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Westworld 2.5 Review – ‘Akane No Mai’

May 21, 2018 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Westworld - Akane No Mai Image Credit: HBO
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Westworld 2.5 Review – ‘Akane No Mai’  

[Warning: spoilers abound for those who have not seen Sunday’s episode of Westworld.]

Since those exciting moments when samurai armor showed up in the first season finale, Westworld has been promising to take us to Shogun World. It’s been a big part of the show’s toolbox of anticipatory hooks and has been hinted at in several parts of the first four episodes season two. It isn’t surprising that it took half the season to get here, of course. But now that it’s finally arrived, it’s fair to say that Shogun World both meets the level of hype built for it and fits seamlessly into the themes that Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have baked into the series thus far.

Westworld is an embarassment of riches for a writer like me to look at critically. Not just because it’s so good, mind. Rather, the show operates on so many textual levels that it’s tough to condense all the things to discuss about each episode. “Akane No Mai” is no different from other episodes in that respect. The samurais and ninjas of Shogun World are cool, no doubt. I could go on about how great the technical aspects of this work on the screen. But at its core, Shogun World works best in two capacities. It opens up Maeve’s storyline to new levels (both narratively and power — she literally “levels up” her host control.) It also slides perfectly into the show’s metacommentary on the nature of storytelling and how it relates to other cultures on a number of levels.

Westworld Akane Maeve

“Akane No Mai” struck me most strongly as an episode that diverges from a lot of season two’s thematic conceits thus so far. It isn’t heavy on uncertain timelines or the “who’s a host or a human” question. It also doesn’t delve that heavily into Delos’ plans. Instead it focuses in on Meave’s quest for her daughter, even as it waylays the momentum for a trip to Edo period Japan. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with film history can tell you, Hollywood owes a huge debt to its fascination with Japanese cinema. The stories of Akira Kurosawa form the basis of films as diverse as Star Wars (The Hidden Fortress), The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) and A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo). America’s fascination with — and often fetishization of — Asian culture has resulted in Hollywood constantly trying to bring stories from Japan and other Asian countries to the US.

With that in mind, it’s very difficult not to view the fact that Lee literally copied and localized Maeve, Hector and Armistice into new forms for Shogun World as a statement about how storytellers often drag plot elements from one story into another. It’s TV Tropes given host form. Virtually everyone who consumes entertainment has rolled their eyes at least once and said “Another reboot/remake/reimagining??” When Maeve calls Lee out on it, his reply is defensive: “Well, you try writing 300 stories in three weeks.” Maeve calls it plagiarism of their identity: Lee calls it “supply and demand.” That’s a pretty succinct distillation of the fan vs. studio debate.

Westworld Akane

It also, of course, serves as a way to dive deeper into Maeve’s identity as a mother and explore her motivations. Confronted with her Japanese mirror in Akane, Maeve sees herself looking into a mirror. They don’t just fill the same roles in their worlds’ respective stories. They also find a thematic similarity in that they’re mothers trying to protect their children. Although it’s never explicitly stated this way, it doesn’t appear to be coincidental. Akane was taken from Maeve as a madame, after she had her daughter taken from her. Westworld has been specifically leaning into the idea that those memories were never going to stay buried forever. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that Akane’s motherhood of Sakura was destined to run deeper than just that of a geisha taking care of her charges.

The sudden development of Maeve’s “vocal voodoo” into a sort of telepathy is a less subtle arc, though no less effective. Maeve’s story has been a bit more morally black and white this season than Dolores. Giving her the ability to reach out and control hosts without the need for words makes Maeve more formidable — and terrifying. Being a comic book fan, it conjures up images of the Dark Phoenix for me. Even for those who never thrilled to the emotional highs and lows of X-Men #137, pop culture is full of the danger of telepaths. Maeve’s first use of her power to force a ninja to brutally kill himself leans heavily into sinister implications moving forward.

And yet, she’s not a person who has lost her sense of morals yet. She knows that freedom is not something to be forced on someone, and she gives Akane the agency to choose not to be free at first. One imagines that’s changed now that Sakura is dead, and I find myself excited and intrigued by the potential of Akane and Maeve working as a unit. When Hector shows an automatic dislike of his duplicate, it brings a warning from Lee to Maeve: “Who knows how seeing our own dopplebot is going to fuck with your cognition?” I don’t expect that’s just a throwaway line, and I imagine not all counterparts will be making it through the season.

Westworld Dolores

Maeve’s arc forms the backbone and more interesting part of this episode. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to enjoy in Dolores’ section. There’s very little movement on the Westworld revolutionaries’ quest. They mostly just start fixing up the train and hang around Sweetwater. But things aren’t just spinning their wheels here, either. Dolores’ hanging onto Teddy for as long as she can works mostly because James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wood play off each other so seamlessly, you want to see these kids make it. Teddy has the chance to be a stabilizing influence on Dolores and pull her back from the darkness she’s been toing toward.

And that, of course, is why he has to go. The moment that Dolores starts telling Teddy about the cows and how her daddy dealt with bluetongue, you knew Teddy’s days of being intact were numbered. Dolores clearly doesn’t want to do it; that’s the battle between mercy and ruthlessness battling inside of her. But this is Westworld and we know how this is going to go, so Teddy gets a digital lobotomy. I’m curious to see where Teddy goes as a character from here, and how Dolores’ actions inform how the hosts ended up in the water. Did Bernard kill them all because he had to after they went insane, or is it incidental? Was Teddy one of the third of the hosts who are mind-wiped? While there’s not much overtly that goes in here, there’s plenty of table-setting if you look at the few signficant events in context of what we already know.

Westworld Musashi

Most of the time, the middle episodes of a season tend to be the ones that sag. Season one of Westworld suffered that to some small degree, due to its need to hide behind all the mystery. But refreshingly, that’s not happening here thus far. Some will be less invested in “Akane No Mai” because it leaves William and Bernard behind, and I get that. But the episode also furthers some of the most interesting plots and has the potential for major payoffs down the line. Besides, I can’t imagine it’s possible to be too harsh on an episode where cowboys fight ninjas.

Westworld Clementine New Clementine

Some Final Thoughts:

• These week we got two anachronistic songs: The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” and the Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” Both were, in characteristic Westworld form, stellar.

• It feels pretty good to watch Lutz forced to be one of the cart-carrying servants for the fake envoy plan after he assumed Felix could talk to them. “I’m from Hong Kong, asshole!”

• We didn’t get much of a chance to see her, but I’m hoping Armistice’s Shogun World counterpart Hanaryo sticks around. She seems fairly badass.

• There’s a lot of talk among fans about how Bernard may be the new host for Teddy’s memories. I’m not on board with that idea yet, but the way Bernard was staring at Teddy’s body in the opening as Strand talked about finding out the truth behind the story surely gives those fans more evidence for their hypothesis.

• “Why should we all get killed over a literal sex machine?” Oh, Lee. Try thinking before you say things to Maeve. It’ll do your life expectancy some good.

9.0
The final score: review Amazing
The 411
"Akane No Mai" puts William and Bernard on the backburner to take a trip into Shogun World, and the results are well worth it. The episode does a fine job of getting us deeper invested into Maeve's storyline. And while less goes on with Dolores, even that does a nice job of table-setting alongside those little hints we've received throughout the season thus far. Thus far Westworld season two has avoided the mid-season bog-down, an impressive feat on a show this plot-heavy.
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