This book presents essays that investigate religious themes in anime and use anime as thinking partners for constructive theological exploration, highlighting the many religious traditions in the medium.
This book brings together scholars to unpack the religious ideas, themes, motifs, texts, traditions, and practices that suffuse anime. Immensely popular with Western audiences since the 1980s, anime continues to be a prominent medium through which contemporary people, especially younger generations, are engaging ideas about God or ultimate reality, the world, and the self. This volume brings an academic lens to anime and shows the central role that religion plays in the intellectual and visual architecture of many popular shows, including Dragon Ball, Madoka Magica, Gurren Lagann, Sword Art Online, and more.
Arvustused
David Armstrong and Roberto J. De La Novals edited book Anime, Religion, and Theology is a valuable contribution to the study of both Japanese pop cultural forms and the global fandoms that consume them. The focus is large Western philosophical and theological concepts and frameworks, which while potentially culturally incongruous are deftly applied to tease novel and intriguing meanings from anime series and films, focusing on theodicy, deification, ecology, transhumanism, and meaning-making in the twenty-first century. Recommended. * Carole M. Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney, Australia * Anime, Religion and Theology is a wonderful addition to anime studies. Starting with a truly thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction, the chapters explore many of the fascinating metaphysical elements and aims of some of the most interesting and important anime productions over the last decades, from lyrical meditations on Miyazaki in comparison to Seamus Heaney, to provocative visions of Evangelion, to a wide-ranging look at the Dragon Ball Z universe. This book takes the study of anime in fresh and fascinating directions. * Susan Napier, Goldthwaite Professor of Rhetoric and Japanese, Tufts University, USA *
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This book presents essays that investigate religious themes in anime and use anime as thinking partners for constructive theological exploration, highlighting the many religious traditions in the medium.
Introduction
David Armstrong and Roberto J. De La Noval
Part I: Magical Girls, Liberation, Theodicy
Chapter 1: Demonic Compassion: The Suffering of Innocents in Puella Magi
Madoka Magica
Roberto J. De La Noval
Chapter 2: The Rose in the Castle: The Marian Feminism of Revolutionary Girl
Utena
Ryan Andrew Haecker
Part II: Becoming God(s)
Chapter 3: Gods, Kami, and Apotheosis: Akira Toriyamas Concepts of Deity and
Divinization
Kegan A. Chandler
Chapter 4: God of This New World: A Semiotic Analysis of Death Notes
Creation of Light
Casey L. Covel
Chapter 5: Godmen and Gunmen: Deification in Gurren Lagann and Mecha Anime
David Armstrong
Chapter 6: The Gothic Nightmare of Technological Deification in Serial
Experiments Lain
Andrew Kuiper
Part III: Body Politics
Chapter 7: Fully Metal and Fully Human: Transhumanism, Moral Bioenhancement,
and Fullmetal Alchemist
Benjamin N. Parks
Chapter 8: A Girardian Approach to Sacrifice in Fullmetal Alchemist:
Brotherhood
Meghan Bishop
Chapter 9: Disability, Eschatology, and Sword Art Online
Aaron Brian Davis
Part IV: Omnipotence, Nature, Permanence, and Time
Chapter 10: Enchanted Worlds: Seamus Heaney and Hayao Miyazakis
Transformative Transcendent
Elizabeth Fredericks
Chapter 11: Shaman King: Shamanism, Ecology, and Death according to Hiroyuki
Takei
Giorgio Scalici
Chapter 12: The Bond is the Curse: Buddhism within the Cultural Logic of
Fruits Basket
Christiania Mullis
Chapter 13: The Weaponization of Time: Zen Buddhism, Dogens Uji, and Popular
Anime Series
Nathan Garcia
Chapter 14: YHWH the Tyrant?! The Depiction and Role of YHWH in Bleach and
Other Japanese Anime
Kaz Hayashi
Chapter 15: Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds: Sovereignty,
Imperialism, and Neon Genesis Evangelion
Jack Dudley
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
David Armstrong teaches Latin and Greek in St. Louis, MO and writes the Substack newsletter A Perennial Digression.
Roberto J. De La Noval is assistant professor of the Practice in the Theology department at Boston College.
