Anime Lectio: The Beginning After the End (TBATE) 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. 

If you could change anything about your life, would you do it?  This usually involves doing something to create the change in your current life instead of being literally being reborn as a new person with the memories of your previous life.  Examples of literally being reborn, or something like it involving living a new life as a new person in a new world, are seen in anime and/or manga a lot, like in the first season of the series The Beginning After the End (TBATE).

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.

After a king dies, he's literally reborn as a child with magic powers in a world where magic exists.  While he's a newborn now with parents to care for him physically, mentally he still has the mind of the king he was in his previous life, so he tries to learn what he can about this world while still being raised by his new parents.  Seeing his talents with magic and fighting, his new parents enlist the help of their former adventuring party to help him with these talents, but while traveling back to their home after they find this party (or something like that), they are attacked by bandits.  The child supposedly sacrifices himself to save his new mom, who is pregnant at the time, but while his parents think he's dead, he actually ends up having adventures that involve finding a dragon-like creature and ending up training with an elf after making an elf friend and helping her get back to her village because of what happens when he finds the dragon-like creature.  After this training, the child goes back to where his family is now, which involves new adventures leading into further training for him, which is what the first season ends with.

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.

As I said in my reflection before the brief and written explanation is given, stories like TBATE are seen in anime and/or manga a lot. While this one has a lot of complaints in regards to how the first season of the anime looks, which I usually don't care about unless I think the story is also bad (a lot like other ones, but still good), and something like it can't really happen, I still think a story like this is important because of the question that I start the other reflection with. Changing anything about your life if you can do that is important for everyone based on things like who they are, what they want to and/or should do, and why.

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 can change our lives based on how we could do that.