I came across this unusual Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Episode recently. It’s called The Magma Giant, Emperor of Hell, and our five favorite bird-themed superheroes go up against a unique foe in it.
In an alternate version of America, a young sculptress is carrying on her father’s legacy of carving the face of Jesus into Mount Rushmore. She vows to finish it, and carve the likeness of the Virgin Mary besides him. Meanwhile, a research base working on an anti-pollution tool is attacked by a rather familiar-faced giant lava monster:
Yes, it’s Jesus. Apparently Galactor has set up base behind the Jesus face on Mount Rushmore, and is using the head as a basis to create its giant magma monster. It travels across the world through a series of networked caves linking volcanoes, and it successfully destroys the research station. The science ninja team arrives on the scene, and investigates the heart of the fiery volcano, only to be driven off by magma Jesus. After it retreating when it sees them by the water, the team wonders about them, leading Joe to realize he recognizes the face.
They link the magma monster to Mount Rushmore. Hurrying there, they encounter the sculptress, who denies she’s with Galactor. A brief battle ensues, with the Gatchaman wrecking the facility and destroying the monster once and for all by luring it to the ocean.
In the end, the sculptress vows to keep on carving, for the sake of peace.
This awakens a new fighting spirit in the hearts of the Gatchamen, and the episode ends.
It’s a brief episode, and surprisingly doesn’t make explicit any real symbolism or point. You could make a subtle point about the danger of grafting Christianity onto public government with this episode; it enables Galactor/evil people to sneak in, hollow it out, and use the Savior’s likeness for their own ends. However, the episode actually doesn’t make this point at all, and the girl continues to add Jesus and Mary to the mountain as a symbol of peace. Even a point about religion destroying beneficial science isn’t made; there’s no anti-religion tirade in the episode at all.
This makes it unusual, once you get past the absurdity of giant molten Jesus. The world has been so politicized that you naturally assume that any work of art concerning Christianity will have a political edge to it. This one really doesn’t. Of course, you need to be careful about reading too much into a 22 minute episode of seventies anime anyways, but there aren’t many works of art that just show Christianity as a natural part of the world, as opposed to either pushing for it or against it. Everything is political now, even the simple act of saying you’ll pray for someone.
One of the goals of my writing is to make Christianity seem natural like that. Not pushing for it, not arguing, but saying “Hey, belief in God and prayer is just as much a part of our world as not.” I think we argue when we should be reminding people of the unnatural climate we live in, that makes a huge part of human experience unsayable in the public sphere and handled like nitroglycerin. People are so concerned about abuses that they forget the use; so focused on people being harmed by prayer that they forget its natural to pray at all. This shouldn’t be.
It just takes a funky seventies anime to remind me of that.