Last time, Sadie and I talked about the music that inspired the VN! Today, we decided to talk a little bit about some of the films that inspired it. The C is for me, Crystal, and the S is for her, Sadie. Here's...

Two Tokyo Tgirls Talk: Cinematic Inspirations

S: Any movie in mind?

C: How about Carnival of Souls?

S: I think it's a big movie for both of us and the game.

C: Okay, you start then.

S: I think there's a lot to love about the movie, but just how it was made is inspiring. You got this guy, Herk Harvey, toiling away making industrial films, but he has the heart of a poet and artist. But when you're from the middle of nowhere, especially back then, being an artist wasn't worth shit. You gotta put food on the table. But he had this one chance and he made a truly beautiful film with no money or resources. And it's about this girl who has all this talent, and intelligence, and individuality, but her only outlet is playing organ in church and hanging out with a scumbag neighbour. That she was dead the whole time takes on a deeper meaning than just a horror movie twist.

C: It's a shame that Herk Harvey never got to make another feature like this, because he was so obviously talented. Carnival of Souls has atmosphere like nothing else out there. That soundtrack is quite literally haunting! It's a film that means a lot to me, that speaks to me on such a personal level. It's probably because I'm queer, but I find it difficult not to read this film in a queer way! It's the mood, it's the sense of abject isolation that's so present in the film, the feeling of being invisible that does it.

S: It's definitely a movie that has a powerful theme of what it feels like to be an outsider, to be both present and not present.

C: That's exactly it! The scenes that stand out to me the most are the ones where nobody can see or hear her anymore. You remember those? It's shot in complete daylight and it's so unsettling!

S: Right, and she's panicking, and everyone is going about a normal day. Such a relatable feeling.

C: It is! That's just how it feels to be queer sometimes, everyone ignoring or uncaring about your distress.

S: And the doctor that finds her when she's visible again just dismisses her worries and says she's hysteric, and she just has to learn to be normal. The scene where she goes on a date with her creepy neighbor too, that's when I think she realizes she's dead. How's that for a metaphor?

C: That scene in particular is so uncomfortable to watch. She just wants to be with SOMEONE because she's so frightened of the ghouls she's been seeing. So she goes out with that sleaze, and she's terrified!

S: It feels like she's desperately trying to be normal. The horrors of compulsive heterosexuality.

S: I think everyone knows someone like that. Even with the ending, it doesn't feel like death is horror, but escape almost. You can join the other ghouls in the cool carnival! No more shitty neighbor, landlady, or boss. It’s sad, but the horror I guess is "This feels like the only escape". This is not even touching on how visually beautiful the movie is.

C: The ghouls in particular are a standout of the visuals. The shot of the head ghoul under the water opening his eyes is still startling to look at!

S: Or when she's driving at night and sees him out of the side window! It's still scary to me.

C: When they finally catch her, smiling and laughing, there's nothing left there, her footprints in the sand simply stop. She doesn't exist in the world of the priest, the neighbor, the landlady anymore! These feelings, these impressions, were a big influence on Cosmos itself for me.

S: Same here, yeag. I really want to hammer certain feelings of isolation into certain Past characters.

C: When it comes to Cosmos, that feeling of isolation, that feeling of forcing yourself to conform, plays a huge part in the story of Side Future. You've seen a bit of the isolating aspect in Chapter 1. You'll see a bit of the latter aspect in some chapters that aren't in the demo.

S: Films like Carnival of Souls really drive my cinephilia, all these gems and masterworks hidden away at the margins.

C: And because it's such a big influence on me... I did have to weave the movie itself in the game somehow. That chapter should be included when we get into early access!

S: Yeag, we have a lot of movies in Cosmos. Some of our public domain faves. One of the themes I'm interested in exploring in the Side Past that people will see is how art and media and fiction shape people's outlook, and how people find meaning in fiction. Cinema being probably the most important art for me.

C: It's one of our great loves, outside of each other!

S: Hehe, that's right!

C: What's another movie that influenced us?

S: Gosh, there's so many! Maybe we can talk about Obayashi’s House.

S: I feel like House has become a canonical cult movie, but it's also one of the best movies ever. And it too often dismissed as "WTF!?", When its a much deeper, interesting, and thought out film. For one, it's an anti-fascist film, about how the older generation is still carrying around the trauma of the war that they will impose upon the young. It's a film about how adults are at best clueless, and at worst predators. And it's a celebration of film as a medium, its possibilities, its history, and its artifice.

C: Its beautiful, beautiful artifice.

S: Basically the horror of the film is lingering fascism and war trauma, and the kids are too disconnected from the past to combat it. It’s a joyous, funny, sad, serious, goofy stew.

C: Somehow people really, really miss the war trauma aspect of the film, even though they go out of the way to say it when they talk about the Aunt's backstory!

S: The way one of the girls sees the mushroom cloud in the flashback and says "just like cotton candy!" That's powerful. Werner Herzog when he remade Nosferatu said something about feeling like the war created a gulf of a generation and he wanted to reach across it. I think Obayashi is doing something similar by using silent film techniques and outdated effects. And the young girls in the movie I think in a way don't have a past to look back on that feels real.

S: WWII is something they don't really understand, that is really disconnected like an old film. But it's alive and it will hurt you. They see old soldiers in a propaganda newsreel and say how they were more handsome, but they just got sent to die and leave the ones at home to try and make sense of things.

C: And it's because they don't understand the past, because they're so ill equipped to fight back against it, that it ultimately consumes them, isn't it? Ultimately in intentionally absurd and visually inventive ways, but nonetheless!

S: Yes, because their parents and other adults just want to bury that past. My proof that this is all intentional is the rest of Obayashi's filmography. Like Labyrinth of Cinema where he just shouts these themes at full volume! But yeag, it's also an extremely fun movie where wild things are constantly happening. It's a multilevel experience.

C: Those same themes of the past devouring the future I think are a major inspiration to Cosmos as a project, in both Side Past and Side Future, I'd say.

S: Hell, Side Past is also kinda about the trauma WWII effects on the post war period.

C: Side Future takes place in a world where the surface has become a nightmare of forced conformity, the kind of place that you see modern conservatives striving to make.

S: Yeag, anti fascist for sure. Really the exuberance of House is the opposite of what the Creeps want.

C: Exactly! House is vibrant and expressive and beautiful and complex. The Creeps ultimately want a society of simplicity, which means draining the beauty and the color from things. Making things uniform, eliminating diversity; that's what our antagonists want, and that's what our protagonists fight against. As for how the world gets to the point it does in Side Future, when you play through Side Past you'll see the beginnings of that!

That's it for our film inspirations... for now! There's honestly way more we want to talk about, but we'll save it for another time.

Next time, we'll talk about the last member of the demo's main cast, Starlight! Look forward to it!

• Crystal