Ah! My Goddess is a very interesting movie in how it portrays humans and gods in the world. In the film, Belldandy and Keiichi are two characters, one human and one goddess, who are in a relationship and everything is going well until Belldandy’s old mentor, Celestine, returns and wipes Belldandy’s memory. Celestine then turns into the “villain” of the movie and tries to destroy and get rid of all the suffering in the world so that people only have to go through happiness. This doesn’t seem like he is that bad of a guy to me, because what he is doing is with good intentions. The only reason it comes off as a negative thing is because the goddess do not want this to happen. What makes me curious is what puts the goddess in charge? Who says that they should be the ones that juristic whether or not what Celestine is doing is wrong or not?
 |
| Image from Writer's Cafe |
Another thing that kept me thinking as I watched this movie is what makes a human human. When one tries to define being human, the one thing that seems to be the same in any case is that humans have the ability to choose. There is some unknown entity that humans have that influence the choices that we make which is what makes us who we are. If this is what makes us human, then why are gods considered to be gods? In Ah! My Goddess, the goddess’ are the ones who are in power and decide what to do, but that’s just it, they are DECIDING. That is a form of choosing, and if only humans have this ability to choose, then are they even gods? They are making decisions which can potentially end badly or very well, which is what confuses me. If they are gods, then they shouldn’t be making choices at all, but does that mean that there aren’t or shouldn’t be gods? Do gods even exist? How do they work in other religions? Anyhow, this delves into another discussion entirely, that should be discussed elsewhere at another time…
Interesting idea, Jon. Yeah, Celestine's goal really isn't bad at all... he just wants everyone to be happy! But yeah, it's because the majority thinks there should still be suffering he looks like the bad guy. Hmm, yeah, I wonder what put the goddesses in charge. They don't seem like they're doing a good job of keeping balance from what we've seen. The idea of what makes a being a human is something we've seen in many of the movies we've watched. That, and also the idea of memories and the individual. Hm yeah and if we have a soul and we get to live forever in the end, then yeah what separates us from the gods? If anything, they'd probably be jealous of us for having a body and getting to enjoy a fairly carefree life (in comparison) on earth while they have to govern us up in the clouds or wherever. Hmm, yeah, the themes in this movie are too deep haha.
ReplyDeleteNice job John, this film definitely peaked your interest as far as themes go. You brought up a great point about what the difference between gods and humans and how we are all unable to concretely identify what is what. If being human means having free will, then what makes gods, gods in the eyes of human society. You talk about that and it really gets me thinking, nice work. I would like to bring up the fact that even though Celestine was trying to better the overall existence by ending the suffering and bad things us humans give to the world. This brings up the point that if he were to actually wipe out Earth and all suffering was wiped out, there would be no more contrast in the overall picture. If there is no light, there can be no dark and vice versa. We only know what good is by a mere comparison of what we believe to be bad. All of it is opinionated and great stuff to think about. I wonder if you enjoyed this movie, you never seem to write about that. Anyways, hope you enjoy the rest of the year cause Miyazaki films are the best!
ReplyDelete