The Afterlife Across Fiction: From Bureaucratic Lines to Digital Ghosts

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Karl and Richard explore the fascinating world of fictional afterlives across anime, games, and popular media, examining everything from bureaucratic waiting rooms to digital consciousness uploads.

• Karl shares his experiences diving into Korean manhwa on Webtoon, discovering popular genres like isekai and regression stories
• Richard explains his frustration with the formulaic nature of many modern isekai stories compared to their more nuanced predecessors
• We examine various afterlife systems in fiction, starting with the common "waiting in line" bureaucracy seen in Dragon Ball Z and Beetlejuice
• Bleach is nominated for having the worst fictional afterlife, where even "heaven" is a feudal slum with rigid class hierarchies
• The Good Place offers a thoughtful examination of afterlife ethics, suggesting people need opportunities to grow even after death
• Digital afterlives raise philosophical questions about whether uploading consciousness creates a continuation or merely a copy
• We debate whether isekai stories qualify as afterlife narratives, given that many begin with the protagonist's death
• Dragon Ball Z's tournament-based afterlife rewards martial prowess, fitting its universe's values

What fictional afterlife would you choose? Let us know by reaching out on social media or joining our Patreon community!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's Carl time.
It's Carl time.
Carl is the star of the show.
Also, Richard, I'm Richard.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Carl of Carl and Richard present Deep Space
and Dragons.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
You know, the funniest part is the only thing
that, like we have thetechnology, I could actually
switch the graphic on all theepisodes in the podcast name and
just do that one of these days,like they're allowed to.
It wouldn't even cost you much,like I don't even think it'd be
things that would cost you.
I think it'd be like concepts.
It would cost you, like youwould have to bribe me, but it

(00:38):
wouldn't really need to be likea physical bribe.
It could be something like ahey if you change it to Carl and
Richard present.
It's like well bribe.
It could be something like ahey if you change it to Carl and
Richard present.
I am going to change my name onthe receipt tab to Captain
Eisen and I'd be like, wow,that's such not even a bribe.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
but yeah, you got me sold.
That would be pretty funny.
Well, it's not actuallysomething I care about, it's
just a funny bit.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's true, if you cared, you would have did
something about it.
You know, I think the funniestway to solve this is to put a
strikethrough for the R-I onRichard oh, because then it's
charted.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Carl.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Presents.
And then I win alphabetically,Because it's not with a C, not a
K.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Because if it was a c you would still win.
But uh, enough pre-ramblingabout nothing.
Uh, what's new with you there,richard?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
mild distinction.
What do you mean?
Enough pre-rambling aboutnothing.
That's the show, that is theentire show.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
No, we ramble about some things like I I have.
I have things we ramble about,some things I have things to
ramble about.
But the names on the title card, well, a fascinating topic.
I don't think that's somethingour listeners are.
I mean, that's for us.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
but Obviously they take a shot whenever we complain
about the names, like it's hardto think of whatever our
drinking game would be.
So new with me is I got my newemail set up for my new school.
I got my orientation date inthe calendar.
I applied to a couple offreelance things.
I finished the rough draft ofmy ghostwriting job, so now I

(02:20):
have two months of editing.
But if I were to drop off theface of the earth, they have a
book they could like make itexist.
I'm considering taking the extrathing to format it and send
them like a couple proof copiesjust so they can like hold it in
their hands.
I mean, I always wonder, likebuying a gift for someone who

(02:41):
pays you seems odd.
Like the idea that you'd bringin, like I can't imagine a
situation back when.
Like the idea that you'd bringin, like I can't imagine a
situation back when you're mymanager, that I'd bring you in a
thank you present to work forbeing my manager.
But I think it'd be a littledifferent if, like, you hired me
on a contract type thing andwe're a really good client.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Anyway, I think that's a that's a normal
response for uh, for that kindof that relationship I think so,
so I think I'm gonna go aheadand do that.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Um, it's been raining so I haven't went out for my
daily walkies today, so I'vejust been a cave dweller playing
wild man c6 all day.
I mean, I also did some liketimeets and stamps and looking
and inserting locations to embedimages and files.
You know, I'm the fun one.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Oh, so this week you actually had a super boring week
then.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, because last week was like my romantic date.
We made it to the hand-holdingstage.
That's literally all theinformation I'm going to give.
So I've been doing a runningbit where my mom wants to know
the name of anyone I'm everseeing, regardless if it's one
day, two day, three, day, right,and I refuse to ever give her

(03:57):
that information.
I know she's not tech savvy, Iknow she's not listening to this
right now because she can'tfind the podcast, so there's no
version of reality where thisname would give her any
information.
Right but right.
The denial of the informationgives me great joy because
everyone in my life is in onthis bit.
So I say no, you don't haven'tearned the name yet.

(04:18):
Ask me again in a year.
My brother was like why would Iever ask that information of him
?
And then my aunt's like I haveno idea.
And like my mom's, theassumption that everyone knows
but hers, his name, when just noone actually cares, and like
it's a pointless bit.
But it gives me joy becauseit's like, no, you can't have

(04:38):
this information because Ibelieve in conventionality,
although it's one of thosethings where, like, I'm a harlot
in theory but in practice not.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
So it's like I like to preserve the mystique.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Like I'm a person who goes on more than one date a
month.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
You and that mystery friend have been taking it slow.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, and that's a good plan because I, as
mentioned, busy.
I technically work three jobs,fair enough, and then I'm
heading into full-time classes,which makes me happy, because
that means I can only put likesix hours a day into gaming,
which is probably good for me,probably.

(05:20):
So that's my updates.
What's new in the Carll verse?

Speaker 2 (05:27):
uh well, first off obligatory mini movie review.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Uh we, uh, we watched the new naked gun movie oh, I'm
actually like my fiance, I knowthis has nothing to do with our
feature topic, but I actuallywant to know this, so I'm going
to give you a disclaimer that Ishould probably have talked to
you about off screen.
Your flash movie reviews aremuch more interesting than me if
it's a movie I haven't seen orwe haven't already discussed so

(05:53):
it's like, if you go seesomething spicy and new, I'm
like, oh, I would never see that, I'm deeply interested.
But if you're like, oh yeah, thedrive action dracula is
different than the movie one,I'm like, wow, wow, I should be
discussing this with you.
I should not just be sittinghere taking this.
I should have done the researchto make this a conversation.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well, so there are, at least that I noticed there
were surprisingly few referencesto the original material.
I mean the Liam Neeson'scharacter, frank Drebin Jr, at
least that I noticed there weresurprisingly few references to
the original material, I mean.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Liam Neeson's character.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Frank Drebin Jr Pardon, that's probably smart,
yeah.
So Liam Neeson's characterFrank Drebin Jr is Leslie
Nielsen's character, frankDrebin Sr, his son in the
universe and the plot.
I'm going to spoil one of thefirst jokes in the movie.

(06:52):
The villain steals the literalplot device, plot being an
acronym for Primal Law ofToughness device, ha being an
acronym for Primal Law ofToughness device, and this
device is essentially the plotdevice from Kingsman Secret

(07:13):
Service.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
I liked Kingsman More than it deserves.
I also liked Kingsman.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
I also liked that movie.
I thought it was prettyinteresting.
But if you're looking for amovie that does that plot, well,
kingsman Secret Service is justthe better version of the movie
.
But not that it does the plotpoorly, it's just, you know,
it's a gag movie, so it's notactually on the not as serious

(07:44):
as Kingsman's king's been secretservice, um.
But overall, uh, you know allthe movie reviews uh from uh,
both political spectrums havebasically said that it's super
funny, uh, and I, so I kind ofwent into it expecting to be
like a non-stop, non-stop laughtrain, um, and there were

(08:05):
definitely some lulls, but therewere definitely some extremely
funny parts.
In particular, I laughed prettyhard.
This is like within the firstfive, ten minutes of the movie
that they steal this plot device, but I laughed pretty hard when
I saw that.
I thought that was quite funnyand overall I think they did a

(08:27):
really good job of maintainingthe spirit of the original Naked
Gun while making somethingfresh and new.
I do think, because it's SethMacFarlane, I do think there's
more shock humor than theoriginal.
So I don't know.

(08:48):
It's not the kind of movie thatI would recommend.
I wouldn't say you could watchit over and over again.
You'd have to have somedowntime between viewings
because sometimes the jokeswon't land as well.
If you've seen it recently, Ithought it was pretty funny.
Ah, but obligatory movie reviewaside.

(09:11):
On a slightly nerdier topic, awhile back I decided that I
wanted to try and read moreKorean manhwa, because the
majority of my internationalliterature is manga from Japan.
So I downloaded an app calledWebtoon, which I'm sure a lot of

(09:37):
our listeners are familiar with.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Hopefully I don't know I can imagine a Webtoon
censorship.
That'd be great.
I don't know how corrupt, goodor evil they are, but I do like
money.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, so I'm reading Webtoon and at first I was kind
of disappointed because theydidn't have the two series that
I actually wanted to read onthere.
Actually, I didn't know therewere three series I wanted to
read that aren't on there yet,but eventually I was just like
you know what?
I'm just going to start likechecking just random things out,

(10:08):
right, yeah, and I'vediscovered that there are.
Right now there seems to bemaybe it's just my feed in
particular, right now thereseems to be two rather popular
genres, and they are the isekai,most often the person being

(10:29):
reincarnated into a book thatthey've read.
So they know what's going tohappen, but they're reincarnated
as the villain, or as not avillain, but like a loser side
character or someone who has aterrible fate, and so then they
use their meta knowledge to tryand avoid the fate of their
character.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
So to kind of play on that one a bit is that for a
while I was tinkering on how Iwould run a Dragon Ball Z
tabletop RPG right, played around of different engines,
looked at their official rules,threw that in the garbage.
Looked at some fan rulebooksrules threw that in the garbage.
Looked at some fan rule books,threw those in the garbage.
Made some mechanics myself.
Realized it would probably workwith the fate core.

(11:10):
But fate core rules are barelyeven a game at that point.
But one thing I was like is howdo you deal with players
metagaming a series like that?
That's super linear andcharacters have numbers on them,
right.
So my solution would have beenoh, player, characters are from
the time patrol, from the future, and the meta knowledge you,
your person, knows yourcharacter would also know.

(11:31):
Because it's easier to givefanboys, give it a canon power
that they metagame, rather thanexpecting them to play the honor
system because the kind of dudethat wants to play a dragon
ball.
Z ttrpg is the kind of dude whometagames those.
Venn diagram is the circleright, right.
So it's like I understand theidea of we put you in a novel

(11:55):
and you have novel cheatingpowers for, like an escapism,
fantasy, right, becauseeveryone's played that
hypothetical.
If I was in hypothetical, if Iwas in this horror movie, I
wouldn't die because I don'thave anxiety and have never
dropped a screwdriver.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
But then the other genre that's super popular right
now, on Webtoon, it seems, isalmost the same.
On Webtoon, it seems, is almostthe same, except instead of
being an isekai, they call itregression, where someone gets
sent back in time to theirprevious body and then they know
the future and can avoid aterrible fate.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
I mean I gave a character that power in one of
my books and then had them getcheckmated so bad they just kept
dying in a loop until theykilled themselves.
But I did it as a bit kind ofas shade to that entire genre.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
And I mean, I've read a couple chapters of ones that
were duds.
I've read a couple chaptersnumerous chapters of ones that
were really quite good.
But I'm getting kind of tiredof those two genres.
And then I guess the thirdgenre that they have is the
awakened dungeon crawler genre,Eh, when people awaken powers
and then they go into dungeonsto clear them before the dungeon

(13:13):
break happens and monsters comepiling out of the dungeon.
I wonder, why?

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Hmm, it's like we, as a society gave a bunch of
rewards to.
People will fight me about howgood this series is, and I think
it's a heralder of anapocalypse of blandness.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
because we as a society agreed that solo
leveling was better than freerins, so people were writing
more solo levelings instead ofmore free rins but so I've been
inundated with these genres ofKorean manhwa, and it's kind of
like when I read something else,even if it's not particularly
fresh or exciting, uh, itactually is fresh and exciting

(13:50):
because it's something else.
Yeah, um, and so a genre that'skind of fallen out of
popularity, uh, is the what I'mcalling the mirim genre.
I'm probably not saying theword, right?
Uh, but miram is basically asecret society of super powered
martial artists.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Okay, yeah, yeah, in the shadows I think that's also
the name of the camera.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Ant king, not related .
And so then the, the hero ofthe series uh, either realizes
they have powers or they acquirepowers and they become part of
the society, and their purehearted nature wins over the
hearts of their enemies andallies alike.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
So that genre cause that could easily be a full
episode that we've already done.
But, like I love, I'm alwaystorn, cause I conceptually love
Kenichi.
And then they filled it full ofunderage women with clothes
exploding because anime, and I'mlike but but can we fix it
though?
But the problem is, most thingsI've read that try to fix it

(14:55):
swing too hard in the otherdirection, being like, yeah,
it's only 12 chapters longbecause I fight my brother in an
MMA fight and then we beat himup.
And then it ends because itturns out you can just fight a
person and there really isn'tthat many tears to go.
Or it goes to baki row, whereit just goes so absurd that,
like I don't know how, kanichiso kanichi slow rolled it enough

(15:16):
that a character clapping theirhands together to blow up a
tank didn't break my suspensionof disbelief.
But right, baki baki exists tobreak my suspension of disbelief
.
There's, baki Baki exists tobreak my suspension of disbelief
.
There's a part where acharacter goes, he grabs his
enemy and swings them around sofast.
It's like he's wearing awedding dress because they're in
a blurring motion.
They're being thrown around sofast.

(15:37):
I'm like this is just or inKangan Ashura, where a character
gets themselves kicked in thehead to make their brain wobbly,
to get back their sea legs sothey can use their boat fighting
martial arts, which I lovethese things, don't get me wrong
, I love them, but it's like itlike skill point caps them right
, like the Kengen Ashura Bakithings, which I've watched both

(16:01):
of to completion, are likeactually watching professional
wrestling.
You gotta go into it and knowwhat to get stupid.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's the secret but so one such series that I read.
That was a Murom style seriesand I really enjoyed it.
I've mentioned it on eitherthis podcast or our plays day or
heart podcast.
It's called Elisede.
I don't know if I'm pronouncingthat right either.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Uh, but e, l, e, c, e , e d you know, I'm almost
surprised you didn't make a monkfor a dagger heart campaign, so
you could be.
Go through this exact story ofsomeone gives you a drug to give
you super martial arts and thenyou try and find your sensei
who disappears after killing abunch of people, and then
someone, someone drops ten tonsof weight directly on your fist.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
So I really enjoyed LSE, mostly because the way it
stood out was that the maincharacter's entire motivation
for the first hundred chapterswas the fact that he loves cats.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
I can respect that, I can get behind that.
That's me, I live that life.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Even his mentor actually is a cat through
magical, weird circumstances.
But regardless, I read all theway through it.
There's like over 300 chapters.
I get to the point on theWebtoon app where they say hey,
you know, there's 10 episodes,we're going to send a wellness
check because we're worriedabout your physical and mental

(17:27):
health.
No, no, no, they're like there's, there's 10 episodes, uh, and
you can either uh pay coins tounlock them early, or there's
five of these episodes, you canwatch a little short ad to
unlock the other.
Okay, I'm like, okay, cool.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I'll watch a little ad.
I'll watch some wins.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
I watch the ad.
I watch five ads and then theactual release date for the
first episode I unlocked comesout and I'm expecting the next
episode in sequence to becomefree with ads.
It does not Oof.
The next episode comes out andagain the ads.

(18:07):
They don't seem to roll forward.
Now I have to pay coins if Iwant to unlock episodes past
this last ad episode that I'vewatched, which effectively means
that it was useless to watchthe ads because I have to wait
like 35 days before I canactually watch the actual new
episode that I want to watch,that I want to wait like 35 days
before I can actually watch theactual new episode that I want
to watch.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
But I want to read.
I mean.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
So now I'm like I need something else to read.
So I look on theirrecommendations and they're like
the greatest estate developer,like Elisade.
Okay, well, that's aninteresting title.
I don't really see how thatcould be.
You piqued my interest.

(18:50):
You say this is like Elisid,but as a title like that, it
doesn't really match up.
Yeah, no, it doesn't match upat all.
It's an isekai.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Oh, I was really hoping for the plot twist to be
the secret martial artist whojust keeps trying to beat up
dojos and then flips them asreal as do it's an isekai, where
the guy gets reincarnated intoa book.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
He's from Seoul, korea, seoul.
I'm not gonna get it right,he's from Korea and I'm not
going to get it right.
He's from Korea, and the reasonhe's the greatest estate
developer is when he getsreincarnated into this book.
He reincarnates as the drunkenson of a noble who is deeply

(19:47):
deeply in debt.
Like you do, and all that ourmain character wants to do is to
make lots of money and thenjust live the life of a lazy bum
off of residual income from allthe money he's made.
So I can't remember what theword was.
Uh, but there's a traditionalmethod for heated flooring in

(20:10):
korea, uh, which doesn't existin this fantasy land, uh.
And so he starts making moneyby building people heated
flooring and then when they needfuel for their heated flooring,
he sells them coal that he alsolike he built it.
He gets people to build a pathto like the mine, and then they

(20:32):
start mining coal and it's justlike he, just basically.
He literally creates like areal estate empire in this for a
second.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Imagine you will.
In the 90s, things were aboutbeing the best in the world,
following your dreams friendship, imagination, joy.
Job insecurity has hit so hardthat people are daydreaming
about being shot in the head sothey can wake up and get a
flooring job.
What?
Because putting in heatingflooring in modern society is so

(21:01):
unobtainable it's now afictional aspiration.
People are like I can't get areal estate ticket and then go
out and do this in 2025 in thiseconomy.
I need to die first to be ableto install heated flooring.
Oof, I'm not even saying themanga's bad, that's just a rough
state of mind for that to beyour escape.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
The series is very bizarre.
I really, really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
It's super funny because the character just goes
around blackmailing people intosigning ridiculous contracts, or
you know, at the end of the dayhe improves the lives of
everyone around him for the mostpart, but he does basically
trick people into signingridiculous contracts so that he
has a workforce to actuallyexpand his real estate empire

(21:52):
well, it's like um, so what'skind of funny is, uh, the
reincarnated as a slime, ikasaiwent through this weird plot arc
where the first season was Idie, become a slime, use my
superpower, clear a dungeon, butthen it becomes like a city
building simulator by by seasonthree, because it's like the
original concept just didn'thave anywhere to go.

(22:12):
So it's like early enough inthe genre that I'm reincarnated
in the world to play a citybuilder is a recurring trope.
I've seen a few things do that.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well see, what I really like about it and this is
something that we've talkedabout before is that there's no
point in it being an isekai ifyour real-world knowledge
doesn't do something for you.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
That's fair.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
And so, firstly, he is a civil engineer in Korea,
and so he uses his civilengineering knowledge and
abilities to build, to engineerproducts, like he builds like a
suspension bridge so it doesn'tget washed away by floods.
He builds like a cold storagehouse in the traditional Korean
style.
He builds the traditionalheated flooring.

(23:04):
Or he gets into a fight withsomeone and he's served in the
traditional korean style.
He builds the traditionalheated flooring.
Uh, or he gets into a fightwith someone and he served in
the korean army, and so he useshis korean bayonet army training
to kick this person's ass withthe style of martial arts that
no one has seen in this, in thisuniverse, because they just
don't use bayonets in thisuniverse.
And so I, like that was mynumber one thing is that it's

(23:26):
like man.
Firstly, the fact that he'sfrom the real world is like a
core to the way this story flowsand functions, like it
literally uses real worldknowledge to improve the lives
of people in this fantasysetting.
But then they meet the dragonking real world knowledge to
improve the lives of people inthis fantasy setting.

(23:48):
But then they meet the DragonKing and the Dragon King's like
oh yeah, you're looking for thisMacGuffin, it's in Korea, in
Seoul, seoul, korea, and so thenthey go through a portal into
Korea.
So like I don't know if he'sactually like dead or like just
like actual career and this bookthat he's in, that he knows the

(24:08):
story to exist simultaneously.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Oh no, I'm going to have to use some of adult
language for this it managed toget its head stuck up its own
ass.
There's no other way to putthat.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
It Ouroos itself yeah , I mean I'm.
I don't know if he's ever goingto want to go back to korea,
but or maybe he'll be forced togo back to korea, I don't know,
uh.
But in any event I've I've beenreally enjoying it.
It has been quite aninteresting read.
I'm glad that it recommended methis series, but so far the

(24:47):
recommendations of the webtoonhave been spotty at best well
for a topic about fictionalafterlives like Ika Sai is like
a good natural start of this cuz.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Like so recently I've been going through all the
Final Fantasy games and sequenceand I've been blessed because
I've been going through all thefinal fantasy games in sequence
and I've been blessed becauseI've been going into final
fantasy 6 blind it is such atreat and such a delight to go
into that game blind, becauseit's like my friends, like I
don't want to say the franchisepeaked, but it peaked and I'm

(25:20):
like it did, like there's somebits that feel a little dated
but not really Like.
Gameplay-wise it all looked finebut like the narrative way it
handles characters and characterarcs is like, oh, everyone has
a story to tell here and eventhough it's Fate of the World,
there's a lot of like personalstorytelling going on.
Like you wake up after anapocalypse and a year has passed

(25:42):
and your grandfather coughshimself to death after starving
on fish and you decide to jumpoff a cliff to kill yourself,
but in the last minute you see areminder of a friend, so you
build a rapid escape.
I'm like what?
Why is this here?
Why is this legitimately goodwriting in this final fantasy
game?
I wasn't expecting this to getreal.
What do you mean?
it's getting real with me like,especially when you play them in

(26:05):
sequence right, because youjust got past like, and then I
use the song in the desert tomake the ship to fly and that's
it.
So it's like wow, this is likeblowing my socks off.
But on the topic of, like theegasi, so this might just

(26:25):
because I'm a pretentiousliterary type.
Now I spent a fair amount ofmoney to do begin this
pretentiousness.
My, my problems of egosci arethreefold.
So first, as you mentioned, ifyour real world knowledge
doesn't matter, then you justcan do a fantasy setting.
There's no reason to egosign,right.
Second and this is going alayer deeper is you want a

(26:49):
character with a want and a need, right, and the want and the
need need to be different tocreate a character, to tell a
story.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Okay, just one quick second here.
Lloyd Frontera, the maincharacter of the greatest estate
developer.
Uh, his want is the money so hecan retire, uh, but his need is
uh to protect those peoplearound him.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, and he sorry, you see, that's the problem with
the genre, though.
That want and need is likethere's no personality there.
So when you talk about acharacter's want and need, you
have to have it tied into theirorigin, background, story or
personality in some way, becauseif you say, like, well, what's

(27:40):
richard's want?
To get money, but what's hisneed for people to read his book
?
It's missing, like it's bite toit.
It's what's his need for peopleto read his book?
It's missing, like bite to it.
It's missing humanity, like anai could come up with that I, I
see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I don't.
I don't know um, because I'mgonna give several better ekasi
examples for character writing.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
But okay, okay, go ahead.
So you might just beoversaturated, right, because
I'm not saying the series is bad.
I've watched a fair number ofEcosize in my day, thus my hate
like of it.
Like one I recently wentthrough was a human pretending
to be a demon who was in theDemon Army's general conquering
places so he could set them upworking infrastructure and
political setup and his bigargument to his superiors was

(28:20):
working infrastructure is moreprofitable for their demon
empire, okay, and he's like.
He's like I hate humanity, butI'm setting up commerce for us.
And he's like constantly lyingto himself.
Or he's like why are youhelping a people?
I hate people.
They're just more useful whenthey're happy and productive.
But, like when we look at someof earlier examples of

(28:42):
proto-ecosize, before it becamexeroxed infinitely, let's go to
vision of escaflowne oh yeah,okay so escaflowne was
fundamentally about a teenagegirl trying to build up the
courage to ask someone out thatthey thought they would never
see again.
So the whole thing was they hada crush on a guy and were

(29:04):
working up the courage to askthem out, but instead decide to
like do a dramatic gesture,running a race, and ended up in
a fancy kingdom love triangle,medieval feudalism society that
ran on zero video game logic.
But the thing about thecharacters in escaflone is the
main character, hitomi.

(29:24):
The Ikasai adventure directlyparalleled their ability to like
, see the future, acceptoutcomes, and then what they
learned was their want was to dowhat they could, despite
knowing things were inevitable.
But their need was to realizethat things were not in fact
inevitable.
So the entire series waseffectively a metaphor for their

(29:47):
believing that because they canpredict things accurately,
there is no sense in trying tochange them and trying to make
the best of things.
And then the other maincharacter, vaughn, who is trying
to build on nobility,responsibility, destiny.
He had to go through hischaracter arc to learn that if
everyone's wishes come true atonce, then nobody's wishes come

(30:09):
true except an old man getting asandwich and that he had to
learn that everyone's dreamswere as valid as each other,
because you can't do thingsperfectly, so it's like there
was more to it, like the worlditself effectively existed.
To contrast, the charactersetting like to go like to full
metal alchemist for a quickgoing.

(30:30):
The setting of full metalalchemist is required because
the story needs that setting.
The story simply doesn't workwithout that setting.
Everything is built around forsomething to be obtained.
Something of equal value mustbe lost.
When we get into the ecocidewhere you're just borrowing not
even a particularly good dragonage, like they're not even going

(30:51):
to take the well thought outfinal fantasy 6 world, they're
going to take out the completelynot thought out Final Fantasy 1
world that just has airships,cuz, and it's like, yeah, you
want money, but learn that thepeople are important.
It's just you can do better.
Like Inuyasha was aninteresting one, where it was

(31:15):
like, yeah, he had someone comethrough to teach him that
humanity isn't worth killing,but really he was just trying to
get over his abusive ex.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Okay, but so to our topic of fictional afterlife.
Indeed, you started this, Iknow, I know, I actually I was
going to ask you.
I mean, obviously not allIkasais are an afterlife, but
given the large number of peoplewho do in fact, die to be
reincarnated, would you say thatIsekai, ikasais are a version

(31:52):
of the afterlife?

Speaker 1 (31:53):
absolutely so when we go out, when I was having that
distinction between a protoecossi and a modern ecossi,
right, so proto ecossi is beingmonster rancher, escaflone,
inuyasha and a few others alongthose lines they're typically
well, let's go with the firstone.
The wine lich in the wardrobeis you find a portal to a

(32:16):
magical world, you're alice inwonderlands.
Then, right they, when you finda portal, it gives you a
narrative expectation to thenreturn at the end a changed
person, right, like there's aplot point in monster rancher
was like was it all a dream?
No, I still have the shoes.
I got there, it was real.
Then the ekosai thing thatchanged it weirdly because of

(32:37):
sword art, of all things rightis that, hey, you're stuck in
this new place and sometimes youdied and you have a karma
reincarnation system like slimeand a lot of them are literally
how you lived.
Your human life directly setsup your ekosai life.
So it's absolutely an afterlife, but they don't really go with
what happens when you die there.

(32:58):
Do you then get a status screenand go back to human and like
an infinite, like Ouroboros,because I've seen the reverse
egosize happen, where someonelike dies in their fantasy world
, like there was one.
That was the first episode waslike I'm a general in the legend
of the galactic heroes and thenI died and I got egosized.
I'm like, ugh, you got kicked.
Legend of the galactic heroesand then I died and I got

(33:19):
ecocide.
I'm like, oh, you got kickedout of the interesting setting
into the boring one or one wherethe red power ranger gets
ecocide.
It was amusing follow 10episodes, but yeah, it is
absolutely an afterlife and it'sa high tier one.
If I were to die and be ecocide, amazing, yeah, okay, okay,
like, think about it.
It's a high tier one.
If I were to die in Meek, it'samazing.

(33:39):
Yeah, okay, okay, like, thinkabout it.
It's reincarnation.
But you get to be a god.
You get directly rewarded forbonus points for like you were
creepy and never held the handof a loved one.
Get plus 100 defense stat Likeit is a great one.
It's like you managed to go 30years unemployed.
Get the billionaire ability.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Like, oh, they're just shenanigans um, so then the
, the next version of theafterlife, that I'm a little bit
curious.
How, how many examples youwould have with this uh is the
uh long lineup?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
oh man.
So I'm doing some research forthis episode.
I got a few examples becauseyou're immediately thinking king
emma's desk, dragon ball yeah,dragon ball, uh, beetlejuice
yuyu mako show pixar soulproducer, had a really big
lineup in the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Um, or another.
Actually, an isekai uhcharacter dies, uh, spends like
a thousand years in line to meetthe goddess of reincarnation,
uh, and then, uh, she getsattacked by a monster when she's
about to reincarnate him and sohe like, just like, dives off
her platform and it winds up ina random world and shenanigans

(34:58):
ensue.
But, um, I just uh, this longlineup, uh, afterlife seems to
be a cross-cultural phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
I was curious how many examples you could you
would have of that so, like theimmediate dragon ball z one, the
not explicit in good omens, butgood omens has a lot of the
bureaucracy going on.
Definitely the file orrequisition and like the
beetlejuice one.
The yuyu haka show didsomething similar.

(35:30):
Hades the game does somethingsimilar, where you just see him
at his front desk as the soulsare coming through okay and like
it, being a cultural bit, makessense, like the only things are
life, death and taxes right, soit's like the idea that you
take the myth of I have anall-knowing judge and then you
look at the logistics ofhumanity.

(35:52):
You just got to stand there andwait.
Heaven, hell, heaven, hell.
Back to life, exception.
So right, I honestly like Ihate to say it that's probably
the most plausible afterlife,like in my brain, like it's easy
to imagine.
I die now I have to wait for myturn in purgatory while they do

(36:13):
the math while they do the math.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Do you have enough good karma?
Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
The Good Place was an interesting take on that one
where they literally gave yougood points and bad points.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Okay, I was actually going to.
That was going to be a question.
I asked one of my coworkerswhat they're, what they think
the best afterlife is, and theysaid the final result of the
Good Place, which unfortunatelyI haven't read.
I did read a synopsis onwikipedia um well, it's a show,
but, right, sorry, I haven'twatched it it's funny because he

(36:47):
watched a lot of manga earlierand then tried to read the show.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Your synesthesis powers are quite impressive.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
That has a lot of this bureaucratic theme to it as
well, you think.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
So the core concept was it's a bad place.
It's trying to come up with amethod to torture humans, right,
and they're trying a new,experimental one of making them
think they went to heaven andthen just tormenting each other
for all eternity in fake heaven,okay, and then as the show kind
of progresses, it goes from thedemons like these guys aren't
that bad, what is the point?

(37:26):
System like, and they're likeoh, it's actually impossible to
have a good enough score to getinto heaven now because life got
too complex.
You went to hell because youdrank almond milk, because that
burned the fields down, becauseit came from an apartheid region
, so therefore you supportedslavery by buying almond milk.
So you're a bad person.
So they end up going with thisidea that, like you keep putting

(37:47):
people through learning littlebits of it and then to get their
score up after the fact.
And then once they like gothrough life enough and
eventually become a good person,they move on.
And it's they like, go throughlife enough and eventually
become a good person, they moveon.
And it's amusing Because it'slike, yeah, we are literally
marking it by points, pointingout like, oh, there's flaws in
the system bureaucracy.
They get to the very end andrealize heaven's kind of lame,

(38:09):
because everyone gets everythingthey want all the time.
So they had to add like asuicide button to heaven that
has like quantum instability andjust does something to you and
it's impossible to know what.
So that way, you can end yourinternal happiness, if you
choose to, which made heavenbetter.
Okay, like the ending thing waswe made heaven better by
letting you opt out of heaven.
So it's like big on time loops.

(38:32):
But really the show was justgoing through and working out a
lot of philosophical thoughtexercises, as practical things,
like I had a lot of philosophy.
Like they literally had someonetortured someone through
trolley problems for a while.
I put them actually in thetrolley like that's your friend
steve, are you gonna turn toswerve to miss him and kill
these eight orphans?
So as far as afterlifes areconcerned, that one's actually

(38:57):
kind of a terrible one, weirdly.
Huh, because the idea is thateveryone, you're not going to
have a good point to go intoheaven.
You're just not.
So you go into hell with abuddy to slowly teach you to be
a better person, to then, onceyou're a better person, go to
heaven, to then be there as longas you want to chill out, then
leave.

(39:18):
But it's like if omnipotentbeings create and control you
with their omnipotence then it'slike oh yeah, you're inherently
flawed and the point is to gothrough until you're good.
That's terrible.
That is a terrible thing to doto someone to be like.

(39:38):
You're fundamentally broken,based on your very nature, so
we're going to make you keepgoing through trust fall
exercises until you become agood person, to no longer get
punished.
I almost prefer the D and Dfive E method of based on your
alignment, you get sent to anappropriate afterlife Cause.
It's like, yeah, some peoplewould probably prefer to be in
Valhalla when they die.
Some people like the good place, like you go through the store

(39:59):
and it's literally whatever youwant.
I'm like I do think some peoplewould want to go strobical for
their next life.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Which is what pivots me into the worst afterlife in
fiction Bleach.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Bleach is the worst and most.
I think it's the mostnonsensical because, like do you
, you age in the afterlife.
So the deeper.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
you dig into it and try and find pieces of it, which
the big advice is don't putmore thought into it than the
original author did.
Right?
So we know the basics for ourviewers.
I I'll recap.
When you die in Bleach, youhave four outcomes Outcome.
The first A person in a robehits you with the butt of a
sword and sends you to thebeautiful place Soul Society.

(40:47):
We'll get to it.
Option the second you can'tmove on from the afterlife
because someone didn't come tohit you with the butt of a sword
or whatever reason, so you justturn into a monster and start
torturing your loved ones.
The third option you're justchilling, living your life as a
ghost and one of the monstersdrags you in and turns you into
a monster anyway.
And the last one your soul isdisintegrated and you're turned

(41:11):
to a pile of sand with noconsciousness for all eternity.
That is one of the options.
And the fifth option is youreturn back to Yohabaha.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
And also just cease to exist forever because you
made a contract.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
So the good afterlife puts you in a futile Japanese
slum where you still get bullied, people spit on you, they steal
your food and your candy, andthere's a case system when
basically the only thing thatmatters in your afterlife Is
your blatant fighting potential,to then become a militia.
The good ending is you get tojoin the militia, like I'd

(41:49):
rather turn into the monster,because at least I don't have to
deal with nobility and clansand I can just murder my way up
the chain.
But also you can just murder myway up the chain, but also you
can just get shot by the glowyarrow and just turn to dust and
that's it which might be thebest way out.
The idea that Heaven has a slumand Hell doesn't is really funny

(42:11):
, is there?

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Hell wasn't actually in your list of possible items
for death.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Oh yeah, if you're turned into a monster and killed
, you then get sent to hell,which isn't the monster place.
It's a slightly worse than themonster place.
Monster place which I have seenno evidence to see is actually
worse than the good one.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Fair enough, fair enough.
People are bombing hell.
Bleach does have one of theworst afterlifes possible,
that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
To the point where, like fan theories among my
household, are that no, no,there's actually a heaven, but
the Soul Reapers intercept youand militia-ize you where you
normally would go to heaven.
But they intercept you andmilitia you instead.
It makes more sense if they'reevil.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
It kind of does it?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
kind of does.
And then Yu Yu Hakusho has asimilar thing where, like King
Emma, decided if you go good orbad, but spirits get lost,
misplaced, judged, unfairly,eaten by demons Like drink of
all these narwhals areridiculous ones.
I made it to the good afterlife, oh a monster.
Teleport here and start bombingheaven, like I want a heaven
that isn't bombable that's true.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
That version of heaven is just that version of
the afterlife in general is justway too close to the actual
main universe.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
It's like I feel like you can just fly there well, at
one point they literally take ahigher plane and fry a plane
from one place to another.
But in its defense though, thevast majority of time in the
good afterlifes in Dragon Ball Z, which does get bonus points if
you punch good, but whatever Iguess most afterlifes have to.
Now, if you're in a fight andyou're in a martial arts based

(43:56):
economy, of course you need amartial arts based afterlife.
That just makes sense.
But like Right right, a lot ofthe time they're just chilling,
like King Kai At least.
At least they have cable.
In Dragon Ball Z's afterlife,bleach doesn't have Gaming
consoles in their heaven.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
I don't think they have electricity.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
I'm not sure they have electricity.
Oh also, I don't think theyhave electricity.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
I'm not sure they have electricity.
Oh, also have running water oneof their soul captains.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
The alleged good guys turn troopers into suicide
bombers to capture and torturepeople.
I'm like how are you the goodplace?
This is insane.
Do you not check cvs here?

Speaker 2 (44:34):
okay, okay.
So the next category ofafterlife.
It might be too broad Becauseit applies to a lot of things,
but I call it the Other Side.
Which is a series where thereare ghosts who couldn't move on
to the afterlife.
But the afterlife is only everdescribed as the other side and

(44:56):
the purpose of people Is toensure that these ghosts ever
described as the other side.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
And the purpose of people of ghosts is, of people
is to ensure that these ghostsgo on to said other side oh,
like that one dude who scammedpeople by taking advantage of
bereaved ones live action,crossing over with whatever his
name was uh, well, I mean, I wasthinking uh of things like, uh,
ghostbusters.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Where there are ghosts, there must be an
afterlife, but they never botherto explore it.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
That is coward's atheism.
That is like I want to make ita movie theater to not offend
any religion.
So we have ghosts, but we'regoing to remove all spirituality
from it completely.
That is coward's or DannyPhantom Pardon.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Or Danny Phantom Pardon or Danny Phantom, danny
Phantom, danny Phantom wasanother good example.
Like I said, it might be alittle bit too broad, because
you could apply that to prettymuch any.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I think it's a fair category, though, because it's
like, like I said, the coward'sghost system of it's Bleach, but
you don't actually bother.
After I hit them with the sword, we don't know where they go.
Yeah, they just go to the otherside.
And the thing about I just readabout how shitty Bleach's
afterlife is.
That makes a good storytelling.
I want to be clear, becauseit's worth discussing, right.

(46:08):
Well, like Dragon Ball Z's,afterlife is worth discussing.
There's some logistics going on, like if we get to something
like did you ever do DeathParade?
I don't think so.
So when you die, you playcarnival games to decide whether
winners reincarnate and losersare cast into the void Okay.

(46:29):
And souls are tested at theirworst moments instead of their
bests.
So it'd be like you die andthen Yugi Moto's waiting for you
and then you're playing magicwith them and it's like, yeah,
if you win, you go to heaven.
So you're like well, I need tomake sure I win.
So you sneak a peek at the topdeck of your card and you're
like ha, caught you cheating.
You go to hell forever becauseyou're a cheater.
Well, no, you go to the void.

(46:58):
I Dogami from Death.
No, cameo in it, yeah.
So it's like let's play a gamewhere you throw a dart on a
board and when you hit it, amatching part on the board will
hit your fiancé.
But you need to win the game togo to heaven.
Haha, you're a bad person.
You go to hell.
Ew, it's very Like that one.
It's like kind of goes into agood o omen, one of the carnival
game afterlife, where you haveto like literally do a thing

(47:18):
like how wolverine has to fightdeath to come back so how do you
feel about that?
you die and you have to play agame oddly enough, uh, that's.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
That's not really.
Um.
Most of the things that I'veseen or watched are people
playing sick and twisted gamesfor their actual life, not for
their afterlife.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Ironically, though, the end of Yu-Gi-Oh is
absolutely him playing cardgames to move on to his
afterlife.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
To go political for a second.
So the timeline of Yu-Gi-ioh iswild, because seto kaiba
invested billions.
He took an arms company andtook all of that funding to make
a trading card game economy.
He put his entire net wealthinto making trading cards the
new currency, the new sport, thenew technology, and you see all
the yugioh sequels where he'sdone this.

(48:14):
Could you imagine?
if elon musk was cool andswitched us over to a card
game-based economy.
He had the resources, he was inthe government, but no, he'll
never be as cool as Seto Kaiba.
He had the chance.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
He bit it I don't know, he could bail Hasbro and.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
No, no, it'd have to be a new card game because
Hasbro is bad at card games.
Fair enough Because like tomake your card game-based
economy, you have to have a lotof people who are in it just for
the love of the game.
Right or else it doesn't workBecause the moment you can
pre-order a collector's box setthat has guaranteed Blue Eyes,

(48:54):
White Dragons in it, your cardgame economy implodes.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah, that's true.
So, here's a fun one forAfterlife.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Disgaea, where there's heaven, there's hell.
It's bureaucratic.
You literally have votingthings and if you're a bad
person you can come back as apretty.
That was pretty close, I think.
I feel like the Disgaea one wasinspired by the Dragon Ball Z
Yu Yu Hakusho Afterlives.
They're like I'm going to makea game just about this part.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, Disgaea was definitely.
Disgaea basically takes placeentirely in the afterlife.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
And it's definitely like monsters and demons and
angels and seraphims.
But I like that in theafterlife because it has a lot
of lore and it has a ton ofreally interesting conceptual
ideas that aren't reallyexplored very well in other

(50:01):
media oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Well, it's like it was a line in disenchantment
where they ended up in hell,which disenchantment's funny,
because they're like there'sheaven and hell, but there isn't
magic.
It's just literally the angelof river of angel tears hits the
hell geyser and it creates aweird chemical reaction.
But okay, this is yeah, it'samazing, but there's a line
where someone's in hell andthey're about to fall in a liver

(50:23):
of lava and they're like no, ifI die, I'm gonna go to super
hell.
And that's a question that allof these bring up, that no one's
ever been prepared to answer.
What happens when you die whenyou're dead because, like you
wouldn't think that would evercome up.
But you get to bleach andyou're like when a soul reaper
dies, they're like, oh yeah,captain class ones go to hell.
I'm like what happens to therest of them?
Do they go back?

(50:43):
Do they reincarnate as humans?

Speaker 2 (50:45):
because that would make sense or you know, I feel
like they must, um like refillthe, the hourglass that the
quincy's destroy with theirarrows right.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
So like soul reapers die and then they go back and
get reincarnated and becomepeople, and then those ones are
the ones that get like it.
It almost bleach, is a tapestryof almost works, if you don't
think about it too hard.
Almost works, yeah just justdon't, don't think about it too
much I love the joke though that, like in Yu-Gi-Oh, that duel

(51:18):
spirits are real and when youdie your soul might get dragged
into the card game dimensionwhere you spend eternity as a
monster trading hands betweenduelists, like there's a, if you
look at, like the full lore ofYu-Gi-Oh.
So you die heroically, right,my good friend, in a shadow game
, and then I use your soul tocreate pot of greed and then you
just travel with pot of greedand then in a hundred and a

(51:40):
thousand no, two thousand years,a 12-year-old pulls apart a
greed and it contains your jewelspirit in it and you get to
watch him play card games.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
That would be a pretty awful afterlife.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Because that's actually the canon.
That would be a pretty awfulafterlife, because that's
actually the candidate.
It's like, yeah, a guy becomesdark magician, who becomes a
stone tablet, whose spirit thentransfers into the dark magician
trading card, who then uses hisexistence as a sentient being
to make sure that card's on thetop of Yugi's deck when he plays
.
This is beautiful.
I'm not sure if this counts asan aftergraph, but the Matrix

(52:20):
afterlife if you die and youwake up from the robot doom.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
You know, I was actually going to ask that
question but in reverse Nice.
Do you think that digitalafterlife is a real form of
afterlife, or do you thinkthat's just us being God
complexes, I guess?

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Well, what's wild about this one?
So I've made the quip beforethat I'm never going to use your
teleporter because I enjoybeing alive and it just kills
you.
It's just a mass murder machine,because it breaks you down and
brings you back together, whichmeans you are, in fact, dead.
So the thing that would alwaysget me is I put the neurons in
my brain right and do theconsciousness upload, but much

(53:01):
like a rom cartridge containingI'm gonna go fire emblem, sacred
stones.
If you take your game boyadvanced cartridge or fire
emblem, sacred stones, right,you put it in the reader and you
move the file from thatcartridge to the computer.
That's not what happens.
It's you scan what's on thereand copy it onto the computer,

(53:22):
and we don't have a way to likeever take the you and put it in
the computer.
So you're making a digitalclone of yourself, right, and if
your stream of alertness endsduring this process, you
definitely died right.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Right right.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
So it's like, unless I've created some sort of like
organic thing that like, likeyour brain is pulled out of your
skull and like woven into theweb of brains to be kept alive
Hmm, then maybe blow of yourskull and like woven into the
web of brains to be kept alivehmm then maybe.
But like, if you're doing theupload thing, going from analog
to digital, nah, you're justcreating cyber ghosts yeah, yeah

(54:07):
, okay, cyber ghosts that thinkthey're real people or feel like
they're real people I mean forthe ghost it wouldn't matter at
all.
So I'd probably still do it,because then ghost me is gonna
have a great time.
I just acknowledge that's notme, that's digital ghost me
right, right, and I mean intheory.
Uh, provided the process doesn'tkill you, uh, you could

(54:27):
interact with your own self yep,although weirdly enough I think
you want the process to killpeople, like even if it doesn't
have to.
So what you kind of want yousee this in sci-fi a lot that
the high power brain scan killsthe person hooked up to the
brain scanner, right, right,that's a feature, not a flaw,
because if you're digitally upmaking a carl ghost, right like,

(54:48):
let's say, take the game boyexample of, I'm gonna take fire
him with the sacred stones putin this reader, put on my
computer, but also runs a magnetacross it and just blanks the
cartridge, when it does it, itdefeats the nintendo claim, kind
of sort of of like you made acopy, I'm like no, there's only
one, I just moved where it isand if you just move where it is

(55:09):
because you fried the humanbeing you cooked to the skynet.
They can't have crisis ofconsciousness.
The digital ghost isn't goingto think it's a ghost.
You're not going to havemultiple but one person making
many copies of themselves, whichis a huge problem.
You're not going to haveinfinite copies.
You're not going to have thetwice from my hero not knowing
who the original was and havingan existential crisis If he gets

(55:32):
hit once he poofs cause hedoesn't know what the original
is anymore.
It's just easier to let thereonly be one copy of a person at
a time going.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
I mean, I totally agree, even if, in the case of
an analog clone assuming thetechnology is able to clone me
at my current state I woulddefinitely have to kill my clone
.
If it cloned me as a child oras a baby, I might consider
raising my own clone as my ownchild.
But then it's a Boba Djangosituation Attorney detests that

(56:04):
is my child.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
Well, the thing is, we look at Altered Carbon, where
you got the chip on the back ofyour neck.
So when you die, it uploads thechip to the cloud and then just
prints you in a new body, thatone where it's like, yeah, yeah,
your body is just whateverhappened to be lying around and
they just re-sleeve you in it,but your consciousness is the
usb chip that's on the back ofyour neck.

(56:26):
That's fine, because there'sstill one of you and you're at
least non-fungible, right, right, but you need your people to be
non-fungible, or else we'lljust have a million Elons and
none of them will beparticularly good at the new
Kirby Air Ride when it comes out.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Hashtag fake gamer.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
It only requires one button, the new one, they had
put in a second bunch and muchto sakurai's displeasure.
Oh so the kirby direct wasgreat because it was mostly just
him playing the game.
I'm just gonna tell you spoiledthe kirby direct in the middle
of this episode because that wasgonna be what was new with me,
but I forgot at the time.

(57:12):
Okay, so he's like demoing thisgame and he's like, first off,
our podcast made it happenbecause we said make a new one,
and then we had one download inJapan and now we have a new one,
yeah, which was just Sakuraipersonally.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
That would be amazing .

Speaker 1 (57:27):
They added a second button and the button is for
your super attack and forswitching cards.
Their big update is they addedmore racers to the game.
So it's like we have all theold modes Well, we have the city
trial and we have the race mode.
It gets the race modes likethis is race mobile fans.
The games know we don't careabout that, here's the city
trial, but they're like we haveit.
So they added in a bunch ofracers so you get to pick your

(57:48):
racer and your cart and eachracer has an ability okay.
So like, for example, if you'rethe mushroom head guy, you can
take a few free hits.
If you met a knight, you stabpeople.
Different colors of curb.
Each color of curvy has its ownsuper attack, which is a
different ultra nice.
And they're like city childwith a bigger city, up to 16
players.
At the of the run you get avote on what your arena thing is

(58:11):
, but sometimes they'll just berandom because screw you.
So it's like I'm watching it.
I'm like this is exactly what Iwanted, which means I don't
care enough to buy a Switch 2 toplay it.
It's like if I already had one,absolutely.
But it's like they haven'tshown it being better, just that
.
Look, we made the game againnicer with more characters, more
cards and more things on aconsole that's not 20 years old,

(58:34):
I'm like, technically, that'sall you had to do, sir.
But my mini-game trailer reviewaside, oh man, the worst
afterlife is just being absorbedby Kirby and wandering the void
To never truly die to nevertruly die.
I love the Mario theory thatevery Mario life is a parallel

(58:54):
timeline and Bowser's actuallykilled him hundreds of thousands
of times in different timelines.
There's also the Hadesafterlife, the one where the
roguelike afterlife, whereliterally you just die and come
back, but you don't get toactually die the Deadpool, that
would be.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
That would be a form of afterlife, I suppose the
Eternal Loop.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Yep, I'm not a fan of being stuck in the.
Actually, I think I'd be finewith the Eternal Loop.
I'd be evil but I'd be finewith it.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
You think you'd be evil Eventually I mean I guess
it's an eternal loop You'dprobably go insane.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Well, no, I'm just kind of a little evil now, like
if I'm truly immortal and I'vehit 2,000 years.
And I'm just listening to thenews right now Like spoilers for
the new Superman movie.
I've haven't seen it.
I think, I would just go walkup to the line, the like
starvation zone right now, andjust start stabbing, like I

(01:00:02):
think I'm just walking right upto redacted person's fortress
where he pushing the genocidebutton, walking through the
front door full of bullets, justwalking right up and then
slapping him repeatedly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I was like you think, if you live for every being
evil person.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
I'm like I think I'm kind of evil now, so I
definitely would be if giveninfinite life.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Hmm, did you say you either die the hero or live long
enough to see yourself becomethe villain?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Actually, I might go through the reverse.
I might pull a Strauss andstart the villain and live long
enough to become the hero,begrudgingly.
Which is leads me to my nextcategory of afterlife, the worst
one Spite reincarnation.
Spite reincarnation, fightreincarnation.
So we had it in record of theangsty vampire where his

(01:00:55):
daughter's soul was grafted to ahuman to murder him and keeps
coming dying after every 21years and coming back to murder
him again.
We have seven deadly sins.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Where?

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
meliodas comes back angstier every time, and
whenever him and his true lovefall in love, she dies three
days later.
You know you're stuck in areincarnation and it sucks, but
you also, when paired with you,don't actually know if there's
an afterlife, which means youend your reincarnation, you
might just cease to existforever.
Seventily, sins of All Things,kind of avoided the super hell

(01:01:30):
problem.
Yeah, so they had heaven, theyhad hell.
It was like humans can go toheaven or hell.
Fairies, just kind ofreincarnate giants, just kind of
reincarnate demons, just goback to hell.
Right, angels go back to heaven, and it was.
Or if you kill an angel, theycould get stuck in reincarnation

(01:01:50):
and the guy will just wake upbeing the goat.
But it's like when you died inpurgatory you just kind of
reassembled, more broken andmonstrous, so you just became
more and more demon each timeyou died in hell.
Yeah, okay, which is still aterrible afterlife.
Anything with an endless hellyou can't get out of is a flawed

(01:02:11):
system, like just a bad system.
Same with anything where you'rein heaven and can't leave
heaven.
It's a flawed system like.
I really enjoyed this guy onewhere the angel's like no, no, I
hope it's more interestingbecause I can help more people
here and they just become afallen angel who looks identical
but got a different color wingsand a hat.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
I have always kind of wondered, like in actual
Christian heaven, when you knowyou go to heaven and they say
it's this wonderful, amazingplace, but it's like, do you
just do whatever you want?
Do you even want to do anythingthere?

(01:02:54):
Are you just like part of thescenery or like, what do these
people do?
Because you don't turn into anangel.
Angels and humans are veryclearly distinct.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
So it makes me think of the squirrel heaven, dog hell
paradox.
So, as we're well aware, alldogs go to heaven, right, and in
heaven they have infinitesquirrels to chase.
And you think, oh, that's goodfor the dogs.
And then you think about it.
I'm like, but that sucks forthe squirrels.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
It's like yeah because squirrel hell is dog
heaven.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
And it's like, well, why are all these squirrels
going to hell?
And you're like, because theyknow the bird feeder wasn't for
them.
So like a lot of it'ssubjective where it's like, yeah
, for your afterlife to work.
There's a lot of loop-de-loopsgoing on Like.
I personally subscribe to the.
If everyone's right and justeveryone goes to their

(01:03:48):
appropriate afterlife and youcan kind of shift between them,
just simply.
That's the only way any of thisactually works, because
mathematically, every religionhas an equal chance of being
true, then mathematicallyspeaking, they're all more
likely to be wrong than right.
That's just numbers.
No amount of King's Jamessaying that I can divorce my fat

(01:04:12):
wife is going to convince methat that has equal odds of
being true, has better odds ofbeing true Because we know that
happened.
For one thing Anytime youstaple another testament on a
book, I'm just like that's theone ultimate truth.
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Why is the guy's name on?

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
it.
Who's this guy doesn't say god.
Shouldn't that be the only nameon this book?
Written by god yeah, though,like actually shouldn't it?
If you're omnipotent, they'repretty sure you get the
copyright.
So I'm not saying spiritualityis some nonsense, I'm just

(01:04:55):
saying that people need to havea little more flexibility.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Is all I'm saying, or else you'll end up in the
feudal Japanese society afterlike fighting over a scrap of
rock candy oh man, I don't knowif it's exactly an afterlife, uh
, but I know you said that youdidn't really like chojin x uh,
because, uh it I don't think itdid anything wrong, I think it's

(01:05:23):
just like I read.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
I'm like sure is tokyo ghoul in here.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Yeah, it just didn't feel distinct enough from Tokyo
Ghoul and I can get that vibe.
He basically just rewrote TokyoGhoul for the first portion,
but in the latest chaptersspoiler alerts the pharmacist

(01:05:48):
manages to get basically themost powerful Chojin X.
The pharmacist manages to stealChojin X's power and uses it to
basically destroy the universeso that he can see his wife
again, so he can rebuild it.
Destroy the universe so that hecan see his wife again, so he
can, like, rebuild it, uh.

(01:06:09):
But then, uh, unwittingly, hetraps himself in like a 400
square, uh kilometer space, uh,reliving the same day over and
over again, going home to hiswife, and you know, he can live
there for like 10 000 years,just like convincing himself
that he's happy when he's not.
Um, I, I thought that wasreally interesting, because then

(01:06:33):
one of the other characterswill actually also inadvertently
got sucked into the samepurgatory type place.
Uh, basically slaps him andsays, hey, give me your power so
I can go and fix this, and thenescapes from his afterlife.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
See, that's another.
One is like the.
It's not really an afterlife somuch as the I'm trapped from an
afterlife.
See, that's another.
One is like the.
It's not really an afterlife somuch as the I'm trapped from an
afterlife syndrome, like inkaiju number eight.
We had the soldiers who foughtwere fighting against kaijus
becoming kaijus becoming thekaiju.
But we get a lot of that whereit's like no, you just have to
exist, like the Hellsing, or itcompletely is actually pivot.

(01:07:10):
The full metal alchemistafterlife of a math equation
calls you a chump when a cosmicentity doesn't forgive mistakes.
Eternity is here and endlesslyaware of your own transgression.
But it's not really anafterlife.
It's like it's not that you goto the truth when you die.
You go to the truth when youwalk up and knock on the door of
the truth.

(01:07:30):
Although they kind of impliedin the first Cut of Full Metal
Alchemist, when you die, yoursouls flow to Nazi Germany and
back to power, their alchemy,which is a choice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah, the first Cut of Full Metal Alchemist
definitely has a far worseending, although I didn't mind.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
The Conquerors of Shambhala movie like it's like
the worst version, so it's kindof like I'm gonna go with.
It's the birthday cake blizzard.
The birthday cake blizzard isthe worst blizzard.
Pieces of soggy cake do nothinghowever, okay if full metal

(01:08:15):
okamist.
The original cut is the birthdaycake blizzard version, it's
still a blizzard.
It's still 90 ice cream.
It just is the worst flavor ofit.
So it's like like, yeah, it'sgood.
It's hard to call it bad, it'sjust attached to something

(01:08:40):
that's ridiculously good.
But I mean the only one trueafterlife is your heart is
weighed against a feather and acrocodile eats you.
That's, that's going to be thecorrect one one, right?
Or?
I do love the circles of hell.
I really enjoy when you givehell architecture in your
fiction and there's always like,uh, it's kind of a recurring

(01:09:04):
one where, like, they don'treally show the afterlife, but
the grim reaper, greg the grimreaper, just a dude who comes up
it's like time to go, and thenwalks you to somewhere you're
like can I know where?

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
he's like nah, um, just as a interesting um.
So the the greatest estatedeveloper, the guy gets
quote-unquote reincarnated, um,but but the guy that he
reincarnates as doesn't actuallydie, his soul gets forced out

(01:09:37):
of his body but he doesn't die.
And then the Grim Reaper comesto, like, collect the soul.
And he's like, oh wait, I mean,I see you're a soul, but your
body's not dead.
So I don't really know what todo here.
And so he takes this guy's souldown to hell, um, and then
later on in the series, uh, themain character uh has reason to

(01:10:01):
go to hell to talk to the kingof hell.
Uh, he comes across the soulthat originally owned his body
and then, uh, basicallyconvinces the king of hell to
allow him, allow the former soulto reincarnate.
Um, I don't know the series.
The series is, uh I don't knowif I did justice describing it

(01:10:24):
like I say, it's super funny uh,and has a very interesting,
well, a little kind of a bizarreafterlife.
I don't know okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Well, it's kind of funny because it's like I was
thinking about mechs and magic,where it's like I'm a gumball
clan reincarnated who knows howto build mechs.
In this fantasy setting I justcan't get over the fact how much
better it would have been if itwas just the fantasy setting
and a person had cool mech ideasand that's like I don't know.

(01:10:55):
Afterlife is such aninteresting talk because it's
like so much of things arescaffolded off of earlier pieces
of fiction, because I'd sayabout half this list are a take
on Dante's Inferno in some way,like even the bureaucratic
standing in line, and then likeI really wonder who did it first
, the standing in line to checkinto heaven thing, or if that's

(01:11:19):
just an obvious bit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I mean it must be a somewhat obvious bit because, as
mentioned at the start of theepisode here, that is a
cross-cultural joke I don't evenhave anything against that joke
.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
It's like it's a cross-cultural joke, but it's
good.
Like if I found myself in asituation where I was writing a
comedy and needed to have anafterlife the bureaucratic
afterlife is my go-to.
Like I'm like, yeah, that's,that's pretty funny already.
Like I don't have to do likethat, there's a lot you can do

(01:11:57):
with that.
I also really enjoy that.
You're not qualified to die,but here's your reward points.
Like not everyone can do abiscuit hammer, where a
character sees himself dying ina dream and tells another
character and then the charactercatches up to the part where
they died in the dream that thatis true.

(01:12:17):
Lucifer and the biscuit hammerwas pretty interesting in that
way and can't be worse than hiscurrent life, like if the big
twist to chainsaw man is denji'sjust in.
Hell.
Yeah tracks, oh man, clearly,clearly he's in.
You know.
I think denji's right about hisstatement in the recent chapter

(01:12:39):
.
By the way, I think he is aninappropriate location for that.
If you think about it, it is aperfectly sanitary location.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Like In the nurse's office.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
I mean of all the places.
I'm like you know, I don'tthink he's wrong, really, oh,
chainsaw man, so it's just sounique.
That is the most absurdsuperpower I've ever heard and
I'm like that's so good, that'sso weird and fucked up.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
But I digress.
Shall we head into our randomquestion of the day?

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Yeah, sure, I mean, we've definitely covered all the
versions of the afterlife thatI was thinking of.
I mean, I wasn't going to comebust down actual afterlives and
talk.
Start talking about theSephiroth and the places of
divine hierarchy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
No, yeah, Keep, keep it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
uh, fictional media, which I mean, some people might
argue, but I've actually seenlike the divine hierarchy
Sephiroth used in a couple ofanimes before.
But usually like wrong, I'dhave to assume Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
So here's a random question.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
You are a Hollywood director.
You are doing a reshoot of lordof the rings.
However, you marvel hasrecently bought your studio and
you are forced to replacegandalf with an mcu cameo.
What character is replacinggandalf?

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
uh well, I mean, the obvious answer is Doctor Strange
if you want a boring movie,sure yeah, you're right, doctor
Strange would just solve all theproblems well, not just that,
but like.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
So Doctor Strange is actually probably weaker than
Gandalf, because it's likeDoctor Strange.
Part of the point of Lord ofthe Rings is the wizards in Lord
of the Rings are basicallyangels, like they have like
Archangel.
The point of lord of the ringsis the wizards in lord of the
rings are basically angels,right, like they have, like
archangel, gabriel, powers goingon, and the reason gandalf
can't do shit is the mainvillain is one of these angels.

(01:14:59):
Long story short, don't come atme.
Stephen colbert and one of theone of his generals is also one
of these angels so it's like drstrange with being like I'm the
sorcerer supreme and it's likecool, we got dormammu's boss
over there and his lieutenant,alternate reality dr.
Strange, but good, good, go atit, fair.

(01:15:21):
So I'm making a great movie.
I don't know if it'll be goodmovie, but great movie.
I'm replacing g Gandalf withSpider-Man Huh, he is just
quipping the entire way throughthis movie and I enjoy the part
where the evil, where DoctorStrange knocks Spider-Man off
the tower and then he, like,jumps off a cliff and Falcon,

(01:15:41):
punches a Balrog and comes backas Spider-Man in the Venom
symbiote suit.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
You know what else would be?

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
a fairly interesting movie replacing gandalf with, uh
, daredevil yes, I love theworst the superhero, the better
this works out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
It turns out well, yeah, because then you know he
goes, goes off to deal withwhatever and comes back and it's
like he's just some dude thatwent out and beat up all these
crazy powerful monsters with hisbare hands.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Hawkeye would be lame , because he's just the worst
Legolas.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
He is just the worst Legolas.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Nick Fury would be pretty great.
Like Nick Fury, pulling a Glockon the Balrog is a pretty great
visual.
You shall not pass.
And then just surviving somehowis pretty in character,
honestly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
Oh Well, no, I don't know if you can have a black
character play Gandalf the Grey,because they come back as
Gandalf the White.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
The only way this works is it's called that, but
it's just a theory with adifferent color eye patch.
That's the only way you can dothat right, fair enough, and
that's the joke.
It writes itself, becauseeveryone just calls him Nick
Fury the White and he just has awhite eye patch.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
Thank you for everyone tuning in to this
week's episode of Deep SpaceDragons.
I don't know.
Send us random questions.
I'll send you stuff, probably.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Yeah, well, I mean, if you sign up for Patreon, you
could get one of our Deep SpaceDragons mugs.
I think that's the only merchwe have right now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Our Patreon.
It has made an indeterminateamount of funds over the years.
Really, though, like I wantthem just to raise a check so I
can justify just trying to sendsomeone your spleen in the jar.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
I just think that would be really funny oh, I
still haven't asked whether ornot I get to keep it afterwards
because it's just in a jar andit's just labeled carl's spleen,
like that's the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
I don't even know if we can legally give that away as
merch, like that might likebreak some laws.
I think we have to like giveaway a mug and it just comes
with the mug uh, can you shiporgans in canada?

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
you would think no.
You can only ship medical orbiological materials if they're
not infectious, poisonous orotherwise prohibited under any
applicable legislation or law.
All right, so we're gettingclose to being.
You can only ship medical orbiological materials if they're
not infectious, poisonous orotherwise prohibited under any
applicable legislation or law.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Alright, so we're getting close to being allowed
to do this.
That wasn't as strong of a noas it should have been.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Yeah, well, I mean, that's what Canada Post says,
anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
You know, shipping it through Canada Post is the best
part of this bit.
Like the version where, likeour like top, top tier donator
like comes to a dinner with usand you give it to them in
person like feels feasible, butthey're just opening it in a
crate and their loved onesstaring at the being like we
can't afford rent this month.

(01:18:42):
Bye, bye.
Oh man, ecosize are actuallylike the best afterlife, like
it's actually ridiculous to justbe like.
You died.
Oh, I got hit by a truck in my30s.
What will happen now?

(01:19:03):
Well, do you want to shootlightning from your hands?
Even the one where you're acute spider still lets you shoot
lightning.
Somehow.
It's like, oh, what's this?
I died and went to a worldwhere I can afford a property by
working a 9-to-5 job.
This is amazing.
What do you mean?
There's healing magic and I canjust fix my sore back.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Okay, okay, this looks like the.
Okay, okay, this looks like theCanadian Border Service Agency.