Thread by @KrisAtLarge

Chara cameo in _Akira_ (sitting just to the left and just above center)

we interrupted ourselves, to watch a movie on a friend's stream. got about this far: Tetsuo having a difficult time with his spiritual awakening. ~Chara

one of the aspects of _Akira_ that's barely explained even in the manga: what was going on with "The Project" *before* Akira? all the numbered experimental subjects we ever see are fairly high in number; Lady Miyako, who gives us what little info we get, is No. 19.

~Chara

it seems slightly significant to me that #Akira was No. 28—a "perfect number".

anyway, Otomo must surely have been inspired by the subculture of "parapsychology" that's been bubbling in Japan for a while; the guy who inspired _Ringu_ was working in the 1910s.

~Chara

this preoccupation with "ESPers" has been a *thing* in Japan—and elsewhere, of course, but I've seen so many works of Japanese media pertaining to this undercurrent of *weird research* in Japan...we've been thinking of devoting some specific study to this field.

~Chara

the official Western view is that it's all horseshıt from start to finish. *pretending* to have freaky supernatural powers is such a lucrative racket (yay #capitalism again!) that the field's been _smothered_ with flim-flim artists.

but surely people still poke at this?

~Chara

if there's *one message* that people ought to carry away from Otomo's #Akira, I think it ought to be a very plain and practical one:

if ANYONE is actually researching this kind of "parapsychology" stuff...it's likely to be very military, and very very quiet.

~Chara of Pnictogen

like, you might well ask: what use is ESPer mumbo-jumbo to anyone in the military? here's a flashback to one of the kids in "The Project" in _Akira_ doing something very practical: he's apparently able to perceive a printed circuit *inside the box*, without needing technology.

you may say that it's impossible, and maybe it is—but ask yourself this: when they're handing out defence-contract money, do you really think that the same people who will gladly waste billions on space lasers (or @elonmusk) would think twice about underwriting some ESP research?

especially because that sort of thing would be *much cheaper* to investigate?

at first, anyway.

~Chara