Gatchaman Crowds Insight Final Thoughts--Not Becoming One

I was a big fan of the first season and had high expectations for this one. And Insight did meet them…for the most part.

(A/N: This post contains spoilers from Gatchaman Crowds Insight.)

Picking up where the first season left off, the Gatchaman have to deal with a sudden swing in public opinion against the use of Crowds thanks to a terrorist organization. As the media gradually turns against Crowds and the Gatchaman, an alien named Gelsadra announces a new plan to solve society’s woes—everyone should become one! However, that is easier said than done, and when Gelsadra’s power gives form to the unspoken atmosphere, it’s revealed that the problem lies in society itself.

The previous season in this Gatchaman reboot focused on the Internet and society’s response to it. Overall, Gatchaman Crowds had an optimistic take on social media and how society responds to negativity. Insight takes the opposite approach, focusing on the negative parts of specifically Japanese society, but a lot of it is still familiar on this side of the Pacific—paparazzi, the way television plays with perception for views and ratings, and the insidious ways that media can create social pressure, convincing us that we’re doing the right thing when we’re really just following the crowd.

Because of that, this season can be viewed as a rebuttal to the first, since it takes a much more negative outlook on society as a whole. While Crowds appeared to argue that the good in humanity will eventually win out through rule by the masses, Insight makes the case that society is easily influenced and controlled, and therefore can’t be trusted with major decisions.

In its first season, it argued for gamification and wide rule by the masses, siding with the idea that humanity will push itself towards what is right. This season took the opposite stance, presenting the wider public as “apes” who blindly follow the media and what others around them say. It felt like the show was sneering down on humanity as a whole, with that kind of smug "I’m better than you because I think" sort of philosophy.

There’s a character in this season that embodies that mindset as well, and despite the insistence on Twitter and elsewhere that he wasn’t meant to be viewed as anything other than a villain, I’m not sure if that was true at the end, especially since a lot of the characters adopt some of his main ideals.

There’s a comparison late in the show between the events being depicted to how Japan behaved during WWII, making it clear that this show is a commentary on Japanese society. However, the message of this season seems to boil down to “blindly following the crowd without forming your own opinion can be dangerous,” yet that’s not a particularly unique message. That said, recently “social commentary” in anime has either contained radical Japan-centric nationalism or is a TPP satire, so going broad does work in Gatchaman’s favor.

While taking an abstract concept (in this case, the atmosphere surrounding social interaction) and giving it physical form in order to make it the antagonist is an interesting choice, it pushes the show into a corner where it cannot resolve its conflict without utilizing something that wouldn’t work in real life. It sounds silly to lob an accusation of a lack of reality against something that’s a superhero cartoon at its core, but since Gatchaman does take itself seriously as a social commentary via various symbols (Gelsadra, the Kuu-samas, and the members of Gatchaman themselves) it’s expected that the show will present a possible solution to the real-life problem that it’s addressing.

The way it decides to do so, though…

All we have to do is air brutal live murders ordered by an internet lynch mob, then everyone will come back to their senses!

While I understand the point the show was trying to make, I have two major problems with it. The first is that the theme of “people are all idiots who believe everything they see on TV and the Internet” done to death—including on the same kind of talk news programs that Insight rails against. Secondly, the way that it decides to resolve this problem feels ridiculous. The sort of society this season depicts thrives on shocking television, yet it’s presented as a brilliant solution to “snap people out of it.”

When I was watching this season I didn’t feel like I was watching a social commentary being worked out through stories and symbols; I felt like I was watching the writer struggle to reconcile the optimist and pessimist sides of himself in regards to their views on society, and in this case the pessimist won out.

Because of that, I’m not sure how I feel about Gatchaman as a whole anymore. I thought that the gamification ending of the first season was a bit silly, but I loved its take on Internet culture. It felt more like it was a show that just wanted to get people to consider their own stances; this time, the ending screams “THINK FOR YOURSELF,” yet it doesn’t feel like the show was trying to be accepting of alternative opinions as much as it was trying to get everyone watching to agree that the writer is right in their views.

However, Gatchaman did make me think about where I stand in my own opinions about how society and people function. At one point, this season even made me question a major life choice I was about to make—was I really doing it for myself, or was I just convinced by the atmosphere that I’d built in my life? The message was already there, but I felt that the last two episodes took it a step too far and that the writer needs to go sit in a corner and give some serious thought to all the cynicism displayed this time around.

But good shows—heck, good art in general—make you question why you see the world a certain way, whether you agree with its message or not. While I’m not quite in love with Gatchaman as I was previously, I do feel that this is a show that should be seen if only for the viewer to see how their beliefs line up against it. The Internet and society become more intertwined with every passing year, so it’s good to know where you stand on a personal level. Even though I feel that Insight was really just the writer arguing with himself, I’m glad that I watched Gatchaman to the end.

Gatcha!

Images from Crunchyroll.com. Please support the official simulcast.

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