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Water

Water in mythologies from around the world, acts as the primordial fluid from which creation comes. It can symbolize the psyche's deeper layers. It has been considered the pure element. It is the symbol for the energy of the unconscious. It can be the watery womb or baptismal rebirth. Water is a reoccuring symbol in the Utena series. In the Utena movie it serves as a symbol for Touga as he drowned. One example is the rain falling when Utena talks with Touga and first learns of the Seal of the Rose.

In the Escaflowne film when Hitomi is carried to Gaea, water fills about her ankles and she falls through it until she finds herself within the Escaflowne armor. The experience was real but Hitomi can't help wondering if it's a vision or a dream. It seems as one. Water sometimes symbolizes dreams or the unconscious in anime. In the first Sakura movie this is so, as it is during the Evangelion series. Water also becomes something womblike or protective in mecha, and see this in Evangelion as well as here in Escaflowne while Hitomi is inside the armor.

Watermelon

"Watermelon are virtually synonymous with summer. The favorite Japanese game of blindfolded smashing the watermelon appears in anime as diverse as SD Gundam, Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu!, and Tenchi Muyo".*

*Jan. 26, 2004 Ask John article at AnimeNation.com: What's the Significance of Fruits in Japanese Culture?

Water Spirits

Spirits in lakes are common in Japanese legend and anime. Serpents or dragons were once thought to dwell in them. Water nymphs and spirits are found in many European legends as well. An example is the Rusalka, a spirit of a woman who died within or nearby a lake, and thereafter would haunt it and lure men to their deaths. In ep. 5 of Sorcerer Hunters Carrot meets a spirit of the lake in the various stages of her life.

From Inu-Yasha. The water goddess herself is a maiden, a spirit or nymph who protects the lake, and by extension the village nearby. She uses a trident to focus her powers (including over storms and rain).

The water sprites are lesser spirits, being servants to the water goddess. The main ones portrayed are two talking female fish (perhaps koi or goldfish) with miko-like apparel. The other water sprite portrayed is a snake who for a time imprisons the goddess and with her trident tyranizes the villagers, demanding a human sacrifice of their first born to appease him. This is very much intune with some old legends in Japan of snake deities or spirits in lakes and water who needed to be subdued or appeased sometimes with a sacrifice.

Well

The online Asian Horror Encyclopedia says that the well in Chinese and Japanese film can be a symbol of the underworld or unconscious. This idea fits in with the well in the first film that serves as a gateway to Madoushi's world. As she died a long time ago, the world inside the well could be by extension the underworld, or the unconscious as Madoushi speaks to Sakura through her dreams and brings her into her world this way. Kagome's house is a very old shrine in Inu-Yasha, and the Bone Eater's Well is only one of the very old parts of it. It goes back to the Sengoku Jidai and acts as a portal to pass between the present time (1997) and the old era. Kaede explains the legend behind it's name: "It is a dumping ground for the corpses of demons and monsters. Pass by a few days later and the corpses will have vanished."

Werewolf

The term comes from the Old Saxon for man and wolf. As the moon was believed to be associated with change and magic, those believed to be werewolves were said to change by night from a human to wolf form. The 16th-17th centuries were thought to be the peak for these superstitions. Werewolves appear in both Vampire Hunter D films. Batanen in Hyper Police is a werewolf.

West Wind

Zephyrus. He was the messenger for spring for the Greeks. In the second two Unico movies, the West Wind is portrayed as female and carries Unico from place to place in hopes of hiding and protecting him from the gods and the Night Wind.

Wings

The Draconian wings in Escaflowne symbolized the advancement of the people of Atlantis. Their abilities, and knowledge, and mental powers became so great they were almost like gods. Indeed, they even learned how to make human thought into energy, and the power of Atlantis is the power of wishes, the power of the human heart.

In the dreams or visions experienced by Kotori, Fuma, and Kamui, Kamui is pictured with wings in the X Movie. In the first vision Kotori has in the beginning of the film, she sees two Kamuis: one with white angelic wings who drops the sphere of the Earth, and one with black angelic wings who closes his eyes as it happens. In the later visions, Fuma will see Kamui with bat wings, and Kamui will see himself with white wings kill Kotori on a cross. In the dreams each character is shown, the black and white wings symbolize the two halves that will soon fight for the destruction or salvation of the Earth, and Kamui has the power to become either one.

Winged creatures can be symbolic of spirituality. feathered wings can be an angelic symbol, while skin or bat wings are often used to denote evil. Eternal Sailor Moon gains wings, and in the final battle between Serenity and Chaos, Serenity possessed white feather wings and Chaos batlike wings.

In the animated music video directed by Hayao Miyazaki, On Your Mark, an angel girl is repeatedly rescued and attempted to be freed by two police officers. In the video, the city they live in is polluted and there's a hint of a nuclear disaster. The angel could represent a number of things, and Miyazaki has left her meaning ambiguous. She could represent hope, innocence, purity, goodness of humans, or any number of interpretations.

Wise Old Man (Shoujo Kakumei Utena)

Besides Akio being the negative animus archetype, he seems to also personify the wise old man archetype. This archetype appears as an authority figure, and gives needed knowledge. He represents wisdom and insight, but can also have both good and bad qualities. This is the figure who asks questions of the hero and tries to put the protagonist on the right path. Sometimes when the hero is afraid of the challenge or sees no hope, this figure will appear when most needed and offer aid. Yet, there are also instances where this figure appears and does harm, or it might be known that he is capable of harm.

Akio is the authority figure we see at the academy, and though he injures and manipulates those around him, he also gives advice and seems to have accumulated some knowledge over the years. For instance he acts as a kind of mentor to Utena on one level, giving advice while they sit together; he drives the Akio car in the scenes where the duelists are made to confront themselves and those they are close to. And in these cases he becomes a guide figure. At the same time, his guidance can be destructive and his intentions harmful on another level to the duelists and Anthy. And this gives him a double aspect of a wise and wicked old man archetype.

Wishes

From Chris: For Tsubasa RESERVior CHRoNiCLE. Yukito, who is the Priest, sends Li and Sakura to the Witch of Dimesnsions(from Xxxholic) where they meet up with some companions. In order for her to grant their wishes (she runs a wish shop and payment must be equal to whats given) she takes whats most important from them.

Wolf

The Japanese name for the wolf is okami (great god). The wolf was worshiped as a god in the mountainous areas of Japan, and was thought to protect against misfortune, fox possession, and crops from wild animals. See also Inugami under Japan, these great dog spirits can be either dog or wolf.

Stories of humans tended by wolves go far back to Roman days when the Romans believed their founders, Romulus and Remus were suckled by a mother wolf. Tales from India include such legends serving as the inspiration for Kipling's The Jungle Book. Can see this theme in Princess Mononoke when San is raised from a baby by Moro and the wolf tribe, even though Moro has no love for humans. From Norse myth the wolf Fenrir will swallow the Earth at its end, as will the other wolves.

There is a folktale in Japan called The Wolf's Reward. A young man comes upon a wolf in the night and finding him with a bone stuck in his throat, pauses to help him. Several days later the wolf appears at the man's house in the village and brings him a pheasant in return for his kind deed. There is also another folktale that tells " of a blacksmith who helped a wolf in the throes of childbirth. Later he married a beautiful woman who proved to be the wolf transformed and who bore him hairy-chested children."*

Western stories of wolves, includes one by Ovid. Lykaon tested Zeus' omniscience and served him human flesh. This angered the god and so the king was punished by being transformed to a wolf so that he too would devour flesh. Author John Fiske conjectures this may be a legend that began the later stories of werewolves. Dogs and wolves were also messengers, sent to devour the person at death or accompany souls riding the wind (thus the howling of the wind).+

In Mononoke & Shirahime Shou there were wolf gods. Also, Moro, the mother of the wolf clan raises a human girl, San, who comes to see herself as more wolf than human, and more as part of the forest. In Shirahime Shou, a yuki-onna as a spirit of the natural realm, can call upon the wolf spirits of the mountains. In Sorcerer on the Rocks, Kiss can transform into a wolf.

From Chris: "I came across an anime called Wolves Rain. in it there is a story that Wolves will lead the way to paradise. That humans were born from wolves. There is also a flower maiden. Neither human nor flower. But she is the one who knows the way to paradise. She is drawn to the wolves and they to her.

It reminded me of the legend of the origins of the Turks of central Asia. They lived around Mongolia. A village was attacked and destroyed and the only survior was a boy who's arms and legs were cut off. A she wolf took care of him. The people who destroyed the village decided to kill him. But the she wolf saved him and took him across the river where they went into a cave. Many many years later their decendants came from out of the cave. And these were the Turks."

* Japanese Folktale information from Folktales of Japan edited by Keigo Seki and translated by Robert J. Adams, pages 20-22.

+From John Fiske's book Myths & Myth Makers.

Woman on the Spindle

In the case of Berserk, she is Griffith's guide through his memories and to the repressed realm of his psyche. In some fairy tales, the woman at the spindle is identified with the witch or dark fairy. Sleeping Beauty would be such a story. Here she leads Griffith to see what he hasn't wanted to see, the lives he's touched and the price he chose to pay to reach the castle, his desires. Yet, she is also a dark guide as she pushes him to go further and continue to forge the bloody cobblestones. In one shot, the woman is shown as the demons who appear to Griffith, linking again the dark female aspect to the shadow.

Another interesting aspect is that this woman on the spindle is quite similar to the white, ghostly witch Washizu and Miki encounter in the woods at the beginning of Akira Kurosawa's Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood. The witch sings and spins of fate on her spindle and tells Washizu a fortune of gaining more and more power. Those familiar with Shakespeare's Macbeth or Kurosawa's film know that the protagonist treads down a road of blood to bring this fate about. Griffith isn't too unlike these characters.

Work

At Spirited Away's beginning Chihiro is an apathetic child, and doesn't much care to leave her old home behind. On finding she cannot leave the spirit bathhouse she must make a contract to work there. This begins another common fairy tale motif of a heroine either humbled through work or brought down into it through her circumstances only to be brought higher through it. And Chihiro is indeed brought higher. She goes through a process where she learns to manage herself quite well on her own, and to build her confidence and sense of others through her time there. She's even given the worst jobs of all (such as being made to scrub the filthiest tub), but by this point she is no longer whining about her situation (as she does in the opening) but rises to what is asked of her. Other stories this theme is seen in are tales such as the princess whose father orders his daughters to bring him precious gifts and she brings salt, Grimm's The Goose Girl, and Cinderella.

A bound servant to a Sanjiyan Unkara in 3x3 Eyes. The soul is taken by the third eye and bound to the Sanjiyan, making the person immortal and their life and soul dependent on the Sanjiyan. If the Sanjiyan dies, their Wu does as well, if they become human, so does the Wu. To save Yakumo's life, Pai keeps him from dying by making him her Wu and promises after that once she is made human, his humanity will be restored to him in turn.

Benares is a very powerful Wu of Kaiyanwang. His name comes from an ancient holy city on the Ganges River. Benares today is known as Varansi.*

*From Visuals Unlimited.com