Scavengers Reign

Time after time, the crushed hum is crowned by gusts of wind, carrying colorful spores, small insects and petals of predatory flowers that can kill with one bite. This is the breath of the planet itself—a huge organism named Vesta, shrouded in myriads of mysterious creatures. An ideal mechanism that exists within a bottomless set of conditions and unwritten rules.

The conflict between man and nature, full of emotional twists and turns, makes sense only for one of them. The imposing planet has no fears and desires, so it does not act as an antagonist and does not oppose its natural forces to anyone. He only watches indifferently as guests from another world try to integrate into a harmonious and integrated life.

Aliens, dead or alive, will inevitably become part of the wild fauna, and the rude but masterfully designed wheel of life will take another turn. Touching a wild fruit can lead to a completely unpredictable sequence of events, which, in turn, will trigger the irreversible and almost sequential birth of new organisms.

Buzzing cocoons with tentacles grow a golem from a simple drop of blood, and then poison the “original” so that it does not prevent the newborn from carrying the seeds to new territories. A local dandelion launches seeds into the air to immobilize the creatures and eat them in peace. And the remains of a torn man are sure to serve as fertile ground for glowing flowers that can endow a primitive robot with real intelligence and feelings.

IN “The Realm of Scavengers” the viewer silently watches what is happening and therefore becomes Vesta's tacit accomplice, but in return gets the opportunity to see hundreds of wonders and horrors. Human flesh, spores, the entrails of unseen creatures, sweat, colorful blood, wild foliage, insects and lymph are mixed in the broth of new life.

This is what secret knowledge is all about. Tragic, sudden, and even wild deaths in the manner of The Last Man season 2 (cf. our text) frighten and sad, but only from a human perspective. For Vesta, mandatory processes take place at such moments: substances or organisms develop, adapt, combine and disintegrate.

Each creature is subject to metamorphoses. A person, trying to survive at any cost and return to his familiar environment, does not want to understand that he has become part of a gigantic organism. Vesta may have already made it inside, and his heart is covered in black parasites who share their knowledge of surviving in the fascinating wastelands.

It seems that Hayao Miyazaki could have shot “The Kingdom of Scavengers” if he were a misanthrope. Glorifying the beauty and harmony of nature goes hand in hand with hatred for people — they die like poisonous flies, and their moral qualities are often questionable. Almost like the recent Boy and the Bird (cf. our text).

Hayao Miyazaki, being an author with a recognizable handwriting, does not make films about “the beauty of nature”. Rather, she tries to capture important moments of everyday life that hide between magical or everyday details. That is why tired and wise adults often miss all the magic in his works, while children, on the contrary, clearly see it, because they know how to be surprised at trifles.

The creators of “The Realm of Scavengers” focused on the complexity of imagination. If you watch Vesta closely, you can notice small details in its impeccable mechanism and their fundamental impact on various forms of life. Then you will understand that this is not a story about hatred for people, but about the enormous complexity of the very concept of life and its metamorphoses — positive, negative and simply necessary.