If you're a fan of action, gore and independent animation, this is something you would want to watch.
Ninjai is a little ninja who travels around killing bad guys, with the ultimate aim of hunting down the head honcho of all bad guys. He's small but powerful, and a very composed and mysterious sort of kid (a full view of his face is never shown). The story is a simple and exciting piece, with good art, good music and good direction (read: highly recommended). Currently, though, it stops at chapter 12, and new chapters roll in extremely slowly. Still, it's brilliant for an independent work and deserves some show of support.
Ninjai was created using Flash, and all its music is original. It's great to see how software, that is not necessarily state-of-the-art, can combine with creativity to produce something enjoyable and of quality.
I’ve recently watched two anime that I find interesting because of their simple expositions of the nature of God. It is refreshing that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Kamisama Kazoku bring up this topic because I’ve never really expected to see discussions of the divine in anime.
Don’t worry – these anime are not in the slightest bit esoteric, and are based on familiar (some would say trite) themes like romance and boy-girl tension. The characters are middle and high school students, which makes for easily digestible dialogue and storylines.
In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Haruhi is a high school girl who attracts curious company – an alien, a time traveller, an esper and an ordinary boy – whom she gathers and forms into a school club. The members of the club seem like any other human being to the naked eye, but in fact have special powers unknown to the people around them.
Haruhi herself is God, but is oblivious to this fact. Her club members are the only ones privy to her true identity, and task themselves with monitoring her behaviour. This is an all-important task because when Haruhi feels upset or melancholic, she can bring about the destruction and recreation of the world. The club members take it upon themselves to keep her in a pleasant mood so as to pre-empt a new cycle of creation.
It is intriguing how God in this show does not know herself to be God, and further, that God is embodied as a female, with the accompanying feminine traits of emotional vulnerability and even whimsicality. Though clueless about who she really is, Haruhi is an omnipotent being who can control outcomes according to her will – she specifically wishes to meet an alien, a time traveller and an esper, and it transpires; but again, she does not know that her club members are such extraordinary beings.
There are also elements of Deism in this show, where Haruhi is cast as Prime Observer, observing humanity without intervention in their lives. The world operates according to natural law, and Haruhi is not aware of and does not receive human supplications in the form of prayer.
This is opposed to Kamisama Kazoku, which draws on Christian notions of God. In this show, God is omnipotent and omniscient, and intervenes directly in human affairs. Unlike in Deism which rejects the idea of miracles, Kamisama Kazoku is premised on the granting of prayers and miracles by God.
Other Christian ideas also feature in this cartoon. Samatarou Kamiyama, the main character, is the son of God. He has a guardian angel, Tenko, who looks out for him. Sins are washed clean through repentance, and God is benevolent and forgiving.
There, the resemblance to Christianity ends as God also has a wife called Venus, obviously alluding to Roman mythology. Besides his only son, God has two other daughters who are training to be Goddesses.
The sycretic constructions of God in both The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Kamisama Kazoku add creative overtones to their otherwise predictable plots. Here are some clips to whet your appetite:
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, part of episode 10
Some time ago, two anime cartoons were taken off Japanese TV temporarily because of the Japanese axe murder, in which a 16-year-old girl killed her father with an axe in Kyotanabe. You can read more about the murder in this Yomiuri Shimbun article.
A week after this incident, another teenager attempted to kill his father, also with an axe. The 15-year-old boy struck his father several times on the head, but failed to kill him. You can read more about his attempt in this Japan Today article.
The two anime cartoons that were either cancelled or delayed are the twelfth episodes of School Days (where two high school girls kill their victims with knives) and Higurashi no naku koro ni kai (the sequel to Higurashi no naku koro ni).
Chiba Television Broadcasting Corp. and Aichi Television Broadcasting Co. discontinued airing School Days, while Television Kanagawa replaced the cartoon with a nature programme called Nice Boat (you can find the Mainichi article here). KBS Television and Tokai Television likewise decided to temporarily cancel broadcasting the twelfth episode of Higurashi no naku koro ni kai.
Here’s the portion of the twelfth episode of School Days that involves some violence: Some fan responses to the delay/cancellation of the anime were that of indignation, questioning how airing the anime might inspire similar murder attempts, or else how taking the anime off TV would prevent such attempts. The assumption underlying this view is that the power of media is limited, and that audiences do not fully absorb and mimic media messages but rather filter them and come to their own thoughtful conclusions about them.
While I wouldn’t be hasty to say that a single cartoon episode could trigger murderous intent, I also wouldn’t totally discount the impact of media upon its audience, regardless of age group. What I think is missing in the analysis is the cumulative effect of media – such cartoons involving violence in addition to the countless other shows featuring homicide. Perhaps gatekeepers and media critics should be thinking about the effect of the media in totality rather than singling out one show or another.
Something else to think about is the time and TV channel that violent anime are aired on. While older fans may be quick to dismiss the impact that anime has on them, the same may not apply to younger audiences. Besides being popular among the younger crowd, anime also simplifies reality in its 2-D world where gore doesn’t look as gruesome and the consequences of violence are muted. Just because content is in the form of cartoons does not mean that it can be shown indiscriminately to people of all ages.
Lastly, to indignant fans out there, another thing to consider would be sensitivity to the families involved in the murder and attempted murder. Sometimes the unfortunate “timeliness” of such incidents warrants some measure of sensitivity and sacrifice on the part of viewers.
