I keep forgetting to address the matter of deconstructing Crystal Tokyo. Well, better late than never, I suppose...
I think it's due to a number of things. To begin with, it's easier to destroy something than to create, and the creation of Crystal Tokyo itself is full of so many unknowns that the lack of potential contradictions makes it even easier to do than normal. That makes it a prime target for the ubiquitous "what if" approach, and people tend to be more interested if there's conflict and/or change instead of everything being peachy and/or unchanging. After all, if they wanted more of the same, they could just watch or read the source that inspired the fan-fiction. Some probably think that Crystal Tokyo is too good to be true, so there are bound to be those who think that it would only make sense to illustrate that Crystal Tokyo isn't all what it seems underneath the surface. Well, unless they just outright AU Crystal Tokyo into something non-canonical, and that could be done for reasons well beyond what I've already mentioned.
Maximara wrote:In the anime the Black Moon family seem to be the original people exiled from the planet. The United States still has threads of its United Kingdom past running through it and there are even elements of the even older Roman (Republic) and Greek (democracy) cultures. The United States didn't really become separate from the UK until 1812 some 29 year later..a generation later.
You're not making any sense. The Dark Moon
was separate by the time they attacked. They were no longer within Crystal Tokyo or any of its territories. It's obvious that they did not like the nature of Crystal Tokyo to begin with, so what sense does it make to make out a minority of people into a notable facet of a society that they wish to destroy (and actually tried to make said destruction a reality) when they are nearly as divorced from the place and people that they left as possible? That's like one side of a divorced couple being able to shift debt to the other despite their financial obligations being independent of each other.
Plato's Republic is a fictional place as well and it has some dystopic aspects to our modern eyes but it was written as the first utopia.
Again, "our modern eyes" is a red herring. We can argue until the end of time whose opinion-based perspective makes something a utopia or dystopia. The fact of the matter is that you have yet to present any clear indication of why Crystal Tokyo is a dystopia, or -- otherwise -- why it isn't a utopia. Like I've already said, Crystal Tokyo hasn't always been in a state to be a utopia all of the time. We just don't know many details, be they good or bad. However, aside from being attacked by aliens and those banished from Crystal Tokyo (thus removing the one non-utopian-like thing that we knew about in Crystal Tokyo), both of which not necessarily being the fault of Crystal Tokyo's environment, we only hear and see good things about the place.
We are presented with the Renaissance as a prosperous and happy society but it wasn't a utopia by any stretch of the imagination.
Yes, because we have a lot of history to fall back on. We
can know better about the renaissance. Are you trying to imply that you can relate Crystal Tokyo's history in such abundant detail? If not, you're making another ill-chosen comparison.
utopia - An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. (oxford online dictionary)
That's one definition, yes. Let's not forget that it's not just imaginary/fictional. Just because it hasn't arisen anywhere and anywhen yet, either as far as we know or to an insider's or outsider's perspective, that doesn't mean that it can't happen or never will.
Again look at Huxley's Brave New World:
Is the World State prosperous? Yes
As a whole are the people of the World State happy? Yes
But Huxley's world is NOT a utopia but a dystopia. People are programmed (Cleansed) to accept their station in life and when that fails there is soma (more Cleansing).
Wells Things to Come (the movie) has a future government that is portrayed as a Utopia but as one commentator noted 'there are no non white faces to be seen'.
Well, then. Where does it say that being cleansed is being programmed? I'm not familiar with this "soma," but I'm pretty sure that more cleansing after the failure to cleanse is factually incorrect. There are at least two examples of people given the choice to be cleansed (the aliens and the rebels who would become the Dark Moon), and that's not even after a failure of being cleansed. Another example of cleansing (the Ayakashi sisters) was asked of Sailor Moon; she didn't force it on them.
Also, are you implying that Crystal Tokyo is racist or genocidal? Seriously: before making comparisons, you'd best have something to compare, other than just saying that this one thing is a dystopia because of this and that's why Crystal Tokyo is, as if it's guilty through an association that hasn't even been proven. It's simply crazy talk.
Um... No, it isn't. Not by a long shot. To make that kind of claim begs the question: are you trolling me? Your arguments stray ever further from relevance and manage to become even more ridiculous. However, I'll humor this line of logic. After all, there's a link to the source of your evidence right there. Surely you won't have any problem pointing out every part of it that can be compared to the World State. Especially to a degree worthy of comparison as a whole, as you're making it out to be, because some single or small aspect isn't going to cut it.
There are two types of immortality - the inability to age and the inability to die.
Incorrect. Only when one is not subject to a form of death is one immortal; it's only coincidental if they also don't happen to age, or change in a way that would suggest it. If you don't age, thus meaning you won't die from aging, then you're simply ageless unless there's another factor to take into account.
There is one Greek myth where a goddess begged Zeus to make her mortal lover immortal but she forgot to ask that he not age. He turned into a grasshopper. A more modern version of this kind of immortality are the Struldbrugs of Gulliver's Travels.
The deities of many pantheons were immortal in that they didn't age but they could still be killed.
Vampires in their many incarnations are immortal in that they don't age but they can still be "killed".
That first example isn't even relevant. How does a mortal getting turned into an immortal grasshopper, because of an oversight, illustrate your point that an immortal either doesn't die or age?
What deities from what pantheons? And are you sure that you're not just assuming that they were considered immortal? Or that they didn't have their own, special exceptions? A more proper example in Greek mythology, for instance, was that centaur who had been poisoned. Normally, it would have been deadly, but the centaur was immortal, so he agonized until he begged Zeus to end his life (who became the constellation Sagittarius). In fact, there are many instances in a variety of pantheons where one does not truly die, but lives on as something else.
As for vampires: if they can be killed, they're not immortal. Sustaining their lives is not that different from how mortals do it, since they either require sustenance and/or need to avoid sustaining a particular or great injury. They are -- effectively -- conditionally ageless.