the only way you have to create your avatar is to give him yourself: the game acts like a sponge for you brain.
In the first level you can lose only some non-essential brain feature, but more you play, more you lose your deep, essential brain function…in the exact way it can happen using a drug. Creating your avatar drains your brain richness to shape him. Something like “everyone can create his own creature”, that is a very common concept in the videogame nowadays.
But we are talking about the 13 th level: when you achieve this advance, the creation of the Avatar is complete: your brain is brain dead, not in the sense of a death from a damage, an inflammation, but in the sense of the exhaustion of its capacity.
The fact is that you are brain dead, but your avatar is quite live. Actually you have donate him quite everything you could, except a real body.
He “lives” an independent life, because his profile, his virtual brain is so rich that he, even if it is not an intelligent being, can guide him in a lot of different situation, like an “automatic pilot” always power on.
So on entering the 13 th level you become an unreturned, in my opinion. And then , in the 13 th level we see the avatar of Ash starting to live without anything of the master (actually Bishop says that she has lost every weapon or equipment she have before…like she has been “disconnected” from the master)
But, why the 13 th level is so different from the others?
Well, Bishop says this: there is more powerful hardware. So it resembles a trend that is very common in the nowadays game: the simulation the more precise of the reality.
Actually even if the world of the 13 th is very different from the other before, Ash doesn’t have many problems adapting. I suppose that the world we see in the 13 th is like the real world in which Ash lives: the game simply is a more simulation of the same world we’ve seen in the level 12 th, but more technically advanced.
And why she has unlimited time? In my opinion this is like Grand Theft Auto: you have your mission to accomplish, but you can behave how you want, you are free to make other stuff: the dreams of a living world in which you can make whatever you want, without fear of suffering anything. I believe that in the theatre Ash, instead of killing Murphy, could have listened the concert and then could have gone to have a walk in the street.
At the end, by shooting again the Ghost, she advance in the last level, Avalon. What is Avalon?
I think that, like the 13 th level is a quite perfect simultion of the real world, the 14 th (Avalon), is in some way a world beyond the reality, a sort of Heaven (actually they say that Avalon is a fabulous island, populated by gods and mythical people) In a way, in the film we see the advance in the game of Ash, that coincide with the lost of consciousness of the girl who is “behind” Ash, and her death in the reaching a, fake, better world.
In my opinion a desperate criticism of our world…