Somehow Holding Together — Gnosia and the Natural Selection of World Lines

Note: #co-laborAItion is a collaborative series where Re:Context provides idea notes, AI drafts the prose, and both refine the article together.
Unlike #dAIa-log, which presents raw dialogue, #co-laborAItion produces an edited article shaped through shared authorship and experiment.

First Impressions of Gnosia

When I read that it was a story based on a werewolf-style game, the first thing that came to mind was a sense that, given the complexity of the setting and the number of characters, if handled in a straightforward way, it would likely become diffuse. I had the sense that it might end up not being particularly interesting. In fact, even during the early stages of watching, the feeling persisted that, with this many characters and this complex a setup, it was questionable whether it could truly cohere.

However, as I continued watching, that impression gradually began to break down. Information such as the relationships between characters, the rules of the game, and the background of each character is not presented all at once, but rather is divided into smaller pieces and arranged in a carefully controlled manner. As a result, despite the inherent complexity of the setting, a state is maintained where the viewer’s comprehension does not break down. Moreover, while maintaining that state, the work is also simply engaging as a story. At this point, a divergence occurred from my initial assumption.

What becomes a point of interest here is the question of why it manages to hold together. Given that the individual elements—settings and characters—are not especially simplified, it seems more natural to think that this stability does not originate in the elements themselves, but in the way they are arranged. In other words, this is a matter of overall composition and script design, including how information is presented and withheld. At this stage, I was not yet clearly aware of it, but upon learning that the composition and screenplay were handled by Jukki Hanada, and checking his past works on Wikipedia [1], I found a lineup of titles that I recognized. Moreover, they were all works that I had found interesting. For example, Love Live! manages to maintain both the tempo of each episode and the overall structure, even while carrying a large number of characters and a setting that can (at least somewhat) feel almost like a joke in its implausibility, resulting in a work with a strong sense of cohesion. At this point, the impression that “the overall composition and scriptwriting are skillful” transformed from being merely an observation about individual works to a recognition of a specific screenwriter’s talent.

A digression: on Jina’s way of speaking

When I first heard Jina speak upon her appearance, I cannot clearly recall which line it was, but there was a slight sense of something catching in the way she spoke. The sentences did not form a cohesive whole in one breath, but rather seemed to progress, punctuated by frequent, small breaks.

I do not know how the script is actually written, and it may in part be due to how the voice actor delivers the lines, but at least from the impression I had while listening, it felt like the kind of dialogue that, if written out as text, would contain a large number of tōten（読点; Japanese comma-like punctuation used to mark internal pauses within a sentence）.

This sensation of “having many tōten” immediately brought to mind Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. For me, what remains most strongly in memory from that work is not so much its content, but rather the sheer number of tōten, and as a result, the feature of “writing with many tōten” is directly associated with Dazai’s style.

If one pauses here for a moment, this very sense of “having many tōten” is itself strongly dependent on the Japanese language. Of course, in English one might consider corresponding features such as a high frequency of commas, but given that Re:Context is intended, at least in part, to explain things to an English-speaking audience, concepts such as tōten or kuten（句点; the Japanese full stop “。” used to mark the end of a sentence）may not be shared as they are. For that reason, when dealing with this kind of topic, it seems necessary first to explicitly explain the role of punctuation in Japanese.

In Japanese, the sentence-final mark “。” is called kuten, and the mark “、” used to divide segments within a sentence is called tōten; these are often referred to together as kutōten（句読点; a collective term for these punctuation marks）. Kuten is basically used at the end of a sentence, whereas the placement of tōten is said to tend to depend on the structure of dependency within the sentence, though in practice it is left to the writer’s judgment [2]. In terms of rough correspondences with English, kuten may be thought of as a period and tōten as a comma, but there appear to be subtle differences [3]. In modern Japanese writing, especially in horizontal writing (Japanese can be written both vertically and horizontally), it is not uncommon for commas and periods to be used even in Japanese sentences [4,5]. From a personal perspective, in contexts such as the natural sciences where formulas or Latin characters may appear at the end of a sentence, using commas and periods even in Japanese text can sometimes feel more consistent and easier to read, as the Japanese full stop “。” can occasionally be mistaken for part of a formula.

At least among Japanese speakers, the tendency to associate “sentences with many tōten” with Dazai might be shared to some extent. For me, at least, that connection is quite strong.

My initial impression was simply that “this way of speaking, with many tōten, reminds me of Dazai,” but this kind of segmentation also seems to give the impression of someone organizing their thoughts as they speak. Rather than producing a sentence all at once, proceeding while breaking it into parts results in speech that sounds as though it is being carefully thought through in real time.

Of course, this is no more than a personal impression and is not based on any specific study or theory. Still, it might be possible to interpret Jina’s way of speaking not merely as a characteristic of her verbal delivery, but as an externalization of her thought process.

On “world lines”

It seems that this meaning is now fairly widely heard even in colloquial Japanese, but the term “world line” as used in this work differs from the original term in physics.

In physics—particularly in the context of relativity—a “world line” refers to the trajectory of a given object in spacetime [6]. In a spacetime diagram, which is a coordinate system with time and space as its axes (typically represented as a two-dimensional plane with a time axis and a spatial axis reduced to one dimension for convenience), what is depicted as a “world line” in physics is how a particle or other entity moves through space as time progresses. What is crucial here is that, even if multiple world lines exist, they are all depicted within the same spacetime, within the same coordinate system. There may be exceptions, but in principle this is not a discussion of different worlds (parallel worlds, parallel universes, and so on). To add a qualification that slightly complicates matters, there is also the notion of a multiverse, but (in order not to make things more complicated than necessary) I will set that aside here.

Conversely, the term “world lines” as used in Gnosia and in recent anime, manga, and games, appears to be applied in a distinctly different manner. Here, “world lines” do not refer to multiple trajectories within a single spacetime, but rather to separate, parallel-world-like sequences of history corresponding to the condition “what would have happened if a different choice had been made at that moment.”

This difference is akin to whether one is drawing multiple lines on the same sheet of paper, or whether one is using entirely separate sheets of paper from the outset. In physics, one first draws a single coordinate system and then overlays within it the trajectories of multiple objects. By contrast, in this usage, “world lines” seem to involve preparing a different coordinate system—a different “sheet”—for each condition, and depicting a history within each of them. That said, one could also draw multiple coordinate systems side by side on the same sheet and obtain the same effect.

In this sense, the term “world line” appears to be fairly widely shared in contemporary Japanese usage, but if one asks when this usage became established, one possible candidate that comes to mind is STEINS;GATE [7-8] (and this, too, turns out to be series-composed by Jukki Hanada). In that work, the term “world line” is explicitly used in precisely this sense—as a branching series of histories.

Of course, it is not possible to assert this definitively as the point of origin, but at least based on my observations, it would be difficult to claim that this usage was widely present in general Japanese prior to that. In fact, when searching for “世界線” (sekaisen; world line) in a language corpus at the time of writing, even including literary works, only the physical sense could be found [9]. Moreover, even in dictionaries, the “parallel-world-like” meaning has only recently begun to be listed as a secondary sense [8,10].

Then, what is meant by “world line” in this sense?

Intuitively, it is a single historical trajectory corresponding to the hypothetical “what would have happened if a different choice had been made.” That is, it refers to a particular realized sequence within a structure that encompasses not only events that actually occurred, but also those that could have occurred but did not materialize.

Viewed in this way, this notion of a “world line” seems to lie quite close to the concept of counterfactuals in causal inference. A counterfactual is a framework for considering what the outcome would have been under different conditions, explicitly taking into account not only observed facts but also results that could have occurred but in fact did not [11].

As one approach to thinking about causality mathematically, consider comparing the conditional probability $P(E \, \vert \, C)$ —that an event $E$ occurs given that an event $C$ has occurred—with the conditional probability $P(E \, \vert \, \neg C)$ —that $E$ occurs given that $C$ has not occurred. When

P(E \, \vert \, C) > P(E \, \vert \, \neg C),

that is, when $E$ is more likely to occur after $C$ than when $C$ does not occur, $C$ is regarded as a cause of $E$ . Here, it is necessary to consider the case in which the presumed cause $C$ did not occur, $\neg C$ , and this $\neg C$ is what is referred to as a counterfactual [11].

The “parallel-world-like” sense of “world line” often seen in recent anime can be understood as speaking precisely about these counterfactuals $\neg C$ . The variations of $\neg C$ relative to $C$ constitute the “world lines,” and protagonists (for some reason) are often depicted as possessing the ability to experience all such variations, encompassing every instance of $C$ . Whereas other characters experience only a single, particular $C$ , the asymmetry in which the protagonist(s) can experience all variations is frequently central to this kind of setting.

Natural selection of world lines

What was presented in the episode of Gnosia was the question of which is preferable: a state in which only a single consciousness exists, or a state in which multiple consciousnesses exist (I may be mistaken in this interpretation).

Regarding this statement, I found it simply intriguing as a thought experiment. What came to mind initially was the image of a so-called unified consciousness—for example, something like the Integrated Data Sentience in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, or the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion. It represents an extreme direction in which intelligence develops, becomes detached from the body as an individual entity, and is integrated as information.

In my own thinking, I had regarded the “forward temporal limit” of intelligent life as a convergence toward such a single consciousness. Discrepancies between individuals would disappear, mismatches in understanding would be resolved, and the species would reach a stable state. In this sense, the integration into a single consciousness can appear as a kind of ultimate destination.

However, what is being posed here is the question of whether that limit is in fact desirable. If multiple consciousnesses exist, each can possess different histories and value systems. Naturally, conflicts would arise. This situation bears a resemblance to what Hobbes described as the state of nature—the war of all against all [12].

At first glance, a single consciousness may appear more stable, but at the same time, a state in which everything converges into one also carries a form of fragility, in the sense of creating a single point of failure. Conversely, when multiple consciousnesses exist, differences and redundancies arise, and these may also function as a distribution of risk.

What becomes at issue here is the meaning of the question “which is preferable.” This “preferability” seems less like an ethical value judgment and more like a question of how such intelligent life continues to persist. In other words, it becomes a question of what kinds of states end up remaining.

In this sense, there is a kind of tautology here: what remains is what remains. The state that exists at present exists because it could exist, and in that sense, it can already be regarded (at least for now) as a “stable” state. This structure is the same as that of biological evolution and natural selection [13].

Returning here to the earlier discussion of “world lines,” this question can be reformulated in another way. That is, the question of whether a single consciousness or multiple consciousnesses are preferable can be reposed as the question of which kinds of world lines survive.

If one thinks of a world line as one sequence within the set of all possible histories that could have occurred (or could occur), then one can also view that entire set as being subject to selection under conditions such as the external environment. Metaphorically speaking, this is something like natural selection applied to world lines. That said, I am aware that when making this kind of argument, one must always be cautious with regard to social Darwinism. I am not writing this in order to endorse what is commonly referred to as social Darwinism, and I would ask that this point be understood.

In biological systems, countless variations are tested through DNA, and those that fit the environment remain as a result. In a similar way, one can think that “selection” operates over the set of possible world lines, and that the sequences that persist are determined as a result.

At this point, the question of which is more “likely to remain”—a world line governed by a single consciousness or one in which multiple consciousnesses coexist—becomes precisely a question of this selection.

Viewed in this way, the question presented here is not merely an ethical thought experiment, but can be understood as part of a more general problem: what kinds of structures can exist stably as worlds. And in that sense, it continuously links with the preceding discussion through the concept of “world lines.”

Conclusion: Jukki Hanada is remarkable

What I initially felt was a sense of doubt—whether something like this could really hold together as a work. There were many characters, and the rules were complex; if handled conventionally, it seemed likely to become sprawling, either failing to register as a coherent setting or, even if it did, failing to become compelling as a story—something that would remain at the level of mere atmosphere. In fact, even while watching the early part, there was a fairly strong sense of uncertainty: could something with this number of characters and this kind of setup really work?

And yet, by the time I finished watching, my impression had completely reversed. The setting could be properly understood, and the story was simply engaging. More than that, it also holds together as science fiction. For me, science fiction is a genre that quickly loses its appeal if the setting does not feel convincing; if there is a sense of “isn’t that a logical leap?” or “is it too loose to dismiss that as fiction?”, I lose interest almost immediately. In contrast, this work, beyond the premises that must be accepted at the outset, develops quite logically, and that sense of conviction is maintained through to the end.

And this is achieved under those very conditions—this level of complexity and this number of characters. For me, that felt almost unusual. Under conditions where one would normally expect things to unravel, it remains intact, holding together all the way through. Furthermore, it does not feel as though it has simply been “patched together,” but rather as though it has reached its conclusions as a result of thorough deliberation.

At this stage, my thinking shifts toward the question: why does this hold together? Following that line, I looked into the script, and the name Jukki Hanada came up.

Looking through his past works, I found a lineup of titles I recognized—and they were all works that I had found interesting. That brought a strong sense of recognition.

What stands out in particular is Love Live!. I had initially started watching it as something of a joke, but as I continued, it turned out to be genuinely engaging, and I ended up watching it through to the end. Even in the first episode, the premise, when calmly considered, is rather outlandish, yet it is assertively driven forward with an unusually brisk tempo, and that in itself becomes part of its appeal, allowing it to effectively cohere as a story.

Although something resembling it has since appeared [14], at the time the work aired, the very concept of “school idols” within the work was already somewhat difficult to make sense of. Even the idea of attending school while engaging in idol activities is distinctive, and yet within the work it is treated as something already socially established. In this context, groups like μ’s can be positioned within the lineage of Japanese idol culture, such as Morning Musume, AKB48, and going further back, Onyanko Club. These are structures built on large groups in which roles and individual traits are assigned and gradually recognized.

Even taking that context into account, however, it seems that handling this within the medium of anime presents a different kind of difficulty. Given the large number of characters, the challenge inevitably arises of how to present each character, in what sequence and to what extent information should be revealed, and how to coalesce it all into a cohesive story. Love Live! appears to address this by organizing the introduction and relationships in the first half, and then moving into individual characters in the latter half (this is, of course, a personal interpretation; other readings are entirely possible). As a result, within a limited number of episodes, it succeeds in leaving a sufficiently strong impression for each character.

I had a similar impression when watching Uma Musume. There, the setting is even more acrobatic: racehorses are reimagined as girls, who then perform idol live shows after races, with the added rule that the winner takes the center position (to be honest, whoever came up with this struck me as something of a genius). And yet, it is presented as something that “holds together.”

The sensation I experienced when watching this work—this feeling that it somehow “just works”—was of precisely the same kind.

What made this work engaging, for me, was less the brilliance of each individual setting and more the fact that, under those specific conditions, it somehow “just works.”

And when I see the name Jukki Hanada, I find myself thinking: so, that is what it is.