God is in the details

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


Kamisama Kazoku, part of episode 1