This was a round-robin by lelangir, Lbrevis, ghostlightning and usagijen. In it, we start by discussing Christmas (we started a while ago heh…) and how it’s turned into such a commercial enterprise. We use Kannagi and Lucky Star as vehicles for our discussion.

This round robin took place in the form of a chain letter. I wrote a short remark, and emailed to the next participant. I hoped that this would develop a linear dialogue, although that’s only part true.

Round 1.

lelangir: So, in relation to Christmas and religion, one interesting case is in Kannagi, specifically Zange (which wiki tells me means “penitence” or “confession” in Japanese). In essence, Zange chooses her host, a Christian nun, because it is a more popular religion, and so all the faith she receives is what nourishes her existence. Nagi, on the other hand, comes from an ancient religion, which is not so monolithic in itself, “Shintoism” being an agglomerative representation of many tribal religions. This is also shown in Natsume Yuujin-chou 02, where a god continuously shrinks until he vanishes because his only worshipper and source of faith, an elderly lady, dies. People have mentioned how Kannagi is social commentary on religion and cultural idolatry. And this is supported by, literally, the idolization of Nagi, manifested quite clearly in the OP.

Lbrevis: I think it all comes down to the fact that generally speaking the Japanese are not religious, at least not in the way the West is. Just the other day I saw a bumper sticker that said “Keep Christ in Christmas.” The driver would undoubtedly be horrified to know that in Japan Christmas is a commercial event where the Christmas cake is far more important than a baby in a manger.

So getting back to shrine maidens, it’s not surprising that Kannagi mixes pop culture with religion in a way that would be sacrilegious to everyone else… in America! (thank you, Bandit Keith). It may be, for better or for worse, that Nagi has really hit on something here and this is the only way to make an ancient religion like Shintoism relevant.

ghostlightning: The Philippines is the largest Christian (Catholic) country in Asia, and over here, the Christmas season begins in… September! So imagine the eerie juxtapositions of Santa Clause and Jack o’ Lanterns during Halloween. Here however, despite the overt colonization into Christianity, we appropriated Catholicism right back – in very animistic ways. Patron saints bless locales the same way Nagi the patron goddess of her area.

You’ll really see oddities, such as the Black Jesus in the heart of Manila (Quiapo district).

The people, the worshippers, by appropriating religion to fit within their own understanding and comfort levels, perpetuate religion. I’m pretty sure Jesus isn’t black, and neither are Filipinos, but the Catholic church didn’t/couldn’t declare this sacrilegious. Nagi may be on to something.

usagijen: I recently thought about how Japanese can’t say the pun-ny line ‘Christ puts “Christ” in Christmas’ because of how they represented Christmas in their language — クリスマス — simply KURISUMASU, with no Christ in sight, and I guess that would make more sense when you take into account what Lbrevis said. They could’ve opted for the Chinese equivalent, 聖誕節, if they really wanted to show its religious roots, but they didn’t, as though they just adapted Christmas for the sake of its “modern-day rituals”. In the words of ghostlightning, it’s like they simply appropriated Christmas to fit their own understanding, in the same way religion works, or pop culture for that matter.

There’s a reason why idols, both in religion and pop culture, are called as such. And when you see the incredible feats my fellow countrymen — the Filipino devotees — go through just to touch their beloved Nazarene idol each year (illustrated in the pic provided by ghostlightning), no less than the die-hard fans of, say, Michael Jackson or Miley Cyrus (or other phenomenal craze), who cry, faint, and fall head over heels for their beloved pop star idol, the intersection between the two becomes even more vague. Do we call the religious devotees’ act sacrilegious, or simply an admirable display of faith and devotion? How about the overzealous act of fans? The thin line that separates them is the sanctity aspect of religion, which is quite ambiguous in and of itself. Religion is a mainstream pop culture, after all. Now if my confusion serves to affirm the social commentary present in Kannagi, then all I can say is, Nagi may be on to something indeed.

Round 2.

lelangir: We’ve said that religion is commodified and transformed into pop culture that is devoid of most religious value, and one way this happens is through anachronism, or really, the usurpation of anachronism.

Lucky Star even satirizes the rhetorical nature of new years prayer. What they also poke fun at is the fetishization of the shrine maiden, or the hardcore fans that actually do have a shrine maiden fetish. An article at Sankaku Complex [SFW] would dismiss any attempt at saying the shrine maiden isn’t sexualized, perhaps not in a dissimilar way nuns in the West are sexualized. One commenter posted: “I love [that] japanese culture [has] something different than the whole anime/manga stuff. It’s like Japan [has] two (or more) complete distinct worlds… the old and cultural one impresses me more than the modern one, though I like both.” I don’t necessarily agree with traditional vs. modern culture as “complete distinct worlds,” but it is a very perceptive insight into how, as I said, anachronism is utilized as cultural (often nationalistic) capital.

Danny Choo has an excellent photoset of this on his blog.

So the thing here to think about is how the past is rearticulated in the present as “cool” – it’s how old is turned back into new.

Lbrevis:

The first thing that comes to mind in relation to this is Washinomiya Shrine, the shrine featured in Lucky Star. As most of you may know, it’s an actual shrine in the Kanto region which thousands of Luck Star fans have made a pilgrimage to.

Now the shrine maidens in lelangir’s example aren’t really encouraging otaku to ogle them, it just happens to be a side effect they have no control over and are probably not aware of. But in the town of Washimiya the locals have actually capitalized on the anime’s influence by selling Lucky Star goods and even allowing otaku to carry a Lucky Star themed portable shrine (known as a mikoshi) during festivals.

Never mind for a moment how silly this looks, consider that it’s a prime example of religion incorporating pop culture and, like lelangir was saying, old meeting with new. This all seems like harmless fun to me but who knows, a couple hundred years from now and maybe Konata and the others will be incorporated in the legends surrounding the shrine. Kind of a strange thought, isn’t it.

ghostlightning: Something to consider: what is the purpose of religiosity? To me it smacks of ritualized wish-fulfillment. Isn’t prayer a wish? The formula of prayer (Christian, New Testament) can be broken down this way:

Acknowledgment of God as God, his power.
Worship and adoration of God as God.
Wishes, please grant them.
Further/final acknowledgment of God as God.

The Lord’s Prayer [ecumenical English Language Liturgical Consultation (eELLC) 1988]

Our Father in heaven, (a)
hallowed be your name, (b)
your kingdom come, (a)
your will be done, (a)
on earth as in heaven. (a)
Give us today our daily bread. (c)
Forgive us our sins (c)
as we forgive those who sin against us. (c)
Save us from the time of trial (c)
and deliver us from evil. (c)
[For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.] (b)

Is anime a form of wish fulfillment? Consider the fetishization of shrine maidens. The fetishization itself is a wish, and anime is the prayer answered: Lucky Star’s Hiiragi sisters, Kannagi: “Crazy Shrine Maidens” is another. The mikoshi Lbrevis shows us is the prayer continued. The religiosity here is not asking for daily bread (unless sexual gratification is substituted as the signified), or for leading the religious away from temptation/saving from the time of trial. Nonetheless, it can be read as religiosity.

usagijen: Forgive me if I’m gonna break the cycle here or contradict what I said before (or strike another tangent), but after all that’s been mentioned so far regarding the commodification of religion, the question is, if the object of worship in the religion becomes the 2D “gods/goddesses” who simply parodied it for fetishization purposes, as opposed to the deities meant to be worshipped in the religion (and the values it promulgates), can we even consider that to be religious? Taking what ghostlightning said, for example, it might seem silly that God (or any gods for that matter) would accept a prayer meant to fulfill his/her self-serving fetish wish which actually diverts his/her attention from the deity he/she is addressing the prayer to in the first place.

I don’t see anything wrong with the intertwining of religion and pop culture, especially if this is meant to inculcate the values being taught by the religion, allow people to have a newfound appreciation for it or something, but the moment the focus of the worshipper shifts to nothing else but the fetishized aspect, the fetish will have then become a religion of itself. Take Haruhiism for example.

Going back to the mikoshi scene as Lbrevis shown, I’d agree that it looks harmless, especially when you regard it as nothing else but a creative way of performing the rituals of the Shinto religion. If, on the other hand, these guys are doing this to worship nothing else but the Almighty Lucky Star goddesses, it’ll be a completely different story, as I’ve also said in the aforementioned paragraph.

Round 3

Round 3.

lelangir: To piece together what was said in round two in relation to Kannagi, Nagi’s idolatry, as we’ve said, is the combination of new (pop culture) and old (Shintoism). This is a new, synthesized religion per se, at the core utilizing Shinto traditions in a modern style: just check out Nagi’s exorcist wand.

It would seem Nagi’s wand might be a modern transformation of a traditional gohei a device used for purification rituals:

Both devices have two shide, the white streamers. However, Nagi’s wand has the body of a pink plastic toy; mahou shoujo incarnate, quite a manifestation of this modernized tradition.

The most heightened aspect of this synthesis is probably identity. Pontifus of Superfanicom and Mike of Anime Diet implicitly mention this in two posts.

Pontifus

: It’s not the drama that bothered me about the end. Really, I think I just wanted a “

Nagi goes back to Goddess-land

, and everyone learns something” end. But this post also makes me wonder, in the context of Shintoism

, if Nagi has anywhere to go back to

. If “destroying the tree was akin to destroying the goddess,”

is her human (or human-like) body her new “tree?

” Is she susceptible to death, and if so, what then? In any case, I’m inclined to think now that she may just be stuck as she is. [my emphasis]

Mike

: …[w]ho exactly is Nagi? What kind of powers does she really have? Why doesn’t she remember everything? Nagi and Zenge are both goddesses whose power depends on that of others’ devotion and belief, and it is when in says that he “believes” in her that she is able to be restored.

That makes Nagi pretty human actually

, and it makes even more sense when we consider the other way we understand what it means to “believe” in someone-to trust and to love someone. [my emphasis]

What they seemed to be getting at is the dividing line between humans and gods, living and dead, tangible and intangible. Cuchlann also speaks of this:

So far as I know the Shinto gods aren’t intermediaries in the [way of Greek titans], but I think we could look at them as go-betweens for the earth itself and the humans who live on it. This is important because I wonder if some people are misinterpreting Nagi’s status.  She is a god, this hypothetical reasoning could go, so why all these strange problems – the inability to properly destroy impurities, the memory loss, the weakness in power. But unlike a Greek god, who just has power, the Shinto gods are just sort-of around, almost like a higher grouping of priests. [my emphasis]

Nagi has been subject to the shifting of positions – in the earth or as the earth, in a state of abstract existence, or in a human container, quite a concrete state of existence. And these shifting positions, locations and states are what articulate her identity, as they are employed with great effect to stimulate character development. So if the complexity of her identity is never answered nor resolved, what are we left with?

Faith.

Yes – Kannagi does in fact break the fourth wall, explicitly (ONCE!) and implicitly via its otaku inside jokes (butthurt director, etc.).

(note: winking at the audience constitutes fourth wall fracture)

As ghostlightning said, this fracturing of the fourth wall is the fulfillment of the wish. Why is Kannagi reliant on viewer faith? I think that, just as Jin said that fun was most important,

As Jin said, while he believes Nagi is a god, what matters is that they had fun. As it turns out, Jin probably is Nagi’s biggest worshipper. IT’S 4th WALL FAITH, ETC.

Concluding questions for the reader

1) Compare the assertions quoted above (Nagi and Zange is intermediaries between gods and humans) with the Catholic idea of saints (who are also patrons of locales and intermediaries between God and humans). Do you feel that a lot of beliefs are more alike than they are different?

2) Does seeing Kannagi in the light of religion change your appreciation of the show in any way? (How about Lucky Star? Haruhi?)

↩[LWC 63]

The territorialization of the socio-cultural and political positions, that is to say ethnicities vis-à-vis corresponding politics, is pretty interesting in Geass R2. But for a moment may we put aside all raeg and anti-raeg in order to simply enjoy something? – and by enjoy I equate to masturbation, blogsturbation, blogfap, etc. Essentially, OGT put it very well when he said that Code Geass is like a history major’s wet dream come true (though I’m no historian).

1 – Territories & Positions

Kallen is a half-blood and self-proclaimed Japanese while Suzaku is a half-baked traitor in the eyes of the Japanese public. Their personal histories also emphasize the culture behind these positions, Suzaku’s father being a (dead) former prime minister, Kallen seeking a kind of vengeance for her dead brother whom we assume fought in the Brittanian invasion with Ogi. We can, of course, detect both a resonance and polarity between Suzaku and Kallen; one man, one women; both pivotal knightmare pilots; both fighting “for Japan”, albeit in opposite ways; both with dead father-like figures, and so forth and so on. I could posit that they are each other’s antithesis, but that would perhaps skew Lelouch’s role in relation to them both.

While not ignoring the multifarious parallelisms exhibited by these two characters in respect to Lelouch, going back to the territorialization of certain positions, how does the presence of Britannia affect the positions in which these two characters take action? These positions are out of their control – they are unable to remove Britannia from Japan (for now, at least), so dissident Elevens become territoralized as “terrorists”, and those that join or submit become the dogs of Britannia, like that hotdog stand guy.[1] But these characters must also work within their kaleidoscopic socio-ethnic positions; their halfness. These are the ones in which they exercise their agency. This is not to say that they can, to their liking, pick and choose an attractive position out of the many within their cultural kaleidoscope and curtain the rest, but because these positions are not political (they have a politics, but they are not inherently so), Britannia can do little to nothing to alter directly the “meaning” of Japan since she has not established a hegemony over the majority of the its public – every action has an opposite and equal reaction (I’m not trying to be cute, I swear), therefore, Britannia’s actions elicit a response from the Japanese, and this response is what develops the nation’s meaning.

These positions are not immobile. In fact the greater territories themselves are expanding and contracting – hence the paradox behind the title. Kallen is simultaneously a Native Nippon and an Exiled Eleven. Her homeland is her exile; her exile is her homeland. The same applies for Suzaku. It’s what they fight for – the reclamation and reterritorialization of their Island as Japan and not Area 11. It’s reading how they negotiate with the flux of the territory, and how their positions are territorialized as Britannian, Japanese, or Eleven. There’s the crucial distinction: the difference between fighting as, in, and for – positions, territories, and goals, respectively.

Two of the greatest political forces that territorialize are both part of Britannia. There’s the imperialistic side, regal Charles (his army as well) and the insistence upon natural inequality, and the let’s-be-friends side, Euphie/Nunnaly and the Special Administrative Region of Japan (Henceforth SARJ).

Consider this territory: Suzaku wants to change it from the inside, so he joins not the very thing he wants to change (Japan, or perhaps the world), but the thing that controls the power that is able to produce change. Lelouch points this out in the first season – the insertion of Japan into the empire’s global market has stabilized their own economy, although this is to the suffering of the Japanese and the benefit of a select few like Kirihara. Suzaku fights as a reformist Britannian, perhaps an extremely leftist one at that – Euphie and Nunnaly fall into this political category since they all want to recognize Japan. They are contrasted by the conservative Cornellia, Charles, and so forth. While the first attempt at the SARJ ended in a fiasco, the original intent behind it is what is important. The Japanese may have perceived Euphie as a psychotic killer, but that was all – they never thought that the intent of the SARJ was a bad thing. The ideology of the SARJ remains as a territorializing force in which Suzaku locates himself.

While Suzaku is situated within the ideology of the SARJ and thus positioned as Japanese, the infamy of his reputation precedes him and he is positioned as more of a [honorary] Britannian than a Japanese. Suzaku’s efforts towards forging himself a Japanese image are thwarted by the disabling results of his actions – he fights Zero, thus he fights Japan. Ironically, Suzaku fights Japan for Japan. And more and more is the Japanese territory he so desperately wants to fight in expanding due to the reinstallation of the SARJ, yet, again ironically, no longer are his actions by any means Japanese for he surely is a Britannian, for he surely is a Knight of the Rounds. Suzaku enters the dilemma of standing far, far away, seeing his homeland being gradually restored, helpless to partake in the festivities since he is the one that always crashes the [Zero's] party.

Kallen’s situation is a little more straight forward, and while she’s half-blooded, she is seemingly insecure about her Britannian background and feels it as a blemish, as her mother’s addiction to refrain is a good indication of the remorse she held at her self-disgraceful heritage.

Kallen doesn’t have the drama of being deemed a traitor by her own people, so, unlike Suzaku who is moving away from his native territory, she is seeing the perimeter of hers contract and break, thus allowing the ideology of Elevens and terrorism flood in and territorialize herself as such. She has to work against the current of this force in order to execute a counter politics and force under the banner of Japan. A counter politics she exercises, and the workings of the Order can be seen either as contributing to either the discourse of terrorism or [anti-imperial] “justice”. The big factor here – the gravity that pulls the scales in one direction or the other – is Zero, which makes it all the more complicated for Kallen since she knows that Zero is a Brit whose intentions lie not with Japan in the long run of things.

I think that she dims the spotlight on this horrifically revealing facet. Of course she knows that Lelouch doesn’t care about Japan, but Zero does. There was the “play on identity” back in episode two of the second season, Kallen relying on the convenience of Zero in the face of Lelouch and so forth – that’s the hegemony of Zero; out to get Britannia, yet Japan will be liberated in the process, so why not jump on his bandwagon until then? Kallen is perhaps the only one (and the late Urabe) that resigns to this technique, but in doing so, she submits to the representation of Zero. She then contracts her actions over to the Order and loses all her political power, letting Zero territorialize her however he sees fit.

Kallen positions herself as a Japanese fighting for liberation, and, after having received Zero’s burden of representation, remains territorialized as Japanese. The contradiction she faces is personal and internal – bow down to the Machiavellianism of Lelouch and posture herself as an Eleven, or ignore that and focus on Zero and the reclamation of Japan. Suzaku, too, has personal issues (you may accept this pun if you wish) centered around his ends versus his means, but these aren’t so much as self-territorializing as they are Kallen’s. Both have differences, yet their paradox remains: they are forced to circumvent particular ideologies in order to propagate some and reconstitute others – they are forced to work within a particular position in order to see that their actions are not territorialized in a problematic way that aggravates the circumstances they seek to improve – all of this is as exiles within their nativity.

2 – Nationalism

Episode 8 of R2 brings (brought) up the interesting topic of nationalism. Not necessarily what it is, but where it is and how it is so. Is nationality dependant upon geography? Perhaps, I think concrete, geographic location has a large say in the genesis of nationalities, but after substantial development “geography” becomes the politics of mapping – a discursive element. It goes without saying that if it weren’t for that island near the Korean peninsula, there wouldn’t be a Japan, but if the island were to be decimated and subducted into the Pacific ocean (knock on wood) “Japan” would surely still exist and, possibly, continue to thrive alone as a concept.

Because our concept of Japan is merely that, a concept, it is amorphous, kinetic, movable, displaceable, and so forth. Hence the state of being Japanese – the ability to declare a heritage, a cultural lineage – is decentralized and not physically or geographically restricting. We had not seen a great Japanese diaspora here in Geass; you may call the iceberg exodus a migration of sorts, though it being limited to insurrectionary guerillas surely reduces the scope of its potential cultural impact. Compare the lack of evident Japanese rhizomorphic elements to Britannia’s apparent global, colonial ubiquity. When she conquers, she colonizes and establishes governance as well as cultural gateways. While this oppression does not necessarily lead to a supposed “melting pot” (disparate Shinjuku ghetto across the train line from wealthy urban center) but rather than “salad bowl” that is indicative of distinct socioeconomic conditions.

Language plays an oddly mundane role in Geass. Apart from the large amounts of Engrish (which we shouldn’t hastily express as such because it was rather good Japanese) the “language” elements here are for narrowcasting to a specifically imagined Japanese audience. Because Britannians speak Japanese, there is no official language of state, and thus one less way (a very important way at that) for the Japanese to declare their cultural autonomy. In that sense, Britannia has already territorialized the language by her “fluency” in it – the only problem is that “fluency” was most likely not intended by the animators, it wasn’t even considered, it’s just to make the show palatable, unfortunately.[2]

The use of what we can now lightly call “catch phrases” such as “yes, your majesty/highness” and “all hail Britannia” are then exotified, dramatic effect only (compare this to this). Similarly, on the subject of verbal traditions, we see glimpses of bodily traditions, namely Cornelia’s informal knighting (“Simplified ceremony”, as GG translates it) of Suzaku in episode 25 of R1. Traditions, rituals, ceremonies, and so forth and so on all have the potential to draw practitioners and witnesses into the hegemony of the nation state. This was the case for historical shift in the British governmental system as it appropriated power from the King and reallocated it to Parliament. With the “disintegration” of the Monarchy and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the royalty in the eye of the public transformed from a stereotypical god-sent dictatorship to a waning, grandfather-like figure. With the aid of new technologies that propagated images, sounds and footage of the royalty, public connection to their increasingly beloved royalty grew, and, as David Cannadine put it (1983), there was a “‘preservation of anachronism’, the deliberate, ceremonial presentation of an impotent but venerated monarch as a unifying symbol of permanence and national community” (p. 122). In the context of Geass this is strange because I don’t think we’ve yet to see of an actual Parliament within Britannia; seems like the emperor has all the power, and we’re left guessing what the general public opinion is.

But similar anachronism is evident in Geass; the lances on the Sutherland KMF’s that are mirrored by the katana-like swords (more like chainsaws) of the idiosyncratic, samurai-esque Burai KMF’s of the Japanese.[3] For the most part, anachronism connotes class – from Kanon‘s ballroom dance scene to Afro Samurai‘s clashing juxtaposition of sword and gun – but here each militaristic motif is meant to compliment the nationalities carried out through KMF’s.

For the sake of brevity I’d hav….oops.

[1]“Territorialized” may seem like pretentious jargon – could I have used the word “labeled” here? But in fact “territorialized” means more than simply a cultural connotation that is the adhesive properties of a name/concept and a particular entity. It is how things are positioned within an ideological territory. In this sense, things are stationary and the ideological territory is always shifting around and exhibiting a kind of osmosis of things; in the sense of things being labeled, labels are stationary and the things float around to insert themselves into certain categories and/or descriptions.

[2] It’s also interesting to note how Japan is deemed erea juu ichi while the Japanese are labeled as ereben. The land receives the native numerical (十一) while the peoples receive a more “foreign” taxonomy (エレベＮ). I said language plays a mundane role, and it does so in a first-order denotative sense, though a second-order meta sense does reveal, as usual, that language plays an interesting role in many things.

[3] To this extent I wonder if the Britannian KMF’s being purple has any significance?