Anime Lectio: Tokyo Revengers Season One

  1. Why do Anime Lectio? 

Anime Lectio is a time for us to stop and take a breath. Between work, activities, family life, and social media, our minds are always moving. We rarely take time to contemplate and ask, why am I watching this anime? What’s the point of all this? And, how is this making me feel? 

2. Put away all distractions 

(phones, work, etc.)

We are so enslaved to things that stimulate our minds. Let this be a moment for us to free our minds, look inside of ourselves, and be at peace.

3. Deep Breathing

Take several deep breaths. Let your mind relax. If you’ve had any questions, desires, or struggles that you’ve been hiding or stuffing away, let them rise up to the surface. 

4. Open yourself to God’s Presence

Remember God places all our thoughts and desires inside of us, and He uses them to draw us closer to Himself. God gives us a community to help us understand who we are and what He is calling us to do. The faces of other people you know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence.  

5. Think About What’s on Your Mind in Relation to the Anime

Think about what’s been on your mind in relation to the anime.  The following is an example of such thoughts written by me.

Recently, my monastic community has been talking about what to do to prepare for our visitation, or evaluation of our monastery and monastic life. We are now currently working on a document about how to improve ourselves, both on an individual level and a communal level. Community can be expressed in many ways. The first season of the anime series Tokyo Revengers offers another example of this.

6. Brief and written explanation of the anime

Pay attention to how the brief and written explanation of the anime seen on this blog, or seeing the anime for yourself since that's better than any explanation, might “speak” to you or shed light on the things that have been on your minds.

The anime Tokyo Revengers starts out with the main character living a life that's not as good as it was about ten years ago. For example, in the past, he had a girlfriend, who was killed in the main character's current time. The main character wants to something about this, as well as his current life, when he gets the chance to go back into the past by getting hit by a train (goes back into the past instead of going to another world - I guess the past is another world). When he's in the past, he finds the girlfriend, but also ends up finding the girlfriend's brother, who the main character tells to protect his sister from getting killed in the future. The main character goes back to the future to find that his girlfriend is still dead despite the brother trying to save her, so they come up with plans to save her that involves the main character going back and forth in time by shaking the brother's hand and gang activity, which is what got the girlfriend killed since the main character is involved in a gang and gang violence.

7. Reflect on the anime

Has this brief and written explanation of the anime, or seeing the anime, shed any light on what's been on your mind? The following is an example of a reflection on the anime from me.

Why do people do what they do? Everyone has their own lives to live, but not everyone does this in the same way. In the anime Tokyo Revengers, there are characters involved in gangs in order to do all of this, whether they are directly involved by moving the gang forward or indirectly involved by supporting the gangs and/or learning more about them. Being involved in a gang, despite having other interests that are not gang-related, is the only option people have sometimes in order to continue their lives and make it in the world. This involvement comes at the cost of involving the ones you love and risking their lives, since there are people who will harm or even kill them in order to help themselves. As I said earlier, everyone has their own lives to live, but not everyone does this in the same way. This also involves people who will be against you because they are also living their own lives, but doing it in a way that's different. This difference can also be threatening, which is usually the case with gangs.

8. Final Prayer

Please voice any prayer intentions for friends, family, or people around the world that relate to this anime. The following is an example written by me.

Let us pray for an understanding of what it really means to belong to a gang, which is that a gang is a community, as well as an understanding that differences aren't threatening, but make life more interesting, and are things that need to be dealt with by dialogue, not violence.