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The Gospel According to Mewtwo

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Nekusagi

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With Good Friday/Easter upon us, I thought I'd point out some of the interesting use of Jesus imagery I've noticed in the Mewtwo storyline. A lot of the scenes (from MSB and MR) are extremely reminiscent of scenes from the New Testament. For example:

-The destruction of the lab where Mewtwo is created, and his rage that brings it about, is much like Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple

-When TR and Pikachu crash into Purity Canyon in MR, the Pikachu clone nearly gets into a fight with Ash's Pikachu. Mewtwo stops Clone Pika, telling him, "Fighting is useless". For some reason, this reminded me of Jesus telling off one of his disciples in Gethsemane after he cut a guard's ear off ("Those who live by the sword shall die by it," or something like that)

-The entire first part of MSB, as well as an early scene in PC in MR (where Giovanni asks Mewtwo to return to him from the helicopter), could easily be compared to the temptation in the desert.

- And of course, there's the blatant use of crucifixion imagery in MR, when Giovanni pretty much crucifies Mewtwo on a force field. Following that scene, Mewtwo basically gets resurrected (by being thrown into the spring), and defeats (okay, wipes the memory of) Giovanni.

Keep in mind that I came up with this theory at 2 in the morning, after watching MR at a friend's sleepover. And my mind does weird things late at night. So if I offend you or just weird you out, please don't flame me.

Still, anime borrows from Christian imagery all the time, and I just thought this would be a neat thing to point out.
 
I've heard of making gods but Giovanni took it to the nth level. :/

Though, wasn't there a lot of talk about God and creation in MSB (cut out by 4Kids)?
 
From a religious pamplet on Dogasu's site:

Kids everywhere love to catch Pokémon and train them to fight. The highly-charged Pikachu, fire-belching Charizard and scrappy Mewtwo battle their competitors for honor and “trainer badges.” They are found along with all the other Pokémon in video games, toys, a movie and everyone's favorite—Pokémon: The Card Game. It's really cool to collect Pokémon, study their strengths, and battle them against rival trainers. Kids try to capture each one to become the “number one Pokémon master in the world.”

Playing in the Pokémon world is really fun. It's too bad they are only pretend. How awesome it would be to have friends with special powers and strengths way beyond our own! But wait! Have you ever thought about God and all the awesome power he must have? He made the huge oceans, immense solar system and billions of different people, all with his own hands. He even made you. Just like Mewtwo searched for his purpose in life (in the movie), God created you for a specific reason. There is one thing above all else he wants you to do in your quest. He wants you to meet his son, Jesus.

Jesus is really powerful too. He healed disease, raised people back to life and calmed violent storms. He's even forgiven tough criminals and gang members and transformed them into nice people. The most awesome thing Jesus ever did was to come back to life. When Jesus chose to die on the cross to pay for our sins, his arch-enemy Satan thought he could take over the world. But then Jesus rose from the grave with even greater power because death could not hold him. Jesus really beat Satan. Beat him bad.

Jesus Christ is the most powerful Master in the universe, and he lives in the hearts of all the people who trust in him. And each time a new person trusts him, his power goes into them! You can have the immense power and love of Jesus living in your heart, too. Your love will be so powerful that you will be able to do great things for God. Like tell other people about Jesus (train them), and help his army grow even more. Then when you die someday (which everybody does), Jesus will take you to heaven to live with him forever. Cool! For Jesus to live in your heart, just tell him you are sorry for the bad things you've done and thought about. Especially those things that hurt other people or their feelings. Those all make God unhappy, but he forgives us when we tell him we believe Jesus died and rose again.

Jesus promises to come and live in your heart if you pray a prayer like this: Dear Jesus, I want you as my true Master. I believe you died and rose again so I could be forgiven and have you live in my heart. Someday I will live with you in heaven for all eternity! Thank you, Jesus! Amen.

In the Bible Jesus said: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all” (John 10:28-9).
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I also rember one quote by Lucario (well, a english translation) that reminded me of some religious song, but I forgot what it was?
 
Yoo gotta love the Google ads.

"JESUS DIDN'T EXIST?"

Hehe... just pointing that out.

But wasn't the only mention of God (concerning Mewtwo) in the Birth of Metwo CD Drama? I remember Aii saying something about being the clones' parent or... something. o.o
 
OMG my religious aunt mailed me that pamplet! At first I thought she wanted to show me something Pokemon-y but it turns out she was trying to convert me... once again!
Interesting..., btw, I could show you guys the actual pamplet I got. But I'd have to make the blurryness disappear, my camera tends to do that.
 
Weird, but nevertheless seems quite familiar. Floods are quite common apparently. It happened in Pokemon Heroes too.

Anyway, I think its coincidental, but it definately fits.

And as for those religious extremists who think Pokemon is that of the devil, they can just go away, 'cause honestly I dun want a part of it. And that's coming from a (relatively) devout Catholic. >_>
 
Floods aren't common in Pokemon Tsunami are..since Japan sees a lot of those. Nothing religious about it.

Anyways, you can find religion in everything... Jesus wasn't the first persont o go out and discover who they were...
 
I'm with Dogasu on this one. This all seems like it was intentional, unlike Narnia.
 
That's interesting, but I've never thought that Mewtwo was supposed to be a Christ-like figure. He's got god-like strength, sure, like the legendary pokemon, but I nth that the Christian symbolism wasn't done on purpose.

nekusagi-chan said:
- And of course, there's the blatant use of crucifixion imagery in MR, when Giovanni pretty much crucifies Mewtwo on a force field.
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I'm no expert on Japanese culture, but one mini-convention I went to had a speaker who did a small workshop on mythology and symbolism in anime, and one of the points that was brought up was the use of the crucifixion image. The speaker said that if a person/creature/robot etc. was held up in that way, like Mewtwo in the lazer-ball thing, then it symbolized that they were in a situation that they were trapped in and couldn't get out of, not trying to make a connection to Jesus or religion. The example the speaker used was Cheza (sp?) in Wolf's Rain when she's inside her artifical womb (or whatever that big tank that she was in at the beginning of the series was). The second thing I thought of was Mewtwo cause I had been wondering about that too ^^
 
Alyssa Myuu said:
I'm no expert on Japanese culture, but one mini-convention I went to had a speaker who did a small workshop on mythology and symbolism in anime, and one of the points that was brought up was the use of the crucifixion image. The speaker said that if a person/creature/robot etc. was held up in that way, like Mewtwo in the lazer-ball thing, then it symbolized that they were in a situation that they were trapped in and couldn't get out of, not trying to make a connection to Jesus or religion. The example the speaker used was Cheza (sp?) in Wolf's Rain when she's inside her artifical womb (or whatever that big tank that she was in at the beginning of the series was). The second thing I thought of was Mewtwo cause I had been wondering about that too ^^
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Ah, yes, I've seen it in other places, too. Like in Lunar 2 Eternal Blue... when Lucia appears in the crucifixion pose, it actually makes me think more of a scarecrow than Jesus. Like Zophar's trying say to Hiro and the others, "Look, here's your super goddess chick covered in dark crystals by my power. She's helpless. If I could do this to her, what do you think I could do to you? Get away from my castle. Go on, shoo. You're better off just sitting at home and waiting for me to destroy everything." And then the heros throw caution to the wind, raid his partially digested castle, defeat him twice, save Lucia, and then have one pathetic final battle against skull or something versus Hiro and Lucia (who just gives support magic to Hiro, mostly).

I mean, I don't know how many of you even know what I'm talking about, but I really don't think they intended Lucia to be a Christ figure. One could argue she is one unintentionally or something, I guess, but she doesn't particularly seem like one.
 
I read somewhere that it was around 1% a few years ago and I think the number has increased since then.
 
The Big Al said:
Though, wasn't there a lot of talk about God and creation in MSB (cut out by 4Kids)?
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Not a lot,just in the beginning really.But it still has more impact than anything that was said in the dub.There's actually an english sub for the first couple of minutes of the movie uploaded on Youtube.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=8bTUjKZw27w&search=mewtwo



Then there's the whole thing where Groudon is based on the Behemoth and Kyogre is based on the Leviathan.


And yeah,the crucifixion scene was pretty blatant in Mewtwo Returns.

mewtwo_cross4.jpg



lol I'm also Catholic but I've never read the Bible. ^^;
 
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