Fragments of Identity in “MMO Junkie”

Recovery of an MMO Junkie has an intriguing opening. (TBH, I tend to find openings really interesting, occasionally moreso than the actual series!) Over and over it messes with your brain’s attempt to combine pieces of information into a coherent narrative. At first this looks relatively benign:

Our blue-haired heroine runs through an open space in our field of vision, behind an obstacle, and back into the open before disappearing once again. Or is it the same person? Common sense tells us it is. Now watch the next clip:

Here one character is seen in a mirror running towards us, but when we would expect him to run past us we instead see Miss Blue-Hair doing so! And when we expect to see her in the reflection of the second mirror, it’s instead a third person running away. If common sense tells us that these sequences of motion form a continuous narrative, it also tells us it’s impossible for that narrative to consist of three separate characters like this. (At least, if we were watching this happen in real life, that’s what we would think.)

As if to underscore this theme, a third sequence occurs: This time, instead of characters running, we see Blue-Hair holding a mirror. She raises it to her face, causing the latter to disappear from view temporarily, and then…

The mirror’s reflection shows a sequence of different individuals’ faces. It almost looks like their faces are replacing hers. It’s hard to imagine something that symbolizes “me” more than my face and my body: By visually separating one’s head from the body, and then substituting other faces on the same body, this scene asks, “What is identity? Is it constant? Can it be replaced? Is it limited to individuals? Can one person have multiple identities/selves, or conversely can many people share a single identity?” And so on. And underlying all this the ultimate question: How do we determine what identity is?

Truly a feast for the curious!

The next visual break links these questions of identity to the relationship between the physical world and the MMO world:

Mori-Mori is seen sitting in a chair; in the next moment, the chair is empty. Again we have the separation between two perceptions, broken in this case by the missing seconds during which she got up out of the chair. She goes to her computer and we see her physical form dissolve into her online avatar:

Here it is the continuity that is disruptive: We don’t change views from one character to the next; we see the continuity of identity between two seemingly different characters.

Which makes sense for a show that plays off of the relationship between one’s real-world identity and his or her online avatar(s). Is one identity more or less real or fundamental than the other? An online avatar is a constructed identity: Is one’s real-world identity also a construction? Or not? Or partly? How much of it is a conscious construction (like an avatar) vs. unconscious? Recovery of an MMO Junkie doesn’t seem so eager to answer these questions so far, as to tease us with them delightfully.