Tarot and Anime

Shoji Kawamori is a Japanese anime creator, screenwriter and mechanical designer, of the series he has worked on I am nearing the end of Vision of Escaflowne and have started watching his new series Nobunaga the Fool. Both heavily feature the use of Tarot so if you’re interested in learning more about the Tarot or just seeing it used in fiction, give these series a try.

The main character Hitomi (meaning: “Pupil (eye)”) does tarot readings in the series which have effects on future events, she also uses a pendulum. Every episode begins by showing a tarot card which often has a connection to the story of that episode, sometimes blatantly, sometimes more subtle. (from what I can recognize, I’m still very much a tarot novice).

Here are the opening scenes

Only 2 episodes have been released of this anime, it’s a bit silly at first in using historical characters alongside mechs but nonetheless really entertaining so far. In the first episode Leonardo Da Vinci introduces himself to Jean D’Arc by saying he works for King Arthur and offers her a Tarot card. She draws the Star and gets an explanation. Apparently they drew up an entire deck, we’ve seen two so far, the Star and the Lovers and both look amazing.

Do you know any works of fiction that uses the Tarot? Please let me know. Meanwhile I’ll listen to David Goddard’s audio series again, I should probably find a good book on the tarot too (the one I got with my cards from a dutch author isn’t that good.) so I can finally get to know them by heart.