Christology and Anime

Christology and Anime

The following are notes for a talk I gave at Regis College on Thursday, March 8th. The theme was suggested to me by the Jesuit motto, “To find God in all things”.

What is Anime?

After WWII, Japanese culture was highly influenced by American culture. In the 1960s, Japanese artists adapted and simplified the “Disney” style animations they saw at the movies and used them to tell Japanese stories.

In the 1980s, the popularity of manga, the comic-book form, skyrocketed and the process of animating manga series as TV shows became big business... big enough business to be noticed overseas; making titles like Dragon Ball Z familiar to westerne. Anime is known for its distinctive artistic style, its use of cartoons to convey serious literary themes, and frequent appeals to the zany, the magical, or the metaphysical.

What does this have to do with Christianity?

History of Christianity in Japan

Japan was the final frontier. Traveling from Europe to Japan in the 16^th century was the equivalent of traveling from the earth to the moon today... except space travel is a bit safer. Travel by ship carried enough risk of disease, malnutrition, pirate attack, and shipwreck that missionaries had about a 50/50 chance of making it to Japan alive. What religious order would be stupid enough to take on odds like that? You guessed it: the Jesuits. St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, arrived in Japan in 1549. Christianity enjoyed great reception in Japan, especially among peasants, until it was outlawed decades later by the shoguns who rejected all things foreign. A few underground churches survived but Christian culture didn't gain much traction in Japan until after WWII... where it was accepted as part of a growing interest in American culture. The lasting contribution of American Christianity to Japanese culture? Christmas and weddings. They love Santa and presents, and they love dressing up and going to a church-like 'wedding chapel' where an employee dressed as a clergyman performs a “western style” marriage

But during the last century, the tropes and themes of Christianity worked their way into the mythology of the Japanese people. And where do the Japanese explore myth and story?

Three kinds of Imagery I want to talk about...

-Christian Symbols
-Christian Characters
-Christological Characters

Christian Symbols:

Appropriation of general Christian symbols to explore a theme.

These symbols convey emotions and a subtext of meaning... these might be images of the cross, death scenes that resemble the crucifixion, angel wings, resurrections, etc. The symbolism can be complex or quite simple. You can find examples of the simple use of Christian symbols everywhere: good characters may be drawn with halos or angel-wings; evil characters with names like “Kururo Lucifer” or “Gamora”.

But the symbolism can also be complex. A good example is the Christian imagery in the 1980s anime series Evangelion. The author is not interested in exploring Christianity, angels, or scripture. He is however interested in using these symbols to represent aspects of the story he wants to tell about human nature.

When an explosion happens in anime, there is often a column of fire. In Evangelion, an explosion that occurs when an enemy alien dies is topped with a horizontal line, making a cross-shape. The author is using the symbol of the grave. But the death of the aliens is not a simple victory. The protagonists are torn by the necessity of killing other creatures to ensure humanity's survival. The cross evokes the sacrifice of one celestial life to preserve the lives of sinners. So the Christian symbol helps the author convey and explore themes of his story.

These are symbols. What about characters who profess a Christian faith?

Christian Characters:

Characters who are explicitly Christian.

Professed Christians are rare, though not unheard of, in Japan... and so they are rare but not unheard of in anime. Such characters are almost never protagonists. They are usually a bit inaccurate, mythological, or exaggerated. They represent the exotic and the foreign in the story. 

 

One example is from a show called Saint Tail. The drama of her show centers around a high-school girl who is secretly a notorious cat-burglar. The Christian character is a 14-year-old nun-in-training called Seira Mimori. Mimori, is the close friend of the heroine; and ends up hearing her confessions. The show doesn't really explore any themes of Christianity and, as you can tell, doesn't much understand the practice of confession. The Christian character's Christianity simply serves to reinforce her role in the story as a representative of the good and juxtaposes the heroine's dangerous double-life walking the line between law and crime.

Christian characters can also represent cultural outsiders. A good example of this is Fr. Anderson from the anime Hellsing.

 

Anderson is a priest secretly employed by the Vatican to hunt vampires. Awesome enough to be the hero of his own show! But he is not. He is actually an antagonist, because the hero of the story is a Vampire who helps humans. Anderson represents an uncomprehending foreigner: while he has ideals and honour these very traits lead him into conflict with the protagonist. Christianity is exagerated and used to convey the exotic.

In these cases, Christianity is used to explore the story. But there are rare cases when the story is used to explore Christianity.

Christological Characters:

Characters who are not Christians themselves but who represent Christ in the story.

Most heroes can be considered Christ-like characters because of the way in which they redeem the story and defeat evil through their actions.

However, there are a few characters who represent the person of Christ and their actions in the story reflect Christ's actions in salvation history. For instance, many heroes sacrifice their lives to save the lives of their friends; only to experience a 'resurrection' moment.

In my opinion, the most explicit Christ figure in anime is from the 1998 series Trigun. Trigun is primarily a western; as such it seeks out to explore the themes and archetypes of the great cowboy movies of the past few decades. As such, the exploration of a western gunslinger as a Christ-figure is very deliberate.

The hero's name is Vash the Stampede. It is revealed that while he is an extremely dangerous gunslinger, he has taken a vow never to kill; in a world where outlaws threaten innocent lives, Vash struggles to save the lives not only of the innocents but of theives and murderers. Vash works to redeem and change the minds of criminals and “sinners”.

At one point in the series, Vash is depicted as a young man watching a spider catch a butterfly... he wants to set the butterfly free. An older character kills the spider, explaining that without food, a spider cannot survive/ The law of nature is that one or the other must die. The older character states that the human mission is to save that which is beautiful from that which is evil... but the young Vash weeps and pleads that there must be a way to save both. His character is to reject the logic of death and survival and seek another way.

Vash's skill at fighting borders on miraculous; but he hides his abilities by behaving clownishly and foolishly (which lightens the action with a little comedy but also represents a self-emptying kenosis). Vash's partner and friend is a country preacher named Wolfwood who carries a huge cross. The cross is a secret stash of guns. The symbol of the cross represents the human belief that only violence is capable of opposing violence. (It is worth noting that Vash's name means “cow” and his partner's name means “wolf”).

The author uses the story of Vash and the old west as a metaphor for the problem of human suffering. The people of the old west and of Jesus' time were convinced that the solution was for God to punish and kill the evil people and invite the innocent to paradise. But Christ defied this logic; instead of using violence Christ comes to suffer. Vash himself suffers terribly as a result of his refusal to kill, enduring great injury while trying to save people who are trying to kill him.

The climax of the story involves a terrible moment for Vash, in which he resolves to kill an arch-villain who is bent on destroying the world. Vash is plagued by guilt, as if he has taken sin upon himself. He is dragged behind horses as a criminal, stripped, and humbled. He does not resist this treatment. At the last moment, though, he stops the villain without killing him, and carries the villain back home on his shoulders, resolving to care for him and teach him how to live rightly.

All of these moments are replete with Christological imagery: Vash wears red (standing for blood, life), he wanders in the desert, he has a transfiguration in which he appears to be a heavenly figure, he bears symbolic wounds, and he has an intuitive grasp of what people need in order to turn from sin and live. Lastly, the later episodes reveal that Vash is old enough to have been present when the world was a green paradise, and that his motivation is to remedy the wrong that turned the world into a desert wasteland and let humanity have a new future

The Christ-figure reveals the author's conviction that humans are caught in a cycle of violence... and that radical forgiveness and a salvific act of sacrifice are needed to show humanity the way to live. Not a bad Christian message.

There are many other archetypes at work, the message is strongly Buddhist and the lone gunslinger also represents the values of samurai ethics. But the Christological aspect of the character is strong and deliberate. This makes for a rich and fruitful context in which Eastern and Western ideas can play off of one another.

Concluding remarks:

Anime can be very strange. Like any artform, it can be used to convey either fatuous, destructive themes or deeply human and redemptive ones. It is our role as discerning viewers to seek out that which is most good and benefit from it. I hope that by my little analysis I have not imposed Christian themes onto non-Christian work. It is neither my job or my desire to bring Christ to these stories. It is my belief that, implicitly or explicitly, Christ is already present in all human narrative.

The Jesuit missionaries who first came to Japan were deeply moved by the culture and the people they encountered. They found Christ already at work in Japan. Their faith lead them to openness and receptivity. Our faith must lead us to the same; only then can we truly find God in all things.

PS: For complete episodes of Trigun on youtube, click below... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRpi2_QdA0