Author of Multituberculate Earth and Lands of Fire

I genuinely think Pantheon is one of the greatest pieces of media ever created. I think art is an expression, wrt Pantheon is the expression of the creator's idea in an animated medium. Anything can be art (if you think hard enough), but the quality that makes a work of art great is that a great artwork makes you think, in my opinion. Great art makes you think, reflect and question ideas presented; it is especially hard in the age of passive over-consumption of content. Pantheon does not make you ignore or forget it, every little detail can be interpreted about a different thing. The monologues present profound ideas, and each could be an analysis, there is so much to ponder upon once presented - it is magnificent.

One of the core themes is change, the transition of humanity's evolution through technology. The world changes in the show, the lives of characters change and their sense of being alive changes. One thing I particularly like is that the character changes, but instead of they representing particular viewpoints, their own perspectives shift. Maddie and Ellen completely reverse by S2E7, they change. Maddie's arc in the ending is mentioned in my next post instead of here. Caspian's arc is about taking control of his life after learning the truth and dealing with his destiny, the purpose of his creation - which causes him to swing in different directions to do the right thing, even embracing the thing he was running from. Though in the end he proves his identity, he is willing to die for his principles like Yair says. He is not Holstrom for his relationships (mainly Maddie) with other people giving him his sense of self, they change his destiny, another core theme of the show on how other people give us identity. The reason Holstrom couldn't crack integrity is because his abusive environment he grew up detached him from people. He only cared about himself. This is why he couldn't understand, even when presented the solution - other people are important for existing. Holstrom never loved anybody, not Renee or his mother or his friends or his cult. He chose evil instead, not that he lacked compassion for some reason as Caspian is filled with it despite his life, Stephen never wanted compassion in his life. He saw them as the pawns in chess. He wanted to be the saviour of humanity, not for saving humanity but to refrain from his fear of death, and to fulfill his own desires - being the God as he was convinced on his outlook of life is the correct one. He wanted to be the God, for he felt entitled to it. He was willing to die to become god but Caspian was willing to die to save humanity. This is why in S2E7 it feels like we lost, half of humanity is UI as change is inevitable. Technology doesn't disappear only humans adapt. On the surface level it feels like this is the utopia Holstrom wanted - but when you look deeper it is not. The UI don't have any God, they are democratic society. It is not a utopia, conflict still persists, maybe it always will for our existence as life. They can choose to die. And this is the evolution of uploaded globalisation in the world of Pantheon. The themes are fleshed out even in majority of side characters, Chanda goes from a normal enginner to an antagonistic force blinded by anger, then unfolds most of plot by sending the UI technology out of his own loneliness and then decides to establish a UI society and a part of it was probably desires godhood but he wants guide the UI race and from a sense of ego or attempt to make sense of his situation decides to the prophet. But after his villain arc, he starts a redemption arc. He sees Ellen 's interview and realised his actions and blind anger has caused effects and now the realisation hits. The guilt is eating him away. He decides to take action and hence tells everyone about the virus plan and goes against the world he wanted when his humanity kicks in. That is why he dies with a smile, he knows he did the right thing. He is not the main character but a point of the plot device. Even Farhad and Yair, at the end of lives and instead of extension of their nations communicate as people, try to understand the history of hatred and decide to change into a CI for that action transcends everything they knew in pursuit of an attempt for something better than the world they lived in.

Recently I was asked to write an essay about Solarpunk - and especially the "punk" of Solarpunk and how it is used to tell stories - for a German publication that will be released later this year. Originally someone else had been asked to write an essay, but the publishers were not happy with that essay, becuase that essay very much focused just on the history, and worse, on the history in "the west". So, I did what I already do in this blog over and over: Ramble about Solarpunk. Though for that essay I tried to get it a bit scientific sounding. ;)

I did talk about the history of the genre, too, and about how the punk genre came to be. But with Solarpunk I especially talked about the influence of Hayao Miyazaki and Ursula K. LeGuin. And while discussing how those stories influenced Solarpunk as a genre, I realized one thing: The most Solarpunk Ghibli movie is Princess Mononoke. In fact, that movie is so Solarpunk, that I think it can be used to explain the genre more than anything. And that is despite the fact that this movie is not science fiction, but set in the Japan of the 14th century.

Because, well... I will repeat: No, Solarpunk does not necessarily need to be a SciFi setting. You can write a story that is fundamentally Solarpunk in almost any setting.

Now, let me talk a moment about Princess Mononoke, for everyone who has not watched the movie (at least in a while):

Princess Mononoke is the story of Ashitaka, the prince of the Emishi (one of the technically erased indigenous cultures of Japan). After his village gets attacked by a corrupted god, he travels west to find one of the last mountain gods in the hope that this god can heal him. Before he finds the god, however, he gets drawn into the conflict between a settleman calling itself Irontown and the minor gods of nature living around it. The gods try to bring down Irontown, which is lead by Lady Eboshi, as the iron extraction is destroying nature and with it the gods themselves, too. On the side of the gods, there is also San, a girl who had been abandoned in the forest by her parents and was taken in by the wolf gods. Ashitaka finds, that he will have to help both sides to find a peaceful solution.

Now, the movie is very interesting from so many Solarpunk aspects.

The central conflict is very much a conflict between men and nature, but one where both sides are shown with a lot of nuance. As well as having some aspects that a lot of people tend to overlook - like the importance of Ashitaka's perspective as an indigenous man.

Now, the movie could have been quite simple, but Miyazaki chose to not make it that way. Because the quite interesting point is, that Irontown is filled with people from the Untouchable Caste of Japanese society. (Because yes, Japan has a Caste system - untouchables exist to this day.) Untouchables were prostitutes, people who worked certain other jobs like mortician, sick people and such. And Eboshi is a former prostitute, who knew of this and decided to fill her town with only other untouchables, often rescuing them from abject poverty. And she does care about them. She wants to help those people. She just does not see the value in the nature she is destroying compared to the value she can create for herself and her people by selling weapons.

The mythology shown in the movie, rather than depicting classic Shinto mythology, actually is build more around what we know about pre-Shinto Japanese mythology, which has a lot more animalistic gods than what it evolved to with Shinto.

And again, the very interesting aspect that a lot of people ignore is that Ashitaka is indigenous. He is not Japanese, he is Emishi - he is from a culture that the Japanese culture (that came from Chinese and Korean colonialism of the Japanese islands) eradicated. But within the world of the movie some Emishi have survived and have hidden in the mountains.

Which brings me to the point that actually makes me say, that this is the most Solarpunk movie: The ending. Because the ending of the movie is, that both sides decide that they will need to find a way for both of them to live. And they will learn that with Ashitaka staying with the people of Irontown and helping them live together with nature.

Because the movie quite clearly says: Yes, the methods that Eboshi choses are wrong. But her goals - helping those people outcast by normal society - are still good ones. And there has to be a way that these people can live a good life at this place surrounded by this ancient nature without being antagonistic towards it.

Now, of course the movie leaves in a very open end. It does not say whether they manage and how they manage. But they at least try.

And I think that is what makes this movie so inherently Solarpunk: The mixture of those themes. The indigenous culture. The nature and its protection. And the survival of those outcasts. That is a lot of themes - and it is the themes that I think are at the very core of what Solarpunk should be.

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”