Also, when Minekura first mentions youkai-human cross-breeding in Saiyuki, there's an image of a flesh-and-blood human hand grasping a youkai hand dissolving into machinery. Um. Or it may be the opposite. I don't remember, but I'll check when I get home. Other youkai = machine imagery includes Kougaiji's mother bound up in some ginormous doomsday cryogenic thing with loads and loads of wires coming out (or in) her, a la CLAMP. So I figure it's a stretch, but you could probably connect this with Nataku being the forbidden union of god and youkai
Oh, that's neat; I hadn't connect Gaiden to the Minus Wave in that way. But doesn't the exposition explicitly contrast human technology and youkai magic, and say that it's the hybridization that's forbidden? This does make me wonder who's doing the forbidding, and why, although I'm not sure Minekura's world-building can sustain that kind of analysis. But based on Gaiden and the possibly non-manga-canonical Homura arc*, the gods in heaven forbade it--not the gods like Kanzeon Bosatsu, but the petty bureaucrats whose judgment is no more trustworthy than that of, say, most of the priets Sanzo mocks.
* The only reason I am tempted to accept any of the Homura arc as bearing on the manga is that from the Gaiden side-stories (gaiden gaiden?), it looks like Minekura was using Homura as a character.
Anyway. The mixture of technology and magic is created by Nii/Ukoku and we still don't know why. He may want to do world-wide psychology experiments. He may want to create a new world a la the Homura arc. He may want to destroy the world just to prove he can. He may want something entirely different. But the mix of technology and magic is defined as a heresy--and Sanzo calls Ukoku the "heretical Sanzo." And Ukoku has the sutras, but not the god-mark (as opposed to his apprentice, who had the god-mark but not the sutras).
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. The mixture of science/magic is clearly bad when it creates the Minus Wave--but there's a kind of superstitious fear of hybridization being used to support this, which is contradicted or at least complicated by the sympathetic pictures we get of hybrid characters like Nataku, Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai. Hakkai isn't much of an argument--he is a monster, and not because he is a youkai; he is a youkai (or a human-youkai hybrid) because he's a monster. But all Gojyo did was get born; Nataku is being abused by the people around him, but the monstrosity is clearly not in him even if it's in the manner of his creation; Goku--I still think Goku is a natural force, like a hurricane, which does terrible damage on the human scale but which isn't evil because evil takes intentionality. Then again, I don't know how to account for the malice and joy in destruction evident in the Seitan Tasei we see.
no subject
Oh, that's neat; I hadn't connect Gaiden to the Minus Wave in that way. But doesn't the exposition explicitly contrast human technology and youkai magic, and say that it's the hybridization that's forbidden? This does make me wonder who's doing the forbidding, and why, although I'm not sure Minekura's world-building can sustain that kind of analysis. But based on Gaiden and the possibly non-manga-canonical Homura arc*, the gods in heaven forbade it--not the gods like Kanzeon Bosatsu, but the petty bureaucrats whose judgment is no more trustworthy than that of, say, most of the priets Sanzo mocks.
* The only reason I am tempted to accept any of the Homura arc as bearing on the manga is that from the Gaiden side-stories (gaiden gaiden?), it looks like Minekura was using Homura as a character.
Anyway. The mixture of technology and magic is created by Nii/Ukoku and we still don't know why. He may want to do world-wide psychology experiments. He may want to create a new world a la the Homura arc. He may want to destroy the world just to prove he can. He may want something entirely different. But the mix of technology and magic is defined as a heresy--and Sanzo calls Ukoku the "heretical Sanzo." And Ukoku has the sutras, but not the god-mark (as opposed to his apprentice, who had the god-mark but not the sutras).
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. The mixture of science/magic is clearly bad when it creates the Minus Wave--but there's a kind of superstitious fear of hybridization being used to support this, which is contradicted or at least complicated by the sympathetic pictures we get of hybrid characters like Nataku, Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai. Hakkai isn't much of an argument--he is a monster, and not because he is a youkai; he is a youkai (or a human-youkai hybrid) because he's a monster. But all Gojyo did was get born; Nataku is being abused by the people around him, but the monstrosity is clearly not in him even if it's in the manner of his creation; Goku--I still think Goku is a natural force, like a hurricane, which does terrible damage on the human scale but which isn't evil because evil takes intentionality. Then again, I don't know how to account for the malice and joy in destruction evident in the Seitan Tasei we see.