Retronauts - 672: Attack and Dethrone God, Book 1:1

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

What's up with all those JRPGs making you kill God? Having weathered the ’80s Satanic Panic, Jeremy Parish, Chris Sims, Benito Cereno, and Shivam Bhatt seek the answers by tracing the history of Christianity's spread into Japan—including JRPGs. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This weekend Retronauts, grab your chainsaw, we're going to meet God. of Retronauts, an episode we're calling attack and dethrone God. That's a tall order for a two-hour podcast, but I believe in us. I think we can do it. But no, in all seriousness, this is not, this is not an episode about heresy. It might be an episode about heresy, but we are not going to be heretical, necessarily. This is the, a little, okay, this is the another episode, another installment in the trends and influences line of Retronauts podcasts.

I am your host, Jeremy Parrish, and trends and influences episodes are really more about the things that shape and inspire and influence, if you will, video games and video game trends. This is a follow-up to our recent Satanic Panic episode, and I've called in some of the same folks from that episode, but also another folk who I think will have a lot to say about this episode, because we're really specifically really the focus of this episode, as you might be able to infer from the title, is about how Japanese games specifically treat Western religion. It's not about religion in video games as a whole. That's more than a single episode. But it's really talking about how God appears, the Western God in Japanese RPGs and other things like that. And the ultimate question is why? And this is a podcast that I've really wanted to put together since before there were podcasts, I thought about creating a website about religion and JRP's back in the 90s, inspired by Final Fantasy

Tactics, and I never did because that would require time and research. But a podcast is the perfect format for that not to wear out. It's welcome. So let me introduce the rest of the cast and also kind of give a baseline of where we're approaching this topic from. I love me some JRPs. And I grew up, as I mentioned in the satanic panic episode, going to church usually three times a week, a very conservative Christian church. But what I took away from that was be nice to other people and, you know, do charitable things, be kind, and basically don't be a dick. That's seems to be a message that's lost on a lot of people who grew up in religion. But that's the one I took away. I blame my bleeding heart parents. Anyway, so a special guest that I called in

for this episode because he's someone who is an enthusiast, and I mean it in the truest sense of the word for both JRP's and religion, really of all stripes, like the academic side of religion and also, I think, the practical side of religion. Please introduce yourself. I'm good to Yes, you're talking about me, Jeremy. That's you. Hi, my name is Shivam Putt, a long-time contributor to retronauts, a host of my own podcasts about Magic the Gathering, but also when I'm not talking about video games and stuff,

I am also a Hindu priest. And so, like, it's, you might say this is exactly in my wheelhouse of discussing the intersection between the divinity that we practice in the real world and that we attack so thoroughly. in all of our JRPs. This is a topic that has entranced me for decades now, ever since I started playing D&D in, like, the 80s and playing, like, Dragon Warriors and whatnot.

Because a lot of it is, like, understanding the weirdness of growing up with a pseudo-Polytheistic, you know, religion, and then being introduced to Western and Japanese fantasy, where it's like, this is fantasy religion and stuff. I'm like, well, it's, that's kind of, just what we do. And so, and seeing like, you know, what it's like when fantastical polytheistic religions are written by monothea,

or people who are angry at their monotheistic faiths and don't understand how polytheisms work. So you end up with this weird set of competing monotheisms that just kind of exists. But, yeah, video games and God is a thing that I spend way more time than I ought to thinking about. And that makes you perfect for this episode, almost as perfect as for a Civilization episode, but sorry, that's not what this is. No Siv 6 yet. Someday. Chris Sims, please introduce yourself and provide your Jesus bona fides. Hello, my name is Chris Sims. And my favorite example in a video game of attacking and dethroning God is the end of Persona 5, which is my favorite ending of any video game ever,

as I have written about extensively on my website, T-H-I-Sb.com. I am also the co-host of a podcast about a Bible, where the tagline is two nonbelievers read through the Bible and we try not to be jerks about it. That is called Apocrypal's, and I am the one who is usually making references to video games on that show because the heavy lifting of actually knowing things about it is handled by someone else, but I do, I am probably more religiously conversant as a result of all that than the average person who mostly thinks about religion in the context of Dungeons and Dragons. And finally, who is that other person who is your co-host on Apocry Pals?

Please introduce yourself. Hi, it's me. I'm Benito. I'm the other set of footprints from Apocry Pals. I grew up also in a very religiously conservative church, Southern Baptist. And on a slow week, I was at church three days, three times. And I have only ever played video games in which the God of Israel is the protagonist. So this will be a learning experience for me. Which ones were those exactly? The Wisdom Tree family of games.

There you go. And for people listening to this episode now, Chris and I, we do have a whole episode. It's obviously episode Nintendo 64 in which we talk about the entire. library of wisdom tree content. That one got us a write-up in The Guardian. That's international news exposure, baby. And yeah, other than that, my actual qualifications are I studied ancient literature and civilization, etc. So I know a little bit about that stuff. But despite what people think I'm not actually, I didn't study theology or biblical studies. that just overlapped somewhat with my study of Greco-Roman literature and history and that kind of stuff.

You do have multiple degrees in... Well, yeah, but, you know, ancient literature and language. Don't sell yourself short, because if you do that, then you're the scholar and I'm the clown, that makes me seem even worse. I have always, I have always asserted that in the format of our show, it is completely a toss-up as to who, Who is the scholar? Who is the clown? And if anything, I think Chris proves himself to be the more learned man in each new episode. And remember, the king's jester enjoys an unusual privilege in that he is able to speak truth to power, veiled behind japerie, if you will. So there's no, there's no shame in being the clown, in my opinion. Okay, so anyway, let me say a quick word about the phrase,

attack and dethrone God, which is the title of this episode. I'm sure at this point we've all heard it in different contexts. It's actually a phrase that originated with the radical militant leftist group Weather Underground in the 1960s. But it kind of entered the video game lexicon about five years ago when that numb nuts, Laura Ingram, decided to stir up a moral panic on the internet or on Fox News by talking about the horror of Japanese video games in which you attack and dethrone God, we need to ban them from America or whatever. Anyway, that was picked up and immediately dunked on by pretty much everyone. If you look for the phrase attack into throne God, JRP, you will see that within like

the week following that broadcast that she did. there are articles, like half a dozen articles of people saying, here's why I love fighting God and JRP's. There was a game jam that started like three days after that broadcast where people were creating, you know, 24-hour video games where you attack and dethrone God. So whatever she was trying to accomplish, it basically just made people say,

JRPs are so cool. This tries out effect. I was like, she's morally incorrect, but she's not wrong. She's not wrong. We've all played a Final Fantasy. We've all played a bayonet. I thought it was a drill tweet, not going to lie. But there is, like, the entire episode we're doing here is about why you do that in these games and, you know, how that sort of evolved over time to become a common motif in these, in these.

games. So we're going to try to approach this topic respectfully, but also, you know, with the awareness that it's just video games, folks, like, you know, just calm down. It's fine. It's fine. No one is going to come away from playing Final Fantasy 7 and think, you know, I should go kill angels. That would be a fun thing to do. No one did that. I don't know that no one did that necessarily, but because I haven't seen any angels around in a while. You can only do it if there's like a Carmina Barana ripoff playing in the

background. That's the rules. I didn't make them up. Because I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about this in that in this modern era of culture that we live in where we've lost a lot of our kind of core fundamental unifying texts that we draw from to build

culture and build morality out of. A lot of this has been replaced by video games because these are the only places people are getting a shared story. Everybody is playing a Final Fantasy game. These things are all over the place. So we, I mean, as a priest, I'm more attuned to just paying attention to this sort of thing. But I have noticed a lot of theology of people who have grown up in the 80s and forward who are not, who are like, you know, angry at the churches of their parents or whatever.

They're taking these ideas from video games and these video games are coming from Japan because that's where the narrative games are coming from for a large block of time. So we are getting a lot of pseudo-backwards, like, reflected mirror theology coming from this filter here. Because, like, sometimes you will hear people. I ran into the Internet atheists all the time, and they yell at me because it's just a thing that they do. And when you sort down and filter through these arguments, literally what you're hearing are supervillain speeches from JRP's kind of just filtered through modern dialogue. So I wouldn't be quite so quick as to be dismissive of the impact of a killing Sephiroth, the one-winged angel, you know? What I'm saying is that, like, people aren't literally out to kill God just because they played a video game.

I think there are other factors involved with people's disgruntlement with religion. I can't imagine what you're talking about. And video games are probably not like a game where you fight. among other deities, some sort of vague rendition of Yahweh, that's probably not the point where people are like, yes, this is it. My calling is actually to fight religion and all gods by hand. I'm just saying, like, you have to put things in the grand scheme of reality. I do want to say, your use of the phrase, internet atheist, is the reason that the tagline of our show uses the word non-believer.

just to distance ourselves from that kind of thing. I mean, you guys know what I talk about when I say that phrase. Like, yeah. There's a very specific Dockenzian person in mind. I don't know, but the thing is, and I'm not here to, I don't mean to dunk upon any people or their beliefs or anything. But the idea of just like, in Japanese RPGs, this overwhelming trend, the divinity is just bad.

Like, it is very rare that you find. a divine spirit or something that is beneficent or worth worship or anything, especially in Squaringix games. And I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. I don't think that's really true. I think for the most part in RPGs, JRP's, you find goddesses and spirits, you know, that are part of the world. And they're, you know, they're on your side or they're just kind of like forces within the world who will save your game or whatever. I think we notice the, the, the more violent conflicts with deities in these games because it's like, oh, this is transgressive and weird. I like this. This is fun and different. And finally, all those times I had to sing

728B at church, I get the payback for that. So if you grew up in the Church of Christ, you know exactly what 728B is. Anyway, yeah, so what I want to do this episode is spend about half of it talking about what the hell Christianity is and how it got to Japan. And I think we can definitely fit that entire discussion into 40 minutes, not a big topic at all. And then the other half of the episode, I'd like to kind of talk about how that shook out and resulted in video games. Now, I say my intention, but I also know from the past few years exactly how Retronauts goes, which is that I'm like, oh, we're going to do this in one episode. And then we get to about an hour and a half in, and I'm like,

hmm, we've made it less than halfway through the notes, so there's a part two. So I don't know. That could happen. Anything is possible when you are shaking your fist at the gods and daring to fight them with the glass sword that breaks in one hit, but is an insta kill.

So we don't know how this is going to go. This is a wild ride. We are grabbing our S2 engines and generating AT fields and heading out of out on a grand adventure. I like this because I feel like this episode is going to follow the same narrative conceit as my favorite Jack Chick Tracts, which assumed that you have heard

of Star Wars or Final Fantasy, but don't know what Christianity is. Well, we've already had episodes. You just need someone to explain it to you. We've already had episodes on Star Wars and Final Fantasy. So the Retronauts Insiders, they've got the bases of knowledge there. If you're not familiar with these topics, please check out our back catalog of episodes, and we will explain Star Wars, Final Fantasy, and many other things for you that will be useful context for this journey we're about to take into the strange and exotic world of Christianity. Look, dude, as a Hindu, it is a strange and exotic world. It is a very weird tradition to look at when you are entrenched in an entirely separate one. I've run into this because my son, you know, I have a child and I'm raising him as a Hindu.

And that means that we're sitting here and he's looking around like, Papa, why do all these buildings of weird tease on them? I don't understand what's going on? And I was like, well, you know, they had a god and then they hung him from a thing and then they put the teas on top of the building to say, hey, look, we killed this guy. And he's like, that's a strange thing to build a religion on it. I'm like, it sure is. If you go inside the buildings, there's some really weird art of the teas. A little graphic, a little strange. Well, I mean, I can't even say that much.

Hindus have weird art, too, man. Like, we love us in Antrile, I'll hold necklace. I feel like that's the, like, that's the core idea of all this, right? Is that whatever is not, is not the thing in your culture is the thing that is exotic and interesting. And I feel like for video games, like particularly like 80s, 90s video games, that, it's the equivalent of American ninja movies yeah right where it's

or comics or or anything like that where it's like yeah but it's kind of wrong like yeah you you're using the imagery but that's not what that is look man when when Shiva got turned from a god of meditation and fire who lives in the Himalayas into a lesbian bicycle by Final Fancy

I knew that we were already well and off the track A lesbian bicycle made of ice, thank you. Yeah, an ice lesbian bicycle, which totally misses the point of why Shiva is sitting in ice in the first place. His body is generating so much heat that the only place he can sit is on top of the mountain of pure ice. And they're like, oh, he must be an ice to eat, no. But that's okay. It's like translation through countries and countries. But the thing that really intrigues me is that, like, you are exactly right in that this is the exotica of Japan.

Exploring a tradition that is so not theirs. Like, I mean, Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan, right? Like, it's a day that they know because of world global influence and stuff. But, like, yeah, you get KFC for dinner. You still got to go to work. It's the way that, like, in America, Diwali is not a holiday here. Like, I still got to do my thing, even though I'm going to go and have dinner with my family or whatever. But their ideas of what Christianity is have been filtered through very, very unique and small lenses.

And the footprint of Christianity in Japan is so small. mall. Like, when I lived there, there was a missionary who came to my door once, and she was so excited and thrilled to find somebody who cared at all about religion, despite the fact that I was a Hindu and not Christian, but that I could at least speak the language and knew what she was talking about. She came in and we sat and hung out for like an hour and a half just because this woman was like desperate for anybody to care at all. And Japan, just culturally speaking, it's like a good comparison between Japan and Korea, for instance, where Korea, Christianity, both Protestant and Catholicism, have had huge footholds and taken up a good chunk of the culture and the

mindset. And so you've got this Christian and Buddhist and shamanistic kind of triangle that lives there. In Japan, Christianity has always been this weird subversive religion that kind of snuck in and like took in the minds of like these either people who were downtrodden or like left outside of the main system. A few samurai might have been taken by the philosophy of it. But it never gained a real foothold. And even today, you've got this feeling that Christianity is just one of these other weirdo cults that exist in Japan. You know, it's just like if the Romans had not accepted Christianity and spread it out

through Europe, Christianity itself might have stayed in the world the way it is in Japan, which is a small cult of people who believe in this one subsect of Judaism. And it's just, it's wild to see, like how little Japan understands and cares about this thing that in the West here is such a fundamental part of, Even when you're not in this, it's just what we live. So, TLDR, Jesus in a JRP is equivalent of us putting cream cheese and tempura batter on a sushi room. He is a California role of God's, right? The fried California roll, thank you.

The fried California roll. It's a kimchi burrito. I'm Our return Our return the land is keeping us in common So, in essence, in the Arab exploration hit in, like, the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Oh, oh, oh, we're getting ahead of ourselves. You didn't look at the notes, did you? I'm not them, but I'm reading about killing the Buddha right now because, like,

you know, we were talking about attacking a dethroning God. And one of these core ideas is the Zen idea that was by the Japanese or Chinese kind of like a monk, Linji Zhu Shuan, who said, you know, if you see the Buddha on the street, kill him. That famous phrase, which is kind of the core here, which is the sense of like the nature of like divinity and God is the absence of it. It is our own internal exploration of this, and we don't need somebody to give us his guidance on the way. And that kind of metaphor, because Zen Buddhism became such a big part of Japan and their culture, it would be weird to talk about Japan's exposure and understanding of Christianity, which has such a monolithic figure of divinity without considering this notion of the fact that Japan and divinity is just literally kill that dude. Like, that is the core fundamental.

Sure, and we'll get there, but first I did want to, I wanted to ask our biblical scholar, the scholar versus the clown, to just kind of give us a baseline on what the hell were, oh, so, oh, hell. What on earth, what under the heavens we are actually speaking of here in this moment. Benito, I mean, it is as Chris alluded to, a little silly to explain Christianity, but I do want to speak. specifically talk about not not what is Christianity, but how did Christianity spread into the world, really? Like, what is the trajectory? And why did, as Shevim says, the subset of Judaism become a thing that basically has a massive grip on the world and has for the past 1500 years or so, heavily shaping politics, culture, society, exploration, basically anything you could think of, and video games.

Yeah, sure. Big, big question. Don't know. How do we want to go? Do I need to start with Canaanite polytheism or should I just, let's just start in the first century C.E. Let's just do that. Let's just assume everyone knows who.

Well, you can open up your Bibles here to Genesis, book one. We're not going to attend and talking about Akhenaten and the Egyptian monotheistic rise of psychology. Yeah. Maybe a little out of scope. Yeah. A little bit. Okay. So let's start first century CE. That seems recent enough. Yeah. So Jesus is, as you alluded to earlier, an apocalyptic preacher of the, he is a Jew and his followers were Jews. And apocalypticism was very common in that era under first Greek and then Roman oppression of Judea in the surrounding areas. Because apocalypticism, the kind of stuff that to Christians would be most familiar as like the book of Revelation,

what is that genre about? That genre is basically revenge fantasies against your oppressors. And that's what that is. And so like, by the way, don't worry, you don't have to worry that any of the things in Revelation are going to happen in the future, because they're not about the future. They're about dreaming that your oppressors are going to be killed by locusts with horse heads or whatever. Seems like a rough way to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Jesus likewise, in addition, And he was also, like his mentor, John the Baptist, he preached a decentralized form of Judaism that relied less on the temple and more on finding the forgiveness of sins through other ways, through baptism, through repentance and that kind of stuff. And he was, yep, he was executed by the state, probably causing an uprising in the Jerusalem temple of some kind. And for one reason or another, his followers believed that after his execution, he rose from the dead, and they began to spread his message as a wonder worker and his message of preparing for the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God, meaning that the day of judgment was at hand, and within their lifetimes, the world was going to end, and you needed to get right with God.

and one of his followers named Paul said, if we're trying to save the world, let's save the whole world. And so he made sure to try to adjust Christianity to be more palatable for Gentiles, that is non-Jews. And he spread his message through a series of missionary journeys around the Mediterranean. He went to Rome. He went all through Asian Minor. And so across the early centuries of the common era, the message of Christianity is getting spread around the Mediterranean. It's initially, yeah, a very small kind of sect held in house churches,

small communities of, you know, a dozen, two dozen people. But as time goes on, it grows and grows until eventually it is a fairly substantial religious presence within the Roman Empire, in part because, especially in the early days, what we call the anti-Nycine days, the days before the Council of Nica, it was a religion that was very accommodating for women. and for enslaved people. And that made a real difference in terms of its acceptance in that time. Also, it was free to become a Christian. You didn't have to make monetary donations like you did for the state religions of Rome.

And so it was very appealing for people of the lower classes and especially enslaved people and women. Obviously, that changes as the religion becomes more hierarchical as it establishes more sociopolitical in later centuries. But at first, that helps the spread around the Mediterranean. Yeah, I was going to say, I've seen some guys on TV who missed that part about the lot of monetary elements. Before you go any further, I do want to kind of grab onto something you mentioned there, which is the missionary element of Christianity. Because I feel like that is one of the more unique facets of the religion that I don't think people,

when they talk about Christianity really, like vis-a-vis other religions, really does. discussed that much, at least not in the hoi-po-loi circles that I belong to. But I don't hear about like Shinto missionaries or even Jewish missionaries. It's really, it seems to, I mean, I'm not saying there aren't any, but just that missionary, the idea of going out spreading the word, you know, venturing into other cultures, other countries, other continents, and, you know, bringing the light of the word to the masses there, that's really different. It's not something that I just associate with other religions. Yeah, for sure. I can say, you know, Judaism is not, is a non-proselytizing religion. I can't speak for, you know, others. But yeah, it's, it's baked into

the DNA of Christianity, you know, in the Gospels, which were, you know, written towards the back half of the first century C.E. You know, we have Jesus in his giving his great commission telling his followers go out and spread the word. And they take that to heart because, again, it's an apocalyptic sect. And so they believe the end is very near. They literally believe the world was going to end in their lifetime. And so they go to spread that word because, yeah, they're trying to save the world. And so since that became such an essential part, like an innate part of it, yeah, that has never gone away, you know, to differing degrees. Obviously, there are certain denominations these days that are more, well, evangelical,

but in the sense of spreading the word than others. Not in the literal meaning of the word. Yeah, right. And so there might be, you know, some certain sects of the Christian church are more likely to proselytize than others. But, yeah, it's definitely from the beginning. It's a fundamental part of the faith. for sure. I think it's also like one of the more difficult things to grapple with if you are an ex evangelical or you know, someone who was was raised in in the church and kind of bounced

off of it is you do have to reckon with figuring out the level of sincerity in a way that I don't know. I know from first and experience you have to do with Christianity in that if you truly believe that he is the way the truth and the light and the only way to the kingdom of the father is through him, then proselytizing and evangelizing and being annoying

about it is the kindest thing you can do to another person. Yeah. And if you don't truly believe that, then it quickly becomes a scam. I mean, Christianity is not the first of the proselytizing religions. I mean, Buddhism

and proto-Hindus and both they sent out missionaries at least to Southeast Asia and to East Asia Buddhism more so than Hinduism did which is why there's like very few Buddhists left in India but they're definitely China, Vietnam, Japan, etc. You also had, there was an early

Jewish kind of spread of their faith like the original like I believe it was Kazakhstan or one of those countries in like East Europe became a Jewish country, one of the first real Jewish countries because they sent out proselytizers and stuff but it's important to talk about the kind of like

why this is. And what it is is that in the Near East, in the early days of religious traditions there, each community had its own deity. And their deity was present within, like in Judaism, in the Ark, for instance, or in a temple that would be within the polity of your city or your civilization. And you knew who your neighbors gods were. They were not your God, but you knew them. You maybe didn't believe in them, but you believed they existed. Because if you have a God, obviously they have a God. And that's why, you know, when you read the Old Testament, and you read the commandments and stuff and say, Thou shalt have no other God before me, not no other God flat.

It's because that means that don't worship the gods of Err ahead of me, the God of Judea. You know, so we have these different polities that have these specific local deities, and when they would commit war on each other, one of the big things they would do would be destroy the temple, take your deity, melt it down, and show that my deity is stronger than yours, my people are stronger than yours, my God is bigger than yours, which is why, you know, We have these traditions of the Jewish temple being burnt down by the Babylonians or what have you. They're showing the supremacy of their deity over this other deity. And so when Christianity is there and Jesus and Paul and their message kind of breaks this notion of deity being located in one specific area building box polity and says,

God is everywhere and I must spread the word of God everywhere, that allows you to then be able to go to Rome or go to Anatolia or go to India or whatever and say like my god is bigger than all things is not just this local god in this temple, it is the god of gods everywhere, which allows you to have a missionary presence that is something that people would buy. It's like, oh, your God is overarching so I don't need to worry about it being in one specific religious place to go to for pilgrimage to do my offerings. I can do my rituals and prayers anywhere. And that's why you see a lot more evangelism in later decentralized religions, like

Islam being a very strong missionary presence, modern day Buddhism, modern day Christianity, other futuristic religions. Like, Zoroastrianism could do that because Zoroastrianism had this notion of monotheistic, you know, Hura Mazda is everywhere

and not just in this one box in this one city. But that was one of the big innovations of Christianity that allowed it to break away from just being Judaism. Because like we see in the Gospels, St. Paul goes back to Jerusalem and talks to James, the brother of Jesus, and to the other leaders of the

Christian movement within Jerusalem. And the Jews there who are in the Christian movement are basically like, we minister to our people here in Jerusalem and in this surrounding areas. And Paul's like, no, you don't understand. We've got to go to the Gentiles and spread the word of the Lord everywhere.

And James and friends are like, no, this is, that's not what we're doing. That's not, we're Jews. We're here. This is our Messiah has come. And that break is why we have this world where Christianity spreads so wide and so far because, like, you have to go to this hill, the capitaline hill to go to Zeus's temple to pray to Zeus, or you have to go to the Oracle Delphi to pray to Apollo. Jesus is everywhere. And so you can go to these slaves and say, like, you've been taken from your home in Ethiopia and brought here to France to work in this dude's villa. Here is a God that does not care where you are and is going to give you salvation.

And that's why the Jesus movement was so successful, because it was able to remove a lot of what was core to religion pre that era, which is geography, community, and locality from this notion of faith. Also, that dude wasn't even there. Paul, he wouldn't even there. We have a lot of, we have a lot of difficulties with Paul. That is so wild to me that, like, Paul ends up being, like, the great spiritual, like, the dude who spreads all Christianity. He never met Jesus. He never saw it. He wasn't even from Jerusalem.

You know, it's like, well, whoa, dude, you, like, created a whole cloth, this notion of Christianity based on what your assumption is, based on what somebody wants told you, based on you having a seizure in the street, you know, like, this is why. Yes, correct. Yeah, Paul met the Christ in the road, and he did not kill him. No, and he was like, he just altered his message a little bit. This is a real great business right here. Let's go. Yeah, he was maybe history's first PR man. Oh, dude.

That's why it's always amusing to me to think about his going back and meeting like the actual core apostles and realizing, oh, these dudes are just yokels who don't understand what they've got here. I'm going to take this word and take it to the world. And like... Which you did say it, but I want to make sure everybody caught it. One of them was Jesus's brother. Literal James the Justice is Jesus' younger brother. Like, come on. He's like, I knew the Lord.

literally grew up with him. Come on. Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those moments where I just sit there. I'm like, damn, dude, you think about losing the control of your family business to this other dude just because you don't know how to market. It's just like the founder. Which is a real crude way of saying it. I understand.

Yeah, something you mentioned about having no other gods before me. I think that's something that tends to be lost when we're looking at, you know, how. how Christianity is viewed and incorporated in Japan especially and in a lot of Asian societies is that here, kind of in the post-people world, Christianity is basically like, hey, there's a God, that's it. That's all you get. Don't even think about other gods. No. But I feel like, you know, a lot of missionaries went out, spread the word. and the people who were receptive to that were like, cool, it's another God in addition to the ones that we already know.

And I mean, a few days from now is Thet, so I'm going to my in-law's house, and I'm going to offer a prayer to the ancestors at their shrine, which has a crucifix and some Catholic imagery above it because they're practicing Catholics. but also there is the traditional Vietnamese ancestral element, not necessarily worship, but reverence. And, you know, the idea that they are part of us and with us and that we should pay respects to them, even though they are no longer in the living world. So, you know, it seems strange or heretical to a lot of Westerners, like how can you think that way with religion? but I think that's a big part of, you know, we'll get to this, but why Christianity is often the villain, the bad guy in so many of these games, because it is coming in and saying, like, you know, we are absolute and the entire tradition, yeah, like the society is built around, not built around, but just kind of accepts, you know, there's more to divinity than just like this one dude and his kid. in you you see this a lot in India for instance when you've got a lot of Christian missionaries and missionary actions is that a lot of the original meetings between Christians and the people there are like okay well I'll just take your Jesus and put them on the shelf with all the other ones it'll be fine does you have a feast day great we'll go um you know and that is really really irritating to people who are like no this is the one and only God everything else is fake is like what do you mean I've got thousand gods I've got all the days you want to take them all the away from me and just have this one dude from over there?

Like, that seems really dull and boring. Why would I do that? Like, for instance, my mom at home in our home shrine, she's got a statue of the Pieta, which is Mother Mary holding the body of Jesus. And I'm like, why is that here? And she's like, well, look, this is Ma Mary, the, you know, our mother who is holding her beloved son. Like, why not put that in the Monday with everybody else?

That's like, God right there. I'm like, there's a lesson here. It's just, it's. And that is one of the reasons why, in Japan, especially, when Christianity starts to make its moves over there, Shintoism is so strong, and not only Shintosem, but imperial Shintosum, where the emperor is God and where, like, you know, the spirits and the spirituality are there. And when someone comes up and says, no, this other dude who was a preacher 2,000 years ago in, like, a place you've never seen thousands and thousands of miles away from here is the actual God, and all the rest of this is not God. that is going to make if you were the power of if you were the people in power in a position where the people in power are deities that's going to make you very unhappy right like that's going to be a very conflicting issue that you're going to have to deal with where these guys are coming in and trying to say like the emperor is not God it's this other guy and all of this is just heresy and that is a very strong challenge to what it means to rule your society right like that's like untire undercutting the power system. It's like, if the emperor's not God, then what is he?

Why is he here? That's one of the big lesson of World War II, right? Like, they had made Hirohito come out there and say, like, I'm not God, sorry. And that's just like completely shattered Japanese culture, right? Like, the religion in Japan is not recovered from that moment in time. And so that is why it's a little understandable from the Japanese side, why they would be so hesitant to accept any new traditions like this. Buddhism wasn't trying to tell you that the emperor wasn't God, right?

Like, you know, all these other traditions coming from China, coming from India, we're just trying to integrate themselves into society as opposed to upend society. But Christ, his whole deal is upending society. That's the entire message, right? It flips the table of society. Yep. And the tax collectors. And that's an important tie into like where we got in the discussion of the history of Christianity.

Sorry. I feel like you need to take us through the Holy Roman Empire and all that stuff before we can get to Japan. Yeah, but like, but I mean, but the point there of the separation from society and the refusal to worship the power structures as deities, that's why you end up with Christianity as a persecuted class. Now, like modern, modern scholars are going to argue the degree to which the Christian persecutions were exaggerated in early Christian literature. However, you know, at least in the sources we have, there are persecutions of Christians under Nero, the emperor's Decius Valerian Diocletian. And this is known as the Age of Martyrs. A lot of this stuff is greatly sensationalized. If you want an example of the kind of stories that are getting passed around, check out the Apocrypal's episode on the story of Perpetual and Felicitas, which is an early memoir.

by a Christian martyr, a woman as well. But yeah, so during this period, yeah, because Christians were separating themselves from society because they were part of a group that, as she even was saying, about overturning society and overturning traditional power structures. And most importantly, they're refusing to sacrifice to the emperors and to the state gods. And so as a result, to whatever degree, they were persecuted or marginalized or whatever, that goes on for a while until ultimately one of the biggest turning points in Christian history, of course, I think most people probably know about this. Constantine the Great, at least according to the official version, experiences a vision in which he sees the sign, not of the cross, but of the Labarum, the Cai Row, the combination of the letters Kai and Roe, the first two letters. of the word christ um you might know that one from kingdom hearts yeah barred from kingdom hearts and uh and with with the words uh in this sign you will conquer it in the greek it's just in this you will conquer in the latin version they had the word sign but um and so

he goes on to have his uh decisive battle the battle of the milvian bridge he has all of his soldiers affix the symbol of the cairo onto their shields and onto their standards he has a over his rival, Maxentius, for power. He consolidates power in Rome. Eventually, he issues the edict of Milan in 313 C.E. It's around then, if it's not exactly 313. But that's an edict of toleration. That means you can't pick on Christians anymore.

He does not make Christianity the official state religion of Rome. That is a later emperor, Theodosius. but he is the first Christian Roman Emperor. You can debate amongst yourselves how sincere his conversion was, and if it was just about consolidating power or whatever, that's up to you. We're not here to debate that right now. It's like a theme throughout Christian history. Yeah. But he's like, well, if this is going to be my religion now, let's make it make sense.

And so prior to this, you know, the development of theology and official doctrine was pretty loosey-goosey. especially as it was spread out across the Mediterranean. And so if you guys have any familiarity with Christian history, then obviously the Aryan... Yeah, I was just about it. Do we get to talk about Arrhenius? Yeah, I think we have to talk. So Arias was a, he was a bishop, I guess, or a priest. But he taught basically that Jesus was a lesser divinity than God.

And that was a very popular idea. and actually if you apply a moment's thought to it, it makes more sense than what official Trinitarianism teaches. But it was very popular throughout. Jeremy, you said we weren't going to do a heresy? I'm just saying. Oh, come on, man. I love me a good monophysitic heresy.

The mystery of the Trinity is what makes it powerful. And so the fact that it's seemingly paradoxical is what makes it more likely to be true, probably. We haven't even talked about them. Holy Spirit. I mean, that's because no one has any ideas about the Holy Spirit. They just were like, we need a third one. Yeah, dude, seriously, as a Hindu, looking at this stuff and when I was learning it, I'm just like, wait, so you're telling me you guys are not polytheistic, but you have three gods that share one Unitarian Soul. This sounds awfully familiar, but you're not polytheistic. You're monotheistic. No, it's like, you know, manny faces from

He-Man is one guy, but he's got three faces. Or like, who's that dude from Transformers? with the foreheads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a heresy of some kind, but I don't know what to do. Where do you find out about all the saints and how some of the saints are like dudes from the 1800s,

and some of them are angels? Yeah. Oh, goshers-in'er. Oh, goshers-alleled. I don't want to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. Yeah, anyway, so the Council at Nicaea, the Nicene Council is the first ecumenical council, meaning that they summoned bishops from all around the Christian world, which would have been basically the all of the, all of the, the areas surrounding the Mediterranean

from Europe to Asia Minor into Northern Africa and a lot of them showed up including allegedly St. Nicholas of Myra I choose to believe he was there. Oh, that's one of my favorite stories. Yeah, but

anyway, yeah, so they were like, we got to make this make sense. How do we prove that Jesus is fully God and a fully man? And that's where they invent the idea of Trinitarianism. It's a whole it's a tricky thing and I think people who just kind of casually grew up

with Christianity will be surprised to learn that things like monotheism and trinitarianism are all and even the full deity of Jesus are post-biblical innovations those things cannot be found

in the actual biblical text without tweaking some things but yeah so the idea they land on trinitarianism at the Council of Nicaa. All the other stuff that you hear, they did not create the biblical canon there.

They did not decide what is and isn't in the New Testament. That stuff did not happen there. The primary thing they dealt with was how do we explain that Jesus is fully God while also being a different thing than God? And then they also said, how do we figure out when Easter is without having to ask a Jew? That's the other main thing they did at the Council of Nicaa. sorry sir when is passover again yeah exactly that's how they did it they had to they had to ask a jewish person when passover was and they're like no we can't just keep doing this we got to figure out away and uh and they came up with a thing and it's called computis which i always think sounds like

a legion of superheroes villain um but that is that is how they determine uh that is how they determine even now uh how they determine when easter is uh but anyway so you know after constantine after the council of nicaa we have a we have a more developed uh theology and series of doctrines under important church fathers like Augustine of Hippo and people like that, who Augustine creates the idea of original sin and stuff like that. So here we're talking fifth century, right? So a lot of these things that people assume are in the Bible are not coming up until 400 plus years after Jesus. But yeah, so now we have Christian emperors for the most part. Augustinian, he brought in a lot of like his original

zero astrian faith with him, right? The Manichaeanism that she's born in. And that whole black and white notion of there is good and there is evil and they're forever at conflict with each other, which is like such a fundamental part of modern day Christianity that was not a part of Christ's Christianity.

For sure. Yeah, that's absolutely the manichism leaking in from Augustine. Yeah, absolutely. Early Christianity is like one of my favorite topics to talk about. I'm saying my best to like bite my tongue here and not be like, Athanasia, let's talk about Athanasia. No, as far as I'm concerned, jump in,

except I know we're trying to keep this as brief as possible. This is going to be a two-parter. Sorry. There's just, there is no way I'm going to be able to talk about all of the things I want to say about Final Fantasy legend and Shin-Megame Tensei after you guys get through this. I have a lot of about Megatine, man. Look forward.

All right. So let me go faster then. It's fine. It's fine. So eventually we have the, after Constantine, we have the main center of Roman power moving to Byzantium, aka Constantinople, named after Constantine. And so there's an eastward shift. And then eventually by the end of the 5th century, you have Rome in Italy falling under invasions by Goths. And even as this is happening, Christianity is spreading among the Goths, although most of the Goths were Aryan Christians and not Trinitarian Christians. It actually took, even after the Council of Nica, it took a while for Arianism to go away. And then they just got into Vampire of the Masquerade. That's exactly right.

And listening to Sisters of Mercy at the mall. Yeah, so following the fall of the Western Empire of Rome, there's kind of a, what's the central sociopolitical power now? There's nothing because there's just all of these scattered Germanic tribes around. And so the Catholic Church is the most ingrained institution. power at that time. And so the Pope becomes increasingly powerful throughout this period. And following the fall of Roman in the West, that's the beginning of what we call the Middle Ages, the medieval period. And so it's during this period that the Pope's power increases. The church becomes more powerful. Monastic groups are developed, and they are basically the only groups that are preserving, maintaining, or transmitting Western culture, art and literature. You've got all those monks copying books and all that kind of stuff. It's really the church is the last, you know, bastion of preserving the culture of Rome. And inventing Chartreuse. That's very important. Also, also important. And so then, but then eventually, yeah, you get the Holy Roman Empire, which is, finally, you get a, you get a Christian

German guy who the Pope can support over the Eastern powers in Byzantium, saying, you know, this is the true descendant of the Roman Empire, not those, you know, effete Easterners. Is that my boy, Carl?

Yeah, Carl, Big Carl. Carl. Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl, the Magnum. Yeah,

big Carl, out in Aachen. And you know he's legit, because his sword has a nail from the true cross. That's correct. And his, and then his mother,

no, wait, hold on, I was getting mixed up with Constantine. Sorry. But yeah, good old, good old big Carl.

Charlemagne, Carl de Grosso, yeah, the Holy Roman Empire. And meanwhile, you have the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, by the 1400s, has been rapidly decreasing in size and scope with the incursion of various Muslim groups, primarily Turks, of various stripes and different caliphates and that kind of thing. And eventually Constantinople falls in the 1450s, and that's kind of, either that or some other things are kind of considered the end of the medieval period, the beginning of the early modern period. One of the other major things that is considered the beginning of the early modern period is the Protestant Reformation, which happens in, begins in Germany in the 1500s when Martin Luther says, hey, the Pope has too much power. because over the last 1,000 years, the Pope has been the primary power in Western Europe to varying degrees. This is completely simplified, but a word. I've seen that door. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. It's a big old church door. It's just right there. It's a door. Yeah. So he has some complaints about the abuses of power within the church. And so he and, you know, he's not the only one who had been, prior to him, there was Jan Hus and other people like that, who were talking about power abuses in the church.

And so the Protestant Reformation spreads primarily across northern Europe, the northern half of Germany up into Scandinavia. Because Christianity had spread all the way across Western Europe by the Middle Ages. And even most of Eastern Europe, although it was the Eastern Church, the Orthodox Church, I didn't mention the Great Schism. You guys can Google it. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm like, wait. Before you get too far, it should be noted that, like, aside from the church splitting into the Eastern, the Orthodox and the Catholic churches on the West, there was also the Church of the East, which was the Nestorian Christians who had been excommunicated during, like, the Council of, like, Ecclesia or whatever it is. And they spread out eastward into China, into Mongolia. That's why when the Great Khan is having, like, you know, Kublai Khan's got his big empire, there were Christians there who were hanging out with him.

and associating and advising him. And these were Nestorian Christians who were believing in, like, the, I'm not going to go into the theology of it too much. But the point is, though, there was a Christian presence in Asia. And it was continuing to the point that later on, when the Europeans go through and explore later, they find, like, Christians and Jews in China, and they're like, what the hell is going on? Who are you? What is going on here? But they didn't make it to Japan, because Japan was notoriously very hard for anybody to

get into. However, they did make it into Manchuria, into North Korea. So they're Nestorian Christians that were spread out throughout all of Asia as well. They're really wild. Obviously, those are the followers of the kingdom of Presser John. Yeah, Pressure John, buddy. The descendant of one of the three Magi who went and came and saw Jesus, who were baptized by the Apostle Thomas. We all know this. One of my favorite books I read. Was he the Murr or the Frankencents guy? No, those are rastrians, thank you very much. The Magi. I love, by the way, that, like, the word mage and magi and magician and stuff are all just, like, terms for Zerastrian priests.

They still call them magi, but we just use them as spellcasters, but they use mana to cast their spells, which is the Polynesian essence of God, right? Like, so it's a super weird, holistic kind of fusion. It's a sort of thing that tickles me as a theologist. It's the original fusion cuisine. That's right. I do not have the expertise to add to this. you too, too. But you did mention the Order of Ecclesia, which I know Jeremy and I are very familiar with. Big fan. Big fan. Love when Dracula comes back as a big old blob.

Well, the thing is like, Presser John, for instance, this idea of this Christian king who lives in the East was, we're jumping ahead. I don't want to jump ahead. But yeah, so, well, maybe we should jump ahead a little bit because otherwise we're going to be just having a good idea to fast-forward a bit. Fast forwarding a bit. First off, Christianity has spread all over the world, right? Like as we're discussing here, and before we get to even the Protestant Reformation, it is spreading into Ethiopia, into Arabia, into, you know, the African horn there. And it is getting into the Arab tribes where there also is a lot of latent influence of Judaism that is still left from the ancient times, as well as, you know, Arab paganism and pantheism

and stuff that was Semitic religions pre, even the Jesus movement. And so, like, some of these guys, these Christian traders and these Jewish traders are getting down and sharing stories with the tribes that live down in Mecca. And one of them is the uncle of Muhammad who teaches him the way of the monotheistic religions of Christ and the Jews. And Muhammad then goes and synthesizes this and creates and is given the revelation of the new monotheism, which is this completion of this story of Adam and Moses. Jesus and stuff, where we've got this now really thoroughly, not purified, but almost like a distilled essence of monotheistic evangelical faith. And his religion spreads like wildfire throughout all these ancient Christian strongholds, all these ancient Jewish strongholds, North Africa, Persia, and gets into the Zoroastrian.

And like, we didn't even talk about the fact that the Zoroastrianism, which has its original monotheistic flare is why Jesus has angels and devils and stuff in Christianity. But that's a, we'll talk about that when we get to Final Fentic Tactics. Because did you ever notice that some of the enemies and tactics like the one-eyed flying dudes are named Arimans,

which is actually the Satan figure from Zoroastrianism? I always thought it was really cool. I'm pretty sure they got that from Final Fantasy, or from Dragon, D&D, didn't they? Yeah, where do you think D&D got it? But because of Islam and the growth of Islam and, you know,

invading and knocking out the Christian strongholds of Constantine, these Protestant and Catholic traders who lived in, these Protestant Catholic kingdoms from the north and east, north and west of Europe want to get the spices and gold and money from Asia. And they can't because the Muslims have this big trade block and the Mongols are up there and this whole mess of thing. It's very hard for them to get from here to there. So we've got to go around the other side.

And these rumors start of this kingdom of Prestor John, this Christian king who is fighting the good fight against all the Muslims and he lives somewhere in India or Asia and is here and waiting for the good men of Christ to come and join him and bring all the stuff back to the good Christians can live richly. And so, you know, when Hernan Cortez and all these guys are going to India and they're going around the south of Africa and they make it up into India, there's this really fascinating anecdote of the first time the Christians there land in Goa and they're led up to. they're meeting the local people there. Goa has had Christians since literally Christ's era before Europe did. The Apostle Thomas himself went to India and evangelized and there's been a prison presence there since like four, you know, the year four or something like that. Like they've been Christians there forever and ever, but also there's a huge Hindu populace there. And so these guys sit there and the thing about religion in Europe at this time is they are so like mindlocked by the Islam that exists there.

the only thing they can understand are there's Christianity and there's Islam and that is it. Jews are a thing that existed at one point, but are not our problem now. There's either this or that. So if you're not Muslim, you must be Christian. And they land in Goa and they go up and they try to meet the leader and they're brought into the temple where the king is sitting and having court. And they're looking around like, man, the saints here look really weird with all these heads and arms and stuff. I guess it's just kind of different in the East. And he's listening, it's like, they're all singing to Mariama, Mariamma.

Oh, they must be saying Maria, this must be the mother of God. Of course it is. And they led up to, you know, the statue of the multi-headed goddess Mariamma, who is a mother figure there. And then they're here like, Krishna, Krishna. And they're like, Christ. Oh, it must be Christ. Of course it is. There we go.

So these Hindus must be Christians because they're not Muslims. And it was very, let's say it was eye-opening for them to realize this is more than just the A or B in the world. This is actually an amazing, like, comedy film. Oh my God, it's so funny, if not for the canons that followed afterwards. Yeah, well, okay, so all the dying is not so great, but the rest of it. Can you imagine these Spaniards or these Portuguese dudes landing in Goa and going into a Hindu temple and seeing for the first time all these crazy-looking demons all over the place and just be like, man, them saints grow weird here? I mean, we've all seen what angels actually look like and in art, so is it really any different? Like those those illustrations of like, you know, biblical forms of angels with the wings of eyes and things like that.

That's like the book of Revelation, right? So the idea that, you know, the saints and the angels would manifest in the form of, you know, Hindu deities, that's not so far-fetched. They're actually pretty grounded compared to some of the stuff that's described in Revelation. If listeners want to find out more about Prestor John, he does show up in Fantastic Four, number 15. but it's probably easier for you to find a copy of Thor annual number 17 where he fights Thunderstrike because of Kang, the Conqueror. So are you talking to like 54 like Kirby and Lee? Yes.

Yes. Prestor John was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Yeah. I don't know if you know that. Or you can also check out any episode of the Apocopal of Apocopal about the Three Kings. We'll probably talk about Prester John in any episode you can find. She'll probably do this Thor annual. MCU Phase 6 is going to be crazy.

Yeah, I took this story. There was a great book I read called Holy War, How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in Centuries Old Clash of Civilizations, which is about Christianity and Islam and the Trade of Spices and The Exploration of India by Nigel Cliff. It's fantastic and worth reading. Introduced to me by one of our old colleagues from Computer Games World, Sean, I forget what his last name was the other Sean

But yeah It was great though But the point though As Christianity is spreading It is a lot of political motivation Behind it spread Right like they're going around the world Trying to

Because it's not just about faith and theology It is about power And it is about making sure Like for instance the Pope splits a world And half so Spain gets this side And Portugal gets outside And all of these other trades and deals Because they want to break

the hammerlock that Islam has on trade between Asia and Europe, and that is a lot of why we get this evangelism that goes through Africa and goes through India and goes, tries to make its way to the east. And that's why whenever you see like a lot of these Christian ports like Macau or other places like that, they're basically little havens of Christianity that these people can land in safely with their brother kingdoms and be able to spread their power through soft power and through just political manipulation. and eventually bring these people under their control so they can gain wealth out of it. just to interject that I've had this topic on the Retronaut's books for about a year with the plan to talk about this particular subject following our episode 666. And in a wild coincidence, my wife Kat and I sat down a couple of weeks ago to watch the FX series Shogun from last year, which, by the way, is a 10-10, 10 out of 10, like one of the best shows I've ever seen. amazing in all respects. But it just kind of blew me away because so much of the plot is predicated on the fact that the main character is a British Protestant who has come to Japan

basically trying to create trade with the East and specifically Japan. And the Portuguese Catholic presidents factors heavily into the show. When people speak English in Shogun, they're actually speaking Portuguese, but they just didn't feel like subtitling the whole damn thing, which is good. But the divide there and, you know, the division of the world between the Spanish and the Portuguese Catholics, all of these things factor into this discussion. And, you know, it's fiction, but it's very grounded fiction, very closely based, but not literally based on actual history of the Tokugawa Shogunate and how that's established. And, yeah, like, it gave me an unexpected appreciation for the presence that Catholicism especially,

but also that Christianity as a whole had in Japan for a while and how it fits into a very formative time in Japanese history, even as just kind of like this background element. but it did drive some of the divisions and some of the political maneuverings of that era. And, you know, after watching that show, I was like, huh, that's an amazing coincidence. So I sat down and read about some of this and was like, okay, so what we're seeing on screen is actually pretty accurate. So I, you know, if this topic is of any further interest to anyone after hearing us talk about it for an hour and a half, I strongly recommend watching Shogun both. for its edifying elements and also for the fact

that it's really damn good. Well, I mean, I watched the original one with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifunet, so I don't know how the new one could possibly be nearly as good as that was. It's phenomenal. Because, I mean, the original was absolutely genius, and the novel is written on is also fantastic.

James Clavel, for all that he is not Japanese, wrote a damn good book. And you can find that novel at any dad or grandpa's house. As a dad. Yes. It's a good book, man. Like, I don't know, I'm a big fan of Richard Chamberlain. He was a big dude in my house growing up. We watched the Thornbirds a lot.

Taking me back to the 80s ABC promos. The dawn of time, right? So Christianity is spreading here, and one of the things is fascinating that you don't see in Shogun, for instance, is that a lot of the people who are on those ships going from, like, you know, trade ports west onwards to Japan were Indians. They were the Indian Christians from Goa who were

coming with them because of Portuguese, when they had their foothold in India, we're basically using that as a place to resupply and reload their ship. So a lot of these guys are Indian Christians. So you see in Japan early on, they're like, oh, Christianity must be one of those other weird Indian religions like Buddhism that just hasn't made it here yet. And so they kind of treated it with a little bit of like disregard and not like dismissiveness, not disregard, but just kind of like, oh, India's got a lot of weird faiths that we just know about, it's fine. Actually, I just read a book called The Golden Road by the great historian William Dalrymple, which talks about India's position within the Silk Road as a center of culture and trade going east and west,

and talks about the spread of, like, Hindu and Buddhist culture from India into China, Japan, and Mongolia. It's very fascinating if you guys haven't checked it out if you're interested in that sort of thing. But fundamentally what it is, is that in Japan, religion was Shinto, the ingrown spiritual-based religion based on local spirits that are in the various areas and in nature. And then also this imperial faith, which is based on Amaterasu, the goddesses and everything, where the emperor is the descendant of the living god here descended from the great god who created us. And then also Buddhism, the foreign religion, which was brought in by China, because everything China was in vogue in Japan. If they're doing it, we should follow suit and do it as well. And they also had like pseudo-Confucianism, but the Confucianism in Japan never really got to the level that it did in Korea,

for instance, where Korean Confucianism was driving the country for well after it stopped in China. But in Japan, fundamentally, you had two religious faiths. You had Buddhism and you had Shinto. And Buddhism was dealing with death and with reincarnation and with, you know, what your legacy is going to be. And Shinto is what you're doing right now in your life. and survival. And later on, when Christianity finally made his foothold,

Christianity gave them ceremonies for things like baptism and marriage that Buddhism or Shintoism didn't necessarily care about as much. So it's kind of like there was a joke when I was living there where you're born a Shinto, you're married to Christian, you die above this because these are the people who care about these set traditions. But when Christianity is starting to make it foothold, it's got a couple of levels of baggage with it in Japan. One is that it is being associated with these giant traders from Portugal who are coming in and trying to either take our stuff and give us crap for it or like just try to supersede our traditional power structure.

It is a weird foreign religion. We don't like it. We will give you this small chunk of land in South, in like Nagasaki or whatever you can Christianize, do whatever you need to do over there. Stay there and leave the rest of the hell alone, right? And that is where a lot of this conflict come from because Christianity obviously is a religion of events. and people will get taken by this message. I mean, it would not have spread if the message was not a message that was so compelling to so many people. If the message of salvation and of, like, we've been kind of pseudo-dunking on it a little bit here,

but really, if the message of salvation and redemption was not so powerful, it would not have spread as fast and as far as did. And in Japan, you would see these people who are samurai or who are lower class or who are oppressed, hearing this message of this redemptive word of like, we can all be saved. we can all, there's no, it doesn't matter who you are, what cast or class or race you are, you can be saved just by believing that a man came and saved us. Is an insanely powerful memetic force

that spreads itself through the world. And so it broke out of these small enclaves that they were putting them into, and it would start to spread. And you would see, like, there's an artifact from the 1600s that are in Japan of like, you see Kuanian with like the little baby Buddha or whatever on her lap,

and then you flip to the back end there's like a cross etched on the back of it because it's actually supposed to be the Mother Mary holding Jesus, but it decorated to be Buddhist iconography so that the people who walk in don't think you're a weird shadow Christian. It just happens to be

it's just the mother of the holy blessed Buddha. That's all it is. And that sort of thing is a lot of how Christianity spread through tracts and through people just passing the message human by human to saying like, look dude, we don't have

be locked in this caste system that puts us at this bottom here underneath all these people. There's a way for us to be free. And you could see why the imperial forces did not appreciate that and why they might not be so fond of this notion of like, you mean anybody can be saved at any point in time and they don't need to pay me or honor me or honor the emperor. I'm not sure I like that. That's got to go.

That's a problem. And you see this in a lot of Asian countries of these countries where, they'll be like, oh, there's a plague, let's just kill all the Christians, because obviously they must have brought it in with them. Or like, hey, this city is having unrest. Okay, well, let's just take all the Christians, round them up and kill them. It'll solve our problem.

It was a very good political tool to be able to just have a group of people that nobody like that you could point to, just say, like, if we solve those guys, all of our problems will go away. Glad we don't have to worry about that here in the modern day.

You know, Yeah. And so, you know, you see like Francis Javier, who is like the Catholic missionaries coming in from Spain going to like Japan and bringing this faith with him. And because he is an embassy from the West, he meets with the imperial lords and the shoguns and stuff and starts a conversation. And the problem is just starting this conversation is immediately going to cause interest to grow in Catholicism and in Christianity and cause. to spread. And so, like, you know, the Mexican orders, like the Jesuits and Dominican Franciscans show up, and they

start to heal people and help them and, like, build houses and do all these nice, wonderful things. And, like, then they start to baptize people. And now, now the Shogun's like, okay, we like it when you were doing things for free. We don't like it when you're starting to take our kids' souls.

This is not a thing we're a fan of. But why is Christianity taking a foothold in Japan? Because Buddhism has, has become entrenched and rich and noble and they're like the biggest landholders in Japan or the Buddhist temples and monasteries and they're like a military force

of nonviolent people yeah but and Shinto is not really a religion that has any kind of like it's just a thing that is there that you are you don't practice you are not Shinto it is just part of the air you breathe so having this force come in when your current religious force is

corrupt and soft and dealing with just gaining power for itself. People want to have, you know, sucker. They want to have care and they want to be loved by somebody. So Christianity is able to make its way through the lower castes and classes of the country because these people feel like they're being exploited without being cared for. And Christianity says, I'm here to care for you. And that is a problem. Because that's the same thing that happened in India, that's the same thing that happened in China,

where like, oh, why are all these people just converting away from this true faith that we have? Oh, well, maybe if we didn't treat them like dogs, they wouldn't be so ready to leave us. And you get to this weird state where there's also political unrest in Japan at the time. The Sengoku period, the warriors are fighting, the emperor is there as a figurehead. The Shogun is the actual power, but even then it's not really a power. It's kind of like which kingdom is the most prominent kingdom right now. And this leads a power vacuum where people can start to bring in their faith and bring in this foreign faith that will give us a little bit of stability here.

And you see in this era, a bunch of daimyo, a bunch of warlords and subjects and stuff are converting to Christianity, and as part of that, they're taking on Portuguese iconoclasm, so they're starting to destroy Shinto shrines. They're starting to destroy Buddhist shrines. They're trying to like forcibly convert monks and priests. and this is where they run into the wall. This is where it's like, okay, no, now this is not okay anymore. We were okay when you're just dealing with like small squale, giving people.

And Odunabunaga, who is one of the most famous shogun of all time. You know, his him and his homie Tomitoi, the Tomitoy Hideyoshi, I forget what his first name is, Tomo something. I love Hideyoshi though. He's like one of my favorite Japanese characters. Those guys hated Christians. They turbo hated Christians. It's not really a character, but yeah. Well, I mean, I was just rereading a book called Taiko, which is the history of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and it's just, it's so good. It's so good.

But anyways, they published this edict called a Batheiraen edict, which is banning missionary activities. They basically say, you are not allowed to spread your faith anymore. This is a problem, but we don't want it. We need you to go away. And Hideyoshi specifically hated Christians. And it's hard to explain really necessarily why, but it was a problem. was definitely, he was one of the guys who went out of his way to really

just prosecute them. And so he would do things like, you know, they would kill a lot of the missionaries. They would crucify them. They're like, oh, you guys like a cross? Okay, we're going to learn how to crucify people. And we'll do that to you. Happy birthday. There's the famous 26 martyrs

of Japan, the first 26 missionaries who were basically crucified in Nagasaki in like 1600, 1592 something. And they were horrific executions, horrific executions. And because these guys were reading all the stories of the martyrs, because the two books that Portuguese Christians would bring to share their faith is the Bible, and then the

modernology, the story of the saints, because they want, oh, these are how Christ has come down and touched these people and brought them the way and the light, and let's follow their example and bring you the way in the light. And, you know, Hithiosian friends read this and say, oh, these are a manual of ways to kill Christians. Got it. Let's go. And that's horrifying but the Tokugawa basically they sat there

and after Hideyoshi leaves and Iasu comes in they're like we want to trade with Portuguese but we're just going to shut down the kingdom instead so they effectively eradicate Christianity in Japan like

it's almost like Christianity is a mind virus so they go in and they put down a full on lockdown kill all the Christians shove them away to Nagasaki and all the way down at the bottom the country and lock the country down and do that for like a couple hundred years you know

and so Christianity now becomes a very shadow religion in Japan where it's like it has not been obliterated but it is so much in the deep dark of the culture that you won't find anybody calling them so Christians but you will see these notions of the the Kakurei Christian which is like the hidden Christians the guys who are just going to be sitting there. with their Buddhist statuary, pretending to be Christians. It's a lot like the way after the Inquisition Jews in Spain would pretend to be Catholics, despite keeping their original faith. And you see this in a lot of places where the religion has been effectively pushed to the far margins as far as you can go,

the way the Zoroastrians in Iran might be right now, for instance. And it's wild. And that's, of course, a lot of where video games take place in those eras. So it's really, this is where a lot of. this cultural kind of is coming from. Yeah, something worth mentioning is that in 1638, so this was after the Tokugawa Shogunate,

and, you know, kind of, I guess after this lockdown, definitely after the, the Barrington document edict, 1638 was a huge rebellion in Japan called the Shimabara Rebellion,

which supposedly, you know, based on just the summaries that I read, is the single largest rebellion, in Japanese history. It was thousands and thousands of people rising up against the leaders, and it was instigated by Christians. And that was really, I think once that was battened down, and they fought that off,

that was really where the leadership said, okay, this Christianity thing, it's got to go. Like, this is just a problem. They've, you know, roused a rebellion. They've stirred discontent and disaffection among the poor. and, you know, they have lots of samurai, as you've mentioned, on their side who are, you know, better than just farmers. You know, they've got better weapons, better training, better armor, like, it's dangerous. And I'm going to mention a video game here. It's finally happening.

We're talking about a video game in the context of this episode. It's not, if you've been with us for the past 80 minutes. Thank you. No, no, no, no. this was, you know, this was really kind of, I knew the risks going in. No, this is the payoff. Here we go. Samurai Showdown by S&K is a fighting game, which was notable for being one of the very first

weapons-based fighting games. It's got beautiful animation and art. But it takes place in 17th century Japan. And the primary story behind it, the main main. villain is a guy called Amokasa, who is a real historical figure. He was a Christian. He was the leader, the instigator of the Shimabara Rebellion. So in this game, Samurai Showdown, it's not that Christianity is, you know, the church or anything like that is, is necessarily presented as villainous. You're not, you're not fighting, you're not attacking order

athrown in Samurai Showdown, but you are fighting against a notorious Christian from Japanese history who helped to lead one of the biggest insurrections against the emperor and the shogun and basically just the established leadership in the country's entire history. So, you know, he's kind of like, it's not really a good comparison, but the Jefferson Davis of Japan in a sense just that he's further back in history

and obviously this rebellion of several thousand people didn't have nearly the same divisive effect on that country as the American Civil War did on ours certainly it doesn't have the same lingering lasting after effects but nevertheless it is a part of history

And, you know, understanding what Samurai Showdown is all about and why you're fighting this guy and what the context and the place that he has and his following has in Japanese history, I think is a pretty good entry point into saying like, hey, what's up with all these JRPs that are like fight the Catholic Church and destroy the space pope? It's, you know, it starts with Amakusa, Amakasa, however he pronounce his name. Now, the thing that's wild about Amokasashiro is that he was 16. He was 16 years old when he came and... Just like a JRP protagonist. Right. And he dies by the end of 17 when he's executed and, you know, his head is stuck on a pike in Nagasaki. But what's wild is this guy has such a huge outsized impact on Japanese culture.

Like, if you ever, did you ever see the anime Ronikenshin? There's this huge arc in Ronan where they have like the Catholic, the, the, The Shimabara arc in there where they've got like, you know, Kenshin has to fight against like the Catholic church and it gets really weird and stuff. But in that, Amakusa is like the bad guy there. He's like one of these people who has turned himself into the son of God and this whole thing. And basically this character of Shimabara of Amakusa Shiro is one of like the most like pivotal figures in the history of this era, which is wild for like a dude who is alive for a year and died.

17 years, really. Well, yeah, 17 years. It's kind of, you know, the Joan of the Ark. John of Arc. It's exactly that kind of vibe of John of the Arc. But he never did aerobics with Bill and Ted. So really, which culture is superior? I mean, they thought he was the illegitimate son of Hideyoshi, but that would have been weird.

But yeah, this guy and like his banner during the Shimbada rebellion, it had a medieval Portuguese's grail and cross on it. And it said, pray to the Holy Moly. the most holy sacrament. So this guy was Catholic, Catholic. Like he was like oh yeah, we are doing this, we're going to do this. Now, it is wild to think of like a 15-year-old being like, all right, we're going to attack and dethrone

the Shogun God, but that's what 15-year-olds and JRP's do. I mean, that is the time in your life where you're most likely to be rebellious, so it does kind of fit. But I mean, he must have had... I mean, his Catholic name was Geronimo.

He must have had phenomenal charisma to have, you know, to have led this, this group like that. So it's just an interesting sidebar in history. I'm afraid I never saw that Ruroni-Kinshin. It's the worst arc, don't we? Because I couldn't, I couldn't get past, no, I couldn't get past a circus episode. That was where I tapped out. So everything after that, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, not a good one to get into nowadays either. No, we don't want to. No, but that's a different thing altogether. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Christianity has a weird

fraught, like, relationship with Japan, though. And so the Meiji lockdown, and then there's, you know, these guys in the West keep trying to come to Japan. And they keep trying to break in and get to this market for... I don't even know why there's not, like, Japan had any resources

that were particularly hot and, you know, needed to be in Europe that weren't there. But the idea, I guess, for a lot of Europeans, it's like, us in, which means we need to get in. Like, the fact that you won't let us in

means that there's got to be something in there worth having, right? It's negging, you know? Japan is the ultimate pickup artist for the Portuguese Catholics. Right. And so, like, in like the mid-1800s, Japan starts to open

more tough to foreigners and to allow more foreigners to come in and stuff. They're starting to soften the, like, whole ceiling of the country. And then, at this point in the mid-1800 you start to get a lot of Christians who aren't just the Portuguese Catholics, Catholics,

Protestant, Orthodox, like the Russian Christians coming in through China, the Protestants coming in from England. And like the major restoration happens in 1871 where Japan's like, oh, we got to be more like the West. We have to make ourselves bigger. We have to start eating meat and get taller and all this stuff. And Christianity is a big part of that. And so we start to see a lot more

like versions of Christianity starting to show up in Japan but it still doesn't really make much of a foothold I mean that's not to say that there wasn't any at this point there were even prime ministers of Japan that were Christian there were famous Japanese Christians who were like

you know even as recently as like Ataro Asso who is still one of the heads of Japanese culture of the Japanese government right now is a Christian and he was a prime minister a few years back and is like just generally speaking a weird conservative jerk but there were a lot of, in the early 1900s and 1920s and stuff, when the, after the Medi

Restoration, after there's much more openness to Western ideas, you see a lot more nobility becoming Christian and a lot more, uh, Christian become, Christianity becomes like the intellectuals religion. It becomes like, because like religion in Japan, Buddhism and like Chintos, again, they'd ossified, they hadn't really evolved. They hadn't really fit a theological need that people who care about these things want. And Christianity, having had so much development in the West from all these nerds sitting, then writing a lot, gives this theological kind of food to these people who are desperate for philosophy and philosophical discussions.

And so it feels like a lot more upper caste, upper class people become much more Christian. And there's a lot less persecution of it, but it's also not very supported. It's not like they're given the state. Like the state is still Shinto, but one of the empresses was Christian, right? Like, it's wild now how many Christians have made it into the different states and stages of Japanese society now. Even though once you become a noble, you are meant to give up your Christianity or your other religious faith to take on this Shinto tradition. But you're still saying your kids are Christian school, right? So it's kind of this weird, we're not going to talk about it, but it's here type of tradition now.

And so in Japan these days, you have a lot more just warm throwing. Even like going back to video games, Kat Harai, you know, he went to like the Christian International Christian University and grew up with Christianity in his life. And you see a lot of these things kind of starting to become much more of part of the culture there. But because it came in in such a haphazard way and such a non, like, systemic way, it means we've got a lot of just weird, weirdness about Christianity in Japan, like Trigone with his gigantic Christian giant cross McGeehan. Good old Wolfwood. Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite Japanese, yeah, influencers is A.G. Suribaya, who created Ultraman and, you know, worked in a lot of those Tokasatsu shows. was like the whole thing about Ultraman is, you know, there's some famous bits of Ultraman being crucified. And you're like, whoa, that's weird.

But that's not just them taking imagery from another culture and being like, hey, let's just run with it. It's actually Tsudabaya, you know, expressing his faith and, you know, like pulling, maybe not expressing, but pulling from his actual practicing tradition. When Ultraman destroys enemies with his ultra beam, he makes a cross with his arm. and fires, you know, incredible power with it. And that is a crucifix. It is not like a coincidence. It's actually sort of by, you know, again, drawing from his actual practical religion.

There was an anime I watched where one of their power moves was the holy blazing Jesus slash. And you're like, and a big giant glowing cross comes out and slices through. And I'm like, you know, I'm not sure. I don't remember what the gospel.

That one came out. I mean, Richter Belmont can do that too. Yeah. I didn't crash if he's carrying the, yeah, if he's carrying the boomerang. Or, like, we all remember Superbook, right? Like, the good old Christian anime from the 80s? I don't remember that. You don't remember Superbook?

Oh, God. No, look it up. I looked out, I guess. You are very lucky. There was a very turbo Christian anime in, like, 1981 or something like that, starring a young boy named Chris, who discovers the ancient Bible powers that can send him and his friends back into time to the Old Testament. It is...

Is it like an Issaquay? No, yeah, it's an Issaquay. Like ancient, ancient Israel? It's wild. I used to watch it on English TV before I knew what anime was. Don't ask me why I'm watching Christian shows. This is America.

That's what to do. But yeah, dude, like, the reintroduction of Christianity in modern sense, it's weird because after World War II, religion in Japan kind of just stopped being a function of society.

in the way that it had been before. Because when you take down here, you take down the imperial divinity and you nuke them, they're like, what do we need God for? Obviously, he didn't help us here.

You know, but there is still, though, there are a lot of modern Christian sects and like cults and small groups and stuff that show up there. There's a Christian presence, but it is a very small portion of the society.

And it is more fashionable to get married Christian style because they're like, oh, we want a big white dress wedding because that's what we see in the movies and TV and less about any sort of like any sort of like real divine kind of

it's cosplay, it's religious cosplay. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Christmas earlier and that is a chance for you to buy a nice cake and spend a day with your girlfriend. Yeah. Oh, I mean, yeah, the KFC there, amazing, great stuff. I would have that on Christmas Day.

I've spent Christmas in Japan. We did not have KFC. but, you know, there was the cake. I remember the first Christmas I spent in Japan. It was so weird just because having grown up here in the States and going there and be like, oh, you mean, you're just, it's just, it's just a day. It's like, I didn't know this was a lot. Isn't it like a more romantic thing in Japan as well?

It's like a Christmas Valentine's almost. Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a Michael Bublae song about that, actually. Santa buddy. My wife listens to it. It's called Christmas Valentine. My wife listens to it. hourly from November 25th through December 25th.

Yeah. All I know is I remember going to India from Japan in Christmas time and seeing dudes driving the rickshaws in like 90 degree heat wearing Santa caps. And I'm like, Christmas. Here we go. Yeah, like that's another interesting aspect of it, right? Because you do have like religious Christianity and then you have cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity.

And like secular Christian celebration. and influence on culture that is kind of endemic to America. Yeah, I was going to say, is that so different from the Christian cosplay we get here? No. Yeah, like a lot of people have, a lot of people who aren't religious have big weddings in churches because that's what you do. Just like, you know, neither Benito nor I are believers, but we are the biggest Christmas fans you are likely to find.

Well, I think I mentioned this in the Satanic Panic episode, but the two, church I went to is like, yeah, don't talk about Christmas because, like, do it in the privacy of your home. That's fine. We'll have a holiday party here, but it's not Christmas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like, just like Chris is talking about, you've got the religious Christianity and the cultural Christianity, and they often turn on each other. I am, yeah, I'm going to save my thoughts on Christmas for another show, but it has been the source of great fights in my house because I am not a fan, but my child is being raised American too, so he's got to get his Christmas things.

And I'm like, fine, we'll have a tree. It's okay. I think the interesting thing for this discussion is we as people who live in America can very easily spot the difference between cultural Christianity and religious Christianity. Like a crucifix and a Christmas tree are different. But when you are not part of the culture and you're looking at it from outside, like it's kind of all the same. same thing, right? Like, a thing that I put in the show notes is I love in Dragon Ball how a halo is just someone's dead.

Yeah. And how that's like a weird Byzantine art element depicting Jesus and saints that then gets modified over hundreds of years and then becomes a thing that shows up in like cartoons when Daffy Duck is blown up with dynamite and ascends to heaven and has a heart. harp and wings and a halo. I saw that note you put, and I was like, oh, man, I want to talk about this because it's not just that. It's also in Hindu tradition and Buddhist tradition, so you get this synthetic thing.

Now, I'm not saying the Hindus didn't get it from Jesus. They very well could have because there's a lot of, you know, transmission along the way. But in Dragon Ball, he's going to hell, or in, as we learned in America, home for infinite losers to fill. You know, and you've got who's sitting at the desk of hell, but Yamraj, right? Yama, the god of death for Buddhism and Hinduism, is sitting there with his yak horn helmet, which is very much Hindu iconography, very Buddhist iconography, leading you to Christian hell, you know, with your little halo on your head. And, you know, there's some, there's some- Because Friza dies on Earth and has to go to Earth-Hell. There's also some conflation there with Christianity because there's some early Christian art that depicts Jesus or the apostles or whatever with horns instead of halos because there was a,

issue with the translation. So, you know, the idea of like, yeah, the halos were, were misunderstood as horns. So it's a, it's a wild, wild, uh, cultural transformation that we've experienced here. It makes, it makes sense when it's Goku or King Kai, right? Because those are good guys. But then when Frizo, like they, like, he literally has to go to hell. Anybody can be saved, man. Anybody can be saved. Even Al if you look at the Sega Master system.

If I saw, if there was an episode where I got to see Friza except Jesus Christ as a personal Lord and Savior, like Wolverine did in that one episode of X-Men 92, like that would have been, I would have lost it. Oh, my God. Yes, I'm going to be baptized. All right, so we are at the point where we haven't gone for two hours, but there's no way in the next 20 minutes. We could cram all of this video game discussion. So this is going to be a two-parter, which you already knew if you were listening to this. You knew as soon as you saw this come up. You were like, oh, no, there's no way those guys are going to get through all of this.

No one thought we were going to cover not only the entire history of Christianity, but also the influence of a major world religion on an entire medium. I want to make a note here that in the show notes I put together, it's six pages. And the history of Christianity part is three lines, basically saying, all right, guys, just go for it. Take it away, gang. Yeah, take it away, gang, is what I wrote. Basically, none of that was scripted or planned. It was just like, let's see what happens when I wind them up and let them go. And the answer is what you've just heard over the past hour and a half.

Hey, she, we've talked about your special interest for two hours. Okay, let's go. It was very informative and it did tie into video games. So it's not like we have bamboozled the audience here by saying, hey, come to hear about video games. and we're going to teach you the good news about Jesus Christ. It's not one of those like bait and switch proselytization type experiences. We just didn't quite get to all the video game stuff, although we did talk about a few video games, as is our remit.

But there will have to be a second episode where we can really dig into a lot of these JRPs. God may have been attacked, but not dethroned this episode. So clearly we need to reconvene for a second shot at all of this. Yeah. I mean, I was going to bring up at some point the fact that like Christians and Muslims became enemies in dynasty warriors as a yellow hat rebellion. But nobody knows about that because they're just called yellow hats and they just divorce it from the context of what that actually was. But I didn't. So this will be the conclusion of the attack phase of the attack phase of the,

this discussion. Join us in a future episode for the throne phase. But no, thanks all of you for coming in to talk about something that is not a typical retronauts discussion, but nevertheless is highly relevant because it does affect video games and also is history. So, I mean, that's the whole point. I mean, I've been playing a lot of Fantasy Star 4 lately. And when you've got the fact that you were fighting against his interplanar god named the profound darkness, that tells you something about where they're coming from theologically. See, so you've got to save that for next time and talk about it with us.

And if you're going to play persona, you've got to get into Gnosticism. Oh, I have a lot of things to say about persona, buddy. And we will get there. We will get there for sure. But for now, we are going to say so long, farewell. Alviederson. Goodbye. Goodbye. Yes.

All of those things. So with that being said, I am going to allow everyone to be aware that Retronauts is a podcast you can find on the internet and listen to more episodes of. We recently put together an episode on the 1980s Satanic Panic that is very relevant to this. And as I mentioned before, we've had Final Fantasy and what was the other thing episode? Star Wars. Oh, yeah, Star Wars. Yes. We've had episodes on those things. So really, Retronauts is your one-stop shop for video game history, and many things ancillary to video games.

So check us out, Retronauts, Retronauts.com. We are on Patreon. That is how I pay for my health insurance. So please support us, patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you subscribe, you get each episode a week ahead of the public feed with no advertisements or promotions and a higher bit rate quality than on the public feed. and for a couple extra bucks a month, you also get a ton of bonus content. It's like twice as much stuff as the standard subscription.

So I highly recommend it. It's still actually increasingly, as inflation gets worse and worse, increasingly the best deal in entertainment. So retronauts on Patreon. Patreon.com slash retronauts. That's the pitch. Now, please, uh, Sheevam, where can we find you on the internet? You can find me these days on Blue Sky at Shevenputt dot blue sky dot

Whatever Also on Twitter Well no actually I've basically cut off my Twitter entirely You can also hear me on the podcast Casual Magic With Shiva and Putt Where I interview people from Magic the Gathering On other things Really just whatever I want to talk about

And also the Shevenwood Wheeler Love Magic podcast Where it's actually physically about Magic the Gathering And like half a dozen to 10 or 15 Retronauts episodes over the years So many people have come up to me And be like oh my God dude I love listening to you talk about Street Fighter for six hours. And I'm like, I love talking about Street Fighter for six hours. So it works out. I like that earlier you said your special interest, as if you

just have one. There, there. You have, you have a broad ranging, uh, appreciation for many things in the world. I like things. It's fun to talk about things I like. Things are great. Anyway, thank you, Shiva. Chris, Sims. Where can we find you online? Uh, you can find me at t-h-e-isb.com. That is my website. It's got some things that I've written on it as well as links to other things that I do and comics and things that I have written that you can buy. You can also find me weekly on the War Rocket Ajax podcast and irregularly on Apocrypal's which I co-host with Benito where we read through the Bible as well as hagiography is apocrypha and all kinds of other stuff. We do have an episode on the wisdom tree games. That's episode 64. We also have an episode on El Shadai, Ascension of the Metatron. which I forget the episode number, but it's, it's in there. And we have plenty of episodes on increasingly tangential topics. I think our last mutual birthday episode, we covered the three-issue Christian Marvel comic series, Illuminator, which is a very fun time. But it's a good show.

I enjoy it. And if you liked our discussion here, you will probably get a kick out of that as well. I'm also unemployed, so we can't find you at the office, is what you're saying. You can't find me at the office, but you can't hire me if you would like any writing or my general expertise on pop culture subjects, which, I don't know, you can, I think you can contact me on my website, but you can also find me on Blue Sky at theisb, T-H-E-I-S-B-B-B-S-Sky dot-Sky.com. And finally, Benito. All right. Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky at Benito Serrino. B-Sky.

dot social. And in addition to hearing me and Chris on Apocrypal's talk about biblical literature, you can also hear my other podcast, Friends to the End, which is nominally a Chucky podcast, but we've covered all of the Chucky media. So for 2025, we have converted to be the Purge podcast. And so our first episode on The Purge should probably be out by the time this episode goes up. Otherwise, yeah, you can find me on Patreon where I do all sorts of things. I've got serialized Latin translations of early modern sci-fi utopias.

I've got a serialized book about Christmas as well as horror movie reviews and all sorts of other stuff. That's patreon.com slash Benito Serino. So those are the best places to find me. Don't forget that you also covered all of the final destinations. We did do all the final destinations. That's true. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish on the internet all over the place. J. Parrish.

dot blue sky, dot social at limitedrun games.com on Retronauts here. And also on my YouTube channel where I talk about video games. Yes, imagine that. It's very exciting. Anyway, that's it for this episode. If you thought there was not enough video game talk, well, I don't know if next week, no, no, no, I'm not, that's not an accusation. Just me saying that I don't know if next week is going to be any better because it's a years in review review. That's also another one where we talk about history and we do talk about video games, but also we didn't finish that one in a single episode either.

So a lot of talking about history, not a lot of being. concise. That's the retronauts promise to you, and we'll leave it there. Thank you and good night. You know, Thank you.