2020/07/06 Key the Metal Idol and the Rose
Key the Metal Idol is not a popular show. Many of those reading, as few as they may be, are unlikely to have watched Key. So going forward I'll assume either you've seen the show or you're unlikely to ever get around to watching it.
I'll begin with a short description of the show - although that may be tough given its nature. The protagonist, Key, is a powerful psychic Miko, as is later discovered, but, after a traumatic incident in her youth, becomes a 'robot'. Devoid of emotion. But the real reason she lost her emotion was because she had all her 'Gel' sucked out. Gel is a Sheldrakian mind substance, present in all humans, but highly concentrated in the psychic Mikos, giving them their powers. The evil boss is trying to suck up everyone's gel to make telekinetic war machines but to do this he has no choice but to set up huge idol concerts. Key, in order to become human again, must develop a devout following of over 30,000 people, and to do this, she trains to become an idol.
The main theme of Key is about humanity and dolls. Who is the doll and who is the human? Where is the line drawn? Key is a human who acts like a doll, whereas Miho on stage, the idol, is a doll who acts like a human. So at what point does the doll become human?
Christianity has an answer for this: love. A certain kind of love - namely Agape. Agape is a kind of selfless love, a love given from God - a love that gives you your humanity. There is a problem in our definition of (a) what is alive and (b) how far should our morals reach. All our tribe - they deserve life and honour. With strangers, it gets a little blurrier. Animals... I won't kill one for fun, but sure I will to eat. Plants, I'll just trim for aesthetic value or shred a leaf in my hand to keep my fingers busy. Crystals... they certainly grow? Life is very much a spectrum in the materialist model. Buddhists won't hurt any living things - by which they mean animals. But there is certainly an argument to make that some plants and fungi are smarter than shellfish. Where is this line drawn? Regarding the moral part of the question, Christianity has an answer. All men are loved by God. Through agape, through God's selfless love, a man's humanity is given. It is only through agape that a man is human rather than a sack of meat - a kind of divine power, one must admit. It is the invisible part which makes something precious, as Saint-Exupery says in the Little Prince. In Christianity, the modern bedrock of our humanism was lain.
Key, with her repressed gel, has lost her capacity for love. However, ever so often, her human self explodes out of her, with exceptionally powerful telekinetic results - much like Akira. And, in many of those instances, roses appear.
Here's one such example. During an incident, wherein her human self is released, Key saves the day firing a rose, stem first, into the eye of the evil robot. Each incident in which her true self is unleashed leads to roses firing. Roses are flower language for love - intense love - the agapic love from God which she reconnects with her as she temporarily reassumes human form. But more interestingly, on a similar note, is the relation with Christ. The rose has typically been associated with the blood of Christ, the thorns with the crown of thorn, the rose's five petals with the five holy wounds. Not to mention the Rosicrucians - an alchemical secret sect of Christianity whose main symbol was the rose cross - a symbol which predates their organisation.
These two meanings of the rose are in fact one. The rose in the centre of the cross is the centre of the Christian mandala - the divine agapic love found in wholeness, with communion with God, with the contemplative mindset. And that is what Key is undergoing in the show - her suppressed personality flickers with mandalic patterns of wholeness. Patterns which, Jung states, are typical of highly neurotic and psychotic people. Images to mend the fissure (neurosis) between Key's two halves. They are patterns of psychic completion which are projected into consciousness or into the world around, an attempt to engender inner change - much like an alchemical transmutation.
And project, Key does, that very rose, that very symbol of agapic love, that love which makes us human, into the eye of the doll. The doll who, by virtue of being a doll, is not human and is instead a tier below man, as Iklone points out. It takes a god to give a sack of meat humanity insofar as it takes a man to give life to a doll. The robot is, therefore, in losing his eye, blinded by that very divine love as an unworthy recipient.
The finale takes place in a theatre with crowds who come to see the last performance of the doll idol Miho. There, the big bad boss attempts to steal the gel of everyone in the crowd, leaving them in a steep stupor. In essence, their essence has essentially been taken away - their soul, their godliness, their agapic love from God has been snatched. They say that those whose gel has been stolen lose their energy and their personality, their vigour for life. It's no wonder - their ego-consciousness is being partitioned off from their unconscious mind. The axis has been snipped. And no longer are they connected to the deep divinity derived from the depths of the collective unconscious. Abandoned by God. Losing their energy source and will for life. No longer do they feel God's love. And flop they go.
But Key is now an idol. The idol rouses the soul of a man. Heals the soul, gluing him back together. The very word idol derives from a worshiped god. That word was no accident. Only an idol can re-evoke that divine love. In Jungenspräken, that would be the 'anima projection'. The anima, as the collective unconscious' gatekeeper, is the thread which every man must connect to to stay in contact with their life force. And as we see ever so often in anime, the idol sings her song to save the day. Music is a transcendental message to a higher part of oneself, as Schopenhauer says.
And like Mary, the love which emanates from the idol's song brings back the crowd members humanity. As ambassador to God's love, as the mother of Christ, Key reconnects the crowd members with their souls, channeling the agapic gel. Mary is, after all, the one who brought Christ, the son of God, of agape, into being. Birthing love, the rose, Christ's blood. A kind of Platonic midwifery, reconnecting with God's love, and achieving enlightenment. Reconnecting with that invisible part of the world which gives meaning to us. And by engendering that in the crowds, so too does Key engender it in herself, becoming human.
Here's one such example. During an incident, wherein her human self is released, Key saves the day firing a rose, stem first, into the eye of the evil robot. Each incident in which her true self is unleashed leads to roses firing. Roses are flower language for love - intense love - the agapic love from God which she reconnects with her as she temporarily reassumes human form. But more interestingly, on a similar note, is the relation with Christ. The rose has typically been associated with the blood of Christ, the thorns with the crown of thorn, the rose's five petals with the five holy wounds. Not to mention the Rosicrucians - an alchemical secret sect of Christianity whose main symbol was the rose cross - a symbol which predates their organisation.
These two meanings of the rose are in fact one. The rose in the centre of the cross is the centre of the Christian mandala - the divine agapic love found in wholeness, with communion with God, with the contemplative mindset. And that is what Key is undergoing in the show - her suppressed personality flickers with mandalic patterns of wholeness. Patterns which, Jung states, are typical of highly neurotic and psychotic people. Images to mend the fissure (neurosis) between Key's two halves. They are patterns of psychic completion which are projected into consciousness or into the world around, an attempt to engender inner change - much like an alchemical transmutation.
And project, Key does, that very rose, that very symbol of agapic love, that love which makes us human, into the eye of the doll. The doll who, by virtue of being a doll, is not human and is instead a tier below man, as Iklone points out. It takes a god to give a sack of meat humanity insofar as it takes a man to give life to a doll. The robot is, therefore, in losing his eye, blinded by that very divine love as an unworthy recipient.
The finale takes place in a theatre with crowds who come to see the last performance of the doll idol Miho. There, the big bad boss attempts to steal the gel of everyone in the crowd, leaving them in a steep stupor. In essence, their essence has essentially been taken away - their soul, their godliness, their agapic love from God has been snatched. They say that those whose gel has been stolen lose their energy and their personality, their vigour for life. It's no wonder - their ego-consciousness is being partitioned off from their unconscious mind. The axis has been snipped. And no longer are they connected to the deep divinity derived from the depths of the collective unconscious. Abandoned by God. Losing their energy source and will for life. No longer do they feel God's love. And flop they go.
But Key is now an idol. The idol rouses the soul of a man. Heals the soul, gluing him back together. The very word idol derives from a worshiped god. That word was no accident. Only an idol can re-evoke that divine love. In Jungenspräken, that would be the 'anima projection'. The anima, as the collective unconscious' gatekeeper, is the thread which every man must connect to to stay in contact with their life force. And as we see ever so often in anime, the idol sings her song to save the day. Music is a transcendental message to a higher part of oneself, as Schopenhauer says.
And like Mary, the love which emanates from the idol's song brings back the crowd members humanity. As ambassador to God's love, as the mother of Christ, Key reconnects the crowd members with their souls, channeling the agapic gel. Mary is, after all, the one who brought Christ, the son of God, of agape, into being. Birthing love, the rose, Christ's blood. A kind of Platonic midwifery, reconnecting with God's love, and achieving enlightenment. Reconnecting with that invisible part of the world which gives meaning to us. And by engendering that in the crowds, so too does Key engender it in herself, becoming human.