Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
In the setting of Apocalypse Hotel, humanity has fled to space to avoid a deadly airborne virus which has spread the world over, leaving their old civilisation behind. In the building which is the real-life modern headquarters for the watchmaking company "Seiko" (35 40'17.0"N 139 45'54.0"E), one of the final vestiges of Earth-bound civilisation remains: "The Gingarou Hotel" (translating to "The Galaxy-Tower Hotel"). Here a team of robots maintain the establishment as a fully-functional hotel, awaiting the eventual return of mankind under the leadership of the android girl "Yachiyo-san". This team of immortal, unfeeling hoteliers plod along through many hundreds of unchanging years, repeating the same chores and daily tasks ad nauseam. The rooms' bedding is changed, the dinner is cooked, the showerhats readied; all without ever being used and without so much as a grumble from the robots. This forms the general rhythm of the story, and while it may seem depressing from just a description, I quickly found it to be amazingly comforting. These humble robots diligently perform their role to an endless drumbeat, carrying out their daily "normal" ritual while the rest of the world has gone mad. Even within the first two episodes the show captured me with its simplicity and healing gracefulness; I hoped it would never change...
^The Gingarou Hotel
Which is why episode three's tone shift hits hard. The introduction of the rowdy and downright annoying "Tanuki Family" into the story upset many viewers at first: "The Tanukis ruined the whole episode again", "The poo-rats should just go ahead and die!", "I hope they deport the damn space-Indians back into space!" Many, including myself, hoped they would only be in one episode, but as one turned into two and then three it became clear they were here to stay. Some people even dropped the show at this point: too much of the original appeal to them had been lost. But while I too occasionally enjoy a good spite-induced nose-amputation, that core rhythm of daily life still remained underneath the new chaotic facade of each episode, and despite the levity and increasingly weird plotlines, the earnestness to which the characters maintained their work spoke to me, so I continued watching...
From a narrative view, these mid-season episodes are still excellent, while the first two episodes were painting a static painting, these are more vignettes of life. One can only admire an image for so long after all: we all give more time-investment to a good book than a great painting. Many of these episodes were great, my favourite probably being the whisky episode, in which the cast use their near-immortality to develop a whisky distillery over many centuries, an achievement that for humans takes many generations. We get to see the cycles of Earth pass again and again: no matter how much the scenery changes season-to-season, after a century it will seem as if nothing has changed at all. The world again relaxes into a new regular rhythm, with each character, be that robot or tanuki, falling neatly into their own harmony. But things are changing after all. Even within Yachiyo-san, routine-driven as ever, something is stirring. The show doesn't hasten to bring it up, but over the first half of the show there is a definite change in her mentality, her heart is awakening. In episode six we see this internal shift more explicitly, Yachiyo doesn't recognise it herself but from the outside it is clear to see her heart has opened up enough to let her love. And while this spark of Eros doesn't go far, it does bring Yachiyo-san to an acceptance of her own change: thanks to the Tanuki Family she has somehow become more "human".
Yachiyo and her team's ability to keep on performing their deigned roles as hoteliers despite the hopelessness of their situation is striking. To me it represents "the humble life", and is indeed distinctly Christian. To toil away at a task which may never bear fruit in your lifetime. To wait for the return of your creator ensuring his house is always kept perfect for whenever he is able to come home. Many would view the robots' labour as pointless, or even madness, but they never hold any doubt as to whether it is worth continuing, living in accordance with their nature.
As an aside, each episode of Apohotel is named for one of Gingarou Hotel's founding principles of good hospitality, each one a clever play on words mixed with a sincere belief (a good analogy for the whole show). My favourite is episode six's: "おもてなしにはうらもなし", "Omotenashi ni wa ura mo nashi". It's a weird pun, crudely translating to "In hospitality (omotenashi) there is no back-side (ura mo nashi)", meaning that there should be no ulterior motive behind hospitality: it should be given for its own sake. The "nashi" in "omotenashi" has nothing to do with the nashi in "ura mo nashi" as it's a seprate word, but "omote" (表) on its own means "front-side" opposite to "ura" (裏) back-side. So this gives the phrase the double meaning of "There is no front-side if there is no back-side". In this episode we see Yachiyo-san struggle with this notion: she wants to give the guest good hospitality for its own sake, but as she comes to realise she has fallen for him, she reveals to herself she does in fact have an ulterior motive and is breaking the rule! But at the same time she is finally opening up her emotions to the outside world, which changes her character and (at least for a while) brings her happiness, something she could never have done without the external motivation in contravention with her code (both moral and digital). "There is no front-side if there is no back-side". I'm not exactly sure if it was intentional, or whether its lost in translation, but I found it a beautiful little theming to the episode.
However Yachiyo-san's new positivity hardly has time to express itself before the "second impact" of the show occurs in episode seven/eight. Yachiyo is flung into low-Earth orbit for an unknown number of centuries at the culmination of a six-man space race, only returning once her orbital velocity is bled off enough by the small amount of atmosphere still remaining at her altitude. She returns to find her world, and her hotel, a changed place. Ponko, the daughter tanuki, has taken up the reins of hotel manager in Yachiyo-san's absence, developing it into a popular destination for alien-tourists and circumventing some of the more pedantic rules of hospitality set out by the old owner. Yachiyo is lost in a world that is no longer her own. She realises that she no longer has a place in the hotel, her old-fashioned ways are now backward: she is "out of place, out of time." Several episodes are dedicated to this painful feeling of othering she experiences as she becomes embittered and unhappy with her new life. The only thing that brings her out of it is another bout of change: Ponko, once a small child, is now getting married, and Mujina, Ponko's Grandmother, is on her deathbed. Through a frankly bizarre wedding-cum-funeral ceremony Yachiyo is able to pull herself out of her rut and is able to come to terms with what I believe this show is really about: change.
The acceptance of change is difficult for most people. We are creatures of habit and are generally happy with things staying the way they are. Change is biologically unsettling and scary. The naysayers from episode three rejected change, just as Yachiyo does in episode eight, and we tenacious viewers had to accept that change as not just unavoidable but necessary, just as Yachiyo does in episode ten. This is not to say that change is always good, I would argue that the vast majority of changes are bad when taken individually, but the core concept of "change" is an inarguable good for us. "The Tale of Heike", a mediaeval Japanese epic, begins with the immortal line:
祇園精舎の鐘の聲 諸行無常の響き有りThis sentence uses the yojijukugo (4-kanji idiom): "諸行無常", "shougyoumujou", best translated using the English 4-word idiom "This too shall pass". Both beautiful phrases which find their equivalents in all civilised cultures. In fact it is civilisation itself that makes it impactful in the first place. We build ourselves towers and treasures to last an eternity, but eternity is just the folly of the civilised man. In pretentious Japan-centred circles the phrase "Mono no Aware" is thrown around a lot (including here), but I disdain those Westerners who assign the appreciation of the transient to a Buddhist nature: it is far more universal than that. What of "memento mori"? What of "Ozymandias"? "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"? This acceptance and eventual appreciation of change and transience is near universal.
And this shift from acceptance to appreciation is seen in episode eleven of Apohotel. It is a quiet episode; Yachiyo has finally found a new place in the world and spends her day off wandering around the ruins of inner Tokyo. By ending her rejection of the world, she is rewarded with it's beauty. The decomposing cityscape around her glows with a new wonder, and the wildlife which has moved in in humanity's stead treat her as one of their own. To accept change is to accept one's own place, and thus be accepted by the world. And so in turn to appreciate change is to be appreciated by the world.
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.