Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Disclaimer: This article does not serve to be an academic paper or it has any instructive or authoritative purposes. As always, the opinions of this author are written as an editorial and this article acts as a column for the author to express his own thoughts and such.

First, I will like to clarify several things. I am not a new writer on the site, I just happened to be a very slow and lazy writer if not the worst offender on both counts. The other thing is that, this article is indeed an entry for the LaMB blogging contest that’s organised and promoted by Animax, I don’t wish to make any attempts in disguising this effort to be something else. Let’s hope that it can serve the purpose of being entertaining and readable to the general audience as well.

Much has been made and written about the LaMB animation project, which is an effort by Animax to nurture local and regional creative talents. LaMB is a dystopian science-fiction narrative, on a wasteland where the very key to salvation lies in not wasting any resources even criminals as a labour source. It may seem on a superficial level, not very much more outstanding or different from the myraid of science-fiction/cyberpunk works. However what makes LaMB different and very important from ordinary and conventional animes of the genre is that it’s a symbol.

It represents the efforts of a single genius and how creativity and passion is able to shine through in Animax Asia’s attempts to be a content producer such as this. Projects like LaMB allows people to shatter the laminate of mediocrity and allow one’s dreams to colour the sterile dreamscape of commercialised creative works. We should break away from our laminations of stereotypes that locally produced works are definitely sub-par compared to the Japanese animation studios and pass judgement only when LamB is released to the public.

I am tempted to digress into what does LaMB represents and can possibly symbolise to budding creative talents but let’s move on to the aspect of LaMB that intrigues the most out of my boring mind which is the idea of beauty and the process of lamination.

To start talking about this, let’s first think about the idea of beauty and how much people have throughout history been trying to preserve every bit of it. Beauty as a concept started out since ancient times, since from the times of ancient Greeks and the Egyptians. One thing interesting to note is the concept for beauty in classical greek is associated with "being in one’s hour" namely behaving and appearing as of one’s actual age. This is very different from how beauty is being portrayed in the modern age where beauty is associated with youth and such. It’s this modern sense of beauty that justifies and validates the idea of lamination.

Lamination in LaMB started out as a method to preserve beauty, beauty in the sense of appearing like one’s youth. Dewy, fresh and in full-bloom.  This reminds me of the Portrait of Dorian Grey, the gothic horror novel by Oscar Wilde which happens to be one of my favourite authors and the book itself, a favourite of mine as well.

Why do I associate The Portrait of Dorian Grey with lamination in LaMB? In Portrait of Dorian Grey, beauty was seen as something so powerful and potent that it transformed people and allowed people to prosper or be ruined by it. The more apparent link would be the price that one has to pay for having unchanging beauty, in Portrait of Dorian Grey, Dorian Grey gradually lost his naivety, innocence and eventually his soul as he realised the terrible things he had caused. In LaMB, lamination would be the loss of freedom and free will albeit the preservation of beauty is a side-effect.

This culminates in the question that I will like to conclude this short column with, to what extent and to what price are people willing to give up for this concept of beauty? To preserve their looks and appearance of a certain age? People are willing to go for plastic surgery, splurge lots of money on skincare products and whatnot. However are these people willing to trade away their freedom, conscience or their souls to arrest time so that their limited appearances might be much more lasting?

Will you be willing to step into a cage of lamination so as to preserve whatever beauty that you may ever possess? Personally, I will be very tempted to say yes and leave my regrets to the moments where I am caged as a deaf-mute albeit a more.. plastic deaf-mute then others. However, such a question should be made up by you the readers and whether do you all view beauty the same way as how the folks in Cerra in LaMB or our ordinary blue planet see it.

Afternote: I have been really distracted and occupied by several things namely, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft and WoW. Ordinary things like anime, studies interest me especially not 2D females. I kid. I been watching animes still but this season doesn’t seem to be that appealing to me much save for stuff like Marimite and hmm.. Maria Holic. And my lackadasical attitude to things doesn’t really help. But I will be back to wrap all the LaMB short entries. And.. if anyone who play Alliance on Aman’thul US Server, come give me a holler!

- Crest

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