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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 2474600" data-attributes="member: 5990">Green Snake 青蛇 (White Snake, Green Snake) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106559/" target="_blank">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106559/</a> is another good film for this. You get to see both the stereotype Buddhist monk caster and the stereotype mad Daoist caster (Daoists are almost invariably portrayed as weird, scroungy, and antisocial in Chinese literature) along with several examples of the stereotype uppity evil critter caster.With magical writing, the power is less regarded as being in the symbols as in what they express (which is why a sutra scroll isn't used up like a D&D scroll). It's not exactly like a symbol of pain, but more like reciting the Lord's Prayer to ward off evil. In some cases, single characters can have this function as shorthand for holy invocations, but it's the holiness of the sutra itself that makes the evil critter writhe in agony. It's not like you use the character for fire　火 to cast a fireball (that's more characteristic of Norse magic, where inscribing and "coloring" the rune for "curse" is actually what you might do to curse someone). Yeah, OK, you could probably find some example of that in anime if you looked, but it's not very traditional.</blockquote>