Trilogy (NTAE, Add violence, Bad Witch) playing order/theories

[Max]

I just finished reading the novel 1Q84. Has anyone read this? It’s incredible.

The trilogy goes with it PERFECTLY. I don’t imagine Trent has read it, I don’t think the two have anything to do with each other, but man the similarities in theme and subject matter to the trilogy coincide quite well.

1Q84 is a surreal story. It feels real but has characters questioning their own grip on reality based on strange and sometimes disturbing events. There is murder, there are dark forces coming for characters who are trying to survive and find each other. Loneliness, isolation, the end of the world.

If 1Q84 was ever made into a movie, they could just have the Trilogy be it’s soundtrack and call it a day.

Has anyone else read this book and see how well they fit together?

[StockAvuryah]

I just finished reading the novel 1Q84. Has anyone read this? It’s incredible.

The trilogy goes with it PERFECTLY. I don’t imagine Trent has read it, I don’t think the two have anything to do with each other, but man the similarities in theme and subject matter to the trilogy coincide quite well.

1Q84 is a surreal story. It feels real but has characters questioning their own grip on reality based on strange and sometimes disturbing events. There is murder, there are dark forces coming for characters who are trying to survive and find each other. Loneliness, isolation, the end of the world.

If 1Q84 was ever made into a movie, they could just have the Trilogy be it’s soundtrack and call it a day.

Has anyone else read this book and see how well they fit together?

I did read the first one 6 months ago ! But didn't make any connection between the two. I should continue. Thanks for the reminder, I'll report back.

[Max]

I did read the first one 6 months ago ! But didn't make any connection between the two. I should continue. Thanks for the reminder, I'll report back.

I want to reiterate that I don't believe that Trent was inspired by the book, only that there are a LOT of points of connection.

Here are a few that I can think of right off the bat (Spoilers)-

Both are concerned with "Not The Actual Events". The idea that we are living in a reality that isn't quite right. Maybe it isn't even happening. There is a sense of "is this character mentally ill or has the world around them really gone surreal?" I can't seem to wake up. I know you saw it too. Feels like I've been here before. I don't know anymore. I'm locked inside here, have to stay... everything is getting unfamiliar now. None of this is happening. It folds itself in two (the two moons). Behind the background world is always leading through.

There are characters in 1Q84 who have a shadow version of themselves, like Fuka-Eri. Many characters have a feeling of being divided. This is like the two voices in Dear World, just go back to the idea of me, maybe that was somebody else, maybe I was somebody else, i think there's something just wrong with me

There is a sense of isolation in 1Q84. Tengo, Aomame, and Ushikawa are all profoundly alone. You left me here. Everyone seems to be asleep. It gets so lonely in here.

Surreal, sometimes horrific imagery. Murder. Branches and bones. Spiders crawling everywhere infected Japanese. She's gone. Longing for someone, like She's Gone Away and This Isn't The Place.

I know what's coming. I feel it reaching through. There is this sense of impending doom. The Little People and the dark forces at work in 1Q84, the coming of the kingdom in that book. The idea that they are heading for something terrible and some supernatural forces are intervening and shaping and guiding things. Welcomed oblivion.

Not anymore could be the song that plays when Tamaru finally gets ahold of Ushikawa. The bag over the head. the suddenness of thinking you had a future but finding yourself bound up and screaming.

The idea that Aomame can't get out of 1Q84. You can't understand what they've planned until you try to leave.

Themes of memory permeate both the book and the trilogy. Time itself is messed with. Tengo and Aomame keep bouncing around in time to when they were younger. I'm going back. Of course I am. As if I ever had a choice. I've slipped out of time leaving all of you behind. This keeps happening, over and over again. Characters listening to the same piece of music, or holding hands again after many years, or similar fates happening to different people - as though the same mind is trying to understand the events by reliving them over and over.

the lovers, the sex that Aomame and Tengo and other characters use to fill the void.

This isn't the place could be the lost of Aomame's two close friends, or her and Tengo longing for each other.

Shit mirror - there are several scenes where Aomame is standing in front of a mirror trying to understand what she sees, the changes inside.

God Break Down the door- there is always this idea that the kingdom is coming, with these cults and the characters like Aomame who are thinking that the end is coming. The second ominous moon and the little people. But there aren't any answers here.


I haven't heard a thing that leads me to believe that Trent was in any way influenced by this book, that he has ever even read it. I doubt he has. But man, if I found out he did, i oddly feel like, "this all makes so much sense".

I think the truth is that these are universal emotions and stories, and that by using a similar device - the idea of questioning reality, a simulation or alternate reality, it creates a lt of creepy, mysterious, sad, shocking feelings that harmonize the two. Haruki Murakami is a contemporary of Trent Reznor, both are living in the same world, seeing the same things, swimming in the same ocean, and I suppose we should not be surprised if there are many points of connection.