The thought came to my mind while watching Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Anyone else annoyed by the lack of the article “the” before “Journey’s”?) that moderns are too desensitized to violence. I can hear some of you thinking sarcastically to yourselves, “Wow, who would have thought of that, Medieval?” But, really, we are! I suppose that my sensitivity towards violence has increased as I have aged, which makes me remark on that fact. Frieren itself is a rather clean anime, so maybe the clash between how civilized everyone is most of the time highlighted the violence for me.
One scene gave me pause: Frieren wins a magical joust against the mazoku Aura over who had more magical power. Through the use of the Scales of Balance which mediated this contest, Frieren gained control over Aura and had her behead herself. The actual moment of decapitation is off-screen, but we see Aura’s face contort with tears as the blade begins to bite into her neck before the fatal moment.
It has been far too long since I rated a season like this. The spring season of anime has only just begun, so I hope that I’m not too late to the party. I stalled in watching Doctor Elise and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. In the case of the latter, I have been trying to catch back up and have reached episode ten. Maybe by the end of the spring season, you’ll hear my thoughts on Frieren and the unique way I decided to watch it. Three anime below have not yet finished their runs, so I will eschew rating as of yet. Five of them will received a rating on a scale of one to five stars. Five stars indicates a masterpiece. Unfortunately, this season included no masterpieces. The most recent anime I gave such high marks to were Dororo, Promare, and Karakuri Circus–all from 2019. So, that means it’s been five years since an anime has risen to that level of perfection for me. Feel free to tell me if you think that there’s something deserving which I have not seen between then and now!
The anime from this season were enjoyable but average. I can only see myself going back to watch four of them again. Other than one slice of life and one science fiction anime, the anime below all fall in the fantasy genre.
1) Bottom Tier Character Tomosaki
Stories where a character has checked out of really living always grab my attention. Tomosaki finds joy in playing a certain video game called Attack Families, in which he ranks #1 in Japan. But, he drifts through school and does not make many friends. However, he learns that the class president, Aoi Hinami, is the #2 player in Japan, and she resolves to teach him how to enjoy living and to put him on the road to being satisfied with life. To this end, she arranges several goals for Tomosaki, which leads to him becoming more active in his school and developing various relationships with his classmates.
This scenario reminds me of the movie, My Fair Lady, which itself is based on a play of George Bernard Shaw titled Pygmalion. However, with Bottom Tier Character Tomosaki, the sexes of the protagonists are reversed such that we have a woman tutoring a man on social etiquette. The characters are all quite likable, despite Aoi Hinami reminding me strongly of Hillary Clinton. Not in regard to espousing political positions, but in her personality type–the type willing to use all available means for success in this world. For me, this serves as a reminder that everyone has some good in them no matter how much this good becomes effaced over time.
Here we are! Twelve years writing about anime and religion. How much things have changed since 2012! The one constant is that I still watch anime. (Fun fact: half of all anime which has ever been made has been aired since 2011.) If I’m good, I should wrap up the anime I’m watching from the current season shortly in order to give you my opinions of them. I’ll just mention here that the show I most looked forward to watching each week was not the much hyped Solo Leveling but Villainess Level 99: I May be the Hidden Boss, but I’m not the Demon Lord. I found the heroine of that anime very charming and comical. May none of you have missed it!
Below is a list of new shows I want to try out from the Spring 2024 season. N.B. I mean try out: this means that each show will be given at least three minutes of my time. So much anime is made these days that it’s not worthwhile to watch an anime which doesn’t grab you from around the start. The only exception is when a friend (or one of my dear readers) tells one that the series is worth at least the standard three episode try. Here’s the list, but feel free to encourage me to give something else a try too:
Here I was hoping to have reached this point a couple of months ago, but I just finished Spriggan moments ago. It is amazing how little delays add up to becoming one great delay. Tomorrow is the twelfth anniversary of this blog, and there will be something to show for it–I guarantee! Meanwhile, permit me to offer some quick takes on six movies plus a bonus TV anime.
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Darkside Blues counts as a decent anime from the pen of Hideyuki Kikuchi, who is more famous for Vampire Hunter D. Vampire Hunter D is the better anime movie for sure–even Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is better. Darkside Blues conveys similar vibes to the other series, but it has a futuristic political conflict between the monopolistic Persona Century Corporation and freedom fighters who wish to live without its control. The main part of the story begins when a gang leader in Kabuki-cho, one of the last areas free of this corporation’s control, saves a freedom fighter from assassination and agrees to become his bodyguard.
Ever want to watch a ninja anime which includes an epic journey to the United States of America where the hero meets Mark Twain before returning to Japan to avenge his murdered family? If that desire has ever filled your heart, studio MADHOUSE has you covered in their epic ninja adventure movie The Dagger of Kamui. The animation is quite dated, and yours truly had the misfortune of sitting through an English dub which could have been produced by him and his friends. (N.B. None of us are actors.) The first half an hour was torture to sit through. And, I asked myself just what I had gotten into, and whether I could really watch the anime until the end.
The last time I did a series of posts like this was back in 2018 when I hit 500 anime. That time I put up a poll to have my dear readers select the anime, but time constraints don’t permit me to accomplish this now. That is to say, I’ll fly over 700 anime when sufficient time has passed to take a proper vote. This will be a series of seven posts on seven movies. The choices below contain movies I wanted to watch when I first became a fan of anime way back in 2003. How time flies! You know that I am a lover of old anime and these films are all pretty old:
The beauty within The Eminence in the Shadow struck me: elegant backgrounds, stylish fights, and gorgeous women are found throughout the anime. I took great pleasure in just looking at the backgrounds and cityscapes, which corresponds to turn of the 20th century Europe. Maybe The Eminence in the Shadow did not require any plot to be enjoyed: just images of photogenic persons traipsing across old cities such as one might find in the parts of Europe not decimated by the Second World War.
The hero, Cid Kagenou, never appealed to me. We human beings are weak, and an overpowered character defies identification. There are other isekai heroes who act as a deus ex machina, but most of them lack the same off-putting personality Cid has. His manner of manipulating events on the sly and dressing like a villain made him seem more like that kind of character. His overweening pride, which never failed to surface while in his true form as the Eminence, counted as another point against him.
The idea came to me to look back on the manga I read last year. My Goodreads reading challenge reveals a rather sporadic manga reading year: I never read more than three volumes in a row of any series. But, let me give a little blurb and a rating on what I did manage to cover. I hope some of the titles below catch your interest.
Annus Domini 2024 looks like it will be a good year for light novels, since I want to increase my Japanese fluency. Testing my fluency through the Japanese Language Proficiency website’s sample tests reveals that I’m solid at the N4 level and hit or miss at the N3 level. So, I made it my new year’s resolution to reach N2, and this will require broadening my vocabulary and exposing myself to higher forms of literature than manga. (I write that, but manga can also get pretty abstruse–particularly if you’re reading a medical drama.) Another of my resolutions will be fulfilled by me writing here and other places. Wish me luck!
1) Manga Dogs #1-2
Here is a humorous manga which reminds one that achieving one’s dreams requires actually putting in the work. Our heroine, Kanna Tezuka, has already debutted with her manga Teach Me, Buddha! As someone in a middle school which offers manga as a course of study, she hopes that she can use this as a venue to work on her own story–only to be vexed by the other members of the class. The drawing style is pretty basic, and the comedy is mildly funny. I picked up these two volumes in order to complete my reading challenge on Goodreads. It proved useful for that reason and as a reminder to keep writing.
The last episode of In/Spectre S2 unveiled a fascinating moral problem. The episode stands outside of the other story arcs, so all the spoilers below only relate to the last episode. Should this article lead you to start watching In/Spectre, you might even forget the plot of this story by the time you get around to it. Wishful thinking–but perhaps the dear reader is like me in caring more about the execution of the plot than in being surprised by it. At any rate, I am eager to discuss what this episode reveals about human nature and what it highlights: the need for a divine Savior.
Two friends meet at an unagi restaurant. Their conversation covers the mysterious and doll-like Kotoko, the unfortunate death of Kajio’s wife, a certain buddha, and points on the preparation of eel. The discussion of Kajio’s wife takes the surprising turn of Jujoji accusing Kajio of being the murder. Jujoji claims that his friend staged a serious of muggings in a certain area prior to the murder in order to throw the police off the scent. When Kajio finally kills his wife, the police assume it to be a mugging gone bad. His wife had been looking to divorce Kajio, and Jujoji deduces that Kajio could not bear the thought of another man having her. Kajio shrugs off the accusation, making Jujoji think that his theory is off-base after all. (He figures that Kajio would have reacted differently if he were trying to avoid detection.) They then finish their meal, and Kajio pays the bill.
I just finished watching Claymore again–this time in the English dub. The voice actors and actresses did a great job. The way they translated “Yowasa ga tsumi” (Weakness is a sin) to “Helplessness is a sin” struck me as an interesting interpretation. Neither one counts as a sin, save to the extent that the yowasa comes about through one’s deliberate neglect. In context, the King of the North, Isley, uses this line to encourage Raki to become a better swordsman.
Weakness in itself is not culpable: our weaknesses and insufficiency ought to bring out others to supply what we lack. Society in the MIddle Ages was divided into those who work, those who fight, and those who pray. The knight’s boast is “I protect all.” The peasant says, “I feed all.” Clerics claim, “I pray for all.” The kind of strength referred to by Isley refers to the warrior class, but human society cannot flourish without work and prayer. Without the farmer, there’s precious little to eat. Without priests and religious, one fears lest the just punishment due to our sins should come upon society all to soon. As Padre Pio said, “The Earth can more easily exist without the sun than the Holy Mass.” Materially speaking, this line is hyperbolic; however, the world is much better for the grace shed upon it by the sacrifice of the Mass.
Watching familiar, old anime is a delight in which far too few fans indulge. These days, everyone talks about a season’s best two or three anime, which will be forgotten three weeks into the next season. We used to have a canon of anime including things like Cowboy Bebop, Berserk, Slayers, Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and other works which everyone who wanted to call himself an enthusiast needed to watch. This list offered the crème de la crème of anime for new fans to enjoy before moving onto less spectacular works which often owed some inspiration to them. We have more anime than we know what to do with these days, but often spend so much time watching average or trashy shows. Quel dommage! One wishes anime fans could unite over a canon of enduring works these days.
An anime sure to make such a list is Claymore (2007), which I rate 9/10. The battles keep you on the edge of your seat, and you feel like no one except the protagonist is safe. The likability of most of the characters makes that last fact even more awful. The animation compares favorably with anime made these days–especially if you’re watching it in high definition, as I am. Having now seen some of the dub, I can confirm that the English voice actors almost perform as well the ones in the Japanese original. (Luci Christian as the psychopathic Ophelia rather impressed me.) The story follows a Claymore (the name for a human genetically modified in order to fight yōma, the monsters in this fantasy world) named Clare in her quest for revenge. This journey brings her in contact with a young man named Raki, who becomes her companion after he loses his brother to a yōma. The very first episode makes the vileness and power of these monsters plain to see!
I have been reading a couple of manga of Nisio Isin: Bakemonogatari and Imperfect Girl. Both were part of a deal on Humble Bundle which I took advantage of. The deal was too good to be true, so I had to snap it up at the time. Two years later, I’ve told myself that I need to finally read these works. I’m glad that the bulk of the bundle consisted of light novels, because the Bakemonogatari manga proved to be too lascivious. Which is to be expected from the illustrator: Oh! great is also responsible for works like Air Gear and Tenjho Tenge. These two works have fanservice galore. Bakemonogatari can’t be accused of going over the top in this manner, but Oh! great plays up those moments where it gets a little sexy for all it’s worth.
The French really love manga and anime, by the way.
The misfortune of spending one’s money unwisely always leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, which can only be alleviated by not having spent much. Buying four volumes of Lady Snowblood by Kazuo Koike recently gave this experience to me. I might have known better if I had payed more attention to the author’s name: Kazuo Koike is also famous for the samurai manga Lone Wolf and Cub. While Koike creates great stories which immerse one into the setting, he also depicts scenes of an inaccrochable nature. If you’re unfamiliar with this French word, let me just say that I don’t want someone reading over my shoulder when something inaccrochable pops up.
I first came across Lady Snowblood in Barnes and Noble. The volume intrigued me with its action, art style, and setting in the Meiji Era. The first show which hooked me into anime was Rurouni Kenshin, which was set during the same time period. Later, when I saw that the volumes of Lady Snowblood were on sale for $5 each on Kindle, the decision for me to snap up these four volumes was easy.
The premise of I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World seems completely fantastical and worthy of its genre, where each series tries a new gimmick to grab viewers’ attention. (The anime has a longer title, but I refuse to write the whole thing out.) But, there is a certain truth in the idea of striving for good things eventually leading to the attainment of good things. This need not even be in the gradual and reasonable manner everyone expects: God makes poor and makes rich. He can accomplish this in an instant: bringing fabulous riches on the poor or cruel poverty on the rich. While everyone wants riches, they are not necessarily good for us. We can always trust God to provide for all of our daily necessities.
Isekai de Cheat Skill begins with our hero being dealt a cruel fate: an unattractive physical appearance leads to his rejection by his family and his peers. Only his grandfather has a soft spot for him. Much to Yuuya’s good fortune, his grandfather leaves Yuuya his house and effects when he passes away. Despite his new wealth, Yuuya’s existence is still barren of friends, and his family, vexed over receiving none of the inheritance, cuts themselves off from him completely. Yuuya reaches a new low after saving a young woman from some thugs. The immediate results of his good deed are him getting beaten and bruised before getting fired from his job for tardiness.
To my reckoning, this story is a little more than a week old. After being dead and buried for four years, the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster was found incorrupt. That is to say, the normal process of decomposition had not set in yet. The coffin had broken, allowing water and mud to enter the casket in the meantime. Though the lining of the coffin had rotted away, neither Sister Wilhelmina’s body nor her habit, which was made of natural fibers, had decomposed. For a woman of her size, the body ought to have been reduced to about twenty pounds. Instead the sisters estimated that it weighed between eighty and ninety pounds. If that’s not miraculous, I don’t know what is!
Watching the first two episodes of Magical Destroyers stood as a unique experience for me because of the clarity with which I saw the wares they tried to sell. The anime displays the Spirit of Revolution as presented by the American Catholic scholar E. Michael Jones in neon lights for all to see. Jones had a front row seat to the eruption of the cultural revolution in the ’60s and has written many books on the topic of moral subversion, such as Libido Dominandi (2nd edition coming soon), Monsters from the Id, and the Degenerate Moderns series. His best book is Logos Rising, which covers humanity’s consciousness of the divine order of the universe from the earliest civilizations up through the rise of philosophy and Christianity. Every educated man worth his salt should read Logos Rising–that’s how excellent a work it is.
So, while I would have felt that Magical Destroyers was morally subversive from the first episode, reading Jones’s works allows me to explain why it is so. The last time an anime to bring about a similar reaction was Concrete Revolutio. The opening song of Concrete Revolutio seemed to project a morally relativistic framework, and I get more than enough of that from reading the news.
The idea for this post comes from looking for a Japanese translation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which our Lord revealed to St. Faustina Kowalska for the conversion of the world. An internet search has turned up empty, so yours truly is left to his own devices. The chaplet requires six different prayers: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Apostles’ Creed, the Trisagion, and two prayers unique to the chaplet. Fortunately for us, the first four prayers already have official translations, and we can simply rely on those. On the other hand, the two prayers unique to the chaplet will require some work on my part.
My hope is that this little effort will be picked up by other people interested in spreading the message of Divine Mercy revealed to St. Faustina and that yet better translations will result from this. The Divine Mercy Chaplet only takes ten minutes to say, and is an excellent way to meditate on the Passion and Death of Our Lord while beseeching his mercy on the whole world.
An anime came out in 2019 called Babylon. I don’t remember Babylon receiving too much discussion at the time. I attempted to watch the first episode, and it did not grab me them for some reason. Am I glad that I decided to give it another shot recently! The plot offers a really philosophical discussion of good and evil but in terms people who lack B.A.’s in philosophy can grasp. I myself felt frustrated for a while that the characters were not able to form good arguments against suicide for most of the anime. That, I’ve come to realize, is actually part of the anime’s charm. It would not be so well done if our hero, the prosecutor Zen, were a Japanese St. Thomas Aquinas.
The root of the problems with the debate on suicide in Babylon lie in no one understanding what man is. They don’t understand what man is, because they do not know what man is for. In order to understand anything, one needs to know the purpose of that thing. No character in the anime appears to realize that man is for God. As the Baltimore Catechism explains it: “God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next.” The fact that God is the Lord of Creation and that Man was created for His Glory means that human beings cannot destroy themselves at will. The time of their demise rests in God’s hands–not theirs. The exceptions to this rule only come in the forms of self-sacrifice: sacrificing oneself to save another person or to avoid sin, e.g. accepting martyrdom rather than renounce God.
Suzume is a good anime movie to watch. Fans of animation are sure to be pleased with it, and even the English voice actors performed well. Suzume fits nicely alongside Makoto Shinkai’s other blockbusters, Your Name and Weathering with You. Some bloggers have said that the movie is lacking in comparison to the other two, but I didn’t think so. The film is quite beautiful and the characters compelling, so I can only reiterate that fans of animation will enjoy it.
Yet, the movie itself did not impress me as much as something which struck me by its absence: fathers. We do get to meet the hero’s, Souta’s, grandfather and the father of Chika, a young girl whom Suzume befriends on her heroine’s journey; but, these have very little screen time and centrality in the plot. Souta’s grandfather gives some vital information to the heroine, entrusts her to the care of a guardian deity, and leaves the story for good. At the same time as fathers make very little impression in the story, family connections form a big part of the story–whether it’s Suzume and her aunt, the various families Suzume encounters, or even the familial duty handed down to Souta.
So, that leaves me the question of why this father shaped hole is here? And, I’d love to hear comments from my dear readers, since I can only speculate. One option lies in Makoto Shinkai in particular lacking a father figure while he grew up. However, my research into the state of fatherhood in Japan leads me to the conclusion that this might be a more general problem. Japanese fathers appear to often play a minor role in the actual upbringing of their children, spending forty-one minutes a day doing housework or childcare on average.
While providing material necessities for their families is one of the primary roles of a father, which might even necessitate long absences from home in particular circumstances, Japanese culture seems to have made it the father’s only role. Japanese companies expect their male employees to be devoted to them both during working hours and even socializing after the end of office hours. This likely leads to many Japanese having a rather distant relationship to their fathers or maybe only getting to know them later in life.
The Japanese government appears to want to change this way of living and allows for both parents to have up to 52 weeks of parental leave, retaining at least 60% of their salaries. However, many men fear their company taking a poor view of them taking advantage of this leave and will often not even be present even at the birth of their children! So, the government is trying to change minds by an ikumen propaganda campaign. Ikumen is formed by combining the words for childcare (ikuji) and hunk (ikemen) and conveys the image of a strong, sexy dad who loves spending time with his young children. You see, they think that the birth rate can be increased if women believe that becoming mothers won’t be the end of their careers because their husbands will take part of the load in childcare. (Many Japanese women quit their jobs after becoming mothers in order to care for their children full time.)
I fully support this idea of a dad able to have a work/family balance, and its success might very well lead to Japanese families having more children. However, it’s not for the reason they state: women developing their own careers instead of being devoted to care of the home always leads to smaller families! The reproductive cost of women has always been higher than that of men, and often means that women must choose between a career or children. The real benefit to having men take more involvement in the care of their children is twofold: 1) the children gain in their education by receiving more formation from their fathers and 2) the fathers themselves will love and value their families more through spending more direct time with them. The latter will likely encourage fathers to have more children, and the former benefit will probably create young men who will want to replicate that kind of family life. At any rate, any change which makes fathers less like cogs in the machine of the Japanese economy will be a good thing. Who wants to be just a cog? If one must be a cog, it should at least serve a good purpose for one’s own life.
But, I have a sense that some of my readers have a better understanding of how Japanese culture works, especially as it relates to fathers working white-collar jobs. Please let me know what you think about this issue in the comments. Also, what did you think of the movie Suzume?
Medieval Otaku 