Ao no Exorcist: A review

Also known as the Blue Exorcist

I really liked the female lead in this Moriyama seems like a normal decent person. She isn’t a helpless crybaby like Sakura from Naruto, neither is she a sex symbol like Yoko is in TTGL. Although Moriyama is competent at what she does and is rather strong willed she is still defiantly a girl, unlike Shakugan no Shana whose only feminine qualities are boobs and that she cries when she is sad. (Normally anime blokes don’t cry, they just have a blue aura, AKA Bleach)

Of the protagonist Rin, I will say this, he reminds me of Azuma Kazuma  that makes me happy and is sufficient description for him I think.

Levi put me onto this anime and said that despite being about exorcism and quoting multiple religious texts and having Satan as one of the main characters, he was able to watch it and rather enjoyed it.

I found it to be a nice interpretation of exorcism and a very Japanese take on demons and the underworld. So rather than Satan being the Deceiver/Destroyer he is just the űber powerful king of the spirit world, most spirits being practical jokers and curiously seeking chaos.

One of the messages of the story is about anti-racism, and accepting people for who they are, not their appearance. If you stand on your own two feet and be yourself and accept others at face value then people may get to know you, and once they do they will realize what a nice person you are. This is also seen in Rin’s interactions with Eyebrows girl.


Spoilers:

The plot centers around twin boys that were immaculately conceived by Satan, their mother was of priestly decent, she and Satan became friends.

The boys earthly father was a Paladin and one of the elite of the church, apparently the strongest exorcist ever. When he was sent to kill his girlfriend and the spawn of Satan he found he couldn’t kill the children and raised them as his own. So the boys are raised as humans and have a human body but the soul and magic powers of a demon.

There is the normal anime bit of growing as a person, overcoming adversity, being ostracized and making good friends.

Then at the end of the first series the protagonist is sacrificed on a cross for the salvation of all mankind, his blood given as a pure offering where none other would suffice.

Again here Moriyama shows up and is actually helpful, not just a love interest/bystander, and along with Kirigakure the women stood at the foot of the cross.



That got me thinking then. If the boys here are physically human and have a demonic soul and people/things can be possessed by another soul; then maybe that is something of what Jesus was? A physical human with the soul of God, given the breath of life by the Spirit (pun intended). As it says in Heb 4:12, its not easy to separate those things. Following on from that then would I be a lump of meat that was possessed by an angle (I’ve passed on lots of messages) and given the breath of life by the Holy Spirit?

Leaving Home

Usually on setting out on a journey I’ll do a last minute check of things that are absolutely essential. First I check that my arms ar attached, then I use my arms to make sure my legs are there. Next, do I have a smile and a dynamic personality. Good, all set.

But then there are some things I may like on the journey. So I’ll pat my pockets, keys are good to lock the house with/ start the car, plastic money lets me interact with merchants and I get paid to carry my phone.

This weekend though for example when I left for church I realized I had locked my phone in the house “Oh well” I though “I doubt anybody would call me anyway”. Then on the way home I bought some groceries, with my plastic money. So these things are a little helpful when out and about in order to interact with society. But being happy healthy and whole is far more important.

King of Alcohol

Kings shouldn't drink wine or have a craving for alcohol. If they drink they would forget the laws of the land and ignore the rights of the people who are in need.
Alcohol is for the miserable, for those who are dying. Let them drink alcohol and in doing so forget all their pain and poverty. They will be happy then, for a while.

Kings who drink to much will always be full of sorrow. They will be miserable and each drink will make the kingdom poorer. Such a King causes no end of trouble, loudly complaining about everything. He will stumble and fall down stairs, where a sober man would have no trouble climbing mountains and remain safe. Such a King has bloodshot and bleary eyes. Drums pound in his ears, waking him in the dead of night.

So don't let Beer tempt you even though it glows like gold and is freely shared by friends. Bottles of wine will beg you to open them, their rich red nectar sparkles in your cup. The dregs of the bottle will call out "Only one more drop! May as well finish me off!"

A King who gives into these taunts will regret the morning.His eyes will deceive him and his tongue will swell up and trying to choke him. The ground will move beneath his feet like the stern of a ship. Such a weak King will be seasick on dry land.

A King shouldn't drink spirits or have a craving for alcohol. Leave it for the poor and miserable, let them make foolish decisions and wallow in self pity. A sober King knows what he does and why, he remembers everything that happened the night before and wakes early in the morning refreshed, ready for the new day.

Multicultural society? or a Multicultural person?

Is Australia really a multicultural society? recently at SYNOD the evening entertainment was supposedly multicultural but it felt more like "here is a select representation of an alien culture for you your viewing pleasure". Are we not then just a host of isolated cultures that occasionally interact? I'm told that locally most of the doctors in town are of Sri Lankan heritage and that most of the Main Roads department originated from Nepal.

Wouldn't it be better to be like this Wolverines song?
"There's a little bit of outback in everybody here tonight"
and have an indistinguishable culture?

For this specific reason I enjoy making my Indian curries with Beef and Greek Yogurt. Maybe this is why I feel Australian when I hang around foreigners? Then I wore my Drizabone when I went to Nepal and several Auzzies came and said G'Day They recognized it as one of the few things that are uniquely Australian. Maybe I should get some Ugg Boots too?

"Us" & "Them"

It seems to me that everybody wants to be with the group “Us” and we want as many people on our team as possible. Whether that be a church group, a local football team or just cricket appreciators in general. Of all the groups I have been in very few have failed to winge about lack of numbers. Why do people always want their group to be more popular? Apparently everybody should learn to surf because it’s great fun. I’ve also been told “Why wouldn’t you want to go sky diving?”



It seems to me that groups large enough to be not actively complaining about a lack of members are too large. Their members form into unofficial sub groups. Ie, within my subgroup of the 10:30 service at church I usually get into the social circle where one of these five people are talking. If none of them are nearby then I will mill around by myself, a part of the general group. It’s not that I particularly dislike anybody, jut that I prefer the company of some people over that of others. Hmm that sounds a bit discriminatory, I should put some effort into saying hi to everybody, it is church after all.



I recall my grandmother is rather racist towards aboriginals. Particularly as a group, all Australian aboriginals in general. But she now has some aboriginal neighbors, and they are quite nice and easy to get along with. See, because she has associated with some people they moved from being “one of them” to being “one of us”.



We want there to be more of our type of people. Isn’t it obvious that people like me, like me? But once there are lots of people like me then there are too many and we start dividing them again between us and them. I know it sounds draconic but I’m aiming for perfection here. But if everybody were the same then I would rebel against the norm and revel in my uniqueness, maybe I’m just confused?



I remember being told that “Any radical movement needs to become mainstream in order to survive.” Also “any social/political movement could be revolutionary depending on the time and place” I suppose that everything is relative, once a new idea is formed people may or may not jump on the bandwagon (if nothing happens it will fade in to obscurity and not be worth mentioning) and as the community grows rules need to be formed so that everybody is on the same page and follows the same belief system. When there is only one person they are always right and a free radical by default. The larger the community is the more defined its ideals are the more mainstream it will become. What may starts as a revolutionary concept, like the abolition of slavery. Eventually becomes the norm. I only know about slavery from books and movies.



And again I have slid from one rant unto another. But to get back to the start, how many times have you heard the words? “How can we engage the young people?” I know from playing RTS games that you can never have to many people in your community/Civilization/race if you get near the population limit and they are becoming impoverished then it’s time to use Slavery to finish the Pyramids in Civ4 or to go to war with your neighbors in AoE. With more members you get more resources to spend doing more fun things. With more fun more people want to be members. The reverse is also true, if your community lack a critical mass it will become stale and members will gradually leave.



Small towns are a good example of this. One town will be slightly large that the others around it, so people for the region will travel there for shopping. Then the town will start getting more shops because the potential clientele is larger. Then the Backer & Butcher in the smaller towns may be forced to move because they have insufficient customers. Thus the larger town gets larger and like a sponge it leaches people from the region, then all the other towns become satellites of the sponge. Larger communities always grow larger and smaller communities always shrink. When there are so many options of places to live (or sports clubs to join) the benefits of any one of them are hard to see and so the population distribution will remain average, and every one of the communities will complain about lack of numbers. Why are more people like us, we are much better than them.



It seems to me that the discrimination between “Us” and “Them” was the same in WWII as it is in my Fencing club. There are too many of “Them” and not enough “Us”. What can we do show them how much better we are?



I should stop writing now otherwise I’ll start talking about the Preconception Bias :( I really should derail my train more often rather than changing track all the time.

Languages

A language changes the way that you think. I really enjoyed the book “Sophie’s World” because it was translated to English and is about philosophy. Some cultures have concepts that are really hard to translate into English, purely because there are no words to describe any of it. So for a long time I have thought wouldn’t it be cool to speak a foreign language. But in my early years of schooling I kept changing languages, French, then German then Indonesian. All Indonesian did was make my English spelling go from bad to worse. And so by the time I finished school, all I can really do is count to ten and say Hi.



Arabic sounds musical and looks very arty when written, but there doesn’t seem to be many interesting things in Arabic culture. Like most of the countries that speak it have been at war for centuries and I don’t think I’d have much reason to speak to those people. Maybe the Turks would be interesting. I like the stories of Lawrence of Arabia, Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor.

Russian I like because I got romantic ideas of the country from reading “War and Peace” when I was in primary school. Also before that we had a game called Troika, that was a series of puzzle games. None of it was in English and that made it more fun than it otherwise would have been.

Spanish, I could be like Zorro, or Don Quixote. One day I plan to do that pilgrimage where you walk across Spain but I don’t know when. I also still like fencing. So there may be opportunities to use this language in the future and it be useful. Maybe I could go and see Carlos in Columbia, the bloke I boarded with at Uni.

Japanese has only recently become interesting. Mainly because of anime but also because of my old SNES games. Part of the allure of them is the foreign language and the alternate fantasy settings, their spirituality is nothing like ours. Subtitled is definitely better than dubbed and I’ve picked up the odd word through repetition. This is probably a language I can use with computer games. Plus Brother Jo is quite good at it, so I have at least one person to practice talking to. And using a skill like this is the only way to keep it. I have learnt quite a few programming languages not that I have never used once I learnt them. It seem like a bit of a waste of effort now.



These are the ones that I have been more interested in. German and French are a bit too familiar for my liking. Particularly German I seem to be able to guess what topic people are talking about from a paragraph or two. There are enough words that sound the same. Also these languages use the same Cyrillic alphabet and my Indonesian experience tells me that my spelling and grammar will get worse from reading it.

There is also ancient Greek and Hebrew. If I decide to be a Lutheran pastor a part of the training includes reading transcriptions of the original translations, Dad and Brother Levi can already do this. But there would not be many day-to-day uses for either of these languages.

Oh and there is chemistry, that qualifies as a language too, although I’m getting a bit rusty in it of late.

Why am I still interested in learning a new language? I like learning; I still think it’s romantic. It will also be useful in the eighth continent, the internet, when playing computer games. I believe everybody in the world should be able to play games together, League of legends is a good example of this, or at least it was. I remember trying to talk to people in Spanish.

I also have a fondness for fantasy, LOTR, TOME, ADOM, SLASH’EM, those sort of acronyms. It’s nice to hear where a culture was developed and how they base their outlook on life. Some cultures fundamentally believe in Original Sin, they need to work hard to learn to be good. Some believe they are destined to be god, if only they work hard enough. Some that there is nothing after death but the decaying flesh and so we should enjoy it while it lasts. For some people their ancestors are sacred, for some it is sportsmen, some have holy ground and others holy relics. Note that your philosophic outlook on life is fundamentally tied to your parent’s religious beliefs. The way that you express yourself and communicate is colored by the means that you use to communicate.



So when will I get the motivation required to fluently speak another language? Can I find someone somewhere to practice enough to be fluent?

Ecc 12 struck a cord

Do whatever you want when you are young but remember the Lord will take account of everything you do. For the day will come when you will not be able to hear a conversation for the sounds on the street and yet a bird in the night will keep you from sleeping.Your joints will ache and slow your movement. Your teeth all fall out and you will have to eat steak through a straw.

I read that somewhere recently. I'm sure of it. Maybe it was in proverbs. Took me over a week to find it again. I had been researching planar travel and some website sent me to verse 6 as proof that there is more than one dimension. It sounded like they were talking about Neverwinter Nights 2.

Trousers of Time

The way that I understand the omnipresence in inexplicableness of God is also the way that I understand the organised chaos theory. Through the trousers of time. I believe Terry Pratchett first introduced me to the Trousers of Time. The way it works is this. At any arbitrary point in time you can make a decision. For example weather to wear my unban camo trousers or my denim jeans. Once I have put on one set the the universe will be irrevocably altered. Just like trousers you can either put the left leg in first or the right. And since time (for us) only moves the one direction you cannot change your mind part way through. You can imagine what the universe would’ve been like if you were wearing urban camo but there is no way to know. Unless you are God. Trousers are like a fork in the road and also like a fork in the road there will be more choices to make. Will I have Spaghetti bog for tea or Spaghetti and meatballs? Now you have two Trouser like splits in time giving rise to four different possible universes. Its like trousers stuck on the leg of the trousers you just put on. And the choices go on forever, and sometimes there are even three legged trousers. Eventually the possibilities would end up like a plate of spaghetti.

I believe God can see every possible choice of trousers, be they camo or jeans, and can accurately depict what the universe would be like with any combination of trousers and spaghetti. Even where separate time streams recombine. For there are times when it is irrelevant to your choice of tea what trousers you are wearing. So regardless of your choice of Urban Camo you will still end up with the choice of Spaghetti bog or Spaghetti and meatballs. God doesn’t exist outside of the bowl of spaghetti he lives in it with us, but he can clearly comprehend every set of trousers.

So, our lives travel along one of these strands of spaghetti, like a photon in a fibre optic cable, twisting and turning wherever the spaghetti will take us. At each junction we make a choice and travel down one branch and not the other. Thus our reality is completely linear like a game of F3AR. Also unlike movies time always moves in the same direction and at the same pace, so we can never remake a decision once decided. Thus there is only one possible reality that we can experience.

But wait, what about the game F3AR? Is that not an alternate reality that can be experienced? Movies too, they are like our reality but strange things happen, like aliens building pyramids that then get attacked by Decepticons because a boy fell in love. Then if things can be experienced and shared they must exist, as per the qualification “I think therefore I am”. It’s also possible for me to imagine what life could’ve been like if I had chosen Jeans. Is that not nearly looking into a different strand of spaghetti in the trousers of time? But we still cant really get into these alternate realities for we always exist in the current one. Its sort of like a psionic translation or a sojourn of the soul then, after a while we reincarnate and return to the real world. I think these are like the meatballs in the spaghetti. You can access them from different places in the time stream but they are always the same; Some of them like movies can be accessed by lots of people while others like daydreams can only be accessed by you. And like two fibre optic cables, photons can only cross the divide when they touch each other. You can get lost within a meatball but eventually, you must reincarnate back to your original universe, the linear one.

So thats kind of how I understand Life, the Universe and the Trousers of Time. God knows the spin on every atom and every outcome that is possible from a single electron changing spin. To me life looks like complete and utter chaos. But yet it also kind of makes sence, at least I like to think so.

What is a a better term than LAN to describe what we do?

At a “LAN Party” we generally transpose a digital manifestation of our soul into the alternate reality of the chosen game.

Is there some sort of extra planar entity in a rougelike monster compendium that we can model ourselves after. Something that can transplant its soul into different world. that can reset reality when bad things happen. we fear the blue screen of death. We can easily adapt to new surroundings and shapechange from Mario to Chell to a tynanid hivemind.

Escapism comes to mind. We are able to transplant our selves into the new world and participate within its rigid set of rules. with level ups and only completing tasks if they are defined within quests or recorded as achievements.

So when we participate in a LAN we travel together cooperatively in to an alternate reality in which we overcome conflict. While in this reality we posses one of the locals, call them a protagonist and mold them to our will, evolving them as we see fit. At times treating them like lemmings, sometimes 
 developing a relationship.

Does “Astral travel” kind of fit what happens? no not really it seems to involve a passive physical body. But our fingers in particular are definitely not passive when gaming.

The mindcrafter in ADOM sort of fits. I thought he could posses critters as well, but that isn't the case. maybe it was TOME where I did that.

Hard to tell, the new tome is rather small as they are remaking the game. But I did find an old TOME that could be good for LAN, I think the loremasters had Symbiotic powers that allowed them to inhabit recently vacated corpses. Posessor was the class I was looking for. This requires some research. Found the old files here.

Work

This made an interesting read. Definitely not what I was looking for but I agreed with most of it. I try quite hard to never admit to working, as work generally implies not fun (or displacement x vector).
When you find your vocation it will be something you would pay people to let you do. Like fishing or golf, except you get paid to do it. If everybody enjoyed their jobs that much then the world would be a very different place.

Do communities die?

In order to die, you must first live. Life is the period of time between birth and death.

There are several qualities used to determine Life, I think you need most to qualify.
 

1. Homeostasis: Rules and regulations to define how it runs. There is a constitution as well.
2. Organization: President, Secretary, Treasurer; Delegated subcommittees.
3. Metabolism: Consumes the energy of money and paperwork. Excretes more paperwork.
4. Growth: Communities don't grow like snowflakes, they grow like cancer. Government funding can stimulate growth and apathy can make growth retarded.
5. Adaptation: The Laws change and communities can migrate from one country to another. Like Octoberfest migrating from Germany to Australia.
6. Response to stimuli: If the management committee all get food poisoning from bad Natto (is that ever good?) and die, then a new committee can be formed from the remaining members. And since all the new management live in surfer shacks on the beach the meetings now take place by the sea shore and they eat fresh fish cooked in a hangi.
7. Reproduction: Primarily asexually But nowadays with woman's rights sexual reproduction between two organisms is possible. Like there may be too many people in minicolts, so the club spawns an offshoot to increase the size of the football league. Or maybe all the husbands want to have a go at Roller Derby, So they form a new club to compete with their wives.

Seems to me that communities must defiantly be living things. They can be as small as the church of the flying spaghetti monster or as big as AA. They may be as extinct ans the Babylonian's or as new age as the new agers.

Community Theory

Time to get something written.

What is a community? How does it form? How does it grow. Now that I think about it I wonder if a community is alive? What about in this digital world? are online communities real things? What separates communities?

What causes war? How can people actually kill each other? Seems that it is usually justified by saying that they are lesser people and not deserving of what they have. It's for their own good after all. Or maybe they started it first and we are only protecting ourselves.
Anything can be used to draw a line in the sand to differentiate Us from Them

How about computer games? they usually have a lot of war and killing, the overcoming of some dark tower. All in all I rarely play a creative game on the PC where you build things out of lego bricks. I'm just not interested in growing virtual plants, unless they then kill zombies.

How does this all relate? Well computer games are more fun when there is a community to share them with. Be it the developers who will support you and help make sure the game actually works. The other players who try to finish the game first/better than you and then tell you all the cheats and shortcuts. Or maybe the NPCs themselves, yes you can even form a community with them. Especially when there is a Wise Old Mage + Brutish Lout of a Berzerker + Thief who is Quite Debonair  + Princess (who happens to be your love interest, oh she is a healer too).

I saw a list somewhere on how a community forms.
1 a group of people exist (Boat crashes on deserted island)
2 Identify a common goal, (do nor die)
3 Be on your best behaviour, work together to achieve goals (collect food)
4 Relax, be your true self, conflicts arise (U lazy, I got more food)
5 Sub communities develop / community fractures / community consolidates (one of the three)
6 Death (shipwrecked passengers get rescued)

I think I am done for now...