I’ve decided to take my weekly The Devil is a Part-Timer! 2 posts as a bit of a challenge. Basically, I’m going to try very hard to write entire posts about each episode. Not necessarily long ones but I want to talk about a least one thing per post.
I figure actual writers have to write about things they don’t necessarily have deep thoughts about all the time so I’m taking it as a learning exercise. Not that want to become a writer. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
I’m overachieving already, I have 3 things to talk about…well two and a half.
First is what’s up with the art! Like a lot of people, I’m not too crazy about the change in art style this season. And maybe that’s why I thought it looked particularly off this episode. I mean without context, I’m not sure I would have recognized the two main characters in the opening scene. You could clearly see how inconsistent it was throughout the episode.
I’m not talking about the fisheye deformation. That was actually cool. They should do that more. I’m talking about uneven proportions and wonky features. I have no clue if this show is on a budget strain but I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me it was. If you’re going to wait that long to follow up on such a popular franchise, at least make sure you got the budget lined up.
Jumping into a completely unrelated topic. The Devil Is A Part-Timer is a bit of a hodgepodge of religions, isn’t it? There’s the very obvious Christian influence. I mean we have angels and Satan and Lucifer. Except Satan and Lucifer are different people so I’m not too sure about that. There’s even the Arch-Angel Gabriel.
However sephiroth or sefirot, Yesod, the 1 emanations and all that. Those are all concepts in Kabbalah which is Jewish mysticism and itself borrows lore from earlier mythologies. It’s rare to see these two mixed together like that. Mostly because they are somewhat mutually exclusive from my understanding. Don’t take my word for it though, I am neither of these religions. But I find them both interesting.
As for the half a thing, it was fun seeing Lucifer being Lucifer. And I think Gabriel is becoming my favourite character. Not that I like him as a character exactly but I find the show gets more interesting when he shows up. He also occasionally reminds me of a 1990s Disney villain and that works for me!
See, look at all the things I had to say. Now to do it again next week!
Mrs B and I enjoyed season 1. Never realized there was more….
It just started
That would explain it then 😀
Yeah. He does remind of a Disney villain a bit.
Now, in Christian writings Satan was the most powerful angel who fell due to the sin of pride. Most angels did not have free will, so that’s another mark of his power. Even after the fall, only God and the archangel Michael are able to defeat him in a straight up battle which will take place after Armageddon.
If you are Jewish or Muslim, Satan (or Shaitan) does not have any power independent of God. The devil exists to test people’s virtue and tempt the unworthy to sin but doesn’t have any interest in hurting people for its own sake. The virtuous have nothing to fear from Satan. (There may however be collateral damage from the evil that lies in the hearts of humanity.) In the story of Job, God and the devil are on pretty good terms.
Christianity turned Satan into a creature with active malice towards humans because God created them and he wants to hurt God by hurting God’s people. He and his servants got the blame for every catastrophe.
Satan is an Old Testament name. Some think it may have been derived from Set who was the Egyptian god of war, chaos and storms, sometimes written as Set-hen. So the name may have an origin in Jewish theology dating back to the enslavement in Egypt.
Lucifer was not the name of the devil until much later in the post-Roman Christian era. I don’t think you’ll find it much in early Bibles. It is Latin for “light bringer.” (Because of this, early matches were called “lucifers.” It has the root lucid which also applies to elucidate.) Maybe this connection to enlightenement was drawn as a parallel to Adam and Eve’s eating from the tree of knowledge, so the devil became Lucifer.
The closest character in Greek mythology would be Prometheus. Dude did basically the same thing as the snake in Eden by giving us fire, (that lucifer connection again) knowledge, technology, and medicine so that we could live without gods. Greeks thought this was cool and had Hercules rescue him from a kind of hell of having his liver eaten over and over. Obviously two different points of view regarding secular knowledge here.
Lucifer did not become a popular name for the devil until after Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”
The sausage is free! long live the Sausage!
You and I have some different thoughts on Gabriel because I don’t enjoy his presence that much. I don’t think the lore of the show that he brings with him is that interesting at all.
Oh that’s too bad since it seems to be the main plot of the season.
Yeah, I know…