There’s this weird trope, which I have now come across in several examples of weird-dark Japanese fantasy, and never even slightly in anything from any other cultural source:
The gestalt masses of humanity, as a collective, made a wish. Because of their corrupt and sinful nature, they wished for something really fucking terrible. This wish was granted, and gave rise to a super-creepy evil entity that serves as the Metaphysical Big Bad of the narrative, standing in for “everything that is wrong with society.”
This is specifically something much stronger than the “so long as there is darkness in men’s hearts, I will survive” trope. The demon isn’t just feeding off of human badness, or reflecting it, in some nebulous way; it rules precisely because, at least on some level, people want it to rule and called it into being so that it might do so.
I’m not going to go into details, because in almost every case it would involve a huge spoiler for the work in question, but this pattern perfectly describes:
* Persona 5
* Berserk
* Fate/zero
* Paranoia Agent
…and even, to a lesser extent, Revolutionary Girl Utena.
(I feel like I’m missing a couple of salient examples here, but these will do for now.)
I am not sure what to make of this. It bespeaks a sort of reflexive super-ultra-cynicism about humanity, a contempt for the People, that I think of as being very much at odds with the standard fantasy feeling of “the nameless faceless People are the source of all legitimacy and virtue, which is why the good guys have to fight and die for them.” Is it just, like, a random cached concept that cropped up in one particular place? Is this a reflection of weirdo Japanese auteurs feeling really hemmed-in by a more-than-usually conformist culture?
Is there a TVTropes page for this that I can’t find?
I have no answers right now, just questions. But…it seemed worth making note of the pattern.
Give us Barabbas!
[content note: spoilers for most of those series which @balioc mentioned above, as well as Personas 3 and 4]
Honestly, these seem to me like psychodrama more than condemnation of the gestalt, at least on some level. It’s not a lack of faith in the nebulous category of the People, but a specific confrontation of some externalized, Jungian human quality (appropriately for Persona with its Jungian metaphysics, and a less explicit ditto for the Fate series and its heroic archetypes), one independent of the times. The “born from the gestalt’s wish” part is less about sin and more an indication that the demon is a general human weakness; at least a few of your examples involve protagonists confronting the principle represented by the demon in themselves (SEES in Persona 3 and the question of suicide / loss via Nyx; the IT in Persona 4 confronting themselves as complex people via Shadows).
They don’t refer to structures of a specific society (beyond the fact that they’re necessarily in the context of Japan, which, yeah, that’s definitely a non-trivial trend), they’re embodiments of psychological phenomena – Nyx is the death drive and desire for suicide, Izanami is the desire to reject difficult truths, Angra Mainyu is the desire for a scapegoat/rejection of heroism as an enterprise, Li’l Slugger is the desire to blame your suffering on a nebulous, unstoppable Other in which you are not blamed for anything, etc.
But Persona 5 kind of breaks the trend (as I perceive it); none of the protagonists are tempted by the idea of surrendering to power. The Phantom Thieves and your Confidants are explicitly non-participants in humanity’s ignorance and worship of the Holy Grail. And P5′s popularity poll, emphasis on fame and public approval, etc. seem, more than the rest (although don’t quote me on anything but Persona and Paranoia Agent – the Nasuverse is basically impenetrable to me and I just haven’t read Berserk), to treat Yaldabaoth as everyone else’s fault, a consequence of a corrupt, sinful society (with its own Treasure and vice of Sloth, to boot) which you are challenging as the Phantom Thieves.
To be clear: I don’t disagree with any of this. P5 is maybe kinda sorta making a Social Point about how contemporary-Japan-in-particular has problems, but overall, the works I’m talking about are definitely doing the Universal Psychodrama thing. They’re not saying Society X is bad, unlike Society Y, which is totally doing the right thing by our standards. They’re talking about “general human weakness,” as you say.
But I’m a little taken aback – not unhappy, not offended, not disagreeing especially, just surprised – to see a robust tradition of pop-culture media taking this kind of stance regarding the topic of general human weakness.
As far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of pop-culture media adopts one of two socio-metaphysical stances (or blends them together somehow): “people are basically good” and “people are just people, and you have to take them as individuals.” Individuals can be anything and do anything, but when they’re presented as the faceless gestalt of The People…and when this presentation is made out to be legitimate…they are the source of all that is good and right and important in the world. Heroes are obligated to give their all, often unto death, so that The People may survive and thrive. Paeans to the fundamental excellence of humanity are the mark of good-guy-ness, and anyone who talks about how The People are actually bad is thereby revealing his status as a mustache-twirling villain, or at least as a gritty cynical antihero who doesn’t really mean it deep down.
Hideous sin is the province of unusual, warped individuals.
So when the manga/show/game/whatever comes out and says “nope, The People summoned up the eldritch horror because human beings just suck that way,” I find myself doing a double take.