Welcome to the philosophical apocalypse.
GLT is so... The opening is SO: It's so dark. They haven't seen the light of day in so long. It's so cold. We're so hungry. It's so lifeless. It's so dull and overcast. Despite the grey palette, it's a show that is pleasant to watch for 11 episodes and then, in episode 12, it suddenly launches into a thing of true beauty🦋
A 2017 Release that is rated 8.2 on MAL, GLT is 1 season consisting of 12 24-minute English dubbed episodes with CC available. The art is near childish in its simplicity. On a reality scale people are 2/10, drawn crudely with little detail, and backgrounds are 3/10 with minimal lines. This augments the main theme: Simplify. They still manage scenes that mesmerize.
GLT opens to a couple of young girls walking around a desolate land littered with weapons left by a long ago war. They talk about why people fought, why didn't they store up food instead, and what was the meaning of all of °this°? We also get a minute demonstration of how human☠nature leads to °this°.
Yuri (Yuu) carries a 🔫. She's the brawn. She's got the boundless optimism of a naive and ignorant child. Not much for reading, she loves her gun and food. Chito (Chi) carries a 📗. She's the brains and a bit more of a pessimist. Not much for violence, she loves 📚. We'll know from her dreams that Yuu does cause her anxiety. Chi is the even road and Yuu is all the highs and lows. Chi spends her time journaling about their travels and explaining everything, grand and simple, to Yuu.
To Yuu? TO YOU! AND ME! "Hollow?" "That means it's empty inside. Like that head of yours." Yuu understands nothing. Chi must explain the basics to her: What a book is, what a house is, who and what God is... The show is their dialogue; the pedant and the blank slate. They will get separated in a dark building. Even though she's joked and even dreamed of eating Chi, Yuu is upset apart from her constant companion. She mourns being cold and alone in the dark. Later, when they are together in a grand corporate lobby, and Yuu realizes she can't eat the (fake) fish in the (fake) pond, which is part of a glass and metal sculpture, she fumes about how useless the fish is. They had been wondering about God, so Yuu decides to curse, or blame God that something so useless exists. Chi works out how being alone in the dark was upsetting, and perhaps people wanted this brightly lit space so that they would feel "more at ease." Yuu refuses to accept that there are things beyond her understanding. She will accept something once Chi explains it, but she doesn't obtain wisdom from these interactions. In every new situation Yuu rejects new things, forgetting that there are many things she doesn't understand. Sounds familiar.
Yuu isn't wrong about everything. Their different personalities provide balance. The girls find a path marked with arrows, and Chi wishes that life came with ↗⬆➡↙↔. Yuu is scandalized, stating that it would be no fun at all! They share an empty room one night. They try to imagine it furnished and that they live there, in a building that doesn't move. "House Awesome!" Yuu loves the idea, but she doesn't understand why the tank they travel in isn't their house. Out of the first 5 episodes they only encounter 1 other human. The first two adults that they meet end up losing years worth of work. One woman says: "Once you fail at something, you feel so carefree." Chi concludes: "Maybe 'life' just really means something that has an end to it, you know?"
'As long as I have Yuu/You, I'm happy.' Haunting and moving, the last episode is the big payoff. The most frightening concept is isolation, we learn. But community is scary, too. We see lots of images, mostly of people living their lives interspersed with war and destruction. An image of a 🕷 on top of a 🦋 shows up in the center of the montage. Is life a spider, or a butterfly? Must life be the 🕷 on top of the 🦋? Do you want to be a 🕷 or a 🦋? We all have a choice. People choose to be the spider because they fear the spiders; they fear being weak. All I can say is that I would rather be a butterfly for a day than a spider for 100 years. I will not choose the spider. GLT expresses the hope that society can "ingest these unstable beings and dismantle them back into a static state," which is by way of determined collective enforcement (punish crimes & uphold justice), but it must also be done with care, connections, & constant hope. "Let there be peace ☮n earth."
QUOTE📢
"What Does 'empathy' mean?" "It means when you are happy, I am happy as well," (says the robot).
House Awesome!
〰🖍 IMHO
📣8.2 📝8.5 🎭7.7 🌞5.7 🎨8⚡4.5 🎵/🔊7.6 😅4 😭3.5 😱4.3 😯4 😖3 🤔7.9 💤4 🔚10
Age 11+
They bathe and we see nondescript nudity. There are curves with no detail.
Rated TV-PG-13 Parents Strongly Cautioned.
Re-📺? 👍🏽
