Oh My Druids! Pagan Themes in Anime

At first glance neo-paganism and anime don't seem to have much in common. Neo-paganism is nature centered and environmentally concious while anime is traditionally associated with Japanese schoolgirls and giant robots. There is much more to anime than this however. Japanese people share many of the same environmental concerns that Westerners have, and this is inevitably reflected in Japan's dominant cultural output. This article is going to focus on a small number of anime films and examine the neo-pagan themes that they contain.

First some background though. For anyone who’s been living under a rock for twenty years, anime is the name given to Japanese cel-animated movies, mini-series and TV shows - cartoons basically, although the name hardly does justice to the wide variety of anime produced. In the West animation is for kids. In Japan, although there is some anime aimed at children, the vast bulk of it is produced for an adult audience. The genre includes everything from romantic soap-operas to techno-westerns and police shows to tits and tentacles pornography (called hentai). Much is atrociously bad; occasionally a true classic emerges that redefines the whole anime industry (Akira being the best known example). In between are the movies and shows which form anime's bread and butter output.

Pagan themes crop up in anime in a number of different contexts. There are retellings of western myths such as The Little Norse Prince, which is a version of the Siegfried legend. Demons appear in a large number of historical and horror stories (Ninja Scroll, Vampire Princess Miyu). Environmental issues are raised (Princess Mononoke). The following examples show just how diverse the neo-pagan elements can be in anime.

Oh My Goddess!

This is a romantic soap-opera about a teenage boy named Keiichi who accidentally summons the Norse goddess Belldandy, who appears as a beautiful young girl. She agrees to be his girlfriend and they live together in an abandoned shrine along with Keiichi's sister and two more goddesses, Urd and Skuld. Urd and Skuld, of course, cannot resist interfering in Keiichi's life and all sorts of romantic entanglements ensue. The goddesses are portrayed as typical teenagers who happen to have mystical powers.

The Adventures of Mini-Goddess

This is a spinoff from Oh My Goddess aimed at children and is best described as Tom and Jerry on acid. When Keiichi is away from home Belldandy, Urd and Skuld shrink themselves to a few inches tall and play with a friendly rat called Gan-chan. Their subsequent adventures are decidedly odd, with a very Japanese sense of humour. The show has a degree of educational content as well, with Skuld lecturing on various scientific topics such as the history of powered flight.

So we have seen pagan gods being used in a very Japanese fashion, and probably in a way to make most Norsies spill their mead. The next example shows how anime approaches environmental issues.

Spirited Away

This is based on Japanese fairy lore. Chihiro, a 12 year old girl, has to save her parents after they are turned into pigs in a haunted theme park. It turns out that the theme park is a spa for nature spirits who go there to detox. Chihiro finds work at the spa and has to find some way to return her parents to normal.

The environmental themes are well handled. Chihiro's parents are being punished for their greed; a mysterious shadow being shows up who uses gold to trap its prey (a metaphor for capitalism?), and the nature spirits initially regard Chihiro with fear and mistrust. The most striking scene in the film is when a huge sludge monster turns up. It heads straight for the bath house and immerses itself in hot water, and then it bursts releasing a stream of sewage and rubbish. At that point you realise that it is the spirit of a polluted river which has come to cleanse itself.

This film is directed by Hiyao Miyazaki, long regarded as one of the masters of the anime form. He also directed Princess Mononoke.

Finally a film which deals with the issue of alienation in an industrial world, the corollary of environmentalism:

Ghost in the Shell

This is a detective story similar to Bladerunner, about a computer virus which is causing androids to malfunction. All of the main characters are cyborgs and the film's heroine, Major Kusanagi, cannot even tell if she has any organic components left in her body. The film deals with the nature of the human soul and how it might evolve in a technological environment. This is a world where nature has been so heavily modified that nothing can be regarded as natural anymore. It ends on a positive note by suggesting that the soul can adapt to any environment and that evolution is the key to our survival.

This has necessarily been a very cursory glance at the phenomenon of anime, but hopefully it has given a sense of the kinds of neo-pagan themes that can occur. All of the titles mentioned in this article have been released in the UK and should be fairly easy to get hold of.