Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Maria the Virgin Witch
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18394 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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While I otherwise agree with you, the recent advent of the printing press is widely-considered to have played a key role in making the spread of information (and especially translated Bibles!) that powered the Reformation possible. And mangamuscle: While Christianity is hardly powerless as a force today, I think you're overestimating its power, reach, and unity of spirit. Too many people these days see Christian factions which reject evolution, etc. as crackpots. Hell, one potential Republican presidential candidate has been dodgy about whether or not he supports Creationism (my impression is that he does) because he knows that he wouldn't have a chance of getting elected these days if he openly admits it. The reverse would have been the case 80 years ago. Last edited by Key on Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Yttrbio
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mangamuscle, I don't know if you just don't know any Christians who don't fit your stereotype, or you ignore them, but your perception of Christians is miles away from my experience. The fact that you thought there was an actual risk that the show's stream might be stopped suggests you don't really understand how religion and political power interact in the US.
To Valhern, that's actually exactly my complaint. The (earthly) Church is hypocritical in a specific, human way. But Michael's actions this episode seemed totally human, in contrast to his earlier actions. Gabriella's interpretations of him as a "sore loser" seem to see a similar thread. And to jroa, if Michael's response was a mechanical, robotic response, then Maria would have been dead by the end of episode 2. But back then, he took the time to try to convince and educate her, and it took a clearly unwavering rejection of his orders to lead Michael to consider trying to kill her (and then was stopped by God). His reaction to Viv is completely different. He attacks her when she shows hostility to God, and rejects the existence of God's love. I don't think it fits the same program. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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You have taken a somewhat strange tack since the Church in this show is the Catholic Church which has never had a strong anti-science stance. When they had the power to do so they put conservatism in religion ahead of scientific inquiry by sometimes punishing scientists but even the famous example of Galileo is often misunderstood to overstate the Church's vociferousness.
Wouldn't this contact more probably be through the relatively few Japanese Christians? |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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Well, so it is that you just don't like it, I suppose. I at least like that god-like beings are actually portrayed as big crybabys with a lot of power that don't know how to handle it. |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Sho nuff. Forgot about that element of the whole process. Haven't studied that stuff in years. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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May I remind you that a presidential candidate in the 2000 election openly refused that he had any intention whatsoever of starting another war. Yep, he got elected and the rest is history. I believe you are underestimating the Bernards of the 21st century, they are just waiting for one of his followers (someone like Guillaume) to get elected and bang, he will make sure a Garfa gets appointed to rape any science budget. Don't laugh, as it is the usa is already starting to lag in R&D (aka science and technology). Probably might sound farfetched to many people reading me, as it sounded looney crazy to have militarized level security in airports and big brother watching over the internet back in 2000. p.s.
Not really, it is no secret that nowadays almost no science is done in mostly Catholic countries, so opposing science would change little in the great outlook, too much effort for no results.
My Japanese teacher was Japanese and Catholic and she was v-e-r-y quite about it, I studied under her for years and only realized when she talked about her younger years. So no, I think that in japan you could have japanese friends who are christians and never realize/learn anything from them. Last edited by mangamuscle on Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gabbomatic
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Maria the Virgin Witch’s religious ideal is basically one of those COEXIST bumper stickers. No religion takes authority because they’re all ultimately rooted in human belief. It’s the opposite of the viewpoint that most religions espouse (particularly Christianity, whose doctrine is defensive of its position as the One True Faith) but it’s convenient for a secular world where all sorts of different viewpoints have to live without killing each other.
I’m not an expert but I believe that Christianity in Japan is dually known as a colonizing force and a faith practiced by a highly oppressed minority. There are a lot of Japanese Catholic martyrs because it was outlawed for so long, and so many people were killed for practicing it in secret. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Roman_Catholicism_in_Japan |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11553 |
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Not all Christian religions hold the same beliefs, nor do they in general oppose all science. The Catholic Church has essentially stated that it has no problem with evolution, as long as you believe God guides it, and that God creates the human soul. Other fundamentalist Protestant religions believe the Bible's account of creation is to be taken literally, and any evidence otherwise is trickery of the Devil or God testing human faith. A great deal of scientific and mathematical inquiry and advances were due to support of the Catholic Church (see all the venerable universities with Saints' names attached). The geneticist Mendel was a friar who did his experiments at St. Thomas Abbey. The Big Bang theory was proposed by a Belgian priest. However, religion is a convenient crutch to oppose economically troublesome science like climate change, and people often use religion to further their own agendas, as they always have. Also, while reproductive issues are contentious (including stem cell research), they don't account for all science by a long shot, so the Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant churches' opposition to abortion can't be used as an argument that they oppose all science. Just the science they don't like. |
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chrysanths
Posts: 7 |
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Maria continues to excel.
Anyway, there seems to be a common error shared by some reviews here on ANN. I see punctuation marks preceding and inside parenthetical content where there should be none. For example,
and
In the first quote, the comma after "Michael" is unnecessary and the inclusion of the period inside rather than outside the close parenthesis means that the sentence has no ending. The second quote again has an unnecessary comma before and inside the parentheses. Much like how parenthetical content has no effect on the conjugation of adjacent verbs, parenthetical content has no effect on punctuation. I recommend this source for a clear and concise explanation of parenthesis and punctuation dos and don'ts. Please don't mistake this comment as condescending in any way. I highly enjoy the reviews here, but as a stickler for punctuation, it does take me out of an otherwise immersive reading experience. |
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jroa
Posts: 546 |
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Then we clearly have different interpretations about the show. I don't think Michael reacting with violence to Viv insulting God makes him any more emotional in nature. I think that's almost a built-in feature of his archangel/heavenly watchdog programming, so to speak. Remember that Michael wasn't too peaceful towards Maria either. He attacked her serpent with the spear without saying a word. Then he stepped on Maria herself in order to cancel the other summoning spell in the village. That was all before a short conversation between them happened, which was basically a lecture with some physical force on the side rather than a free debate. Still...Michael might be robotic, sure, but that doesn't mean he is irrational. Yes, they can talk, and if Maria or Viv had submitted to his words alone that would have been enough. But it wasn't the case and Michael was immediately ready for a fight. For that matter, Viv is a different person with her own attitude towards everything and already knows enough about Maria's situation. It would have been redundant to literally repeat the same sequence of events. |
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dogsaregreat
 Posts: 2 Location: Southeastern US |
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Gabriella wrote "in this show's universe, humanity made God, not the other way around". I would like to point out that we don't actually know this for a fact. Cernunnos merely said that his existence was affected by human belief. We can clearly see that valkyries still exist in this universe despite the fact that the Scandinavians and Poles wiped out the last Germanic/Norse/Slavic pagans in the Northern Crusades more than one hundred years earlier. We also have no indication that the show's monotheistic God is the same type of being as Cernunnos.
PS: Cernunnos, Gilbert, etc. aren't even in the manga. Makes me wonder just how far the anime strayed from the source material (really wish someone would finish translating it). |
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Johan Eriksson 9003
Posts: 281 |
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That could just be because people still remember these gods even though no one actually worships them anymore. Half of the Norse Pantheon is invoked approximately 52 times on every calendar. Point is, they don't necessarily need followers to get enough juice for simple existence. It wouldn't make much sense for God to be fundamentally different from other gods with the worldbuilding they have set up so far. |
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cheshire1501
Posts: 52 |
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(Before You read the rest of this post, I recomend you to watch Extra Credits videos tackling the subject of religion on video games, and also the following video in which they adress the SH&%storm that enssued in the comment section)
Any narrative dealing with religion has, in very broad terms, three angles to tackle. Lore Mechanics Fatih When it comes to lore "Maria" doesn't exactly care, the figures are there, but their roles are dictated by the plot instead of the actual lore behind them (Ezequiel) Mechanics seems to be the aspect the shows handles the best, it shows that the inner workings of religion can be used as a justification for both good deeds and bad ones. Faith...oh dear. To be completely fair I have only seen two narratives that tackle the subject competently (The Mission, by showing the differences between passive faith and aggresive faith, and The Ninth Day, by exploring the fragility and strenght of faith in a rough position) Maria did handle the topic incrdibly well, not with the church, but with the character's reactions to Maria's actions. Faith is believing in something without hard evidence. If you really think it, this teenager with a tendency to cause collateral damage gives very little reason to be taken seriously in terms of actions. The faith that the others have on her capacity is based on her conviction, but not in any solid prove that she actually can change the course of the war (So far she has ben stoping a battle but then other villages take the toll). But then came Viv's statement on God's love, and then it seemed that the show suddenly forgot about the meaning of faith as a belief not backed by actions, at least in terms of deities. If anything I think the show gets the concept of faith in people, but not the one of religius faith as believing without proof. "For those who believe, proof is unecesary, for those who don't believe, proof is impossible" (You are free to take my argument as seriously as you want. By all accounts I had a ridicoulously lucky experiency with the church, as it was the only place in which a I felt welcomed as a person when I was a teenager) |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 681 |
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I like your post Cheshire. You raise some good points on what the focus of the show is on. I do disagree with you on Viv's speech though. Trying to see it as a statement on faith without proof doesn't fit. In the world of Maria God exists. It's not even a question. He exists and does nothing. Viv has every right to call that out without intruding into the ideals behind belief without proof. I don't think the show is trying to say anything against that at all, but simply stating that if you have the power to help people and choose not to then what you're doing is wrong. Viv uses that as proof that God cannot love, and therefore the people should not have faith in a loveless god as love is the most important thing to humanity. If you really stretch that out it could be taken to mean that the absence or inability to observe God doing anything means faith is foolish, but that's pretty far from the central point of the show of using that faith to justify hurting others is what's actually wrong.
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cheshire1501
Posts: 52 |
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I wasn't questioning Viv statement on the terms of the existence of God, but in the sense that the show seemingly forgot that in Christian lore God is a loving being, sure Maria doesn't give a damm on being acurate on lore, but it shows a pitfall of havin deities coexisting, you will have to get into contradictions of lore in order to make them fit.
(I should have said that in my previous psot, sorry) I admire what this series is doing and I would show it to my former catholic monitoring group, but it seems to be confused on what the deities represent in their actual faiths and what it wants them to be on the story. |
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