*DO NOT REUSE THIS POST. DO NOT COPY AND DO NOT RE-POST*
Manga is a Japanese version of comic book and graphic novel. It branches into different genres and there are slight variations depending on which country in the east you read them from. For example, in Korea different version of manga called webtoon claims popularity while Chinese manga is called manhua is much known to the public. In this essay, we will be focusing specifically on one of Japanese manga named Zankoku Na Nami Ga Shihai Suru (translation: A Savage God Reigns) by Moto Hagio and one of Korean webtoon called Loplop by CTK. The key similarity in these two works lays with their theme of tragedy and the religious lessons that characters convey through their circumstances. We will be relating these similar characteristics of the works to religious archetypes and theories. This will help us understand the minds of those who enjoy these types of works and why they are religious notions reflected from reality.
Before we begin our discussion, it is important to inform ourselves how manga and religion relates to one another in Japanese visual entertainment industry. Jolyon Baraka Thomas writes in his book titled Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan, “the willing suspension of disbelief inherent in fiction and art-and thus integral to the imaginative participation in closure on which the viewing of manga and anime is predicated-is, conversely, the voluntary (if temporary) assumption of credulity” (Baraka, 56). Baraka points out the essential similarity between manga and religion. There is a belief that what you see and read becomes your reality, even just for a moment. The yearnings for such belief and experience are what makes these types of works attractive to young readers. Baraka adds that “manga and anime along a continuum ranging between aesthetic and didactic types, which respectively focus on the “show” and “tell” of religion” (Baraka, 58). The difference is that the purpose of such “show” and “tell” creation lays with entertainment, not spiritual enlightenment. However, what we deem entertaining has significant moral value and messages in them. Entertainment is another way of conveying what is significant in our reality at the moment. Of course, unlike religion, entertainment lacks certain sense of classism but because, it has its own unique history and jargon. For those of who familiarize themselves with these cultural cannon, they can have the power to create their subculture or sub community that develops into entity. For example, in Japan, there is an artificial singer named Hatsune Miku. She is a pure digital creation that can be developed and molded into audience’s taste. She is an entertainer that surfaces any singer in the world because of how flexible she is in her form and creation. The advantage of message send in form of anime and manga is that they can attract varying types of consumers. In this constantly changing society, we cannot always reach every single people but with entertainment, it might be possible. Baraka points out that “nearly 75 percent-reacted positively to the idea of lay artists using religious themes in their stories” (Baraka, 60). This survey might not be sufficient enough to draw any definite conclusion, but it could be hope that there are more people who are willing to spend the time in learning more about spiritual experience if it is presented in form of manga or anime.
The first work we will be discussing is CTK’s Loplop. Because Loplop is digitally published work, we will be referring to the work with chapter numbers. Our main character Felix is an art college graduate who struggles to establish himself in the art industry. Felix lives in New York with his roommate named Harry, also Felix’s longtime friend, who helps Felix economically. One day, in a subway, Felix encounters a person with black bird costume and becomes inspired to create a painting (CTK, Chapter 2). Follow by the costumed person, Felix also meets a set of homeless twins on a wintery street, asking for cigarettes (CTK, Chapter 10). Both encounters create a painting that becomes a part of an exhibition which helps Felix further his art career (CTK, Chapter 11). Throughout the plot, the readers slowly get to know Harry and the purpose of such character. Harry is a researcher who observes Felix, like observing a lab rat. Harry’s observation of Felix is due to Felix’s illusions which happens to be Felix’s inspirations of his paintings. To be precise, there was no one in the subway cart who was wearing bird costume, and there were no homeless twins who asked for cigarettes. All the encounters that inspires Felix to paint are all but fragment of Felix’s imagination or so Harry believes.
The iconography of the illusion that CTK uses for Felix relates to one of cave paintings that David Lewis-Williams writes about in his book The Mind in the Cave. In the image 28 of his book, Lewis points out an odd-looking man painted on the Upper Palaeolithic. According to two University of Santa Barbara researchers, it is “concluded that the figure is bird from the waist up and human from the waist down” (Lewis, 264). Lewis also wrote the fact that the bird figure in the cave “illustrated a contemporary Siberian shaman’s ongon, or spirit helper” (Lewis, 265). Before meeting the bird figure on the subway, Felix did not paint. It was due to a car accident that Felix experienced during his college years with Harry. The car accident left a major trauma on Felix which contributed Felix almost giving up on his art career. The bird costume in everyday setting brought out a spiritual experience for Felix. Without Felix’s illusion of such bird figure on the subway, Felix might not have pick up a paint brush ever again. This relates back to what Lewis explains about the shaman’s ongon. Without the ‘help’ of the bird figure, Felix wouldn’t have chance to restart his art career. It is likely that CTK did not intended to borrow an imagery from a cave painting or the similar message the bird person conveys. The author simply taps into the collective unconsciousness. Neumann points out that even if our cultural cannon differs from that of the past, our collective unconscious or the source of imagery we tap into are the same because “these forces flow into the personality through the unconscious” (Neumann, 107).
The painting that Felix exhibited in the webtoon has bright red background with flowers spotting here and there, which are mostly white and light pink to violet colorings (CTK, Chapter 11). There are four figures present, two are human and two are birds with human body. Bird-figures seems to hide their faces amongst the flowers while men do not. The contrast between the two species are apparent in their body language. Younger man with glasses is helping older man with balding head while the two bird figures are not interacting with each other at all. Bird figures appears as if they are merely a shadow of the two figures and that they are observer, like the flowers decorating the painting. According to Tillich, this painting would be considered as ‘realism’. To Felix, what he saw was the ultimate reality. By incorporating them into his painting he was able to relay that experience to his friends and art business dealers. What Felix painted is “something unfamiliar what we believed we knew by meeting it day by day” (Tillich, 228). Felix met with the masked bird person from the subway and met the person in a bus too. This encounter of unfamiliar in daily basis gave Felix certainty to interpret its figure into his painting. Tillich also writes, “it is the humility of accepting the given which provides it with religious power” (Tillich, 228). Felix could have question his mentality for seeing something that is out of place, but he instead believes his ability to understand the world and accepts them as the truth.
The last scene of Loplop ends with Felix breaking down into tears muttering “what should I believe now” (CTK, Chapter 41)? This comment was result of Felix discovering his illness on his own. Followed by his previous exhibition, Felix was able to make name for himself through creating book illustrations. Felix then met a giant man with white hair, named Mr. Grey, whom Felix invited to the exhibition. Because Mr. Grey was a model for the painting, Felix introduced Mr. Grey to the audience during his opening speech which ended in confusion because no body was able to spot Mr. Grey. Felix’s visions, which were comprised of conversing, seeing, and touching the illusion, were the source of Felix’s inspiration throughout the webtoon. This was evident when Felix could not paint again during the absence of his illusions. Felix’s illusions stopped when Harry secretly medicated Felix with psychic medication. As soon as Felix stops taking the medication, he saw his visions and starts painting again. In Neumann’s perspective, what Felix experienced could be categorized as seeing “the creative sphere of the psyche” (Neumann, 85). To Felix, what he experienced were reality and he believe them to be nothing but. This could be described as relying on “unconscious and unknown powers” to “determine the life of the group” instead of having “fixated” the “archetypal contents” as fixated “myth and cult” (Neumann, 87). Of course, what Neumann expected people to receive from the unconscious are not vision of non-existing entities but to tap into unconscious through reoccurring thoughts or dreams. However, who is to say that seeing a vision is any less unconscious then thoughts and dreams? What Felix experiences throughout the webtoon could be called ultimate reality. Tillich makes clear that “ultimate reality underlies every reality, and it characterizes the whole appearing world as non-ultimate, preliminary, transitory and finite” (Tillich, 219). What Felix sees could be the subjects hidden behind the “deceptive character of the surface” (Tillich, 220). Ultimate reality is we see could come from the philosophical thinking and “discoveries about the nature of reality” but Felix’s ultimate reality is simply his vision of various archetypal contents. More things could be said about Felix’s vision but most likely Felix’s vision relates to how individual have different ability to perceive reality.
The next work that we will be discussing is Zankoku Na Nami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto. This manga was created in 2000. The Japanese title translates to A Savage God Reigns. It is a story about a young boy named Jeremy who lives with his mother, Sandra. Because of Jeremy’s father abandoning Sandra and Jeremy, Sandra is mentally unstable when it comes to loving someone. Because of Sandra’s condition, Jeremy has strong sense of responsibility when it comes to family. It was a relief for Jeremy when a rich man named Greg Roland comes into town and asks Sandra’s hand in marriage. Greg took Jeremy out for a little talk but kisses Jeremy instead, saying he loves Jeremy. Jeremy escapes Greg and run back to his home. What Jeremy finds is crying Sandra asking Jeremy to apologize to Greg. Jeremy asks Sandra to forget about Greg but she does not recover from the broken engagement with Greg and commits suicide. After Sandra stabilizes in a hospital, Jeremy calls Greg to become his stepfather thus abusive relationship begins between Jeremy and Greg.
The story focuses heavily on Jeremy’s psychological journey that goes through Greg’s sexual abuse. At first Jeremy struggles against Greg by barricading the door but it quickly changes as time goes by (vol.2 Ch5, pg65). Jeremy admits his void heart and thinks “I’m empty, like the walls of apparition, there is nothing” (vol.3 Ch15, pg24). In the midst of all the suffering of the heart, Jeremy also admits his strong desire for love. Jeremy says, “I want to love, from the bottom of my heart” (vol.3 Ch15, pg24). Jeremy’s suffering might not be enough to compared to the black spiritual but what Jeremy yearns for is the same, “it is an affirmation of the dignity of the black slaves, the essential humanity of their spirits” (Cone, 16). Jeremy is but an empty shell of his former self. Jeremy seeks for affirmation of his being by seeking love but he does not know how to achieve that fulfillment. Unlike the black spirit which finds its own religion and its own spiritual reality in Blues, however, Jeremy battles his inner demon by locking them all in his heart. Jeremy confirms this when he says, “I have to turn it off, so stuff doesn’t come out” (vol.7 Ch54.2, pg19).
Jeremy sacrificed himself for the sake of his mother. For Sandra’s mental health and happiness, Jeremy did not abandon his family like his biological father did. The shocking facts reveals that Sandra knew what Greg did to Jeremy behind her back. Jeremy confesses, “Sandra…knew, everything’s written in that diary…” (vol.7 Ch.46, pg24). This confirms the ‘savage god’ is not Greg but Jeremy’s mother, Sandra. Sandra is our god because she is ‘Self’ that ‘Ego’ emerged from. Renos K. Papadopoulos explains Carl Gustav Jung’s world in his book, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy. Papadopoulos writes, “Jung had always maintained that the ego’s roots were to be found in the self, that the ego early in life emerged from the self” (Papadopoulos, 133). As a Jeremy’s mother, Sandra had more power over Jeremy than Greg can ever have. Greg, by wielding Sandra, gained a powerful weapon. Through Sandra’s feign ignorance, Jeremy’s connection to the world is broken. It could be explained as “manic-depressive states” which the “relation between the ego and self; or, in other words, that the ego/self axis is damaged or broken” (Papadopoulos, 133). To reestablish the ego/self axis, Jeremy needs an anchor that can bring him back to ‘Self’. This could be a challenging task since Jeremy already experienced abandonment from his previous ego/self axis. The manga does an excellent job in displaying the process of Jeremy rediscovering the trust and belief in the world through different encounters of characters, such as Ian.
In the manga, Greg had a son named Ian. Ian has an upright personality with strong sense of who he is and what everything around him is. When Ian learns about the true face of his father, Greg, Ian denies the truth and forces Jeremy to alter his reality. This action of Ian closely resembles that of slave master’s attitude toward slavery. Cone writes, “white missionaries and preachers were distorting the gospel in order to defend the enslavement of blacks” (Cone, 23). To such an oppression, Jeremy confirms his truth over and over again. Jeremy says, “you, just what kind of truth do you want” (vol.7 Ch.48, pg31)? Jeremy speaks with his own agency which becomes foundation of his spirit. This fact can be closely compared to the black spirit which is “the record of black people’s resistance, an account of their existence in an oppressive society” (Cone, 23). Again, we cannot say that what Jeremy went through can resemble any close to what African Americans are going through but there are inevitable similarities which ties into Manga’s religious value.
Jeremy suffers and that suffering brings him much closer to his surroundings and the reality lays within. This is evident in Jeremy’s bike trip with Ian to Dover Cliff. Jeremy looks up at the light shining through the clouds and thinks “Ah, light, there’s something in the light…it’s coming down, an angel” (vol.12 Ch.66, pg29)? What Jeremy experience is what Otto calls numinous. Otto writes in his book The Idea of the Holy, “it is really simply a sort of growl or groan, sounding up from within as the quasi-reflex expression of profound emotion in circumstances of a numinous-magical nature, and serving to relieve consciousness of a felt burden, almost physical in its constraining force” (Otto, 193). At the time, Jeremy was relieved from his consciousness and entered a state of being. By simply existing, Jeremy was connected to true ‘Self’. This true ‘Self’, not like his mother, beckoned Jeremy further into its collective unconsciousness instead of pushing him away. Like the moth to a flame, Jeremy raised toward it. When Jeremy came to, Ian was stopping Jeremy from jumping off the Cover Cliff. Jeremy confesses, “there was something wrong with me, I didn’t notice I was running” (vol.12 Ch.66, pg40). In Jeremy’s case, the numinous force was certainly physical.
Here, we stop to answer a very important question. Can the religious classics convey what Jeremy experienced without limitation? The answer is in David Tracy’s writing. In the essay The Religious Classic and the Classic of Art, Tracy quotes Santayana: “poetry is religion that supervenes upon life; religion is poetry that intervenes in life” (Tracy, 242). Tracy explains, “the religious classic expresses the power of a manifestation of a “limit-of” experience, an experience of a self-manifesting power, an eruption of both radical participation and nonparticipation in the whole” (Tracy, 243). It is a mistake to believe that one aspect of something represents a whole. Same can be said about religious art. By limiting classics with specific category such as ‘religious art’, we can consciously limit our minds to perceive things that are equally as religious but not view them as ‘religious art’. The phrase that Tracy frequently use “limit-of” utilizes the same idea. The phrase ‘religious’ is somewhat limiting in its view and category. Just as Tillich explains, there are “two indirect ways” of experiencing ultimate reality and they are “philosophy-more specifically, metaphysics-and art” (Tillich, 221). The broad-spectrum of category such as art can be considered religious because it is representation of reality and portrayal of ultimate reality. Going back to Tracy, he further explains his view by giving example of how we bestow the title, ‘religious’, to something that is “self-manifestation”. Tracy give an example by writing, “when religious persons speak the language of revelation, they mean that something has happened to them that they cannot count as their own achievement” (Tracy, 244). The definition is somewhat like that of miracle. What Jeremy experienced on the Cover Cliff is certainly self-manifested but it is not something religious classic conveys. They are different in that, one, Jeremy is a character who can talk, and, two, Jeremy is hoping for death but not miracle.
Death is a frequent subject matter in Zankoku Na Nami Ga Shihai Suru. It is a mysterious topic that many people are interested in but not many people are willing to talk about the actual process of dying. Sandra attempts suicide by gas poisoning (vol.1 Ch.1, pg53), Marjorie, one of Jeremy’s friend, “have an obsession with suicide” (vol.10 Ch.57, pg47), Dr. Adam Zorson is dying of cancer (vol.4 Ch.22, pg8). Not only physical death but psychological death is prominent throughout the book. So how does this relate to religion? David Lewis-Williams writes in the chapter of Cave and Conflict that “the ‘death’ and suffering of an initiate often involves descent to the lowest realm of the shamanistic cosmos-and to the furthest end of the induced spectrum of consciousness” (Lewis, 282). For a shaman to be created, one must experience and come back from furthest end of the consciousness. The point is to familiarize oneself in the cycle of division and submersion. It is easier to divide from a whole then going back into them. The key aspect of death is that it pushes one’s conscious further away and help reflect oneself from the whole. Jeremy falls too far for self-recovery. Hagio Moto, the author, decides to bring Jeremy back around by letting him encounter various kinds of death. It gives Jeremy sense of community instead of isolation amongst ‘normal’ people. Ian is good example of rich normalcy. By pairing Ian and Jeremy together, the two characters can create anchors in the reality and keep each other in balance. Ian, full of life and energy, pulls Jeremy up when down, and Jeremy pulls Ian down when Ian avoids reality. This repeated cycle gives readers a glimpse of how we should prevent ourselves from staying in one set of minds for too long.
Manga and webtoon alike are one of many types of expressive art. Many dismisses the nature or the origin of such art and does not give it second chance for it to become more than what people believe them to be. We should strive to see beyond the prejudices and seek with our own eyes and mind to determine values of each means and media of art in society. This essay is aimed to make openings for anyone who wishes to attempt at challenges of turning the notion of what seems to what is.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Paul Tillich, Art and Ultimate Reality, Cross Currents Corporation, 1960.
Tillich discusses three different method in which people can experience ultimate reality and how they are categorized into five types: sacramental, mystical, realism, paradise, expressionistic, and religious. Tillich also explains the concept of ultimate reality as something lays beyond the deception of surface and how it is underlining truth of the reality.
Erich Neumann, Art and Time, from Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays, Taylor & Francis, 1999
Neumann relates how collective unconscious can be influenced by cultural cannon but has power to create myth and cult which can solidified ground work of creative psyche. The archetypal contents can be excessed through unconscious or these myth and supernatural beliefs. When something is created they will be always influenced by cultural cannon and sometimes they are broken down and replaced depending on how culture changed.
David Tracy, The Religious Classic and the Classic of Art, 1981
Discuss the limitation and definition of classic and how religious classics is different from classics of other art forms. It also points out that self-manifestation of something is relate to how one feels they the achievement was not meant to be credited for oneself but for god.
Lewis-Williams,J.David. The mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Extensive collection of images collected from cave paintings and their origin. Discussion about meaning of paintings depending on its location, type of paint, and the ritual it represented. In dept speculation about the society, economy, and shaman practices evolved around the cave paintings and their practices.
Cone, James H, The Spirituals and the Blues, Maryknoll, N.Y.:Orbis Books, 1991.
Collective definition of the black spirit. This book establishes connection between blues and religious significant of the genre. The relationship between African American slavery to suffering and the manifestation of their culture and their musical devotion.
Thomas, Jolyon Baraka. Drawing on Tradition, University of Hawaii Press, 2012.
Close examination of Japanese religion and how they are relating to today’s method of entertainment, mainly manga and anime. How the iconography of traditional Japanese culture and religion incorporate into Japanese manga and anime industry. Also the out look of critic about the future prospect of religious manga in Japan.
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford University Press, 1958.
Examples of the term numinous and how the word came to be. Its significance in describing other worldly experience. How to decipher and interpret different experiences of living into religious encounter and expression.
Renos K. Papadopoulos, Carl Gustav Jung: Psychopathology and Psychotherapy, 1992.
Discussion of modern day psychology in the light of varying theologists. How they are interpreted with child psychology and how these philosophy relates mother and child together in religious life cycle.
Hinawary 