However, in the hearts of those who live their daily lives like this, there is undoubtedly anxiety about what the world will become. The anxiety that is usually hidden is succinctly expressed when one of the main characters, Kadode, says to his teacher, “Teacher, really, how bad is this world?”
One person who is even more sensitive to such anxieties is Kenichi Kohiruimaki, a classmate of Ontan and Kadode, who is dating their friend Kiho. He was a very quiet young man who liked subculture, but he gradually became interested in the information circulating on social media and began to believe in conspiracy theories. He then became the leader of the radical group “Blue Co-op” that hunts down invaders, and even began plotting to overthrow the government.
Kohiruimaki is not necessarily an enemy of the two main characters, Ontan and Kadode, but he is portrayed as a contrast to the two main characters, as a young person living in Japanese society in the 2010s and beyond who hides his anxieties. I would like to focus on Kohiruimaki this time as a character who represents a different set of values from the main characters.
The animated movie version of “Dededede” is composed of two parts, the first and second chapters. Throughout the movie, Ontan and Kadode’s actions and motives do not change significantly. Although they are anxious in their hearts, they continue to live their lives by considering the daily life they spend with their friends as irreplaceable, and this continues to be the case until the end.
The one who changes the most between the first and second chapters is Kohiruimaki. In the first chapter, he is dating Kiho, one of Ontan’s group, and they get along well for a while. Although he appears timid at first glance, he is a young man with a kind demeanor.
He often looks at the timeline of social media on his smartphone. Even when he is on a date with Kiho, he is staring at the screen of his smartphone. It seems that he is researching information on the mother ship and the invaders, and the effects of harmful radiation called A-rays. He has a great deal of anxiety about whether Tokyo is really okay in this situation, and whether it is okay to live a carefree daily life, and it is this anxiety that causes him to collect information on social media.
Gradually, he begins to share information of unknown veracity with Kiho. He begins to feel that Tokyo is already in an irreversible state, and yet everyone is living their lives as usual. He begins to feel that no one is aware of the truth, which leads to an argument with Kiho and the two of them breaking up. From then on, he becomes more and more obsessed with conspiracy theories, and leaves Tokyo.
When he reappears at the end of the previous chapter, he has become a member of the extremist organization “Blue Alliance” and appears completely changed.
In the later chapters, he begins to kill the invaders with a knife. He also attacks the government that is hiding the truth, and transforms into a subversive entity that uses journalists to take over television programs.
Kohiruimaki, who appears in the latter chapter, is an absolutely dangerous terrorist. He starts killing not only invaders but also humans, and is a man of determination who will not hesitate to take any extreme action to achieve his goals. He seems to have crossed the boundary between good and evil.
In this work, Kohiruimaki embodies the danger of becoming obsessed with conspiracy theories of unknown veracity on the Internet. There are significant overlaps between real-world phenomena and Kohiruimaki, such as QAnon and the group that attacked the U.S. Capitol, and the work is highly regarded as reflecting the reality of modern society, likely due in large part to Kohiruimaki’s presence.
Even if what Kohiruimaki believed was nothing more than a baseless conspiracy theory, the fact that he believed it and took such actions is a reality (within the story). It’s like a pawn coming out of a gourd, or a truth coming out of a lie, and this kind of thing happens often in real life.
What is important to prevent this kind of situation? Will it be enough to simply tell people that conspiracy theories are bad? At least, I don’t think that will convince Kohiruimaki in this movie.
What’s important is that the motivation for him becoming obsessed with conspiracy theories is portrayed as being his anxiety about society. For him, conspiracy theories were the only thing that could ease his anxiety.
Everyone lives with anxiety, to a greater or lesser extent. So what is it that separates those who are obsessed with conspiracy theories from those who are not?
Although Kadode and Ontan are anxious, they have friends who are “absolute.” Did Kohiruimaki have such a presence? Considering that his girlfriend Kiho broke up with him because she couldn’t become “absolute,” she probably didn’t have one either. In that sense, Kohiruimaki is the opposite of the two main characters.
Do you believe in your friends, or the internet? What you believe determines the fate of Ontan and his friends and Kohiruimaki. We who live in society need to think about how much our society can create that is worthy of belief, other than conspiracy theories. I felt like this was thrust upon me through the character Kohiruimaki from “Dedede.”
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