After-Thoughts: Light, Darkness, and the concept of Balance

Many series that have eastern influences, such as anime, manga, a lot of video games, and plenty of TV shows and movies as well feature a concept that they refer to as Balance. Balance, for the most part, is referring to Light and Darkness and how they interact with the world around us.

Now, usually, this concept is derived from Buddhism alongside the Yin-Yang Symbol, which describes how there is light and dark in all things, represented by a white half that has a black spot and a black half that has a white spot, which is used to indicate that these two things exist together in all things, nothing is entirely good or evil.

However, many series that have balance as the focus tend to have messages or influences that do not reflect the concept they are taking inspiration from. Many who are familiar with anime and anime-inspired Western Cartoons are probably aware of Avatar: The Last Airbender by now so I won't go into too much detail about that, as that series is more or less pretty spotless considering the world is imbalanced by having far too much dark as a result of a 100 year war. The actual botching of the concept comes from The Legend of Korra, specifically season 2.

The Legend of Korra introduces the war between light and dark in a flashback dealing with the first Avatar named Wan and his journey involving the Goddess of Light Rava and the God of Darkness Vaatu. Initially, it's not so bad. The two were initially struggling for dominance in an endless cycle, until Wan attacked Rava without knowing what was happening and let Vaatu escape. Vaatu gains far more power and Rava becomes weaker, leading up to the event known as Harmonic Convergence, which resulted in Rava fusing with Wan completely, sealing up Vaatu, and creating the first Avatar in the process.

It's how the concept is handled later that poses a problem. In the current time with Avatar Korra, Harmonic Convergence is happening once again and, this time, Korra has Rava within her Avatar state but the antagonist Unalaq intended to fuse with Vaatu to create a Dark Avatar that could balance out the world that was imbalanced by Avatar Wan. He absorbs Rava and Korra, without her Avatar state, calls upon inner spirit energy to become a giant and fight Unalaq in a Kaiju battle.

Say what you will about this but it results in Rava absorbing Vaatu forever and Rava fusing with Korra, causing a hard reset on the Avatar cycle.

The way the concept is botched is that, it has a concept of light and dark and, without answering any questions about how or why either would be inherently less necessary than the other, the Dark God is sealed away and everything's hunky dory.

The problem with this is that, the concept of light and dark comes with a parallel concept that's related and similar: creation and destruction. Creation is used to create new that will last until it needs to be wiped away, destruction clears away the old creation, then creation energy creates again in cycles, which is how the Yin-Yang came to Buddhism in the first place.

Buddhism started off with a foundation in Hinduism and Hinduism focuses on three primary Gods, Brahma, who is the creator, Vishnu who is the preserver, and Shiva who is the destroyer. Brahma creates everything, Vishnu sustains those creations for as long as possible, and Shiva destroys those creations once they can no longer be preserved. At least in Hinduism, none of these gods are inherently better than the others, they all simply maintain a cycle that requires maintenance.

Similar concepts in other Mythologies come in the form of Underworld and Grim Reaper Gods, such as Thanatos in Greek and Osiris in Egyptian. These gods serve as guides for the dead to their proper after-life, which is not a pretty job by any means but it's a job that needs doing.

The problem with Western countries that tackle this is that many Western Countries, due to influence from the three abrahamic religions tend to see light and dark in far more extreme ways than countries with Hindu or Buddhist beliefs.

This is actually the reason Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is able to handle the concept much better than The Legend of Korra despite not being primarily focused on telling a good story. In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX there are two seasons dedicated to dealing with the concept of light and darkness, the former being the Society of Light arc, and the latter being the Yubel arc, both being sandwiched by the first and final seasons. The Society of Light arc introduces a concept known as Neo-Space, which is a dimension in which light and dark meet to sustain life. Neo-Spacians come in many different forms, one for each attribute in the card game: Aqua Dolphin for Water, Flare Scarab for Fire, Grand Mole for Earth, Air Hummingbird for Air, Glow Moss for Light, and Dark Panther for Darkness. This is actually important because Neo-Spacians and, by extension, the universe at large, can only exist while there is a balance of Light energy and Dark Energy and Sartorias, the Society of Light, and the people influenced by the Light of Destruction as a whole, wish to remove darkness so that it may rule, which is destroying Neo-Space in the process.

The third season, introduces an entity named Yubel, who is a creature comprised entirely of Darkness who wished to fuse all of the universes so she and Jaden could be together again and, in doing so, resulting in the deaths of everything in the universe. However, even here, darkness is not painted as entirely evil.

Yubel was a close friend of Jaden's as a monster spirit when he was a kid, she was quite possibly even romantically interested in him. But, after some time, he stopped interacting with her and she felt lonely and abandoned. This went on for around 10 years until she finally decided she wanted to fuse the universes together so she could be with a man that, as far as she knew, didn't want to abandon her.

This is why, for as dumb as Super Polymerization seems to be for most people, by using it to fuse himself with Yubel, he gave Yubel what she wanted and, in doing so, prevented the universes from being destroyed. As I mentioned, Yubel's goal was not to destroy everything, that was simply a byproduct of the process she was using to get what she actually wanted, which was to be with Jaden. By fusing together, she no longer needs to destroy anything since she got what she wanted.

Now, this is excluding Season 4, which I have yet to get to as I'm still in Season 3. And, to my understanding, Jaden has an evil side in Season 4 that comes out every so often. However, since I'm not entirely clear on how that happened or what it's supposed to represent, I'll leave that out for now and add it to this post as an addendum.

Of course, being a kid's show, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX isn't even the best example of Light and Darkness implemented well. There are still plenty of shows and games that handle it better. So let's go over some of them.

• Star Wars, or the Legends canon at least, features Light and Darkness in the concept of the Force. While the Jedi and Light side are usually the focus of the movies, the books feature far more representation for the Sith and the dark side. In there, there is also something known as a Gray Jedi, which is a Jedi that focuses on maintaining balance rather than forcing light to overtake darkness. In their code, they specifically state that Darkness cannot be allowed to overtake the light but you cannot have one without the other.
• Devil May Cry is about a human-demon hybrid known as Dante and puts a very large emphasis on the idea that your actions matter far more than your race. Hideki Kamiya stated in a twitter post that the thing humans have that demons don't is "Heart," which some have interpreted as the ability to care for others but, because he's Japanese, could just as easily refer to determination and willpower. Dante and Vergil are both half-demon but also half-human, which gives them the aspects of both but they clash ideologically. Dante wanted to maintain his humanity and doesn't come to terms with his demon self until the end of DMC3, whereas Vergil abandons his humanity in favor of demonic power. However, one thing to consider is that the most important figure in DMC lore, The Legendary Dark Knight Sparda, sealed off the demon world because he cared about humans, featuring heart, and Arkham was human but sought to be powerful for selfish reasons, making him more demonic.
• Bayonetta has similar messages, surrounding a human woman who interacts very heavily with demons and fights angels and Lumin Sages on a regular basis. However, one thing to mention is that, while the series is from the perspective of a dark lurker, her father, a Lumin Sage, is not an entirely evil man, he's simply opposed to the Umbra Witches. In fact, before he got together with Bayo's mother, the two sects coincided in peace but separate from each other because the Light and Dark were not allowed to interact. But the act of doing so resulted in a woman that was prophesied to destroy the world and, lo and behold, she didn't. This is far more focused on keeping light and dark separate but shows that one is not inherently better than the other.
• Overwatch doesn't really tackle the concept of Light and Darkness directly but the support character, Symmetra, has a moveset built heavily around creation and destruction, which is a related concept.
• Fate/Zero has a light-darkness conflict in the form of the main characters Kiritsugu Emiya and his servant Artoria Pendragon or Saber. Artoria and Kiritsugu both intend to save the world, or at least a big part of it but they go about it in entirely different ways. Artoria wants the Holy Grail to wipe her influence from history so that Great Britain can be spared from the horrors that the Kingdom endured under her rule and lack of ability to lead. Kiritsugu wants to wipe away evil so that pointless deaths, war, and other evils can no longer take place. However, while these characters are inherently heroic, they are two different types of heroes: Artoria wants to save history and the people she led but does not want to sacrifice honor or justice in order to do it. She won't fight dirty and she will only kill as either a feat of necessity or as an act of mercy, usually the latter in the case of Kayneth and Lancelot. Kiritsugu, however, has no problem cheating, lying, playing dirty, and stacking the deck. His ultimate goal is world peace and he believes that, so long as that goal is achieved, he will become the necessary evil to end all other evils.
• A parallel can be seen in Kirei Kotomine and Gilgamesh, who are both antagonists but feature a lot of the same imagery. Kirei is similar to Kiritsugu in the dark aspects but, while Kiritsugu is the necessary evil to end evil, Kirei simply wants to destroy. Artoria and Gilgamesh feature a lot of light imagery with a heavy emphasis on the color gold. However, while both are historic heroes intent on gaining the Holy Grail, Artoria does so for entirely selfless reasons, wanting to wipe her influence away to save what she could not, which is one of the most selfless things someone can do, while Gilgamesh wants the Holy Grail simply to have it and to gain a human body so he can continue to rule.
• Dark Souls features dark and light in the form of Gwyn and humanity. Prior to Gwyn's rule the Fire was intended to burn out and bring on the age of man, which is the darkness. However, Gwyn did not want his rule to end, either because he was a ruthless tyrant or because he was afraid of humans, take your pick, which resulted in him keeping the fire alive longer than it should have. Initially, Dark Souls by itself paints the fire ending and the dark ending ambiguously and makes it so that neither choice is inherently better than the other. Then Dark Souls 2 messed that up by making the fire ending canon and devaluing the dark ending. Dark Souls 3 did the best with what was available but ended up being an "everybody's fucked" kind of ending, which is somewhat less generic than a happy ending but is just as cheap because it wasn't always intended to be that way.

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with tackling a story of light versus dark. If you want to tackle a story where light and dark forces fight and one has to overtake the other, then that's perfectly fine. The problem I have is when people take light vs. dark stories and then describe them as stories about balance. Stories about balance will feature the negatives and positives of having too much of both and having both in moderation respectively. Having one overtake the other is fine in stories of light vs. dark or good vs. evil as long as that is how you're presenting it. The problem comes when you try to make it about balance and your writing skill is not nuanced enough to show how bad things get when imbalance happens in either direction.

That's all for now, have a wonderful night.