A thought about Easter

Well, with the German Easter holidays approaching, I started to wonder why there never was an Easter special in the animes I saw (at least I don’t remember). There is a focus on every little day that I barely heard about (e.g. St. Whites day, St. Patricks Day) but I saw an anime covering Easter? Why could that be?

The first thing I thought about was that it is a Christian holiday, and thus not widespread in Japan. But thinking along those lines, you start wondering about why there is Christmas represented, right? I mean Easter is more important than Christmas (at least if I believe the fanatics in my family).

The next thing I considered was that Easter is more of a holiday for children, for the actual egg-searching part. Maybe that is why it is not represented, and thus often skipped in animes. But then it would perfectly fit childish characters, as the search is seen as childish (at least in Germany it is).

Another thing that came up is that there is no equivalent present. I mean every culture generate it’s own new years festivities, and since they did not always have accurate time measuring capabilities that would explain the differences in time. I hope you understand what I mean with equivalent festivities. In the Nordic culture, Christmas was at times pre celebrated as the night, were all life left the earth, and now prepared to return at the longest night (New years).

Then there is the lack of meaning for the audience. I mean what meaning does Easter actually have? It’s theme is rebirth, which was adapted by Christianity from all the small culture groups that warred each other at the end of the bronze-age. How would you implement that rebirth theme then? Some animes actually have that opportunity, but their theme is to serious as to actually apply Easter to it.

Another problem that comes to mind is, that the date is not fixed. I would actually believe that most script writers don’t want to fix themselves to a year, by choosing the dates beforehand. It might have some political implications that are not intended, although that could turn out funny. And the date is not as calculable as we think. I mean thinking back, the earthquake in Fukushima shortened our days by 13 ms. That might be a small difference, but if you know about the chaos theory (it sound weird, I know, but it is proven) then you also know about what that minor difference may cause. So even if he the author fixes on a date, it isn’t necessarily the correct one. I don’t think that makes this much of a difference, since I think it won’t ever be really considered as an option to input Easter into the kind of anime that I watch. (list, it’s missing a couple, but who cares).

All in all it makes no real sense to me that it is not implemented into animes. I think it could be used perfectly used in the comedy-harem type of anime. And there might be some other ways to utilize once one starts thinking about it. But then, who actually cares about things like that. I just thought it fits the season, and since I’m not here to post it on the appropriate date, I’ll post it earlier.