All of my posts on this Blog are meant to be Conversation Starters. I never want to be the final word on any topic. I'm trying to put ideas out there that hopefully others more knowledgeable and skilled then me can expand on.
The third episode of Sword Art Online is often considered a Christmas Episode because of it's last segment.
But what I like about it is it's depiction of Survivor's Guilt. Survivor's Guilt is a fundamentally irrational phenomena where someone who survives something others did not feels guilty simply for surviving and latching onto anything to rationalize it.
But too often stories in fiction meant to address this do give the character in question a reasonable reason to blame themselves, usually nothing that would make them truly legally, ethically or morally culpable, but still some decision they made that if they decided differently could have made a difference. Because modern standards for good writing are obsessed with things like "consequences" and "Cause and Effect" and trying to avoid getting a plot hole ding from CinemaSins.
What I like about this episode of SAO is that Kirto truly has no rational reason to blame himself, the thing he latches onto is the whole not telling them how high leveled he actually was, but what lead to their death was their acting rashly and overconfidently, knowing how OP Kirto actually was would have had the opposite effect.
But as expected the SAO haters trying to give it the RLM treatment constantly do treat this as a pothole when it's in fact exactly what makes it a good depiction of Survivor's Guilt. Yeah it does also serve the purpose of giving Kirto more reason to be a Brooding Loner while not undermining that he's the best at playing this game, but so what.
SAO was never about IF Kirito is a good Gamer or not, it's about how this experience was Traumatizing regardless.
I feel compelled to make this post about it even though I'm not entirely sure how to articulate my feelings.
Most of Japan is similar to California and Israel in that Snow at this time of year isn't as common as it is for those of us living further north. That makes a subtle difference in the thematic role Snow plays in Anime in general. In my post a couple years ago on episode 6 of Noir I got the name of that episode confused, it's Lost Kitten not Snow, but it kept using the word Snow in ways that confused my memory (I think it's because Snow was the name of a song on the Soundtrack).
The episode climaxes in a Christmas Miracle that is really a simple act of kindness. Standard Christmas episode tropes. But it's also specifically tied to the show's Sci-Fi setting and how Otaku driven it is.
I'm sure all the Christmas episodes BeneathTheTangles talked about are perfectly good if you're into those shows. But I think this may be the best Anime Christmas Episode at being Christmas for Anime weirdos.
I have in the past both on this Blog and elsewhere referred to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's as the Batman Returns of Anime in terms of the debate about classifying it as a Christmas movie.
I have since then learned that Die Hard is usually the first Hollywood action/adventure movie people think of when it comes to movies that are technically set at Christmas time but not directly about Christmas in an obvious way. I agree with James Rolf that BR is more of a Christmas movie. But I have enough posts on this Blog referencing Batman in the title for the time being.
I have however remembered that there is another Anime I've seen that fits that category of Christmas movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. That being a movie is probably easier to compare for most people. There is a film version of the story of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's but I honestly don't remember if it included the Christmas references and for a number of reasons I don't like it nearly as much as the two series.
The Haruhi film probably spends a larger percentage of it's run time referencing Christmas, BeneathTheTangles only lists episodes 9 and 11 of Nanoha A's as Christmas Episodes. But I feel Nanoha is more properly thematically right for Christmas.
Nanoha A's is also more like Batman Returns in being specifically a second instalment. Disappearance would've been the 3rd or 4th movie if Haruhi had been done as films from the start.
Still both are very good, Disappearance has pretty consistently been on my Anime Films 3x3 and Nanoha A's is one of my favorite instalments of one of my favorite genres.
Disappearance is also arguably a good example of a Eucatastrophe for any Tolkien nerds reading this.
Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas is a movie I haven't seen yet but basically know what it's about and what happens in it from watching YouTubers trashing the movie for different reasons.
I have mixed feelings about the movie because I know the people making it are very politically Conservative, the kinds of Christians I'm very often specifically arguing against on my other blogs since I'm a Communist and LGBTQ Ally.
However I try very hard to view these disagreements as a disagreement within the family. I still value much of what I've learned from the likes of Kent Hovind, Chuck Missler, Chris White and Rob Skiba, and those individuals are in some ways to the right of Kirk Cameron. And of all the recent trend of Evangelical movies, this one is kind of the easiest to separate from their politics. And the BreadTubers as much I love them are taking a lot out of context when they try to paint the film as if it's main message is F*** poor people.
What Kirk says near the end about "imbuing old symbols with new meaning" is what the Church has always done. And I find it amusing how people while mocking the movie want to call that deceptive when they promote Death of The Author elsewhere. The first people the movie is actually against are those Christians saying we should reject Christmas for being UnBiblical, he's trying to say if it bothers you so much make it Biblical. It's what Peter Hiett is doing when he says to "watch the Harry Potter movies looking for Jesus" in his Acts 17 sermon. And it's what I sometimes do looking for Jesus in Anime.
And that's where I come in. Because I see that quote from the movie as partly his call for others to continue doing what he started. And who better then me to start creating Biblical meanings for uniquely Anime related Christmas traditions?
One uniquely modern Japanese Christmas tradition you might notice in Anime from time to time is eating KFC at Christmas time. It apparently had it's beginnings in an old KFC marketing campaign. Well Chicken is commonly interpreted as being a Levitically clean animal, Chickens aren't directly mentioned in Scripture but when comparing birds that are clean to birds that aren't Chickens seem to fit in with the clean ones, being similar to Quail, Turkey, Geese and Ducks, some of those were already common Christmas meal options in the West. In fact it's even become acceptable in modern Rabbinic Judaism to eat Chicken instead of Lamb for Passover. The rest of that connection should be self explanatory.
I said last year that in the context of it's position in the conversation about what makes a Christmas Movie I consider Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's to be the Batman Returns of Anime. So I seek to make it a personal tradition of mine to watch that Anime every holiday season. The Christian meaning I see in it is about the same as I usually do in the rest of the Magical Girl Warrior Genre, themes about Love and Found Family and saving even the villain of the story.
It doesn't take long at all to connect this to Christianity. Because the character who started it all is the historical Roman Emperor Nero re-imagined as a Cute Anime Girl because..... well because Anime.
She is sometimes refereed to as "Saber Red" or "Red Saber" which can create confusion with Mordred in Fate/Apocypha.
Nero is traditionally viewed as the first Emperor to persecute the Church. I have argued that the Neornian Persecution is actually ahistorical. But Fate/ is not aware of any of that niche historical dispute, and they didn't ignore the issue either. They included the Persecution as part of Nero Claudius's backstory, but also gave her character depth and nuance.
Even the sin of persecuting Christians is one Jesus can and Will forgive, it was after all Paul's sin which is why he called himself the Chief of Sinners. So this image of one who once persecuted the Brethren of Christ thousands of years later joyously celebrating the Birthday of Christ fits perfectly what I believe in as a proponent of Universal Salvation.
If something can count as a good quasi Christmas episode just from featuring Snowy weather (Western TV tends to pretend it only Snows at Christmas and New Years even though in my experience Winter is only just starting then) then the Sixth Episode of my personal favorite Anime, Noir, makes a pretty good one. It’s an episode titled simply Snow.
It’s not quite as cheerful and uplifting as what I’d generally prefer to promote at Christmas time, but it’s not typical Dark and Edgy Anti-Christmas Nihilism either.
My personal tradition of watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s dubbed on Thanksgiving (preceded by season one on the same day or the day before) started mainly as a fluke, since it happened to be on Thanksgiving of 2016 I first decided to dive in and watch Nanoha. By the time I contemplated making it a tradition a few weeks later I’d kinda forgotten that A’s actually takes place at Christmas time, making it a more logical tradition for a month later. I think the movie remake left the Christmas part out of it which further affected how I remembered the story over the course of 2017.
But it does still fit because of how we tend to traditionally view the Christmas season as starting with Thanksgiving, hence Santa at the end of the Macy's Parade.
Things didn’t go quite according to plan for 2018, since it turned out to not be so easy to get myself into the right mindset for watching Nanoha when I’d a little before gotten into A Certain Magical Index and it’s spin off. There is a lot of natural overlap between the appeal of these two shows, but Nanoha’s overall tone is a bit more mellow so jumping back and forth between them isn’t easy.
If I had to call any Anime the perfect Holiday Season Anime, it’d be Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s. It’s about family and like all great Magical Girl shows it’s highly optimistic in-spite of the darkness present. It really is the perfect melodrama.
I'm not a big fan of the strictest definition of a Christmas movie, I'm more a fan of movies that happen to take place at Christmas time, where in theory it didn't need to be, but being Christmas still adds to the film thematically and emotionally. Batman Returns is my favorite example of such a film, Die Hard is okay, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe kind of counts as one of these (the weird thing is the centerpiece of that story is actually about Easter), I still haven't seen any Shane Black Christmas films.
Basically Batman Returns is my favorite Christmas movie, and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's is the Batman Returns of Anime in terms of how it relates to Christmas.
That messed up my plans for both 12 days of Anime Christmas and Anime Weekly Updates.
Two posts for the "12 days of" project were already written and are still coming.
Then I think I'd decided following my last Anime Weekly update before all this started was that I was likely to wait till December's over to binge all the December episodes of IndexIII.
I don't think I'll be saying anything about my catch up on what I missed last week, just know they're the shows I'd been following.
I’m not planning to play by the rules of any existing 12 Days of Anime project like the one Zeria is taking part in. But I will try to post something on this blog that is at least tangentially related to both Anime and Christmas for the 14th through 25th of December 2018. Some of them may wind up being pretty weak posts, but I will try. I may also decide to do something on YouTube for at least one of them, but if so it’ll get a blog post promoting it.
Zeria’s project of sharing Anime related stories from earlier in the year doesn’t suit me at all. Generally I’ve been trying to post about such experiences when they happened. If I look back on the year that’ll be for New Years. But doing some sort of Anime Christmas extravaganza does intrigue me.
I don’t know how much Christmas related stuff I’ll be doing on my other blogs, I think I’ll try to mostly get them done before this project starts. I have at least one planned for the Prophecy Blog where I continue to defend my firm belief against mainstream modern convention that Jesus probably was born in December or early January on the 25th of Kislev aka the first day of Hanukkah. You should also keep an eye on my Tumblr where I’ll try to copy/paste there some older Christmas related posts.
I'm certain Holbrook was not the one kissing Ali, that's a mislead, they're not gonna rehash the whole crooked Cop angle a third time. I stand by the theory I posted not to long ago.
The whole thing about telling Ali she’s going to Hell really bothered
me. Reminds me of what lats year I hated how AHS Coven ended and how TVD
ended Katherine’s story-lines.
The Gothic horror of the 18th and 19th centuries was usually written by Universalists. I"m not a Universalist, but I simply prefer the horror in a horror story to end when the character dies, leave the after life out of it please.
I'm bugs me that Paige is being put on a Bus again.
The show was awesome over all because everything I love about PLL, everything Fevalian about it, was up to 11.
