February 24, 2008
The Japanese have never really understood Catholic nuns. It's a visual trope that shows up all the time in anime, not to mention being a big-time fetish, but characters who are nuns don't act the way I think of nuns as being. For instance, in Petite Princess Yucie the character Arc, a handsome rogue, makes a pass at a nun in one episode. She blushes and smiles and acts in a way that suggests she might be willing to respond, were it not for the fact that everyone is busy. She certainly doesn't act as if his comment was out of line.
Not in any Catholic church I've ever known about.
No show typifies that disconnect better than Chrono Crusade. The primary characters are Sister Rosette, a 16 year old nun, and Chrono, apparently a tame demon who works with/for her, though later in the series it's revealed that the relationship between them is more complicated than that, and darker.
Sister Rosette is simply too gorgeous and sexy to believe. Not to say that girls that good looking don't become nuns -- it does happen. But their habits don't look like the one Sister Rosette wears, and sure as hell don't emphasize their figures the way hers does. That isn't a habit, it's a fetish costume.
She wears a lot less than that in a few cases later in the series, or so I understand. Fact is, she's a fan service object in this series, which is a bit icky. But that's not the biggest reason I don't want to watch this.
The real problem is that having spent 23 episodes showing us this young, gorgeous, vital, enthusiastic girl, and doing their best to get us to know and love her,
I bought the first DVD of this series, and I think I watched two episodes of it. The basic disconnect regarding nuns turned me off and I didn't go any further with it. Probably just as well, because it's fundamentally a horror series, and I never do very well with those.
Pity; it's yet another series where Chiba Saeko has a major role (as Azmaria).
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Never Watch at
03:20 PM
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Rosette didn't want to become a nun for the usual reasons, not even in that rather peculiar Order. Why she joined, why she made her deal with Chrono, and why the Order tolerates them are all key plot points. As for the ending, it was pretty much inevitable once all those points were introduced. I'd have preferred a lighter story, but alas.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at February 24, 2008 05:55 PM (2XtN5)
Guess the answer is "not in the slightest."
Posted by: metaphysician at February 25, 2008 05:24 AM (9Lztf)
One of the things that I liked was that the show went in a different direction from the manga, and for once, I thought it did a better job. (That's not usually the case, of course.) The anime bad guys are actual demons, from actual Hell - and so it makes perfect sense that they're being fought by the church, and susceptible to divine power, all that jazz.
In the manga, the demons were... er... Leaving aside the cheeseball factor, you'd think this would be the sort of thing that a young demon finding himself living in a Catholic-ish church might see fit to mention to somebody! "Uh, yeah... we're not the nemesis..." Yet another case where the Japanese have trouble understanding how seriously Christianity takes itself...
Not that Gonzo was 100% on target themselves. One of the extras "explaining" Mary Magdalene essentially casts her as #1 of Jesus' "many women"...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at February 25, 2008 11:00 AM (LMDdY)
Up through about episode 21 or so it was actually quite a fun series to watch. When it turned, though, it really turned. Still, even though the ending is the opposite from the way they'd led you to believe, I thought it was well done. Very sad, but well executed at least.
Posted by: astro at February 25, 2008 03:24 PM (RXNsB)
I bought the first DVD when it was all that was out, and at the time I wasn't into reading blogs which wrote about fansubs. So I didn't know anything about the ending.
I believe that the ending is well done. But I don't want to see it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 25, 2008 04:01 PM (+rSRq)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.
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