That's right heathens, I know the secrets of the heavens and you don't! All thanks to Anime.
The other day, I got an email from some random guy through CrissCross Friends - a MySpace styled community website here in Japan. He was giving away free tickets for this Anime in Shibuya, and I thought well, why not, it's free, it's Anime... what could go wrong?
The film is actually a vehicle for the teachings of Ryuho Okawa, head of the quasi-religious sect 'The Institute for Research in Human Happiness'. Sounds interesting already, doesn't it?
First, don't fret, I haven't joined. I'm pretty sure that I haven't anyway. In fact, how disturbed would you seriously have to be to have your theological point of view altered by a cartoon?!
Anyway, I'm sure that you're all dying to find out what the Laws of Eternity actually are... well, I'll tell you some! That's right, now you can also spread the word!
The key points are;
- be utterly selfless, and never do things expecting something in return. This will give you a halo, and allow you access to lower heaven (upper heaven is restricted to special people, like Edison and the founder of Toyota [?]). Getting to heaven gives you an eternity to master your craft in peace - which sounds fine if you're an artist or scientist, but what if you're a road worker? Or one of those guys directing traffic? How about an eternity of mastering the secret art of working in an abattoir? Sounds like more like hell to me.
There are loads of ways to access hell, try some of these;
- be a sex pest, and you will rise an dip in a sea of blood until you repent.
- commit schadenfreude, and spend a very long time indeed climbing a cliff face - you working class scum
- think nasty thoughts, and black gas will come out of your head, and hell will find an adequate punishment for you.
Hell is so much more creative - more 'out of the box'. The highest form of heaven, the '9th Dimension', is populated by a religious all star team that include Jesus himself, Buddha, Moses, and, erm,Isaac Newton. They are all massive and shower the Earth in gold dust. No sign of apples.
The movie even tries to have a story to carry all this. This and much more; oh so much more.
4 young people - 2 Japanese, an American and a Hispanic, are visiting the Thomas Edison museum in New York, when Ryota, the hero who we eventually find out is the reincarnation of Thota (the ruler of Atlantis, flying airbuses and all) communicates with Edison via a Shaman, and is told an equation to build a Spirit Phone, which will enable him to visit the Spirit Realm...
Should I stop now? Is it feeling creepy yet? Because wait - Edison is in trouble! Not enough people know the truth!! Let's help him!
The film finally reveals its true colours in a hideously protracted sequence in the the movie's centre, when Yuko, the only girl of the 4, meets Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa and a fully able Hellen Keller who all proceed to tell her the Laws of Eternity, a bizarre mish-mash of science and all religions (no mention of Islam strangely). By now, some people are leaving the theatre, others are frothing at the mouth... meanwhile, Yuko is on the floor, weeping uncontrollably... "If only everyone knew the truth... there would be no war!"
Eien no Hou reaches it's peak soon after, with an utterly mental sequence where the 2 foreign guys find themselves in Hell after feeling miffed over not becoming angels (yes, that's enough to land you in hell these days - in fact the movie includes the handy statistic that more than half of all dead people end up in Hell these days - great ice breaker!). When the Japanese couple come to save them (they're angels by now), Hitler summons a giant daemon - a cross between an elephant and an armadillo. Whilst the... armaphant? tramples on various things, Nietzsche writhes in the background, screaming "Ha ha! God is DEAD!"
Don't worry, all is not lost! God Eagle, an Incan prophet, sacrifices himself to distract the armaphant mega-beast, and in his act of heroism is transformed into Mecha-God-Eagle, who under Ryota's remote control, destroys the armaphant with a giant sword whilst screaming "THE TRUTH CANNOT BE DESTROYED!!". I guess at the very least, these guys have a pretty colourful imagination, but it's always disturbing (yet frankly hilarious) to see efforts by religious groups to be 'down with the kids'.
Well, I could write about it all night - I have never watched anything before where every single part of the story was contentious. Suffice to say, the movie is a massive, impressive and convoluted crock of animated horseshit. It really makes you wonder how people end up being like, say Tom Cruise. Pity the fools. You'd probably do best to stay away from this Anime unless, like me, you find displays of communal madness intriguing. It's probably better than The Passion of Christ after all.
For those of you dying to know more;
the official website
the movie trailer on Youtube
