It is conditioned loyalty that keeps the ants from second-guessing their actions in service of the colony – but their own actions complicate the distance between ant loyalty and human love, and this distance is questioned in the other direction as well. Her loyalty is to her children, a very human emotion, and that “unconditional familial love” is echoed later on through Youpi and Pouf’s efforts to save their King. But loyalty takes many forms, and even from the beginning, the Ant Queen exists as a counterpoint to the ant loyalty being a wholly alien emotion. This is part of what makes them strong – their initial power of unity is great, and the introduction of human individuality ends up creating cracks in their united front. They do not have individual goals – they work in service of the colony. The alien structure of ant society is initially cast as one of the most “inhuman” elements of their nature. The process of change and the shifting characters of Chimera Ant constantly reflect our darkest instincts on our lightest ones, and so it’s not surprising that against this backdrop of terrible, inevitable war, the arc somehow tells a story predicated on loyalty and love. It’s an evolution of our fundamental conflicts, and in Chimera Ant, evolution is key. The tragedy of its context is constantly foregrounded, but the conclusion isn’t “war is bad, don’t do war.” Chimera Ant is too smart for that, too intent on paralleling human nature against itself – war isn’t a foreign agent, it’s a symptom. In Chimera Ant, it’s impossible to avoid it – each new soldier comes at the cost of a past life, and reflections of those lives crop up more and more as the ants evolve. Hunter x Hunter is a shounen, and thus conflict is almost inevitable, but most shounens do not show the human cost of conflict. The deaths shift from horrifying to numbing, and by the time the later parts of Chimera Ant unfold, the backdrop of potential genocide is somehow far less chilling than the possible deaths of one or two people we know. The first act takes a narrative form suitable to its content – its episodes are a parade of murky combat in jungles and endless villages of civilian casualties. The nations of Chimera Ant are simply waiting for a spark to light the tinder, and the Ants provide that spark – by the time our human “heroes” arrive in the NGL, the Ants are already deep in a guerilla war. Its two primary settings both already sit on the brink of it – one the “NGL,” a closed state sheltering a drug-running network, the other a regime mirroring North Korea in all but name. For now, let’s start by setting the stage.Ĭhimera Ant plays out against a backdrop of continuous war. “Fortunately,” this intermingling of human and ant instincts isn’t restricted solely to one side – as Chimera Ant unfolds, even the humans begin to demonstrate that ant nature isn’t perhaps quite so inhuman as it seems. As her army of Ants grows, their human DNA becomes more and more prominent, and the “imperfections” of human nature become more and more apparent in their behavior. In order to do that, she constructs her child out of the best pieces available – and in the first of Chimera Ant’s many strange reflections, the construction of a Perfect Being end up requiring a great deal of flawed, self-involved, self-destructive human beings. The queen of the Ants wishes to build a Perfect Being – the ultimate animal, destined to rule over all others. It catalogs the rise of the (surprise) Chimera Ants, a species that continuously evolves, absorbing the quirks and powers of any species it consumes. Or perhaps such a species doesn’t even need to be offered a chance – if we were ever put against a creation that combined humanity’s intelligence and strength with an animalistic unity of purpose, would we even stand a chance?Ĭhimera Ant is a story about that question – or at least, about that question and a number of others. Perhaps such a species deserves that chance. Perhaps a species somewhat more animal, more willing to be part of a grand organism than a wild, unpredictable individual. Perhaps another species could do better than us – perhaps a species more interested in its own collective survival, and more able to coherently absorb the lessons of its forebearers. In light of this, it seems somewhat reasonable to consider the possibility of a do-over. For all our triumphs, every advantage of our intelligence and self-awareness is also reflected countless times in insane invention, in total megalomania. It’s almost a wonder we’ve come so far, or at least that we haven’t destroyed ourselves along the way. We’re selfish and self-destructive, ignorant to the point of blindness, arrogant to the point of madness. Actually, that’s putting it very generously – humanity is a deeply flawed species.
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