Anime Roulette #5: The Laws of the Sun

One of the reasons why I love anime so much is because there is, seemingly, anime about everything. American animation is so dominated by a few select styles that we can often forget, or fail to assume, that animation can be used to tell literally any kind of story, whether it's an insane violence epic or a touching exploration of transgenderism. For the most part, this is positive - until we realize that the unbound freedom anime offers us can even be used to make ridiculous propaganda videos for Japanese cults. Which is, of course, what I'm going to be talking about this time.

The Laws of the Sun is, literally, a propaganda film made by a religious organization called, I shit you not, Happy Science. Founded in 1986, the movement believes its founder, Ryuho Okawa, is the reincarnation of a celestial being called El Cantare, who's apparently the true form of the Old Testament God. In the past, El Cantare incarnated himself as The Buddha - in his present form as Okawa, he is able to channel the spirits of such religious leaders as Jesus, Muhammad, and Confucius. As if that weren't enough, Okawa can apparently use his powers to speak to the spirit of Margaret Thatcher for political advice, because of course that's a thing he can do.

Bomb China - Reagan agrees with me.

Obviously, their beliefs are nuts, and it would take an entire entry in itself to completely unpack their theology. Thankfully, this movie makes it so that I don't have to - the plot is essentially a retelling of the Happy Science creation myths.

El Cantare, as it turns out, isn't the highest god in the Happy Science pantheon - the Primordial God, as he's called, first appeared 80 billion years ago, and he's described in this movie as a "13th dimensional cosmic spirit." Yes, 13th - this is the guy that's responsible for the creation of the universe, and as such, the first part of the movie consists largely of wonderfully animated sequences of cosmic activity.

Honestly, this movie deserves credit for its consistently high animation quality - though made by a fringe religious group, they somehow convinced Group TAC, the studio responsible for awesome shows like Touch and the Street Fighter Movie, to animate it. How in the hell they worked that out is beyond me - the upside is that when shit really starts going bananas (which doesn't take long at all), we're able to watch the insanity in beautifully animated form.

Like I said, the insanity begins very quickly - El Cantare, we're told, is a 9th Dimensional Cosmic Spirit that was originally born as El Miore, guardian spirit of the planet Venus.

I'm sure you guys remember this from high school history class, but Venus, we're told, was originally the home to a hyper-advanced civilization that makes the Galactic Republic from Star Wars look like a motherfucking collection of tribal huts. I mean, look at how goddamn beautiful this is!

But TJ, you say, the planet Venus is completely uninhabitable. Don't worry, the movie itself is quick to point this out - at a certain point, El Miore and the other Cosmic Spirits realize that perhaps building a civilization on a planet comprised of dangerous volcanoes maybe isn't the best idea. It's alright! They'll just transport the population of Venus to this new planet called Earth - El Miore will continue to be their guardian spirit, this time under the name El Cantare, while a few other spirits will come in to guide the new Earth civilization in the right direction, one of those spirits, of course, being Jesus Christ.

What, you thought I was joking?

All of this literally takes place in the first 15 minutes of the film. And even though I've barely scratched the surface, I think you can clearly see what makes this movie so baffling. Every religious system, whether it be Christianity or Ancient Greek polytheism, is founded on a group of stories - for many of these systems, these stories are so well told, so fundamentally archetypal, that even those who don't believe can get something out of them. The stories in The Laws of the Sun don't feel mythic, archetypal, or well told in the slightest. They want to be told as sincere history, yet the things we see are so fucking ridiculous that nobody in their right mind will take them as history. A super civilization on Venus is the least of our problems here - are we supposed to believe that a 13th and 9th Dimensional Cosmic Spirit didn't have the foresight to understand that building a human civilization on a toxic/volcanic planet may not be the best idea? These are supposed to be their supreme beings, and they're doing stupid shit like this! They wanted it both ways - to have a crazy Venusian civilization and to have the atmosphere of the planet be recognizable - but it just doesn't fucking work. It's dumb, no way around it.

You know what else is dumb? What happens afterwards. So all the Venusians are living on Earth now, but the civilization is selfish and corrupt, even though El Cantare and Space Jesus are supposed to be tag-teaming to get this shit done. Their corruption peaks when they brutally kill all the dinosaurs, which happens, I swear to El Cantare, by having all the humans ride around on hoverboards and shoot them with lazer beams.

Thankfully, the spirits have thousands and thousands of years to get this human civilization thing right. The rest of the movie is basically the progression of human life on Earth from our dinosaur-lazering low point to where we are now. Of course, because Happy Science has such a firm grasp of history, that progression may look a bit different to what we've been told in the past. We start with Satan, who is, of course, an corrupt spirit originally from the Large Magellanic Cloud.

We move forward through some of the great empires of the world - the most important, of course, being those based on the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis. These empires were lead by El Cantare himself, who took the human forms of wise men called La Mu and Thoth. Also, quick note - the sign of any great empire is pyramid power.

From there, we spend a bit of time in the Incas, in Greece, and finally in India, where El Cantare took on the form of Buddha. This was, we're told, his final and most important human form until his present incarnation in Ryuho Okawa - as such, a good portion of the movie focuses on Buddha's story. Unfortunately, this was probably the most boring portion of the movie as well - honestly, if I want to see the story of Buddha done right, Osamu Tezuka beat you to it decades ago, Happy Science.

Note: Osamu Tezuka is the only person on the planet who can wear a beret and not instantly become an insufferable douche, because Osamu Tezuka is the motherfucking God of Manga and he can do what he wants. Alright? Good.

As you can see, I've basically given up on talking about this movie in any sort of sane way. It's impossible to review this like an actual movie, because the things we're meant to take seriously are so far beyond what is acceptable for most people that there's no point in even trying. When faced with something this absurd, all we can do is point out that it exists, and there are thousands, if not millions, of people who take it seriously. That, and try your best to be entertained.

I'll be honest - if animation, as an art form, succeeds or fails based on how entertaining it is, then this is one of the most successful pieces of animation I've ever seen. You literally have no fucking clue what's coming next, and when it hits you that they're going to be spending five minutes blasting dinosaurs with lazers, you laugh like a madman. This would be such a great thing to watch in a group of your intoxicated friends - seriously, anyone watching this needs to buy like three bottles of whiskey and just watch this thing straight though. If you aren't entertained, I'll give you a dollar. Seriously.

One last thing before I stop - though this movie never got an official release in the US, Happy Science did produce an English dub of it. This is noteworthy for two reasons: it actually isn't terrible, and, though I have no way to confirm this, I'm like 95% sure that El Cantare is voiced by Crispin Freeman. I'm dead fucking serious - the same guy who voiced Alucard from Hellsing seems to be the voice of El Cantare. Somebody watch this clip from Hellsing Ultimate and then watch The Laws of the Sun, and tell me if I'm right or if I'm just delusional.

Is this not the same guy? I want to believe it is, if for no other reason than for its poetic beauty. If Morgan Freeman has become the unofficial voice of God among American actors, then it's perfectly fitting that Crispin Freeman is the unofficial voice of God among American voice actors.  And hell, if the voice of El Cantare really is Crispin Freeman's voice, then maybe the theology of Happy Science isn't as awful as I was lead to believe.