Forum - View topicMaria the Virgin Witch (TV).
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2866 |
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I thought last week accelerated the pace a bit, turns out this week's episode goes up a notch.
I haven't seen a schemer so effective at exploiting unexpected opportunities for a long time, but bishop Bernard certainly knows how to push the right buttons when faced with Maria's supernatural abilities. Joseph spoiler[might well be the undoing of Maria with his unshakeable faith in encouraging Maria to do what she thinks is right ], but his story doesn't look like it's going to end with him being a mere bystander to events. I wonder what spoiler[kind of gimmicks Galfa's new toy is equipped with, it's certainly good enough to let him easily kill a skilled compatriot armed with an interestingly designed zweihander ] ケルヌンノス spoiler[shadowy being who showed up at Maria's house unexpectedly ] is the Celtic God of the Hunt according to http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ケルヌンノス Coupled with the reappearance of the Valkyrie in this episode and the mythological framework of Maria's world setting starts looking less simple than "monotheistic God standing back and letting humans do their thing". |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2866 |
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I didn't quite nail it a few weeks ago, but the relationship between spoiler[Maria's powers and the Horned God is still unclear ] |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3653 |
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Cernunnos was identified by name the first time he (it?) showed up, and the monotheism as the literal mythology of the world went away the first time the Valkyries showed up. All of them seem to sit back and let humans do their own thing, though.
Interestingly, it's important to the nature gods and the Church that people believe in them, but not to the Christian God (thus far). I think the show letting each of them play by their own rules. |
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HaruhiToy
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Could you explain more about this? I thought it was pretty clear that the Christian god was trying to replace the pagan/polytheist deities with itself as the head of a monotheist dominant religion. Witches such as Maria have their super-natural powers rooted in the powers of the old deities, and therefore are declared anathema to the Church and exterminated whenever they have the power to do so. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2866 |
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No word from the Christian God personally, but doesn't Michael keep hammering home the point of "letting humans be masters of their own destiny" or somesuch? Michael has problems with out-of-control witches, but there's been no interaction at all with the Valkyrie or the Celtic Pantheon. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3653 |
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HaruhiToy,
The Church wants to replace pagan belief with Christian belief (they wouldn't want to replace pagan deities because they wouldn't believe they exist). While historically the "witch" concept arose out of pagan beliefs, the idea of witches being related to the devil was a way around the awkwardness of condemning the powers of nonexistent deities. Officially, the Church said there was no such thing as a witch for a time, until they became in league with the devil. As a result, in Church doctrine, witches aren't pagans (i.e. nonbelievers), they're heretics, though I'm not sure whether that would be the case at the exact time this show takes place. But Christian God (here represented by Michael, and clearly presented as separate from the Church) doesn't seem to have any problem with Maria being a heretic or pagan, or even practicing witchcraft with subtlety. And his complaints about her being flashy seem less about making people's belief in God waver, and more about not disrupting God's plan for the people. EDIT: One more thing to note is that Maria's coat has those yellow crosses on it. I don't think she's literally meant to be a Cathar, but there are a lot of parallels between her attitude towards the Church, war, sexism, etc. and Catharism. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Good explanation. I had noted before that Michael seemed oddly less hostile to Maria than the Church even though it was pretty clear he could stomp her at will. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23813 |
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Wow, this is a freakin' great show. I love the subtlety and complexity of everyone's portrayal. No ridiculous Embryo-sama style villains here, thank God. And the background art is truly mouth-watering. I plan to own the crap outta this show. Good pickup, Funi!
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15487 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 8
Is it just me, or does there seem to be a hint that thespoiler[ priest is using drugs which could be both pain killer and make the grandmother more susceptible]. The medicine was spoiler[little more than a trick that made her think she was better]. Interestingly it seems that Cernunnos spoiler[might have actually changed since his heyday into not only being weaker but perhaps demon like]. He mentioned that the spoiler[goblin people have changed since people forgot them], and I wonder if Cernunnos' spoiler[change is from his anger at loss of power, or if he has changed to fit the depiction of the devil he has been misinterpreted as]. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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It seemed pretty clear what was going on. Martha was spoiler[drugged to deaden her pain and possibly feel euphoric]. That's what was behind the fuzzy vision. Maybe even a hallucinogen. So she was very easy to manipulate in that state. On top of that she may have realized that the Church would have taken it out on her family if she didn't "repent." That was the MO of the Inquisition after all. She will probably die sooner but no doubt the Church will declare that even their medicines and miracles could not overcome the assault of the witch's poisons that Martha took for so long. Anne is the real victim. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3653 |
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After giving it a bit more thought, the whole spoiler[send Galfa to rape Maria] thing is not just twisted in the normal sense, but it's thematically twisted in three different ways, which I love.
1. God put the virginity requirement on her power as a way of forcing her to reflect and think about her choices. spoiler[By sending a rapist, it completely borks God's plan, because it's no longer about reflection and choices.] 2. Bernard is not just committing a monstrous act for his own good. He, a member of the Church, is seeing a rule that God set as an opportunity to be exploited by committing a monstrous act. 3. By the same token, from the other side, God has created a situation which has the unintended but foreseeable consequence of leading men to commit this evil, which is a lot like what Maria is constantly chastised for. (Although, depending on how "God" God is in this universe, maybe He sees what's coming) |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Unless, of course God's plan encompassed more than just Maria's discipline.
It is a pretty good example of what happens when people with political power believe that they are doing it For God and God Is On Their Side. More on this below.
From the Christian Creator's point of view that's not a bug it is a feature. Bernard put it pretty well himself when he readily admitted that he had a Devil within him as did everybody and that was the reason we all needed God. Back to the reason I posted: It has occurred to me more and more lately that if I were teaching high school history and civics that this anime would be ideal for teaching students why the founders of the U.S. and many other advanced nations insisted on separating Church and State. What Bernard is doing is exactly what happens when politicians use religion to endorse their actions. Yet we have far too many people here who believe that we should turn the U.S. into a "Christian Nation" as was intended by the Founding Fathers (it wasn't.) They see nothing wrong with that. We even have a state Supreme Court Chief Justice defying the federal courts based on religious scripture (and not for the first time). Right wing politicians routinely invoke religion as their guide for their policies and these days to justify new war. These people and those who follow them are raising kids to think like them (homeschooling anyone?). Most of them are decent people seeking stability, but have no idea what the consequences would be if they got their way. Are there any educators reading here who think MtVW could actually be used that way? |
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Rogueywon
Posts: 252 |
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Ah, so this is where the "fun" discussion of this series went. The episode review thread has destroyed my will to live. I used - more than 15 years ago now (yikes!) - to be a postgrad lecturer in history (different period - late Roman Republic/Early Empire in my case, but the same principles apply and the question of whether historical fiction could/should be used in teaching was a perennial one). And no, the show wouldn't have been suitable as an educational tool. Partly that's because of the level I was teaching at; first year undergrads (the most advanced bunch I was ever let loose on) need more sophisticated teaching materials than this. But also partly because of some choices made in determining the narrative. Before I go further, note that what I am about to say is not a criticism of the show as entertainment (where it is undoubtedly one of the better shows this season). It's a criticism of it as a teaching aid. The problem with the show as a teaching aid is how it is framed. There's a lot of good stuff in here; a (fairly) realistic depiction of late-Middle Ages France, for one. But having Maria as the perspective-character means that it can't really be used to teach about that world. Because Maria is, in essence, an early 21st Century teenager transposed across the centuries. Her viewpoints and values are those of the early 21st century. She has a particular pacifism that would have been unthinkable until the 20th century, plus a whole range of other attitudes that just don't align with the setting. Taking the show as entertainment, it does no harm - it's a lot of fun to play around with the medieval world from a modern perspective. But there is no value in teaching history as a simple morality lesson about how people today are more moral than people were in the past (not least because it overlooks how spectacularly fortunate anybody born in the West after 1945 has been in their upbringing). The relationship between Church and politics in the late Middle Ages is a massively complex subject. It's not my (former) specialty, so I won't go into the details, but at the very best, Maria is giving you the Cliff Notes version. It's highly sanitized compared to the reality; the massacre at Béziers (kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out) happened more than a hundred years before this series began and things hadn't gotten much kinder since. Anybody living as Maria did (and without her magical powers) would have been slaughtered for heresy by this point. As would her associates. The one thing in the show that it wouldn't be ridiculous to use as a teaching aid is its depictions of late medieval armies. The rag-tag combinations of barely-armed peasantry, professional mercenaries and elite knights is spot on, and a pleasant antidote to the "fields of streaming banners" impression that people take from the Lord of the Rings movies and the like. That works. The rest of it is of no use as a teaching aid, other than as a crude morality play. None of which means it isn't a good show. Because it is. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2866 |
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I humbly request your expert opinion on whether the primitive arquebus/firearm weapon portrayed last week as well as the artificial arm debut this week are anachronistic or historically accurate relative to the timescale. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2866 |
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I'll stick my head out and see what comes from the following replies. Not expecting any. 1. Is it God or the Archangel Michael? Is the presumption that Michael is an absolutely loyal servant of the monotheistic God he works under feasible? His treatment of Ezekiel after her "miss" doesn't seem to be consistent with the ultimatum given at the start of the series. Furthermore, I seem to be missing the chain of logic linking a human conspiring for another to rape someone else a part of "God's Plan". 2. There's religious belief and there's cynicism. Disposing of tools which no longer serve the purpose you're scheming for is an old stratagem common across many cultures. 3. Given this particular monotheistic God doesn't really care what happens down below so long as red lines aren't crossed (Maria's actions being one such red line), then anything which resolves the problem is probably ok since wrong actions are apparently able to cancel out each other. |
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