1. Autumn Grayson says:

    One thing that sort of bugged and confused me when I first started watching anime was that many of the Japanese creatures, such as yokai, were translated to ‘demon’ on many occasions, never mind that yokai aren’t anything like demons. But then I guess as time went on I realized that other cultures might actually traditionally use the word demon, but it means something different than in Christianity. I still disagree with the translation in application to most Japanese creatures, though. In fact, I don’t know why they bother translating it at all. If they’re yokai, just call them yokai.

    I find that this issue even affects how anime writes demonic chars that should be more in line with Christianity, though. There’s that whole ‘devouring human souls’ trope, for instance. It’s interesting, but typical at this point. As you said, following reasonably close with what the Bible implies about demons and angels actually makes for a more unique story in many cases.

What do you think?