The tragedy of Chiyuki in Death Parade and how it relates to our culture

 Today I'm going to talk about my favorite anime, Death Parade (spoiler alert). Specifically, its main female lead, Chiyuki. I had recently watched a thoughtful and interesting videocast by conservative Matt Walsh titled "We have ceased to see the purpose", discussing how our current culture has lost its sense of purpose and meaning. A good summary of his video would be to read a similar article by him here. Essentially, I'm going to use Chiyuki's death as an example of what he was describing.

In case you forgot Chiyuki's backstory, she's a talented ice-skater with a passion for it, but one day she sustains a knee injury and she can never skate again. Falling into a state of depression, she commits suicide.

Now how does her death relate to what Matt Walsh has described? In his videocast, he says this:

"People are told that there is only one life, one reality, and it has no meaning aside from what you assign to it. But what happens when you no longer see meaning? Well, our culture says, if you do not see it then it is not there."

It's very apparent that what he says is accurate of our current culture. With phrases such as "You Only Live Once" or "Life's short so do blah", the general message can be taken as such: there is one life, so do whatever you think is meaningful to you.

Chiyuki's entire existence had centered around her ability to ice-skate. She's made a career out of it, winning many trophies and making many friends who also love to skate. Ice skating is what had defined her- her meaning. Once it was taken away, what was she left with? She couldn't do the thing she loved anymore. She couldn't relate to the friends that she had made either. In other words, she had lost her meaning- or more accurately, couldn't see meaning anymore. And like Walsh says- if you don't see meaning, it's not there. So the only logical conclusion then is to either bear with the pain of knowing your existence is meaningless, that you're just a biological machine that has no purpose, or to cut things short and end your life. Chiyuki chose the latter.

Now I'd like to elaborate on why I said that Chiyuki couldn't see meaning anymore and not that she had just lost her meaning. That's because, as Walsh would argue, meaning is not something that is arbitrarily placed by people. Meaning isn't something you have to discover- it exists objectively and is unchangeable. Walsh and I would concur that that meaning comes from God- whatever God you believe in.

Of course if you don't believe in a God, which is perfectly fine to do so, you may it harder to find and maintain a sense of meaning and purpose which we all ache for. To this I recommend finding meaning in the things that can't be taken away as easily. Things such as trying to make yourself a better person, cultivating relationships with family and friends, and helping others. And just to clarify, this isn't to say that you can't embrace what you love, be it sports, music, art forms etc. Just don't let it define you.

This is my first article I've written for this blog, and although it is pretty heavy, I am pleased with what I had wrote. I hope you enjoyed reading and would love to hear any thoughts about it. - GaryMuffuginOak