I shoot you for confusing the hell out of me. The only proper Cyberpunk response.
Edit: and then loot you for organs and 'ware!
On the topic:
In Cyberpunk, once you're dead... you're dead
As said, unless they created something to save the brain between 2020 and 2077, or maybe some experimentation in a lab, the usual Trauma Team can't revive you if your brain is too damaged, and since the brain-death comes after 6mn, don't count on resurection. (even if your character is called Jesus Christ, that'll not help lol).
Anyway, even if it would exist, it would be only for the Corporate, like in the movie Elysium, so your character shouldn't be allowed to use it (since you have to be dead to use it, and corpses don't pay.)
Personally, even if i like some cyberpunk anime, i feel more connected with the "US Cyberpunk", just because almost everyone lives in the "american way of life", even in europe, we share the same food, same corporations (apple, coca cola, mc donald, KFC, etc...), we lives in close culture (even if every-country has it's own culture, the american capitalism has spread the US culture worldwide, even in poor country like Etiopia, they drinks Coke (coca cola) and smokes Malboro. That's the point of the US Cyberpunk, even there the Japan are shown like "capitalists yakuza" ready to kill anyone on their path (well, that's the truth, during the tsunami, japanese governement said "no thanks" to the international rescue teams, and instead of turning down their nuclear reactor, they kept it on to earn a few more Yens.).
That's how the world is Depicted in the US Cyberpunk, just add to it some urban culture, drug, violence, cybernetics and the everyday life of the real everyday "nobody".
Japanese Cyberpunk is stylish, has deep story, interesting tweak, but in the end they totaly miss the political point of view, yes there are a few sequences like in Akira, but i've only seen once a bunch of poor in Ghost in the shell -The eleven individuals... and guess what? they weren't poor! they were just some cyber-bolsheviks. That said, the story is still good, but it doesn't connect with our world, or our culture.
Japan is a real closed-minded country, they don't want other country's culture, but they are really happy to sell their.
They barely depict any social-class war, or whatever, and nothing about the politics or the culture of their own country.
I like both Us and Japanese cyberpunk, but i find the American cyberpunk much more interesting, it connects better with everyone's life, where the japanese cyberpunk talk to the japanese at first.
In Cyberpunk, once you're dead... you're dead
As said, unless they created something to save the brain between 2020 and 2077, or maybe some experimentation in a lab, the usual Trauma Team can't revive you if your brain is too damaged, and since the brain-death comes after 6mn, don't count on resurection. (even if your character is called Jesus Christ, that'll not help lol).
Anyway, even if it would exist, it would be only for the Corporate, like in the movie Elysium, so your character shouldn't be allowed to use it (since you have to be dead to use it, and corpses don't pay.)
Well, the point is that there is a HUGE mindset difference between japanese & american view of cyberpunk.
Personally, even if i like some cyberpunk anime, i feel more connected with the "US Cyberpunk", just because almost everyone lives in the "american way of life", even in europe, we share the same food, same corporations (apple, coca cola, mc donald, KFC, etc...), we lives in close culture (even if every-country has it's own culture, the american capitalism has spread the US culture worldwide, even in poor country like Etiopia, they drinks Coke (coca cola) and smokes Malboro. That's the point of the US Cyberpunk, even there the Japan are shown like "capitalists yakuza" ready to kill anyone on their path (well, that's the truth, during the tsunami, japanese governement said "no thanks" to the international rescue teams, and instead of turning down their nuclear reactor, they kept it on to earn a few more Yens.).
That's how the world is Depicted in the US Cyberpunk, just add to it some urban culture, drug, violence, cybernetics and the everyday life of the real everyday "nobody".
Japanese Cyberpunk is stylish, has deep story, interesting tweak, but in the end they totaly miss the political point of view, yes there are a few sequences like in Akira, but i've only seen once a bunch of poor in Ghost in the shell -The eleven individuals... and guess what? they weren't poor! they were just some cyber-bolsheviks. That said, the story is still good, but it doesn't connect with our world, or our culture.
Japan is a real closed-minded country, they don't want other country's culture, but they are really happy to sell their.
They barely depict any social-class war, or whatever, and nothing about the politics or the culture of their own country.
I like both Us and Japanese cyberpunk, but i find the American cyberpunk much more interesting, it connects better with everyone's life, where the japanese cyberpunk talk to the japanese at first.
It is saldy true what you say about the Japanese not wanting stories about what's wrong with their country, although their light touch on politics might be for the better in some senses: it isn't there to stroke anyone's ego with things like "Left wing is the cool thing to say" or "Look at Batman, Frank Miller made him fascist-cool". It's so broad that it becomes ultimately more universal, and it sometimes lends itself well to overthinking, like "why did the Minister of Domestic Issues stay in the Kayabuki Cabinet?", well, maybe he's "a man of regime, someone that would administrate and hold power no matter what the trend is", every country has loads of those. I think manga-anime itself may have lost a lot of that energy that it had with all those directors and authors like Oshii or Miyazaki that were so militant at least in their youth. Modern manga-anime feels way more "feel good" (or, the stark opposite, super disturbing). I know talking politics tends to be banned from forums and family dinner tables for a reason, but still, it's an important part of the lives of everyone and it shouldn't be such a taboo to treat in any form of art.
It's kind of unclear if we're comparing cyberpunk manganime against american cyberpunk THE GENRE or against cyberpunk 2020. I think it's the first case, though. It would make more sense. Well, again we have to be careful with what mainstream media like cinema or tv may be doing with the label cyberpunk. Is what they do really that political, that incendiary?
And talking about Immortality in cyberpunk and now also about cinema I think I'll tell you my gripes on the movie "In Time" in which I think it wasn't dealt with all that well. When I saw the trailers for the movie I instantly knew what questions I wanted the movie to answer for me when I get to watch it.... then the movie failed at answering them. Okay, so in the movie the idiomatic expression "time is money" is truer than ever: people have these implanted led wristwatches that tell them how much time do they have to live, taking into account that this time can also be used as the main kind of currency (and so it can be earned the same way we earn wages, or won the same way we win the lottery). The way I saw it, there were only two ways this plot device could have worked.
1. The wristwatches do indeed transfer whatever the body needs to sustain itself as immortal. Taking banking and economics out of the equation... isn't it kind of easy to steal whatever this is from others? Banks are made of glass and they have these devices used for payments, but muggers didn't need anything like that... and it borders on fantasy.
2. (My favourite) Everyone is now immortal thanks to gene therapy, but we still need people to work so that our society can exist, so we make "time to live" into currency so that: the rich will change their wealth into this new currency, allowing them to make use of their practical immortality or use it as they please; and the poor will have to work in fear they might run out of time. So what gives? Why can't everyone make use of his/her immortality if thanks to gene therapy everyone already has it? Maybe the answer is limited resources and/or the need of a working class to do the work. And maybe the wealthy and powerful think the "lazy" working class need an incentive to work -death- or they think that a "lazy" unemployed is a waste of resources and should be terminated before it drains these resources in his or her immortal life.
The problem is the movie failed to answer any of these questions that I found of capital importance for earning it a good rating from me. It instead preferred to lose itself in badass quotes like "A lot of people have to die so that a few can be immortal" (which would be wrong by my theories... and arguably by the movie's own logic?) and "Immortal this... immortal that".
I was talking about US Cyberpunk in it's globality.
And yes, politics is a burning subject, but if handled correctly, it can be a really good weapon to make people thinks (and, that's probably why there's more stupid movie without any reflexion nowadays.... in a crisis, you don't need people to think.), but i think it add weight to the story, makes it less bland and connect it better with our own world.
Like in the books World War Z, the author talks about the start of the virus, and how pharmaceutical corporation tries to sell a "placebo cure" against the zombie virus "If he's biten, he dies, if he thinks he's got bitten and survive... we're rich!!!"
And a few year latter, during the Bird Flu psychosis, our REAL pharmaceutical corporations has done exactly the same thing:
outselling a lot of unworking cure for an inexistent virus, just to earn $ over people psychosis.
I found it quite funny how the author nailed the mindset of those pharmaceutical sharks.
This is the kind of "political view" i like to see, not just "being leftist is cool" or "come on, be liberal!", but a real and mature point of view over our world, because nothing is all white or all black down here.
And as said, i don't remember seing those kind of stuff with the Japanese cyberpunk, maybe a few hint here and there but not "at the core" as is it in the Us cyberpunk usualy.
The WWZ and the Birdflu examples are all based on the old 'snake oil' principles. It's an old, old routine.