#all said the akane has now become catholic meme will never not be funny her line in ztd is still sudden as fuck and making it make sense

[bibiana112]

I've grown a bit protective over my theist Akane headcanons lately because everyone I've seen dismiss her as definitely making more sense as an atheist after the experiences she has seem to almost.... i dare say whitewash her faith? it's why I only use the word Theist she seems to believe in Some kind of god but that really really doesn't automatically imply a capital G western God that is characterized as fatherly and all powerful and all good it does not even imply values ascribed to western saints, I've been agnostic since elementary school and listen to atheism podcasts all the time I say this cause I'm the last person who will be attached to a character for them being religious but I also live somewhere where one of the better known religious minorities is polytheistic and of african origin and completely outside of the eurocentric conception of spirituality and since I have friends who converted to that and suffered prejudice about it I know very well what it looks like when people are projecting God vs Devil worshipping stuff on a belief that does not frame itself with those binary axes at all

I don't even think Akane would strictly follow the Shinto traditions she grew up surrounded by but it's what would have framed her early life and it's a completely different framework and understanding of spirituality and ok I will probably be a bit reductive here but as I understand it Shintoism has many subdeities yokai many superstitions baked into it that are incredibly varied and specific to each community and place and rituals and perfomances are the main expression of this faith (which the kanji for ceremony/ritual is literally in her name! which could be showing she sees her own nonary game as one big ritual I think the ideas behind the Kurashiki etymology are honestly really fun) so with that basic context plus the fact she literally does have her prayers answered, she literally does pray over her doll while crying in the incinerator and that's what saves her I don't know if she'd be mono or poly theistic but her believing in Something doesn't feel like much of a stretch

Sure, people will say, but it didn't Completely save her she still suffered she was still all alone in there in some realities but for goodness sake there is not anything that could more accurately apply to the meme of teehee I'm god's most specialest suffering soldier than what martyr complex ass mindset Akane developed I think she just made up her own understanding of divine intervention right there right with getting her future sight and morphogenetic powers and shit her prayers were answered and the person she wanted by her side talked to her and saved her even from nine years in the future because the forces at be allowed it on the condition that she played her part because the pain and death was supposed to be all there was to it but she performed this display of faith and it suddenly miraculously wasn't a dead end anymore and she was allowed to live if only with the weight and understanding that fate will work in its own mysterious ways and it's up to her to appease it and do whatever ceremonial bloodshed it demands over and over again to salvage at least one timeline out of many that fall into certain doom without her intervention... or at least that seems to be her perception of it she would probably also get ocd from all that but I don't have much say on the subject myself

Her line in ztd is hypocritical but I still don't think it's internally contradictory for her and I will die on this hill