Yeah, maybe they were just more "sneaky" about keeping me from getting into Pokemon. I didn't have cable, and nobody broadcast the Pokemon anime in my area. I was dissuaded from the card game because it was a money sink. (After Pogs, they didn't want me participating in any other collectable stuff. They liked to pretend I had a "problem" or something with Pogs.) I don't really know why I never had any of the video games. It's likely my parents engineered that behind the scenes or something.

Of course, my whole peer group was obsessed with Pokemon. And I was unable to participate in that. Really made me an outsider. So when my local Fox affiliate started carrying Digimon from episode 1, it was kindof my opportunity to have something over which to actually finally connect with my peer group in a way I couldn't before.

But my mother, who had a habit of not showing her face until at least noon most days, happened to get up that one Saturday morning for some reason and found me in the middle of an episode of Digimon. She never made a "thing" about Pokemon. I had no way to know before right then that watching the Digimon anime was something "against the rules." But she flipped her shit about Digimon that day. I guess she didn't realize I was watching it until that day, or maybe it was seeing the art style that tipped her off or something. Who knows.

I should also mention that was far from the first thing that was banned for similarly bad and fundamentalist Christian reasons. Just a few others that I remember:

• The Mighty Max animated series
• He-Man ("there's only one 'master of the universe'")
• A great Sega Genesis dungeon crawler game called "Shining in the Darkness"
• All anime. (Digimon was kindof the first time she realized that "satanic Japanese brainwashing shit" was getting into our house, I guess)
• Popular secular music

I tried to convince my mom Diablo 2 was good because the goal is to defeat the devil.

My cursory understanding of Shinto would lead me to believe that... basically, the idea here is that a haniwa is an effigy, meant to both honor and protect the dead.

And... given than many kinds of 'spirits' in Shinto essentially... manifest themselves in, or possess certain objects, things, even people, that match with their particular demeanor...

Yeah, basically a gyroid is fairly similar to a golem spell, its a spirit or demon or minor demi god possessing a fashioned form.

But I am not by any means an expert.

Either way, thanks for actually answering my questions, hehe!