When it Feels Wrong.

Last night I was catching up on my subscribed channels on YouTube and saw that a band I like (not a Christian one) had released a new song. It goes with an upcoming animated show that's pretty anime-ish in its look, based on what was shown in the video (it was a lyric video).

The music is good, and the lyrics are what I would expect from the band, but the combination of the visuals and the audio (plus a few soundbites from the show itself) just felt... off.

When this hits me, I feel physically ill, but not exactly. It's like nausea, but I know I'm not actually going to vomit. It's this feeling that spiritually I am going to be sick, and it's manifesting physically. At the same time as this, my emotions go wonky but I can tell that this isn't actually how I am feeling emotionally. It's a lot of scrambled, mixed-up stuff, and I don't really know how to put it into words except that it's extremely disturbing and when it hits I know without a doubt that whatever I'm in contact with is actually evil.

It hit early, and I stopped what I was doing (I watch YouTube while I play Sims or knit) and watched it closely to see if I could figure out what was wrong, because this was a familiar feeling. After the video ended, I looked up the show to see if I could find out more about it. Wikipedia has a whole entry about the source material that shed some light on things for me.

The first time I felt this way was 20-some years ago when I read a book about the New Age "Indigo Child" thing. If you don't know about it, it's the idea that kids who are diagnosed with ADHD are actually alien beings sent to prepare humanity for the next stage in the universe's development, and autistic kids are Crystal Children, the next step in that whole evolution or whatever. Later I tried to read another book in that realm and just touching the book gave me that feeling. I can't really even look it up online without getting this knowledge that it's evil.

The next time that I know for sure it hit me, I was trying to read a book that a friend had recommended to me. It was a horror novel, and I don't usually do horror anyway, but my friend had said that these books were really good so I tried them. I wound up having to put them down halfway through the second in the series, because I felt so ill every time I picked it up I couldn't pay attention to the story anyway. I usually finish books (especially novels), so this was unusual. And now I can't even tell you the series because it's so thoroughly blocked from my mind. It wasn't even so bad in terms of the plot and whatnot, I've definitely read worse in terms of content. It's the book itself, the series, that was disturbing me so much.

Then there was a Sims machinima that I started watching and had to unsubscribe after the first episode because it hit me so strongly. That one took me a while to realize what was wrong, and then I couldn't remember the name of the channel so I had to wait until the second episode came up in my feed so I could get it gone.

So now, this animated series. It looks to be similar to a lot of anime I've seen over the years, and based on the Wikipedia summary it's about a demon hunter. It's based on the game Devil May Cry, which I have never even heard of before. I still don't know much of anything about it except that it's evil. And I'm going to keep it that way.

I like some anime. Ghost in the Shell is great. Obviously Studio Ghibli is also really good. But this particular piece of media is not. No matter how good the art is, no matter how good the storytelling is, the series itself is evil.

I don't know what else to say here. But I'm still feeling the after-effects of watching that music video, so I thought I would write about it. Pay attention to how you feel spiritually and emotionally when you're taking in media, because sometimes God tells you important things that way.

Also, avoid Devil May Cry.

Peace & Blessings.