During the recent heat wave in Melbourne, we sat down and continued watching the series Denno Coil (Cyber Coil) which we started watching last year. Japanese anime has been exploring the world of technology since Tezuka Osamu's Tetsuwan Atomu in the 1960s based on the manga series (1952 - 1968). Whilst that series looked at how technology could be used for peaceful means by the 1980s this utopian fantasy had turned and darker dystopic fantasies such as Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Appleseed (2004) have proliferated. Denno Coil was broadcast on the NHK education channel in 2007 and has a slightly different purpose. It is, after all, educational and therefore has a strong moral message which can be seen at the end of the series when the parents put their collective foot down and confiscate the kids' cyber glasses. But that's at the end of a very long and complicated story. All you need to know is that there are some black shadows (illegals) looking for something in the town of Daikoku where there have been a number of accidents involving children from which the technology company Megamass is keen to disassociate itself and its products...
In Daikoku all the children wear glasses which allow them to enter cyber space, they also have cyber pets. These can only be seen if you are wearing the glasses. Part of the discussion that is generated in the series is whether things that exist in cyber space are real in the way that they are in the 'real' world. Thus when Yasako's pet dog Densuke dies, her mother questions whether the dog ever existed and therefore whether it can be mourned.
Some of the children collect meta bugs and later kira bugs which allow them to become more powerful in cyber space. In the town there are still a number of old cyber spaces. These are being cleaned up by Megamass which has employed Tamako for this purpose. Under her command she has a number of robots known as Sacthi who chase down illegal cyber activity and clean up old cyber spaces. They cannot, however, enter shrines or schools. A new girl nicknamed Isako arrives at the school and takes control of the hackers club. Apart from the fact that she can write codes and is collecting kira bugs she has a secret and this secret connects her to Yasako who has had a dream in which all she can remember is the number 4423. Over the series, the search for the meaning of this number draws various characters together and against each other. The number 4423 turns out to be the number of the hospital room in which Isako's brother Nobuhiko is being kept. His cyber body and his real body have been split after he went over to the other side, controlled by Michiko and the illegals. He is unable to come back so Isako is trying to use her codes and amass enough kira bugs so that she can open up a pathway to the other world so that she can be reunited with her brother.
Suffice it so say, Tamako is monitoring Isako as she herself is being monitored by Nekome, also employed by Megamass. If people have concerns about CCTV cameras and the digital footprints that they leave all over cyber space, this series will be food for thought. Whilst some have given up on privacy this series opens this issue up with siblings spying on each other with cyber pets that have illegal recording capacities not to mention a company (Megamass) that can shut the whole system down that people have become dependent upon.
At the end of the series, it is revealed that Isako is being manipulated by Nekome who has his own reason for opening up the pathway in contrast with Tamako who wants it shut down. It is also revealed that that the cyber dog Densuke holds the key and that Yasako's grandfather who designed the cyber glasses for Megamass implanted a node in the dog which is necessary allows a pathway to be opened up to the cyber world. This is where Michiko and the illegals lurk eager to draw children over to their world. To protect themselves and their cyber products, Isako is blamed for the accidents in the town (including the death of Kanna which haunts Hanaken, the nephew of Tamako) and she is further said to be in league with Michiko. Her death is a tragedy but more to the point, the adults in the town have little knowledge of any of these events. They sense that their is something wrong so they blame the cyber glasses and confiscate them. The message for children watching the program is that technology is fun but dangerous. Whilst adults have power and can confiscate the glasses the real danger of the technology is only understood by children because they are the one who live these experiences. For the rest of us it is more reason to distrust the self serving natures of big corporations.
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