Hi GLT/ShimSim subreddits, this post forms my observations on Ch 44 of Shimeji Simulation. For context, if you refer to my profile, I have done a previous "treatise" 2 years ago on how Shimeji Simulation connects with GLT, and how Sis, Yomikawa and the Gardener are just personifications of programs within the Simulation (a virus, a data retrieval program/database and a debugging program respectively).
Missed this panel my first time round (oops).
Now, I come with enhanced reading and writing skills and a limited re-analysis of the series to bring you an analysis on this critical chapter.
Ch. 44: "Reality" is a Simulation
This is the most important chapter on the reality of Shimeji Simulation. Yomikawa repeatedly emphasises that Shimeji's reality is a simulation. She then demonstrates this by turning her story from a comic into a written story, and evoking physically impossible imagery that can only be evoked through written text:
A crow can only be either black or white. However, the crow that is described in the story is both black and white. Furthermore, Girls' Last Tour demonstrates the existence of a reality that is bound by traditional limitations of reality (i.e that a crow that exists must be either black or white, not at the same time).
Therefore, if we accept that these two series are within the same universe, which I firmly believe, and assuming GLT does not take place within the Simulation, it must be the case that Shimeji exists within another plane of reality, given that she has the ability to perceive a black and white crow, and have her body become extremely long and narrow. These are feats that are physically impossible in the GLT world, which is presumably on the same set of physics as our world.
This does not make it a non-reality, however; within the Simulation, it is just the rule in the Simulation that creating or changing reality is as simple as writing it down in text. In fact, any one of us can manage such a feat by simply picking up a pen and writing a story. What makes Yomikawa special is that she is a self-inserted co-author of her own story
However, in the next few komas, Sis potentially demonstrates that the Simulation is nothing more than just a fake reality (or is it? (see Yomikawa's philosophy after this to find out))
Sis' Philosophy; The World of Material and Materiality
Sis goes on to disrupt the setting with two actions. Firstly, she refers to the fishes' explosion of meaning from the sentences that form the heavens and earth (i'm just as clueless as you). Secondly, she glares at Yomikawa with a notebook containing a language that is incomprehensible, even to Yomikawa.
If we accept the conception of Yomikawa's assertion that humans are living in stories, and that she has complete control over the form of its contents, then how is it that Sis can create figures beyond her comprehension? If she, as a database of knowledge of all literature within the Simulation, comes across something incomprehensible that Sis creates, wouldn't this suggest that either Sis or the language created is beyond the scope of the Simulation itself?
We come to the conclusion of this short theory by analysing the two possible answers to this question.
Note: its late here as of writing, will touch up upon feedback/ideas
Option 1: Sis' existence proves that humans are not just living in stories, or that at least the Simulation itself is unravelling due to her actions
These three panels, along with some other material in my previous post that I do not have the time to reference now, suggest that
- On a meta level, Sis' is an anomaly, namely a virus that is unravelling the Simulation
- Humans do not live in stories, with Sis as an example of a person that has the power to exceed the constraints of the Simulation through the effect of her consciousness on physical change
However, from evidence in Ch 36 suggesting her recognition of the limited computing power of the Simulation only permitting her to alter the efficiency of the Simulation, the second theory here becomes suspect. We thus move on to the conception of the story that leans in favour of Yomikawa.
Yomikawa's Philosophy: They never left the Simulation
Of course, the other plausible theory is one of entrenchment; our heroes never break free from the Simulation, or on the meta level, the story, since they, as fictional humans, continue to live inside the stories that they will act out in accordance with their character and characteristics.
Even if they somehow manage to corrupt and break out of the Fusiform, they will spend the rest of their existence limited to the pages of the book, always subject to the pages of the book and the control of the co-authors such as God (tsukumizu) and Yomikawa.
Note: I stop here for the night