(Warning: This post contains major spoilers for The Rising of the Shield Hero. The show itself, while emotional, action-packed, and causing a good deal of controversy in Western media, really doesn't have an objectionable content. As always, no piracy!)
Something is different this week. It may not be immediately perceptible, due to the quarantine and the lack of public Masses. Yet, even checking a secular calendar, one notices how close Easter has come. But entering into a Roman Rite Catholic Church this week, the signs of a peculiar change from last week would be even more apparent.
In every church of the Roman Rite, the Lenten Purple of Penance has returned, with not a trace of comforting Rose to be found. What's more, in most churches devoted to the Ordinary Form, and all churches devoted to the Extraordinary Form, all the statues and images of Our Lord and His Saints have been veiled in purple cloth, even the Crucifix above the altar.
These are but a few of the hallmarks of Passiontide, which began this Sunday, aptly named Passion Sunday. (Note: In the Ordinary Form, Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday are used interchangeably for the Sunday of Holy Week. In the traditional form, they are two separate Sundays).
This season of Passiontide is marked by many more changes in the liturgy, some of which might not be immediately apparent. As before Laetare Sunday, the organ is silent, and now the opening psalm (Psalm 42) prayed by the Priest and Acolytes at the beginning of every Mass, is absent. More and more the Mass begins to resemble that of a funeral, as Mother Church mourns in anticipation of Her Savior's impending death. Those who follow the traditional Divine Office (viewable online for free at Divinum Officium) will find that all the hymns about fasting have been replaced with hymns revering the Holy Cross and Our Lord's Passion, while the scriptures read at Matins have changed from the stories of the Patriarchs (From Adam seven weeks ago down to Moses last week) to readings from the Book of Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet. For just as Adam rejected God after the Seven Days of Creation, so Israel has begun to reject her God and Savior, who formed and blessed her these past seven weeks.
The Gospel for this Sunday comes from the end of the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. For context, this chapter begins with the episode of our Lord saving the woman caught in adultery from being stoned. Afterwards, our Lord begins a dialogue (which quickly turns into an argument) with a group of hostile Jews, who are scandalized by His calling them sinners and describing His relationship with the Father. As the reading begins, things finally come to a head:
At that time, Jesus said to the crowds of the Jews: Which of you can convict Me of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God. The Jews therefore in answer said to Him, Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan, and have a devil? Jesus answered, I have not a devil, but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. Yet, I do not seek My own glory; there is One Who seeks and Who judges. Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keep My word, he will never see death. The Jews therefore said, Now we know that You have a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and You say, ‘If anyone keep My word he will never taste death.’ Are You greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom do You make Yourself? Jesus answered, If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing. It is My Father Who glorifies Me, of Whom you say that He is your God. And you do not know Him, but I know Him. And if I say that I do not know Him, I shall be like you, a liar. But I know Him, and I keep His word. Abraham your father rejoiced that he was to see My day. He saw it and was glad. The Jews therefore said to Him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am. They therefore took up stones to cast at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out from the temple. (John 8:46-59)
As I mentioned last week, it is impossible to have a truly neutral opinion of Jesus. Any who encounter Him and hear His words and claims about Himself must regard Him as a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis). The crowd here, all pious Jews in the very Temple where God made His dwelling among them, have made their choice. Thus did Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, thus did the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai with the Golden Calf, and thus do we, who even after all Our Lord has done for us, resist His call to come out of the darkness and into His marvelous Light. As St John says "men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil" (John 3:19). And if we were to shine the light of truth into that darkness, we would be astonished at the number of bodies we would find, victims sacrificed to quell rage and sooth guilty consciences.
According to Rene Girard, these bodies lie buried in the foundations of every human society ever founded. Indeed, the are the very mortar that holds the bricks together. As stated in his Mimetic Theory, all archaic religions are cover stories for one or several murders that formed an assortment of panicked and angry individuals into a true, unified community. The god who was among us certainly wasn't murdered by us, and anyway he totally had it coming. The death of Christ is not the first time a society murdered an innocent victim to preserve the myth of their own purity; it was merely the first time the society was caught red-handed.
Which brings to this week's anime show: The Rising of the Shield Hero.
(As always, OPs with English subs are hard to find, so I found an English cover for you all):
The Rising of the Shield Hero is an isekai anime. (Isekai is Japanese for "different world;" in this case it describes a fantasy sub-genre in which the main character is transported into an RPG-style sword and sorcery world.)
Like other isekai anime, the protagonist (a twenty-something otaku named Naofumi Iwatani) is transported to another world almost as soon as we meet him. And like other isekai anime, Naofumi is told that he, along with the three other young men summoned from other worlds, are going to be given special powers and the responsibility of saving the world from destruction (In this case, from a phenomenon known as The Waves, in which armies of monsters descend from the sky in random locations and kill everything in sight.). And like many other isekai anime, these powers are contained and represented by a signature rare weapon: in this case, the Four Cardinal Weapons: the Spear, Sword, Bow, and Shield (Naofumi’s weapon).
But then the story takes an unexpectedly dark turn. (Last chance to turn back if you want to be unspoiled.)
For someone summoned to save the world, Naofumi seems oddly unpopular with everyone. He seems to be oddly ignored or given strange glances from the locals, but no one wants to tell him why. His fellow heroes chalk it up to the fact that the shield character was the worst type of character to play as in the online games they played in their world (apparently our world is the only one to discover the value of tanking). But is that the only reason why none of the local adventurers want to join his party? (No small setback; Naofumi’s shield has no attack power, so he needs someone else to handle offence in battle).
Just as all seems lost, a pretty adventurer volunteers to join Naofumi’s party. They spend the day together, killing monsters, training, and buying rather expensive equipment. But the next morning, Naofumi wakes up to find all his money and belongings stolen (except his shield; it’s permanently stuck to his arm.) A few minutes later, the royal guards show up and haul him back to the palace in chains. As it turns out, the adventurer he took up with is really the princess, and she’s telling everyone that Naofumi raped her.
(And this is the part where some many western critics started foaming at the mouth and crying “sexist!” Frankly, I fail to see the issue. Scumbags are plentiful among either gender.)
Unable to defend himself, Naofumi is only spared a quick and painful execution by his status as a hero; fighting the waves becomes much harder if they only have thee heroes, and they can’t summon another Shield Hero unless all four of the Cardinal Heroes are killed. Unable to return home, Naofumi is thrown out of the capitol and forced to try and train to fight the waves on his own.
Understandably, Naofumi is pissed. Any shred of optimism and innocence has been crushed. Angry and bitter, Naofumi does whatever he has to in order to survive. Unable to trust anyone, Naofumi resorts to buying a party member from a slave trader: a sickly demi-human tanuki girl named Raphtalia.
Now, Naofumi may be untrusting and perpetually grumpy (understandable), but his interactions with Raphtalia prove that he hasn’t become a monster. He nurses her back to health, feeds her well, gives her plenty of time to play and rest, and even comforts her during her nightly PDST episodes (being a slave in a racist society will do that, especially if it happen after watching your parents get killed by a monster). He does train her to fight, of course, and justifies his kindness towards her as just keeping her in good condition so she can fight better. Nevertheless, Raphtalia can see that he does care for her, and she takes quite a shining to him (even calling him “Naofumi-sama, giving him the highest possible honorific).
After only a few short weeks with Naofumi, Raphtalia grows from a traumatized child into a strong, confident young woman (Demi-humans grow up as fast as they level up, and she and Naofumi have been grinding exp so hard that she’s now the same age as he is). She’s also fallen hard for Naofumi, and her love for him is such that, when the Spear Hero and Princess Malty (the one who ruined Naofumi’s life) forcibly set Raphtalia free, she declares in front of everyone her undying loyalty to him, going as far to get her magic slave mark reapplied. She also gives the Spear Hero a well-deserved tongue lashing: If the Spear Hero really cared about poor enslaved demi-humans, he should have rescued the miserable souls being sold on the streets, not freeing a clearly happy slave against her express wishes.
(This is the second reason certain western critics hate this show, claiming that it is “pro-slavery.” This accusation is ridiculous; Raphtalia isn’t arguing that slavery is good, but that Naofumi actually cares about her and the pretentious Spear Hero and his royal patrons do not.)
Naofumi and Raphtalia go on to have several more adventures, fighting off the Waves, protecting and healing the common people, and cleaning up the messes the other heroes cause. They even pick up another party member along the way: Filo, a large flightless bird called a filolial (think chocobos from Final Fantasy) that can take the form of a small girl with angel wings. Through all this, Naofumi gradually discovers the reason that everyone in the kingdom hates the Shield Hero: the Shield Heroes have always protected demi-humans, and for that reason among others, the kingdom’s state religion, the Church of the Three Heroes, regards the Shield Hero as a demon. And the Church leadership is invested in maintaining that narrative (and their power along with it).
I don’t want to spoil much more of the plot, but I will say this: everyone who made Naofumi’s life hell gets their glorious comeuppance towards the end of the season, either dying horribly or eating a very large slice of humble pie.
But just as Naofumi’s name is cleared, a troubling discovery is made about the Waves: they are the result of two different worlds crashing into each other. Only one of these worlds can survive, and heroes from the other world are arriving to kill the Cardinal Heroes.
As in so many myths and stories, the cost of survival is always the death of innocents. I don’t know where the story will go from here, but I half expect that both groups of heroes will eventually team up to fight some greater threat whose defeat will, conveniently, allow both groups and their worlds to survive. It’s an old plot, used by countless novels, movies, and MMOs. Even Tolkien made use of it in The Hobbit (imagine what would have happened if the goblin army didn’t show up). But if Girard is correct, it’s no wonder we keep telling ourselves these kinds of stories. After all, we’ve been telling them to ourselves our whole lives.
Our Blessed Lord, seeing us trapped in sin and trying in vain to use this scapegoating mindset to free ourselves, takes upon himself the role of our scapegoat. For just as He draws to himself the stones that would have been thrown at the sinful woman, so He draws to Himself the hatred of men and devils, that His suffering and death might show us our own sins and show us the way out.
It is because of Christ that we in the West (and those places that have absorbed sufficient Western Culture, such as Japan) no longer fully buy into the scapegoating myths. Yet old habits die hard, and try as we might, we can’t seem to stop trying to go back. Even Naofumi, who knows exactly what it’s like to be discriminated against, heaps loads of contempt on Princess Melty (the kinder, wiser sister of the wench who screwed him) even though she’s trying to help him. He justifies this by saying, essentially, “all royals are evil.”
Thankfully, he comes around and starts to trust her. Would that we would do the same, we whose culture and politics seems to always consist of one or more sides accusing each other of scapegoating, thereby turning each other into scapegoats to hide their own problems. (This, I’m convinced, is the only reason that everyone is still talking about a certain German ass hat).
As we pass by this week, this most blessed week before our Lord’s Passion, let us renew our efforts to imitate Him, rather than the world. Let us meet hatred with kindness, distrust with understanding, and accusations with charity. Our Lord did no less for us. To do so may lead us to be scapegoated ourselves, but we will be in good company. Come, Christians! Let us shield the weak like Naofumi and throw ourselves to the Cross with Christ!
A most blessed Passiontide to you all. Stay safe and healthy, and pray for the afflicted and those who care for them. And remember that my novel Cain: Son of Adam is available for free on Kindle Unlimited.
Stay tuned for next week’s entry: The Mystery of Iniquity: Future Diary and the Passion of Christ.
God be with you all.