NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 17
By Gerdha & Joe7
(first article: here; previous article: here)

ANALYSIS ABOUT NAIDA

NAIDA: THE FIGHT BETWEEN CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS

To understand Naida's behavior in ep25, a premise is necessary. In the Roman Album, Toshio Katsuta states that "experimental" elements have been voluntarily included in this episode and that this approach is then continued in other episodes. And for anyone who knows Go Nagai's works, it is clear that one of the fundamental elements of his poetics is the introspective analysis of the characters and the attention to the inner struggle between the conscious and the subconscious. I'm convinced that ep25 was the first (but not the last ...) explicit attempt to introduce elements of this poetics into Ufo Robot Grendizer.

To understand Naida's personality, it is necessary analyzing her relationship with Duke Fleed. First of all, Naida IS NOT Daisuke/Duke Fleed's cousin (as it is said in FV ¹) nor she is part of Fleed's royal family (as stated in IVSD ²). We have this passage from Dialogue 1 between Gandal and Blacky:

Gandal: Naida from Baron family (...)

Gandal says that Naida was part of the Baron family, and the Japanese phraseology here used ³ indicates that Baron family was a noble Fleedian family, but NOT the Royal Family. Hence, Naida was not related to Duke Fleed (as said in FV).
But that's not all: Gandal says other things, always in that dialogue:

Gandal: (...) Naida and Duke Fleed are childhood friends (...)

Daisuke also speaks about having grown up "as a brother and sister" with Naida, confirming Gandal's words. But, even if at first glance these two dialogues seem to imply a simple bond between Duke Fleed and Naida of long-standing friendship, reading them carefully, they do not define at all what their relationship really was in their youth. Therefore, the link between them must be sought in other sources. In order to understand their relationship, we must also rely on images drawn in the anime. And we see a unique and unprecedented scene in the series: a short kiss between the two characters.

Someone can speculate that childhood friends can kiss each other without any sexual implication, and/or where exactly that kiss was placed (on Naida's forehead? On her lips?). But I am of the opinion that - given the average cost of each cell in ep25, whose development team was composed by the best professionals of the time, who certainly did not work for free - would have been foolish for the authors to insert those few frames without a particular purpose. If it was a chaste friendly kiss, it would have been meaningless inserting it: why wasting time and money to create an insignificant scene? The kiss scene is not in contradiction with Gandal's words: Duke Fleed and Naida knew each other since they were children and grew together, but that moment of physical intimacy is there to show the observant spectators (the scene happens in 17/100 of a second) in what Naida and Duke's relationship had been developed in: at least, they were bound by a strong passion.

This detail introduces a fundamental aspect of ep25's analysis: the visual clues. Is it possible to understand Naida's personality not only through her words, but also through in-depth analysis of the scenes she is involved in?

First of all, it may be only a case, but it's strange that Naida, in Dialogue 3, talks about Sirius after a long silence, as if she was thinking about what to say.

In addition, she talks about the death of her brother without a hint of sadness or sorrow: her face and her eyes are cold and chill. She does not show any emotion. And she will not show any emotion even in front of the cell where a "crazy" Daisuke is locked (see the difference with Hikaru).

Also note that Daisuke in Dialogue 3 (but also in many other occasions) smiles at Naida while she does not smile. In that scene, Daisuke puts a hand on Naida's shoulder; she closes her eyes and bows her head, as if she is even more annoyed with Daisuke's action. It is clear that Naida is not pleased with the presence of Daisuke next to her.

Worse: in the scene of Dialogue 3, while Naida narrates her story, Daisuke grabs Naida's shoulders and turns her around. Notice Naida's annoyance for Daisuke's action: she looks like a woman who feels repelled to be touched by someone who she despises. Naida's annoyance here is no longer simulated, in fact, it seems to show real hate.

Do you think I am exaggerating? Go on, then. Again in Dialogue 3, Daisuke speaks with Naida, trying to look at her face, but she voluntarily avoids doing so. Shortly before, her mouth was bent in a grimace of disgust. She then closes her eyes, refusing also visual contact, causing Daisuke to become angrier, so he shakes her.

In response, Naida accuses Daisuke of hurting her, while she had already provoked him before, with her "refusing" behavior. Here she begins to accuse Daisuke and make him feel guilty. Soon after, Naida follows Daisuke with her eyes, with a mixed expression of sadness and disgust. Then she closes her eyes. In this scene she shows some sadness: in addition to hate feelings for Daisuke, she also seems to be distraught.

At the end of Dialogue 3, the background behind Naida becomes indistinct and red. It cannot be a mistake or an accident. This color traditionally indicates hatred, violence, blood, anger, aggression: it is like an anticipation of Naida's future action when she will almost kill Duke Fleed with an iron bar. The hangar scene is somehow anticipated here.

The negativity of the color is also underlined by the look without mercy that Naida takes towards Duke. Also, look at her position: it is on the side, showing the shoulder and elbow, as if to express a barrier between her and Duke. It is a strong sign of non-communicability, total refusal to create a relationship. At the lake scene, Duke Fleed and Naida exchange a few words without ever being in real communication with each other. During the episode, the dialogues between Daisuke and Naida are always elusive, on two parallel levels, until they eventually cross together in the hangar scene and then distancing again at the end of the story, when Naida is about to commit suicide. Indeed, in Dialogue 8, Duke Fleed and Naida don't exchange directly any word during that last scene. She does not even respond to Duke's supplications for stopping her suicidal action.

It could be said, at first glance, that these images and dialogues appear to be not well-coordinated: but, considering the team that created the episode, which includes Katsuta and Nagai in person, it is not possible that this idea is correct. There must be a more complex explanation, which is surprising only to people who think of Ufo Robot Grendizer as an anime for children.
The explanation can be found by changing perspective, and putting the focus of analysis on the complexity of the human soul. In this way, images and dialogues are harmonized, and all scenes get their correct meaning.

In essence, Naida possessively hates and loves Duke Fleed at the same time. Summing up, my basic theory is that Naida hates Duke Fleed for what happened in the past among them: the reasons are related to her relationship with him on Planet Fleed, the arrival of Rubina and the attack of Vega at their planet. We'll understand it better when we deal with Rubina. Naida's hate feelings have been latent in her subconscious for years, while she tried to ignore or suppress them during her imprisonment on Planet Vega. But repressing a feeling never allows to escape from it. King Vega is aware of her feelings, having been able to observe them directly during Naida's life as a hostage on Planet Vega, so he performs a sort of shock treatment to Naida in order to lower her mental defenses and to allow her hate feelings to surface.

The small instrument in Naida's brain had the purpose to allow that tension to remain alive, so to avoid Naida to deal with it rationally.

But, in hangar, she cannot longer suppress her hate. Naida tells the lie of the Fleedian brains to rouse Duke's sense of guilt. He cannot rationalize her words (Daisuke himself is in an altered state) and he falls into a catatonic state.

Please pay attention to the visual details. It is a cause/effect reaction: Daisuke's mind loses every connection with reality when Naida tells him the history of the Fleedian brains. If you own the OV (Original Version), you can hear a very significant dubbing in that scene. It's really scary. And note that, in Dialogue 6, she adds that "she does not love him anymore". Hate has overlooked the passion. Read:

Naida: (looking up) Even if, up to that day, I have always been affectionate to you, I loved you, now it's all over…

"now it's all over…" she tells this to herself, not to Duke. It's not a theory. Remember her different words in her room, when she remembered her torture suffered on Vega? From Dialogue 5:

Naida: Duke, I loved you, I loved you so much I could not forget you for a second only. Nevertheless…ah!!!

In that moment, Naida was still in conflict with her past love feelings (in fact, she is using the remote past: "I loved you" in the sense of "I loved you in the past and I perhaps still love you now") and her current hatred. Even after Naida's massacre on Daisuke, the hate/love conflict returns to her. Her words, from Dialogue 8, when she runs off the Research Center and goes to the spacecraft before committing suicide, seem to me to be quite significant from this point of view:

Naida: Forgive me, Duke, for having let you suffer! I loved you really!

Naida (to herself): (...) You were our only endless hope.

"I loved you", "you were": all these are verbs in the past, as in Dialogue 5. Naida, essentially, returned to the stage BEFORE hangar massacre.

I'm not even surprised that Naida does not remember anything, the morning after Daisuke's massacre; in fact, this is a typical process of mental removal. After letting explode her "unconscious part" for a moment, the "conscious part" takes over and everything seems normal again. Removing the Veghian "stimulant" device allows perfectly this process.
Note the visual details of the scene in the infirmary. Dr. Umon does not understand the exact function of the device, as he ignores Naida's psychological background. But she seems indeed to understand what happened, even if she does not remember it: she is surprised to have struck Duke Fleed, but she does not deny this possibility, she does not think it is impossible.

She is not bewildered by her actions, nor repented, not even in the scene where she is with Hikaru in front of a "crazy" Daisuke. She never sheds a tear, she does not excuse herself. In front of Hikaru's words which anticipate Dr. Umon's decision to try on Daisuke a very dangerous procedure such as an electroshock, Naida shows no concern for him. Daisuke might die or be permanently disabled, and the problem does not seem to concern her at all. It is, from a psychological point of view, a seriously anaffective personality, drawn in the anime with an extraordinary precision.

It is now possible to understand better Dialogue 8, Naida's silent speech aboard the spaceship before her suicide, which seems to show her dark personality, quite separate from reality.

Naida (to herself): I'm sorry Duke. You were the only one able to take revenge of our humiliation and our anger for the downfall Planet Fleed. You were our only endles hope. Forgive me for having taken an action which could annihilate it. (Naida activates one of the protonic bombs which are onboard of her saucer). If you could succeed in escaping with the opportunity I am going to create, run away! And one day, the Vega Empire... ⁴ (the sentence remains interrupted) If it is for this, if it is for this, for me it's not a pity to lose my life. Now I'm arriving, Vega Allied Forces!

In this odd monologue, Naida suggests Duke to run away from Earth ("run away!"), without realizing that Daisuke had been there and he had never run away because he wanted to protect the Earth. And, in fact, Naida here shows that she is detached from reality and she has never understood Duke's personality: she had thought that his purpose was like her own, i. e. the pure and simple revenge against Vega, not the salvation of the Earth, which,on the contrary, is Daisuke's main objective. If Naida wants to kill the Veghians and revenge herself (just read her words: "You were the only one able to take revenge of our humiliation and our anger for the downfall Planet Fleed." , Daisuke wants to protect Earth. These are two opposite way of thinking. Besides, from a strictly psychological point of view, ignoring completely the most authentic part of someone's personality prevents anybody from loving someone else in the deepest meaning.

But there is still one thing to look at about Naida's personality. We previously demonstrated Naida's lies about Fleedian brains. This proves that Veghians could not control her: she still had her will, she was not conditioned by King Vega in the hangar scene. Then, why Naida lies? Given the above, there is no other explanation: because of hatred towards Duke Fleed. A very strong hate, which led her to hurt Duke Fleed on what she knew to be the dearest things to him (his planet, his inhabitants and his responsibility as a Prince).

And, looking at the visual aspects of the hangar scene, especially about how Naida is drawn when she tells to Duke Fleed the story of Fleedian brains, I can get a further confirmation that she REALLY HATES, and DEFINITELY, Duke Fleed. Her hair, her eyes, her expression...she looks gratified by her own words, she seems almost to foretaste the effect of her speech on Duke Fleed. Observe the images from Dialogue 6:

Naida: (...) Besides, you are going also to cancel the only possibility of surviving which has been given us in desperation! That monster-saucer ⁵ you destroyed full of confidence some days ago was a Fleed inhabitant, do you know this? The brains of Planet Fleed inhabitants are used for the monster-saucers, you know? ⁶ They are brains whose conscience has been annihilated and has been inseminated with fidelity to Planet Vega inhabitants!

Maybe it's the scariest image I have ever seen in an anime. Her hatred for that man is so strong that hurts, you can feel it like getting on you from the screen, it's terrible.

Shingo Araki has drawn a masterpiece in the anime history. Anyone who owns the cells of that scene is lucky.

And the next scene is a further confirmation. Once she has told the story of the Fleedian brains, the voice of King Vega is heard as if it comes from the receiving apparatus installed in Naida's brain. From Dialogue 6:

King Vega: Go, Naida! Transform yourself in the flame of hate, and take Duke Fleed's life!

When Naida "feels" inside her King Vega reminding her that she should kill Duke Fleed...it is her subconscious, in reality, who claims to ultimately win her inner drama between "love" and hate. So, she also changes her physical appearance and she becomes a demon. Of course, this is a symbolic image: the authors wanted to emphasize that her soul was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of hatred for Duke Fleed. Her weak rationality was completely overwhelmed.

Her consequent action (taking a bar and striking Daisuke with violence) is, in my opinion, the definitive expression and the conclusion of an internal psychological state of repressed feelings that come to the surface.

One might wonder why, in the case of Naida, there was no Kaori scenario as in ep16. Since Naida continuously professes throughout all ep25 her love for Duke Fleed, she should be in the same situation like Kaori, so she could not hurt physically the object of her love. But, with a careful examination, one must admit that the situation in ep25 is completely different from ep16. From a strictly psychological point of view, Naida's love is not real love. Naida has a possessive attitude toward Daisuke. Throughout the episode, she does nothing more than repeating herself in a maniacal way, "I love Duke Fleed".

It is the symptom of a serious possessive syndrome: it has nothing to do with real love, as a positive and relational feeling with the partner. I don't think that this mental attitude is the result of the imprisonment: it is the degeneration of a previous attitude. If so, we can assume that Naida has never really loved Duke Fleed, not even on Fleed.

In any case, Naida hates Duke Fleed for an autonomous action of her spirit, without conditioning. She really believes that he had abandoned Fleed inhabitants in Vega's hands and judges him responsible for the deaths that, in any way and for whatever cause, followed his departure, with the phrase "My brother has been killed by a traitor."

But this is a too weak reason to justify the kind of hatred and violence Naida shows in ep25: it cannot be enough. There must also be some other motivation to support her hatred, and something very personal. WHY Naida hates Duke Fleed? What is the TRUE reason for her hatred? I believe that this motivation is not understandable only in ep25: you can understand the true background only at the end of ep72. Naida never forgave him for having consented to the marriage with Rubina and for being not only put aside, but also abandoned to her destiny (it does not matter to her that Duke Fleed believed she was really dead).

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¹ FV: French Version
² IV SD: Italian Version Storic Dubbing (1978)
³ the Japanese phraseology here used: transcription romaji: “Furiidosei de horyonishita Baronke no Naida ga notteita hazudaga dousita?”
⁴ "the Vega Empire...": “Kyousei” in the original. It is referred to as the object of the sentence, not as a subject. But Naida will never complete that sentence.
⁵ "monster-saucer": “Enbanju” in the original.
⁶ "The brains of Planet Fleed inhabitants are used for the monster-saucers, you know?": “Enbanju niha Fleed seijinno nouga tsukawarete irunoyo!” in the original.


(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 10/3/2020, 12:24