Anime Lectio: Yurei Deco

                                                            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.

Do we like to forget about bad things as if they never happened, or are not happening, in order to make us feel better?  Do we also think that getting rid of these bad things, either literally or figuratively, will help other people feel better too?  What if we would rather know the truth and even fight to find it/figure it out than to believe in the lies that make people feel better?  The answers to these questions can usually be seen in interesting ways in various examples of media and other things, but the anime series Yurei Deco is one of them.

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 series Yurei Deco starts off with a young girl living in a society with her parents where your social standing is based on the amount of love you have indicated by a point system based on what you do. Doing good things is what this society likes to do, even if it means avoiding and even deleting bad things by monitoring them, which is a job some people have, including the parents of the young girl. One day, the young girl starts to have some sort of malfunction with her deco, or device that allows her to interact with others via an avatar on the internet (or something like the internet). This malfunction allows her to see things that others usually can't, like someone she first thinks is a criminal known as Phantom Zero that steals love points from others, but is actually someone that's trying to stop Phantom Zero. Instead of getting the malfunction of her deco fixed, the young girl decides not to do that in order to continue seeing what others can't, which leads to her also helping trying to stop Phantom Zero with the help of others, saving their world with their help, and changing their world with their help.

7.  Reflect on the anime

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

Besides reflecting on what to do when bad things happen, either by forgetting they ever happened by deleting these experiences or by doing something about them by changing these experiences and learning from them, it's also interesting to reflect on love as a point system. Love can't be, or at least shouldn't be, measured by points since doing such a thing is a pretty simple way of looking at and understanding love. Doing such a thing, meaning measuring love by points, is also dangerous because if points for love increase by continuing to do good things, even at the sake of ignoring bad things, which can be seen in this anime, then you'll only care about the good things you can do to increase your love. Real love requires doing something about the bad things in your life besides ignoring these bad things, like making them good things by also caring about them.

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 that we cannot only see bad things as potential good things, but also understand what love really is.