My SO and I saw 9 a week or two ago. It as an enjoyable movie, had some fun elements, but was weak in some areas. The SO mentioned an anti-science bias message she noticed that troubled her a bit (feel free to beat me if I misrepresent you, babe). We sort of waved it away and accepted the movie as a mixed bag, visuals alone worth seeing, but that sort of puts it in the level of impressive experimental film or proof of concept rather than a truly great animated masterpiece like Up. We still loved 9 as an alternate time line alchemy story, but I have to admit I was disappointed that the twist revelation was 'the soul' and 'alchemy' over something more unique. It's not like the harder sci-fi hasn't presented more than enough actual technological stand ins for the soul or magic that you couldn't have made something surprising. I can't help compare it to The Secret of NIHM which added mystical elements to the story but wasn't virulently anti-science when it came to it (least not as I can remember), or Full Metal Alchemist where the story setting is a place where the magic of alchemy works as if it was scientific (ie has set rules and principles stated or at least implied).
He Fried for Your Sins
Anyway I thought I'd link to this article sort of bitching about the ascience in it as well. I'm not really knee jerky about this sort of thing, it doesn't bother me too much as I can accept fully psionics and the soul showing up in Babylon 5 or the force in Starwars, but for some reason the message of 'science is bad' keeps seeming to regurgitate back into my craw when I think about 9. Not NEARLy as much as it did in the Bones premiere but...still. I want to know what do you think? Did 9 have a strong "SCIENCE BAD" message? Can you think of any other kid movies that did? What's the line between soft sci-fi and pro-mysticism propaganda?
What could a Japanese medieval Fantasy comic known for it's insane nihilism and ultra-violence POSSIBLY have to do with secular humanism? Quite...a lot actually.
The Meat:
Written and illustrated by Kentarō Miura, Beserk is a fairly long ongoing manga epic. It is fairly popular and is known for both it's fairly blatant, unsubtle sexual and violent content. The series spun off a video game for the now defunked sega Dreamcast, and a short lived, but highly received Anime.
Prepare for gore chunks
Berserk follows the exploits of anti-hero Gutts, a swordsman fueled by endless rage and animalistic savagery, as he cuts his way across a craptacular dark-ages setting seeking revenge. The story contains elements of both fantasy and horror, as it explores both the best and worst of human nature.
...damn O~o
The Anime actually details the backstory behind Gutts , an orphaned mercenary warrior, and Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the Band of the Hawk whose mentoring helps Gutts grow from a solitary boy into a man who realizes the value of camaraderie. I highly recommend watching it before diving into the Manga. Be warned though it's...dark. Dear lord is it dark.
Not at all compensating for anything
So yeah, without giving too much away what we appear to have on the surface is your typical Japanese pornographic gore fest with a nasty tough as nails Chuck-Noris esq badass killing everything in his path with an absurdly over sized Freudian Phallic Sword.
~the ambiguously gay duo!~
So, why do I bring it up? Despite the immature first impression some may take of it, there is a surprising amount of complexity to Beserk and the setting. Most of the Anime actually focuses on character interaction and motivation. The characters and plots explore the spectrum of morality, psychological motivations, humanity's inhumanity, sexual motivations, and existentialism. However, it's the backstory to Beserk that draws my attention to it's over all Secular Humanism message.
I've avoided spoilers so far, but from now on I'm going to talk about recent revelations in the Manga, just FYI
we can't stop here this is bat country!
Recently, the Manga has revealed the origin of why every thing sucks so much in Berserk World. To summarize, the world was always a nasty brutish place. People were assholes to each other. However, to explain the suffering primitive humanity went through they imagined up a God. The explanation became that they suffered because it was God's Will. This belief gave birth to that god, known as The Idea of Evil. The Idea of Evil's purpose was to make Berserk-World a living hell....and damn if the fucker isn't good at his job. The Idea's MO has typically been to offer humans in moments of great despair the chance to become his acolyte demons, and thus use them to spread more chaos and misery. Gutt's surrogate family was sacrificed in such a ritual. Against the odds Gutts survived despite being marked for death by GOD himself. In berserk-world the pessimism about the world became a self fulfilling prophecy. Gutts is the hero because despite his flaws, he doesn't whine and bitch when things go wrong for him (and believe me...they do. The whole universe loves to take dumps on the guy), he goes out and tries to fix the problem. Typically through breaking things.
The moral of the story: Don't be pessimistic because you're negative vibes will give birth to a monstrous deity who'll spend the rest of eternity collectively sodomizing all that is good and decent.
What we can take from this:
Theism and God leads to misery. The fatalism makes people accept their lot in life and creates more suffering through The Idea of Evil. Instead of sacrificing your free will and lamenting your lot, you should go out and fix the problem. Evil doesn't only triumph because good men do nothing...it is spawned from just that. Beserk at it's core is a Heavy Metal-esq exploration of the nature of morality and the savagery of the "divine". Despite it's bleakness there is an ultimate message of hope that is derived not from any divine authority, but from humanity's own determination.
