/lit/ - Literature

>>17968445
It's weird to consider that in all of the history of literature this hasn't been something exactly like anime, maybe the Chinese classics Journey to the West and the Water Margin come close from what I hear. Even what would be considered the "anime" of its day like Charles Dickens novels are not exactly anime as they deal heavily in contemporary social issues, which anime certainly does not at all. Maybe things like the Iliad come close, and at least a lot of texts certainly have anime-esque elements looked at retrospectively, but none hit the exact mark in sensibility.

Satan's monologues in Milton's Paradise Lost do kinda have that feel, as does the showdown of his with the archangel Michael, which could not be seen as anything other than a shounen anime fight if the fight actually went through before they were interrupted

>What though the field be lost?
>All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
>And study of revenge, immortal hate,
>And courage never to submit or yield:
>And what is else not to be overcome?
>That Glory never shall his wrath or might
>Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
>With suppliant knee, and deifie his power
>Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
>Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
>That were an ignominy and shame beneath
>This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
>And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
>Since through experience of this great event
>In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc’t,
>We may with more successful hope resolve
>To wage by force or guile eternal Warr
>Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe,
>Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
>Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n.