Dimensional Prophecy of Zohar Redux
is an Animesque cel-shaded animated movie in German produced by SSJ Kamui. It is an adaption of a book of the same name, which was an adaption of a webcomic which was in turn adapted from a fanfiction the author wrote at the age of 16. He used Autodesk Maya, RealFlow and a motion capture system based on a Kinect to shoot the movie.
Was adapted into a visual novel in 2021.[1][2]
Dimensional Prophecy of Zohar provides examples of the following:
- Abnormal Ammo: Guns are equipped with explosive ammo. This ammo featured a uranium core.
- Abusive Parents: In Karalas hallucination, she sees how her father throws her down the stairs.
- Airborne Aircraft Carrier: According to Reika's tablet computer, the Carl Friedrich Gauss Institute operates a fleet of seven.
- Ambiguously Gay: Many commenters from germany assumed that Karala and Madoka developed romantic feelings for each other. Notably, one voice actress theorized it.
- Angst: Obviously, as the series is directly inspired by Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and frequently alludes to it.
- Chainsaw Good: In her hallucination, Karala sees a chainsaw-wielding doctor attacking and telling her that he has to "amputate".
- City Noir: The City is the typical Asian Cyberpunk Night Cityscape and in the interiors the typical Film Noir Volume Lighting Technology is used frequently.
- Cyber Space: The Calculation sequence near the end of the movie.
- Dysfunction Junction: A malfunctioning robot, a girl suffering from depression, a girl with a pervasive developmental disorder, etc.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Caine Aliens.
- Genre Throwback: To gory Anime OVAs of the 1980s and 1990s like Wicked City.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: From a genetic point of view, the Caine are Humans. Nobody knows why.
- Idiot Savant: Madoka Michael has a pervasive developmental disorder which prevented her from learning to speak in a natural way. At the same time, she is one of the best mathematicians in the world.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: For both Karala and Madoka.
- New Neo City: Subverted with Kyoto Novalis:
- The name Novalis is related to the german word "Neuland", but this was no Shout-Out to Angela Merkel calling the Internet "Neuland"
- There was also a german romantic poet called Novalis.
- Paranormal Investigation: The protagonists are a group of Mathematicians who have to investigate the Caine attacks and improve a mathematical algorithm that can predict future Caine attacks.
- Parental Substitute: Hilal for Karala, and Reika for Madoka
- Psychological Horror
- Shout-Out
- Oh fortuna, velut luna, semper dissolubilis
- The first attack of the aliens happened in the Mars colony "Grover's Mill". Grover's Mill was the place where the Martians first appeared in The War of the Worlds.
- To Babylon 5: The Institute is like Father and Mother
- Hilal speaks something similar to Newspeak in one scene
- Madokas Doctor is named Dr. Caligari.
- Once, the words "Der Wille zur Macht" are visible
- To Marquis de Sade: In Karalas Hallucination, the words "The Misfortune of Justine" appear
- To Manga Video and Angel Cop: When attacked by the Caine, Hilal shouts "Fuck and Piss"
- To Space Runaway Ideon: The main protagonist is named Karala after Karala Ajiba
- To Isaac Asimov's Foundation: The protagonists are a group of Mathematicians who design an algorithm that can predict future Caine attacks. The algorithm is once called a form of "psychohistory", a term invented by Dr Asimov that his mathematicians use to predict the future.
- On a freeze frame during Karala's hallucination, the sentence "Man muss eine Rose brechen, ehe der Sturm sie entblaettert" appears. This is a shout out to the book "Emilia Galotti" by german enlightenment philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
- This doubles as a Take That! because SSJ Kamui shows a huge hatred against Lessing because of this novel.
- On Szabos Desk, a book called "Time Wave Zero" is visible. Time Wave Zero is a theory by the mathematician Terence McKenna stating that it's possible to build an algorithm able to compute the exact date of the doomsday.
- The signs on Karalas notebook in Episode 4 are different notations of the Timewave Zero Algorithm.
- Terminology used in the movie refers to the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger and to Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, B.F.Skinner and Kevin Winnicot
- In the ending narration, the quote "Number rules the universe" from Pythagoras appears, as well as the quote "The empire never ends" from Phillip K Dick
- Parts of the calculation sequence of the algorithm looks like the painting "Calculating Space" from Konrad Zuse, an illustration of his theory that the universe is a giant computer simulation.
- Other parts show a dolphin which is an allusion to the hacking sequence of Johnny Mnemonic.
- When Reika enters the main complex of the Carl Friedrich Gauss institute, she looks at her tablet PC and reads that it failed to establish a wireless connection to all "Helicarriers".
- The conspiracy stores secret data in "Bielefeld."
- The theory of government used by the superstate is called the fifth political theory. This is an allusion to the book "The fourth political theory", which states that a global superstate like depicted in the series is impossible.
- Note: Many philosophers referenced in the webseries (mainly Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger, Sprengler, Dostoevski etc.) are also among the primary sources of Alexander Dugin.
- In the English subtitles, Madoka Michael once uses the term "deep existence", which is a term introduced by Dugin. SSJ Kamui had trouble with translating that passage from german to English and used Dugins term in an attempt to make his point clearer.
- Hilal's "never live for the sake of anyone else" is a direct quote from Atlas Shrugged.
- The name of the state founder, "Katharina Sokolov" is a shout out to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
- Parts of Dubois confrontation with Tsukiko Oda parallel the encounter between Jesus and the inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoesvsky's The Grand Inquisitor.
- Tsukiko Oda directly quotes the sentence "Man can't live by bread alone" from The Bible.
- During this confrontation, the phrase "panem et circenses" appears, which is Latin for "bread and games" and means a policy of distraction from political problems by offering "entertainment"
- On several occasions, it is mentioned that Vladimir Putin built tesla coils as a defense system on crimea. Tesla Coils are among the distinct weapons of the Soviet Union in Command & Conquer: Red Alert. (One of SSJ Kamuis favourite games of all time)
- The main tower of the government building looks similar to the central tower of Walt Disney's never realized utopia "EPCOT" as well as the "Langer Eugen" tower, which was a government building in Germany during the cold war. (One of the newspaper articles in the first episode also calls this tower the "Langer Eugen")
- The "Friedrich August von Hayek Bank of Austria"
- The Kisoudis act reestablishing a gold standard of currency is an allusion to a german political science book predicting a global financial crisis which would result in the re-establishment of the gold standard
-
Reality Subtext:- SSJ Kamui once got into trouble with the police for playing music too loud. The same happened to Karala
- The wound in the nightmare scene of the first episode was modelled after an inflamed wound SSJ Kamui had before he started producing the series
- By accident, in large parts, the political positions of Professor Szabo and Hilal Oescelem mirror the political positions of the voice actors.
- Take That!: Dr.Caligari essentially compares the behavior of the government in the War on Terror to the behavior of mental disordered persons.
- The Tunguska Event: One of the news articles in the beginning suggests the Caine might have been involved.
- Unreliable Narrator: Many things about Karala and the Caine could be the product of delusions
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Nobody knows the true shape of the Caine. People only see skeletal arms attacking or giant eyes floating in the room. And most witnesses of the Caine went insane. Because of this, it is unclear how many Caine attack at the same time.
