Lacayo's mind and the Deadly Sins

I walk into the screening room, smoothie in my hand and donettes in my pocket. My mind is tossing different scenarios that could potentially show up in what I’m about to see; Giant red ogres, demon women that seduce men into their deaths, ninjas and some magical scroll that gives power.  Blood, guts and sex were also in there considering the warnings we had received in class. Not that I was hoping for sex, I’m no pervert okay? Anyways, about 2 hours later I’m walking out of the room with a half asleep look, a full stomach and mixed feelings about Ninja Scroll.

            What can I say? The movie has potential, the characters all seem to have interesting backgrounds, the plot could have been better but it wasn’t outright awful and the style is a good kind of old-school anime. The problem is, the characters are somewhat stale and mix that with a mediocre plot and you get a movie that didn’t quite live to the expectations that other people had set in my head. But I’m not here to talk about how I don’t like the movie, which to a certain extent is not true; I’m here to talk about an interesting parallel I found while watching the movie.

            I hope I’m not stretching a theme here that may not be even present in the movie. I’m very much aware that Japanese Shinto and Western Christianity are at two different ends of the spectrum. However, knowing the Japanese’s affinity of the Western world, I think my point can pass.

            While watching the movie I made a mental note as to how many enemies Jubei had to face before finally being able to fight his nemesis, Gemma. “7 demons and one leader…” I though to myself as Utsutsu (the blind samurai) toppled over. “The Seven Deadly sins and the devil! That’s it”

          

  So lets go over the deadly sins:

Which is YOUR deadly sin?

Gluttony: an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.

Lust: an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.

Greed: the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual

Pride: an excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God.

Sloth: the avoidance of physical or spiritual work

Envy: the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation

Wrath: Inappropriate feelings of hatred and anger. Impatience with the law, or seeking revenge outside of justice, such as with unnecessary vigilantism. Wishing to do evil or harm to others.

Now Lets link the villains with the sins.

The Oni...disturbing 

Gluttony: Tessai: One may at first think that Tessai is the representation of Lust due to his sexual assault on Kagero. However, further thinking made me realize that he’s actually gluttony. Gluttony, I believe, doesn’t only apply to food, it can also be just the overall to indulge excessively in anything, whether killing people, drinking their blood or raping. Also, as Tessai is about to rape Kagero you see how he licks her entire body and even goes as far as pretty much chewing Kagero’s entire breast.

75% of the time naked.

Lust: Benisato: This is kind of a given. In most of her screen time, Benisato is fighting around in her birthday suit. Her first appearance is an attempt to tempt and kill jubei, her tattoos give her that sense of dazzling beauty that both enthralls and scares. She’s also Gemmas love and their sexual relationship is mentioned many times in the movie.

Gross

Greed: Mushizo: A little bit hard on this one but I ended up linking him to greed for one reason: his size. You see, he’s pretty much a dwarf, ridiculously small (not to mention butt-ugly) and relatively weak. I can only deduce by his characteristics that Mushizo had an awful past. Hypothetically, before he obtained his powers probably had a thirst for power that led him to commit some terrible act in order to have wasps living in him. The wasps, the representation of his greed (more and more and more) ultimately end up killing him.

Blind in the eyes and blinded by pride

Pride: Utsutsu: Even if Utsutsu is in the film for only 7 minutes, one is able to see his pride through a couple of things he says and does. First, by saving his Jubei when he is about to fall down the cliff shows that Utsutsu has the confidence to defeat Jubei; an enemy with less poise  would have probably let Jubei fall to his certain death. Also, the fact that Utsutsu points out that Jubei’s eyesight is his greatest weakness proves that Utsutsu is certain of his abilities to the point of arrogance. That self-assurance leads to his demise, he was confident that he knew his surroundings but in the end forgot about the blade that caused him to miss.

Never fights directly

Sloth: Shijima: Puppets, that’s the one thing that connects to sloth. Shijima tends to hide in the darkness, unseen by his enemies and then strikes. However, Shijima doesn’t strike directly; he uses his victims as puppets who do all the work for them. He’s not lazy; he’s avoiding the dirty work while he sits in the shadows, protected.

Yuri in Japanese means Lily

Envy: Yurimaru: This one is rather easy, Yurimaru embodies envy. He is envious that Benisato is in a sexual relationship with Gemma. He desires Gemma to be his own. Yurimaru, because of his envy, rejects any other that desires to be with him. He doesn’t care, all he wants is Gemma and he hates Benisato for having him. That rejection he gives to others causes Zakuro to become enraged at him which well…ends up killing him.

Touchy personality.

Wrath: Zakuro: Okay, so a couple of things as of why. This lady is explosive (pun intended), the violence her explosions create can easily connect to the feeling or wrath, where you just want to crush everything. Also, because Yurimaru rejects her, she becomes infuriated and ends up, out of revenge, blowing up Yurimaru. Another thing that should be noted is that the color red is generally associated with wrath, giving her more reason to represent the sin.

And what is Gemma? Well that’s easy, he’s the devil. The source of the sins and the one who controls all that evil...

These devils, along with their leader, are the source of turmoil to Jubei, who represents justice and the good in everyone. In the same way, the seven deadly sins are struggles that everyone needs to learn to overcome in order to be better people, no matter the religion. Chessyness aside, the movie was good and the parallelism between the deadly sins and the 7 demons is an interesting and hidden topic.






Well that's enough rambling for this week.


"Praise God who has many names, but the devil has many more. With the love that my mom gave to me I'm gonna drop the devil to the floor." Dave Matthews: Eh hee
-Xavi