Sunday 25 April 2004

Pic of the day: Scary yaoi fangirls? Actually only the blonde is verified as a shounen-ai fan, but they all look suspicious, don't they? Screenshot from anime Pita Ten.

My "Pita Ten" reflections

I would like to say a little about this anime. I assume you know roughly what anime is. (If not, Google is your friend, but basically it's the Japanese equivalent of cartoons but with a broader audience.) Pita Ten actually is for children, but older children, and both boys and girls. The main characters are 12 years old. Well, except the angel girl and the demon girl, who are presumably early teens.

The main character, at least formally, is the boy Kotaro. He is living with his father, a business man who is rarely seen at home, and who is no help when he is there (except he does pay the bills). They live in an apartment. One day a new neighbor moves in beside them. It is the girl Misha, living all alone. Misha is an angel, or rather an apprentice angel. She is not very good at it. Oh, she is good at heart, but has the impulse control of a 4 year old. She is addicted to fun and to her neighbor Kotaro, although in an angelically innocent way. Not that everyone would realize that, the way she literally clings to him.

Kotaro is not overjoyed by the affection. His mother died when he was a child, and she died saving him from a speeding car. The idea of anyone wanting to protect him sets him on edge. He gets along better with his childhood friend and classmate Koboshi, a girl wearing fake cat ears (no explanation is given for that). She likes him a lot more than that, however, and is not happy to see him embraced by Misha. (At first Misha does not mention that she's an angel, and even when she does this does not change their relationship much.)

If Misha is not very good at angel stuff, the demoness apprentice Shia is even more a failure as a demon. She is however an excellent cook and a perfect hostess. She moves in with Misha, and chaos continues over a total of 26 episodes of warm family-friendly humor.

***

Both the entry and exit songs are quite beautiful and cheerful songs, although it is clear that they are not written solely for this anime. I found myself strangely touched by a line in the opening song. (Probably clumsily translated, not that I impress anyone in that regard either.) Even if I could calculate it, I still have to experience it.

That's the human condition, is it not? I find myself now thinking back to something I wrote a couple years ago, after visiting my (then) best friend, the young woman I liked so much. I guess I still do, but now it is all gone. Anyway, she asked why God had to let us live in this world at all if he knew who would be good and who would be bad. I said back then that it was because God was not omnipotent in the meaning that he could do whatever, only in the sense that he could do what he wanted. God did indeed make a stone so heavy that he could not lift it, and he dropped it on all the atheists. The stone is free will. It is exercised eagerly even by those who deny that it exists.

Even if God could calculate it, we still have to experience it. That's what we use our free will to. And God can do a lot for us, but this is a stone he cannot lift. And in truth, we would not want it otherwise, no matter how much we whine and gripe.

***

The angel / demon thing in the series is tastefully done. They are basically very human, but with a little magic. (In fact the ending song after each episode is called Chiisana Mahou, meaning "small magic".) Yet I cannot avoid noticing that once again a demon is portrayed in a positive light. This seems to be very much a trend of the times, and has been for a while. I know I have written about it before, how this is a logical follow-up to making trolls nice people in the previous generation or two.

As a matter of fact, I have kinda done this myself in my unfinished novel "DarkEyes". It is implied that Jon is part demon through his father, although I personally think he might just be extraterrestrial. The darkness inside that Jon fights every day is not very different from what I have experienced myself, and I can very honestly say that my father is not particularly demonic. He is however human, and so am I. Both the kingdom of Heaven and Hell are within us, so it seems to me.

By coincidence (or is there such a thing?) I had a muse in my head tell me a cute shounen-ai story not long before I started watching this anime, and one of the boys in the story is an angelic alien. He is adamant that he is not an angel, and he is not in any literal sense. But his race is so advanced that he can do things that seem like magic, and he is free of many of the gross and chaotic desires that drag us hither and yon; his senses and his mind are refined to an even greater beauty than his body. Of course that's not an angel. And yet. The angelic and the demonic, somehow we strive to integrate them in our world, don't we? Even if we can calculate it, somehow we try to experience it. Or at least bring it closer. In a world more rational than ever, perhaps we thirst for ... a little magic.