BookTuber reviewing classic Fantasy Novels.

The name of the YouTube Channel is The Everyman Reads.

The idea is he's going to review 500 major Fantasy Novels in the order they were written.  He's still very early in the project having just reviewed George MacDonald's Lilith.  And it's a very good video everyone should watch it. 

In this video he defines how he divides Fantasy into 6 Eras. He's probably about right in what his divisions are, but the Pedantic in me can't help but be annoyed by the labels he chose, the point of naming eras after precious Metals is to repeat the Greek Mythological format, Gold then Silver then Bronze and then Iron.  His timeline goes Bronze, Silver, Classic, Golden, Modern and the current recently started but not definitively named era.  Which is the other pedantic complaint, Modern is by definition current, if we aren't in the same era as 2005-2020 anymore then that era needs a new name. 

Now as I said when talking about Eras of Anime The Golden Age is the first full era of greatness, but there can be a proto or pre history. So I would call his Bronze Age the formative years, then his Silver Age The Golden Age, then his Classic age the Silver Age and his Golden Age the Bronze Age and his Modern Age the Iron Age.

The 500 books he's selected are naturally biased towards the English speaking canon. And that's fine actually, there is a lot to cover just there. I just want to use this framing as a jumping off point for mentioning some foreign works I feel deserve more credit and attention.  Because what foreign language country's fiction I'm interested in changes depending on the era. 

The first two eras line up well with my Froncophilic interests I hold thanks to CoolFrenchComics.com and BlackCoatPress.

Paul Feval wrote only one book I'm confident can be considered Fantasy enough to definitely count, La Ville Vampire translated into English by the late Brian Stableford as Vampire City, first serialized in the 1860s.  Stuff straddling that early transitional line would include some of the works in Anne of The Isles. Some of his books set in modern Paris I would draw inspiration from when writing Urban Fantasy though they wouldn't actually count since the Supernatural element is always left ambiguous if present at all, The Vampire Countess, Revenants, Knightshade and The Blackcoats saga whose 6th volume The Companions of The Treasure is in my view the most Tolkienesque thing written before Tolkien. 

The Angel and The Sphinx from 1889 by Eduard Schure and translated by Brian Stableford.

The Enchanted City by Eugene Hennebert from 1893 including in BlackCoatPress's upcoming French Tales of Lost Worlds anthology.

In 1908 and 1909 Gustave Le Rouge wrote two novels that directly anticipate the Barsoom series, these were Translated and published together as Vampires of Mars. 

1919's L'Atlantide is like She in some ways but not in others, the author Pierre Beniot had not read She. It has had a similar if more forgotten cultural impact, for awhile being directly adapted every decade but also in the name of it's Femme Fatale Antinea influencing even more films.

As far as arguing that 1990-2004 was the best era of Fantasy Prose Novels, this wouldn't be the only time where what I call The Bronze Age is also the age I would argue is the best, that's certainly the case with Anime and kind of is for some DC characters. And that is where my Weeb interests come in.  

I haven't read these books, I haven't even seen all the Anime based on them, but I know a lot about their cultural importance.  And these are only stories that were originally prose novels which Light Novels count as, I won't be including anything that started as a Manga, Anime, Video Games or Visual Novels though they certainly have plenty of their own contributions to making this an exciting decade and a half for the Fantasy genre.  

The Heroic Legend of Arslan series started in 1987 but continued all through this era. 

Majuu Senshi Luna Varga is referred to as being based on a Light Novel but I can't find any publication dates for it, it's probably the most randomly obscure thing I'm going to list here.  The OVAs came out in 91 so it could turn out to be too soon for this era. 

Slayers started in 1990.

The Twelve Kingdoms started in 1992 and is one of the many GRRMs of Anime source materials in that it's still unfinished. 

On the subject of Urban Fantasy I'm unsure what does and doesn't count but I feel 1998 started a peak era for Japanese Urban Fantasy with Boogiepop and Others in February and the first Kara No Kyoukai in October.  I also recall Trixie The Golden Witch mentioning an anthology book of Light Novels like these from this era called Faust. 

Maybe a short story shouldn't be considered eligible for this but Kinoko Nasu's Angel Notes from 99 is pretty important. 

Scrapped Princess was from 1999 to 2003.

Legend of The Legendary Heroes started in 2002. 

2002 is also the same year as the original Web Novel for Sword Art Online, which isn't a Fantasy novel but has become undeniably important to the history of Fantasy in Japanese media.

Baccano! started in 2003 as did The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya if you count either as Urban Fantasy.

The year 2004 was the start of at least three important Light Novel sagas. 

The Familiar of Zero was very popular and a website that started as a fan site for it would go on to be the main incubation chamber for modern Isekai.

And then two more where I'm unsure if they count as Urban Fantasy for now.  Durarara!! and A Certain Magical Index.

And in December of 2004 Hakubō no Dendōshi by Gen Urobuchi was published. 

Low Church Fantasy

I’ve noticed a trend lately of YouTube videos analyzing how fictional religions in Fantasy settings often don’t feel authentic to how real Regions function, including one focusing specifically on the lack of Schisms. 

So I want to talk about something that perhaps only I care about.

Fantasy religions Aesthetically based on Christianity are always specifically based on High Church Christianity, usually quite specifically Roman Catholicism. More disorganized local spirituality in Fantasy stories are usually more inspired by Animist polytheism like you’d see from Indigenous Tribes of North America or the Sami or local Shintoism. 

This probably has to do with the simplified understanding of Christian History where there is no Protestantism till the Middle Ages are over so therefore it’s assumed Baptist or Quaker inspired communities would be out of place in a Medieval Europe inspired Fantasy Setting.  

However I have seen plenty of Fantasy settings that extend their real word inspirations into the Renaissance, Enlightenment or even Victorian period. Like all those Otome Villainess settings, or really any with a Magic Academy element.

But besides that Medieval Proto-Protestants of different kinds did exist, most relevant here would be the Waldenses/Waldensians. Talking about the Waldenses as Low Church Proto-Protestants is made more controversial than it should be because of how they factor into the imagined revisionist histories proposed by Landmarkists.  I do not believe in the core Doctrine that often lies behind Baptist Successionism theories (that being in the “True Church” requires an unbroken chain of Believers Baptism back to the Disciples), so whether or not there is direct continuity between the Waldenses and 15th Century Anabaptists doesn’t concern me. However I am convinced there is plenty of solid evidence that many Waldenses (they were probably not always all the same) were Credo-Baptists who practiced Congregational Polity. 

There's also the Lollards from English History, some of them were more Low Church then the others, Wycliff himself was certainly not a Credo-Baptist but I think some later Lollards did come to that conclusion.

But also Medieval Europe inspired Fantasy sometimes is unlike real Medieval Europe in more ways then just the Supernatural stuff. Just look at all those Fantasy Anime with Chattel Slavery as part of the setting. So who cares about the precedent, I want Fantasy Baptists. 

George MacDonald was a Congregationalist Minister who was a huge player in the origins of the Fantasy Genre being a cited influence on both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.  The way Goblins tend to be depicted in Fantasy began with him and he also arguably wrote the first Isekai. Unfortunately his influence was filtered through a Catholic and an Anglican. His position on Church Polity is not the deviation from the Established Church of England MacDonald is most well known for, and indeed Universal Salvation is also something I’d like to see in the Fantasy Genre more often.

The major impact this could have on both the Mechanics and Lore of a Fantasy Setting is the question of Apostolic Succession.  

High Church denominations believe the Spiritual Authority Jesus gave the Apostles is only truly inherited by the Clergy, while Low Church Christians believe strongly in the Priesthood of All Believers.  Today most major Baptist denominations are Secessionist on the question of the Spiritual Gifts meaning they believe the more explicitly supernatural manifestations of that authority don’t really happen anymore. However most Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations are also Low Church in form, and the Quakers have their Inner Light doctrine. 

So you could easily still have your Catholic Church like institution be the one wielding the most political power in Society, seeking to restrict the knowledge and use of Healing Magic (and other forms of what a Final Fantasy player would call White Magic) to the Clergy, even having most Adventurer Guilds refuse to give proper Healer licenses to anyone not properly ordained.  While the Low Church Schismatics are teaching that such powers can be called upon by anyone who has Faith. 

People also criticize how passively Pro Monarchy the Fantasy Genre often seems. Well I’ve written before about how Congregationists were the harbingers of modern Democracy and Socialism, so perhaps having some Low Church Schismatics is also how to bring about a Revolution in a Fantasy World?

Baptists and Quakers also have a long history of opposing Slavery, the Southern Baptist Convention were the exception not the general rule, John Brown was a Congregationalist and Nat Turner a Baptist. A Fantasy story inspired by the history of The Baptist War in Jamaica could be interesting. 

Update May 17th 2026: I've recently learned that contrary to what I'd long assumed contemporary Japan has more Protestants then Catholics. 

This completely recontextualized the matter of why most Anime  seem like they don't know non Catholic forms of Christianity exist. And the main exceptions are specifically depicting the Anglicanism of England. 

And it means that the people who write the Web novels that become Light Novels that become Manga that become modern Fantasy Anime really should broaden their horizons. Tokyo has Baptists and Presbyterians and a Non Church Movement. They do have a frame of reference for what Low Church Christianity looks like. 

Catholics get more respect because they've been there longer. But so much else in Anime is the product of post Meiji Westernization, it's time Christianity in Anime reflected that too. 

Death is NOT Good Actually

I have in the last decade become a huge Anime fan, now most of the Entertainment media I’m particularly into is Anime or Anime related.  And in my praise of the many things I love about Anime I sometimes go a little too far in making Anime sound morally superior to Western Media.  But there are some common philosophical themes in a lot of Anime I don’t like.  

And chief among them is one I noticed being a thing when I watched Manmode’s video on Darling in The FranXX.  Now I am also a bit of an apologist for that show, the common criticisms of it I don’t agree with.  But Manmode correctly observed that one of the morals in this show’s worldbuilding was that Humanity would lose what makes us “Human” if we actually stopped dying.  He also sees this as a common theme in many Trigger/Gainax style shows with it even being awkwardly shoehorned into SSSS.Gridman in one scene in the last episode.

And even beyond those two studios it comes up a lot, though often just in making one villain's individual refusal to accept their own death a root cause of much of their villainy.  And yeah no one disagrees that Zouken Matou in Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel II: Lost Butterfly saying that he would gladly kill everyone else on earth if it would prevent himself from Dying is very Evil. 

But this broader philosophical notion that Humankind needs Mortality to motivate itself isn’t limited to Japanese media of course, it's a theme in the “Christian” world building of Tolkien and Lewis as well, The Elves view Mortality as a Gift that they are envious of..  I put Christian in Quotes there not to deny that those two were Christians, they were, but this aspect of their worldview is Anti-Christian, it is the very heart of Paganism going all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

What separates the New Testament 1 Corinthians 15 Gospel of The Resurrection from the many “dying and rising gods” that Mythiscists obsess over is that for Paul the Resurrection is NOT mere Symbolism, it is other things that are made mere symbols of The Resurrection.  The Gospel is the promise that Death is Temporary, that one day it will not exist any longer.

And the reason I’m still a Young Earth Creationist even though I have no interest in telling anyone they are required to be one to be a “True Christian” is because tied into that is a Belief that Death was not originally a natural part of Life, it’s existence is a consequence of Adam’s Sin, it is a Curse that the Last Adam is liberating us from.

Returning to Anime this is why I am glad there is a counter example.  The Black Moon saga of Sailor Moon (as it was in the Manga and second cour of Sailor Moon Crystal but not the 90s Anime which removed this element of the plot) involves a future where Death has ceased and everyone is now immortal, and the people who think that is a bad thing for exactly the reason Trigger thinks it would be are the villains, and the narrative has no sympathy for their perspective at all, not even the slightest nominal consideration that maybe they have a point.  Part of the reason this is one of the awkwardly worst Arcs of the 90s Anime is that it tried to make these villains more sympathetic while dropping their motivation.  But in Crystal I love it, I love finally seeing an Anime say FU to this popular Pagan idea.

Update: I've now seen Baccano! and it's also proven an interesting sort of subversion to this.

Christian Isekai, or how I'd do Narnia differently.

One of the characteristics that separates the modern Isekai trend of Anime/LNs from older classical stories the word applies to, both in Japan and in the West, is how modern Isekai protagonists are Nerds who are very Genre Savvy about the kind of story they’ve been thrown into, a more subversive one may have them be a bit Wrong Genre Savvy sometimes, but still the concept itself is far from alien to them.

However, George MacDonald and Frank L Baum and J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wrote stories about protagonists who go on a fantastical Journey to learn rather then to show off what they already know (and 90s Shoujo Isekai was largely the same).  And so Narnia works as a Christian story the way it does because the Pennevises are not very Biblically or Theologically Literate, Narnia has to teach these children what modern education (in Lewis's view) neglects.

And yet I as a Christian who has a lot of theological and doctrinal disagreements with Tolkien and Lewis even though I’m a fan of their fiction, feel like the Modern Anime Isekai approach is actually a better framework for Christian Fiction because you can frame it as a missionary journey, a quartet of modern Christian Nerds like myself sent to like Paul and Barnabas bring The Gospel to people that hadn’t heard it yet.  

I’m also more Politically and Socially Leftist then either Tolkien or Lewis and that'd be reflected in anything I wrote as well.  They are sent to preach the Gospel to those willing to hear it but NOT to impose anything, as believers in Universal Salvation they won’t go around telling anyone they’re going to Burn Forever if they don't accept their message.  If they do wind up influencing any Governments or Political movements it’ll be in a Communist direction.  Instead of siblings the four will be Polyamorous Pansexual Lovers. 

I’d also take the approach of a world that has had migrants from our world in the past, in fact I'd trace all Sapient life back to Earth.  But I'd have all prior contact be B.C., or at least before Christianity reached the part of our world they came from.  I’d have a portion of the “Lost Tribes” wind up there, in fact I’d probably name the world Arzareth as a Book of Tobit reference.  I’d have the Elves of this world descend from Cain with sub divisions based on the four children of Genesis 4’s Lamech.  And if I include Talking or Anthropomorphic Animals I’d explain their origins as being Genesis 2:18-20.

And speaking of Furry Bait, I want to rant about the whole “Aslan is Jesus’s Furrsona'' issue.  There are a few different animals you can find Biblical Justification for making a symbol of Jesus, but a Lion is the last one I would chose to outright make Jesus’s Animal form, and the reason why is reflected in the Text of Narnia itself, every time they emphasize that Aslan is “Wild” it makes me uncomfortable, that sounds like the characterization of a Pagan god not Jesus.

Revelation 5 tells us what animal Jesus’s Fursona would be in verses 5 and 6, the same passage that is also the main Biblical basis for associating Lion imagery with Jesus.  

And one of the elders saith unto me, "Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

Now I wouldn’t do the full The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe premise, The Passion is something that only has to happen once, and His only Incarnation is as the Son of Adam.  But if I had Him appear in an Animal like form in a Symbolic Vision or something It’d be as The Lamb.  He’s The Lion of Judah only as a title to describe his specific relationship with that Tribe.  It would not be very relevant to mention at all in a setting with no Israelites, or one like my hypothetical here where the only Israelites came from the Northern Kingdom.

Now there is some debate over just how Zoologically flexible the Greek words for “Lamb” used to describe Jesus are, the possibility that they could include Rams or Goats does exist   Jesus as a Goat would have potential significance to the Tribes of Joseph based on Genesis 37:31 as well as to people who are into Yom Kippur. Exodus 12:5 even says Goats are equally valid for Passover. And it’d be an amusing subversion of expectations given Pop Culture’s love of assuming Satan is a Goat, (Biblically Satan is the Great Dragon and the Old Serpent).  But I'd most likely just go with a regular Lamb like most visualize anyway.

Anime Recommendations for Inklings.

Anime is such a vast and diverse medium that I truly believe it has something for everyone even though a lot of it will struggle to appeal outside the specific subculture that created it.  So one recurring theme of this Blog is me as a person who was once a more normal western Nerd with a wide range of interests for a long time before Anime took over my brain appointing myself as an expert recommender.  And of course one of my top Western Nerdy interests is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Now if any long time followers of this blog exist you may think I’ve already covered Tolkien and Lewis like Anime in various ways, but the truth is the prior examples of one or both of them and Anime coming up in the same post were more the other way around if anything.  In this post I want to focus on Anime that I think could have appealed to Tolkien and Lewis themselves if they were still around, not merely fans who like their work but also a lot of stuff very unlike them.

So for example while I’ve made a few posts on why Fantasy Anime even at its most Generic and Gamerfied would appeal to someone whose tastes in the Genre were shaped by them more then the slew of GOT wannabes that western “Prestige” television spewed out in the 2010s.  I am still not insane enough to think either of them would like a show that’s basically literally about being in a Video Game.

Maquia and Frieren are the top two Fantasy Anime I would truly call Tolkienesque.  Maybe Grimoire of Zero and Dawn of The Witch could fit in.  Something that actually qualifies as Isekai would have a better shot with Lewis then Tolkien but not most modern Isekai.  Lewis and Tolkien’s different views on Allegory would have me recommending something like Princess Tutu or an Ikuhara show to Lewis way before Tolkien.  The third Pokémon movie Spell of The Unown might be able to appeal to both.

Also Tolkien's anxieties about Technology and Nature make him a bit of a kindred spirit with Miyazaki but that's not something people needed me to learn about, there's already a YouTube Video Essay on it.  I have also already stated that the ending of Nausicaa counts as a Eucatastrophe, also an observation I didn't make on my own.

However I want to remind people that Tolkien was capable of enjoying more kinds of fiction than just the genre he's most well known for writing.  

For example I was intrigued when I learned that Tolkien was a fan of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Now the first Anime that I would recommend to any Clarke fan is the Gundam franchise, the Childhood’s End influence is there right form the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I often feel like I’m the only western fan who notices that the term Newtype itself is basically a Childhood’s End reference.  However I feel the best Gundam in many ways including as a Clarke homage is Gundam 00, now 00 like a lot of non UC Gundam Anime in my opinion struggles in its early episodes. I was lucky I caught Gundam 00 randomly in the middle of season 1 on the SciFi channel.  (The Witch From Mercury finally avoided this problem by just making its Pilot a remake of Utena’s pilot).

Heck I’m gonna leave Anime for a second to mention how I see a lot of thematic similarities between Tolkien and the works of 19th Century French Novelist Paul Feval.  They are most apparent in The Companions of The Treasure the 6th and in my headcanon last Volume of The Blackcoats saga, a Tolkien fan reading it will be reminded of a number of things.  Part of it might be how Feval was also a Roman Catholic seemingly specifically to be contrarian (it wasn’t rare in his nation like it was Tolkien but was among those writing serialized novels for newspapers).

Anime that reminds me of Paul Feval are also something I’ve already talked about on this blog.  But which ones do so in specifically a way that speaks to why I compare Feval to Tolkien?  Well I suspect Princess Principal may exist at exactly the right crossroads for that.

Since Tolkien was a Linguist first and foremost he might have been amused by some of those Detective Conan episodes that play on language for a key clue.  Like episode 651 which used differences between the Kansai and Kanto dialects of Japanese.  Or that subplot from the latter part of the Clash and Red and Black where Conan used a sort of reverse Shiboleth.  

Thing is I have no idea if Tolkien ever had any interest in Detective Fiction as a genre.  Lewis did make a Sherlock Holmes reference once and I will definitely recommend Detective Conan aka Case Closed to any Holmes fan, it’s a way better modern reimagining then what the BBC and Hollywood have given us in the last 20 years.

Given the interest Tolkien seemed to have in the idea of Cursed objects that kind of Doom their possessor I’m almost inclined to wonder if even Death Note would have an appeal.

Update February 10th: I recently learned about both Tolkien and Lewis being fans of Voyage to Arcturus thanks to the Media Death Cult youtube channel.  I'm sure there are a number of Anime you could compare to Arcturus but they aren't on the tip of my tong right now.

Update November 18th 2025: Narnia is the obvious C.W. Lewis reference for discussing Isekai, but  when I watch one of the rare Isekai that actually at first tries to have the protagonist communicate with the residents of the new world through a language barrier instead of immediately ignoring or handwaving that issue, I immediately think of Out of The Silent Planet when Ransom first meets Hyoi and begins learning the Hross language.   I wish I could remember which Isekai those were off the top of my head, it kinda happen in YU-NO which doesn't become an Isekai till episode 18.

I remember reading once about how the climax of Peralandra is compared to The Lord of The Rings because they both involved a confrontation in a subterranean cavern where the villain winds up falling into lava.  And today as I rewatched my favorite Anime Noir I realized how it's final confrontation can also be described the same way.

Update March 2024: And ya know what that also applies to the ending of Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel too.

Update August 9th 2026: I feel like adding that The Ribbon Hero has scenes that feel like what an Anime adaptation of The Fall of Gondolin could look like.

Willow, finally a good Live Action Western Fantasy show

First I should explain that I'm new to this franchise as a whole, I watched both the original 88 movie and the first three episodes of the new Disney+ show today.

The original Willow is a satisfying charming 80s Fantasy film.  What's neat about it is while a lot of the influence Tolkien has had on the Fantasy Genre has been through LOTR and later the Silmarilion, Willow feels like George Lucas's take on The Hobbit with a little Narnia inspiration as well.

The new show however has proven to endear me personally even more.  After the late summer and early fall of 2022 being largely HOTD and ROP discourse, this show came along and frankly blew both out of the water.  It also easily beats all the SW shows Disney gave us this year.

HOTD is fine, it's what I'd expect from a GOT prequel, but GOT type shows are of limited appeal to me.  ROP I enjoyed plenty of, but I also hate how much it basically felt like a post GOT fantasy show wearing LOTR cosplay.

I made two posts in the last two years about why Fantasy Anime has generally been more appealing to me then any Western Fantasy shows of the last decade, one on how they look and one on the kinds of stories they tell.  Willow is finally a Fantasy Show taking the right approach to both those issues.

And comparison to Fantasy Anime isn't the only reason to recommend the show to Anime fans, Kit has a very Bifauxnen appeal, and her being canonically Gay seems to be where they're going, so it's something Yuri fans may like as well.

I'll be following the show every Wednesday till it's done.

Tolkien's Middle-Earth Theology was Platonist and even a little Gnostic

I was wishing I could discover that Tolkien's Metaphysical Philosophy was unintentionally Stoic like I have for Star Wars and Final Fantasy VII and maybe even Zelda.  But no, both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are firm examples of Platonist Christianity.

It starts right with what the name Eru is said to mean in the opening lines of the Ainulindale and Valaquenta and the Index of the Silmarilion, "The One" and "He that is Alone".  That comes from the Pythagorean concept of The Monad which became core to the Monotheism of Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism.  Lewis does the same thing in the Space Trilogy by calling the first person of the Trinity the "Old One".  The New Testament never uses any form of Mono to define God, the verses people often cite as saying "God is One" or "The Lord is One" have a different word being translated One which I argue is a misleading Translation, Unity or United is the idea being conveyed by that word.

Another part is the very concept of having the Valar do much of the heavy lifting in actually physically creating Arda, this echoes the Demiurge concept of Numenius of Apamea or Plutarch's Daimon subcreators and is firmly Unbiblical.

The most truly in-depth discussion of Theology in anything Tolkien wrote for his Middle Earth mythology is the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth or The Debate of Finrod and Andreth, published in The History of Middle-Earth Volume X: Morgoth's Ring.  It's in the style of a Platonic Dialogue but more importantly then that are three key things it reveals about Eru Iluvatar and Arda and Men.  

In my copy of Morgoth's Ring (a Hardcover edition with a Red Sleeve) on page 311 near the bottom Finrod says that Arda "was made by Eru, but He is not in it" and goes on to basically say the same of Ea the equivalent term for the Universe/Cosmos.  This God being outside the Universe concept is another idea that has been taken as a given by most modern Christian Theologians because of the influence of Platonism, but that I have come to view as actually contrary to Scripture, Stephen says in Acts 7 quoting Isaiah 66 that the Heavens are His Throne and The Earth His Footstool, and remember in Hebrew and Greek the Heavens means the Sky and Outer Space. making it fundamentally part of the Universe.  The Ancient Platonists referred to the World of Forms where their transcendent God lived not as Heaven but as "A Place Beyond Heaven".  The Biblical God is Imminent within the Universe not outside of it.  

Next on page 314 Finrod explains that the Spirit/Souls of Men unlike those of Elves are not confined to Arda nor is Arda their Home.  Thinking things like this about the nature of the Human Soul is a gateway drug to de-physicalizing the Resurrection, now Tolkien doesn't do that, Finrod's ultimate conclusion regarding the destiny of Men and the remaking of Arda involves their Bodies becoming as immortal as their Souls.  But still I tend to be uncomfortable with even introducing a concept of the Soul being somehow less tied to The World then The Body is.  But when interpreting The Bible this idea naturally comes from the previous one since Adam became a Living Soul when God Breathed the Breath of Life into him.

Then on page 318 they basically adapt the Platonic World of Forms concept to be in the Mind of Eru.  Related to that is how the openings of both the Ainulindale and Valaquenta state that Eru made the Ainu of his thoughts.  That comes from the 2nd Century Middle Platonsit Alcinous who defined the lesser god subcreators as Ideas made of the thoughts of the First God.

Now when I discussed Gnostic Interpretations of certain Anime and Video Games I mentioned how a lot of ideas we associate with Gnosticism are irrelevant to the point.  Not all Gnostics believe the Demiurge and/or Old Testament God was Evil, nor was making good guys out of certain Biblical villains a requirement.  The core is that Gnosticism believes The Physical World is in some way tainted by Evil, but the degrees can very. 

The World Soul is a metaphysical concept I've mentioned on this Blog before mostly in relation to Stoicism, but versions of it existed in various forms of Platonism and Gnosticism as well.  Tolkien's Cosmology winds up kind of incorporating two conflicting World Soul ideas.

The one thing in Tolkien's Middle Earth Theology that seems close to my Christian Stoicism is the Flame Imperishable, which Tolkien in one letter identified with The Holy Spirit, it's also placed in the Center of the World and is the source of all Sapient Life.  So easily comparable to the Stoic concept of the World Soul and Pneuma, if it weren't in the context of all this Platonism I'd be much more excited about it.

However the Middle Platonist Plutarch introduced the idea of an Evil World Soul, a World Soul that is responsible for corrupting all physical matter, which Numenius of Apamea also agreed with.  And this leads us to the entirety of what Morgoth's Ring is about, Morgoth emptied his essence into all of Arda corrupting and marring it, this taint is called the Morgoth Element.

Now The New Testament does agree that the current world is imperfect, it is still far from God's final design for it.  But the blame for that is chiefly Man's Sin not something an evil god did, however mainstream Christianity loves to overstate the significance of Satan.

None of this changes my enjoyment of Middle Earth set Fiction, in fact I'm glad to have a popular Fantasy Universe that is rather Gnostic to contrast with the ones I feel get called Gnostic unfairly.

And it's hard to tell how much any of this actually reflects Tolkien's real Religious beliefs.  On the one hand he seems to have clearly said to his Priest friend not to take it that seriously.  But on the other every core idea I've objected to here has been genuinely believed by many Christian Theologians.

Fantasy stories are better with a focused narrative.

Last year I did a post about one aesthetic problem I have with most Live Action Fantasy TV shows of the last Decade or so.  But there is also a narrative problem.

Game of Thrones had a structure that involved jumping around between various characters and plotlines that were not directly connected in any way yet apparent.  And for Game of Thrones it worked, in fact that show's downfall seemed to begin when it started rushing to tie everything together.  But the problem with so much post GoT Fantasy TV shows is emulating that aspect of GoT's structure.

I prefer my Fantasy Stories to be adventure stories, about one protagonist or group of protagonists on a journey, with the audience learning about the epic scale and lore of the world as they encounter it through those protagonists eyes.  This is why The Hobbit, The Fellowship of The Ring, the Narnia Books, the first Dragonlance book, and most Fantasy Anime (Isekai or not) I'm a fan of work so well.  And outside the realm of specifically medieval European style Fantasy I can add The Phantom Menace and A New Hope, even Star Trek when it intentionally or not starts to seem more Fantasy then SciFi, I think both Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra originally worked that way as well but I didn't watch them.  It's also essentially how Fantasy Video Games like JRPGs wind up being structured.

Now some of the sagas I just referred to will eventually split up the main cast or even jump away from them altogether.  But that's after doing a lot of build up, Peter Jackson's version gave us 3 to four hours before the Fellowship was broken, but the content of the book could have given us a full TV season with more episodes then a GoT season.  Also cutting away to villains occasionally is a different matter.

I'm well aware that the Wheel of Time books are older then the books Game of Thrones was based on, and so fans of that franchise will be annoyed at me referring to it's new Amazon Prime TV show as the product of a post GoT trend, but it was largely my thoughts on how that show played out that made me start working on this post.

However I suspect the TV show is only doing what I don't like here because of the decision to cram 4 novels into one 8 episode season.  The series splits it's initial party up at the end of episode 2, and it goes on to treat that split and their eventual reunion with a gravitas I do not feel was properly earned.  How it feels in TV form would be like if the Fellowship of the Ring split up before they even reached Rivendell.

I've referred to the film Maquia as being the fantasy Anime that most resembles the Aesthetic I would want for an Animated film or series set in the First Age of Middle Earth.  But I've also now watched 11 episodes of Record of Grancrest War, and I think in a weird way that Anime most resembles the Inklings ideologically.  It's also another example of an Anime that handles this issue better then any of these American TV shows, it only spends any significant time away from it's main couple after spending a lot of time establishing them.

Isekai Light Novel Adaptations naturally focus primarily on the POV of the Isekaied protagonist(s).

Update November 2022:  I have very mixed feelings on The Rings of Power series, most of what I don't like does come down to it forcing the GoT story structure on Tolkien. 

Fantasy stories should look Fantastic

Lately there has been a lot of complaining about the over abundance of Medieval European Style Fantasy in Anime.  But I'm glad Anime gives me so much because even at it's most generic Anime takes on this Genre always look like a world I can believe someone would Fantasize about living in.  Even when the subject matter gets rather dark like in Berserk or Goblin Slayer it's still not afraid to actually have a bright and colorful look do it.

American Media has been approaching this genre the same way they have Historical fiction.  Besides the actual Tolkien and Lewis adaptations they are obsessed with looking "Gritty" and "Realistic", which I feel often results in looking uninspired and boring.  And some might think Jackson's approach to Middle Earth was too gritty, well it mostly was for The Hobbit.

For an example I watched the first episode of The Shannara Chronicles on Netflix recently, and it looks so dull, like they'd rather be making one of those YA Dystopian movies that was a trend in the 2010s.  Like you can have a culture in your fantasy setting have a "we're the Emos wearing black all the time" aesthetic, but that certainly shouldn't be the firggin Elves.

And every other Live Action Fantasy show I saw scrolling Netflix looked the same, The Witcher, Cursed, all of em.

Thing is you can be aesthetically dark in a way that's still visually interesting, like the Aesthetic Giger was hired to create for House Harkonnen in Jodorowsky's canceled Dune adaptation.  But that's not what we're getting in these shows, it feels like they're gritty because they think that's how to be taken seriously in a post Game of Thrones world.

The Gritty and Realistic approach worked for Game of Thrones because it had successfully positioned itself as the Watchmen of High Fantasy.  A show trying to look like Game of Thrones while not being so deconstructive in how it's written (Shannara's pilot seemed to be setting up some pretty standard heroes' Journeys) will clash far more then a dark story that looks bright and colorful will.

Let's take Narnia for example.  In the case of Prince Caspian I consider the film version an improvement over the book.  It is darker and even grittier in subject matter then the first movie, but still in fact operates with the exact same color pallet.  It doesn't clash because Narnia looking like a world someone might want to live in is what makes bad stuff happening to it effective.  And that is doubly true for why the original Berserk Anime worked.

But speaking of Anime, most of the Fantasy Anime of the last 10 or even 15 years is not stuff the Inklings would have been likely to like for other reasons, because of how much they run on Gamer logic.  However 2018's Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is an exception to that, it's a High Fantasy Anime Film that is free of those Gamer elements and really is a pretty good reference point for how I would want an Animated Film or Series set in the First Age of Middle Earth to both look and feel.

The Superhero genre has learned that it doesn't always need to be dark and gritty.  To the point where now even most R Rated Superhero films are pretty bright and colorful like The Suicide Squad and the Deadpool movies.  And then Birds of Prey was a good example of being dark a lot of the time but still vibrant.  I wish both the Fantasy and Historical Epic genres could learn that lesson.

Perhaps some might argue the budget is to blame when I'm talking about TV shows.  Shannara wasn't even a Netflix exclusive but originally on MTV.  However I don't see how that so specifically effects Color.  You see the thing with Shannara is that everything else you could call cheap and bland about how the sets and costumes look I could have tolerated if it was colored differently, or maybe even if the colors they do have weren't so muted.  It might be because of my ADD but Bright Colors inherently hold my attention more.

Some Anime is for Children

I want to share one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis.

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

This quote can be relevant to a lot of disputes that happen on the modern Internet.  I of course want to bring this into Anime.

There are a lot of American Anime fans who've greatly tied their love of Anime to appreciating that in Japan there is less of a perception that Animation is inherently for Children.  And that is indeed apart of what I like, many of my favorite Anime are ones you absolutely shouldn't show to small children, and some more you probably shouldn't.

However this results in there being some of us, a minority of the overall total I'm sure, probably no proper respectable AniTuber, but still some who have trouble accepting that some Anime is indeed for kids.  Anime refers to all Animation produced in Japan, and Japan has children who need to be kept entertained on Saturday and Sunday mornings just as much as American kids do.

I have seen both Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z referred to as shows that "stupid western studios tried to turn into kids shows".  In Japan both of those are kids shows, that they did things American (and Canadian) network censors didn't find appropriate for children doesn't change that.  Japan simply has different standards.

I said different standards, not lower.  While there is a certain type of "sexual" content Japan may be less uptight about then America, there are other things that I bet 90s American kids shows could get away with easier, especially pre-Columbine.  Chiefly I think there is a certain type of "realistic" violence you could see on Batman: The Animated Series that probably wouldn't have flown on a Toei produced Shonen.  Battle Shonen may be technically violent, but it's so cartoony and distant from the way people hurt each other in real life that BTAS isn't.

Of course there is the occasional Bat-Nerd in denial that BTAS was a kids show, it aired on Fox Kids, just grow up and accept that you like a kids show.

Today I am concerned that too many Millennials with this attitude are influencing how Shoujo and Shonen Anime get Localized in the opposite direction of what plagued old 4kids and DiC Localizations.  Yashahime should be a fairly kid friendly show, but the Dub has some profanity laced into it that really feels out of place.

And then there is the fact that Toonami has been folded into Adult Swim.  Back in my day those were totally separate Cartoon Network blocks.  Toonami was founded on the very same two above mentioned Anime I've seen people deny the Kids show status of, while Adult Swim was where you went for Lupin III and Cowboy Bebop.  It seems occasionally Toonami accidently got a show that should have been Adult Swim from the start like Tenchi Muyo, but mostly it remained a bloc for Teens at the oldest.

I guess the reason for this is partly that today many Adults are Nostalgic for Toonami.  However this doesn't change that it is inherently wrong to put the localizations of modern Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece and My Hero Academia in a timeslot where their real intended age demographic are told they shouldn't watch them.

Another post on Watch Orders

Debating about unconventional watch orders has become a hot topic again lately.  Watching something in its release order is never inherently a bad order but there are plenty of cases where I feel it’s not the best.

For an example of a case where I do favor the release order even though a dispute kind of does exist, The Chronicles of Narnia books should be read in the order Lewis wrote them.  A Horse and His Boy does stand on its own in a way none of the others but the first do, so it can perhaps be read a little out of sequence and maybe if you're into stuff with a 1001 Night flavor it would benefit you to read it second, but definitely start with Wardrobe and save Last Battle for last.  In Anime terms AHaHB can perhaps be considered a Gaiden rather than part of the main saga.

For Star Wars I strongly feel Episodes I-VI should be watched in chronological order, and then the rest I really don’t care about as long as you see nothing before finishing the 6 George Lucas movies.  I actually think it would be hilarious to have someone watch the Disney Sequel Trilogy backwards and see what perspective that causes.

For the Raildex franchise I shall offer an incomplete recommended viewing order, incomplete since Railgun season 3 is still airing.  This is neither the release order or chronological order strictly speaking.

A Certain Scientific Railgun season 1 (skip episode 2 on the initial viewing but besides that all of it)
A Certain Magical Index season 1 (all of it if you can but if you don’t like it the rest of Railgun can stand on its own.)
A Certain Scientific Railgun S
A Certain Scientific Accelerator (currently has only one 12 episode season)
A Certain Magical Index II (the first 7 episodes)
A Certain Magical Index The Movie: The Miracle of The Endymion
A Certain Scientific Railgun T (First episode)
A Certain Magical Index II (episode 8)

A Certain Scientific Railgun T (Episodes 2-3)

A Certain Magical Index II (Episodes 9-13 the Daihasei festival arc)
A Certain Scientific Railgun T (episodes  4-15)

[Update: I've decided you should finish IndexII before seeing the rest of Railgun T]

The Blackcoats novels (English name of the French Les Habits Noirs) were published by BlackCoatPress in a different order then Paul Feval originally wrote them.  Nonetheless in the afterward of the last one they published both the translator and editor expressed the opinion that the books should ideally be read in Feval’s order.  I’m not sure I agree, but it’s complicated.

For the way my brain works Salem Street was the ideal first impression and The Invisible Weapon a great second.  But Salem Street has an element most modern readers will likely be put off by, (but I know of some specific people who’d love it).  They all stand on their own pretty well, but the actual first book is the longest of them and so perhaps a little overwhelming for someone new to reading 19th Century pulpy French Novels no one considered worth translating into English till over a hundred years after the author died.  The Invisible Weapon is in my opinion the absolute best of them and so I see no reason not to simply start with it.  Cadet Gang should be saved for last only because I kind of don’t recommend reading it at all.

My doing this post now was partly because of a recent Mother’s Basement video.  I have currently no direct knowledge of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but I know Part 6 is the first female Jojo so I’ve been intending for a while to start with it when the Anime comes, I don’t care how confusing it will be.

I’ve saved Fate/ for last because that is the most contentious topic.  I am a firm start with Fate/Zero person.

A lot of people will claim it’s only the convoluted nature of how Fate/ has been adapted that makes there be any dispute at all and if only more people would just read the Visual Novel it’d be fine.  However I disagree, even if you are willing and able to consume each Fate/ story in it’s original medium first, I still say read Fate/Zero first.  But I mostly just recommend watching the Anime, translations of Light Novels and Visual Novels suck, but the Aniplex Dub of the UFOtable Anime is perfect.

Fate/Zero simply is by nature the most accessible.  Every person who would like Fate/Stay Night but not Fate/Zero is already into Fate/, they don’t need to be talked into giving it a chance.  There are lots of people for whom Fate/Zero is the only Fate/ they would enjoy.  And I think there are other potential Fate/Zero fans who’d enjoy Fate/Apocrypha before anything else.

My Christian reading of Penguindrum

The Gospel According to the East is basically now the introduction post to how I look for Christian meaning in the Anime I watch, and media in general really.  Though one thing I fear it might have failed to communicate is how I'm more like Tolkien then C.S. Lewis.

Ryan Reeves has a series of lectures on Tolkien and Lewis, one of the things he talks about is how Narnia is mostly a one for one allegory, Aslan is Jesus and so on, while Tolkien prefers to avoid that and focus on how all people can be Christ-Like.  In my opinion the Lewis approach has a far greater risk of leading to unwitting idolatry while Tolkien's better fits my understanding of how Christians should think.

For Steins;Gate in that prior post I refereed only to how Kirisu can be viewed as Christ-Like but really many characters get to be Christ-Like in that story.  For example Okabe himself when he replaced Kirisu's Blood with his own.

I was reminded of this in my most recent re-watch of the Devotional Criticism video on Man of Steel particularly when comparing it to the Donner and Reeve films and how they apply Messianic imagery to Superman.  Donner takes a much more Lewis approach where Superman is basically Aslan, at the moment I can't even recall those two films having anything to establish Christianity existing in their universe, in the world of the Donner films Superman explicitly replaces Christ.

[Update: That video I referred to is now on the Archive. https://archive.org/details/devotional_criticism_04]

The video is seeking to show the absurdity of critics like MaggieMaeFish claiming Man of Steel actually doubled down on the Jesus allegory in a way no prior installment did, when in fact Man of Steel distinguished Clark from Christ making him a Disciple of Christ striving to be Christ-Like in the way we all do.  Donner made Superman Jesus while Snyder made Superman a Christian.

But you didn't come here to talk about Superman, you came here to talk about a trippy 2011 show from the David Lynch of Anime.

This post will have Spoilers for Penguindrum, especially since the episode I will most focus on is one from the latter half which is itself the second part of a two parter.  So if you haven't seen the show already you should maybe watch it before reading on, it's a very good show.

George MacDonald the invertor of Isekai

His 1858 novel Phantastes: A Fairie Romance for Men and Women is the first book that can unambiguously qualify as an Isekai, predating even Alice in Wonderland.  And MacDonald is known to have been a sort of Mentor to Lewis Carrol, it was because of MacDonald's advice and the fact that MacDonald's children loved it so much that Carrol published Alice in Wonderland in 1865.

George MacDonald's Magnum Opus was also an Isekai, Lilith published in 1895 is younger then Alice but still older then The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and the Narnia books.  George MacDonald was also a Christian Minister and it is this book more then any other fiction he wrote that incorporates his belief in Universal Salvation, indeed how much it is allegorical of his view of The Gospel firmly makes it the proto-Narnia.  The book is also technically a Vampire novel that predates Dracula, but not by long enough to have been a likely influence.

Those two novels may be the only ones he wrote that qualify as Isekai, but not the only ones that can be considered early Fantasy stories.  Tolkien said he didn't admire MacDonald as much as Lewis did but admits in his letters that the Goblins in The Princess and The Goblin (1872) were an influence on how he wrote the Goblins in The Hobbit (not quite as much the Orcs in LOTRs).  Indeed that novel is really the invention of the modern notion of Goblins, Goblins in Medieval European folklore were trickster spirits like Leprechauns, the notion of Goblins as evil minions you can fight a war with without needing to worry about the humanity of your villainous mooks begins with this novel.

There was an animated movie made out of The Princess and The Goblin in 1992, I decided to watch it, partly for my interest in MacDonald in general, but also because I figured it'd be interesting after how much Goblins were a meme of the Fall 2018 Anime season to familiarize myself with the origins of the modern Fantasy Goblin.  It was a pretty decent movie, I'm amazed at how much agency the Princess had in it, remember this was a novel written by a Victorian era Pastor.

Probably the most enthusiastic literary student of George MacDonald was C. S. Lewis, even though Lewis didn't agree with Universal Salvation, he clearly respected it and didn't consider it something to condemn someone as a Heretic over.

The only reason Jadis, The White Witch, is identified as a descendant of Lilith is to homage George MacDonald's Lilith.  Frankly I think the Lady of the Green Kirtle makes more sense to associate with Lilith between her shape shifting into a serpent and being Lewis' only Femme Fatale character that I'm aware of.  The character of Jadis is much more modeled after The Snow Queen.

Now I've already talked about the ways in which I feel the Narnia books are closer to modern Anime Isekai then other early Western Novels that can be called Isekai.  Though clearly a lot of current Anime critics wish the genre would more often follow Voyage of The Dawn Treader's attitude towards slavery.

The big difference between Lilith and most Anime Isekai is how much older the protagonist is.  But Lilith can in fact seem perfectly suited to Anime in a lot of ways, it's a story where all but 2 of the most important characters are women, and one of them is arguably a Neko.

All of George MacDonald's novels are in the Public Domain now, so I'd love to see some Anime studio try adapting them.

Lindsay Ellis did a video critiquing Death of The Author

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A

She makes lots of valid points, the thing is the point of Death of the Author to me is not about trying pretend there is no Authorial Intent, I do sometimes quite enjoy looking into the thoughts and opinions of Artists I'm a fan of.  Though doing so is a lot more complicated now since I got into Japanese Media.

The point is that the audience is allowed to interpret the work in ways the author didn't intend, because the author's personal views and experiences were only one factor in how the art was formed, there was also earlier art that influenced them, and other people helping along the way, and if you're a Christian like me the possibility that the Holy Spirit was a factor is always there, I believe it does sometimes work through non-believers.

She talks briefly at the beginning about the "Ethics" of supporting art from artists who've said or done problematic things, but never really delved into that.  Death of the Author is mostly irrelevant to my answer to that issue actually.  The issue there is that "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" whether or not the "Author" of some art you spent money on is problematic I guarantee you someone making money off it is.  So if you want to boycott a perfectly enjoyable piece of entertainment because you don't like the author fine, just don't go around shamming others for not doing the same, because we're supporting evil corporations just by buying the food we need to live.  And for me simply enjoying the entertainment media I like is also important to how I survive living in this world. 

I'm now gonna copy here a comment I left.

What annoys me is the notion that Death of the Author is some new thing and Authorial intent is what's traditional. Lots of traditional texts we don't even know who wrote them, sometimes we have a name and nothing more like Homer and Hesiod, it's entirely possible that Homer as he's traditionally thought of didn't even exist, there are conflicting theories even on when The Iliad was written down.

But regardless of all that the Traditional view of the Iliad was never that who Homer was mattered, he was always viewed as just a vehicle by which more ancient stories were past down.

The problem is it's actually a very modern idea to think of any text as having only one author. A Prose novel may not have collaborators in the same obvious way a Movie does, but it's known that Tolkien was constantly showing what he was working on to Lewis and vica versa. And that's the thing, Tolkien pretty much expressed the Death of the Author concept before the 1960s, he wanted his myths to be like real myths, he wanted people to read whatever they wanted to out of them.

I know full well that C. S. Lewis wasn't ultimately in agreement with me on Universal Salvation, but I've gained a lot recently from interpreting his fiction as if they could be.  And it's kinda the same with Tolkien.

The video is mainly about the impossibility of separating art from the author in the modern social media driven world, well even then it depends.  Most of the Anime I consume I know nothing about the people who made it.  A decent amount I've heard something about them, but even then I'm often skeptical of what I hear because of the nature of how news travels from east to west.  And not once in the FranXX controversy did anyone even think about seeing if the authors had expressed any political views, no everyone decided what they thought the show's politics were from the text alone, and I didn't come to the same conclusion as most ani-tubers.

This reminds me of when I was reading about 19th Century French Pulp authors via Brian Stableford, how Alexandre Dumas was perceived as a royalist based on aspects of the content of his most famous stories even though he was staunchly a Republican.

Paul Feval was probably the Tolkien of the 19th Century even though he mostly didn't write in the same genre, because of how he was a Conservative Catholic who's fiction has a bizarre way of appealing to people who are clearly against his real world politics.  The people at BlackCoatPress making his work available in modern English are clearly closer to Eugene Sue on the political spectrum, yet it was a Feval work they named their publishing company after.  I don't know if his stuff can appeal to Protestants/Evangelicals like Ryan Reeves as well as Tolkien's does, but I know I'm broadly speaking an Evangelical and I'm a fan.

Narnia Animated

I just re-watched the 1979 animated version of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.  The 2005 Disney film happened to be on TV while I was in the Hospital last month, which partly prompted my recent re-watching of Prince Caspian.

When I last watched this cartoon years ago I still hadn't gotten that into Anime yet.  Now in 2019 I have a lot less tolerance for a cartoon having a severe lack of nuance in characterization compared to it's live action counterpart.  Tumnus and Edmund both act like mustache twirling villains before their plot ordained change of heart happens.  The Dom complained in the 2005 movie about Jadis when first meeting with Edmund seeming much more cartoonish then she did in the book, well just look how it goes in the actual cartoon.

Ya know, I don't think most people even know this cartoon exists, most discussion of Narnia adaptations are just about comparing the 80s BBC miniseries to the Hollywood movies.

As someone who's familiarity with Narnia is mainly through adaptations, and just hearing people talk about the books a lot.  I wonder if I'm only such a fan of Susan because of Anna Popplewell?  In this cartoon she was kinda just there, and I don't much remember her from the BBC versions.  Thing is I haven't watched Anna in much else, I tried getting into Reign a couple of times but it was never able to keep me interested.

If Netflix is really gonna reboot the series, I think they should forgo LA and work with their Anime partners to make a better Animated adaptation.  For one thing Anime people won't be afraid to make Aslan adorable which I've heard he is sometimes.  This cartoon made more of an effort then the movie to reference Aslan playing with the girls after he's resurrected, but it looks really really not good.

The Dub of Princess Principal has proven there are Anime Dub actresses who can do British Accents well.  But I'd have Aslan be voiced, in both English and Japanese versions, by the same actor who voiced Entei in the 3rd Pokemon movie.

The movies were clearly building to having Tilda be the Lady of the Green Kirtle, which is not a decision I would have liked.  Tilda suited the White Witch fine but I tend to visualize something very different for the Green Lady.  There was this piece of Fan Art I saw of her once a long time ago, but it wasn't on a website you would normally go to for Narnia fanart and now I can't find it.  Some of the fanart you will find on a google image or deviant art search has the same kind of look.  I would want her to have the same kind of vibe as Amora/The Enchantress from the Thor comics. I'm amazed how off the top of my head I can't think of an analogous Anime character.

The Prince Capsian movie of 2008 was pretty darn good.

I just re-watched it and it does still hold up.

I thought about putting right in the title of this post a declaration that it's "better then the book", but the thing is I haven't actually read the book (all I've read of Narnia are the first few chapters of A Horse and His Boy).  I just know that on the old IMDB Boards and other places when I would see people complain about all the ways this movie wasn't like the book, their descriptions of how it was in the book had me going "wow, it sounds like the book sucks".  Then I watched the BBC Miniseries where Prince Caspian is adapted more faithfully and I did not find it very engaging at all, the other three were fine in the BBC versions so it can't be blamed on the BBC.

So maybe what Lewis wrote for this book works on paper, but it would not have worked as a film.  I think this book was always regarded as the weakest so I don't see why book purists felt the need to even care this time.

It's a fun action/adventure medieval fantasy film. It's the only version of any Narnia story where Susan is treated with respect.  And it has pre Game of Thrones Peter Dinklage.

Leaving aside the increase in action and structural narrative changes, what mainly bugged people was making the protagonists more flawed.  Lewis and Tolkien didn't exactly share our modern values about the importance of heroes having relatable flaws.  But I don't think it's a coincidence that Peter was named Peter, Simon Peter was far from flawless.

Before December of 2017 I consistently felt that if any company can be trusted to handle a beloved franchise they didn't create themselves it was Disney, and the worst option was Fox.  And comparing the MCU to the X-Men films was not even my main example for that, it was what happened with this Narnia series.  Disney made two pretty darn good films, then Fox got the franchise cause people whined about this one, and turned the generally regarded as best of the books into one of the few Hollywood movies I've seen and have no fondness for.  The BBC version of Dawn Treader was more satisfying even though it didn't have the run-time it needed.

I suppose the denigrating Fox part of that rant I can still make, but after a certain film I'm trying not to talk about, I clearly don't trust Disney so blindly anymore.  The MCU has done so well because Disney let the people already in charge keep doing what they already started.  In the case of the franchise you can probably guess I'm referring to, they did the opposite.

2008 may well have been the best year for movies in my opinion, between having half my candidates for greatest film of all time (The Dark Knight and Speed Racer), the start of the MCU, my personal favorite Indiana Jones film, and in Anime Land most of Kara no Kyoukai, this underrated film being in 2008 is merely icing on the cake. 

As someone who's been a type of Evangelical Christian since before this particular film franchise started, I've often thought about how I'd do something like Narnia differently from Lewis well before I started getting into Anime and it's peculiar versions of this genre.

For starters if I made a Christian Isekai series I'd have one of the Lost Tribes of Israel wind up in this parallel world,(in the case of this story the Telmarines could have easily filled that role, instead they're just random Mediterranean pirates). And then I'd have the protagonists from the modern world be young Christians who are actually pretty genre savvy about the Biblicalness of what's going on.

I have become a supporter of Universal Salvation which means there would be no Susan Problem if I'm in charge.  In fact the Susan in my stories would probably be the main protagonist.  Speaking of Universal Salvation and Isekai, I really need to read George MacDonald's Lilith some day, if only someone would adapt it, it would make a great Anime, it even has a Neko I've heard.

So I forgot some pretty obvious Pre Narnia Isekai novels

When I wrote my Isekai, In Another World with my Smartphone, Why Wish Fulfillment is Art blog post, talking about western works of literature you could apply the Isekai label to.

Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, plus their sequels and stuff.  Ya know, it's amusing that this genre seems to begin with female protagonists and then Males take it over later.  I don't know enough about George MacDonald's works to know if any of them can be labeled Isekai.  What I mainly know is that he is cited as an influence on Lewis.

I still think the Narnia books are more analogous to modern Anime Isekai then those.  Especially as I've watched more now.

So it occurred to me that I'd forgotten about Oz as I was watching No Game No Life.  I'm aware that a key difference between the book and the infamous 1939 film is the whole "No Place like Home" part.  In the book Dorothy wants to get back home to see her family again.  But the overall attitude towards Mid Western Rural America that Baum was expressing was rather cynical.  So the movie saying "There's no place like home" went quite against the themes of the books.

So all that popped into my head as I watched this Anime about two Siblings with absolutely no desire to return to modern Japan, since they are stereotypical Neets.  And then I slapped myself that I just did a blog post acting like I didn't know about any major Pre-Narnia Isekai stories.  Then I thought of Alice in Wonderland also.

Overall though, No Game No Life still feels much more analogous to Narnia.  With a very different attitude towards religion and spirituality of course.  But it's about Siblings who become King and Queen in their new world.

Speaking of which.  The most awkward parallel No Game No Life holds to Narnia is the tendency for some of the fandom to engage in Incest Shipping.  Now knowing Otaku culture that was probably a little bit intentional with NGNL.  While Lewis certainly did not intend that.  Also I don't think any Narnia fans ship Peter and Lucy, which is age wise what Sora/Shiro is more analogous to.

NGNL is a very good show, I highly recommend it.  I'm a fan of stratagey based Anime like Code Geass.

If I hadn't recalled Alice In Wonderland already, I would have when I started Problem Children, where the protagonists are brought to this world by a Bunny Girl called Black Rabbit.

Problem Children shares NGNL's Gaming theme.  But not executed nearly as well.  Problem Children also feels like it's trying to copy Fate/ with all the re-imagining Classical Myths as Anime Girls.

But Problem Children might feel the most like Narnia in terms of being about a group of kids.  And Asuka seems to have been taken from the WWII era and so almost looks like she's a Susan Pevensie cosplayer at the beginning.  Problem Children is a fun show but isn't gonna come off well comparing it to others.

One big advantage protagonists in modern Otaku Centric Isekai Anime have over more old school examples is they tend to be, or at least include, an Otaku who is very genre savvy about the world they've been taken to.  The Pevensies don't even seem to figure out that Aslan is Jesus till the third book when he finally spells it out to them.  And that's part of my disappointment with Narnia as Christian fiction actually, I'd prefer more Bible Genre Savvy protagonists in my Christian Isekai.  The other is that if I wrote a Christian Isekai I'd have one of the nations in this world be one of the Lost Tribes.

Update: January 2019: Peter Pan, I also forgot that Peter Pan kind of qualifies, I'm such a Baka.

Isekai, In Another World with My Smartphone, Why Wish Fulfillment is Art.

The Isekai genre is arguably more purely escapist wish fulfillment then most, being literally about escaping this world, going all the way back to C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The With and The Wardrobe.  It may not quite be the first Isekai story, but it is the most important in popularizing it.  And it was translated into Japanese as early as 1985.

It's not common to use this Anime term to describe western novels like the Narnia series.  No one would deny that the term applies and so they are technically the same genre.  But the development of Isekai in Japan, in Otaku centric media, has been very particular.  With increasing nods to Video Games of the RPG genre, (making them perhaps feel slightly more Tolkien then Lewis).  But also filled with Anime cliches, including the influence of Anime's most dreaded genre, The Harem.

I haven't watched a lot of Isekai Anime.  I tried both Konosuba and Re:Zero in 2016 and wasn't able to get into them.  If you count trapped in an MMO shows as Isekai, then I've seen 2 seasons of SAO and will see more when it's dubbed.  My onions on them are complicated.

Right now I'm currently watching In Another World with my Smartphone, via it's simuldub so I'm a few episodes behind most watching it, episode 8 I finished recently.  I'm really enjoying it, the number 1 of the Summer season was Princess Principal, but this show has been fun.

I never thought I would be this into a Harem show.  I've liked other Anime with the harem stuff going on, but never all that much liking it for the Harem, but rather preferring to imagine the girls kissing each other.  In this case I like that the show is seemingly building to a non monogamous resolution, as of episode 6 four of the girls have basically already agreed to share the main character.  And it helps that I kinda see why they like him, he is nice, clever, has a sense of humor, and I'm not afraid to say he's kinda pretty.  So not as Bland as the usual Harem protagonist.

The Haremness isn't the only thing that's blatant wish fulfillment about it.  He is also really OP, but in a way that is fairly well explained in the story and so doesn't come off as inexplicable as Kirito or the MC of Log Horizon.

This show, and the two 2016 shows mentioned above, are Light Novel adaptations, and so as expected are very Meta, but in different ways.  Those two were a Parody and a Deconstruction, two things that kinda overlap sometimes.

The Meta in a parody and/or deconstruction involves a scenario not playing out how you expect, or playing out fairly straight but in a way that seems designed to undercut the idea that this fantasy is a desirable situation.  Something deconstructive can have an ultimately optimistic ending, concluding it's worth it, but is still largely about the price.

This show is Meta, it's definitely winking at the audience subtly at times.  But rather then spoofing or criticizing it's own genre, it seems to be an unashamed unapologetic wish fulfillment fantasy.  And I actually find that refreshing.

Today critics of fictional media are growing more and more obsessed with rejecting wish fulfillment.  Praising every deconstruction that comes along.

Of course a lot of shows criticized for being pure Wish Fulfillment are ones perceived as putting on a pretense of being something more, of having something deeper to say, but seemingly in the end don't really.  I think that's what a lot of the hate SAO has received comes down to.

This show has no pretense, it does not want to trick anyone into thinking it's deeper then it is.  And yet that does not result it becoming pure memetic trash like Eromanga-Sensei.

Digibro has expressed the view that Meta in Anime is lazy if it's not in some way subverting or rejecting the trope being referenced.  That simply telling us you know what you're doing doesn't make it okay.  Well I agree it can come off that way sometimes.  I haven't seen the main shows he was attacking in that video.

But I do see value in being meta in a way that purely and unironically celebrates the fantasy the show is indulging in.  And that is what appeals to me about In Another World with My Smartphone.

We definitely need art with messages and deeper meanings.  Including that fiction that warns us to be careful what we wish for in-case some cute silver tongued BunnyCat offers you a contract.  But I think Art that's pure wish fulfillment is just as artistic and worth praising.

Isekai is a wish fulfillment fantasy going back to Narnia, which was about escaping war time England.  But Lewis did have messages he wanted to send, and for fans who don't quite share his peculiar brand of Christianity, those messages sometimes become the story's weakest parts.

So an Isekai story that is unafraid to simply be about the fantasy of being sent to a High Fantasy world with your smartphone and demigod like magical abilities, and meeting a bunch of cool cute girls to hang out with, is exactly what I need right now.  So in a way I like it similarly to why Digi likes Ponyo.

How do conservative and liberal writers write women?

[Update 2026: When I made this series of posts I was still mistaken about some aspects of Political terminology are used.  I called myself a Liberal but I was actually already a Socialist.]

I want to preface this by saying that I myself while Theologically Conservative have become increasingly socially and politically liberal (a left leaning Libertarian as opposed to most American Libertarians) and I certainly consider myself a Feminist.  So please do not interpret these observations as an endorsement of conservatism.

I had a post early in this blog's history where I discussed the strong women of French Pulp Fiction, (I've recently added to that post, and will add more).  I had promised back then that I would make more posts on that title subject.  And I still intend to do so, but this post is more so a follow up to a different aspect of that post.

The centerpiece of that post became my observation that.  "the two who were the “Conservatives” in the context of post Revolutionary France (in being devout Catholics and Royalists) Feval and Ponson. Seem to me to have over all been more inclined to write surprisingly strong independent women."

I want here to speculate how this trend might exist beyond simply the comparing of those 4 writers.

What I will say first is mostly that male authors who are liberal and feminists often fail, (not without successes to praise of course, my favorite characters in anything tend to always be the women) while if women are actually involved in the writing, like on a show like Pretty Little Liars  then women as characters and the handling of gender issues are each done much better then usual.

Hollywood writers tend to be liberal or leftist, many are not the Hollywood Liberal caricature Fox News pundits imagine, but they are left of center.  As are Comic Book writers and so on.  Yet that doesn't stop the handling of female characters and gender related social issues in those writings from being problematic.

The LadyGeekGirl blog deals with a lot of those issues, as does themarysue.com I don't always agree with them but their articles make good eye opening reading.  But two posts from different blogs are at the center of my thinking here.  I hate Strong Female Characters and this post which follows up on that.

I'm also intrigued by something I read on TVtropes about Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

"As a Reason.com review pointed out: Its kind of ironic that Phillip Pullman labels other works like Narnia as sexist and full of class snobbery, when Will the male hero, is the one who gets to fight the most and even becomes The Chosen One in control of the mystical Subtle Knife, meanwhile Lyra's greatest feats are accomplished by "feminine" wiles like lying and manipulation. "

Narnia (written by the very traditionalist C.S. Lewis) meanwhile is definitely not a work of Feminist literature, but it's handling of female characters is surprising.  The Pensvises are 2 girls and 2 boys, and A Horse and his Boy is also.

In the first book when the kids are given their weapons by Father Christmas he tells the girls that theirs are "Just in case" and doesn't intend them to be in battle.  But they are in the battle at the end, and it's Aslan who brings them there.  Also A Horse and His Boy criticizes the practice of arranged marriages.  Though admittedly by that time few even radical Christians stood by that practice, thought even today you'll find some defending it in concept.

Susan's fate is the main part of the Criticisms of Narnia as sexist.  Three things.

1. She did not go to Hell, Lewis himself said she could and probably will go to Aslan's country later.  In fact she's the one character still alive, in a story from her POV everyone else was fridged.

2. The negative things said about her are not really by Alsan or the narrator but other characters, her siblings.  Maybe their perception of things is flawed.  Remember Lucy had her jealously issues with her in Dawn Treader.

3.  It seems Lewis felt someone had to be left behind in The Final Battle for some thematic reason, and process of elimination left Susan the only logical choice, for reasons not related to gender.

You can validly look at it as Susan was the only one who Grew Up.

I'm the kind of person who rarely discuses Lewis without also discussing Tolkien.  But in this case I feel a discussion of Women and gender issues in Tolkien could be another post.

The Apocalypse series of Christian straight to Video movies from the the early 2000s were definitely made by Christians with highly conservative political values, and some disturbing homophobic implications.  But Hellen Hannah is the main hero of the series, and is very well written and acted.

The creator of Attack on Titan has gotten in trouble for defending Japan's actions against Korea and China during WWII.  Yet his handling of female Characters is among the most progressive of any Anime

So this clearly doesn't always happen, but it happens enough to warrant some wondering.  Maybe male liberal writers are sometimes more concerned with making their female characters Feminist friendly then with actually making them characters.  That wouldn't quite explain Pullman though.  Sometimes it may be simply that to many men no matter how Feminist they are other liberal agendas are more important.

I think even the most Feminist viewer of media would agree that a female character who's traditional but well written with depth is better then a "Strong" woman who has none.

Why are some "Conservative" writers surprising in this area?  My argument is not just that the women are well written regardless of being traditional.  Rather it's that sometimes they do defy gender norms without being vilified or even criticized for doing so.

Maybe sometimes the criticism is so subtle I mis it simply because I don't agree with it.  But if the writers who wrote Helen Hannah agree with many Baptists that women shouldn't be pastors, then their choice to write a woman as the leader of these End Times believers is odd.

Maybe it's the subliminal influence of ancient source material that isn't as "Traditional" as modern "Traditionalists" think they are.  Chief among those being The Bible. Deborah was likely the model for Helen Hannah, yet many "Conservatives" preach on Deborah blind to how her very existence in the Biblical narrative undermines their patriarchal assumptions.

In the case of the ones who are truly believers (I am an Evangelical Christian in case you didn't know) maybe The Holy Spirit worked through them in-spite of themselves.  And yes I think it's possible for even Catholics like Feval or Tolkien to be true believers in-spite of their Catholicism.  I was Saved for awhile before I fully accepted that the Roman Church I grew up in was incompatible with The Bible.

Maybe some of it is hypocritical, being selectively okay with women doing a Man's job if she does so in the name of some other Conservative cause.

Or maybe sometimes we should just see this as a reminder that people are complicated, and being conservative in one area doesn't mean conservative in others.  Or that believing in traditional gender roles as the norm doesn't always have to mean refusing to accept those who defy the norm.