Magical Imagery: The Other’s Dragon, the Other’s Moon

3.1 The Ontological Property: Otherness

It seems harder, in logical terms, to identify a definite common property of magical imagery than of scientific imagery. If we must identify one, our only option is being an other. This is largely because the category of “magical imagery” under discussion is extremely broad. Actual language use supports this broad understanding: many elements of worldbuilding, depicted forms, plot developments, and so forth in contemporary works are regarded as magical imagery. A work may construct a magical world without relying on the most typical vocabulary, such as the word “magic.” Among generally recognized examples of magical imagery, we also encounter less typical terms: “magecraft,” “sorcery,” “alchemy,” “superpowers,” “spiritual power,” and so on. Observing how the word “magic” is used on the Chinese-language internet likewise supports a broad understanding. When, for example, an event in a work depicting a magical world seems to make especially good sense by the standards of the natural world, Chinese internet users often respond, “That’s not magic.” Conversely, when a work set in the real world includes something far too incredible by comparison with reality, we find the response, “All right, now that’s magic.” These uses of the word make a broad understanding of “magical imagery” both reasonable and necessary.

Under this broad understanding, then, otherness is the only property that all these disparate magical images could share. When we use “That’s not magic” as the opposite of “That’s not scientific,” we are already presupposing that magical imagery stands as an other in relation to scientific imagery. The relation between magical and scientific imagery resembles the relation Wouter Hanegraaff describes between esoteric and mainstream thought: each establishes a sharp boundary by treating its counterpart as an other. We can go further and consider how especially important this otherness is to esoteric thought. Mainstream thought can reinforce its authority through the entire system of social beliefs built upon it, and the considerable resources that system provides, packaging itself as “common sense.” Against the pull toward mainstream thought, esoteric thought’s only weapon is its own otherness. Whether it resorts to conspiracy theories or various gnostic approaches, even if it makes no normative claims to “ultimate truth” or “the source of happiness,” it at least promises a picture of the world different from that offered by mainstream thought.

There is, of course, one significant difference between magical imagery and the otherness of esotericism. Even if the picture of the world promised by esotericism does not seem real to us today, we might say that historical esotericism—especially before the scientific age—was, to some extent, an exploration of the natural world. That exploration was directed toward the actual world. Alchemy is the best example: even after Boyle’s time, it continued to provide some empirical material. When we discuss magical imagery, however, the magical world and everything that might inhabit it have no reality in any sense, nor are they directed toward the actual world. We can imagine that the creation of magical imagery in many works is inevitably influenced by the intellectual and cultural resources of human history, esotericism included. Ultimately, though, magical imagery is not in any sense a description of the actual world.¹

3.2 How Magical Imagery Acquires Otherness

This difference also means that, unlike esoteric thought, which naturally “parted ways” with mainstream thought over the course of history, magical imagery has an inherent tendency to distance itself actively in order to acquire otherness. It distances itself not just from things at the level of thought, but from the actual world itself. The world magical imagery inhabits is a world estranged from reality. To make the comparison with scientific imagery clearer, we will again confine our examination to visual presentations and mechanisms in discussing how magical imagery acquires otherness. Magical imagery in the form of mechanisms is very common. The simplest example is the power-scaling debates on the Chinese-language internet. When we discuss whether a character in a work’s magical world has near-admiral-level strength, whether one character could wipe the floor with another, or what a character’s powers really are, piecing together the smallest clues, we are discussing magical imagery as mechanism.

3.2.1 Imagery as Mechanism

In analyzing magical imagery, mechanisms are much simpler than visual presentations. Just as with scientific imagery, a mechanism functioning as magical imagery entails a network of interactions extending from the macro to the micro. When we abstract this network into conditionals containing causal relations, the wording alone shows us that the various elements of worldbuilding already contained in the network must themselves appear as other forms of magical imagery. Of the past decade’s magical mechanisms, perhaps the most famous and most intricate is the “Holy Grail War” of the Fate series.

Judged against the original specifications, there is scarcely a Holy Grail War anywhere in the Fate series that proceeds without something abnormal happening. Even so, we can roughly outline the Holy Grail War’s network of interactions as a mechanism. Let us take just one macroscopic aspect and see how the network acquires otherness. The Holy Grail War’s procedure is roughly this: seven mages, each accompanied by a Heroic Spirit they have summoned, fight for the omnipotent wish-granting device known as the Holy Grail, until the last surviving mage obtains it. This simple procedure creates a variety of networks of interaction. The simplest is that a mage’s desire to obtain the Holy Grail causally leads him to fight the other mages. The procedure also permits other networks: Kariya Matou’s desire to save Sakura, for example, causally leads him to fight the other mages. There are even networks that change with time and with changing possibilities, especially at turning points in the plot or when a character’s “reason for fighting” changes. In every case, however, it is obvious how the network acquires otherness. The descriptions alone contain words such as “mage,” “Holy Grail,” and “summoning Heroic Spirits,” which are themselves typical magical images. Thus, a mechanism acquires otherness through a network of interactions governed by a collection of magical images. As with scientific imagery, magical imagery in the form of mechanisms is derivative, deriving especially from visual magical imagery.

3.2.2 Imagery as Visual Presentation

Magical imagery conveyed visually is among the most common and most thought-provoking forms. The most direct way to create it is to invent a form that does not exist in reality. Intuitively, at least, since what the depicted form refers to does not exist in reality, it must be an other in relation to reality. But this view does not hold up. In what sense does the existence or nonexistence of a visual image’s referent in reality confer, or fail to confer, otherness? We can give an endless number of counterexamples. Giant humanoid robots do not exist in reality, but as scientific imagery they clearly lack otherness. Mages from another world do not exist in reality either, yet they are generally recognized as magical imagery and possess otherness. Clearly, existence itself cannot distinguish the two.

3.2.2.1 Clearing Up the Misconception about Existence

Perhaps it would be better to examine particular cases directly. Magical imagery in popular literature may have a history at least as long as scientific imagery. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, at any rate, continues to generate derivative works in various forms to this day. Many people may not know much about its conflicts and wars, but Gandalf’s appearance as an old man with a long beard, a pointed hat, and a cloak seems, for the vast majority of people, to be self-evidently synonymous with the magical image of the “wizard.”

For all the influence of such works, however, when discussing magical imagery in Japanese anime, manga, games, and light novels, a better starting point is Dragon Quest (DQ) in the Famicom era. As Japan’s “national RPG,” the series has supplied many of the designs and worldbuilding elements that later works share as magical imagery. We might even call them cultural symbols of the Japanese role-playing game. Neither “heroes,” “dragons,” nor “rescuing the princess” originated with DQ. Yet if we trace the history of a plot such as “the hero defeats the Demon King,” we will often find ourselves returning, inevitably, to the way this series established the figure of the hero. The “slime” may be the most famous design in DQ, or even in the entire history of the JRPG. Across different works, it could even be called the slime’s “standard appearance.” A DQ slime looks like a slightly broad drop of water. Its body might be flowing slime, or it might be an elastic, jellylike substance. The name in fact encompasses a whole family of monsters, from the blue slime, the weakest of them, to the rare metal slime and beyond.

At first glance, the DQ slime’s status as magical imagery seems obvious—as we said above, it does not exist in the real world, and must therefore possess otherness in that sense. But the problem is not so simple. Something’s existence in the real world has no inherent connection with our view that an image in a work is magical. Suppose that something called a “slime” actually does exist in reality: a slimy organism living on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. For various reasons, the scientists who discover it decide to keep its existence a closely guarded secret. Under these circumstances, the slime’s existence in reality would not affect our view that the DQ slime is a magical image.²

The simplest response is that the people who consider the slime magical do not know it exists in reality. At first glance, this answer makes sense, but it has problems of its own. It seems to suggest that, once someone knows slimes exist in reality, they will no longer see the slime as a magical image when they start up DQ again. Consider another example, then. Suppose a new DQ game introduces a new monster: a wolf with multicolored fur. Most people would undoubtedly regard this strangely colored wolf as magical imagery. Yet dyeing a wolf’s fur different colors would not be particularly difficult in the real world. Once someone had actually dyed a real wolf all those colors, and most people knew about it, would they cease to regard the wolf in DQ as magical imagery? Probably not. Most would perhaps be more inclined to think that someone was making an innocent animal cosplay.

What, then, gives the DQ slime otherness, so that it is regarded as magical imagery? To consider this question, we may need to examine that simplest response a little further. Suppose the scientists one day announce that slimes exist in reality, but the news attracts no attention from the mainstream media and spreads very slowly. Imagine that only ten thousand people know about it on the first day after the announcement. Would they conclude that the slime is not magical imagery? No. This situation is not substantially different from that of the multicolored wolf. What about a hundred thousand people? A million? Ten million? Or everyone in the world? Would people now conclude that the slime is not magical imagery? No. The situation would still resemble that of the multicolored wolf. Apart from a few conspiracy enthusiasts wondering what was really going on, most people might simply think the existence of real slimes and DQ slimes was a coincidence. This seems to be where the problem lies. Our answer could therefore be: unless we learn that Akira Toriyama really had seen the concealed slimes when he created his design, we will still regard the DQ slime as a magical image.

But this answer is not good enough. Set aside the various modern literary theories concerning the author’s absence, and consider just this situation: someone does not know the background to the creation of the DQ slime—that Toriyama had seen real slimes. That person will still regard the DQ slime as a magical image. Clearly, explaining how otherness is acquired by appealing to the creator provides only a sufficient condition, and even its sufficiency is questionable. When engaging with a work, we do not always concern ourselves with its author or the circumstances of its creation. These may provide resources for understanding the work, but they do not determine that understanding itself. This, then, is not the answer we are after either.

3.2.2.2 Conditions for Possessing the Ontological Property

Let us continue extending the example. Under exactly what circumstances would the slime’s existence in reality affect our view that it is a magical image? Such circumstances are not difficult to imagine. Suppose that, more than a century after scientists announce the slime’s existence, a much wider scientific community has studied this slimy organism in depth and revised many existing scientific views. Compulsory-school curricula have also been revised to reflect the latest science. Countless families have adopted slimes as pets, and everywhere in the parks we see people taking their slimes for a walk… Under these circumstances, we can reasonably assert that the slime is no longer regarded as magical imagery.

On this basis, we can reasonably propose a better condition for an image to possess otherness: its visual presentation should make it plausible that the thing it refers to cannot be explained within our existing system of scientific knowledge and beliefs. If we take a naturalist attitude toward the real world—that is, if we hold that everything that exists in reality can potentially be explained through scientific knowledge and beliefs—then this condition also involves the question of existence. In other words, once this condition is violated, the thing concerned cannot exist in reality either. The converse does not hold, however. A nonexistent thing might be a giant robot: although it does not exist, as a scientific image it clearly satisfies this condition. Or it might be a mage from another world: as a magical image it clearly does not satisfy this condition. But if we want a proper understanding of the distinction between scientific and magical imagery, what we actually require is a necessary and sufficient condition for “possessing otherness.” The condition concerning the possibility of explanation is enough for that purpose.

Of course, this condition is still rather general. In our analysis of scientific imagery, we identified the property of plausible science-fictionality, and this condition is largely its reverse. We still do not understand exactly what is meant by saying that “the thing this image refers to cannot be explained within our existing knowledge and beliefs.” For a more concrete answer, perhaps we should return to the slime as a monster in DQ. In short, the context constructed by the work itself confers otherness on the slime. The context required to give this depicted form otherness can be minimal, established through a visual scene: a slime confronting the hero, a slime near a medieval-style village, a slime in an abandoned castle, and so on. It is worth noting that the slime need not actually appear in any of these scenes to possess otherness. We need not even clearly picture it in such a scene in our minds.

On the other hand, here in 2018, even people who have never seen a slime will clearly recognize its otherness when they encounter the design: “What kind of monster is that?” Conversely, as in the example above, if knowledge and ideas about slimes had long been part of compulsory schooling, no one would still regard the slime as magical imagery. Thus, when we say that the context constructed by the work confers otherness on the slime, that context need not be confined to the work’s audience. It may even be embedded more broadly in a social context. Within this social context, any depicted form in a work is set against people’s knowledge, beliefs, and impressions outside the work, creating a feedback process through which they judge, consciously or unconsciously, whether that visual form possesses otherness. In particular, when we distinguish scientific from magical imagery, the public’s mnemohistory of science may be one of the most striking aspects of the knowledge, beliefs, and impressions within that social context.

Interestingly, the slime seems a much simpler magical image than many that have appeared recently, yet we have spent so much space analyzing how it acquires otherness. The good news is that the analysis above applies broadly to any magical image whose primary form is visual; the details may even be simpler. “King Arthur as a girl forever fifteen years old,” for example, is a magical image because of our existing shared memory, even if the latest archaeological discoveries were to support the depiction of Arthur as a girl. Or take the various stories of superpowered battles set in contemporary cities. We intuitively recognize that, even if something like “pitch-black flames blazing from someone’s hand” really happened, we would still regard it as magical imagery—at least for a time. Although the ontological question of these examples’ status as magical imagery has been provisionally resolved, they raise another interesting question, just as scientific imagery does: the question of diachronic heterogeneity.