Contemplative Weeb Reviews

Vinland Saga 2

In the last post, I mentioned that this show is not only amazing from a technical standpoint, but conveys messages excellently. In this post, I will be discussing those messages, what I understood from the show and providing my opinions on these messages. If you disagree, that's okay because all our opinions are valid.

War

Since Vinland Saga is about Vikings, we see a lot of violence, wars and warriors. All of us can probably agree that wars are bad and humanity would be better off without such conflict. This anime however shows us that no matter what our personal beliefs are on the matter, if a war breaks out around us, we will get affected. Thors clealry did not want to fight or kill anyone again. He decided to leave the Jomsvikings and live a normal life. However, he had to go when he was called along with people from his village. Everyone else had never been in a war, but were excited about it and Thors did not want to fight. This brings me to my next point, the romanticisation of war. Now, we don't necessarily romanticize war, but certain aspects of it. We believe that dying for pride, honor and your country is good, but this anime shows otherwise.We see soldiers being used as pawns and that no one values their lives, including the soldiers themselves. In fact,it is shown that people believe dying in an 'honorable way' will result in you reaching 'Valhalla', the Viking equivalent of heaven. Vinland Saga presents all these historically accurate scenarios and tries to tell us that war, death for your country and killing should not be looked upto and romanticized. Wars are just started by people who want power and they do not value anyones life.

Humanity

Humans are complex creatures. No human can be perfect. No one exists who does only good deed or only bad deeds. We all lie in the middle and VInland Saga does an excellent job in showing this through Askeladd's arc. We see him killing people, scarring people. manipulating people and even torturing them. However, we also see where he comes from, his sufferings through his formative years, his feelings toward his land and respect towards his mother.One may also think that he starts to care for Thorfinn. Moving on to Thorfinn helps demonstrate human's survival instincts. He starts off as a harmless young boy who has never fought anyone or killed anything. Through the course of the show, we see him change completely for the sake of survival.He goes from being an innocent child to a ruthless young warrior. Due to circumstances, Thorfinn is left alone with no one who will provide him with food and water or teach him about fighting. Because of this, his survival instincts kick in and he learns to care for himself. He has to let go of his dignity for survival. He starves and struggles but eventually learns. I this this is beautiful to see, that no matter what humans will try to survive if they have a goal in mind and are not affected my mental health conditions.

Religion

Like i mentioned before, people in power use soldiers lives in order to gain more power. Religion is a tool which is used by these people in order to influence the soldiers to lay down their lives. For eg. the concept of Valhalla is used to motivate soldiers to become stronger and more skilled and to fight more recklessly. We also see that the soldiers talk about Odin, the Norse god of war and Frejya who is a goddess f multiple things like war, sex, death etc and compare them to Jesus as, according to them, the Norse gods have cooler skills. We also see how religion oppresses people and makes them comply with rules through fear. We see that religion treats petty crimes and heinous crimes in the same way. So much so that we see a girl who steals a small thing worry that she is going to be left alone and will have to go to hell. She feels really guilty and bad about herself. Then the Vikings come and kill everyone in her village and gives her hope that she isn't as bad as her religion makes her out to be.The show also discusses the meaning of 'love' according yo Christianity. The character of the alcoholic priest , Willibald is seen contemplating about love all the time. One day he realizes that love is only attainable after death, and so death is love. It is onlt when we die that we truly do a selfless act. Our body becomes manure for the Earth. Now, one might argue that people do love one another in all kinds of ways. But at the end of the day, but that love makes us feel good which is selfish. Basically, no matter how hard humans try, they can never attain love and so can never be one with God. This realization strikes the priest and this makes him sad and angry. He begins to question the intentions of 'God'and whether God wants humans to die and only then can the love. When Prince Canute learns this, he gets angry and rejects God, in a way. He decides that he will create a better world, a paradise for people n Earth and not wait for death to bring love and happiness.

Strength

This show is about VIkings who are known for being great warriors. The stronger a warrior was, the greater position he held.However, we see 2 of the strongest characters getting defeated in the show by manipulation and strategy. However, even the strategist loses in a way, later on. So, it makes us question what strength even is? Is it simply about winning, being the strongest physically or mentally or is it something else. What does strength accomplish and can strength even help us to survive? Let me know in the comments what were your thoughts about  the messages of the show and what is strength in your opinion. Thank you.