Looking at this about page made me want to revise it. Dear reader, you’re looking at the third version since I started “Medieval Otaku: A Medievalist’s Perspective on Anime and Religion.”
There are some days when I think that the subtitle is misleading. I feel like less of a medieval enthusiast these days. Looking at my Goodreads account reveals only one medieval book! Now, I find myself far more interested in the modern period (say, 1776 – 1960). But, my prior enthusiasm for the medieval period perhaps still makes me worthy of the epithet medievalist. I certainly won’t tolerate any uneducated badmouthing of the period!
As for anime, I am an old anime fan by this point. A new anime fan is generally interested in the next great new anime and avidly follows each new season. New seasons still hold interest for me, but tons of excellent shows exist from a year ago, five years ago, ten, twenty, or even fifty years in the past. Why should I focus exclusively on airing shows when I still have those? Especially when only the best anime are remembered after ten years? As of writing, I still need to finish Patlabor, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Cat’s Eye, Galaxy Express 999, and my rewatch of Cowboy Bebop.
My commentary on anime often concerns religion, and by religion I refer to Christianity. One of the most common etymologies for religion is that it derives from the Latin religare, i.e. “to connect again.” Only Christ, the God-Man, fully human and fully divine, reconnected mankind to God through His passion, death, and resurrection. The most perfect expression of Christian doctrine and practice is to be found in the Catholic Church. When I analyze anime along these lines, I will either tease out a specifically Christian theme (certain anime are very Christian) or contrast a non-Christian idea with the Christian.
I hope that y’all have fun here and find much food for thought. Thanks for reading!
Medieval Otaku 
You can only speak Latin when drunk… we all know that!
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Latin’s not meant to be spoken! Unless you live in Vatican City or are assisting at Mass–that’s where I do most of my Latin speech these days. When most everyone outside of the choir and the priest stop singing, I continue. Drinking does make me less worried about grammatical errors; hence, I’m less worried about speaking it at length.
But, I’m presently reading St. Augustine’s Confessions in order to keep my Latin skill at the right level.
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[…] CHOOSE YOU! GoodbyeNavi (Black Strawberry), Medieval Otaku, Errant Princess, Myst (Through the Frozen Glass) and Caraniel (Caraniel’s Ramblings […]
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[…] the only blogs I’m likely to tag – Shojo Corner, Pixels and Panels, Beneath the Tangles, and Medieval Otaku have all done it at least twice I […]
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Very nice to meet you. I’m certain this site will prove to be interesting.
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Thanks for your encouragement! I’m also looking forward to reading your articles.
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Thank you for your visit and following. Anime and religion sounds interesting enough, keep on going!
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You have my thanks as well! You have a very interesting blog.
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An otaku…a religious (Roman Catholic, perhaps?)…a polyglot…whoa…Your complexity is freaking interesting and freaking amazing! So this is your main blog, medievalotaku…Hmhm.
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Yep, this is the main blog. Nothing like a diversity of interests to help one write in an interesting fashion. 🙂 And yes, I’m Roman Catholic.
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Hm! Interesting. Well, let’s keep on doing our best and having fun with what we do, then! Friendship for the win, medievalotaku! 🙂
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You got that right! Friendship ftw!
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Hey great site here. Love your interests. I will be flowing you. Also thanks for the reblog.
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Thanks! I shall likewise follow your blog and hope to reblog more of your excellent articles.
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[…] Medieval Otaku (is there a rule against someone being nominated more than once?) […]
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‘Sup, Medieval, I know you’ve received this award, but I’d like to award you with The Liebster Award…again. Look here: http://theoverlordbear.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/tobby-received-the-liebster-award/
You know, I feel like more people should take a look at your thoughts here in this blog…
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Thanks! I’ll definitely take a look at that article. You’ll get no qualms from me when it comes to awards!
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Alright! You’re welcome, then, medieval! ^_^
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[…] Medieval Otaku, who is currently my blog’s most regular commenter, deserves an award associated with loyalty. Also, like the above two, he was a willing recipient of the Liebster Award, thus inviting similar behavior now. […]
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Heya! I’ve Nominated you for a Creative Blogger Award! 😀 You can find the details here https://fiddletwix.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/creative-blogger-quadra-kill/
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[…] So with that, I once again thank Medieval Otaku for the award, please hit him up in this link. […]
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Greetings! I hereby nominate you for the 3-Day Quote Challenge! If you’re interested, here’s the link https://akkoanime.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/3-day-quote-challenge-day-3/
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Sure, I’ll participate. Thanks!
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[…] Medieval Otaku […]
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[…] with composing and arranging, and I did the Three-Day Quote Challenge after being tagged by Medieval Otaku. Also, my mind is being a psychological warzone […]
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I nominated you for something. 😛
https://lynlynsays.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/fun-facts-for-writing-nominated-me-for-the-one-lovely-blog-award/
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Thank you! And congratulations on the award!
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I’m nominating you to take part in answering the 50 Anime Questions in honour of World Otaku Day 2015.
http://sleepinggeeks.com/2015/12/15/50-anime-questions/
Don’t forget to link back so we can read yours and add them to our list! Have fun!
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I’ve nominated you for the Liebster Award! –
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Ahem
I nominated you for this award in this post. You deserve it.
https://yaharibento.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/second-versatile-blogger-award-yahari-bento/
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Hello,
I’ve nominated you for a lovely blogger award. Well deserved.
https://otakuorbit.com/2017/04/20/lovely-blogger-blog-award-from-matt-in-the-hat/
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Thank you!
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Your welcome
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Hi you’ve been tagged for this game: TAG – Five Flaming Hotties – http://wp.me/p2mMDp-3GS 🙂
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Thanks! This looks like fun.
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[…] About Me and This Blog […]
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What’s this? A Catholic anime fan and language enthusiast, whose languages include Japanese, Latin, and Ancient Greek?
And here I thought I was unusual or something.
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The chances are that we’re rarae aves. As far as I know there’s at least one more blogger who almost falls into this category: Josh W of Res Studiorum et Ludorum, https://pretentiouslatintitle.wordpress.com/. He hasn’t studied Japanese yet, but Hebrew has to be far harder. Who knows if he will pick it up in the future?
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[…] 1. The Zone of Nerders 2. Rodrovich 3. Mechanical Anime Reviews 4. Jon Spencer Reviews 5. Moyatorium 6. The Antidote 7. Shokamoka 8. Jenn 9. Raistlin 10. Emily Curry 11. Medieval Otaku […]
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[…] –Medieval Otaku (again!) from MedievalOtaku […]
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Now, this is awesome! I’m also a Roman Catholic “otaku” medieval enthusiast, but honestly, any true Catholic would be a medieval enthusiast :P.
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“For combating the New Atheists, I highly recommend reading Inside the Atheist Mind by Anthony DeStefano. He really tears them to shreds by exposing them as bullies who follow a belief system which has maximized human misery wherever it’s gained power. Just look at the French Revolution, various Socialist Revolutions, and Communist states. On the other hand, Christians created science and the advances in human rights and dignity which gave birth to the modern world.
But, the best defense against the New Atheists’ mockery is simply to thoroughly educate one’s children in theology, philosophy, history, art, and literature so that they see the logical coherence of Christianity and all of the good it has produced. Also, to read biographies of the saints and other faithful Christians to show the grace Christ imparts to his followers. The New Atheists’ mockery rings hollow against that education and an upbringing in the Faith.”
Unfortunately, DeStefano only uses lies. When he tries to claim that atheism has caused misery, he forgets that it wasn’t atheism but ignorance, corruption and megalomania. Since I am an atheist and don’t have those failures, his claims fail.
Christians didn’t create science. Humans created science and some advanced it looking for their god, and that includes Allah, and other gods. That you find you also must lie isn’t surprising.
I do recommend educating your children in theology. Make sure that they read the bible since it is one of the quickest ways to become an atheist when a child sees this god murdering children for the actions of their parents, and killing people who have done nothing wrong by drowning them. Unless you want to tell your children they deserve to be drowned. Do you?
C.S. Lewis himself said to hid the disagreements between versions of Christianity in “Mere Christianity”. So, please do show them how Christianity is fractured, where Christians don’t agree on what sins are and how one is saved. Show them how Christianity caused the crusades when Christians attacked other Christians, and the split between Catholicism and Protestantism where each side burnt each other at the stake.
Or will you try to hide those parts?
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Your logic is very shoddy here. You blame Christianity for historical faults committed by Christians, i.e. The Crusades. Yet, with atheist regimes enacting a program of persecuting and killing Christians, dissidents, and innocent people, the fault is not in Atheism but in human vices. Could not the same excuse be offered for any system? I cannot name a single atheist regime which has not led to untold suffering among its citizens. You might claim that Western governments are mostly secular in outlook now, but they still rest on Christian fundamentals and jurisprudence. Where the government has tried to erase these and start over from materialist and Atheist principles, as in the French Revolution and Soviet Russia, the results are murder and misery.
Christians did create modern science. The scientific method derives from Medieval universities, which were created by monasteries. Many of the earliest scientists were clerics. Some Ancient Greeks investigated the natural world and published their findings, but the actual scientific discipline was first created by Christians. Which makes sense, since Christians believe God is rational and created the world in a rational and orderly way. Thus, one can learn the laws God imposed on the material world through the study of it.
God can’t murder anyone. Life is a gift from God. We have done nothing to merit this gift, and God may take it away when He wills. You reference God freeing His people from slavery to the Egyptians by forcing the Egyptians’ hands. The death of the first born only happened after many lighter plagues failed to change the Pharoah’s mind. Even then, they wanted to kill and re-enslave the Jews. They tried to pursue them through the miracle God made to save his people. For such arrogance and malice, the Egyptians deserved death.
C. S. Lewis was wrong when he said to hide the divisions among Christians. One ought to teach children all the divisions from the earliest days to the present. You see, heresies tend to be redundant with the same error popping up again and again. By learning about the heresies, children can more easily see that the Catholic Church is the sole institution which kept the Faith whole and entire. It is also the only one capable of calling new councils to defend against error–unlike the Orthodox Church.
The Crusades were a just war against an expansionist Islam which conquered Christian lands and converted people by the sword. True enough that the Crusades have very ugly and unjust events in them, but the initial idea was correct. After all, Islam only ceased making inroads into Christendom after losing the Battle of Vienna in September 11, 1688.
The Wars of Religion after the Reformation were very ugly. It took a long time for Catholics and Protestants to reconcile themselves to the notion of Western Christendom being cracked. But, about fifty years passed before Christians resorted to war as a means to settle this difference, and Protestants and Catholics have been able to live side by side with tolerance for at least two hundred years.
DeStefano’s Inside the Atheist Mind is a great book with a lot of truth, but it’s probably truth unpleasant for you.
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Bravo! The hardest topic IMO is the Crusades, cuz the Church had very little power over it in reality and some crusades went astray for that reason.
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Yes, the Church could preach a Crusade, but secular rulers ran it. The Church ended up excommunicating the crusaders who sacked Constantinople, which sacking clubschadenfreude alludes to above.
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Your false claim about my logic doesn’t work with someone who knows logic. Christians are Christianity, and what they do is what it does. Since there is no one Christianity and Christians don’t agree on many things, including how to be saved, what their god wants, etc. you all represent what you claim to believe.
Christians don’t want to be responsible for what Christians do, so you try the silly thing of insisting that Christianity is something different than what they practice. Christians did the Crusades and killed other Christians doing it. They did the Crusades because they believed that their god wanted it. Their god, unsurprisingly, remained completely silent on the matter, since it doesn’t exist. The Crusades would not have happened without Christianity.
And of course, you try the nonsense about atheism persecuting Christians. Nope, that was corrupt governments led by megalomaniacs who persecuted Christians and other people. Atheism, the conclusion that there are no gods, had little to do with that. Governments don’t want believers since it causes a problem of who are they beholden to. Christians have no problem with persecuting people themselves, again, when they need obedience to one leader, not more than that. The bible has repeatedly where your god demands that anyone who doesn’t obey it is to be killed. Again, that wouldn’t happen without Christianity and its supposed holy book. Since I’m an atheist and have no desire to force anyone to agree with me, my existence shows your claim to be wrong.
Nope, your excuse can’t be used in any system, since again, your religion literally says that people who don’t follow it should be killed. Atheism has no moral directives like that.
Hmm, I can name plenty of secular governments who have nothing to do with Christianity and work out well and who haven’t lead to “untold suffering”. Most of modern European counties are doing well. Again, you try to lie and fail. They do not rest of Christian fundamentals and jurisprudence, since Christianity and the bible don’t support democracy, and the golden rule has been around far longer than a bunch of ignorant agrarians in the eastern Mediterranean. Christians often want to make the false claim that somehow being a decent human being was all their idea. That is far from the truth.
Like many Christians, you try to make other worldviews required by atheists. Atheism is just not believing in your or any other god. It doesn’t concern itself with morals. Atheists can have lots of different idea on what is right and wrong. Christians are stuck with their bible and they often desperately try to ignore what their bible says when it is inconvenient. I can also point to countries who claim to have governments based on their religion, where those who don’t worship the right way are killed. Most of them are Islamic, but we can see in the past that countries based on Christianity murdered anyone who didn’t worship as they did. The protestant and catholic countries had no problem in burning the other at the stake constantly.
Unsurprisingly, you have no evidence for your claim that Christianity created modern science. The scientific method came from the ancients, not Christians. They weren’t created by monasteries. The earliest scientists were Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, far before your Christians. You lie again and are caught. You try to lie and claim that the ancients “investigated the natural world” but you try to make believe that somehow they weren’t using what they did.
Other religions believed the same thing, that their gods created the universe and made it act like it does. Nothing new to Christianity there; every theist claims the same thing.
Ah, there we go, the common Christian morality of might equals right. You want to claim your god can do anything it wants because of what it is. Yep, that is a lovely example of subjective morality since no action is good or evil, it subjectively depends on who is doing it. If you don’t think that a human can do what this god does and still be good, then you have no objective morality.
This god doesn’t free anyone from anything, since there is no evidence for the exodus at all. This god encourages slavery and makes rules for it, including where a man has to remain a slave if he wants to stay with his family. I do think it’s great that you ignore your bible when convenient when you claim that there were “lighter” plagues, when those plagues also killed people and this god forced the pharaoh to not let the people go. There is nothing that said that the Egyptians wanted anything, this god made them do what they did. You see, I did read the bible and you can’t lie to me about what is in it. It’s a shame you even try.
Yep, C.S. Lewis was wrong. But Christians say how great he is. They just ignored what he said or didn’t even read the preface where he says to lie to people. And each Christian claims that the other are “heretical”, but surprise, they can’t show that their version is any more right than those they attack. Funny how Catholics can’t heal anyone any more than protestants can or Mormons or jehovah’s witnesses, or orthodox Christians, etc. You are all evidently not Chrsitians since you all fail what the bible says.
No surprising in a Christian claiming just war, just like Muslims in ISIS. Christians love to convert people by the sword, as we know from how Jews would either be killed or convert. I know the history of the Roman Catholic Church quite well. The Church murdered many people for not being the “right” religion. Do the Cathars ring a bell? Catholics murdered then because they weren’t worshipping “right”, aka your need to kill heretics. Yep, you claim you “initial idea” is correct just like any Muslim with a bomb strapped to them.
Yep, again, where were wars and there wouldn’t have been the crusades or the wars of religion without the religion. Oh a whole 50 years. That’s such nonsense, since Christians were killing each other for a long time before that. I’ve personally seen anti-Catholic nonsense and anti-protestant nonsense and funny how you were still killing each other over religion in to the 1970s when you both were blowing up school busses. Does Ireland ring a bell? So much for your lies of “tolerance”. The only reason you stopped is thanks to secular law that stopped your stupidity.
DeStefano’s book is rather pathetic. It’s a shame when a Christian ignores his bible when it says not to bear false witness.
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Yes, I say that you use shoddy logic. For example, the claim “Christians are Christianity” declares that “believers are a religion.” However, the two things do not equal each other. Believers try to follow a system of belief, but you obviously find believers who fall short of what their religion teaches or even ignore it to live by their own lights. Whether it’s Jews in the Old Testament or Christians in the New Testament or Christians today, you’ll find some who break one, a few, or all of God’s Commandments.
The people who represent ideal Christian life are the saints. While few become canonized saints, Christians are called to be like them. And, people praise others by saying, “He’s/She’s a saint,” because this indicates a kind-hearted, patient, and loving person. This is the very sort of person the Bible, Church teachings and practices aim to produce. If you were to find someone guilty of murder or another heinous crime among the list of the saints, you can be sure that they repented and reformed their life to imitate Christ, who is the highest exemplar for Christian morality.
While it is true that not all atheists are Communists, all Communists are atheists. These atheists hate all kinds of religion and persecute Christianity especially wherever they find it. Communist China at the present is a great example of this, as we see them even targeting “state-approved” Churches. And, I still say that Communism and socialism are the sole contributions of atheists to political philosophy. After all, Lenin in his book “Religion” did write, “Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” And, Communism was and still is dedicated to the persecution and murder of Christians. The twentieth century shows this fact abundantly.
You’ve written this a few times now: “Since I’m an atheist and have no desire to force anyone to agree with me, my existence shows your claim to be wrong.” My good man, I have no desire to talk about you but about atheism. You seem to be conflating what I write about organized atheists to talking about you. I see that you’re the same in your hatred and contempt for Christianity, but I have no evidence that you want to murder and persecute people. Because organized atheists have indeed done what I’ve described under the banner of Communism, atheism itself is indeed tainted as much if not more than Christianity. Quakers fall under the heading of Christianity, but you would be quite puzzled if I denied Christians went on Crusade because Quakers did not exist then. In the same way, atheists are responsible for creating the most miserable and oppressive countries in the world today even if you yourself are not responsible for them.
Most people recognize that the case of the Troubles in Ireland was caused by nationalism rather than religion. Though Ireland was essentially divided into a Catholic Ireland and a Protestant Ireland, where the people felt stronger ties to London than Dublin, the Irish felt like the British had stolen part of their country and they wanted it back. Ireland always was that whole island, but the people in the North did not wish to be under the same state. So, it was more about territory and the land the Irish believed that they held a claim to.
When you say that all theists are the same about creation, whether pagan or monotheist, you’re wrong. Most pagans don’t believe that their gods created the universe from nothing. They believe the universe always existed. (A logical impossibility. If the universe always was, time stretches back infinitely in the past. If there was no starting point for time, however, the present could not exist. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning.) Their gods merely worked with what was present. On the other hand, monotheists believe that the universe was created from nothing by God’s power alone, e.g. “Let there be light, and there was light.”
The fact that we and all things exist through God’s power alone makes it obvious that God has rights which we do not, including the right of deciding the lifespan of His subjects. We recognize that children have obligations to their parents because they would neither have existed nor continued to live without them. But, our obligation to God, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, is much more than our obligations to our parents. So, to disobey God in the least thing–to sin–is the worst kind of evil there is.
And Christians did create science as we know it today. As I said, the ancients philosophized about the natural world and came up with certain inventions, but that is not science. Science utilizes a hypothetico-deductive model of inquiry in which experiments test a hypothesis in order to determine its veracity. These experiments are taken up by other scholars in the field in order to test whether the author of a hypothesis is correct. The Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (1220-1292) is considered the Father of the Scientific Method. And, you find medieval universities across Europe move from natural philosophy as Aristotle practiced to science as we know it today. This movement happened not under secular teachers, but Christian clerics. Please study the history of science and you’ll see that real science began in Medieval Europe.
And, your assertion that my religion says that everyone who disagrees with it should be killed is completely without basis in fact. If that were the case, there would have been even more violence in Christian history than you bring out and you would see it in majority Christian countries today. After all, if killing non-believers were an article of faith, you would see Christian countries crusading now. On the other hand, you do see the killing, imprisonment, and persecution of dissidents in atheistic countries today as you saw it in the 20th century.
Thank you for your comments and our argument here. I found it very interesting. You may respond to what I wrote above, but I don’t think that I will have time to respond.
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(I can’t reply to that one below)
And there was that case where the one resposible for the Crusade ended up dying, they didn’t even had the money to navigate after.
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