The Man, the Myth.. The Missing? Q spoke to me, "Mr. TD is trapped in the Black Lodge. You must Kill the Past to free him."

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Driving yourself to death

Post by cake »

It seems to me that Mr. Suda is quite the fan of reckless driving, atleast in some of his media. Killer7 & Kurayami Dance in particular. It seems to me that using transports, be it a car or a motorcycle, at really high speeds appear to give the driver mystical new powers.

In Killer7, Ulmeyda picked Clemence out of many other cultists of him and told him that it was his "lucky" day. While it seemed to me at first he was gonna give Clemence some weird ass present, Ulmeyda gave him a really cool car that goes really fast and made him ride it and "drive himself to death" - whatever the fuck that is anyways. Looking back at that scene I thought that guy was gonna die but hey he somehow managed to make it out alive!!!1111 However by the time he came back he found out that Ulmeyda died by correlating the taste of the rain with Ulmeyda's blood. It was during that moment I felt that he started speaking in a different manner, as if he had become a different person altogether. Before, he talked like a kid but by then he started talking like a "man", or so I believe. Anyways, at the end Clemence stated that, "I've always had a sixth sense. If I had only attained Mr.Ulmeyda's level earlier!" He then proceeds to take over leadership of Ulmeyda's city and Lastly if Ulmeyda's ghost is to be believed, Clemence is gonna become a big man! Whatever that's supposed to mean.

As for Kurayami Dance I can't really say much because I feel the entire fucking plot went above and beyond my head but the first chapter made it pretty clear that if you hit 300+ km/h on your motorcycle, it takes you to a world of "true form of reason"....? Oh and also by the time Kaidou Wataru wakes up from his coma he seems to have gotten a cool new eye, a shiny new name (KAMIKAZE Kaidou Wataru) and the ability to scoop out his eye for another (It was Akari's eye if I recall correctly) as if it were a VHS tape.

So............ if I were to drive at very high speeds, am I gonna become a magician? I don't really think so. I'll probably end up driving myself to death, quite literally this time around.
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Re: Driving yourself to death

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I think it's related to a motif that is present in most games, where people who "live their life on the line" or have generally abandoned the lull of society for a world of bloodshed seem to have a deeper connection to the spiritual world. It may have originated with moonlight syndrome, where most of the characters who come in contact with Mithra seem to be deranged on some level or another. (I can't say for sure until that game gets translated though.)
In The Silver Case, characters who can see remnant psyches/spirits are all people who have seen some shit, either because they went through the shelter as kids, or because they're just that badass like tetsugoro lol. In TSC they called it criminal power, though in more recent stuff (like the remake of the 25th ward, kurayami dance and travis strikes again) they define it as bloodlust. Obviously I don't need to mention the Killer7, and even Travis becomes able to commune with his master's spirit after he dies in the original.

Anyway to get to the point, the whole cult of ulmeyda is based around the idea of overcoming the limits of humanity. Ulmeyda himself does it by infecting himself with viruses, but by giving Clemence the car, he's giving him some sort of test where he wants to see if he'll survive the drive. That's why he says "if he makes it, he wins". Clemence ends up surviving, thus "surpassing the limit" so to speak, and in the end he's able to see Ulmeyda's ghost or remnant psyche passing the torch on to him.
In Kurayami Dance, I can't pretend I understand everything that's going on in that story, but I suspect the bulk of it doesen't actually takes place in the "real" world, or at least that the protagonist doesen't percieve it normally. He seems to have broken some sort of barrier into a different world, and the spirit that haunts him or accompanies him is reminiscent of a remnant psyche from silver case or Killer7.
Shadows of the Damned and Kurayami Dance originated from different rewrites of Kurayami, and in SOTD driving past the sound barrier in a motorcycle is what leads Garcia to the world of the dead. I'm not arguing that these games are canon to one another or that it's even that relevant but it's interesting to note
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