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I was thinking about the prevalence of religious ceremonies and practises in even the most unrelated anime and manga for all kinds of audiences (examples are too numerous to name), and a strange thought occurred to me: how natural and normal it all seems.
Then another thought occurred to me: how strange it would be to see played-straight religious (or, more accurately, religiously sourced) practises in cartoons or comics with as little fanfair or attention called to it.
Now, I know this isn't totally absent, because The Simpsons had their church and Reverend Lovejoy as a recurring character, but would you find it to be somewhat unnatural to be watching Gumball and have the Watersons go to Mass with basically no attention paid to it, as easily as if they were at a mall or something equally secular?
Does this say something about the missing "casual spirituality" in western media in general?
Japan has a very different relationship with the concept of religion than the west.
In a lot of sects worshipping the Abrahamic God, it can be very difficult to regard him casually. In some cultures worshipping him you’re not even allowed to draw living creatures, much less draw Him. In many others, he straight up demands you don’t even acknowledge any other gods. Kinda hard to be as casual with a deity like that.
Japan on the other hand historically doesn’t usually believe in any all powerful god, but rather in the concept that there are spirits everywhere and in everything. It’s casual from the source.
Christopher Taylor
New Super-Man/JLC fused spirituality/folklore perfectly with capeshit
Elijah Turner
I think the lack of casualness comes from a sense of insecurity. Like they constantly have to affirm themselves against the secular world around them. That's a big mistake in the West's religious direction, in that in trying to embrace secularism they threw out spirituality along with religion. If Japan had done the same there'd probably be that same lack of casualness with Shinto.
I think this same anti-spirituality is increasing over time as well, because if you compare Avatar with LoK there's a massive drop off in its religiosity that can't just be put down to a difference in the lead character. In Avatar most of the elders were (for lack of a better word) from castes (warriors, monks, royalty, etc.), while in LoK they're all civic in their roles (politicians, police, industry, etc.). Funny that I never really noticed that until now.
Joshua Butler
>anime has taught me that Japan is so much more casual about religion!
I mean, I get why you’d say this. But it’s actually still totally acceptable to fire somebody from a high ranking job in Japan for being too openly Christian just because it’s kind of still taboo, even though it’s no longer illegal.
Juan Brown
>but would you find it to be somewhat unnatural to be watching Gumball and have the Watersons go to Mass with basically no attention paid to it, as easily as if they were at a mall or something equally secular? I wouldn't find it unnaturally if, ironically enough, they mentioned the specific denomination.
Like, call it autism, but the fact that, in Western cartoons, if they are forced to show things with a certain level of religiosity usually attached to them (like funerals and marriages), they never ever show any sign of being any kind of religious denomination bothers me. Even a mostly-fictional one would suspend my disbelief easier than having, say, the airport chapel-tier Church in "Up!" or a wedding with a blatant priest but no clear sign of which rite it is.
Okay, let's get back to the OP: I wouldn't at all. I'd find it a piece of characterization like any other. Mostly shows an undecurrent of one's personal philosophy without having to get the character to stop to preach it.
Jackson Barnes
To be fair, what's the Christian percentage in Japan? 2%?
Hunter Adams
The same thing exists in Europe and across the world. Spirituality and folklore is still everywhere in the world today just under a different guise that is more elaborate. Assuming you live in the US, most celebrations and traditions have a source that comes from Anglo-Saxon-Celtic background. Christmas is Yuletide, Easter is Eostre, Thanksgiving is Harvest Festival, Halloween is Hallow's Eve, etc. I know someone will inevitably suggest that spirituality like shintoism and paganism (which are the same thing) are simply just atheism in dress-up, but that is also true of Christianity in a lot of instances. Spirituality helps process emotions and culture better - it isn't a bad thing to have.
Mason Edwards
And even that 2% is pretty casual in their practices. The percent of Christians in Japan who are hardcore practitioners is even lower.
Gabriel Edwards
It’s kinda difficult to tell because for a long time the only christianity that existed in Japan was their own brand of “underground christianity,” which when they finally legalized it and the underground practitioners came out from the closet, the greater christian world wouldn’t recognize them because too many buddhist and shinto traditions had been mixed in just to keep the sect alive. Then they fucked off and said they were gonna just keep practicing quietly like they had been, but who knows how many are left since they’re not really open about it.
And then things get a bit more confusing from the fact that practically everybody in Japan has a “christian style” wedding purely for the aesthetic, because most don’t give a fuck about picking a few minor traditions here and there without going full hog into it.
Jordan Foster
I think people feel like they have to do these, but don't want to go so far as to feel as if they're endorsing it. Again, I think it's a lack of security. You can talk about The Simpsons, but that's pretty old now, so it setting Springfield up as a Protestant (nearly exclusively, with only Apu and Krusty being the major characters who differ) is also more exclusive than what would probably be portrayed now.
Julian Edwards
In Japan, you’re born Shinto, marry Christian, and die Buddhist.
Nolan Sanchez
I think one of the major problems in the West is throwing out spirituality along with religion, so many of those traditions lose their edge and become just another excuse for consumerism. I know people would blame capitalism for this (and everything else they can), but I think that the commercialisation of these traditions came about as a response to that lack of spirituality. What does the charity of Christmas mean without a spiritual component? Buying stuff. What does evil spirits of traditional Samhain or divine spirits of Hallow's Eve mean without a spiritual component? Horror movies and dress up.
Caleb Collins
From my understanding, most Japanese are non-religious. The spiritualism depicted is more about culture and tradition than way of living. Less the Bible, and more folklore. But, that's just the view of someone who gets all their information from anime.
Jason Johnson
To be honest even a devout Shinto(ist?)/Buddhist from Japan would be seen as non-religious to someone of the Abrahamic faiths. I think I read somewhere that something like 1/10 in Japan are religious, but 4/5 are regularly engaged in religious ceremonies.
Connor Martinez
>I think people feel like they have to do these, but don't want to go so far as to feel as if they're endorsing it. Which is pretty silly. Yes, it ìs true that cartoons made with the "Christian Parallel Culture" in mind have made the idea of religious references (explicit ones) unappealing to a mass audience due to a percieved notion that they are bad, overly twee, or both; and the Bush administration's actions making most creators reel at the idea of featuring Christianity in a positive or even neutral light (not without reason, mind you), but… in the end, it's not like they'd have to state the entirety of the Christian Basic Doctrine (Mystery of the Trinity and suchlike, not the details that actually create denominations) to make it somewhat clear that the characters have some sort of religion.
Even when you consider other religions (even entirely fictional ones, again, I don't mind those either), the hang-up against featuring any sign of spirituality is weird: in that case, the controversialness would be pretty hard to find IMHO.
Ultimately, I get the feeling that this hang-up over religion is a result of fear of looking like either fanatics or disrespectful to divinity, when arguably divinity, by its very nature, can't be serioously damaged by portrayals that aren't extremely solemn.
Evan Wright
Good question. It's not about the difference between the west and the east. Its just Japan which is unironically special about this.
Japanese religeous view or perspective of mysterious stuff is absolutely animistic. They love making something unrealistic or hyper nature/myth stuff easy to "feel". And they give it some story connected to their everyday/modern lives or experiences. Manga is the best media for this cause you can immediately express it yourself when you "feel" it.
Isaiah Gutierrez
I think another aspect is their own ignorance of the differences or peculiarities between certain religious world views. It's like the joke about Movementarians, only they do it seriously and don't really know why they're doing it.
I'm suddenly reminded of those cringy pictures of Christian Sonic and Muslim Hulk, and other pictures artists draw of certain media characters engaging with their own religion, and wondering why I find that cringy but any picture of a character dressed like a Shrine Maiden doesn't. Maybe there's a degree of exoticism as well that allows for a distance to be kept so it's not "too real" for a Westerner?
It might be an island thing. Britain basically just adopted any religion it came across and abandoned it just as quickly. I mean, it went from Druidic, to Hellenist (King Arthur started as one of these), to Germanic, to Catholic, to Protestant, to nothing, and never seemed to really mourn any of them after they were gone.
Angel Evans
>I'm suddenly reminded of those cringy pictures of Christian Sonic and Muslim Hulk, and other pictures artists draw of certain media characters engaging with their own religion, and wondering why I find that cringy I get the impression that most of the cringe coming off those images is mostly due to how ham-fisted they come off (Muslim Hulk, Shadow converting to Christianity) as a result of a slightly better-done "How do you do, fellow kids?" (hard to explain, but there'sa King of the Hill episode exactly about what I'm talking about), or how poor the artwork is (most of the most famous "Christian Sonic" images), a result of preteens and early teens experimenting with "cool plus cool equals super-cool!", which is a natural thing ubt looks awkward to older people.
>Maybe there's a degree of exoticism as well that allows for a distance to be kept so it's not "too real" for a Westerner? I mean, I wouldn't doubt that, Orientalism and Chineserie (idealization through Western lenses of the Arabo-islamic world and the Chinese culture respectively) were artistic trends back in the XVIII century for a reason, and the presence of "diet Buddhists" in the Western world is a sign that it still exists to some degree. But, even then, most don't seem to even touch it.
Compare it to Japanese anime: their only exposure to Christianity has been for centuries the Catholic Christianity the Portoguese missionaries brought to them. Their own version of Christianity reflects that. They do have some sort of fascination with Christian rites (like said), much like how the West has a fascination with Daoism and Buddhism. Yet Japanese media isn't shy in depicting Christianity, even in a mostly incorrect form where nuns are like shrine maidens and inquisitors actually matter outside the Rota.
Owen Flores
There’s a big tradition of veneration of ancestors and deceased family that many in the west might find particularly spiritual, but it is arguably a more cultural component than a religious one.
Oliver Bell
Japan and Shintoism are particularly receptive to adopting foreign religions and cultural traditions and tacking them onto itself. Japan absolutely would’ve done this with Christianity the same way they did it with Buddhism if Christian missionaries didn’t keep telling them they were doing it wrong.
Jackson Gonzalez
I know next to nothing about both christian nuns and japanese shrine maidens and I admit I don’t really get what the fundamental differences between them are. Same for the various forms of monks.
Liam Wood
I think it's an aspect of the European mindset at a genetic level. Even since the oldest philosophies there's been an obsession with systems, and proper systems, and understanding those proper systems.
Abrahamic religions don't have fun things to do with regards to spirituality. Shinto or Buddhism has stuff that you can do to get closer to your spirituality that can also be a nice relaxing event. Abrahamic religions it's all church and fasting. If you want fun western spirituality, go pagan. All those holidays are about dicking around outside, getting naked, and feasting.
Angel Richardson
The fundamental difference between nuns and shrine maidens is that nuns are supposed to be utterly invested to the religious community they choose to take part in. This means that, unlike a shrine maiden, they cannot be married, be of age (but to be fair this didn't use to exist), have underage children or be in deep debt, and, if they are taken in, they only have exactly one year (maximum two) to choose whether committ fully or not.
Shrine maidens… they can be teens, and often can take the vows whenever they want: some Japanese girls may take "shrine maiden" as some sort of particularily spiritual summer job, in fact.
Henry Thomas
I think Abarahamic "intensity" has its uses.
Lincoln Scott
*they msut be of age.
Fuck my impatience.
Angel Morris
Nah, Japan loves systems too. I think the big difference is their systems are cyclic while western ones are linear.
Mason Rodriguez
They're well-made religions, no doubt. The underlying messages behind each of them are great too.
They're just not any fun to actually participate in, which is probably why you don't see them much in modern media. Except in series like Daredevil where the intensity of Catholicism helps underscore Daredevil's whole guilt thing.
Andrew Evans
I remember The Loud House having a couple casual mentions of church.
Carson Brown
I think that they are "literate" religions as well gives rise to this kind of practise and general syntax of behaviour. I think it's why they seem to survive and thrive so well under intense hardship (physical, mental, or spiritual) and collapses once that hardship ends.
Mason Turner
I think that connects to what said about Gerinichristianity.
James Reyes
As I recall, the Ed, Edd, and Eddy Christmas special had a nativity pageant as part of the plot.
I was surprised, because even back then, Christmas was normally secularized in children's cartoon specials, often to the point of only ever being referred to as "The Holidays" or being replaced by some entirely fictional Christmas-equivalent like "Giftfest".
Bentley Edwards
It is a big difference from the Charlie Brown Christmas movie. The "what is Christmas about?" scene being almost from another world.
Blake Perez
nah, christians used to casually go to church (in reality and in media) without making a big fuss about it. then people decided that was politically incorrect and mention of religion on TV became forbidden. now when someone wants to portray religion in media, they know it's out of the norm so they feel they have to make a big deal of it to justify it, unless it's satirical.
Jose Myers
>I think one of the major problems in the West is throwing out spirituality along with religion
Religious people will always insist that all the good parts of spirituality come from God, so those good parts cannot exist without the self-sacrifice that religious practice demands.
Meanwhile, atheists will always insist that the trend away from spirituality and toward consumerism is a good thing, because in their mind, spirituality is just as much a bunch of made up faerie tale bologna as religion is.
So I don't think the idea that we should keep spiritual beliefs but abandon religious practices will ever be mainstream.
Brayden Rivera
I think that people do want a sense of spirituality, and I'd almost go as far to say that a society needs it (even if an individual says they don't). The system of that spirituality is almost totally irrelevant as long as it gets you looking above what is in front of you. While it's popular to see the "death of God" as a challenge, a very small minority ever rise to meet it with a lot more sinking a long way beneath it. Not that this has much to do with cartoons, so to get back to the thread...
It's interesting to note that Light Hope in the new She-Ra is a technological holograph, while in the original series it was a transcendent ray of light from above.
I wonder if it's coming from above or just the way the show-runners feel? Even Bryke have far less spirituality and religiosity in LOK than ALTA did, both in character and general aesthetics, despite spirits having such a major role on the screen.
Even when it makes far more sense to include God in a show or movie they seem to feel the need to avoid it now.
Rick and Morty: >The devil and hell exist, but no God RIPD: > Heaven and spirits exist, but no God The Good Place: >Afterlife exists, but no God Marvel Universe: >Tons of demons, angels are tied in with Asgard's mythology and divorced from Abrahamic religion, God/One Above All appearing is relatively rare and used to pay homage to Jack Kirby rather than for spiritual reasons
Mason Wilson
>Rick & Morty Needless to say, it would fuck the entirety of Rick's character up. Even if the idea of may be nifty.
>The Good Place It seems to operate on the idea of "Heaven Is closeness to God", perhaps they don't want to show how actual paradise look for this very reason.
>Marvel Universe. Very much a semi-unconscious choice to avoid mixing up "real" religion and superheroes, all by the fathers of capeshit back in the Fifties.
Jayden Wright
God not existing while the devil and hell do would make sense for Rick and Morty since they often aim subvert expectations, although... I thought there was an episode that implied that there is a heaven and God for some species but not everyone.
Rick was praying in one episode, he absolutely believes in god
Isaac Long
>The system of that spirituality is almost totally irrelevant as long as it gets you looking above what is in front of you.
I'm just saying, that viewpoint isn't universal. There are many who would argue that the most necessary part of any sense of spirituality is the guidelines that spirituality provides on how to live a correct life. To those people, the systemic part of their spiritual life is very relevant.
Maybe those people are just as much a minority as the "death of God" folks, but it doesn't seem that way to me.
Joseph Thomas
Easter and Eostre have no etymological or theological connections this is a fedorafag myth. In the east it’s called Pascha, and the Paschal mysteries are still named such in the west. Thanksgiving isn’t a religious holiday in any sense and never was. Halloween is All Saint’s Eve. Fucking fedorafaggots.
Benjamin Nelson
Addressing Christianity is seen as religious favoritism and people in the United States think that children's cartoons should be as neutral to religion as the government should be. Every now and then, you will get an episode about a character's Bar Mitzvah or the episode from the Proud Family about a Muslim character in order to show "these people exist," but then their religions go back to being irrelevant to their stories outside of maybe asking their rabbi/imam for advice every now and then.
Wyatt Martinez
Rick's prayer in that episode could be interpreted as nothing more than hedging his bets.
Rick acts like he believes in situations were doing so allows him to feel superior to other people (like in the Christmas episode) and acts like he doesn't believe in situations were THAT allows him to feel superior. It's impossible to tell what he actually believes because he's such a shamelessly situational hypocrite about the whole thing.
Logan Kelly
Son of man, follow the path of the Lord, and stay true to his LAW.
>Britain basically just adopted any religion it came across and abandoned it just as quickly. I mean, it went from Druidic, to Hellenist (King Arthur started as one of these), to Germanic, to Catholic, to Protestant, to Islam Intwesting.
Cooper Wood
2/10
Dominic Torres
>Woah bro, religion in Japan is like so casual and accepting unlike Christianity >1840's USA: Separation of Church and State >1940's Japan: State mandated Shinto taught in schools and imprisonment of Buddhists and Christians. Emperor literally worshipped as the god-emperor of the Japanese master race.
>Britain basically just adopted any religion it came across and abandoned it just as quickly. I mean, it went from Druidic, to Hellenist (King Arthur started as one of these), to Germanic, to Catholic, to Protestant, to nothing, and never seemed to really mourn any of them after they were gone. Are you fucking retarded? The Romans purposefully rooted out Druidic beliefs because the practices were barbaric. They didn’t just abandon them. The Germanic Anglo-Saxons invades and conquered the isles bringing their folk religion with them. Christian evangelization on the Saxons was purposefully done by the Roman Church. Protestantism took root after particular conflicts with the popes from Henry VIII over the validity of his marriage.
Christopher Lee
Separation of church and state was a mistake
Leo Lopez
This. You don't see religion in western cartoons because Christianity is culturally tolerant to nonbelievers compared to other religions and cartoons are controlled by leftists who would rather die than draw a character going to church.
When's the last time you saw a Japanese work take a giant piss on Shinto?
You can see some of this if you watch cartoons from the 30s and 40s. A lot of the background music is hymnals - "Nearer, my God, to thee" is a popular one
Wyatt Foster
I've seen alot of television shows--sitcoms dramas, et. all from pre-80s decades and apart from Andy Griffith, or Westerns that feature a traveling priest, they really do not go into alot of detail with the families/characters going to church or praying on the regular.
My gut/initial feeling is that even back in the day, they didn't want to commit to either protestant or catholic faiths out of fear of distancing either audience but IDK.
Aiden Perez
Honestly I've seen a hijab in pretty much every modern cartoon somewhere in the background if that counts. Though, to be perfectly frank, I think a lot of people these days are just starting to see Muslims more as an ethnicity than a religion for some bizarre reason and aren't even intentionally putting religious symbolism in cartoon, they want diversity and hijab = Arab apparently.
That's not true, there's plenty of variety in Christianity. There's room for prayer, meditation and asceticism, as well as fun festivities with different traditions around the world. It's just that people often just go to church out of habit without actually being believers and not even practicing what they preach. How are they supposed to know the hidden depths of their faith if they don't bother learning about it? However, some Christian denominations are indeed quite sterile, often thinking that more people would follow them if they diluted religion in a way that it is easier for people to participate. That's likely one of the reasons it doesn't appear in media - to avoid bothering people. Thing is, people want nuance and challenge in their spiritual lives so some of them end up taking up more demanding religions or trying to find meaning by following various ideologies. Surely it wouldn't be too problematic if some cartoon characters displayed their allegiance to the church in a subtle manner.
Jaxon Hughes
It's probably the easiest way to get everyone (almost literally) singing from the same hymn sheet, which would allow people to band together under a transcendent ideal should their nation be under attack. This is without mentioning the advantages to national cohesion as well as worship being constructed around a national character.
That "national character" is probably a reason that it's near absent from a lot of Western media in general these days. A fear of chauvinism, which Japan doesn't have to fear in its cultural exports because that national character is part of its cultural exports along with the media it produces.
It reminds me of how that new (British) Dennis the Mennis cartoon was said by the creators to remove Britishisms to make it more appealing to an international market because such things would make it less appealing, which is something Japan doesn't have to do.
