'The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱)' by Tanigawa Nagaru (谷川流)/ Ishihara Tatsuya (石原立也)

I would not be surprised if I were told one day that the world is comprised of units of interconnected 'data' that could be manipulated at will. I would not be surprised either if I were told that the being who could create 'data' out of nothing would be who is hithero known to us as 'God'. What's more, I probably would not be surprised to know that 'God' were one of us, and that 'God' did not know that she was God.

Such is the setup on the cosmological level of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, a hit anime series based on a series of light novels written by Tanigawa Nagaru (谷川流).

Cleverly disguised as a high school comedy, the show is actually a witty thought experiment carried out pursuant to a few more hypotheses:

i) God is high school girl bored by our drab world;
ii) God wants to be friends with aliens, espers and times travelers and have fun with them;
iii) An alien, an esper and a time traveler do become her best friends;
iv) God does not know anything of the true identities of her best friends;
v) Her best friends are determined that she should remain ignorant of her awesome powers.

In short, you have the story of a God whose omnipotence is crippled by that fact that she is not omniscient; a God who seeks to rebel against human conventions but willy-nilly accepts the status quo at the end, and in accepting the status quo earns unbeknownst to her the friendship of far-from-conventional individuals which she has always specifically willed for. It's one of these chicken-and-egg things where you cannot tell where does the truth ends and the lie begins. The caveat is that the moment she 'wakes', her friends (and the world, for that matter) would probably no longer be. There are many things I like about this series, but there a few things which I have not heard raised in blogosphere so far: How much of gaining what we desire in life depends on our abilitiy to renounce it and resign to the exact opposite? How much of what we have in life depends on us not knowing that we have it? And that the moment it comes to our knowledge, it is lost forever? ('Igonorance is like a delicate exotic fruit, touch it and the bloom is gone' - to quote a certain famous play.)

[EDIT: I just learned an astonishing fact that Tanigawa Nagaru 谷川流 graduated from the law school of Kwansei Gakuin University 関西学院大学! Well, so much for people going to law school and end up turning away from legal practice...]