DIVINE YOUTHFULNESS/GRAND ANIME AND THE ANTIPHONAL NEW SAVIOUR

ALEXANDRE HAÏOUN-PERDRIX - Writer, 3rd Year, Philosophy

Sad to say, but if you are a Berkeley student, you are probably already too old to become an anime Messiah.

SPOILERS FOR NAUSICAA!

Slices of life have been part for long of the manga-cum-anime galaxy; recently, some have even been able to grasp a greater share of the public’s attention than maybe ever, in particular Bocchi the Rock, which the author of this article has not seen and about which he will subsequently not talk here. Nor about any slice of life at all, as a matter of fact. Both their survival and their recent thriving means that they have able to perdure also as a concept, which was by no way evident: so reduced, minimal is the way they distinguish themselves, that it must mean that this way of being is enough to make them fairly different from the bulk of the aforementioned galaxy. That is, most of its elements must follow a more crucial framework — deal with stakes more important, and often which amounts to a form of emergency. Thereby it is possible to conceive a spectrum with at its one end slices of life (albeit not only) and at its other end anime marked by the need to solve a terrible crisis. (This does not mean, of course, that this very end of the spectrum has any monopoly over for instance strong emotions, which slices of life and elements of intermediary statuses manage just as efficiently to provoke, sometimes even more.) This second end will be named grand anime. Although it is an extreme genre, it might designate a significant share of the galaxy: threats to the world, a country, a considerable number of lives, or even a dramatic emphasis on the menace over one only, especially if characterised by emergency, are no uncommon basis for an anime or manga scenario. More remarkable, albeit easily explainable as well, is the preponderance in such cases of protagonists both young and, in a certain way, messianic. They are that one or those either whom a superior power has anointed so that they perform the promised salvation, or who through their pure and high soul (higher than those of most other characters) and extraordinary abilities are the sole to be able to do it.

The reason why grand anime have known such proliferation is quite obvious: their very defining feature (the extreme value of stakes) is valuable in itself, since it is enough to attract readers and spectators at first, and to keep their heart beating more rapidly than the plot progresses. Extreme stakes also most often imply extreme events happening and thereby, extreme emotions and extreme (how surprising) attachment to the central characters. Just like slices of life, to which it is frequently very easy to relate, grand anime have an excellent economic reason to be and to continue to do so. The relatable character, however, is not impossible to attain even in such works: the easiest way is obviously to look for the highest degree of similarity between the public targeted and the characters to whom it must become attached. Hence the banal and nonetheless… extreme preponderance of young characters as protagonists. Making them messianic might subsequently just appear as a means to stay on the right side of this public, and this amazing proportion, as the unavoidable outcome of a merely financial reasoning from scenarists, publishers, studios and platforms.

But sufficient as this explanation might be, in no way does it mean that no other possible cause has fostered this predominance, let alone that is the main one. Hayao Miyazaki, who is rarely associated in the mind of people with commercialism, is one of the best representatives of grand anime. Out of his ten or eleven films, between four and five fall in this category, amidst which three have youngsters as protagonists (rather than mere young protagonists, in which category it would have been possible to add Ponyo). Mononoke and Nausicaa leave no right to doubt regarding the messianic trait of their heroes (the question of The castle in the sky being a little less certain). And if Ashitaka and Mononoke appear to be truly messianic, Nausicaa in her dedicated film is more simply a Messiah, being both the one promised by an ancient prophecy and possibly the most iconic recent embodiment of moral purity in the anime-cum-manga galaxy with Tohru from Fruits Basket. Moreover, her abilities were by no way bestowed upon her: this is thanks to them that she may assume her messianic destiny, but because of her research, her behaviour and her principles that she detains them. She opens the door to a more satisfying explanation of the trope of messianic youngsters: in their youthfulness resides both their purity and their potential to change the world. (That is, the circumscribed realm in which the anime or manga takes place, be it the whole universe or a country lost in snowy mountains with barely one thousand inhabitants.)

Their newness makes them indeed more easily morally pure (that is, literally, “untainted” by any worldly corruption). Rarely (albeit fortunately sometimes… for the sake of the diversity of plots, of course) do grand anime look like William Golding’s Lord of flies: evil is to be found in adults, whose age has taken away the innocence and what they now consider as charming but unproductive illusions. For the world to be washed from this dirt, one needs beings whose eyes are not blinded thereby. This is a role youngsters perform most easily: they were not part of this world until recently, and its pollution has subsequently at worst began to cover parts of their skin. They are, so said Hannah Arendt, “new worlds in the human world”: they bring with them their fresh sight into the place wherein all the sights, the conceptions, the opinions and the actions encounter one another, which means they are a chance for it as a whole to be renewed — made out to be younger itself — and even saved. Messianic characters do not really come from, but into the world they are to save. It is all but a specific feature of anime, rather a very common one in political conceptions (even when they happen to be conservative, in which case the new generation is sometimes seen as that which will perhaps refrain the flow of the intermediary), and not only the extreme versions thereof.

What might look like the most hopeful, heartwarming characteristic of grand anime when they include a messianic youngster is in some occasions, however, the manifestation of either great bitterness or some kind of grimness, particularly regarding the world in front of which this character is placed. Be this trait inside the heart of the scenarists or supposed by them to meet some equivalent in the heart of their spectators, it consist of something which may oscillate between , as well as mix both, an association of resignation and despair and one of indignation and incomprehension — refusal to accept that something in the cruelty of this world may be accepted or ignored. The youngster appears to be both the perfect public and character to express such feelings: his age is more often that if revolt than any other. His being able to perceive (or his believing to perceive, in no way does it matter) this unacceptability, which because of its greatness is an excellent kind of stake on which to base grand anime, is allowed by his being as said earlier a new world. But precisely, the ancient world is not only dirty, here: it is fundamentally, almost intrinsically corrupted and so are its adults, those out of whom it is made. Whether it contaminated them or they contaminated it, no one needs to know: what matters is that, for moral values to win, this world has to be vanquished, if not destroyed and rebuilt — “revolution has to be brought to it”. This will to destroyed the world, legitimated by its indubitable evil nature, does not necessarily gives birth to messianic characters: very often, this desire to take it over and make it one’s own or annihilate it is the main goal of the antagonists of grand anime, in a loose way in Mononoke, in a much impressive one in the well-known Akira.

However terrible as this world might be, not for it to be enough to break the protagonists or their resolution to offer it salvation.

This endurance, this incorruptible purity is even one more proof of their messianic status. Not to be able to keep going, a very human, trait, is on the contrary a painful reminder that neither purity nor youthfulness always mean the ability to save oneself, let alone that to be messianic (which few films do illustrate better than Isao Takahata’s Kaguya). Although Nausicaa, as always, perfectly fits the bill, Utena, since its protagonist resists on a wider temporal scale (for herself as well as for spectators who follow her on little less than forty episodes), could be a better available example. One needs not never waver to conserve his messianism; what matters is that one never falls, and so does Utena. Or more justly, if one ever falls, it must not be his own fault.

And that, for messianic characters are not always Messiahs. They might be able to bring salvation but fail: it is the most powerful way for a scenarist to convey his view, if it is that of a world doomed because of its own corruption, which is a defining feature of its nature. It happens that because they knew nothing of (that is, had not experimented) the conflicts of this world (which preserved their purity), these characters are destroyed by them, having tried at too great expense to mitigate or stop them. Disillusioned characters might have been unable to solve those conflicts, like Yupa in Nausicaa; but their knowledge (especially their practical knowledge) thereof at least enables them to face it with lesser risks and sometimes more refined competences.

It is, still, this very fact that they try to save everyone, be it against reasonableness, which makes them all the more deserving. Their impossible mission, which they accept as a duty whereas it had frequently no reason to be so, is such that it precisely takes a messianic character to accomplish it. Herewith come the direst and the brightest situations and actions as well — the greatest hopes and fears; here the most desirable climax is reached, through happy ending or pure tragedy.