What would you get if you took an anime-style Beach Episode and removed the fanservice, the love confessions, all the hijinks and replaced them with a Socratic dialogue about why Jesus can’t be other than what Christians profess Him to be? You’d probably wind up with something like this comic, which is … (Not) A Typical Anime Beach Episode
Pre-Comic Notes: This episode makes use of terms that are familiar to fans of anime/manga, but may not make sense to other readers.
The “Beach Episode” and “The Bathhouse” are two recurring anime/manga themes. In Japanese culture, families do go to the beach during summer break, and communal bathing (sex segregated) is common.
In anime, these tropes are often used as an excuse to showcase the female characters in skimpy outfits and sexualized poses (“fanservice”) with male characters trying to get glimpses of them. Frequently this is done with the teasing of a (never quite successful) attempts to confess love and/or possible intimacy between the male and female leads. It’s aimed at the male reader.
This comic is a subversion of these tropes, replacing “fanservice” with theological dialogue, and poking fun at how western anime fans would be uncomfortable if they actually found themselves placed in these situations that anime and manga treat as common.
Post-Comic Notes: You didn’t think it would be that easy for Iimi to succeed, did you? It’s one thing for Kismetta to find flaws in Islam. It’s quite another to move towards accepting the chief claim of Christianity after years of claims made against it. Apologists aren’t God. They can help remove stumbling blocks in the path. But only God can give the grace.
Accounts of Muslim converts to Christianity all point out the difficulty of overcoming the belief that Jesus was only a man. A holy man to be sure, but still only a man. It’s not just Muslims of course. As far back as the Pagan Romans, we could see philosophical monotheists finding the idea of God becoming man to be offensive… that was seen as beneath the dignity of God.
This is why it’s important to pray for those who struggle with accepting our beliefs. We who were brought up in our faith do not have to unlearn the things that contradict it, so sometimes we don’t grasp just how hard it is for those who come from outside to do that.
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