Kenosis to Gnosis
Hear the silence
Anime Metaphors
Gargantia on the Verderous Planet
This series was made by Production IG, which is the same company that made The Sky Crawlers and they are the ones that made the Attack on Titan series, which may have metaphors in it too. The people in this series live in a world where there's no land and everyone lives on ships that are grouped together that make up floating cities. The main character comes from a distant place in Space and he comes to this world by himself and his robot war machine. It's toward the end of this series that shows that there's an important theme to this anime. The main character comes across a cult with a hive mind and this cult is run by another robot war machine. Their god is a machine with no human emotions at all. It is a psychopathic god and it wants to run this world and it gets the people under its control to try to take over this world. The robot says that happiness is defined as servitude to the system and that's what the main character believes until he starts to think for himself. The cult members have their arms crossed and this is from the ancient Egyptian religion and it means submission to the god and it is a symbol of death, Egyptian mummies had their arms crossed. The cult members have an eyeball as a symbol and there is a scene showing human sacrifice, which means this is a cult of death that doesn't value humanity. The main character has to choose between the human run society and the machine run society with its mindless servants.
Ghost in the Shell.
This Anime is very deep with philosophy, which is explained on this Wikipedia page. The term Ghost in the Shell refers to the consciousness of someone who has a cyberbrain and is also an android. This may seem like a transhumanist science fiction story, but there does seem to be an underlying Gnostic theme to this show. The opening to the Stand Alone Complex series certainly seems to suggest that.
"Angels and demons circle above my head
cleaving through thorns and Milky Ways
He who does not perceive his calling,
does not know true happiness... (The first two lines suggest a divine topic to this song. If someone doesn't perceive the calling of the spirit, he will not find happiness, contentment and peace. The last two lines have a lot of meaning in them.)
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!
I am Calling Calling out!
Spirits, I am calling!!!
To remain myself longer... (This line gives away the Gnostic theme in this song, as well as the Ghost in the Shell series.)
Calling Calling, in the depths of longing!
To remain myself longer!
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!
Stand alone... Where was life when it had a meaning...
Stand alone... Nothing's real anymore and...
...Endless running...
While I am alive, I can try not to fall while flying, (This is falling into the material world. It's linked with being alive.)
nor to forget how to dream...to love...
...Endless running...
Calling Calling out! For The Place of Knowing! (First the calling out was to remain herself, now the calling out is for The Place of Knowing. This is Gnostic salvation at its best.)
There's more that what can be linked!
Calling Calling, Never will I look away!
From what life has left for me.
Yearning Yearning, for what's left of loving!
To remain myself longer...
Calling Calling, in the depths of longing!
To remain myself longer!
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!
Watch in awe! Watch in awe!
Heavenly glory! Heavenly glory!"
This scene from one of the episodes describes how the ghost is in a void which is represented by a zero in the fabric of space and time. This is what consciousness or individuality is and why Man is separate from machine and will always be separate from the mechanical. The concept of the void that exists in between space and time, where the soul inhabits, is explained in a lot of detail on Void Philosophy.
Avatar.
Bubblegum Crisis.
There are two Animes that have this title, one that was made in the 1980s and a remake that was made in 1998. The original version took influences from Bladerunner and one of the two leaders of the Genom corporation, that makes the boomers, who are robot servants, has the last name of Mason. He appears in the remake as well.
The tower that the Genom corporation is at is based on the tower of the Tyrell corporation in Bladerunner and it looks like the Tower of Babel.
The remake called Bubblegum Crisis 2040 is even more interesting. The two leaders of the Genom corporation have last names that are Mason and Rosencroitz. Those two names should be very familiar to anyone with a basic knowledge of occult socities. Going to the end of the series, Brian J. Mason discovers Galatea, who is a robotic clone of one of the characters called Sylia and he puts her into the Genom Tower. Galatea makes the boomers go rogue and then she grows and merges into the Genom Tower and lifts off with it towards the Umbrella satellite, which controls all the world's boomers.
Galatea sets Genom Tower into the middle of the Umbrella satellite which becomes an all seeing eye. The strands of metal that connects it with other satellites are neurons that make all the computers and boomers part of Galatea's hive mind.
The main character, Priss, who's name comes from Priss in Bladerunner, resists having her suit merging with the hive and the boomer suit ever tries to connect with her body. After Galatea is defeated, rays of light appear all over the world, which is a spiritual rain that is talked about on this page. The nudity of the characters at the end represent the spirit being naked of the flesh. This is something that was talked about in the Gnostic gospels in the Gospel of Thomas, (37) His disciples said, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and pace them under your feet like little children and tread of them, then will you see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid." The characters have survived being merged into a hive mind and they have liberated themselves spiritually and now they are experiencing divine light in the form of rain.
There's an interesting statement in episode 4, season 2 of this anime. The tree is the world tree and everything is connected to it in a network. This is similar to the giant tree in the Avatar movie, the one directed by James Cameron. The world tree appears in the mythologies of many ancient cultures and religions as well, such as the Bible, the Sumerian and Babylonian religions, Norse mythology etc. The man in this scence says that he reached enlightment under this tree, much like the Buddha and he then says that everyone and everthing are one and then he explains that time is an illusion and past, present and future are the same. Then the Avatar uses this tree and is able to see through the roots of the tree that extend everywhere.
In a later episode, they come across a library that's buried in the desert. This library has all the knowledge of the world and its location suggests this is a reference to the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The Fire benders, who are war mongers, destroy an entire section of the library and that is a reference to how the Library of Alexandria was destroyed by fire. The library is guarded by a giant owl and that is a reference to the Owl of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. The owl is a symbol for wisdom and is used to portray wisdom by many different groups from the Bohemian Grove to the Bavarian Illuminati.
This is something from the Wikipedia page on the Owl of Minerva, "The 19th century idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously noted that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk", meaning that philosophy comes to understand a historical condition just as it passes away.[17] Philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight.
“One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. When philosophy paints its gloomy picture then a form of life has grown old. It cannot be rejuvenated by the gloomy picture, but only understood. Only when the dusk starts to fall does the owl of Minerva spread its wings and fly.”
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (1820), "Preface"
The last part of this episode shows this library sinking beneath the sand and disappearing with a professor deciding to stay behind. This scene seems to be saying that wisdom is not part of this world and is part of eternity.