In so much of media, a distinct line has been draw between what is objectively good and objectively bad. In most cases this rather simple view served as a way to instill virtue on the youth as they grew up and later became apart of the "adult world". However, when that person, who grew up watching this type of content, begins to mature they begin to realize how flawed this simplistic world view is. With the world being something not as clearcut, or black and white, the actual spectrum of what is moral gets lost when focusing solely on what is definitively good or evil. There has always been this thick cloud of ambiguousness that gets ignored, or never even seen, because people want moral choices to fit in those two nice boxes.
As this anime season comes to an end, I do want to highlight two anime that have focused on the topic of moral ambiguity in their own ways. The more popular show this season was Death Parade, who had several people confused on what the finally fate of these two being judged by the arbiter Decim. And the other being Junketsu no Maria, or Maria the Virgin Witch, where a lot of the struggle is between three "sides", the people, their god, and witches. Most of the hardship has this feeling of questioning authority when their value deviate from your own, or just following status quo to save your skin. Junketsu no Maria does get a bit more in-depth in that subject, but I do what to start with Death Parade and the matter of judging humans objectively as an arbiter.
Objectively Subjective
When the pilot for Death Parade came out from the "2012 Young Animator Training Project" named Death Billiards, my initial thoughts were about the nature of humans as they fight with their lives at stake. It was in fact about that, but there was a bit more that I didn't really see until that concept was expanded on in Death Parade. From the start, and maybe to the middle, most people would have thought of the old man -- that being in Death Billiards -- as someone who was the "good person", but with some hints toward the end it might have made you question that judgement from earlier.
Having that foundation of unclear motives, from the people being judged, it made a nice point to lift off of this idea of whether or not you can judge a person objectively. And right from the first episode of Death Parade, you get reintroduced to that feeling, even if it wasn't as clear that that was what they were going until a few more episodes in. In the ultimatum of being reincarnated or going to the void, viewers almost instinctual think that one party is going to be good and the other evil. When it is clear that both parties aren't "evil" in any way -- for example the Death Bowling episode -- it suddenly shakes that assumed notion of there being two opposing sides.
On the other end we could have people that were clearly evil, but that wouldn't really prove much of a point. The interesting thing that Death Parade did was have two people who didn't seem bad at all and slowly worked in things that most people would consider vile without context, like murdering someone, but with context it doesn't seem as bad but its still morally gray. And this is where the objectivity of anything really flies out the window and things need to be judge with a bit more nuance. Can we really judge a persons actions if we are pushing them toward that evil we want to see? Is that true objectivity if we know these arbiters have the goal of seeing humans in a dark light?
When it comes to judging people, we can only really gauge intent through actions rather than what they are actual thinking. Putting people in a box of either good or evil isn't the best course action because people cast shadows, no matter how well they live their life. If we continue to weight someone's merit simple on the shadow they cast, we will never really get to the person casting that shadow and no real judgement is made. And that is the flimsiness of "objective morality", sure we as people can come to some common consensus but that is not true objectivity -- and never will.
Of course there are some moral systems that claim objectivity, and I obviously disagree as I've stated above, but funny enough there is an anime that gets in the foggy nature of these type of "morality by authority" philosophies. Like mentioned in the introduction, this anime is named Junketsu no Maria and I am going to jump into the individual versus authoritative principles that Junketsu no Maria covers.
Might Makes Right
Considering the main character Maria is a witch in a time of war and peril, I was pretty sure there would be some push back from regular humans. And with references to Christianity, there was no doubt that she would be labeled a heretic since she uses magic not ordained by their god. However, the thing that took me by surprise was both Maria and the god of Christianity had their own opposing styles of interfering with humans. And the humans had interpretations of the word of god via the church and it's priest.
Maria was someone that didn't like the war going on between the France and Great Britain, so most of the time she would interrupt and stop battles by using her magic. It was clear that a lot of the townspeople being drafted for the war also didn't like the war that was going on, so it would seem like Maria was doing them a service. Unfortunately, with some influence coming from higher ups, this includes the church, there was a push toward getting an unfavorable view toward Maria. And this is where I see a lot of conflict going on between individually held values, or morals, compared to a moral system coming from an authoritative entity.
Pretty much every person has their own set of values, even if they follow an authority based morality; however, some believe that you can only get any morals from an objective moral authority. As I said in the last section, I don't think there is an objective moral code, but we as humans can come to some conscience and always improve on ineffective or error prone laws through discussion. Without discussion we end up with this "might makes right" philosophy. A lot of times people go with what they find immoral, in that type of philosophy simply because of fear. With that being said, this was the main struggle between the groups in Junketsu no Maria -- that being Maria, the witches in general, the church, and village people.
It is of value to have some structure in a moderately big group of people, but real morality gets lost if people start blindly following the leader. Individual thought is as important, if not more important, as the group in power because it takes people without power to know when they are being ruled unfairly. And "fairness" is what is so complex, as well as crucial, about the topic of morality in the first place.
Concluding
Whether or not someone believe that morality is objective, subjective, authoritative, or democratic, there is one thing for certain is that it is complex. There is no reason to shy away from complexity and that is what makes mediums that dive into these types of subjects that much more fascinating. It opens up the conversation to those that consume that type of media and form nuance thoughts about many of its aspects.
Of course I'm sure there are quite a handful of anime that cover this no-so clear cut view on morality, but these are this two this season that I wanted to write about. I hope to see more coming out about moral ambiguity expressed in different ways, so the topic can reach more people in the long run.
Orginally posted to the now shutdown sekijitsu.com: Archived Page
