The second and final episode of the Twiligh t Q2 OVA series, Twiligh t Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538, revisits the equivocal ambience conveyed with equal intensity, albeit in vastly different ways, by the Urusei Yatsura films and A ngel's Egg by once more blurring the boundary between the real and the imaginary. I nitially designed to provide an arena wherein budding directors could exhibit their skills through a collection of unrelated narra
tives, the project did not develop beyond its second installment. The title echoes two popular black-and-white television programs of the 1960s, The Twilight Zonel and Ultra Q,2 with which it shares a penchant for the noir and for grotesque distortion .
The first episode was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki (Kimagure Orange Road, 1988, and Ocea n Waves, 1993 ) and revolves around the char
acter of a girl who finds a camera on the beach wh ich turns out to contain images of herself i n the company of a stranger, and then starts journeying back and forth in tim e . The episode written and directed by Oshii elabo
rates Mochizuki's conception of time as a markedly elastic dimension, con
currently bringing into play generic and graphic motifs characteristic of classic science-fiction cinema and literature, as well as autobiographical elements. The portrayal of the film's detective, in particular, is based largely on Oshii's memories of his father as a frequently unemployed private inves
tigator.
It is also worth stressing, in this regard, that the investiga tion topos is rarely absent from Oshii's work, and indeed features almost as persistently as the dream dimension . The investiga tion motif will become pivotal in the Patlabor features in the late 1980s and early 1990s- to be revisited in the post-Oshii sequel Patlabor WXIII: Movie 3- and will be dealt with again through the lenses of cybertechnology and cyberterrorism in the Ghost in the Shell films. Blood: The Last Va mpire is also a detective story of sorts, though filtered th rough the codes and convention s of the gothic tale, on the one hand, and political allegory, on the other. Avalon, too, is ultimately
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an i nvestigation, seeking to penetrate the Chinese-box domain of a multi
zone virtual-reality environment to establish whether or not any empiri
cal reality obtains beyond the synthetic surfaces supplied by technology.
The plot of Twiligh t Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538 pivots on a young girl who shares a dilapidated flat in the Tokyo suburbs with a man who appears to be her caretaker (and possibly father ) . Intrigued with fish and aeroplanes- which she often mixes up as though they were interchange
able or even indistinguishable entities - she dons throughout the story an oversized T- shirt bearing the caption "fish" and an army helmet . In the opening segment, the Japan Air Lines passenger flight 538 begi n s to disi n tegrate in mid-flight, the plunging scraps of metal gradually take o n the sem blance of giant scales and the plane itself incrementally morp h s into a colossal koi.3
In a small and cluttered apartment, a large and sweaty man (the girl's guardian ) listens to the news concerning the disappearance of flight 5 3 8 a n d the analogous vanishing of a n Air Zimbabwe flight the previous day.
Meanwhile, the child stands staring at a tank housing a bulky koi and m i m icking i t s mouth movements . The two characters proceed t o e a t a frugal meal of plain noodles, which the girl interrupts when she hears a plane flying overhead and hurries to the window shrieking " Fish! F ish!" In the next scene, a man garbed i n a trenchcoat and dark glasses is seen gazing at the city from across the bay, as the radio reports the disappearance of yet another JAL aircraft and announces that seventeen j ets are deemed to have vanished over the past month . The man walks to the flat i n habited by the girl and her guardian and finds the child asleep on the floor with the koi tank by her side . His attention then turns to a computer, which he i nstructs to "execute . " As a result, the machine types out the content of its memory:
a message from the large man intended for his "successor." The man in dark glasses turns out to be a detective supposed to be i nvestigating the pri
vate lives of the large man and the girl and contractually bound not to enter their property - a rule he has now patently violated. The i nvestigator finally resolves to peruse the message, thus narrating his predecessor's story.
We thus learn that the large man was also a detective once, and that after countless days spent waiting in vain for a client he had eventually been given a case identical to the one received by the present-day PI - namely, to i nvestigate the lives of a man and a little girl sharing an apartmen t . I n the course of the case, the former detective had been unable t o garner any helpful clues about the objects of his probing, neither the post office nor the family register, nor the providers of gas, electricity, water and TV con nection holding any record of the two characters' existence . This quest had taken place i n an atmosphere not unlike the one pertaining to the present
day narrative : a stiflingly hot summer in the course of which the passing
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of time appeared to have become indiscernible and several aircrafts had likewi se mysteriously evaporated. Having observed the pair through a hole in the wall and found that they did precious little other than eat or sleep, the fat man had eventually taken advantage of their leaving the residence to v isit a public bath and discovered that the place bore no sign of recent occupation and indeed looked quite different from the way it had looked when i nspected from the outside .
Twilight Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538 echoes Beautiful Dreamer, i n this respect, a n d specifically the scene i n which Sakura v isits Onsen-Mark's flat and finds it in a state of utter decrepitude and neglect . Parallels with the second Urusei Yatsura movie continue to reveal themselves as the large man discovers that the land on which the dwelling is supposed to be situ
ated is a non- existent area, according to the city map, having once been marked as due for reclamation but still - in terms of the official records
part of the sea. It should also be noted that the area as seen by the detec
tive is infested with goldenrod (seitaka ) , a plant that traditionally symbolizes desolation, infertility and Nature at its least benign .
Moreover, the character finds that the aeronautical m ishaps have all occurred in the flight zone above the phantom domicile . By and by, the fat man loses all sense of his original identity, becoming totally engrossed i n the fate of the enigmatic pair a n d unable t o ascertain the ultimate reality of either the apartment or the world beyond it. The puzzle at the heart of Beautiful Dreamer is here again invoked, as the empirical validity of the fac
tual and the hypothetical alike is drastically brought to trial and fou n d irre
mediably wanting. Having eventually entered the abode while it was occupied, the large man had become further engulfed i n the conundrum and powerless to transcend it.
It is the present-day i nvestigator's destiny to follow i n his tracks: hav
ing also entered the couple's residence, he is now bound to it - and to act as the girl's guardian, as well as write a similar m issive for his own succes
sor. The bottom line is that the large man was appointed as a detective by the very man he was supposed to i nvestigate and then had become that man.
The next detective, in turn, has been appointed by the large man to p robe into his own and his charge's lives. Just as the large man had turned i nto his client, so the present-day PI must turn into his own client - namely, the large man . This is dramatically confirmed by the fact that after he has read the letter, the detective removes his dark glasses and is openly revealed to be the same large man we saw i n the initial sequenc e .
However, the episode's real climax does not occur until the v e r y end, where the circularly self- reflexive character of the entire experience is fully disclosed . It here tran spires that the events presented in Twiligh t Q2:
Labyrinth Objects File 538 are actually part of a yarn constructed by an
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i ng artist, that his idea is met with puzzled skepticism by his editor, and that it is i n the wake of the rejection that a portentous i ncident occurs . This ending makes it feasible to interpret the story as something of a disgruntled
author parable taken to ludicrously absurdist extremes . Indeed, the large man could even symbolize Oshii himself, as a director nagged by the aware
ness that his films are often befuddling and hence hard to accept into the mainstream . This element of self-parody adds a further carn ivalesque dimension to the Oshiian repertoire .
On the graphic level, Twiligh t Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538 p roposes an effectively disconcerting contrast between the humorous and even, occa
sionally, clownish appearance of the little girl and the fat man, whose depic
tion prioritizes soft, round shapes and bright colors, and the architectural setting's forbiddingly realistic gloom . The oversized fish provides a visual link between these two conflicting pictorial registers, coming across as con
currently caricatural and strangely uncomely. Thus, the particular stylistic approach to the carn ivalesque exhibited by Twilight Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538 could be said to constitute a meeting point between the ludic modal
ity p roposed by the Urusei Yatsura productions at their most flamboyantly comedic and the uncomprom isingly disorientating surrealism of A ngel 's Egg. As far as animation techniques are specifically concerned, the episode's studiously detailed opening sequence with its bizarrely morphing plane p robably offers the most enduring memories. Also noteworthy i s the pseudo-documentary style evinced by the bulk of the production, with its extensive use of still photographs and accompanying voiceover.
The ultimate i nvestigators depicted by Twiligh t Q2: Labyrinth Objects File 538 are the author seeking to engage with a narrative about the limi
tation s of empirical verification, and the camera endeavoring to fathom even the most prosaic nooks of filmed - and filmable - territory in order to assess their own latent lure and distinctiveness .