Earthlings

The final chapter orchestrates the complete breakdown of any connection between the protagonists and the society they call the Factory. The initial interrogations by Natsuki and Tomoya’s families represent the apex of The Destructive Nature of Societal Conformity, where social pressure reveals itself as a coercive, carceral force. Tomoya’s physical beating and shorn hair serve as a visual testament to the Factory’s punitive violence, revealing his true status, to them, of a prisoner. Natsuki’s family employs psychological tactics, with her sister, Kise, wielding Natsuki’s past trauma as a weapon of coercion. Kise’s confrontation is not an act of empathy but a threat, leveraging Natsuki’s presumed guilt in Mr. Igasaki’s murder to enforce conformity. Her declaration that “Everyone. The whole planet” will not allow Natsuki to escape her prescribed role encapsulates the monolithic nature of the Factory’s power (199). This assault provides the final impetus for their total secession from the human world—the Factory’s methods are so dehumanizing that Natsuki, Tomoya, and Yuu feel there is no alternative but to physically and psychologically escape.

In response to the Factory’s ultimatum, the characters engage in a systematic inversion of the social structures that oppress them. This process begins with the “divorce ceremony,” a ritual that dismantles the institution of marriage—the primary tool of the Baby Factory. By performing this for all three of them, they sever all Earthling contracts and reimagine their relationships outside of societal frameworks. This act marks a pivotal moment in the novel’s project of Deconstructing the Logic of Human Norms. Upon their return to Akishina, this deconstruction accelerates into a programmatic “training” to become true Popinpobopians. This training involves viewing all aspects of life—survival, sleep, hygiene, and sexuality—through a lens of pure rationality, stripped of the moral codes imposed by the Factory. Their discussions about procreation exemplify this shift; they analyze breeding as a potential experiment for gathering useful data before ultimately rejecting it as an irrational burden. This clinical approach to the systematic dismantling of the Factory worldview demonstrates a complete substitution of one logic system for another.

The theme of Survival as an Act of Radical Rebellion reaches its horrific yet logical conclusion in the chapter’s climax. The arrival of Mr. Igasaki’s parents, orchestrated by Kise, represents the physical manifestation of Natsuki’s unresolved trauma. The trio’s reaction—brutal, efficient murder—is the ultimate fulfillment of their childhood pledge to “[s]urvive, whatever it takes” (91). The narrative deliberately frames this violence not as a crime of passion but as an act of self-preservation. The dispassionate description of the struggle, focusing on the mechanics of killing, aligns with their newly established Popinpobopian logic. This rebellion extends beyond murder into the ultimate human taboo: cannibalism. The decision to butcher and eat the corpses is presented as a pragmatic solution to starvation. By consuming their attackers, the characters perform a final, irreversible act of severing themselves from humanity. They transform the source of their persecution into literal sustenance, symbolically ingesting and neutralizing the Factory’s power.

The novel’s central symbols and motifs converge in this chapter to articulate the characters’ final transformation. Akishina, once a space of childhood sanctuary, completes its metamorphosis into a self-contained alien world—a “spaceship” isolated by landslides, where the laws of Earth no longer apply. The symbol of Piyyut also undergoes a crucial final transformation. Reconstructed from a mass of human hair, the hedgehog now physically incorporates the world from which they have escaped. This remaking signifies that their new Popinpobopian identity is not an erasure of their past but is forged from the repurposing of their human trauma. In addition, their cannibalism functions as a mechanism for Natsuki’s healing. Her loss of taste and hearing, psychosomatic symptoms of her trauma, which she refers to as “broken,” are cured upon consuming human flesh. The act of eating her persecutors—and later, tasting her companions—restores her senses, suggesting that only by internalizing the source of her pain can she reclaim her body and become whole.

The author’s narrative craft is instrumental in illustrating the origins and manifestation of the trio’s perspective without the buffer of conventional moral judgment. The narrative voice remains placid and clinical throughout the chapter’s horrific events. The preparation of the corpses is described with the language of detached culinary instruction. This detached prose compels an unsettling proximity to the characters’ worldview, where their actions appear logical within their established framework. The novel’s closing scene is the apotheosis of this technique. The rescue party, representing the Factory, reacts with predictable horror, their visceral disgust juxtaposed with the trio’s serene self-identification as aliens. Tomoya’s triumphant declaration, “The three of us are pregnant” (246), grotesquely reframes their swollen bellies—a result of their cannibalistic feast—as an act of procreation, the ultimate goal of the Factory, now achieved through the ultimate act of rebellion against it. By ending on this image of horrific, self-actualized otherness, the narrative completes its critique of society, othering, and what it means to be human.