Ep20: Hell Professor versus Hell Girl
Whoa! Feels like yesterday since I wrote one of these!
Wait, it actually was.
Anyway, here’s episode number 20. It was an awesome episode – that what, 6 minute monologue by the professor was the longest thing to translate ever ^_-. And episode 18 is still not released (;_;).
And every time someone said “Kikyou,” I couldn’t help but think of SHUFFLE!’s Kikyou (Lisianthus’s alter-ego).
Anyway, here are the notes. They get pretty in-depth, because I’m a computer nerd, and there were quite a few things that excited me.
06:53 NeXTstep system! At 11:05, it’s identified as a NeXTcube. These little boxes were amazing – made out of Magnesium and were pretty expensive, if I remember correctly. They were built in the 90’s under Steve Job’s new company at the time, NeXT, and the operating system was UNIX-based, with lots of cool features. It was the first OS to have a web browser (WoldWideWeb), and had scrollbars on the left side (which I would still prefer), plus the equivalent of the Mac OS X Dock and its Docklings, and so many “state-of-the-art” features that it was probably too ahead of its time. You should look at Wikipedia if you really care ^^.
10:15 Elekiter – I wonder if my editor changed this. They’re static electricity generators imported from Holland to Japan in the Edo period (introduced in 1776, see Wikipedia), which really shows how old Wanyudo is.
12:02 Shibata Hajime-shi – Shibata Hajime is the freelance journalist from season one. You probably know that… anyway, the “-shi” at the end is an honorific, used for people you do not know in formal writing and speech (Wikipedia rocks – of course I knew how to use it, but explaining the peculiarities in Japanese is quite difficult).
14:39 Heisenberg – he’s the one who made the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. The professor is referring to how after Heisenberg, everything from Physics to Philosophy to Popular Culture began using the Uncertainty principle as a means to prove that things like moral relativism and the nonexistence of fate had a basis in science. You must understand that calling this professor an “Applied Mathematician” as Ichimoku-ren does seems really strange – the only use of mathematics was to find his constant; everything after that was philosophy and psychology. Of course you can disagree with me, though…
15:04 BBS in BASIC – Yes, there was a time when bulletin board systems were this low-tech. When he says BASIC he’s referring to the programming language – it’s really easy (hence the name), which is why many programs were written in it in the 80s and 90s.
18:04 Ressentiment – This is a French word. Not a misspelling of an English one (resentment), although the meanings aren’t too far off. The editor might have changed this, but it means this, according to Wikipedia (yet again):
Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, an assignation of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.
A term imported by many languages for its philosophical and psychological connotations, ressentiment is not to be considered interchangeable with the normal English word “resentment”, or even the French “ressentiment”. While the normal words both speak to a feeling of frustration directed at a perceived source, neither speaks to the special relationship between a sense of inferiority and the creation of morality. Thus, the term ‘Ressentiment’ as used here always maintains a distinction.
The term was used by Nietzche in his books on Morality – I just find that interesting since I do debate and Nietzsche is an author we see often.
Well, that was a time consuming episode, with the translation finished on the day of transmission – now only if the encoder were faster, we would get 18 soon ^_-. Anyway, enjoy when you finally get the episode!
WOW. Hell Girl seasons are always slow to get the main plot going, but when they do get into it, look out. This episode all by itself made up for all the bee costumes and yaoi parodies in the rest of the season.
Where to start? Finally Tsugumi is identified for certain by the show. It was interesting that even Ai’s helpers didn’t realize it was her; I assumed they were just leaving her alone as long as she didn’t interfere. It’s even more interesting that they seem to have fond feelings for her and Hajime, despite all the trouble they caused Ai. (And I think it’s a minor plothole that they were unaware of an important book about Hell Girl, but I’ll let it slide.)
The Professor was such an interesting character I’m surprised they didn’t save him for the end of the season as a “final boss” of sorts. Everything happened so fast this way; I’m still not clear, for instance, on why he planned to send those kids to hell. (Or how, but I guess that’s what the machine was gonna do.) Between his personal history, his weird anti-hell mansion, and his theories about hell, they could easily have played this guy’s story out for several episodes. He’s the kind of character Ai should face more often — one who knows a thing or two about her operation.
In just a few minutes, he not only recapped large amounts of the show but offered a whole new perspective on what Ai does. We’ve been wondering from the start why Ai seems to take almost any contract, fair or unfair. His idea that this means humans have corrupted hell… I’m not sure I buy it, but it’s provocative. His actual plan was just as clever. I wince just thinking about what he did — implanting hatred in himself, when most of us wish we could get rid of ours. But I’m not too sympathetic. A really good person would never have considered doing that, or become so fascinated with hell in the first place. The Professor wasn’t evil, but he was nearly amoral.
You’re right that calling him an applied mathematician was silly. Too many people don’t understand the difference between math and science. (I’m a pure mathematician, so I notice this stuff too.) His “space prediction constant” as described does sound like something out of probability, but he’d have to be a physicist or at least an engineer to use it for weapons design. Of course, even for a theoretical physicist, proving the existence of hell with a formula makes no sense at all. Sure, you could propose a model that involved some “absolute” dimension outside this one, but no model is so compelling on paper that it’s just self-evidently true of the real world. But then, the prof didn’t seem to care about sharing his discovery with other scientists, so maybe it’s a moot point.
And the continuity! I was expecting ties to the first season, but I never expected Futakomori’s ending to become important too. Now we know why all the hell sending has been taking place in Mikage’s town — it’s reaching “critical mass” like last season. (I bet the same was true of Hajime and Tsugumi’s town; they didn’t seem to leave it much.) I love the suggestion that Tsugumi was fated to become Hell Girl like Mikage is. It’s new, but it fits perfectly. The question of why a new one is needed remains, though. Maybe this is what happens when Ai makes a connection with a human girl — she’s considered to be “faltering” somehow and a successor is chosen.
Quick question: was Kikuri making some sort of reference as she wheeled down the hill? “Your things are all mine” is a weird thing to say, but then, she says weird things.