Pulse (2001)
Haruhiko Katô: Ryosuke Kawashima
Photos
Quotes
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Harue Karasawa : I've always wondered what it was like to die, from when I was really little. I was always alone.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Any parents or family?
Harue Karasawa : Sure, but they're irrelevant.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Right.
Harue Karasawa : That after death, you live happily with everyone over there.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Can we stop talking about this?
Harue Karasawa : But it may be true.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Sure, but...
Harue Karasawa : Then in high school it dawned on me, you might be all alone after death, too.
Ryosuke Kawashima : There's no way to know, how could you know?
Harue Karasawa : The idea was so terrifying, I couldn't even bear it, that nothing changes with death, just right now, forever. Is that what becoming a ghost is about?
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Ryosuke Kawashima : What's this?
Harue Karasawa : That? Something we programmed here. If two dots get too close, they die, but if they get too far apart, they're drawn closer.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Huh... what's it for?
Harue Karasawa : A miniature model of our world... but only the grad student who designed it understands it.
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Ryosuke Kawashima : [reading a book about phantoms] "Everyone dies; therefore, there's no logical reason for ghosts not to exist. How many ghosts have existed since prehistoric times?"
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Ryosuke Kawashima : What have ghosts to do with us? Besides, we're alive.
Harue Karasawa : Then who are they?
[turns on the monitors]
Harue Karasawa : Are they really alive? How are they different from ghosts?
[pause]
Harue Karasawa : In fact, ghosts and people are the same, whether they're dead or alive.
Ryosuke Kawashima : It's not right, it's wrong. They're all crazy! Nobody knows what happens when you die, all this about ghosts, but I won't believe in them, even if I see one.
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Ryosuke Kawashima : [reads an instruction manual] Welcome to the Internet.
[gets on the computer]
Ryosuke Kawashima : "Have fun". Okay, I'll have fun.
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Ryosuke Kawashima : Can a computer dial you up itself?
Yoshizaki : Are you in computer science?
Ryosuke Kawashima : No, economics, no relation.
Yoshizaki : Huh, sounds like a hacker.
Ryosuke Kawashima : A hacker, huh... it said "Do you want to meet a ghost?" Some web site like that.
Yoshizaki : A ghost, huh?
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Harue Karasawa : What got you started on the Internet?
Ryosuke Kawashima : Nothing in particular.
Harue Karasawa : You don't like computers.
Ryosuke Kawashima : Not really.
Harue Karasawa : Wanted to connect with other people?
Ryosuke Kawashima : Maybe, I don't know. Everybody else is into it.
Harue Karasawa : People don't really connect, you know?
Ryosuke Kawashima : What?
Harue Karasawa : Like those dots simulating humans. We all live totally separately. That's how it seems to me.
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Ryosuke Kawashima : Just maybe in 10 years, or at least while we're still alive, they'll invent a drug that prevents death. Then, we could live forever and ever. Of course you might say I'm crazy, but I'd rather bet on *that*.
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Yoshizaki : Through that process, it spread around the world. But now, they're no longer the faint presence they began as. You saw one yourself.
Ryosuke Kawashima : I don't believe your stories.
Yoshizaki : Right, sorry, it's all hypothetical.