Weeeeel, kiddies, it seems that us Cat’licks are startin’ to bore the lil’ Japanese teenagers. So the mangakas are moving into new religious territory that they can pillage for their own visual purposes.
From the artist of MY-Hime (which speaks for itself). Coming next August to a comic book shop or bookstore near you, it’s: The Qwaser of Stigmata.
(Yes, I said Eastern Orthodox. Sigh.)
In the near future in Japan, at a Eastern Orthodox private school named St. Mikhailov Academy, the students become involved in an all-out war between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Adepts, a sect full of people with strange powers. We are told that it is not only filled with nasty violence, but with nasty exploitative and sexual situations and a disgusting magical system that makes no sense. Yeah. Sounds like a literary and spiritual triumph, don’t it? *roll eyes* But wait! If you follow the link and check out Wikipedia, you’ll find out how this manga manages to insult Mary, nuns, all women, and our intelligence all at the same time! Woohoo!
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that would be offensive to people living on Alpha Centauri, much less the Eastern Orthodox.
But never fear. There’s still plenty of Cat’lick manga out there, with all that exquisitely inaccurate portrayal of Christianity, full of unintentional humor and/or blasphemy, that we anime and manga fans have come to expect!
And of course, some of them are actually pretty Catholic stories, if you make allowances for drama, alternate worlds, and magic (not to mention weird dress codes for clergy and religious).
Here are “scanlations” of the Korean manwha Stigmata, in which the Pope is running a secret occult-investigation organization that kills demons, and big-eyed nuns with guns and stigmatist priests apparently are running around all over the place kicking demon butt. Yeah, I’m sure that’s how Padre Pio spent his time, conking demons on the head with a monstrance weapon and casting Holy Power spells at minions of the Evil One. And I’m sure nobody ever called him a “Stigmaster”. 🙂
Aliens in This World 