Elsa, Mewtwo and Taylor

“Ready for It,” the music video.

Immediate cultural touchstones: Pokémon, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Mother/EarthBound, Final Fantasy VII, Blade Runner.

Taylor plays two sides of the dynamic in sci-fi and cyberpunk archetypes and tropes:

1) Mad scientists, half cyborgs, hackers.

2) Espers (Elsa, Akira), hidden lab experiment (Mewtwo, Akira), full cyborgs (Motoko).

“In the middle of the night, in my dreams…”

The whole video centers around the connection between the half cyborg and her lab rat clone, or enhanced clone – her Mewtwo. They are one and the same, and share moments of vulnerability and awe. However, the mad scientist Taylor is cruel and sadistic, forcing the esper in the box to shapeshift and hurting the esper, causing Mewtwo Taylor to become angry and unleash her lightning telekinetic powers.

“…can be my jailer // Are you ready for it?”

Notice, that the first transformation is to, of course, a weapon, which is what Mewtwo was originally intended to be, with no say in the matter. The transformations are both genetic and biomechanical. The next transformation is where people naturally go after weaponizing something: aesthetics. By the time of the second refrain, the Elsa esper begins to discover the real magnitude of her power for herself, to the joint amazement of both Taylors. However, this does not change the scientist Taylor’s conception of the esper as a mere plaything.

“I see how this is going to go…// So I take my time.”

The archetypal dramatic arc plays itself out, with the Mewtwo/Elsa cyborg finally having enough of this torture and destroying the Dr. Frankenstein and the lab. (The games begin, alright.) The esper is finally free for the first time. She goes up the escalator that she could always see from her lab/dungeon.

The story is basically Akira all over again, with a battle between the kept espers and the wild ones that find freedom (Akira, Tetsuo). Wild vs. captured Pokémon. “Frozen” with cyborgs.

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Crossover fiction (Frozen/Pokémon: Generation 4) has highlighted the commonalities between espers and Pokémon. In the Pokémon universe, esper powers and the spirit world have been embodied solely in Pokémon. However, in a world like Frozen’s or Marvel’s (or Akira’s), super powers or spiritual/magical powers that normally belong to Pokémon (Mewtwo, Gengar, Dialga, Palkia), belong to humans – super heroes and espers.

 

The continuum: in the beginning, esper and spirit powers were exported to Pokémon and other magical races, like elves and dwarves. Elsa, X-Men and other Marvel super heroes, like the Avengers, set in the present and the future, have humans eventually evolving to have Pokémon powers in-house.