2d moe robot girl just tryin' to survive in a 3d world, beep boop! ^.^~

Founder and Director of DemureSoft


highimpactsex
@highimpactsex

first off, if you've not seen the video, watch it. it's the best english-language discussion on a tanaka romeo game and how it explores human communication.

you can then read this long ass comment i wrote on my birthday to explain how i view the works of mr romeo.


Thanks for letting me check the script early.

What I love about the works of Tanaka Romeo, CROSS+CHANNEL included, are their exploration on humanity as an ideal. He doesn't exactly suggest being born homo sapiens will necessarily mean you are human, so what does the word mean to him? He sketches out his vision throughout his projects (even his first published work, Kana: Imouto, brings it up) and the answer I get is this ability to comprehend the subtleties of communication.

He wants us to see that even those society deem "non-human" or "not intelligent" are in fact quite human. Romeo explores this further in his science fiction works where he tackles emergence, transhumanism, and the possibilities of post-human societies. I've not read Tsui no Stella yet, but the tagline is relevant: "Even if humanity dies, the machines we have created will inherit our love and create the future." He sees robots, animals, and aliens can take what homo sapiens have left behind and advance this ideal of humanity. A post-human society will still be a human society because humanity, with all its flaws, is the culmination of how much we want to communicate.

You can see how CROSS+CHANNEL is like a microcosm of his ideas without the transhumanism and more focus on, like, disability and trauma. It looks into disabled people because society trains so many people to dehumanize them. You've carefully laid out the case for it here, that even the most awful person deserves humanity. There's nothing human about dehumanization, but there is something human about humanizing -- about communicating, even in total silence. Perhaps, those who are often seen as "nonhuman" are in fact more human; they have more stakes in communicating their incomplete thoughts and getting their voices heard. That desire is human.

Romeo's works are really misunderstood because his stuff isn't adapted or translated well. I'm glad this video is able to capture a fragment of his project of redefining what it means to be a human. Thanks again for letting me help out.


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