#demonnevercare

[mysticdragon3md3]

Recently, I watched YouTube reaction channels react to the episode of Dungeon Meshi when Marcille's walking-on-water spell didn't work on Senshi because his beard was too dirty. It reminded me of several cultural differences in ideas about magic, that have appeared in manga, anime, and Japanese videogames.

The only reason I could think for Senshi's dirty beard to be a factor in Marcille's spell not working, was remembering that in Shintoism, cleanliness is literally "next to godliness". Cleaning one's body is also seen as a spiritual purification, and often part of a lot of religious ceremonies. And since religious figures, like miko, are sometimes considered to have mystical powers in media, because of their closeness to the divine, their emphasis on purification has linked purity/cleanliness to magical powers. So it's possible that all the muck and blood of other creatures, soaked into Senshi's beard didn't contain some (cursing) power in and of themselves that negated Marcille's spell. It could simply be that Senshi's beard being dirty and "unpure", negated any connection to divine power, thus negating magic. (Is that also why peeing on the spirit monsters in Death Stranding defeats them?)

One reoccurring idea that took me a while to wrap my Western mind around, was the idea that sealing a spirit/creature, didn't necessarily mean sealing the ENTIRE spirit's/creature's being away. In the Yuji Shimomura movie "Death Trance", the protagonist is followed around by a little girl, who is revealed to be the war goddess, but transformed into a little girl version of herself, after her power was sealed away, separately from her. When the coffin containing her power is finally unlocked, the little girl version of herself climbs inside, rejoins her power, and emerges as her fully-powered, adult version. In the manga "By the Sword" ("Yo-u") by Sanami Matoh, the protagonist group includes a tiny demon, who is the version of the demon left behind after his power was sealed away. (When in contact with a magic sword, that tiny version of the demon is able to possess the body of his daughter, during combat.) In Devil May Cry 5---SPOILERS!!!---the character V is revealed to be the human part of Vergil, separated from Vergil's demon side, which manifested as the demon "Urizen". Later in the game, V reunites with Urizen, and after they merge, Vergil reappears in their place. This same concept may even be the origin of the Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts II. In the Kingdom Hearts games, a Nobody is a new being created from the body left behind, after a heart is wrapped in darkness and becomes another being called a Heartless. Nobodies are tricked into thinking they have no hearts of their own, but the Hero advocates the idea that they are separate, valid people, with their own hearts and autonomy. This was also confusing when I was little and saw the story mode in Darkstalkers for Morrigan and Lilith. Lilith is a portion of Morrigan's power or personality that had separated from her, personified, and very much acted like her own person. Though she was trying to reunite with Morrigan and referred to Morrigan as "my body", she had her own manga series where she lead an entirely separate life from Morrigan. In Western media, when a demon or any type of spirit is sealed away, its entire soul, it's entire being is thought to be behind a seal or disallowed from entering the human world. So it took me a long time to understand the concept of sealing away a demon's/spirit's power ALONE, while the rest of its soul remained, existing in a diminished version of itself.

Another idea that didn't exactly translate as-is to Western audiences, was an instance in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. When Snow White's Evil Queen is enraged, right before the boss fight with the Magic Mirror, the original Japanese version of the game has the queen glow, while she is enraged, the Magic Mirror mirrors her glow, then becomes empowered with more evil magic to become a game boss. But in the official English release of the game, the scene is changed so that the Evil Queen throws a potion bottle onto the Magic Mirror, to explain why it suddenly became empowered with more evil magic. Maybe I'm wrong, or had been watching too many yokai anime, but the original version reminded me of tsukumogami. In Japanese folklore, tsukumogami are everyday objects that can come to life with their own spirit, usually after existing for a long time. I've noticed a reoccurring idea that sometimes the nature of the spirit in a tsukumogami, depends on the energy/emotions it was surrounded by, for the majority of its existence. An object treated badly and surrounded by death or malice, will become an malevolent spirit. Likewise, an object surrounded by positive emotions or having love focused on it often, can become a benevolent spirit. It seemed that the Magic Mirror taking on the Evil Queen's negative emotions could translate to Western audiences, since it is literally a mirror and mirrors can reflect and take on the appearance of what they see. But the moment was so quick in the game's cutscene, I could see how the Evil Queen throwing a potion would seem to make more sense, whereas a Japanese audience would likely more immediately notice that the Magic Mirror was absorbing/mimicking the negative energies of the Evil Queen, thus increasing its evil power for a sudden boss fight.

Years ago, when I watched Hellsing (the first anime series), it always struck me as odd when Father Anderson pinned religious scripture pages to all the walls, surrounding the area where he was fighting Alucard. I grew up Roman Catholic and had never seen media depictions of Western Catholic exorcists using individual pages of paper scriptures to exorcise demons. (Usually, they say prayers aloud or use holy objects, that were more than single sheets of paper.) I was introduced to the idea of fighting demons with holy pieces of paper, from anime: ofuda talismans from Sailor Mars; miko and onmyouji slapping paper talismans onto people's foreheads to exorcise them of demon possession, or to diminish a demon's power. I wondered if Father Anderson's use of holy pages was actually inspired by the use of paper talismans in Japanese media. (I think I tried to look up if Christianity had a history of pinning Bible pages to walls to purify areas, but may have only found something vague about Jewish paper talismans. I don't remember; it was a very long time ago.)

Whenever something in an anime's/manga's/videogame's magic system doesn't make immediate sense, it's always interesting to me how it might make better sense, in terms of Japanese folklore concepts. It's always even more amusing when the setting seems very Western.