Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2010

For thousands of years, art has provided an avenue for religions to represent the divine. But Kofuku no Kagaku, the neo-Buddhist organization known to English-speakers as Happy Science, must be the only religious group in Japan—and perhaps the entire world—to use anime as its primary means of recruitment.

Since 1997, Happy Science has produced a new animated film every three years, each loosely based on books by the group’s founder and leader, Ryuho Okawa. All have done solid business at the box office: the most recent, The Rebirth of Buddha, opened at 301 theaters last October, hitting number two in the charts during its first week and eventually being seen by an estimated 730,000 people.

Happy Science films can be watched as stand-alone works, but they’re actually part of one long story arc that reflects Okawa’s obsession with history, religion and ancient mythology. Laws of the Sun (2000) depicts the creation of the universe itself, starting with the Big Bang and then offering a glimpse of the Venusian high civilization that would eventually people other planets, including our own.

Moving forward in time, 1997’s Hermes Winds of Love recounts the story of the Ancient Greek hero’s marriage to Aphrodite, and the eventual birth of Eros. It turns out that Hermes was Thoth, King of Atlantis, in a previous life, and in an even earlier incarnation was the King of Mu. He will go on to become Shakyamuni Buddha in India—and is now, of course, a certain Mr. Okawa of Japan. All of these are emanations of El Cantare, the Eternal Buddha, who is the central deity of Happy Science.

While the films serve as religious road maps for the faithful, they can also be enjoyed as grand, and occasionally head-spinning, trips through the world’s faiths and civilizations. In this vast repository of plots, characters and settings, a purple-haired Einstein tells us from heaven, “This is the realm where past, present and future are one. I’m thinking of being born in the 30th century to create a time machine.” In The Golden Laws (2003), we then meet his daredevil granddaughter, who shaves the nose off the Great Sphinx of Giza when flying said time machine through ancient Egypt.

Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa and Thomas Edison all make cameos in Laws of Eternity (2006), but not every famous figures is depicted in a flattering light. Friedrich Nietzsche is awarded a special place in hell, where he’s joined by a scientist and academic who argues, “The freedom of religion also means the freedom of not believing in religion.”

To which Okawa says: tosh. His books, and their anime adaptations, promote a religious alternative to the secular view of the world: if you had a second or third chance or were continually reborn, how would your life be transformed? Basking in past-life nostalgia is Happy Science’s peculiar, optimistic tweaking of Buddhism—and a heroic attempt to inject religious values back into modern society.

For more information about Happy Science, see www.kofuku-no-kagaku.or.jp.