Anime and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  And this leads to another, closely related issue: how Japanese anime artists have appropriated three key biblical narratives—the Flood, the Tower of Babel and Armageddon—and have related them, particularly Armageddon, to the atomic bombs the Americans dropped on Japan during World War II, which, according to Takashi Murakami, is the “engine that drove the great manga and anime [in the past]” (Rolland Kelts’s Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U. S., p. 175).

  Introducing the End of the World

  The biblical flood narrative, wherein God sent a massive deluge to destroy all the sinful people on Earth (Genesis 7-8), appears in many different anime series, such as Ulysses 31, D-Grayman and Spriggan. Setting aside Ulysses 31’s interesting science fiction blending of Incan mythology and Judeo-Christianity in regard to the flood, D-Grayman and Spriggan both deal more explicitly with the biblical flood, yet both share the unusual and unorthodox premise that Noah himself caused the flood! For instance, in D-Grayman, the gray-skinned, superhuman Clan of Noah—that is, the thirteen descendents of Noah (the Bible lists fewer)—want to wreak divine havoc on the world as their father Noah had done. Or again, in Spriggan, Noah’s Ark (which is named “Noah”) is found on Mt. Ararat, the same resting place indicated by the Bible. Yet, according to Spriggan, Noah is an alien spaceship that landed on the Earth and, due to its power to control weather, was the cause of the flood and the subsequent ice age. In both of these series, the flood story is reinterpreted in anime but still carries with it the central theme that was originally foreign to the Japanese prior to their contact with the West: worldwide destruction.

  This epic theme of worldwide destruction is present in other anime series like Gilgamesh and Babel II as well as the aforementioned Ulysses 31. In particular, the Tower of Babel, the symbol of God-defying unity and cause of the fragmentation of the brotherhood of man as a result of inordinate pride (Genesis 11) is alluded to—often with humanistic overtones alien to Christian orthodoxy—in Ulysses 31 (where Circe wants to build a literal tower of knowledge so that she can rival the power of the Olympian gods), Metropolis (where the Red Duke’s Ziggurat eventually crumbles under human arrogance) and Gilgamesh (where the institution at Delphys is referred to as “the Tower of Babel” since it is not only a tower in ancient Mesopotamia but also the site where people discovered the demigod Gilgamesh’s body and were attempting to discover the secret of immortality through its DNA and subsequent cloning). But the Tower of Babel as a symbol of destruction is the most prominent in Babel II, whose creator, Mitsuteru Yokoyama, simply took the name Babel and made it the name of a powerful alien entity which awakes in a young boy named Koichi to allow him to fight a world-threatening disaster. As a result, while the biblical account of the Tower of Babel certainly conjures up the idea of the destruction of human unity, the anime Babel II is largely about the destruction of the physical world and hence is more closely linked with the gods’ judgement of Achilles’s Spring in Big Wars (a take on God’s judgement of Sodom in Genesis 19) or with one of the most important biblical themes in anime: Armageddon, which, though a place, is often understood simply as the global war between the forces of good and evil (Revelation 16:16).

  Given that the whole concept of global destruction is an idea that Japan got from the Christian West, it makes sense that when the Americans dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan during the Second World War, the Japanese—not to mention most of the world—often understood this in apocalyptic terms. Of course, since most Japanese weren’t Christians, they didn’t literally see World War II as Armageddon (nor the reverse: Armageddon as nuclear war), but certainly the biblical ethos was in the air and acted as a source of dark inspiration, often departing from Christian orthodoxy, for many future anime artists (not to mention a few ‘Harmagedon’ cults, such as Aum Shinrikyō).

  Take Chrno Crusade, for example, which is set just prior to World War II. It deals with the spiritual—specifically, Christian—events that foreshadow the Second World War and its greater association with cosmic warfare (hence, Revelation 6:12-14 and 18:10 are quoted at different times throughout). The theology in this series is, as to be expected, problematic, for it primarily centers on a three-way war between God and his followers, the devils who are satisfied with the status quo between Heaven and Pandemonium, and the devils who want to overturn the balance of good and evil in order to achieve “freedom.”

  The premise of the series is that if the balance between good and evil is disrupted, then either good or evil will be destroyed or at least will lose their meaningfulness. Of course, the idea that there is a balance between good and evil is I Ching philosophy (which predates both Daoism and Confucianism) and not Christianity. The I Ching seems to support Dualism or the belief that good and evil are both positive, co-eternal substances, whereas orthodox Christianity maintains that God, who is Goodness itself, only made good things, and so evil must simply be the absence or privation of a good that should be present (for instance, when a person steals something, there is a lack of proper self-control in the will).

  Or again, the solution to universal religious war as it is presented in Chrno Crusade is that since such a war is based on simplistic conceptions of good and evil (such as the I Ching and Christianity), Armageddon can be thwarted or at least creatures can recover from its ill-effects by recognizing that good and evil, especially in their bare metaphysical forms, are not what they seem: hence, God appears somewhat apathetic; the only angel in the series, Ewan Remington, hangs up his wings; and the devil Chrno, à la Hellboy, is not diabolical at all. However, according to orthodox Christianity, the end of conflict cannot be achieved by seeing through good and evil, as Buddhism teaches when it says everything is anātman or “no-Self,“ meaning that there is no substantial Reality behind appearances. Rather, orthodox Christianity teaches that conflict can only be averted when all submit to the established order that the perfectly Good God has made. The basic idea is that if God created everything and knows (because he is perfectly good) what will make everything happy, then creatures can only achieve true freedom and happiness by conforming to the Good, not by pretending it is an illusion (Buddhism) or that there is a positive alternative to it (I Ching).

  Finally, the ethos of Armageddon is especially strong in many futuristic anime and manga series, such as Harmagedon, Apocalypse Zero, Demon-Beast Phalanx, Tokyo Revelations, Appleseed, Earthian, Trinity Blood and Akira, to name but a few. While Harmagedon, Apocalypse Zero, Tokyo Revelations and Akira are not directly related to the Christian apocalypse and Earthian seems to lose its focus on this early on, Demon-Beast Phalanx was inspired by the book of Revelation, Appleseed quotes Revelation 12:4 in its introduction, and Trinity Blood is set just after Armageddon, when the world is divided into two groups: the humans, led by the Pope in Rome, and the vampires, led by the vampire Empress in Byzantium. Yet none of these anime series are very orthodox in regard to Armageddon.

  Trinity Blood, in particular, is problematic in its treatment of the Christian conception of Armageddon. For instance, according to Revelation, Armageddon is supposed to pave the way for the establishment of the New Earth, which is to be peopled by the righteous; but in Trinity Blood, the post-apocalyptic world only breeds new divisions between humans and vampires. And, to make matters more confusing, the humans in Trinity Blood are not identified with the righteous (even though they are led by the Pope) nor are the vampires identified with the unrighteous (as would traditionally have been the case in western vampire lore). Certainly orthodox Christians are able to appreciate that the visible church is not identical with what St. Augustine inclusively calls “the City of God” or the totality of the righteous. That is, orthodox Christians can appreciate that names and physical makeup mean little when it comes to righteousness—the City of God can be composed of Catholics from Rome and Eastern Orthodox from Byzantium, humans and vampires from Earth, and angels from Heaven. And if this is what Trinity Blood is really saying, that conflict between good and evil can only be resolv
ed by submission to the Good, then I think Trinity Blood is one of the most orthodox Christian anime series around. However, I suspect that by equating humans with Christianity and vampires with non-Christianity and then depicting some humans as evil and some vampires as good, the overarching theme in Trinity Blood quickly becomes that of pluralism (all views about Ultimate Reality are equivocal) and Buddhist-Shintō relativism (good and evil, and all categories for that matter, are merely conventions and conflict can only be overcome by seeing past these).

  Why Catholicism Is Better than Protestantism . . . for Anime

  After reading the past few sections, some might feel that I have too quickly glossed over something vital: that while Japanese pluralism itself is philosophical (and perhaps philosophically problematic), Japanese pluralism as it manifests itself in anime is more literary or symbolic—after all, I’ve said it is more about the “spiritual mood” than anything else. Although all cultural products, including anime, are inextricably linked to some philosophy, when the Japanese deal with Christianity in their anime, it is more for literary effect than for philosophical argument: symbols, more than syllogisms, are what most Japanese anime artists are concerned with. For instance, in Golgo 13, the protagonist is an assassin known as “Golgo 13,” which refers to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, and the alleged day—Friday the thirteenth—when Jesus was killed; but beyond the common feelings of death, sorrow and loneliness which both Jesus and Golgo 13 felt or feel, there is nothing else in common between these two. Or again, in Rave Master, Shiba’s sword is called the “Ten Commandments,” which shares the idea of judgement with the biblical commandments but nothing else.

  One of the things that follows from this is that, agreeing with C.S. Lewis’s claim in his essay “Christian Reunion: An Anglican Speaks to Roman Catholics,” Catholicism is a “jungle” of symbols and Protestantism is often a “desert” of bare platitudes (C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, p. 396), when Japanese anime deals with Christianity, it tends to gravitate toward Catholicism. For instance, setting aside the myriad of anime series featuring crucifixes, angels, and demons, all of which are common to both Catholicism and Protestantism, many Japanese anime series make mention of six things that either are uniquely Catholic or Catholics put unique emphasis on:1. exorcists or priests, such as in Ghost Sweeper Mikami or Puri Puri;

  2. nuns, for example, in One-Pound Gospel or Holy Virgins;

  3. Catholic schools, such as in St. Lunatic High School or La Esperança;

  4. Purgatory, as in Purgatory Kabuki;

  5. the Virgin Mary, for instance, in Maria-sama ga Miteru or Wicked City; and

  6. angelic hierarchies, such as in Angel/Dust Neo, whose android emulates are loosely categorized according to Pseudo-Dionysius’s hierarchy of angels (for instance, Musia is a mere “angel,” whereas Leia is a “virtue”), or Soul Rescue, wherein Renji, a rogue archangel, has to rescue ten thousand souls before he is allowed to return to Heaven by God (whose omnipresence is wonderfully depicted by a myriad of wires going into His head).

  Besides being symbolically richer—and hence better able to create a “spiritual mood”—than Protestantism, Catholicism is also more likely to be featured in Japanese anime because many of the western, biblically-inspired stories that the Japanese have drawn from and encoded in their anime were set in Europe at a time when there was no Catholic-Protestant divide and so have typically been thought of as Catholic. Consider three examples:1. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy influenced Devilman’s portrayal of Satan being frozen in ice;

  2. the Arthurian legends influenced Fate/Stay Night’s use of the Holy Grail (but in the legends it is the blood of Christ, whereas in the anime it’s more a generic term for a powerful object that grants wishes); and

  3. stories about Joan of Arc have been extremely popular in Japan and have inspired many anime, such as Jeane, the Kamikaze Thief, in which Joan of Arc is, oddly, a reincarnated Christian hero.

  Moreover, the entire Gothic genre itself, with its sympathetic vampires and the like, was largely a product of the Romantic Movement, which, though it began in Protestant countries, combined the Protestant emphasis on freedom with Catholic imagery. This Romanticism, in turn, influenced countless anime, such as Vampire Hunter D. Indeed, when Japanese anime present unorthodox Christian views, these views are not always the product of Japanese pluralism but are sometimes Japanese appropriations of Romanticism’s unique conceptualization of Christianity; hence, John Milton’s Satan (though a villain in Paradise Lost) became a hero to many Romantics and this Satanic heroism, wherein Satan and his minions are seen as passionate freedom-fighters, consequently inspired the countless antiheroes that we find in anime such as Alucard in Hellsing, Akira in Devilman, Setsuna/Alexial in Angel Sanctuary, and Sapphire in Earthian. And in Maria-sama ga Miteru, when a lesbian schoolgirl asks the object of her affection, a potential nun, “Are you choosing God over me?” we can see, even here, the typical sentiments of Romanticism.

  Gay Angels, Female Cardinals, and Bishōnen Popes

  Whatever the pre-Japanese thought about gender before they arrived on the island of Japan, by the time they did arrive, their religion of choice was Shintoism, which shared with world-shamanism the common belief in goddesses and the importance of priestesses to serve them. However, with the advent of Confucianism, the position of women in society and religion dropped to some degree. Nevertheless, because Confucianism is fundamentally a socio-political philosophy with little or no metaphysical foundation, it was never able to ground its views of gender and sex. Consequently, any deep metaphysical speculation about gender and sex were ultimately rendered meaningless by the antirealist metaphysics of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Daoism, all of which claim that as with everything, gender and sex are not intrinsically stable concepts, but are as illusionary and changing as everything else.

  So it comes as little surprise that when we look at Japanese anime, we are bombarded by innumerably different presentations of gender and sex, including those having to do with major Christian figures, such as angels, demons, priests, cardinals, nuns and popes. For instance, in Earthian, the two protagonist angels, Chahiya and Kagetsuya, are not only partners in evaluating humanity, but are also shown to be gay lovers since both are in male form when they have sex. Or again, in Trinity Blood, the head of the Catholic Church is a bishōnen (“beautiful boy”) pope, who is flanked by a female cardinal.

  Most of these encodings don’t reflect orthodox Christianity, which has traditionally claimed that while sex belongs to the body, gender belongs to the soul or spirit; and because the higher affects the lower, the soul or spirit determines the sex of the body. As a result, when orthodox Christians call God ‘He’ and not ‘She,’ they mean to say that God is essentially masculine, even though He, of course, has feminine attributes. Or again, female bodies point toward feminine souls and male bodies point toward masculine souls, and even though females should have some masculine attributes and males should have some feminine ones, neither sex should engage in any activity, such as cross-dressing or homosexual love, that would confuse or blur the essential differences between men and women.

  Moreover, while angels and demons don’t have bodies as we understand them and hence are sexless, it doesn’t follow that they don’t have genders since gender belongs to the soul or spirit. It’s based on a theory of gender such as this, coupled with the belief that God made all things to function in certain ways, that most orthodox Christians have held beliefs such as the masculinity of God (John 3:35), male headship in marriage (Ephesians 5:32), the unnaturalness of homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9), the lack of sexual marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30), the importance of gender for church office (1 Timothy 2:12), and condemnation of cross-dressing and the like (Deuteronomy 22:5). As a result, orthodox Christianity would take issue with Earthian’s gay angels and Trinity Blood’s female cardinal, and would see potential danger in anime’s general tendency to over-feminize men; for instance, masculi
ne, spiritual authority is poorly represented by Trinity Blood’s bishōnen pope.

  Perhaps more than any other issue, this sort of treatment of gender and sexuality demonstrates that Japanese pluralism has penetrated deep into the minds of Japanese anime artists. The ultimate result of this is that when these artists produce anime, they encode their pluralistic interpretations of Christianity into their works. And because pluralism has little use for propositional truths or religious doctrines, when Japanese anime presents Christian teaching, it is almost always rendered inaccurately. Nevertheless, this isn’t to say that such anime is valueless to the orthodox Christian (or anyone else for that matter). If the orthodox Christian can appreciate the spiritual mood of the unorthodox appropriation of Christian themes in anime, he can often afford himself a pleasant enough aesthetic experience.

  9

  Why Nice Princesses Don’t Always Finish Last

  DANIEL HAAS

  Hayao Miyazaki’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind raises questions about a myriad of topics including humanity’s relationship with the natural world and whether it is ever morally justifiable to torture an innocent. But at the heart of the film are two women, Nauiscaa and Kushana, and their conflicting beliefs about how one ought to conduct oneself during times of political, social, and environmental upheaval.

  Kushana, princess and military leader of the Tolmekian Empire, believes that one can and should do whatever it takes to survive in a war-torn world while Nausicaa, princess of the Valley of the Wind, believes that there are restrictions on how one ought to behave, even after the collapse of civilization. Examining these two contrasting approaches, and linking them to similarly conflicting ethical theories, will help us to determine whether the aim of survival is, ultimately, the only relevant moral consideration.