There’s something depressing about studying the Matrix trilogy for your literature class. One, we’re compelled to believe something Hollywood made is literature, and two, with all its talk of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulacrum and whatnot, it all seems so fickle – one application of the allegory of the cave, the Matrix seems so fanciful, so philosophical – yet another application reveals that it’s nothing more than a way to make profit. The sequels aren’t made to further the philosophical message of the first, whatever that is. The sequels are made to make more money off the first movie.

And then we see the usual criticism from anime blogs which seems so right, yet so flawed : the argument that ‘this anime sucks because it’s a <insert length of time here> commercial for <object here>’. Today, I posit this to you : that all anime are nothing more than advertisements.

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