Ad Terras Per Aspera

So, I watched Metropolis, the critically acclaimed movie and brainchild of Rintarô and Katsuhiro Ôtomo, based on Osamu Tezuka’s comic. I liked it. It wasn’t groundbreaking in animation, story concepts, or execution; but it still was executed quite well. It is on the level that Akira is.

The concept of a robot that thinks its human being the key/core component of a doomsday weapon is not original, but its one that resonates well within the human consciousness; the even idea that humans trying to play God to create a human would in turn bring destruction of the human race is enlightening, if not a little scary.

In my attempts to write science fiction, I’ve played with the idea, and its one of the more fun ideas to play with; except I never knew quite how to deal with it, but I never knew that I wasn’t far off from what others have done.

I wanted a doomsday weapon, two young children (one boy, one girl, both being robots) and have them devoid of emotions in the beginning of the story, and (in sort of a Trigun-like fashion) have them learn opposite emotions.

One (the boy) would learn hate, fear, self-loathing, and the concepts of death, destruction, and murder through a series of unfortunate events; the girl, on the other hand, would learn caring, inner peace, the trust others, and selfless love of others. Complete polar opposites, one would lean towards violence, and the other would do anything to prevent violence. One would serve to destroy human life, the other would serve to preserve it. Death, life. Misery, joy. Black, white.

Except, both are really different sides of the same thing, aren’t they?