Kyousou Giga (TV) Episode 8 Discussion

Though this show hasn't said it, I believe that when you become an agent of the shrine you really become a "Kami" (humans actually become Kami all the time), and in Japan every Kami has two Komainu protecting their shrine (in the Gingitsune they are called the "heralds" of the Kami, notice how there are supposed to be two). Papa-Myoue 's fox mask indicates that he is the Kami "Inari" (which again is the same god in Gingitsue, and is the Kami with the most shrines in Japan), the other masked shrine agents are other Kami. Interestingly they all were shown sort of isolating Inari, which would make sense in that Inari really isn't a traditional Shinto Kami from the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki (the two main sources of Japanese mythology), as is a bit of an unknown interloper.

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The really bizarre thing is that this IS in keeping with Buddhism (and don't forget that Koto is also a Buddha). This world is as much an illusion as the 13th plane, and in order to reach nirvana you literally have to shatter this illusion (as the famous Koan goes: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him" (this Koan is attributed to LInji, the founder of the Rinzai school of Zen, this is interesting because the person who brought the Rinzai school to Japan was the same person who gave Myoue the tea leaves (which I mentioned back in 5.5))) of this world. That is what Koto is doing. The shrine master faulted Inari for forsaking his responsibility and becoming attached to Koto and his family, in Buddhism "attachment" to anything in reality, is the ultimate "sin".

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Myoue returned to working for the Shrine, taking the younger Koto with him as part of his deal to prevent Jinja from destroying the 13th plane when it was initially discovered. Koto accepted imprisonment because the Shrine Master made it a requirement for him to leave the 13th plane alone (remember he said that they younger Koto destroyed mama-Koto's monitoring device).

Buddhas think in terms of billions of years, so most likely the time to return the body has not come (or perhaps ever would come because that would be a form of "attachment"). Koto's form wasn't tied to the artificial world, since Myoue created it for her after she was embodied, so there is no reason to think leaving it would have an impact.

That the writer meant most of this stuff is pretty clear in that he actually said that Koto was a syncretic being. Syncretism is what you call the merger of Shito and Buddhism (I explained this back on 5 I think, that for roughly 1,000 years the Kami and Buddhas were considered one thing, it was only from 1867-1872 when there was a systematic attempt to destroy Buddhism in Japan, that the two became separate). Inari and the Kumano Shrines (which I talked about over on RDG)(a bit can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumano_shrine) are the best remaining examples of Syncretism in Japan. As Episode 5.5 shows, he knows what he was talking about with both Buddhism and Shinto, so there is meaning behind all things.