Sheeple.

Okay, so I just finished watching all 13 episodes of the John-Wick-but-with-anime-girls anime Lycoris Recoil and I found the ending incredibly prescient in our modern day society. People are so gullible these days. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

In the 11th episode, we see the big bad, Majima, reveal the existence of the secret-high-school-anime-girl-assassin organization called Lycoris to all of Japan - and by extension, the world. We are even shown a civie pulling a gun on a Lycoris in public and both getting iced as a consequence. Surely this would spread like wildfire on the Internet - LiveLeak, Reddit, whatever.

But in the 12th episode, Lycoris covers it all up as some sort of attraction for the new radio tower. And the public just accepts it. What? There’s a dead dude and a dead high school girl just lying there in the street in front of everyone. Seriously? Are you going to tell me that the Lycoris just silenced all those civies? You know 100% that someone’s going to put that entire encounter on TikTok. Heck, in the real world, every time a cop does something, someone’s pulling out their phone to record it. But nope - in this world, the Lycoris AI probably scrubbed it from the face of the Internet because it’s just that overpowered.

It felt like a cop-out ending at first… then it hit me. This has happened in real life.

Do you recall the Snowden discloses? I do. What about the general public? I think it’s safe to assume that a general amensia has set in. The world was woken up to just the surface of the surveilence state iceberg. Years later, it seems no one remembers what went down. Much like in Lycoris Recoil, the general public is complacent - they want to believe that they live in bliss - a world with no danger. But that all comes at the heavy cost of their freedom.

When you’ve got a gun to your head since the beginning, you start seeing the gun as nothing but a fact of life. And so goes the tragic reality we live in.