Happy Birthday Thor

Today is the birthday of my friend who goes online as Thor Gundersen1058. To celebrate this day, I have made a list of my favorite 5 moments from series that he introduced me too.

5: Diana defends the Cavendish Legacy (Little Witch Academia Episode 20: "Intellect and Sensibility")

The setup: Akko is a clumsy witch who heavily struggles with magic and Diana is the witch at the top of her class, who comes from a prestigous background. Diana suddenly leaves school, with Akko following, sensing her inner distress. At Diana's residence it's revealed her family have sold their precious family heirlooms and don't believe in Diana's ability to be the new head of their family after her mother's death. Diana attempts to take the mantle as leader of the family to protect her family's legacy but her aunt traps her so she won't be able to complete the ritual in time to take the family title. Akko tries to save her but gets poisoned for her troubles. Diana takes her to a secret hospital and tells her of the Cavendish Legacy: a legacy of witches who selflessly gave of themselves to others, who didn't delinate between friend and foe and healed who they could.

Why I love it: When Diana was introduced I thought she was going to be a fairly stereotypical Shojo character, the talented school bully who torments our lead over her inability. Not only is she not that, she is easily my favorite character in the series. It's revealed in this ep that Diana herself had no ability to do magic at first and only attained it by endless practice and toil. Diana, despite her stoic exterior is trying to live up to her mother's legacy, a mother who selflessly gave of herself to others.

I find Diana's struggle painfully relatable, the struggle to live up to a maternal figure who is endless altrustic and giving. I am compassionate, but I am not trusting easily and I could not imagine how someone could make oneself so vulnerable to being used or exploited. Diana's struggle of trying to live up to such an ideal was so immediatly sympathetic, and her family's degradation of their family name filled me with such internal disdain for them that when the decisoin came for Diana to complete the ritual or let them suffer, I wanted her to just leave them. But....magically both she and I understood that doing so would also be a degradation of the family name. This is why even though she does not gain control of the family, the spirit of Beatrix the foremother of their family appeared before her and showed her approval. I love this part because it feels very compelling to me, and the message is something I have tried to get better at. 

4: Danny saves Jazz (Danny Phantom Episode 9: "My Brother's Keeper")

The setup: Danny is a teenage ghost superhero. A ghost named Spectra, who feeds off the misery of teenagers to stay young, has inflitrated their school as a counselor. She manipulates people into hating themselves and thinking bad about themselves by picking on their insecurities until everyone in the school save Danny's older sister Jazz is effected. Jazz is constantly trying to be supportive to Danny, who she knows is the superhero but he doesn't know she knows, but Danny keeps pushing her away. Danny figures out what's going on and confronts Spectra who is beating him for a second time revealing she is going to kill Jazz at the spirit festival so that their misery will keep her young forever.

Why I love it: As a teenager, I didn't have a good time in school. I mercilessly deprecated myself, every little thing I did was more evidence of how terrible I was. However, the one thing that always helped me get out of it temporarily was my loved ones, was thinking about how I needed to be stronger for them now. Danny is trapped and thinks to himself, and I love how he says this, "I am so tired of you dumping on me. And I am so tired of dumping on myself...Jazz never did that to me, even when I was mad at her...and I won't let her down!" I felt chills at him saying he was tired of dumping on himself, of not liking who he was. 

Jazz's love for her younger brother being the constant that let him rise above his insecurites I thought was really heartwarming and my favorite moment in the show. I especially like it because I too have a younger brother. And it just continues on perfectly with Jazz using the Fenton Peeler to save Danny from Spectra afterwards, reassuring him without letting him know she knows his secret and the bit at the end with the double meaning when Mr Lancer says "They got their spirit back" with the usage of the word spirit meaning both the ghost superhero Danny Phantom and also spirit as in the fullness of life.

3: A flower brings back Wander's hope (Wander over Yonder Episode 42B: "The Flower")

The setup: Galactic Destroyer Lord Dominator has destroyed most of the galaxy, sending Wander the beacon of hope and kindness for the galaxy into despair. Sylvia, his trusted friend and steed thinks that if Wander loses hope then the entire galaxy loses hope and finds a flower to try and help him. The flower has a hard time surviving in the chaos of what has become the galaxy and becomes a metaphor for their dying hope, and so Wander and Sylvia try to find a place it can grow. They travel across the galaxy trying different planets, but each place is inhospitable for a new reason, and a small bit of the flower breaks off each place. Lord Dominator shows up and starts killing the flower. Wander and Sylvia escape but the flower is dead however Wander is moved by Sylvia's attempts regardless and regains his sense of hope.

Why I love it: The entire episode in my opinion builds up to one incredible, beautiful moment. As Wander and Sylvia leave into the depths of the galaxy, ready to face what comes, the camera shows all the planets that the flower visited and the small parts of it, seeds, begin to grow. This one moves me to tears seeing it. From the many sufferings of the flower, the entire galaxy begins to bloom again. We live in this world of suffering and toil and it's easy to say there's no point to it all, that we strive towards nothing. This is the heart of what it means to lose hope. But sometimes the results of what you strive towards are not immediatly visible, but instead cause life to bloom far beyond what can be imagined. A parent will struggle all their life to provide a single moment of solace for their children. Countless heroes have gone before us, who names and struggles can never be known, but who nonethless have created this beauty we see around us. 

Everything else about the immediate lead up to this moment is perfect as well. Dominator is one of my favorite cartoon villains, and this is her best appearence in my view. She is both a destroyer of galaxies and someone who will take the time to crush out the littlest of hopes and life purely out of spite. She is archetypal destruction. She actually suffers her first defeat in this, the penultimate episode. The mighty Dominator, undone by the humble flower and a bit of hay fever. It's both comical and beautiful, as Sylvia puts it, hay fever is not a great long term strategy but it is hope, symbolically Dominator's defeat sets the stage for the end of the episode and the finale, showing that the great darknesses shall be undone by the nameless tiny procession of small things doing their part.

2: Jack's parents watch over him (Samurai Jack Episode 19: "Episode XIX: Jack Remembers the Past")

The setup: A Samurai dubbed "Jack" is flung into the future by the demonic Aku. He travels the land to find ways to return to the past and slay Aku. While there he comes across his home, long destroyed and decrept. He wanders across this land, lost in memories of happy times in the past until he sees people are in need and runs off.

Why I love it: The last moment of this episode is so incredibly perfect. The entire episode has cuts back and forth from Jack's vision and what he currently sees. You can see the happiness of notalgia and the pain of seeing what has become of his home. It's really hard to see this...I am a creature of habit and nostalgia and one of the hardest days of my life was leaving my childhood home. The episode is quieter then normal, allowing one to feel the heavy pain Jack is carrying. It makes one question about the seemingly infinite degrading power of time. It makes everything one can know turn to ruin. What purpose then is there then? Is there nothing that persists across time.

And then there's the last moment. As Jack leaves to help, it cuts back to a memory where it shows Jack's parents loving smiling over their son and is framed such that they are looking at Jack as an adult again running to help those in need. What persists beyond time; the greatest palaces will fade to dust, but the spirits of those that have taught will live in us, their love across time is what will raise us up. I try so hard to live up to the ideals set by those that have come before, I get the pain Jack felt, and I get why we struggle forth regardless. We carry the spirit of all those who have come before us in our actions and in our nobility. Watching this was a very bizarre experience for me, as it was one of the first western cartoons I had seen in a long time. When I saw it, it felt like, to be honest, felt like they could actually understand. 

1: Father Time's view of history (Star vs. The Forces of Evil Episode 9A: "Freeze Day")

The setup: Star Butterfly is a magical girl princess from Mewni who came to Earth to live with the Diaz family in order to for her to train. The son of the Diaz family Marco Diaz is a very responsible, overly safety conscious boy Star's age who quickly befriends her. One day they are running late causing Marco to be in a panic. To solve this dilemma, Star freezes time, only for them to find out she can't unfreeze it. They travel to the plains of time to find that freezing time has allowed Father Time to escape. They chase him across the plains of time where they come to a place where all history is recorded. An eye looks upon people there and shows their history.

Why I love it: Ever since I was young, I've loved magical girl series. Magical Girl series are at their best I find when they are shamanistic, when they are about the personal interacting with the transpersonal, the higher plane, like the concept of time. In magical girl series, the main girl usually represents something and the series will be about expressing why that thing is important in the world. At the time of this I found western culture pretty strange, to be honest. It seemed chaotic and blunt and like people took unnecesary risks a lot. 

During this episode, when the eye shows the history of Star it shows her being how we've seen her all series, she engages in adventure daily, she lives a life full of fun and danger and embraces the chaos. The eye turns to Marco and it shows him doing the same thing every day, he constantly signals to Jackie but never moves forward, trapping himself in stasis. After seeing this he says in a double meaning I love "Wow, I've been nodding a long time" referring to both the physical act of nodding which is his daily routine, and also nodding as in sleeping, as in not being awake or aware of what's going. They find Father Time, and the eye examines him and you see him exist in an eternity, a complete perfect cycle of never-ending procession. Seeing time from the perspective of time itself, you can feel the distress of perfect stasis, the pain of unending non-change, order out of control. It explains why Father Time was so delighted at sensation, he delighed even in mud, archetypally the gross and unpleasurable just because it was some sensation. I've read Dante, and Dante is called the heart of the western canon. In Dante the final deeper pit of Hell is frozen over, it is endless and complete stasis and silence and stillness, a never-ending non-change. I see reflection in this, I see that the excess of order leads one to move closer to the archetypal eternity that torments even time.

This episode showed me what Star represents and why it's important, the sense of life and adventure....moreover it showed me why the west does what it does. And it did this in my own language of magical girls. It made me question the constancy with with I try to attain. It was one of the first series, and one of the first episodes of that series, shown to be my friend Thor, a patron of the west and it's cartoons. In his spirit I see that same spirit I felt in this episode, I feel the presence of a culture that is full of creativity and imagination and a vibratic chaotic energy of life and not sterility. A spirit of youthfulness that embraces each day with hope and optimism. The Star Butterfly to my Marco Diaz as it were. 

Happy Birthday Thor. I hope that in each day we progress together, I will have that spirit with me.