Scrapped Princess

I just finished watching this oldies anime (2003), Scrapped Princess, yesterday. It's been in my watching list for quite few years. It gets published again on the online streaming sites probably because the license just expired. But, I'm more than happy to watch it.

This is why I love anime. Scrapped Princess is an adventure journey of the Scrapped Princess, Pacifica Cassul, and her foster siblings, Shannon and Raquel. Like any other fantasy anime, the journey involves mythical creatures such as dragons, magic chants, time space continuum, and off course, knights and swordsmans. However, like any other anime, it's not just a shallow story of adventure for kids. I find that this anime actually arguing lots of deep rooted questions about faith, religion, and humanity.

In Scrapped Princess, the majority religion is Mausser faith. The Mausser faith believes in its Gods. But what happen if the Gods that they have their faith in are not actually Gods? In the anime, the humans later are thorn into several groups; those who follow the faith blindly including the Scrapped Princess false prophesy, those who are starting questioning the faith itself, and those who are not believing in the Mausser from the beginning. The anime lays out points of argument to the point that no body has the right answers. We are only humans. In the end we need something to keep hoping. For example, though Raquel doesn't believe in Mausser, in the end, she screams to God for help to save Pacifica.

Set aside the bigger picture, let's take a look at Pacifica Callus character. Though she's pictured as a girl who practically can't do anything right without her oniichan and oneechan, Pacifica is a very strong character considering the burden that she carries as the Scrapped Princess. Questions like why people try to kill her when she does nothing wrong, why people has to die because of her (lots of people, literally), why there are people who are willing to die protecting her, is her fate already been set or can she lead her own fate are being argued again and again throughout the anime. In reality, this is similar to questions that we often face when we are dealing with our lives. Why he/she hurt me, why people are so cruel, what did I do to deserve this? Sounds familiar?

And like in Scrapped Princess, it depicts that human can't live alone. The way Pacifica relies and works together with her siblings and people she meets throughout her journey, is the same way as we need support from our families and friends. Without them, we won't be able to be who we are now. Often helping hands from stranger could encourage and give us strength to go on in our journey of life.

Humanity is also another topic that been conveyed in this anime. If humans are so despicable, should God pour down the punishment and wipe out the entire humanity? There're always good and bad people in this world. Greed is one of human traits. But so is love. Which one should prevail?