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diff --git a/src/anime/review/roujin-z/document.en.rest.txt b/src/anime/review/roujin-z/document.en.rest.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..620ae95 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/anime/review/roujin-z/document.en.rest.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +========== + Roujin Z +========== + +Let's care for the elderly… with robots! +======================================== + +:CreationDate: 2012-09-23 19:38:47 +:Id: anime/review/roujin-z +:tags: - anime + - review +:rating: 4 +:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/roujin-z + +Written by OOTOMO Katsuhiro (大友 克洋, "Akira", "Memories", +"Steamboy"), directed by KITAKUBO Hiroyuki (北久保 弘之, "Robot +Carnival", "Golden Boy"), this is a tale about old age, AIs, +transforming robots, the welfare state. + +The story: an elderly man get chosen to be put into a prototype +mechanised medical bed, which should provide him with full +life-support and assistance, much better than what could be +accomplished with more manpower-intensive care in a standard +hospital. Haruko, the nurse who used to assist him, is sceptical. The +AI in the bed is very keen to help the old man, and with some +unexpected input from a team of sprightly old hackers in the +retirement home, it takes on the personality of his deceased wife, and +decides to bring him to the beach. And, given that the bed is +essentially a transforming robot capable of incorporating whatever +machines it finds, stopping it is not an easy task. + +This movie is an interesting piece of anime history: it was originally +released in 1991, 21 years ago, just 3 years after Akira. Japan had +been feeling the pressure of its ageing population for some time +already, and it's no surprise that writers like Ootomo, with a SF +slant, would think of technological solutions. But, like any good +writer, Ootomo did not just assume that technology would "magically" +solve all problems. Technology is designed, built, and deployed by +people, and people make mistakes, people have personal goals, people +have different opinions. And the road to Hell is paved with good +intentions. Accordingly, this movie shows, with humour and without +lecturing, that complex problems require complex solutions. Properly +caring for the elderly requires human-level intelligence and empathy, +and if your self-improving AI is to meet the challenge, it may well +learn to empathise, and do anything in its power to make the old man +happy. Building the bed out of what is, essentially, a military-grade +multi-purpose assault tank might not have been, in retrospect, the +smartest of ideas :) + +I don't think that releasing `Solid State Society`_ and Roujin Z to the +English-speaking world just three weeks apart was an intentional +choice, but they are very close thematically: they are both reflecting +an the consequences to society of having too many old people who can't +look after themselves, and who have no family to look after them. Both +movies present technological solutions (or would-be solutions) to the +issues, both movies deal with AIs, man-machine interfaces, and the +importance of "humanness". If you can stand the 20 years of distance +in the drawing and animation techniques, I strongly encourage you to +watch both: they're good "food for thought". + +.. _`Solid State Society`: ../gits-sac/ |