Chaos;Head NoAH review
A WILL
Chaos;Head as a project is powerful in its ability to—like the rest of its franchise—synthesize genre inspirations to make a more powerful holistic end result. Despite being a sekai-kei work, it avoids many of the genre’s pitfalls by remaining deeply social and intertwined. Chaos;Head properly depicts the vices of social media in imageboards and our ability to ironically detach from the world around us. It articulates the phenomenon of people being able to grab some buttered popcorn and watch a gory, live streamed beheading with absolutely no reaction but a couple of jokes. Its contemporary nature makes its insights more impactful and relevant to Takumi’s generation. Chaos;Head is a tightly paced experience, the very plain Japanese being refreshingly fast to read through, and despite the subjectivity of Takumi’s reality, tends to use very unglamorous objective language. It is revealed Shogun is the one narrating parts of the story Takumi cannot, and their quiet observation of the world never feels overbearing or incoherent.
Whose eyes are those eyes?
The original Chaos;Head opening opens with Rimi and Takumi gazing each other down, with the actual FMV briefly presenting the imagery of a brown sclera. Chaos;Head is a game centered around observation, and it wants to let you know:
Chaos;Head establishes a horrific reality: the entirety of the world Takumi exists in is a simulation, orchestrated by a conspiratorial force outside of comprehension. And yet, it is deliberately ambiguous what that force actually is—because it doesn’t really matter. In Sena’s route, the Committee of 300 allegedly open a blue terminal to converse with the two and highlight their absolute control over the reality we have engaged with. There is a multiplicity in “eyes” watching Takumi, between Shogun, the Committee, and us as the audience. Despite his existence being “sinful” as a constructed delusion, Takumi insists on living and living happily. However, the unknowable force behind his world is ultimately secondary to the connections we build with those around us. Ayase struggles with the pains of a hellish Nitroplus Fuminori Sakisaka reality where everything is bleeding, pus-filled, or horrific to look at, and yet with Takumi she can escape it. At least one person cared enough to acknowledge her suffering. The world of SciADV is deeply human, and it doesn’t matter how “gamified” or digitized it is. This is a recantation of I/O’s thesis: Takumi and the girls proclaim “I am here!” to the world, as it is real because they observe each other. When Takumi takes that awkward picture with Kozu-pii and Sena, the three of them further affirm their existence in the universe as kids just struggling to get by together. And Nanami's love for her brother extends to both iterations -- she observes them as two unique and valued siblings.
Chaos;Head does what Evangelion struggled with by making its lead socially isolated and yet deeply compelling and interesting to study. Takumi as a Shinji expy is superior to the original because he has a much wider range of emotions, his psychology is incredibly well-developed, and he has unique traits of his own. Shinji represents something to the audience, but that’s all he is. He doesn’t have much going for him internally; he doesn’t have too many hobbies, interests, or quirks. Takumi is a deeply eccentric kid who meticulously skips days on his school schedule to limit socialization, holes himself up in a little bunker, and admires his impressive catalog of eroge figurines in his crusty, dilapidated room. It’s so great and helps us understand why Takumi’s self-esteem is so low—the environment around him doesn’t exactly help his conditions. With Yua, Takumi realizes it’s not that crazy that some other people in this massive ass city would be into some of the same stuff he is. Despite Yua’s ulterior motives, she genuinely wanted to share her passion for Blood Tune with Taku.
This deeper characterization of Takumi makes his evolution alongside the other Gigalomaniacs all the more compelling.
Chaos;Head instrumentalizes the girls’ trauma and his own by having physical manifestations of DI-Swords as pseudoscience delusion terminals. It gives the teenage cast near-boundless power and status as freaks of nature, those on the fringes of society able to manipulate a digital existence. It is very chuunibyou in a way and orchestrates their struggles as outstanding facets of mundanity. Navigating the world through Trauma Sticks and Internet hysteria is not a healthy engagement, so Takumi and the girls forge a better sense of self through mutual observation as “sinners.”
Ironically, Takumi is selfish in inheriting Shogun’s life and destroying Noah II—he looks right in the face of Norose and his lofty, almost Buddhist/Schopenhauer-esque musings on suffering. Norose sees the awful trauma the Gigalomaniac girls have gone through but confidently justifies it internally through his own lotus-eater machine. He is Takuto Maruki, and Takumi is a Joker with new resolve. He is the weird-ass eroge reader, and his deep, evil sin is destroying Heaven. He decides, for once, his will as furniture, as a wrong existence, should override the overbearing might of paradise. Rimi struggles with a concrete identity—it is a sin for her to have overwritten herself so often, and yet she accepts Takumi’s love as two newborn humans in the hell of reality, just past the mirror stage.