Anime Lectio: To Be Hero X Season 1

                                                        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. 

Trust is something that people have in others when they believe in them.  Fear is something that people have when they don't just believe in others, but also themselves.  Trust is usually seen as a good thing while fear is usually seen as a bad thing due to how these ideas are usually understood.  But what if what you could do depended on these ideas?  An answer to this question can be seen in the first season of the series To Be Hero X.

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 hero supposedly kills himself, someone nearby who happens to look like the hero who supposedly killed himself becomes this hero, which leads to this person living a new life based on who this hero "was."  This also leads to this hero becoming a new hero, learning about other people who become heroes due to trust from other people giving them the power to be heroes, which involves questionable hero organizations that do anything to make what they want to happen happen, and using the substance of fear (not just an idea, but an actual substance) to try to control how this happens.  All of this leads to a tournament arc to decide the greatest hero, or Hero X, out of ten candidates.

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.

The first season of To Be Hero X can be a little difficult to follow and it doesn't always focus on why certain things happen, but in addition to the second season addressing what happens in the first season based on people being able to vote for what can happen in the second season, what interests me the most about this series is the use of trust and fear. A hero's power doesn't just depend on the trust they have from other people, but this society in general seems to operate/depend on trust. For example, getting an internship depends on your trust value, which does and doesn't make sense because while being trusted to do something is important, it's also important that trust is built as you do something in order to learn to trust others and be trusted. Fear can also be used to control this, as well as anything else, but it can get out of hand when relying on it too much and/or when it can't be controlled.

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 understand what trust and fear actually are.