The Laws of the Sun
So this time around the idea of a plot is more or less cast aside completely for the sake of just narrating stuff instead. So we get to watch basically the entire history of the universe from the creation all the way to the Ascension of Jesus Christ Buddha.
Let me begin by saying that, for a film which espouses such incredibly homogenous, simplistic and candy-coated doctrines, The Laws of the Sun feels incredibly dense and difficult to wrap one's brain around. Revelations abound as the cosmology of the Happy Science Universe is explained. El Cantare is not THE God (in spite of the fact that in The Golden Laws He was revealed to be the Father God), but rather, El Cantare is only a 9th dimensional being created by a 13th dimensional being who is in turn the Primordial Buddha/God depending on which script we're reading. Somehow, God is both an entity who has been incarnated many times and also a concept dwelling within you. Thoth, Hermes, La Mu and Buddha are not Great Spirits as I swear they were identified in The Laws of Eternity, but all physical incarnations of El Cantare. Meanwhile, Jesus is basically the same level as Isaac Newton. I realize I'm coming at that from the wrong perspective of someone born and raised in a Christian background, but there's still something insulting there.
In fact, it's sort of hard not to find the take on anything in The Laws of the Sun not insulting in one way or another. I'm not saying you have to be excessively accurate when laying out a religion, and I won't put your beliefs too hard to a historical tack, since connections between MesoAmerican civilizations and the ones described in the Book of Mormon are leaps of faith to see as it is, but seriously, (and again I confess loudly to you, oh reader, my quite real bias so that you may judge with that in mind), I feel there's a difference to be made here. Dante the poet saw much of Classical Greco Roman theology as being an unenlightened concept of Christianity, but he was simultaneously very respectful of the myths and their proper order.
Happy Science literally could not give a fuck. They lay out an entire list of people who have been physical incarnations of God and explicitly leave Jesus out. They've managed to warp Greco-Roman mythology to the point that I have no idea what they actually think about it since Hermes was married to Aphrodite and Zeus was on par with Newton.
This leads me into my next criticism: Happy Science does not care at all what any of these persons did or taught. No mention is made of the teachings of Jesus, nor of Confucius, and only barely does it seem to bother with Buddha (who is most likely the chief religious figure in the lives of the target audience.) It's just like "Oh these people all taught be good and love therefore they were good." Or something. There is nothing definite here. I feel that if you want to weave the religious beliefs of all mankind together into a greater tapestry you can and should do a much better job than just "everybody who said be a good person to the right, please." I mean Hell, you have Moses AND Jesus, and their two teachings are interlocked. You could bother explaining that.
It's even more baffling, though, with characters like Zeus. As far as Gods go, Zeus was hardly one for teaching people morals. He was almost King before God, rather than God before King. I'm sure Hermes: Winds of Love will touch on the crazy Happy Science version of Greek theology, but in the mean time I'm just left sort of speechless.
The most amazing thing is, though, that after I've gone through all these movies I feel as if I have learned nothing about what the Happy Science religion really believes. From a stand point of Cosmology, sure. I know what they think about the after life, about the interaction of Man and Deity throughout history, about how they believe the future will play out, and how they believe that a man living today is the Reincarnation of Buddha (which is, to them, the incarnation of El Cantare who is, in turn, more or less the only God relevant to humanity). But beyond that their teachings are somehow completely lacking.
Time and time again in these movies they say "Person X was a very knowledgeable in religion" "Person X was great at religion" "Person X was great at teaching religion." And yet, in all honesty, aside from how Buddha shows up once a movie to deliver a speech about being nice to everybody at the end, I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone teach religion. And it isn't like they haven't had opportunities to show me, either! I mean you have Moses, show me how Moses taught the Law. You have Jesus, show me how Jesus taught the Gospel. You have Buddha, show me how Buddha taught people that worth came from action and not from class. You have Confucius show me some of that.
But no, instead it's "Hey did you know that Hermes wasn't the messenger of the Gods? He was a great teacher of religion!" Okay great how- NO IT IS TIME FOR A TIME SKIP AWAY WE GOOOOOOOOOO. And it's grating to me because I've spent a year or two ministering and I'm just left asking "So what exactly does being good at teaching religion entail?" I've had so many teachers and I've taught so many people in my short, short time that the question is super, super nebulous to me.
But I digress. This is all more rambling and ranting and criticism of the Happy Science Religion than any of you doubtless want to see, and I apologize for it since I am almost certain that my impartiality seeps through it in numerous places.
So let's move on to some other aspects, shall we?
Namely: SPACE RELIGION.
Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I actually found the space parts kinda interesting, because there are a lot of Mormons who choose to envision Mormon cosmology in a sort of sci-fi twist. Most notably, the concept of life on different planets spawning from a singular one is sort of similar to Battlestar Galactica, for instance (the original having had a fair amount of Latter Day Saint influence).
The fall of great civilizations is the nearest thing to a theme I can tell that the movie has: that the world is visited by great teachers of spiritual worth who enlighten civilizations and raise them up, only to be ignored and to have said civilizations crumble afterward. I can hardly reject this principle since I believe a form of it myself. That said, I must confess that the inclusion of both Mu and Atlantis seemed a bit odd (though it did prompt a trip to Wikipedia during which I learned that Zealandia is a real life sunken continent!)
Ultimately this movie made me realize why I think that The Rebirth of Buddha is the best work that the Happy Science Anime Department has put out. While The Laws of Eternity and The Golden Laws both made pretenses of having plots, The Rebirth of Buddha actually had a fairly solid one which moved at a decent pace. The Rebirth of Buddha also felt much more focused thematically: The heroine learns about the Rebirth of Buddha, as well as the need to tell others the truth rather than hide it for fear of repercussions (which was a theme of the film.) She and her not-boyfriend developed over the course of the film and by the end things felt like a message had been conveyed and a plot had been told and the preachiness had been pretty damn relaxed.
Meanwhile the Laws of the Sun is the polar opposite. It tries to tell too much, too fast, with no plot to speak of. The Laws of the Sun is the natural conclusion of the direction that The Golden Laws went, but that doesn't make it great. I get why it was done, but as a film it was far, far less enjoyable this way around.
I think that, fun as it is to sit back and laugh about Happy Science's crazy Sci-Fi twists (Dinosaurs were hunted to extinction by Cat People from Space), the film ultimately suffers from the same problem as the Golden Laws: it takes a "History's Greatest Religious Hits" approach to telling it's story, dumps several thousand gallons of sugar water in the middle and gives you the exceptionally half-assed, reductionist moral of "be nice to others or civilization will fall."
kada, LOL.
