Magical Destroyers’ Spirit of Revolution

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.

To begin with, we need to draw a distinction between revolution and rebellion. In many of my readers minds, these are no doubt synonyms, because they bring about similar conditions of violence. Rebellion derives from the Latin verb rebellare, which literally means “to bring back to war.” One imagines a state of nature where each man seeks his own good at the expense of another. This situation is intolerable, so governments are established in order to maintain peace between neighbors. A rebellion occurs when the rulers act as though they are above the law and the ruled seek to restore the order of justice by taking up arms. Of course, the rulers will claim that the ruled are the ones responsible for bringing society back to a state of war. May history treat both sides justly!

In my mind, revolution is connected to the Latin term for it: res novae or “new things” in English. Revolutions occur when a faction hopes to create a new social or moral order. The First Barons’ War of 1215 – 1217 which led to the Magna Charta and the Rising of the North of 1569 count as rebellions pure and simple. The American Revolution has features of both rebellion (fighting for their rights as Englishmen) and revolution (the American Experiment in self-government). The French and Marxist revolutions may be termed revolutions pure and simple since they destroyed the old order in order to usher in a new one.

The sort of revolution we see in Magical Destroyers is of the darkest kind, targeting not only a specific social order but even the moral order itself. The flag of the Otaku Revolutionaries flaunts the red and black colors of anarchists. (To be precise, red and black refers to Anarchic-communists. Black refers to anarchists in general.) The red on the flag comes in the form of an upside-down cross with “otaku” written vertically and horizontally upon it. So, our protagonists reject the moral order symbolized by Christ, the Logos of the Universe, and place “your house” (The original meaning of オタク. Now, it tends to refer to people with a consuming–often unhealthy–interest in anime or video games) at the center of the universe instead of God. The revolutionary leaders all talk about their main goal being to do as they like. Their leader is assisted by three magical girls named Blue, Pink, and Anarchy, who represent Sex, Drugs, and License/Passion: the very essence of modern revolution. The leader appears to have no ties to family, faith, or country–the ideal post-modern citizen.

Judging by the otaku obsession with 2D girls and games, doing what one likes seems to devolve into their lust for fantasy romance and play. Far be it from me to condemn enjoying romantic or fantasy stories and video games, but obsession with these things degrades living into a life of play. A life of play, as Theodore Roosevelt tells us, is the most miserable of existences. Not only that, luxuriating in play does not develop civilization. The first two episodes don’t delve into the government’s motives for confiscating otaku paraphernalia and corralling otaku for re-education (Being “protected” is the government’s preferred euphemism for this action), but excess indulgence detracting from rational living seems as good a cause as any.

Yet, the lack of an explanation for the government’s actions does fit a certain paradigm: people allowing their passions to run amuck in society calls out for raw government power to stop the vices from getting out of hand. The French Revolution produced Robespierre, and the Russian Revolution Stalin. The rule of a Robespierre or a a Stalin is necessary to stop society from disintegrating. Though evil and brutal, the rule of the Leviathan is better than chaos. If only people had cleaved to reason, then they could have avoided the advent of arbitrary power.

At this point, we need to ask what a reasonable life is compared to an unreasonable one? A reasonable life looks at what man is: a rational and social animal with an inclination for the transcendent. Man naturally desires to know, to experience friendship, and to live in union with God. The opposite of a rational life is one based on the passions and delineated by the Capital Sins: pride, envy, anger, lust, sloth, greed, and gluttony. Pleasure is supposed to be a kind of guide pointing to things our nature desires, but reason moderates how we enjoy them. Sexual pleasure points to marriage. Desire for rest, tasty food and good drink point to health. Pleasure is not supposed to be an end in itself. As Fr. Chad Ripperger indicated, suffering, struggle, and work tend to wind up the soul. Pleasure relaxes it back to its original shape so that it can continue to suffer, struggle, and work. To much pleasure deforms the soul, which is why we refer to sensualists as dissipated or dissolute. Pleasures are meant to be restoratives on the road of life–not the destination. The emotion suffusing the end of a well-led life is not pleasure but joy.

On a final subversive note, Magical Destroyers depicts the government side as NPCs while the heroes have distinct personalities. It is certainly true that serving tyrants effaces your soul, but serving pleasure dissolves it. Dissipation might feel more human than serving an authoritarian regime, because we feel as though we freely choose what we like. The servants of the tyrant merely bow to his dictates. However, pleasure itself becomes a tyrant by giving into the desire for it too much, as anyone who has suffered from an addiction knows. A real personality can only be hammered out by adhering to virtue and God’s will. That’s the real middle ground between enslavement to the tyrants or the passions.

At any rate, I can only look at Magical Destroyers as pure poison and can’t watch it. Do any of my readers have a different take on it?