When you hear the word identity, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Is it something that we inherit or is it something that we discover for ourselves? Is it stagnant or does it change over time? Well, on this week's episode we're going to dive deeper into what identity is and how it shapes our lives with some help from an anime movie called Black Fox. Hey what's going on guys, my name is Nate and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation.
I'm sure we'll be helping you break free from the chains that are holding you back in your life by connecting some biblical principles with themes from your favorite anime. And now this week we're doing something a little bit different because it's not a series with an actual anime movie. I figure every once in a while I'll throw an episode like this in because there's more than just series out there, right?
There's a lot of different anime and some manga that haven't been animated yet that we can still learn from. So I hope you guys enjoy this special one. So without further ado, let's get into it. So this week's Bible verse that I want to tie into it is kind of to the whole premise of identity is 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 and it states, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away and see the new has come.
And essentially what it's saying is, you know, you know, who's in Christ, whatever you've done before, previous, your previous identity, your previous life, so to speak, is over and done with and you can begin a new, you can essentially start over.
And in the way that that ties into is how we view ourselves and how we are conducting our own lives is that, you know, you may think you're stuck, you have to be stuck in a certain way because that's all you know, all you have known or all that you think you ever will know and something happens in your life where either, A, you decide to change on your own or something happens where that makes you, makes you change, you know, for good or for good or for bad.
And that's kind of the beauty of our lives as people, right? Because we're not like normal animals out there who are essentially slaves to their instincts. We can change over time. We can grow, you know, people have different preferences as they get older, you know, any different, even down to our taste buds, because I think it's like what every seven years or something like that, our taste buds change.
And you know, just, just thinking about that, something that you don't even have to think about can change that really that often. And the same thing can be said for you, right? What you know or what you thought you knew doesn't have to be the same that you know going forward. And I really believe that this, this was a main premise I, at least I picked up in a movie Black Fox. And so of course, what is this movie, right? So Black Fox premiered in back in 2019.
And honestly, I had never heard of it before. So I saw it on Crunchyroll and it kind of popped up and it's about a young girl who's a descendant of ninjas, who is living in her old family home or a clan home, I should say, where she's being trained by her grandfather, because he hopes that she'll take over as the, as the head of the clan, right?
But after a tragic attack on her family, the main character, whose name is Rika, she has to go on her quest for revenge after, you know, her family was double crossed and things like that. So I'm not gonna try not to spoil the movie too, too much for you guys, but that's kind of the background for it. And what I'm going to do for this episode, I'm going to break down three of the characters who had some type of identity crisis, more or less throughout the movie.
The first one being the main character herself, Rika. The second one being the main antagonist named Lauren. And then the third being Lauren's daughter, Mia. So I'm gonna start off with, with Rika. And because again, you, since we spend the most time with her, we actually see her growth the most out of all three. And first I'm going to begin with her father. Her father's name is Alan.
So like I said before, Rika is descended from a clan of ninjas, like straight up actual ninjas like you see in the, in the, in the flakes with, you know, the, the throwing stars, smoke bombs, all that fun stuff. And, and again, her grandfather is training her to be the next clan head because her, her father, her grandfather's son, Alan, decided he didn't want to be a ninja anymore. He doesn't, he doesn't want to live that life.
Alan is instead a scientist, a very, very good one at that who's developed all types of different technologies that's just helped people progress. One of which is, are some androids that he designed to help people and be companions to humans. And it just helped with different, different aspects of life. Now Alan and his father, his father's name is Hue, I believe, at least I'm hoping I'm saying that right.
You know, they, they, I guess they've come to terms with the way Alan wants to live his life, right? Because again, he's from, he's from the same clan of ninjas, but he decided, nope, I don't want to do that anymore because I don't want to kill people. I actually want to help people.
And there's, I'm not going to say animosity because there wasn't really any animosity between the two, but it was, you could tell the grandfather would rather him be the head of the clan, but he seems to respect his decision on going off on his own, doing his own thing. And both of them want that for, for Rika. You know, Hue wants Rika to be the next head of the clan and Alan just wants her to do whatever she wants to do.
Right. And for Rika, she wants to follow in her father's footsteps and being a scientist. I mean, she even applied to the same college that he, he went to. And that gets her seeing her dad's creations and just how much, really how much joy he gets out of it. And it really stuck with her for the longest time. And she, I guess she wants to just be like her dad, but in that same vein, she also enjoys being a ninja like her grandfather.
She enjoys the sense that honestly the threat, the thrill of it. And she, she strives to live up to the expectations of, of both of them. Right. Those are two most important people in her life. And honestly, unbeknownst to her, she's kind of put that pressure on herself of trying to live up to their expectations, which again, they didn't place, they didn't put those expectations on her. She put it on herself.
And I can speak from personal experience that it's the expectations you put on yourself, or at least the ones that you think other people are putting on you, or some of the heaviest ones to put that you feel just so tied down, so beat down, honestly. And you could honestly find yourself in a position where you think that you're, you're never good enough, that you're always falling short, that you're, you know, X, Y, and Z, whatever it may be.
And it could, honestly, it's all just in your own head. And I know, I know for me personally, it was just always striving to be the best child that I could be for my parents. Because when I was younger, I saw how my older sibling was, and it was, it was a difficult time to say the least for them.
I mean, they never took it out on me or anything like that by any means, but just for me seeing that and me wanting to just make them proud, you know, like any kid, I'm sure we all want to make our parents proud. But it was, for me, it was to the point where I was afraid to make mistakes. I mean, even just normal mistakes kids make all the time, you know, whether it's in school, you know, other kids, extracurriculars, whatever the case may be.
And it was that fear of failure, which eventually led into my identity of trying to be a perfectionist to myself, you know, and just judging myself really, really harshly. And like if I didn't execute something the exact way that I thought I planned it out, then I would just beat myself, you know, not physically, calm down, but mentally and just kind of really pull myself through the wringer. And you know, I did that for years, just, you know, just did it for years.
And again, they never did anything to put that idea on me. So it's not, it's not anyone. It was all me. And you know, I know there's other people out there who are like that, whether it's a parent, older sibling, it's a guardian, it's a mentor, or you could even just be yourself. But when you have this, this type of this mindset, this frame, this identity of, I have to be perfect. I have to be perfect.
And you're sending yourself up for failure right from the get go, because none of us are perfect. No one on this earth outside of Jesus himself is perfect. We all have our flaws. We all have our shortcomings, some that we may know, others that we may discover later later down the road, just live in life. But it takes, it takes self awareness to be aware of those things and to say, and to say it's okay. I'm just the best thing you can say to yourself and to anyone is that it's okay.
It's okay not to be perfect. It's okay to fail. Actually, I encourage you to fail that way you can learn from it and get better at it the next time. That's how we grow. And for a long time, it was a big struggle for me to come to terms with that and to realize it's okay to make mistakes. No one's going to, you know, bite your head off, right? As long as you learn from it, I mean, really learn, sit down and take a beat and say, okay, why didn't this work?
Why didn't it work as well as you wanted it to? What are some things we could change if anything at all? And then you just kind of really just kind of sit and reflect about it. And no one else has to know easily. This is just your time, your, your self-reflection time. And it's really, I want to hammer home that you don't have to be like that. You don't have to be the same. You don't have to be this quasi perfectionist of yourself, right?
Cause me, honestly, we're our own worst critics, we're our own, we're our own worst enemy. I know it's cliche. We say it all the time, but it's, it's the truth. Cause our minds are powerful, powerful things. And what we decide to think about and focus on is what's going to happen. And it is really, when you take that time to reflect and think about it, that's where the mindset shifts can start to happen.
Where you go from being, you know, man, I got to execute it like this or else this is going to happen or else they're going to be mad at me or disappointed in me. Just that in the third to, okay, I wanted this to happen. It didn't quite happen the way I wanted to. What can I do to change if anything? And if not, okay, be, be cool with it. And we're going to move on to the next thing because you can't get that time back. You can't go back in time.
And that's just, you know, we're not Thanos with the time, with the time stone, right? So we got, we have to move forward. And that's what Rika did later on in the movie towards the end. When she, she reflected back on her upbringing with her grandfather and her father, the two essentially the two sides of who she felt, who she was the whole time she was, she was trying to figure out which one to be one or the other. But she came to the reality that, you know, that she's the combination of both.
She's you know, her father's child and she's her grandfather's grandchild, right? Who both loved and cared for cared for her since the beginning. And neither one of them would be disappointed in the way and whatever she decided to do, you know, they, they, they just want her to live her life and to live the best version of her life that she possibly can. And when she realized that and accepted it, because those are two, two different steps, right?
Is one thing to realize it and to hear it and understand it. But it's another thing to actually accept it and apply it. And when she came to the realization, she was able to apply it to her own life. You know, I'm, I'm at the point now where I'm applying it, that, that mindset to understand all aspects of myself in my life.
Before I understood it, I understood the different hats that I wore, you know, the son, the brother, the student, the employee, at one point, you know, the manager, the teammate, things like that, all the different hats that we may wear, you, it can, you can easily segment them or you feel like you have to be one at a time, but you got to realize that, you know, those are all just different aspects of who you are and you're doing yourself a disservice
by not acknowledging them and not accepting them for what they are. So by, by not segmenting them, by realizing, okay, these are all just different aspects of me, how can I, you know, how can I mix and match, right? I can, I can mix and mix and match them and kind of bring them all into the same, your authentic self, because that, that is where your peace will be. That's where you're happening to me. Now that's, that's your identity. That's who you were called to be.
You weren't just called to be someone's husband. You weren't just called to be someone's wife, someone's sister, someone's brother, you know, the list goes on. You were called to be who you are, you know, first name, last name, your first name, middle name, last name, whatever, you know, apply it to yourself, but cause you are a unique individual. No one else is the same. No one else will ever be the same.
You mean even if you, even if you're like if you're twins, triplets, you know, from a multiple birth, you're still you. No one else is you, no one else will ever be you. You're one of a kind.
And I think the sooner we begin to accept that the sooner we can, you know, move forward in our own purpose and in our life and just, just be happier, just be at peace, you know, and not trying to compare ourselves to other people and not being so harsh on ourselves when we don't live up to other people's expectations or what we believe other people's expectations are going to be.
But when we understand who we are, which is a culmination of a lot of different, you know, a lot of different titles from our upbringing and things like that, once we come on a all that together and realize who we are at our core, then, you know, life is just life is golden at that point. I truly believe that. I mean, you're still going to have some hardships and some difficulties, but the peace that will come with that is, you know, nothing, nothing to laugh at. So and that's what Rika got.
We got the guy at the end. She reconciled with herself and found that peace and that ultimately gave her the strength to continue fighting and, you know, go on to beat the bad guy. Right. Who speaking of is the next character we're talking about. And his name is Lauren. So Lauren was a scientist who, who actually worked with Rika's dad back, back when they were still colleagues. And Lauren's identity that he got just so miss-escrubed with was jealousy.
He was jealous and envious of Alan because of his success in Alan's genius. Because again, Alan was, was well known, well renowned, you know, with not just in the scientific community, but actually out in the public eye as well for his inventions and different things like that. And Lauren felt like, you know, he, he felt like he, he, him being Lauren, Lauren felt like he deserved Alan's success instead of Alan. He deserved, he felt like he deserved to be where he's at.
And that jealousy just blinded him to his own brilliance. I mean, cause he was, he was a super smart dude. There's some things he invented were just as good as Alan's in all honesty, but because he didn't get the fame and recognition that Alan got, he felt, he felt bitter and jealous towards him. And that led to him becoming obsessed with Alan's work. So obsessed that he, again, envy and jealousy are some of the most ruthless things that we can ever experience as humans.
But Lauren became so obsessed with Alan's success that he essentially orchestrated the death of Alan and his father, Hue, which started this whole, started this whole series, started this whole chain of events in the movie. And not only that, it led to Lauren exploiting his own daughter for her, her special ability, because his daughter was a, is a, is a psychic, you know, she's a telekinetic.
And so he used, used her as part of his experimentations to basically make her a living weapon for his own goals or his own end results. And you know, and he was so blinded. He was just so blinded that no, not even his own daughter recognized him as her father anymore, that he was just this mindless thing. I mean, he even went so far as to experiment on himself, to give himself similar abilities to his daughter, just to prove that he was better than Alan. Keep in mind who's dead now.
Alan, Alan is dead at this point, but Lauren just has to prove that he's the superior, quote unquote, scientist and that, you know, all of the fame and glory is going to be his, you know, he just destroyed, like half a city block to prove it. And, and we're not careful. We can get so wrapped up into what other people are doing, into what other people's blessings are looking like that we, A, forget, we just forget our own, right?
We know, and then B, we don't even see the ones that God has put in our lives. We get so, so focused, so fixated on what someone else has that we just completely ignore and even forget about the things that we already been blessed with and the things that are coming down the pipeline that we may not even be aware of, that we are not even going to get to experience because we're too busy worrying about what other people are doing and how they're living their lives.
I mean, it's one thing to be concerned for people. It's one thing to be, you know, I mean, inspired, you can be inspired by someone else's blessing. Okay. Yeah, this is where I want to go. This is where I want to, where I want to be at in X amount of time. So when that becomes your soul focus, it's like, man, that should be me. That should have been me. That should have been mine. Why did they, how come they get it? How come they deserve it and I don't? We start going down that spiral path.
I'm going down that real, real slippery slope. Then that's, that's when the, that's when the ugly comes out and that's when your blessings just stop coming because again, you don't even see them anymore. You're not even working on yourself. You're not living for your purpose. You're living for theirs. You living for their reward to their purpose while you're trying to find your own or you've just forsaken your own.
And that's never going to work out because like back to my earlier point, we're all individuals. We're all unique individuals at that.
And what their success looks like may be different from yours and how they got to it is definitely going to be different from you, from you and trying to replicate it, trying to seize it for yourself, you know, whether you literally do it at what Lauren did and kill Alan, try to take his stuff or you just try to replicate somebody else to get the results that they have. Then it's just not, it's just not going to work because what works for them doesn't, isn't going to work for you.
Not necessarily. Now you, some parts of it may, um, I, that you can, you can kind of dissect and take it and apply to your own life, but essentially it's, it's not going to be the same result. It's just not because again, we're all unique in our own way. We all have our own skillsets. We all have our own shortcomings. We have our own personalities, you know, different upbringing, you know, there's so many different factors that can happen, uh, in the course of our lifetime.
And I mean, honestly to me, that makes it all the more special because you get to do something that no one else can possibly do because no one else is you. But if you get so blind by the jealous, by jealousy and just of the success and all the great things someone else has accomplished in their lives, then you're never going to be able to move forward because you're too busy people watching, right?
Instead of moving your feet, your eyes are glued to the screen all the time, whether you're scrolling, you know, liking commenting off all this different things, which you're not doing anything for yourself. Right. And I want you to really get out of that head space of just being a consumer, change your identity from being a consumer and to be someone who produces something, whatever, whatever it is, right. It can be your own, your own brand new clothes line or something like that.
Or maybe you make paper airplanes, you know, really well, I don't know, you know, just, just something, right. It's something and show the world your uniqueness and your beauty that, that, you know, that God's given you. Cause we were getting, we're all our own. Oh, like I say, every episode, we're all, we're all our own main characters in our story. Right. And as long as you have breath in your lungs, your story is still going on.
So why waste it being a side character in someone else's storyline? Seriously, why be, why would you willingly be a side character? Why not be the main character, main protagonist, main hero or hero heroine in your own story? Yeah. That's how I want to live my life. I want to be someone else's side character. Cause you've seen enough in this podcast talk about anime, but in any type of show, if you see enough, you see enough of the shows, you understand what happens to side characters.
Unless you're the best friend of the main character, then you're, you know, your, your, your lifespan is on, is on a ticking clock. So but yeah, so I just really, really want you guys to take charge and be the main characters of your life. And so that brings me to the last character I want to cover in this special episode is Mia who was Lauren's daughter. So Mia is, like I said earlier, she's a telekinetic, so she, she has psychic powers, you know, more or less.
And it's kind of funny, you know, a little tidbit, you know, ninjas versus whoever the agent, you know, martial arts, weapons, ninjutsu, all that stuff to modern day psychic and, and robots and stuff like that. It was, it was pretty cool to see in, in, in the one movie. But for Mia, her identity was kind of wrapped up in having the sense of belonging. She wanted to feel accepted and appreciated, but mostly accepted and loved at first was by her peers.
And so when she was a child, of course, kids can be cruel at times. They were making fun of her because she was different because she had her powers and things like that. And, and so she was, she was telling her father about it. And that was his, that's when he had his bright idea to use her as a weapon, use her as his golden ticket to, you know, shoot to scientific fame and fame and stardom.
But Mia was just really just confiding in her father, someone who's supposed to be there to protect her and help her get through these types of things. But instead he twisted that relationship they had into something that was only benefiting him. And in the process, she, she went along with her father's experiment because she wanted that love from him. She wanted to feel essentially needed, essentially to feel needed by him. And it's just, it's, it's so, it's terrible to honestly think about.
I mean, I was feeling sick just watching when I watched the movie because it was, it was just so sad how he's twisting his, twisting his words around it. And cause she truly believed in him. Mia truly believed in her father that there was some good left in him and that, you know, he could, he could change his ways that he can be better. But at every, at every point, every time he just put a foot in the mouth and lied and just ultimately betrayed her over and over again and constantly using her.
And eventually just how Mia, she just became lost in, in helping her father. She became a shell of, I can't even say who she was because she, she wasn't even old enough to establish who she was yet because she was a child. So she never got the chance to discover who she is and outside of just being this, this weapon for her father to use. And that's, that's what her life was up until she met Rika.
And the sad part is the first time they met is when Mia was helping her father kill Rika's father, you know, against her will. Cause Lauren has this little electro collar that he puts on Mia that allows him to essentially control her, control her powers and things like that. And so back when then everything went down, she wasn't in her right mind when essentially she helped kill Rika's father.
So of course, when all this was brought to light, you can best believe Rika wasn't too thrilled, especially because before that her and Mia actually developed a friendship together and through Rika, Mia was able to start discovering who she was as a person. But again, when it came to light that Mia was the one who helped kill her, kill her father, Rika was, you know, she was out for blood at that point.
And you know, and, but needless to say, Rika didn't kill Mia and then they ultimately worked together to help be Lauren. But again, it was with that meeting with Rika that Mia began to see that she was more than just her father's puppet. She began to realize there's more out there than just doing what he says all the time and just helping him out with his empty promises and empty, you know, just, just aside of him just being a terrible father, essentially.
And after, after everything's all said and done, you know, the, the movie's wrapping up and Mia, Rika and then another one of their friends are going on to the next, to the next big bad. And Mia, actually, she doesn't have that feeling that she needed to belong anymore because now she belongs somewhere with Rika, who's the only friend, the only companion she's had her entire life. And, and of course in conjunction with the other, you know, androids and things like that.
But it, if she's going from being essentially bullied to being manipulated and used to finally being able to come into her own and have people that surrounds her that cares about her, that, that in that short, you know, in the short span of time that we actually get to see Mia's background and things like that, you can see how powerful people have, how powerful people are in influencing you and influencing your personality and things like that, especially from a young age.
And that's going to be as, as humans, we're all, we're social creatures, right? We actually thrive in community, whether some of us may admit it or not. I know for me, I'm more of a loner most times, but I do enjoy the, the companionship of other people, you know, my family, my friends and things like that. And again, who you surround yourself with is ultimately who you're going to become. All right.
That would lead to saying is what you, you're more like the five most people that you spend the most time with something like that. And that's why it's important to pick, you pick people that you associate with very carefully and make sure that they have your best interests out at heart. It doesn't mean that they agree with you all the time is, but they have your best interests and they'll tell you about yourself when you need to be told.
But they also uplift you when you need uplifting, you know, they help guide and direct you and not mislead or mistreat you or just use you outright. Like what Lauren did to Mia and that's, and so when you surround yourself with some loving people like that, we'll all have the same goal, same or same mindset, actually not same goal, but same mindset and who are just there to help one another.
Then you can, you, you'll, you're going to flourish, they're going to flourish and all in all is just, it's being that type of person, being someone who, who can help people, not because they feel obligated to, because they want to, because they genuinely want to see you thrive and to succeed and to help you get past whatever it is that you're facing. And that, I mean, that's the type of person I'm striving to be.
You know, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm taking it, taking it day by day as best as I can. And that's pretty much it. That's all I can do in all, in all honesty. And that's all any of us can do is just to try, you know, put forth the effort and, you know, just bunker down and do it and don't, and don't be caught up in what you used to be or what people are telling you that you are, but really dig deep and reflect and really understand who you are and who you've been called to be.
Cause then you go back to the verse and saying, you know, if you're, those of us who were in Christ, essentially we're, we're born anew, you know, we're, we're a new creation and that's the truth, right? The moment you decide to stop being who you are currently or who you were, and you decide to make that change, you decide to go for, you reconcile with yourself and understand the different aspects of your personality, who you are.
And you're not so obsessed with what other people are doing, what they may say, what they might think, how successful they are, just down the third. And you're not surrounding yourself with people who only look at you as either like a burden or as a cash cow or whatever it is, something that only benefits them. Then, Hey, you, you'll be sitting pretty, you know, get around people who have your best interests at heart and you have their best interests at heart.
You know, don't worry about what everybody else is doing and Hey, you accept you for you because if you don't accept you, no one else will. And that's, you know, that's this whole episode was the long way of saying that, that right there is that you have to accept who you are and who you want to be. You have to decide who you want to be and accept that from, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly and just move forward. Some step at a time, day by day and breath by breath, right?
As long as you got breath in your lungs and it's not over. So that's it. Just want to thank you guys again for tuning into today's episode. I pray that you get what you needed out of it and that you learn something new about yourself and that you just take the time to reflect into really, really dig deep and find out who you are. What's your identity? Who, who are you and who do you want to be? Right.
So feel free to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because again, I would love to read, read to read you guys' comments and it will help me improve each and every episode so I can get better and better. And always remember you want to make character your story and that story doesn't end until he says so. All right. Be blessed.