Summary:
Eiichiro calls Masamichi in to investigate a bunch of guys who like to dress up like renaissance fair cosplayers and eat fake delicious foods. As fun as the Beautiful Food Club is, none of the food is real and so all the participants end up with brain starvation from the lack of nutrients. Masamichi infiltrates their club, but while he is satisfied with some hard water the rest of the club members desire steamed camel hump and fish air bladder soup. They even download a supplement program that makes them feel hungry (even though they aren’t really eating anything).
This story is paralleled by Minamo’s crusade against green peppers. They are the local food on the island, and Minamo eventually learns that real vegetables are hard to come by. Minamo goes through the day unable to find any food that doesn’t involve green peppers and somehow this makes her realize that Masamichi has to get the food snobs out of the Metal. Afterwards, Minamo swears to annihilate all green peppers off the island… by eating them.
Reaction:
This was a silly episode, although I understand the life lessons about real food versus supplements and synthetic food. I also liked learning that Holon loves her manufacturer’s pure oil, Eiichiro loves tea, Minamo likes homemade apple pie, Sayaka likes coffee, and Yukino likes parfaits. As for the food snobs, it was fun watching them splutter after Masamichi gave them the hard water.
As for the science, it didn’t make that much sense. What is the point of purging your cache? It’s not like the food in the Metal really fills you up. If those snobs were smart, they would have hooked some tubes up to deliver nutrients from liquefied iguana spleen or something while they snacked in the Metal.
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I think. Yes I do. Food was just an example, maybe not the best compared to what’s already possible today. The idea was that synthetized experience while seemingly can spoil your senses so that you cannot appreciate the non-perfect natural experiences anymore. This can go so far that you become detached from the real world and maybe totally dependent on the meta-real. This has certainly be true for a long time. Even TV can spoil you by making your own life look boring and pointless in comparison but worse it can numb you and rob your enthusiam, so that you even stop trying to have real fun. Even more so because in reality, it often takes days, months or years to achieve something what is at your fingertips in virtual reality. In the long run though, getting something to easy and maybe for free, just isn’t as satisfying whereas something much simpler and plain but which you’ve worked hard for will have a much higher value and also provide you with an individual experience.
great post chris, it’s just one thin i disagree about.
how come? in my experience this is not true. i feel like i should enjoy it more, but i don’t. actually, when i finished my bachelor in nano electronics i felt nothing. when i hook up with girls it’s allmost allways easy and the difference of my experiences has nothing to do with how easy it was. as far as i can see, what you are saying is logical only for societies, dont steal, work for it. i can see no psycological or physiological logic in it. over exposure to stimulation will move your enjoyment threshold, that’s your bias.
Yes, but this personal bias is a psychological effect and on a neural level a physiological effect, isn’t it? You certainly have a point anyway. It should be most logical to feel most satisfied about maximum success with minimum effort. The long-term result, though, if this works too well could be that you’re always looking for the easiest way because you’re not used to making an effort in order to achieve something anymore. Inertia is a major factor in human behaviour. People tend to dislike change and stick to established patterns even if they don’t make sense anymore.
Therefore it can take quite some time before you’re willing to accept or maybe even just realize that something which was fun, isn’t enjoyable anymore and has turned into a dull habit or worse an addiction.
In any case, I didn’t mean to say you always have to work hard for something to appreciate. I was more talking about a balance which these guys had lost completely. If you work hard for something but don’t care about the result or take it for granted, there’ll be no extra gain either. Nonetheless, working hard for something gives you more incentive to appreciate the outcome. It works the other way around as well. A vision to look forward to makes it easier to endure harsh times and overcome obstacles. It gives you a motivation but technically it doesn’t change anything at all except your mind.
It actually kinda reminds me of how that one Bob skeez wasn’t working hard for his trans-gender deathgasms. That episode taught me that natural orgasms are totally the way to go.
It’s interesting how these episodes often point out that what you think you want is not always what you really want. The irony that fancy food can ruin normal food for you is as delicious as steamed camel hump. As you mentioned, food is simple the example in this episode, but something like intense TV or video games might convince a person that normal activities are quite boring and not worth it.
I WOULD CALL IT A PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICK, oops, sorry for capslock.
i’ve never refused an psychological or physiological effect taking place, however, i might have used the wrong terms, since english is my second language(and i was stoned). what i was trying to say was that i don’t think there is any necessary corelation between working hard and greater satisfaction. i realise i’m splitting hairs here and there is 2 reasons i’m doing it
1. i thought your comments was lucid so i wanted to comment the one point where i thought you took a logical leap.
2. i’m on a albert camus trip, so the difference between what we are and what we think we are is very important for me right now. and as you pointed out, the difference here is just in the mind.
even if i’m right it doesn’t matter. the psycological trick is very usefull, as you have pointed out, and most people are conditioned to belive in it(imo), so your comment would be right most of the time.
i again agree with allmost everything you say and i would like to expand on some of your points, but writing satisfactory english on subject like this is a pain in the ass, i used over an hour and a half writing this and it’s 4.20 in the morning.
good night
Gentlemen, let us focus on what is truly important here: understanding the separation between “green peppers” and “real vegetables”. Seriously, the only way to make green peppers good is by stuffing them with bacon and cheese – and if you’re doing that, you might as well save some time and skip the pepper. Lousy wanna-be veggie! Get off my plate!