Welcome back, my dear readers. Have you missed me? After all, you must toil through six entire days of the week without hearing from me. I only kid a little. It’s been a bit of a rough spring this year. Yes, I have gotten out to my garden, but no, I haven’t planted out everything I bought…yet. Long story short, I need to move all of the brambles I cut last fall into the contained compost area before I can remove the agricultural cloth, remove the last of the blackberries, and than move the final raised beds into place. 

Unfortunately, only two of the five sweet potato plants I had purchased seem to be doing well. But, such is life. 

I found a new manga series earlier this week, and it got me thinking about the ‘sealed spirits’ archetype of magical practice. This is something that most pop culture magicians are already very familiar with, whether they know it or not.

Common Paradigms and Sources

The concept of sealing allies into portable materials is not new within pop culture. The most recognizable of these stories would probably be Pokemon. But, a close second would be Card Captor Sakura. I do consider Digimon to be in a similar paradigm, but in Digimon you have one partner and not a potential library of allies. 

This theme is also repeated with some variation in Natsume’s Book of Friends (Natsume Yuujinchou). In that case, the protagonist has a book full of true names, which he can use to command yoke. The overarching plot of this story is that Natsume wants to return these names to their owners—but he ends up making a lot of friends over the course of this journey. 

Curiously, there is also almost always a secondary-through line of the main plot within these stories—and it’s a warning to treat your allies with kindness and respect. And I don’t feel the need to get into this, because I know for a fact I have talked your ears off about this multiple times. 

Additional Paradigms and Sources

The Spellbook Library is the new manga that I picked up, and it very much falls into the same theme. In this manga, magical beasts can be condensed into spell books. The most dangerous of these are kept in what is effectively a ‘restricted section’ of the library. I am very interested to see how the world building of this manga continues. 

If you are curious about playing around with a paradigm like this but don’t want to completely go full pop culture—I highly suggest the game Wreck This Deck—which is available online. You can buy it in pdf or a physical form. But, I will warn you, just like with any other ‘magic game,’ this does have the possibility to become very, very real. It might be a good idea to set limits about the types of spirits you encounter in your game. 

To all of my dearest readers, what was your favorite Pokemon or Clow Card?