Evangelical Resources

Spritual Aspects of Anime - Christian Viewpoints

9:52 am | Uncategorized | Anime

There have been a couple of recent posts about spiritual aspects of Anime that I’d like to draw attention to.

First, a post on Phil Johnson’s blog entry titled Spiritual Aspects of Anime. Phil drew attention to a recent article by Jin Kyu Park entitled ” ‘Creating My Own Cultural and Spiritual Bubble’: Case of Cultural Consumption By Spiritual Seeker Anime Fans,” Culture and Religion, volume 6, number 3 (November 2005), pages 393-413. It is available for free for registered users of MetaPress.

Second, a post by John Morehead in response to Phil Johnson entitled Spirituality, Pop Culture, and Anime which explores some of the points that Phil drew attention to in further detail. John draws attention to some other resources along the same lines in addition to another version of Jin Kyu Park’s article online.

Understanding the cultural influence of anime - particularly its spiritualities - has been something of a side project of mine for some time now. My friends will attest to this, and how I’ve supposedly “forced” them to sit and watch several anime series in succession. After doing some searching online, I found the Anime and Manga Research Circle - a diverse community of scholars engaged in the academic study of anime and manga. The popularity of Japanese media - particularly anime and manga - is strong enough to support local anime shops and anime conventions. In fact, Dallas was host to some of the earliest anime conventions held in the United States.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, an organized anime club has been on campus as long as I’ve been there, and despite UTD’s reputation as a nerd school, it is not alone. Other Universities also have anime watching clubs, including a rather large and active group at the University of Texas in Austin. When Dr. Susan Napier spoke at UTD last year about the growth of the anime culture in the United States, she commented on how many students became interested in Japanese Studies programs solely through the influence of watching anime.

Anime is a powerful medium for storytelling that includes mythic elements, significant character development, coming of age stories, all manner of eschatological visions both utopian and dystopian, and powerful spiritual imagry. And it is growing quickly - anime sales continue to grow steadily and manga comics now take up significant shelf space at Barnes and Noble. Fry’s Electronics has an entire aisle of its large DVD selection reserved entirely for anime. It isn’t a strange hobby for nerds anymore - it is big business. It is certainly something that Christians should take seriously.