Empire and its Ruins Course Blog

Mushishi In Humanities core, we learned about Immanuel Kant. From my understanding, Kant argues that the Enlightenment is when a person leaves from the “minority,” that they inflict upon themselves. The “minority” is the part of society that does not improve their comprehension without the help of another. After learning about Immanuel Kant, I found connections between his philosophy and the show “Mushishi.” Ginko “Mushishi” is a show that centers around the main character, Ginko, and mysterious creatures called Mushi. Mushi are the most basic form of life, that mimic nature and come in a variety of shapes. They are only able to be seen by a few people and exist as plants, diseases or even phenomena as rainbows. Little is known about the Mushi and Mushishis are people who study the Mushi to find out what Mushi are and why they exist. Ginko is a mushishi and tries to study the Mushi for an answer to these questions. Based on Kant’s philosophy, Ginko would not be par...

Hamatora the Animation Re: Hamatora Hamatora the Animation, adapted by studio NAZ, and Re: Hamatora, adapted by studio Lerche, contains many ideas that could be connected to the empire and its ruins from the humanities lecture. The Hamatora series is set in Japan and follows a detective agency, Hamatora, which is a “minimum holder private investigator duo” consisting of Nice and Murasaki. Minimums are small miracles that a limited amount of people, called minimum holders, possess, which are special powers activated under specific circumstances. The Hamatora series connects to ideas of empire because the components for its plot correspond with the rise and fall of empire and the information gained from ruins of empires. Nice The Hamatora series has connections to the novel, Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee, from the humanities course because of its connection to the theory of empires. In the series, there are two dist...