If you’re new here, let me summarize this theory by going into the mechanisms of Gachiakuta’s power system.
Anima is thoughts/feelings/experiences. In psychology, philosophy, and religion, it is the inner self, ego, the soul. In Jungian psychology, it is the inner self that you project outwards.
Anima, because it can be thoughts, feelings, experience, in my eyes, is better understood to be life energy. It from there relates to memory, and memories can be altered (as we know because of the book from the watchman series). Humans produce anima by virtue of being alive, as being alive is what lets them think, feel, and experience.
Givers are called givers because they give anima to objects, or, they project anima (aligns with Jungian psychology) onto objects. Rudo’s ability is the epitome of this. It is objects that he can project onto, objects he sees himself in (the tossed out before they could show their full worth) that he weaponizes.
So essentially, anima flows like this:
Living thing ->(creates)-> thoughts ->(projects)-> object
I believe the watchman series works in reverse. I believe the watchman series has anima within them. So it flows in reverse:
Living thing <-(receives)<- thoughts <-(contains)<- Watchman Series
Receiver Theory, essentially, is the thought that what if it’s not only humans that produce anima? What if…by virtue of being alive, animals and plants produce anima, too?
Animals dream and experience. They are weaker, yes, but ultimately, they are alive. They have to think…though they are limited in capabilities.
But why do I think this question is important?
Because this manga’s theme is obviously entrenched in criticisms of mass consumption. Givers are “lifted up” narratively because they are people who are seen as the opposite to the wasteful Sphereites. And why is this wastefulness bad…? Because it pollutes the environment. And why is pollution and all that bad…?
Because the damages it brings to the environment.
Being a giver is a solution to mass consumption, because they care for the objects versus tossing them before you can get all your use out of them.
As it stands in the manga, life, in its pure, un-mutated form, has not been “lifted up” similarly…until just now. Until Mymo’s transformation.
Lots of discussion of climate change and pollution is “poisoned” by the understanding that life can always adapt. Like how life on the ground has adapted, with horses and the flora at the Tori forbidden zone.
But there needs to be something that honors life in its non-mutated state if we want to logically adhere to the theme of “pollution bad.”
So, something like the Apostles has to exist, something like receiving anima and it altering the human form in a negative way has to exist, in order to push the message to protect the Earth.
Altering life and making it adapt to hellish conditions is not what this manga is advocating for. That’s what Mymo represents.
Now we loop back to the foundations of the manga’s lore, specifically with the separation between the Ground and Sphere. I’ll pose two paths, the path my fic Impasse is going down (starred)*, and the path that makes the most sense narratively, based on the absolute hydrogen lore-bombs this arc has given me.
*Sphereites are a different race*
This is based on how Rudo is propositioned as a standard Sphereite despite it being possible that multiple factions know his origins. If they knew Rudo was a Surebrec, and Surebrecs are different from the rest of humanity, then studying Rudo would only tell you about the Surebrecs. But if Rudo is a standard Sphereite, studying him will reveal something about Sphereites. Why would a potential difference between people on the Ground and Sphere be alluded to multiple times?
Sphereites are paranoid about crime and know how people can have their forms degenerated, and keep the descendants of criminals away to maintain power and as a collective trauma response to some cataclysmic event, but they could be as equally capable of becoming Givers as everyone else on the Ground.
The Sphereites are maybe a group of people that descend from survivors of some event where people’s forms corrupted en masse, and now have spent generations segregating themselves from and executing criminals in fear of something similar occurring again. Criminals, as “degenerates,” may “pollute” the Sphere, so they push them away. This is based off the mumblings of the Apostles that Rudo hallucinated in episode 11 and how Mymo’s transformation is seen as “degeneration.”
*But what’s the point of dumping all the trash? Why did Canis say “I had to bury all the humans” if they were the humans and the people on the Ground were the degenerated Apostles? Why do they call themselves the Apostles…?*
Shrug.
The Sphereites could be dumping trash because they believed or believe the ground is populated by (transformed) Apostles…but this explanation doesn’t feel sufficient.
*Can’t it be both?*
Could be that people on the Ground were corrupting what became the Sphereites through pollution, crime, and what else, and they believed the only way they could escape was to create the Sphere, create the boundary, and bury them?
At least…that’s the direction my fic is going.
But anyway, I hope this explains more of my internal reasoning for this theory. Essentially, humans need life to function normally. Humans and animals can adapt to mass consumption and climate change…but should we surrender…? Should we surrender to climate change and mass consumption and lose the “pure” state of nature that would exist without climate change forcing it to adapt, lest it goes extinct if it can’t?
