Note: Spoilers related to Apocrypha Ch 6 in this thread.

By the way, there is an older discussion thread on Apocrypha Chapter 5 here if you’re interested (which also has spoilers).

(SPOILERS BEGIN HERE)

Warning, long post!

Well, I think I had mixed feelings about this story, but I thought it’d be worth discussing because I know some people really liked it.

The story immediately introduces you to Yakumo as extremely unhinged, having just committed a mass murder by destroying a KMS building with his boss and coworkers inside. He proceeds to also kill Aldo, at which point time loops back.

We see Yakumo again in the past, this time as a quiet, reserved and docile character. He prefers to avoid social contact if possible and lacks confidence in himself. As you progress through the story, you see that he’s kind of a beaten down, down-and-out type of person. He’s bullied around and berated by the section Chief at KMS, his position in the company is in question due to his performance and poor fit for his role. Rather than doing research as he originally applied to the company, his manager puts him in charge of a sales role. And because of his shyness, he doesn’t have personal connections to others which might help alleviate his difficulties in the company, whether through having an advocate for his career or someone to commiserate with. Although he hates his job, he knows there are no other opportunities because KMS took over the market so that there are no other companies to work for. In his personal life, he lives in Dust City where his boss relocated him, a sort of ghetto / wild west. Even when he tries to find a minor reprieve by grabbing a meal, he’s victim to beatings by thugs for fun because the city is controlled by gangs.

He takes it as a matter of course because he’s internalized a lot of negative thoughts about himself. He comes home exhausted, but finds no rest in the knowledge that the next day will come soon and bring more bad experiences. Since he comes home so late, he also doesn’t have time for leisurely distractions like a TV show of a popular idol that many people enjoy. He feels trapped in an endless cycle of futility and anxiety, whom White Phantom finds as a perfect pawn to use to trigger a recurrence in this time layer. Phantom gives life to Kumos, the company mascot that Yakumo designed and is forced to distribute to the businesses of Dust City.

Although Aldo and Nona try to help him to try to do his job, he ends up being fired by the section chief for failing to meet his performance goals. He’s in a state of shock and outrage that after all of his efforts to do his job, it was meaningless. Because Yakumo values little about himself, the only source of external validation he has is taken away from him (being in a reputable company, albeit in very poor work conditions), as well as the means to support himself, meaning he won’t survive anyway without a job, so nothing matters. He is outraged and in a near-giddy state because there’s nothing left restraining him from acting on his bottled up anger. This is where we find the context for him going on a killing spree. At some point, he’s also gained superpowers through Kumos, and Kumos eggs him on to use them to get his revenge.

At first, I found it hard to sympathize with his response at first, since it reminded me of certain mass shootings in the news which are tragic and senseless, and innocent lives are lost. After thinking about it, I think some of those killings fit more under the category of hate crimes, whereas this event is more reminiscent of the phrase “going postal”. Aldo and Nona find Yakumo to be reserved and even a kind boss towards them, but his job forces him into a corner to become desperate.

This Vice article describes the origin of the phrase “going postal”, where in the 80s and 90s, US Postal Workers lashed out through occurrences of mass shootings in various postal offices, especially against their managers, and killing coworkers as well. In an aftermath of one of the shootings, one of the coworkers said, “In my mind, it could have been anyone,” and “I understand why he did it”. What contributed to these postal office mass shootings were a toxic work environment and the strained relationship between authoritarian managers and workers. Although I don’t want to downplay an individual’s responsibility in this, we can see that there are real-life examples of this occurring, hinting that it’s more than just a problem of one individual, but a societal or organizational problem. For every person who lashes out, there are many more people who suffer quietly in these situations, and just stopping these individuals doesn’t address the original problem or environment that caused it. I think it’s also worth mentioning that this story has special relevance in Japan, which has a widespread problem with work life imbalance and overworking. For a global audience, it may be less relatable what forces or pressures society places on the individual of another culture, but traditional work culture in Japan pressures people to work extremely long hours and neglect their personal health and family, leading to even “karoshi”, or death by overworking. Also, Japan places great importance on putting on politeness and appearances (it has a shame-honor culture like many Asian countries), so it becomes more difficult to express your true feelings. So rather than stigmatizing the feelings that workers experience, fiction can be a helpful device for expressing these thoughts in a safe way to reason about them, rather than repressing and hiding them for society’s sake.

There are more twists and turns in the story, but Yakumo finds his happiness doesn’t necessarily seem to be fulfilled by the time loop:

  • He loses against Aldo and Nona and even ends up dying. Meaning he doesn’t get to live to see tomorrow.
  • He sees his section chief die by jumping into a wormhole, but it doesn’t give him relief.
  • White Phantom welcomes him to trigger the time loop, but it only makes Yakumo upset at being used.

All of these upset expectations make him confused and think twice about what he really wants.
Finally, he realizes that he just wants to be able look forward to tomorrow, which doesn’t necessarily require him to trigger a time loop (aka, a very polite term for committing mass murder).

So he finds that the external solution he initially thought would bring him happiness doesn’t necessarily do that. He has to look within to find his answer. Earlier in the story, you see an example of this idea. He looks for the popular “Drinko Joy” which promises happiness and a “better” version of yourself. But he realizes he doesn’t want it because it’s not true happiness if you can’t be yourself. It’s more like a hyper caffeinated, manic version of yourself. He runs into a young man who’s devastated that they ran out of the drink, because he has social anxiety and feels that he needs the drink to be able to talk to people. But Yakumo tells him that he doesn’t need the drink to be happy. The young man realizes that he’s been talking to Yakumo this whole time and has done so without the drink.

In the same way, Yakumo realizes his happiness didn’t come from trying to control the outcome of the future. The future can’t really be controlled, as he found out (and from observing his future self). Controlling tomorrow was just an illusion of control, the same way that “Drinko Joy” gave the illusion of being a better, happier person. But he looks back on the time he and Kumos laughed together and realized that that was a brief moment of happiness in his life. He finds that there are a lot of things he still can’t control, but he realizes his problem was a lot simpler than trying to control fate and destiny. By acknowledging that he wanted to be happy, he could finally look forward to finding those moments in life, and thus hope for tomorrow.

I’d been ignoring my desire to be happy. I’d been acting like I didn’t even want it.

This kind of reminds me of a Zen Buddhist koan (a type of paradoxical story meant to provoke reflection and show the inadequacy of logical reasoning to arrive at enlightenment or truth) called “The Tiger and the Strawberry”.

You can look it up, but basically the story goes, a person finds themself chased by a tiger. They encounter the edge of a cliff and climb down a vine to escape the tiger. They look down and see a ravine, where yet another tiger is waiting to devour them. Looking up, there is a mouse that begins to gnaw at the vine holding the person. Then they see a strawberry growing off the side of the cliff. While still holding onto the vine, they take the strawberry and eat it. It is delicious.

The story has no solution to the predicament the person is in. Reasoning alone is inadequate to solve a situation that can’t be solved (i.e., the inevitability of death), and so you are unable to find a solution. However, it is possible to reach a type of acceptance and acknowledgement that it is possible to find happiness in that place.

I think Yakumo arrives at a similar conclusion:

After all that’s happened, I’m still just me. Work hasn’t changed. My personality hasn’t changed.
Still, I have no choice but to live like this.
I’ll have to keep searching for happiness within this cage.

Although one could argue his life changed because of his superpowers, he did try to use them, but it didn’t help his predicament. Also, one could argue that his life will get better since his boss is gone. That is true, and there can be much gained by changing your situation to make you happy, but I think the point of the story was that the kind of change he wanted came from looking to his own happiness than trying to change his situation (some of which are beyond his control).

After the true ending, he found that he slept peacefully. Light is shining through his window. He acknowledges that even though he has problems, he remembered something positive:

I get angry and sad every single day. But, sometimes I laugh, too. Like yesterday.

Then he uncharacteristically gets up to go to work early. He doesn’t know how to explain it. Kumos is surprised, to which Yakumo replies:

I just feel like it, I don’t know. Maybe we could grab breakfast somewhere.
So many strange things have happened. I think I went a bit insane. And now, I…
I’m sort of looking forward to what today will bring.

Yakumo (陽雲) means “daylight, the light of the sun” (陽), and “cloud” (雲). Hence the name of the chapter, “The Breaking Dawn”.

True to his name, Yakumo has found a light of hope.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for taking the time to read this post.

What do you think, did you enjoy this story? Did you sympathize with Yakumo? What do you think about how the section chief treated Yakumo after the reveal that it was future self? That was weird. I feel like I didn’t quite grasp this story very readily, so other opinions are welcome. There are a lot of things in the chapter I didn’t mention here due to the length of the post, but we can discuss those as well.

I’ll admit I had a lot of trouble thinking about this story, and his casual deliberation about mass murder put me off, but I think it was well done, and it required me to think a lot about the story to understand the meaning. At least he admits he thinks he went a bit insane. However, I did end up liking the interactions between Yakumo and Kumos. I thought it was funny every time Kumos slapped him on the back.

  • OpenStars@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    It was very deep. And as you said, it may be even harder for those not from Japan to grasp it as readily - although the basics are there, in every Western society (which is what Japan modelled itself after, post-WWII). If you are interested, here is a very interesting video talking about how the USA (along with the global trend at the time) switched to this current economic style, and the effects it had: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNftCCwAol0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s&index=13. TLDR: we switched from “everyone” wanting to be farmers and crafts/tradesmen and thus grow things that at the end of the day made people feel a certain sense of personal satisfaction at having PRODUCED SOMETHING, to then helping a machine make a cog, which by itself sorta felt so useless, thus making people feel like they themselves were merely one among many, aka a proverbial “cog in a machine” - i.e., interchangeable and thus while not entirely useless, lacking that PERSONAL connection to your work. I see this played out in so many stories, Yakumo’s included (he PRODUCED stuff? he just did not care about said stuff; unlike a craftsman that would e.g. spend weeks making a single chair - to sell to a rich someone who could afford to pay for all that labor for a singular product - and after all that time & effort, would feel an immense sense of true accomplishment, as a farmer would as well at producing a sufficiently large crop).

    Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. While those of us who listen to the wisdom of the ages can do different: we can change our lives - as Yakumo did - and become craftsmen. It is not easy, it requires enormous sacrifice, and all that said in some fields maybe it really might not even be possible after all (at least, at a salary level that would be considered sufficient, like to raise a family or own your own home in a nice area where you currently live), but it is something to be thought about. I do not know how that might work in Japan - if it were possible at all - and it might also not be possible in most of the USA as of the last 5-10 years when healthcare costs and other metrics of inflation have jumped sky-high.

    Thus, maybe like Yakumo, maybe the alternative is not to change our circumstances, but rather ourselves. Like if you have to go to work, at a job that you hate until you can make a connection or something to help change your circumstances, then what about going to breakfast first? :-D

    • niantre@kbin.socialOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      here is a very interesting video talking about how the USA (along with the global trend at the time) switched to this current economic style, and the effects it had

      although i was familiar with some US history and the influence of trade, there were some new insights there i didn’t know about. it’s interesting that these changes in the US to trade and free markets probably brought about changes in Japan during this time period (19th century). Japan was forced opened to US trade by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. That was followed by the Meiji Restoration (1868), which changed the country from a feudal political system to a centralized political government in order to resist colonialization and influence of western countries. This brought about a rapid industrialization of the country, modernizing industries like cotton and silk where women (and other types of workers) worked long hours in factories, changing daily life and the nature of work. global trade has had a huge ripple effect over the entire world, which doesn’t allow you to simply ignore it.

      TLDR: we switched from “everyone” wanting to be farmers and crafts/tradesmen and thus grow things that at the end of the day made people feel a certain sense of personal satisfaction at having PRODUCED SOMETHING, to then helping a machine make a cog, which by itself sorta felt so useless

      I am not sure that farm work was that great either, because sometimes the outcome of crops meant life or death. I saw this quote in regard to women in Japan during that time:

      Yet still, most women preferred the factory to the farm. Farm labor was far more demanding than the factory work. Also, the diet offered at the factory was far better to the girls as compared to a life of malnourishment and starvation with their families on the farm. (source)

      That’s not to say that working life in factories were good (they were very bad in fact). But it says a lot if people preferred that over life on the farms.

      However, I do agree with your general sentiment. industrialization brought about a loss of personal meaning to the average person in various ways:

      • loss of agency (long work hours dictated less by day/night and more by market demands and the use of indoor lighting) - livelihood dictated by employers
      • loss of community relationships (life organized around factories rather than villages)
      • disruption of the nuclear family (kids or parents working in factories)
      • loss of personal meaning (work becoming menial or disconnected from its final outcome)

      anyway, i think since then labor conditions have improved comparatively and we’ve had more time to try to grapple and struggle to find an answer to find meaning in the modern age. in exchange for efficiency, it helps to revisit what was lost to question what is truly valuable.

      changing topics… i was curious, you mentioned that this was your favorite chapter in the “wanderer in the vortex” apocrypha. what makes this your favorite chapter? (edit: did i remember that incorrectly? maybe you didn’t say that now that i look back on earlier posts.)

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        Part 2 of 2.

        Labor conditions… is another matter entirely. I think it highly depends on the WHERE, as well as the precisely WHAT - basically industries that have unionized now have it better, and all of society to some degree benefitted from that e.g. a 2-day weekend - while on the other hand, non-unionized labor and to a large degree even those (e.g. the writers and actor’s strikes currently going on in Hollywood surrounding AI story text + AI CGI videos) is reverting backwards to pre-union standards. The railway workers strikes in the USA this past year provide another inside peek: President Biden used a strike-breaking technique 1st pioneered by Reagan (if journal writers are to be believed) to prevent them from demanding better treatment, citing the cost to the economy if they were to strike. That may cost the Democrats the next election even, as many people feel deeply betrayed.

        Also, Elon Musk’s workers may have an office setting with A/C and indoor lighting & plumbing, but are those conditions really so much “improved” from yesteryear? Maybe, in some ways, even while being worse in others.

        My favorite chapter was the second one Fatum Argentauri, b/c of its focus on books and learning and the whole storyline with Alma, and perhaps most of all the puzzles that were not mere “fetch quests” or battles as was the case with e.g. ch. 1, it was really a bit of a departure and more enjoyable to me than the others. Ch. 3 did have a good story, ch. 4 I found a bit over the top “YOU can be my friend TOO!”, ch. 5 was deep but rambled too much at the end (and I REALLY hate heading towards some goal, then being locked away in seemingly unending cut-scenes for like an hour, and then not being able to head back to where I wanted, until like literally several irl days later when I had slogged through all the talking, done all the end battles, started and ended the True Ending, and FINALLY could go walking around where I had wanted to check out originally). Ch. 6 was really cool - I loved the story, I thought the music was just FANTASTIC! and I really enjoyed it overall, but ch. 2… it just spoke to me more:-). Especially seeing all the crappy content that came before, around, and during it - such as the Ocean Palace 3000 where the ending did not explain itself well, and harpooning that un-did all the fishing QoL (like, did they learn NOTHING at all about our preferences there, or do they simply not care!?), and the extremely crappy UI of the TTM, etc. Anyway, you might have recalled me saying how much I loved the music of ch. 6:-).

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Part 1 of 2.

        I am not sure that farm work was that great either

        Right, I did not go into the other side of the issue, in part b/c it was a TLDR and in part b/c I do not know as much about that myself. I do know that in WWII, half of all American “recruits” were turned away, the cited reason being “malnutrition”. To some extent I disbelieve the exact figure b/c that was often the reason written down on paper to explain someone who was CLEARLY under-age (like 14) but who wanted to enlist anyway, and yet images including videos shown of people from the time clearly do show that many were what we would consider malnourished. Since that era, farming capabilities have more than tripled, and the USA now produces more than enough to feed itself and export a great deal more besides to the rest of the world, plus giving away a lot for free for charity. But back then… things were a bit different.

        Also, friends of mine from China say similar things are happening there now, like young people choose to work in those dehumanizing factory environments (the same way that young Americans would choose to work in a service job such as McDonalds or other fast-food worker) b/c the only other alternative for them is to work in their rural farms, but the factory offers a quicker & easier source of income (the down-side being their rates of suicide are notably high, and looking into the treatment they receive it is not that hard to understand why - e.g. the workers can be roused from sleep and given a buscuit and immediately work a shift, plus they are encouraged not to use people’s irl names, plus any complaint is not mere talk but justification enough to call the actual police, etc.).

        So I am sure that decision of farmers+craftsmen vs. factory workers was not undertaken lightly, in any country that made it and regardless of the era in which it was made, and while it would be extremely naive to focus exclusively on the emotional consequences of that without also considering the rest of the story, if we want full understanding in the historical context, nonetheless that was exactly what I was doing in terms of a first-look, reaching back to the origins of that ennui even among employed people in the modern world. Like even artists, at lets say Disney, may feel dispossessed when they crank out that assembly-line whimsey and cannot even take a moment to either celebrate or so much as take a breath before moving on to the next project. AI art then is just the next logical step for such a corporation, to remove the human element entirely, after having already stripped out the humane / humanity.:-(

        And lo and behold, for some odd reason, that seems to make people depressed? :-P It was shocking to me to read that literal peasants in England were happier than people today. Not healthier mind you, but happier, b/c they knew their place and had no expectations of like “keeping up with the joneses”, they expected to live for a brief while and then die with little to no help from their lords, and they had made their peace with that. This idea then of working 80+ hours per week to try to secure access to healthcare & such, really is somewhat new (I…think, if I am understanding sources correctly? and complicated by requirements for daylight, physical exhaustion and thus need to rest, and even then I am speaking of free peoples not slaves, etc.), as Western culture changes from one set of expectations to another, significantly lower set and people keep trying to hold onto the past, to the point of stressing themselves out enough to lower their health & QoL. It is so weird now to live in a land of plenty, and be told that if you do not have “enough” it is somehow your fault, even if circumstances were beyond your control (e.g. picture a steel mill worker or welder - a highly skilled trade - replaced by automation or a factory sent overseas, going from a salary that was like 3-5x the poverty rate so well into middle class, and suddenly being asked to do unskilled labor b/c you can find nowhere left in most of the nation even that wants what you were trained to do for most of your life, oh and add in being like <5 years away from retirement as well).

        This is too long, I’ll have to continue in part 2.