File:Dream 1 murder or mercy.jpg: Difference between revisions

First of a series of seven "polaroids" that fly by the camera in the intro of CHAPTER 11 . DREAM DIVER, as Hasegawa's voice narrates the death of his wife Jamie.

This large version is easy to read; note that the article's left column continues without interruption in the upper-right column, so we can see the rest of the sentence: "government's supposed land [...] reclamation project".

It's interesting that Jamie is said in the article to have cut her leg on a "flowering shrub". Odd that the creators of Oni would include that detail in the text... (see here for speculation).

Other peculiar details that were bound to come up in court during Hasegawa's trial are that: 1) Hasegawa brought a gun on his journey (prepared to shoot law enforcers? or mutant hamsters? or his dying wife?); 2) the young couple went on an adventure that would brand them enemies of the state, apparently without any concern for the fate of their children; 3) Jamie (a student in biology and an environmental activist) went bare-legged into an area that she knew was heavily polluted. The accumulation of these details makes Hasegawa's story very suspicious, even if we consider that Hasegawa's narrative, morphing into Konoko's nightmare, is not clearly a piece of "real-world" information or a part of the dream.

Also interesting is that the newspaper seems to be cynical of the "supposed" project's purpose, which is more freedom than you'd think the press might have, what with the evidence that Oni takes place in an authoritarian state. But, of course, this could be an underground newspaper: marginal publications are hardly a threat to any governement, and can even be encouraged to some extent, only to be disproven by the mass media, be it TV or other digest networks in the Big Brother spirit.

Note that the newspaper headline appears onscreen briefly, as a different picture with trimmed content (only the first paragraph is present, left-aligned rather than justified) and an illegibly small size (under 256x256). However, Hasegawa's narrative and the accompanying "polaroids" still convey most of the details stressed above.