Anime and things hidden (spoilers)
A scene from Sagrada Reset
Our 20ish-old daughter introduced us to anime. Well, we actually discovered Ghibli first, but she introduced us to anime series, typically of the shōnen (young male) or young male audience. Anime literally just mean animation, but there’s a much wider range of genres and audiences than most western animation, which is mostly sentimental feel-good stuff designed to pacify children. I like to say that anime is like jazz. You may not like one form of jazz, but jazz is so much bigger than what people have in their heads when they say they don’t like jazz. While much of anime is made for kids, Japanese culture has a different idea of children. Often times, there’s a quiet seriousness in front of reality that is not far off from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. This is not to say that there’s not also plenty of the loud sensationalism which permeates western media.
While there are many topics and themes in anime, some themes that out at me are those of sacrifice, rivalry, and mimetic desire. Some of this is surely because it is easier for me to see these themes in media which is outside my own tradition, but some of it is likely due to Japan being an island nation where school uniforms are common. There’s a fascination with mimetic desire and an attempt to grapple with it in anime. I don’t think that this fascination has been caused by reading René Girard but a more profound cultural reflection.
One of the earliest series we watched was Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. As a Catholic, I was surprised by the the strange mirror it held up to western religion and Arthurian legend, especially sacrifice. There were diabolical priests, for example. Stranger still to me was the notion of sacrifice itself as a bad thing. I’m used to sacrifice in movies as a good thing, but in FMA: Brotherhood, sacrifice is done to people for the sake of power. In the JRPG video game Trails of Cold Steel, the main character, Rean Schwarzer, is regarded as having a character flaw for being self-sacrificing, and it turns out that this a sign of him already having been marked as a sacrifice by others. I would not say that this perspective regarding sacrifice is wrong, but illuminates a side of sacrifice I would tend to overlook. I was an oddly self-sacrificial child myself, and I realize now that that wasn’t always for the best.
Rivalry is a big theme in anime series. A series that beautifully emphasized the gift of having a good rivalry is Your Lie in April, a series that encompasses playing piano competitively, the suicide of a parent, and the death of a friend. This notion of a rival who is a friend to you because they help you become better is also a theme in March Comes in Like a Lion. Like Your Lie in April, March Comes in Like a Lion is organized around competition. The main character Rei Kiriyama has mostly seen the crushing role rivalry has in driving his fellow Shōgi (aka Japanese chess) players, most of them who are much older and some within his adopted family, but is surprised to find friendships among his own rivals. This series also includes one of the most realistic examples of bullying, its causes, its consequences, and its resolution. Rivalry is explored in many anime series, especially those focused on competition. The profound stakes of rivalry in a technologically advanced world are the theme of Code Geas, a series where the rivalry and disastrous reactions get so bad that we stopped watching entirely.
All of this brings me to a series that I have a special fondness for: Sagrada Reset. Sagrada Reset is a tight 2-season anime, with a crystalline plot structure and lots of existential questions. If you died at the same time a swamp man copy of you was made, would you be the same person? Would you still love the person you care about if they were turned into a rock? The main characters (Kei and Haruki) are emotionally reserved but are thoughtful and heartfelt. What makes this interesting from a Girardian perspective is that the story is set in a small town where everyone has a unique supernatural abilities while the outside world does not have powers. Magic is a common substitute for mimetic dynamics in stories. As it turns out, abilities came to the whole world at once, but they are suppressed by an ability which causes people outside the town to forget about them. This is significant because mimetic rivalry mainly is dangerous within a small community— the larger world is not close enough to be dangerous. So the problem at the heart of the town is mimetic rivalry and how this is restrained. Sacrifice, is of course, a possible solution, as the title image of this post shows. I haven’t completely wrapped my head around the issue of mimetic rivalry is Sagrada Reset, and I’m not really in a hurry to, either.