{"id":1092,"date":"2014-05-14T15:48:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T19:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=1092"},"modified":"2014-05-14T15:48:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T19:48:25","slug":"norse-mythology-in-anime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/norse-mythology-in-anime\/","title":{"rendered":"Norse Mythology in Anime"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the first season coming out on DVD this month and a fancy Blu-ray box on the horizon, Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions<\/em> has wandered in and out of my mind a few times recently. I was in the middle of describing Dekomori\u2019s endlessly amusing \u201cMjolnir Hammer\u201d attack to a friend when something odd occurred to me: anime is bursting at the seams with references to Norse mythology. If a character in a fantasy series has a big hammer, there\u2019s a 50-50 chance it\u2019s called Mjolnir. The term \u201cValkyrie\u201d gets thrown around constantly in sci-fi and mecha shows. Numerous characters from Ah! My Goddess<\/em> take their names from Norse mythology. Heck, there\u2019s even a series called Ragnarok<\/em>. This all begs the question: what is it about the old Viking faith that anime and manga writers find so fascinating?<\/p>\n

\"AMG\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’d make a “Flight of the Valkyries” joke here, but Belldandy and company\u00a0are actually based on supernatural creatures called Norns.<\/em><\/p>\n

The short answer is that Norse mythology is full of the kinds of conflicts that make for epic, action-packed storytelling. You\u2019ve got gods taking on all kinds of powerful monsters. You\u2019ve got a warrior\u2019s heaven where you drink and fight all day, every day. You\u2019ve got an inevitable apocalypse drawing ever closer. You\u2019ve got iconic, archetypal characters with compelling flaws. Just throw in some giant robots and make everyone a teenager and you\u2019ve got yourself a giant robot series.<\/p>\n

Adopting folklore from a foreign culture also saves the trouble of having to come up with names for characters, places, and objects. Belldandy and her sisters in Ah! My Goddess<\/em> are named for a trio of mythical characters who determine the fates of humans and look after a holy tree called Yggdrasil. By some incredible coincidence, the manga and anime characters maintain a computer system called Yggdrasil, which controls reality. It\u2019s almost as if Kosuke Fujishima thought, \u201cHey, this is a neat concept that\u2019s already full of mythical-sounding names. I should totally use it for my manga series!\u201d As far as I know, he has yet to be sued for copyright infringement by a time-traveling Viking, so it looks like the idea worked out. (The case would be dismissed anyway; ancient mythology is in the public domain.)<\/p>\n

Of course, Norse mythology isn\u2019t the only ancient tradition that sees its ideas and characters borrowed on a regular basis. Church-sanctioned vampire\/demon hunters are a staple of supernatural anime, and portions of Arthurian lore get ripped off all the time. So why all the cultural exchange? It\u2019s the same reason many Wild West movies borrow the plots of samurai films: people are often fascinated by foreign cultures and eager to adapt new ideas into their own fiction. If that weren\u2019t the case, I wouldn\u2019t be writing this column about Japanese animation in the first place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kawaii Overthink is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime and manga on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. Check back every Wednesday for new articles.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the first season coming out on DVD this month and a fancy Blu-ray box on the horizon, Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions has wandered in and out of my mind a few times recently. I was in the middle of describing Dekomori\u2019s endlessly amusing \u201cMjolnir Hammer\u201d attack to a friend when something odd occurred [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}