The Holy Season of Quadragisima (Lent for us in the Anglo-sphere) has begun, and the Catholic blogs will soon be loaded with scholarly commentary and sage advise for Catholics looking to get the most out of their spiritual spring training.
Yet I have noticed in years past that on St. Blogs there are comparatively few commentaries on the Mass Reading from the Extraordinary Form (The Traditional Latin Mass) and even fewer relating to anime shows.
I am hereby rectifying this with a blog series of my own: An Anime Lent. Here follows the first post of a weekly series, tying together the Sunday Gospel Reading and one of my favorite anime shows, with a bit of Rene Girard thrown in for good measure. Hope you enjoy!
Part 1: Watamote, Scapegoating, and the Temptation of Christ
(Warning: This week's anime show is about a very angry, very perverted teenage girl, and as such contains a lot of "mature" content. Use discretion and discernment when deciding whether to watch it. And if you do watch it, don't pirate it.)
The Mass of this past Sunday (the 1st of Lent) features the fourth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, in which Our Lord fasts for 40 days in the wilderness, gets tempted by pleasure, fame, and power, and each time tells Satan to stuff it. It is from this episode of the life of Christ that the tradition of fasting for 40 days comes, and like a good mother, the Church uses it to remind us that Christ is with us in our time of penance. Quite possibly, it is also there to remind us that however much we feel we are suffering this Lent, Our Lord's 40 days were harder. Even those of us who keep a vigorous Lent get to take Sunday off, and none of us are required to run off into the literal desert, far from the comforting distractions of our screens or the people we love. As introverted as I am, I think the isolation would take the largest toll on me. Still, being isolated in the wild, far from human society, has been known to produce saints and poets.
Isolation with access to modern media, not so much. Instead, it makes people like Tomoko Kuroki.
The lead character of the cringe comedy Watamote (short for Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dō Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! literally translated: No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!), Tomoko is what would happen if Reddit and Tumblr had a love child, and that child was raised by 4 Chan. You'd be forgiven for thinking this incel waifu was some sort of psychopath. I mean, look at that intro:
The ending credits song, however, paints a more honest, and heartbreaking, picture:
Crippled by severe social anxiety,Tomoko spends most of her free time in her room playing video games, watching TV, surfing the internet, and looking at porn. Unlike the healthy isolation of the desert, Tomoko's isolation is toxic, trapping her in a Girardian Mimetic Rivalry in which she viciously hates "normal" people while longing to be like them. Even her relationship with Yu, her sole friend, is tainted by this rivalry: Yu is cute, well developed, popular, and even has a boyfriend, all things that Tomoko wants, and, perfectly in line with Girard's theory of homosexuality, Tomoko responds by perving on her.
Now Tomoko does have moments of genuine compassion, but these are far overshadowed by her narcissism, her petty rage, and her perversion. She is not someone I would want to be friends with.
She is also my spirit animal.
The thing is, I've been where Tomoko is. Though I never had as severe social anxiety as she does, I went through the greater part of my late teens and early twenties as an angry incel, perpetually angry at my peers and society for not giving me the attention I craved. And, like Tomoko, like far too many of us, I coped with unhealthy habits.
What got me out of that mindset was, first, a radical conversion to Jesus Christ, to actually live out the Catholic Faith I was raised in. Second, and almost equally important, was finding a welcoming community at Bradley University's Newman Center. It was a hard fight, but with the grace of Christ and the love of my friends I was able to get to a far better place. I didn't become normal (far from it). But I did learn to overcome both my sins and my insecurities.
Most importantly, I was able to gain a better perspective and, for the most part, discard the mimetic narrative that had dominated my life. I'm sure most of you are familiar with it: I am good and innocent and it is other people who are evil, hating me for no reason. I am wise and enlightened, and other people are dumb. I am worthy of admiration, and all other people are worthy of is contempt. Like most toxic narratives, this one gave me the illusion of a worldview while accomplishing its real purpose: to hide my flaws from myself.
It serves the same purpose for Tomoko, allowing her to put on an air of superiority while being incredibly shallow and vapid. Yet for all that, Tomoko does the one thing that allows the self-serving narrative to crack: she puts it to the test. Finding herself lacking, she puts forth genuine effort to overcome her anxiety and isolation. She faces a lot of discomfort and pain doing so, but her efforts eventually pay off in spite of herself. In fact, the fact that she tries so hard is what endears her to a popular upperclassman. As she tells one of her friends, seeing how hard Tomoko struggles, she can't help but like her. (Tomoko, sadly, doesn't hear this; she's too busy running halfway across town in embarrassment for accidentally seeing underneath the upperclassman's skirt.)
I certainly share that sentiment, and it seems that fans of the series do too: we relate to Tomoko and want to see her grow and develop into a well adjusted human being. If she can, so can we. In Girardian terms, we almost want her to model us so we can better model her in a positive way.
The anime unfortunately only has one season (the manga series is still ongoing), but the show ends on a hopeful note. Tomoko started the series deathly afraid that her life didn't matter. By the end, she still thinks her life doesn't matter, but she's far more relaxed about it. The narrative has cracked, and she's starting to grow.
And really, that is the purpose of Lent: to allow Our Lord to lead us out of our toxic, self-justifying narratives into the wilderness of uncertainty. It is not comfortable work, for we will find the devil and his angels there, ready to expose our weaknesses and take us down with them. But Our Lord is there to help us overcome them, just as He did. And through that victory, we can, like Him, be a light shining in dark places, for all the Tomokos of the world.
Stay tuned for next weeks entry: Image of Perfection: The Transfiguration and Ao-chan Can't Study
If you like my writing, please check out my novel Cain: Son of Adam, available in ebook and paperback on Amazon.com. Read the ebook version for free if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited!
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