Comedic Mechanism : Parade of the Jane Does- Released May 10, 2015 by Umisawa Kaimen / Vita Sexualice
A quote from Pablo Picasso which you may be familiar with, may it be through scrolling through the internet, watching videos, analysis or other…
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
It brings to mind the questions — What is the conception of art? Where does art begin? Where does art end? What is art? Why does print media still exist in our modern, scientific age?
Break the boundaries of our reality. This world is a butterfly specimen, phantasmagoria, fantasy and reality align as they've been split apart, it is now time to fissure and crack it open like an egg, from which an embryo will hatch.
This is a novel that ends in destruction, and begins in destruction.
Take my hand, the hand of a porcelain doll, as I wish to bring you to this world's finale, or is it even the "ending of the world?". No, this is an annihilation of literature itself.
Comedic Mechanism: Parade of the Jane Does is a work of denpa, a fan-fiction doujinshi novel by the doujin circle Vita Sexualice (Though it is primarily written by Umisawa Kaimen) which uses several characters from the iconic Touhou franchise by Team Shanghai Alice. This work is not an original work, not in the traditional sense, but this does not reduce its literary merit — as this is easily the best work of fanfiction I have had the pleasure to experience and witness — it is a transgressive and incandescent work of literature: it itself dies by its own hands, choking itself out of it's own will. It influences itself off heavily from Hans Christian Andersen, the art movement of French Surrealism, and Wittgenstein (in true denpa flavour.. hehe!)
This novel, from beginning to end, had me entranced (Or should I say, end to end.) I had read this after I read the other Touhou fanfiction by Umisawa Kaimen, The Gymnopédies Never End, itself a spiral staircase descent into madness, and some of the most well-thought out surrealistic horror works in only 90 pages (Later, I may or may not write about this work, too.) Comedic Mechanism is far less grotesque than The Gymnopédies Never End, as Comedic Mechanism doesn’t seek to gross you out. Rather, it searches to deconstruct itself, exploding and combusting disparate words all over the place, and throughout this act, the whole mind becomes a live bomb, splattering its contents all over the room time after time.
It takes every subject it approaches with incredible precision. With deftness it handles the topics it aboards, as if a surgeon, performing a surgery on its own cerebrum. One struggles to understand why it is even able to do that; I mean isn't it ridiculous? The reader witnesses that act of it opening itself, organic matter all over the place, the heart is where the stomach would be, its rib cage was sawed in half, and there were three lungs as if strung up in the centrepiece of the torso.
I don't know how it even walks, breathes or even eats, and I don't think I'll ever know. It did nothing but impress me… despite all those factors, its self-inflicted surgery... as if a miracle, it still lives?
How did it work? That is something only this novel knows, as by the time I wanted to ask, the pages collapsed. Henceforth I couldn't get a single word out of it anymore, it was completely mute.
The act of reading this work is a bizarre and queer interaction—it's tight, iron-grip clenched down on my brain and heart, and my heart raced throughout the entirety of this novel. Even as I hope to write this very review, I hope to describe exactly how my journey through this work felt, but what can I truly do here? It's hard to convey the words of something that's dead.
Édouard Levé, in the manuscript entitled “Suicide”, writes:
Seuls les vivants semblent incohérents. La mort clôt la série des événements qui constituent leur vie. Alors on se résigne à leur trouver un sens. Le leur refuser reviendrait à accepter qu’une vie, donc la vie, est absurde. La tienne n’avait pas encore atteint la cohérence des choses faites. Ta mort la lui a donnée.
Only the living seem incoherent. Death closes the series of events that constitutes their lives. So we resign ourselves to finding a meaning for them. To refuse them this would amount to accepting that a life, and thus life itself, is absurd. Yours had not yet attained the coherence of things done. Your death gave it this coherence.
Once the final word leaves the mind of the writer and condenses itself on the page, the essence, the life of the work has already died. Dispossessed of its voice. Reading it replays the exact moment of its death, and Parade of the Jane Does illustrates just this.
Like the story, the book would've just died too, if it weren’t for preservation. One cannot acquire their digital works any longer from its source. (booth)
I am so fortunate this has not been lost, and preserved and translated, as while I do not grasp the full historical context behind it, the truth of the matter is that it has been officially deleted, it is dead. The doujin circle of Vita Sexualice also seems to have split-up by now, it (at least the Vita Sexualice that produced this work) is dead as well. It seems that Alya is still working and producing as of recently, though, but Umisawa seems to have left.
Quickly, this work has become one of my biggest inspirations in art. It is something that defines me, rearranged my very self, it is something that represents "me". I only wish I could experience it again.
In the future, I shall re-read this, but however, a second encounter with this novel frightens me for now. It has taken my mind and completely discombobulated it, in exchange, leaving me satisfied, and satisfied I am. It has left me hollow, yet full. This is the St. Joseph's staircase I decide to descend once again, but for now I will take a step back. I shall sit down on this stair made out of stone, and I shall take a respite to simply process.
This work has left me afraid, shivering, yet I couldn't help but be amazed, enlightened—this has become the most sublime work of denpa fiction I have yet to experience.
You can let go of my hand now, in reality, reader, I did not need you to hold my hand to take you to this world…
I just wanted your hand's warmth to my porcelain fable after being able to witness such a destructive spectacle, that will hopefully be just as exalting to you as it was to me.
— Tsoochi