If you’ve forgotten about the semi-controversial end of Kannagi (as if you could), the Super Fanicom Voice Module is here to refresh your memory. This one’s a little long, but not to worry; if you don’t have an hour and twenty minutes to spare, you can skip to 25:00 and listen to the commentary on Kannagi’s thirteenth episode, throw the file on your MP3 player of choice, and listen to the rest later.
Super Fanicom Voice Module: Kannagi 13 (77.9 MB)
Oh, and, whatever you think of our aural adventures, we invite you to grace us with your opinion via comment.
[...] of your life Posted by cuchlann under anime, podcast It’s happened again! The Super Fanicom Voice Module returns again! This time it’s a commentary on episode thirteen of Kannagi, and we talk about the whole [...]
DISCOVERY:
I might want to actually adjust settings in Skype/Windows to not sound as much like an idiot!
+2 Intelligence
-10 Reputation
GAINED ABILITY: Repel gelatinous cubes.
I need to get myself a decent headset because mine sucks. but you can find ghostlightning on skype no problem. i’ll let you guys know when i’m ready to contribute and extend the discussion to 160 minutes lol.
It was lucky I couldn’t appear on this one. I’d just rant on about the insanities of fundamentalists and how everyone should convert to Haruhiist discordianism the first twenty minutes.
“Virginally challenged” is going into my vocabulary now. Golden.
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not terribly familiar with Kannagi, and neither am I very familiar with anime in general aside from a few shows.
But a few sections of the podcast have intrigued me enough to venture out here to leave a note. (Danger: nerd crossing ahead.) The first connection I made with Nagi is primarily with Amalthea from The Last Unicorn. In both, we have female characters ‘forcibly’ taken from their original form or element and existing in human form. Nagi seems to be given a new life in recreated as human (correct me if I misstep there), and Amalthea is spared from the Red Bull when Schmendrick turns her into a human, even tho she feels death all around her. Both characters reach the point when they begin to forget that they aren’t actually human. For Amalthea, to reach the point of humanity where she is capable of crying is, as Schmendrick puts it, the point of no return—he could not turn her back into a unicorn if she became that human. But the success of her quest is contingent on her being a unicorn again, even tho she needed the human form to get into the king’s castle. This leads me to ask, since I am unfamiliar with most of the anime, would Nagi face a similar situation and cease to be human, or is she now this way for the rest of a mortal life?
This is linked to another question that may simply be stupid and speculatory, but I ask it anyway. What would happen if Jin destroyed the sculpture he made? Would she return to just being a goddess, or would she effectively be murdered?
The characters, or at least Nagi’s sister, selling-out to another religion gets batted around in the podcast (I can’t remember if “selling out” is actually used, but I don’t feel like trawling back through to find the precise spot, so forgive me). But I don’t think it’s quite that. Most religions that try to convert ethnic groups or try to blot out smaller religions will use usurp some traditions and holidays and incorporate them into their own, as I’m sure most people are aware. Christmas is a good example of this, as December 25th (through the beginning of January) was originally a “pagan” holiday. For the new, “dominating” religion, to appropriate already existing holidays means “easier” conversion. Of course, this allows some of the traditions and beliefs to continue existence, sometimes almost subversively, but at the very least in an undercover fashion—liminal, but still there, I think is what I’m trying to say. In this way, Nagi and her sister are achieving the same thing: existence.
However, it’s also an issue of cultural replacement, as you guys talked about briefly. Shinto, altho a religion, seems to be regarded more as a part of Japanese culture and less as an opposition to monotheism. For example, an acquaintance of mine from Japan was married in the Shinto tradition, but she actually is Baptist. I am also reminded of an interview I saw where the interviewer asked a Tsalagi Christian man why he hadn’t given up his original culture when he converted to Christianity. His response was, “Why should I have to abandon one sin-stained culture for another?” (I thought I knew where I was going with all that, but apparently I lost it somewhere…)
I find it amusing that there’s such a firestorm over Nagi’s virginity. More amusing is “virginally challenged.” But anyway. Instead of arguing if she is or isn’t a virgin, I am going to jump off the deep end and say that she is both. Now before you laugh uproariously (or once you finish laughing uproariously), allow me to explain my reasoning by invoking Jean Shinoda Bolen (which I would be able to do better if I had all of my books with me. : / Going off of memory here). Bolen likes archetypes, and divides goddess into three categories: virgin goddesses (independent), vulnerable goddesses (needy), and alchemical goddesses. It’s the last of the three that I might say Nagi falls into, which combines qualities of the previous two. At the very least, I resist the drive of the virgin/whore dichotomy, as it’s too simplistic here. To say that Nagi MUST be a virgin seems akin to saying that 1) as a virgin, she has no sexual power (markedly different from sexual experience), or 2) the presence of a sexual encounter leaves her damaged in some way, and she is automatically labeled as the whore. Either tendency I find disturbing, but that may just be the mediator in me.
I really didn’t intend to ramble on quite this much, but I am distracting myself. Anyway, the short of all this would be that I enjoyed listening.
@OGT
I didn’t think you sounded like an idiot. I mean, I went into this one knowing I didn’t really have much to offer in the way of insight, so it’s more likely that I sounded like an idiot.
@ghostlightning and Kaiser
We need the two of you, both for what you have to offer in the way of discussion, and because we’d like to diversify our presently narrow range of sexy accents.
@TheKittymeister
I don’t know who you are, but I do hope you’ll stick around for a while.
This is something I’d like to know, too. And if she’s stuck as a mortal, I wonder, what happens if she dies? Cuchlann mentioned in a previous post that, when Nagi still resided in a tree, killing the tree would amount to killing the goddess; would the same be true of killing the human body? Also, I wonder if her not being a tree anymore erects a wall between Nagi and the nature she’s supposed to represent/protect. We have seen her lose both memories and godly power, and I wonder if it’s for that reason.
Well, the statue itself turned into Nagi’s human body. I guess Jin could take an axe to Nagi if he wanted to, but it’d be messy…
But it’s a funny subversion of the usual: normally, at least in the west, we think of Christianity as the imperialistic, dominating religion that had to accommodate itself to local customs to allow itself to spread and continue. Zange is a Shinto goddess who arguably treats Christianity the same way Christians treated European paganism (well, she hasn’t turned God the Father and Jesus into demons…yet). Granted, it seems logical here, as Christianity is not the dominant religion in Japan. But I think your comment in the next paragraph is relevant: “Shinto, altho a religion, seems to be regarded more as a part of Japanese culture and less as an opposition to monotheism.” Zange doesn’t particularly need some oldschool religious dogma to confirm her goddesshood; she just needs worship, and she does what’s most convenient to get it because, well, why not?
I definitely agree. As I said in the podcast, though, I suspect that the outcry over Nagi’s potential lack of virginity came from a very small but very vocal contingent of fans, as that seems to be the way these things go.