Huynh Ah! My Goddess = AMG Mercedes?

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie was another nostalgic film for me, due to the fact I kept up with the anime series back in the day. It was very easy for me to follow the storyline and actually had me go back and recall everything I knew from the series.

Picture taken from ioffer.com

All of the Yggdrasil workers were woman, from the people on earth to the commander who only answered to the higher ups who were men. This showed a sense that woman made things go around in the world they lived in, but in the end the men were controlling them as superiors. The woman were very capable and  strong, with this there were good and evil. The good side was Belldandy and everyone else, the evil side was pretty much Celestin (a very powerful male) and his accomplice Morgan (the princess of the fairies).

The women mostly had the power in the movie. Celestin had a very strong program and powers of his own, but he still needed to use the powers of Belldandy and Morgan to do anything. This displayed that woman had the strength in the film, but the men had the cunning to manipulate them. The higher ups which all the Yggdrasil workers reported to also had the voices of men, so they don't seem to do much other than command the workers. 

Female spirits and demons of the sort also have the sense of strength, compared to their male counterparts. Morgan would be such a spirit, because she freed Celestian due to her rage of losing her loved one. She also made a large misunderstanding between Keiichi and Belldandy by trying to seduce him for herself. She is not just a pawn, but a co-antagonist with Celestin.

This movie was a decent example of the chapter in the book we needed to read. It had many points exemplified throughout the movie, and made it fairly easy to spot. If a goddess came and asked me what I wished for, I'd wish for a means to buy as many C63 AMG Mercedes as I wanted.

Huynh - Princess Mononoke: Nostalgia

Princess Mononoke was very nostalgic for me, because I remember watching this on TV back in my childhood, and now that I think about it, I'm surprised they even aired this on US television! The main reason I loved it back then was for the carnage and awesome magical things going on in the film, but when I watched it this week with a different perspective, it was even more amazing!

Picture taken from cinemagora.co.uk

There was much evil going on in the film, from the gods turning into demons to the people who cause the gods to turn into such monsters. With evil, there's good; and vise versa. The gods were originally good and protected the land and the humans worshipped them, but as humans got more powerful, they started to relinquish their dependance on the gods. The humans started to use their intelligence to create weapons that could kill gods, and this type of action enraged the gods who have ruled the lands for hundreds of years. Humans were going against the order of nature, and against the Forest Spirit.
There was one human in particular who displayed much compassion for the outcasts of human society, but showed none for nature and its inhabitants. Lady Eboshi is one who buys the contracts of prostitutes from brothels and takes in lepers. She gives them all they want to eat, as long as they work for their stay which isn't easy. On the other hand, she invades mountainsides for iron, destroys forests for wood to keep her iron forge burning, digs up mountainsides and forests to get iron from the sand, and kills any obstacles including animals to get to the iron ore. She's constantly trying to create stronger weapons to get what she wants, so she has the lepers create the detailed weapons for her in the background. This is good and bad, because she's giving them a purpose and somewhere to live, but at the same time she's taking advantage of them because they have nowhere else to go.
Another example would be Jigo, a traveling monk who Ashitaka (main character) meets on his way to see the world with "eyes unclouded". He gives Ashitaka help with money and also gives him a meal and information. Jigo is revealed to be a hunter who has been given pardon by the Emperor of Japan to kill the Spirit of the Forest or "Nightwalker". He takes advantage of Lady Eboshi and uses her troops to be meat shields against the animals of the forest. He is evil to both humans and nature, but only shows partial compassion to humans. He gets Lady Eboshi to kill the Nightwalker and takes its head, but fails his mission when Ashitaka and San stop him.

It must be something about relations between race and compassion. One feels more compassionate to one's own race rather than another. That can be between different species of animals and even nationalities of humans. It's just how humans work, it's complicated.