So like, the kaiju cultists of Pacific Rim interest me quite a lot, because religions and cults and all that are things that interest me. I need you to understand this first and foremost.
Because.
*deep breath*
*sobs*
The kaiju prayer in the novelization is. Um.
Well...
It's complete and utter nonsense. Total garble. Completely incoherent.
What do I mean? Well...
So, here's the kaiju prayer written by Alex Irvine for the Pacific Rim novelization:
We are the sisters of the kaiju.
We open our arms to receive the angels of the ocean.
Majestic creatures from beyond our horizons, deliver us from suffering and strike the evil from our hearts.
You are mercenaries on a mission of mercy, come to free humanity from a poisoned home. With almighty powers, you stir our oceans and steal our skies.
O kaiju kings, lead us down into your paradise below the seas and vanquish all who oppose your supreme reign.
Look how you crucify our false prophets, man-made tyrants who fear what they do not understand. You are not the scourge. You are the salvation.
We fall to our knees in your infinite shadow and raise our hands in awe and admiration.
Let the blue blood of the archangels wash away our iniquity that we may start life anew in the world before…
On a broad level, this aligns with Travis Beacham's statement about BuenaKai following an apocalyptic theology and believing the kaiju are here to wash our sins away.
But when you look closer, you can see that the kaiju are referred to as angels, archangels, kings, and mercenaries. Angels/archangels, mercenaries, and kings are very different things, and only one of these actually makes sense.
It should be pretty damned obvious to anyone ever that whatever the kaiju are, they are not kings. Kings wouldn't be out here attacking cities and getting nuked or beaten to death by Jaegers.
Mercenaries is also a strange word to throw into this whole mess, because a mercenary is a soldier for hire. It's both incompatible with king and angel/archangel.
Angel/archangel is the only one that makes any kind of sense. This one actually does align with information in the film, where Hannibal Chau says that the cultists believe the kaiju are "sent by the gods." (And given that Chau sells kaiju bits across the street from a kaiju church, it's reasonable to think he's probably not too off in this description.)
Something that's kinda weird is the "majestic creatures from beyond our horizons" bit. Literally everybody knows they come from the bottom of the sea, and this knowledge is definitely attributed to the BuenaKai cultists in this prayer.
And then there's this line:
Look how you crucify our false prophets, man-made tyrants who fear what they do not understand.
Dear god there's a lot to unpack here.
Like. "False prophet" is probably the the most inept insult Irvine could've come up with, and betrays a severe lack of knowledge in how any Christian or Christian-adjacent spiritual worldview actually works. Like for all of the ridiculous demonization religious extremists get up to, they don't just call anything and everything they don't like a "false prophet." This only happens in hack writing where the writer only knows a few basic Christian cliches.
Same goes for "crucify." The kaiju are not doing any crucifying. The word is only here because it's a Christian cliche. You could have just said "slay," Alex. It's also in the Bible.
"Man-made tyrants who fear what they do not understand" is also bizarre. Wouldn't the "tyrants who fear what they do not understand" be the people who built the Jaegers, not the Jaegers themselves?
Again, I have researched some of the most unhinged spiritual movements on the goddamn planet (Love Has Won, anyone?), and none of them are this incoherent.
So I've decided to rewrite this prayer into something coherent, that also reflects the existence of BuenaKai monks:
We are the brothers and sisters of the kaiju.
We open our arms to receive the angels of the ocean.
Majestic creatures from the world below, deliver us from suffering and strike the evil from our hearts.
You are warriors of mercy, sent to free us from our poisoned home. Your almighty strength stirs our oceans. Your sacred majesty occludes our skies.
O mighty archangels, show us the righteous way that shall lead us to life everlasting in the world to come. Vanquish all who oppose your holy wrath.
Look how you strike down our proud works, look how you have slain the Jaegers and crushed the Wall. You are scourge to the tyrant and salvation to the faithful.
We fall to our knees and raise our hands to thank the Holy Ones who have sent you.
In your death even is victory; your sacred blood cleanses the world of man's sin, to prepare the world for life anew.
