This review contains spoilers
What is it that creates the desire to be number one? Is it the social pressure to excel or rather is it a natural feeling for us humans? Travis, at first moved by the promise of sexual reward, then hesitating between these two first answers, simply ends dropping the case altogether: "You want me to tie up all these loose ends ? I don't think so".
Because it all makes no fucking sense. There is no sense of accomplishment in this work. On the contrary, instrumentalization and dehumanization are all that await the assassins of the United Assassins Association. It is also a financial trap, a deceptive promise: all the money won is just here to pay the "entry fees" for the next fight. So here we are, reduced to doing tedious side jobs to keep our heads above water. And some of these activities pay better than the assassin job in the first place!
This is an economic theory that describes the aspects of our relationship to our being, in a world now made up of entirely artificial objects resulting from mass production (assassins easily replace one another). This capitalist system and the technological device on which it is based analyzes the role that man plays in it, has become an organ, a function, an instrument, and a part of the device.
And what better way to illustrate this instrumentalization than the visceral (and therefore living?) representation of the act of killing?
The fights are as futile as possible, contributing only to reinforce the assassins and their technique. All for... more technique. Technique for technique's sake. Where is the man in all this? He illustrates himself as best he can, through wrestling moves and wanking to reload his beam katana. Nothing seems to improve in Travis' life, locked in the same routine throughout all his rise to the top. It seems that even the materialistic promises start losing their flavor as we lose the heart to appreciate them.
The assassins themselves get lost in all this and I loved how their identity was so powerful (chara-design, music, dialogues...) Some try to keep their human pride through a code of honor like medieval samurai (Holly Summers).
And then, in the end, we learn that it was all a giant masquerade organized by Sylvia to enrich herself. Brilliant.
"Toward our paradise" whatever it is, as long as we stay human.
Because it all makes no fucking sense. There is no sense of accomplishment in this work. On the contrary, instrumentalization and dehumanization are all that await the assassins of the United Assassins Association. It is also a financial trap, a deceptive promise: all the money won is just here to pay the "entry fees" for the next fight. So here we are, reduced to doing tedious side jobs to keep our heads above water. And some of these activities pay better than the assassin job in the first place!
This is an economic theory that describes the aspects of our relationship to our being, in a world now made up of entirely artificial objects resulting from mass production (assassins easily replace one another). This capitalist system and the technological device on which it is based analyzes the role that man plays in it, has become an organ, a function, an instrument, and a part of the device.
And what better way to illustrate this instrumentalization than the visceral (and therefore living?) representation of the act of killing?
The fights are as futile as possible, contributing only to reinforce the assassins and their technique. All for... more technique. Technique for technique's sake. Where is the man in all this? He illustrates himself as best he can, through wrestling moves and wanking to reload his beam katana. Nothing seems to improve in Travis' life, locked in the same routine throughout all his rise to the top. It seems that even the materialistic promises start losing their flavor as we lose the heart to appreciate them.
The assassins themselves get lost in all this and I loved how their identity was so powerful (chara-design, music, dialogues...) Some try to keep their human pride through a code of honor like medieval samurai (Holly Summers).
And then, in the end, we learn that it was all a giant masquerade organized by Sylvia to enrich herself. Brilliant.
"Toward our paradise" whatever it is, as long as we stay human.