Messianic Figures in Japanese Media
By Moogy | May 13, 2008
My poor blog has been neglected for too long. This is yet another half-baked rambling from me.
I should preface this by saying that I do not subscribe to any religion. I just found the topic interesting. Probably because I came up with it at like 3 am.
Also I guess this will contain spoilers. For numerous things.
So, for whatever reason, anime and game producers seem to be obsessed with the idea of, well, Jesus. If the protagonist isn’t Jesus, then he’s probably killing Jesus (or at least God). Or maybe somebody just comes along to die for the protagonist’s sins. Any way you slice it, Japan definitely has a Jesus fetish.
Or, to put it more accurately, a messiah fetish. Since Japan is a fairly secular country, I doubt that they’re specifically intending their Jesus parallels to be, well, Jesus parallels. Instead, they’re probably just drawing from the common theme of a messiah amongst western religions and western societies in general. Well, I actually have no familiarity at all with Judaism and Islam, so I might be wrong. Regardless, I doubt it’s the idea of Jesus specifically that Japanese media seems so enamored with.
Basically, I think the idea of a messiah appeals to Japan because the concept itself is pretty great. I mean, think about it - if you boil it down and remove all of the stodgy religious correlations, a messiah is basically someone who sacrifices themselves for other characters. Or gets sacrificed. Forcefully.
The most readily available example of this trend is Kaworu from Eva. Yeah, I hate to reference Eva, but you’ve gotta admit, he’s pretty much gay Jesus. And how about Hayami from H2O? Well, I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on with the Christianity stuff in H2O, so maybe that’s a bad example. How about Ayato from RahXephon? Minato from P3? If Haruhi is God, does that mean that Kyon is Jesus? Is Archer actually Jesus in all three routes?
I actually made this post because I wanted to hear people’s comments about it. This is much shorter than I intended on it being, but I don’t have much more to say myself. It’s just an interesting tidbit for you to digest while I work on being busy with a bunch of random shit. So, guys, what are your thoughts on the prevalence of messianic figures in Japanese media?
May 13th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
It’s just a fad.
Unfortunately, Japan does not get the meaning of agapé (Greek term used in the New testament to signify the self-sacrificial love Jesus and the apostles had for the people), so it just becomes another storytelling tool.
tl;dr: Japan thinks it is a good idea but chooses not to implement it in real life.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I’ve gotta disagree about Hayami being a messianic figure. She died saving a kid from a train. Nothing more than that.
I say this because I actually don’t like the messianic archetype too much. In short, it’s too good to be true. It doesn’t make for a compelling, human character. More down to Earth characters are far more effective ways to tell a story and evoke emotion, and it is far more poignant when one of these more normal characters ends up making some sort of sacrifice.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
People sacrificing themselves to save others is a theme older than Jesus or living religion. The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had stories of self-sacrifice, and so did Rome and Greece. Japan has many stories like that, from what I hear. It’s not a Messiah fetish, it’s a good story telling tool. Everyone likes to watch people kill themselves to save others.