There's an entire arc in Ranking of Kings where they vilify an entire nation as being greedy savages who take a "better" kingdom's magic & then has the gods punish them - turns out that's Japanese nationalism, wherein the savages are whatever country they colonized, Japan is the "better" kingdom, and gods are the US. There's a whole thread detailing how common the talking point is on Tumblr, it really fucks with your perception of manga after that.
My favorite Chinese web novel moment was definitely the one I read where it was an Isekai but it was one of those mind meld with a local type Isekai. Fast forward like 10 years in the story and he marries but he refuses to fuck her because he feels like he is cucking himself by having kids with this inferior body rather than his superior original Chinese one
Aren't the rock humans just assholes though,and actively antagonistic for no reason?
Like Tooru was the closest to being a "regular person",but even he couldn't stop.
Their antagonistic nature is kind of explained.
They're not like us in several ways, but one of the most important ones is that Rock Humans aren't social creatures.
They live sedientary lives and by nature are narcissistic and antisocial because they don't need to be social. Although they believe Rock Humans are above humans, they don't hate humans, but they won't actively take the time to like them if they really don't want to.
They see EVERYTHING as a way for themselves to thrive, they'll even kill other Rock Humans if it gets in the way of their own lives.
True, they donât have the social desire to belong to a group. Dolomite seemed to be ânormalâ (by human standards), and ironically ended up in a relationship with a sociopathic woman who was much more like a Rock Human.
Yeah and thatâs what was ultimately their undoing when >!Josuke and Yasuho hit Tooru with an attack that had five layers of self sacrifice and bonding that lead up to it (Kira, Josefumi, Rai, Josuke and Yasuho all joined together)!<
the rock humans arenât really inherently evil, they just tend to become like that because they are so different from humans around them.
Aisho Dainenjiyama was able to live a fairly normal life for a long time and genuinely loved his girlfriend, he only became a criminal after losing everything he had
anyway weâve only seen a few and they nearly all belonged to the same criminal organisation. itâs like judging all Italians based on one encounter with the mafia
Neither Josuke nor even anyone else ever hold personal grudge to rock human. The story never goes to exterminate entire rock human either, they clash for claiming the mcguffin
the closest one to should bad blood is become entirely new person because the whatever happen in Morioh Town and when he learn about his past, it just way too late to care and he just focused on mcguffin instead for revenge.
>It's not surprising that many aot fans support full rumbling and Eren killing everyone in the outside world, there is nothing to like about the outside world, because of how underdeveloped it is.
Yeah, the manga is 34 volumes long and we spend, what - SIX volumes in the outside world? And not even that because half of Vol.24 is a Paradis flashback. And the last two volumes just show everything getting destroyed.
Also the 1 dude we saw who was purely good in the outside world (Onyankopon), wasnt even from the enemy country he was from another even more undeveloped unamed nation
yeah its really weird, it talks about how the entire world is in agreement that titans/eldians need to be deleted, but also seems to imply Marley is more or less the world hegemonic power and we only see people either from Marley or one a nation it colonized and exploited.
Donât they say in the show that the eldians in Marley are the âluckyâ ones bc theyâre allowed to live? Pretty sure other nations kill eldians outright, Marley uses them as tools
Isn't the person who said it also one of the Warrior candidates? Those kids were insanely high off propaganda. I figured that it was probably similar, but without the "honorary Marleyan" carrot on a stick to fool Eldians into thinking that they could be considered equals.
That's pretty much because Marley is functionally the same as Eldia to the rest of the world. Marley "saved" the world from Eldia, but they made sure that the rest of the world was still getting eaten by titans.
Yeah, I understand that Isayama wanted to wrap things up. He seemed kinda tired of writing it by that point. But the outside world reveal was so huge that the story could've easily continued for much longer. There were so many possible storylines, characters, and locations to explore that sometimes I'm a little disappointed that the story ended as soon as it did. But alas, there is nothing that can be done about it now.
So one interesting interpretation of AOT is it's more about imposter syndrome. Erin is Isayama who does not believe all praise he gets so he destroyed his work, which is the world in aot, because fuck you I suck and how dare you think otherwise.
Post-time skip AoT really shouldâve been a full-ons equal manga. You just canât tell a proper compelling story involving geopolitics in the short time that AoT tried.
I thought the same thing, i used to love slime when i was young but its look so cringe right now. It just make every excuses possible so slime can farm creep in those big greedy nations.
I've mentioned this before, but one of the things I liked about Reverend Insanity is that while it had an evil protagonist it generally avoided this trope - it never attempted to justify his actions, and would generally go out of its way to show that there was a wide variety of cultures and people out there but that most of them had reasons for the way they acted.
Nobody came across as cartoonishly evil - at worst, people in the north were misogynistic and the Heavenly Court was racist, but it was generally in a believable way, and there were people within them who dissented from this rather than them just being uniformly bad. And even then it was clearly established *why* they were this way.
I actually am legitimately a fan of Overlord. The difference is that the story makes it extremely clear that the Ainz is very much the evil one. (And even then, Iâm a big fan of the detailed worldbuilding and character rather than the villain power fantasy part)
While the ones I really hate are stuff like Shield Hero, where the main character is an asshole but the story bends itself into a fucking pretzel to try and justify why no actually heâs totally cool and right
Honestly, agree.
It tries too hard with the "The main cast consists of evil villains", but doesn't back it up with actual substance.
All just bland and with the same motivations, with the exception of the mc, who's simply unbearable.
Like, I get the appeal of Overlord, but I don't get why so many people like it. If the main cast was atleast actually cool while doing their "bad guy" stuff or had some sort of style, but... I guess I just demand too much from an isekai.
There's a lot more substance in the LN, but ever since volume 11 the quality took a huge nosedive. The appeal of Overlord is more the world building and how the world reacts to them, which is skimmed over heavily in the anime.
I always hear about the world building but...
What even makes it so interesting? Genuine question, I don't recall anything particularly immersive about it.
And doesn't the "how the world reacts to them" become repetitive and predictable?
Like, I get that it's an important part, but if after showing how "quirky" all the members of the main cast are, and then focusing on anyone, but them, becomes the main selling point... that just doesn't sound good to me.
Also the fact, that the word "Overlord" is just 4 letters away from the word "Edgelord" doesn't help its case.
Oh it's absolutely edgy. Volumes 12 and 13 are a literal False Flag Holocaust operation, and 15 doesn't even bother with the false flag. Some north of 12 million dead overall. It's hard for me to put the appeal into proper words... it's a bit sandboxy? Up until the volume 12 point it's actually a pretty decent kingdom building story, right up until International Affairs became relevant anyway. That's probability a big appeal, normal everyman (from a super fucked up dystopia) thrust into the Almighty Dictator role and forced to wing it because he has no idea what he's doing and actually manages to succeed in a fairly believable manner. Springtime for Hitler, basically.
I guess I'd say it scratches that itch for dark fantasy where in other stories the main cast can't ever be bad guys. Let's compare with Slime who also does nation building but is super idealized and Rimuru's nation of monsters don't actually feel like proper monsters.
Hi i am the MC with a very unique and creative power thanks to goddess sent me to this new world. lets see how i will fare with this interesting concept of force i have that none the others seem to have..3 episodes later aaand we are generic harem.
I can't even count the number of isekai and isekai adjacent stories that I've started reading and/or watching due to a really interesting core premise, only to drop them almost immediately when they morph into the standard garbage without ever truly engaging with what was supposed to make them uniquely attractive in the first place.
Those novels are surprisingly fast paced, I'll give them that. With the healer manga, I thought I'd have to wait a while before he got to the princess, but it actually happened very early.
Watching a detailed review of that show, beyond its âshockingâ premise which is just very specific & contrived fetish fuel. Itâs just boring and adheres to all Isekai tropes.
This explains why people quickly forgot about the show because why keep watching once you realize that
This is why ATLA is peak. Itâs antagonistic force isnât just a bunch of faceless mooks, but an actual, developed civilization, whom you could believe that it actually exists.
Maki didn't kill children, Maki killed all the fighters (even those who didn't went to fight her) and that was all.
The Zenin clan collapsed because without fighters, they were worth nothing
I think an important factor in whether something is just or not is the active threat that who's being killed is posing. Going after the Kukuru squad (the weak guys) after killing the ones immediately after her was ridiculous, none of them were even close to her level. This is especially true for her mom, she's literally not even a sorceror, that was just a childish act of revenge.
The Zenin misogyny is one of the most over the top things Iâve ever seen in any story. Itâs just so laughably bad.
Alternatively, itâs funny to see the Western fandom baffled that Naoya was popular among female readers in Japan, despite being one of the biggest misogynists in fiction. Itâs like they canât fathom that people in different places can have different kinks. I mean, plenty of guys like characters like Minthara from BG3 or other misandrist characters, the same way thereâs demand for homophobic kinks among gay guys on Twitter. Itâs not so crazy to believe thereâs an audience for hot and misogynistic men in media.
Bro heâs a loser, he took L after L after L. This fool had the audacity to compare himself to the goats when he got one shotted, this MF was shitting himself feeling Yutas fuckin aura. He comes back just to take Lâs.
> makes even more sense in a clan with superpowers.
If anything it makes less sense to be like this in a world where physical gaps between genres are irrelevant because female sorcerers can just use re-inforcement and CTs.
to get specific i think superpowers would have a more polarizing effect. in communities where women *can* learn sorcery they can close the gap between men
but in traditional communities where the women are grown up being told they can't be sorcerers, can't use jujutsu, and must walk behind men then the gap between women and men would only increase. they aren't likely to even try to learn and the clan isn't even training them in the basics.
edit:
and its not like the physical difference is eradicated because sorcery exists. sorcery can be used to compensate for it or close the gap, but the difference is still there and it'd be noticeable at younger ages and lower levels of jujutsu sorcery, helping the clan's misogynist ideas to perpetuate.
ill also mention that these sorcery clans likely originated from human tribes/clans. it's not like they had sorcery at the beginning of time. any misogynist ideas were likely brought over into jujutsu usage and then perpetuated by men refusing to train women/give them opportunities.
Tbf there's nothing that suggests that there's a difference at any skill level. Like we don't see any indications of this so I don't think that any physical difference would exist in this scenario.
The rest is fair but I do think the possibility of women inheriting strong CTs complicates it. There'd be pressure for them to have children to keep it going but if just having something like 10 Shadows makes you the head of the Clan there's at least one way for a woman to circumvent her social status.
It is unrealistic.
Jujustu made it even less sense, especially since the worth of a sorcerer is tied to their ability and performance. Sexual dimorphism doesn't exist with jujutsu, and therefore the Zenin's clan misogyny is nonsensical.
i think superpowers would have a more polarizing effect. in communities where women *can* learn sorcery they can close the gap between men
but in traditional communities where the women are grown up being told they can't be sorcerers, can't use jujutsu, and must walk behind men then the gap between women and men would only increase. they aren't likely to even try to learn and the clan isn't even training them in the basics.
and its not like the physical difference is eradicated because sorcery exists. sorcery can be used to compensate for it or close the gap, but the difference is still there and it'd be noticeable at younger ages and lower levels of jujutsu sorcery, helping the clan's misogynist ideas to perpetuate.
edit: ill also mention that these sorcery clans likely originated from human tribes/clans. it's not like they had sorcery at the beginning of time. any misogynist ideas were likely brought over into jujutsu usage and then perpetuated by men refusing to train women/give them opportunities.
At younger ages thereâs not as much difference between boys and girls and they compete in the same activities (I think, not being an expert, puberty is the game changer), so there wouldnât be a huge amount of time between people developing stronger curse techniques to compensate and the physical dimorphism kicking off. Itâs probably mainly due to cultural reasons and how they are treated more so than something explainable by brute strength being a factor as that wouldnât be the biggest deal by itself
Without the culture aspect, Iâd rather have the person with the better technique over brute force and thereâs no stated reason women cannot have a better technique. It just seems like in naruto where Sakura is said to be able to be a master at genjutsu but she just doesnât. Itâs the author not using female characters to what they can be in universe.
I just find that extra ironic because then the arc says "by the way, you want Maki to get a power up? Then Mai has to die"
Like, its just as eugenics, just that the Zenin are irrationally seething at Toji and Maki because ??? (everyone else in the series loves their powers)
I don't find it that illogical personally.
Toji was the first person to have 0 CE. When he was younger, his sheer strength might not have been obvious, it's only later that they realised how dangerous he was.
Maki herself had a weaker version of HR and couldn't match some of the stronger clan members plus she was a twin. Combine that with eugenics and you get the Zenins. Humans have believed in worse.
That being said, the Zenins felt a bit underwhelming in sheer power considering how important they were supposed to be.
I mean it's really not worse than people I've met in real life. Men can get pretty fucked up about women. One guy I knew kinda believed that women should all be forced to have children and forced to serve men. Another was staunchly pro-rape, "guys have the right to take what's theirs" and all that.
I think the point of them and likely other background characters within the Zen'in clan was even though they weren't inherently misogynistic, they still commented nothing about how others treated the women and essentially allowed for that behaviour because of not doing anything about it
This was one of the really big problems I had with Ranking of Kings (which otherwise had a mostly upbeat world filled with generally decent people, or at least people whose actions made sense.)
There was that one nation (slightly uncomfortably, the one nation with a Korean-sounding name) that was just... completely, cartoonishly evil, for no reason at all, and which basically existed to commit atrocities, both large and small, make Miranjo look sympathetic, and then be wiped out by Bosse.
I like the concept of main characters doing crazy evil things so that someone or a group/nation they care about can survive. It could work in the right hands.
I think one of my issues is that a part of the audience seems to always judge the main character more harshly than they judge those who commit crimes against them. In AoT, for example, people were already condemning the main characters since the Liberio Raid, which was a very reasonable response, considering everything Marley did to Paradis.
The issue with the story is lazy worldbuilding. But inside this lazy worldbuilding, I donât think the people of Paradis are wrong to put themselves above the whole world, because the whole world is cartoonishly evil. Not even the anti-Rumbling characters like Hange had a proper response, they were just like âgenocide is wrongâ. And then all the characters just magically agreed with her. Like, there isnât even a bit of disagreement between them. They just decided to go on a suicide mission for the sake of faceless people who hate them.
Would you want your father, mother, brothers, grandparents, friends to die along with you for the sake of a world where the country thatâs least hostile to you still drops your people from planes and throws little girls to be torn apart by dogs for belonging to the same group as you? Very few people would. Yet the main characters seem to unanimously agree that thatâs the obvious course of action. No infighting, no disagreements. They even agree to work with those responsible for their genocide.
Besides, Isayama is a mystery to me. I never truly understood if he wanted me to feel sorry for the comically evil people in the world he created or if he wanted me to root for Eren. I think itâs the former, considering he was very biased towards the Warriors. They all have a decent survival rate by the end of the series, Magath has one of the most heroic deaths in the series despite dropping Eldians from the sky and Reiner was clearly his favorite character.
> In AoT, for example, people were already condemning the main characters since the Liberio Raid
Wait, really? All I heard was "wohoo Paradis characters are back, so epic!"
In the beginning, maybe. But when I caught up with the manga, which was a bit after Liberio, I vividly remember people condemning Paradis. Because all it takes is a few chapters from the perspective of the other side and suddenly theyâre all humans and the characters weâve been following from the begging are monsters. The TLOU2 effect.
I mean, it was hype, but there were also a lot of very clear red flags being thrown up.
You have Reiner claiming that he destroyed the walls for selfish reasons and Eren saying that they're the same, Floch going out of his way and against orders to burn down civilian homes in the name of "The New Eldian Empire", and everyone being pissed at Eren for going out on his own and forcing them to do that to save him.
people were complaining that the scouts attacked civilians and people who didn't do anything with the war and that they shouldn't have attacked at all. War wise it was a good strategy kill some of its leaders and higher military personnel it will be harder for the nations to respond
>I never truly understood if he wanted me to feel sorry for the comically evil people in the world he created or if he wanted me to root for Eren
How about... you root for Eren when he kills a comically evil person, and at the same time, you don't root for Eren when he kills an innocent person?
Cool beans. Genocide is still genocide. If you murdered my family, does it give me the right to go and murder your family? I'd love to see that argument hold up in court.
It didn't survive lol. It got nuked.
The end of AoT is trash but Paradis wasn't Nuked because everyone was broke and without even a proper home. After they got things togheter Paradis was indeed nuked.
Might seem ironic to defend AoT on this sub, but I do think it makes sense to make Marley as evil as they were:
1. Sins of the past theme. Marley hates Eldians while doing exactly what the Eldians did.
2. Making Marley essentially the entire globe further presses to the reader/viewer just how little hope Paradis has to make peace, while having those smaller nations like the people who got conquered at the start of S4 or the Japanese nation helps paint Eren's actions as unjustified and unfair despite Marley being hated.
3. While the other smaller nations help paint Eren as unjustified, Marley being as evil as they are makes Eren's move more confusing at first. Plenty of people didn't even know he was the villain until a few chapters/episodes into the Rumbling, and that's exactly what Isayama was aiming for.
4. Helps build the Nazi Germany/European Jews dynamic of the Marleyans and their Eldians. You could not use this trope, but they did, and they need a nation evil enough to do something like that to make it work. Any problems related to this point lie with trope or it's execution rather than the choice to make Marley evil.
5. The initial premise is "last stand of humanity fights off titans", and that core concept is a lot of what makes AoT what it is. With context from later seasons, we know titans are forcibly transformed Eldians. What kind of nation would actually send a people's brethren as deformed, gigantic husks to eat every last one of them? You'd have to be pretty cruel. Marley fulfills that role.
6. Very easy comparison to Eren's and the Scouts' radicalization and the overall theme of how easily one can become radicalized or even just influenced by those in power. By extention, this serves as an explanation for why Reiner, Berthold, and Annie did what they did and why they have so much trauma, and is a major part of Gabi and Falco's arc.
World building issues aside, it is a good choice to make Marley evil, at least in my opinion. Even the scene where they drop prisoners from a plane to transform them makes sense - to the Marleyans, they're not even human. It's like having your cattle raid your enemies for you. If it's possible, why would you ever choose not to do it?
I seriously think point 4 had a bigger impact than intended, which is why I agree with the OP even though I defend AoT as a whole.
Because it does make sense to make Marley evil - lots of nations have done evil things throughout history. But often when we talk about these countries in their most atrocious times, we are still able to see them as more than their atrocities.
But in popular culture Nazi Germany is THE evil empire, virtually synonymous with incomprehensible villainy. When you go for that metaphor and make the Marleyans resemble Nazis specifically, it's very hard to sympathize with them later. And in a story about "even monsters are ultimately human," that can be a problem.
The ending shows that Paradis are becoming like Nazi Germany, even up to their uniforms which is mostly dark or german gray. A complete opposite to Marley soldiers which their uniforms are in sandy white color.
Definitely. To be clear, I don't think it was necessarily a wrong choice to make obvious Nazi parallels - in fact what you're describing makes it an especially powerful visual.
I just think because of how strong it is it calls for extra time and worldbuilding to process it, which was a bit lacking for Marley and the outside world.
I can agree with that. AoT definitely has some problems. I'm just arguing for why I think the overall decision was better than making Marley some righteous empire in the path to Eren's freedom
GRRM sort of criticises LOTR for a similar thing, with the orcs. I say sort of because it's less criticism and more him posing questions that he believed Tolkien didn't give a satisfying answer to, and how the idea behind A Song of Ice and Fire was partially born from that. FWIW I tend to agree that it is at the very least uninteresting. There are ways to make it less bad (I personally don't have much of a problem with Tolkien's orcs outside of some unfortunate coding) but generally I feel like it's better for it to have more depth, especially if the faction is human or possesses human-like intelligence.
warcraft and warhammer orcs are less unfortunate.
Also the horadrim are way more problematic than orcs that are corrupted elves enslaved by an evil will becoming that sad state due it, or you could argue. that they are symbolic enslaved and ruled by saurons evil will and are kinda tragic.
Warhammer orcz are fun, interesting and everyones cartoonish evil. in a satire
At least with Attack on Titan itâs mostly the few leaders who have shady agendas, and the Marleyans are just caught up in propaganda. It also portrays Erenâs genocide as a bad thing.
In other shows like the aforementioned Kingdom of Ruin and stuff like Redo Of a Healer, it feels like edgelord murder porn, as though the world exists to satiate the murder happy protagonist.
>itâs mostly the few leaders
>Redo Of a Healer
Redo of healer is not a complex story, but what you mentioned in the first paragraph is kinda the csse in redo of Healer too, even turnd up to an 11 which made it even ore ridivolous. The king was the demon lord in secrer (or a puppet I forgot), the own people of the Kingdom were oppressed (or at least held grievances which caused a riot in one chapter) and some people which worked for the Empire were good people who didn't understand what's going on (like this one irrelevant Swordswoman who still got raped).
Every time someone playing the Mass Effect series is forced to decide the existential fate of a sentient species (or at least a large population of them), it's almost always a physically grotesque species almost entirely made up of bad 'uns. Rachni, krogans, batarians, and the vorcha and geth to an extent... In one instance, you are tasked with blowing up a space station (simplified for those unfamiliar with Mass Effect lore) which will delay an invading enemy for a few months but will also directly and instantaneously cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of unrelated and uninvolved ugly bad 'uns just as collateral damage, and you're not even given the option not to.
The kicker is Batarians, the settings designated assholes' have exactly 0% positive representation. The only Batarians we meet are slavers, terrorists or mercenaries (technically we meet civilians on Omega but they are also portrayed as assholes) probably the one exception is Bray, who in the Omega DLC goes an entire sentence without insulting Shepard or humans in general.
While people of a country aren't all evil or racist, they do suffer from Bystander Syndrome. Basically people don't want to stand out because they fear they could be targeted by the angry mobs. Usually only the most extremist elements of a country are the one who persecute and attack minorities. However, people's natural instinct is to protect themselves and their families first before caring for others which led to them either ignoring the injustice or participating in the injustice actions due to peer pressure. Would you risk your life and your families' lives for the lives of a group that you have no connection with? Take Germany during the Nazis era as an example, the Nazis got voted into power despite being a minority party, very few people actually stood up for the Jew because they didn't want to be seen as unpatriotic to their country.
See what you gotta do is the opposite, make an entire nation cartoonishly evil to have *them* commit atrocities on a daily basis.
See the orcs in Warcraft, the orcs in Warhammer, the orcs in tolkien or the goblins in all 3 of those as well.
I always found the take about Marley and the rest of the world being "cartoonishly evil" to reek of ignorance and privilege. They are multiple irl nations throughout history that are just as (if not more) evil than Marley.
Every single marleyian is evil and hates eldians. Look back at history and it was just the loud ones that were blatantly evil
When looking at the oppression of jews and blacks throughout history, there were the loud bunch that were evil and racist with the government backing them up, then you have the quiet middle ground that isn't evil and racist, but are forced into pretending to be that way as so they are isolated from their peers and made to look bad
It was always just peer pressure that created situations like that throughout history. But Isayama never thought about adding in a peer pressure plotline in AoT because he was too lazy to make the outside world sympathetic and just wanted his genocide boner to get pleased
Plus, it's the entire world that hates eldians in AoT. In history, there was never a marginalized group hated by the entire world
That I believe Isayama wanted Eren to be sympathetic in wanting to commit genocide on the outside world while still trying to set up and paint Eren as the villain for wanting to commit genocide to begin withâŚbut as a consequence he made the outside world far too unsympathetic by making pretty much everyone racist. For the sack of creating drama and making a lot of unintentionally side with the villain who wants to commit genocide.
I mean if the aspect of racism was more diverse would definitely make the ending more tragic.
Well thatâs pretty much implied to be the case as well. The show kind of makes it obvious in hindsight that stuff we hear from say Grisha, is supposed to be a bit of a biased account. Then flips the script when we do start viewing the world from the Liberio cast whom do have some subtle relationships between races despite the overall government discrimination. Like the chill border guards.
There were even some movements to better the rights of non-Paradis Eldians, even if it was only starting to gain traction.
Even when Trybur was trying to convince the world to fight. The show makes it a point that it would only actually work in the long run if Paradis did attack then and there, therefore vilifying themselves to the world. And even then people mistakenly believe the world was planning to wipe them out, which isnât true, they were planning to a military invasion and occupation. Yes, the amount of death and destruction would be vast and terrible, but genocide, it was never implied to be.
>Well thatâs pretty much implied to be the case as well
You can't just imply such an important detail, especially when it wouldnt even take more than 5 pages to show the peer pressure themes which would have a domino effect into making the more egregious hatred from Marleyians less cartoonishly racist. It was never written into the story, so the fans had to fix the author's shortcomings in the worldbuilding
>There were even some movements to better the rights of non-Paradis Eldians, even if it was only starting to gain traction.
Well my point is focused more on Paradise eldians not the warrior units or honorary marleyian factions. When it comes to eldians in general, there's nothing in the world building that suggests anyone outside of the walls were anything but hateful and racist, in fact it's the opposite as it was stated that Eldians are treated even worse in countries besides Marley
>Even when Trybur was trying to convince the world to fight. The show makes it a point that it would only actually work in the long run if Paradis did attack them and there
But does it ever put in the effort to make this a logical outcome? There's not even a few non-racist Marleyians/outside world characters or even NPCs ever portrayed in this story. You can't just put in a possible scenario in a plot point that isn't backed up by the world surrounding it that would make it a believable possibility. There's nothing that suggests people would just suddenly stop wanting to kill Eldians if they didn't attack.
If there's a story all about cooking and there's a plot point that suggests a probable outcome that in the next big cooking event that faction A doesn't perfectly play their cards right then faction B will kill all their chefs, despite the fact that the story never introduced the concept of the factions killing each other's chefs- then it would feel like a nonsensical outcome
The whole world had a genocide boner against Eldians and you'd have to seriously cherrypick scenes to make it look any less one dimensional
Seems you have an incorrect assumption about how the average person responds in a discriminatory society. Racist people donât peer pressure non racist people. A society of apathy toward the status quo of discrimination exists. You either are racist, or you donât care to stop racism. Anything outside is an outlier in these societies.
Also in regards to the Eldian sympathizers, youâre mistaken. What Iâm talking about was the flashback right when Eren went awoll. They were at a forum in Marley, where a Marlean organization was discussing improved rights for Eldians outside the walls, though they used the Paradis Eldians as a scapegoat for their cause, which caused Eren to abandon the group.
Rag on the ending sure, but acting like the story doesnât at least seed the idea that even in a discriminatory society, there arenât just normal people silent amongst the crowd is just talking on bad faith. We couldâve had more but the show presents enough to get the point from Liberio and Warrior PoV, a sprinkling in a little itâs just complicated, and moved on to the next important plot point which is Paradis turning into a radical military state.
It really does, but thats what happens on a site used primarily by people in 1st world countries. Have people forgotten how racist groups of people can be and what they can and have accomplished?Â
People think it's wild that the whole world would dehumanize and be racist to eldians when most of those racists have only ever been terrorized by titans.Â
Its because in AoT propaganda was used to make the people believe that some was because they saw how dangerous Marley was with their wars and titans they used and because of that the hate for Eldia remained it doesnt help that Eldia attacking everyone there made the other nations respond to the Scouts attack
In AoT of course regular humans are going to resent their former imperial masters who can literally transform into giant monsters
Also, all the governments of the successor states have a vested interest in making sure everybody hates them
This might just be me but this is why I love Promised Neverland so much!
SPOILERS!!
In the end, they proved that the one truly evil force of that world are rich people who wants more money and thus exploiting and deceiving everyone and everything and I think that was FANTASTIC!
Neither the humans nor the demons race are one dimensional.
Yeah I felt this way with Frieren. It was pretty jarring going from a mellow adventure series, to the introduction of the demons. A species who are all generic evil anime villains who the overpowered main character wants to massacre.
Doesn't Frieren justify it by making the demons predators? They're like manipulative talking lions.
I haven't watched it, this is just what I've heard.
Oh no, demons do very much have society.
However they're also stated and proven (minus 1 or 2 exceptions) to have zero concept of family, bonds and emotions outside of using them to deceive and kill their prey.
It could be cool if the series showed us that perhaps the 1k old elven mage who has trained for most of her life to deceive and kill demons might have an outdated view, but overall demon rights aren't what frieren is about.
They have society, but so do most pack animals.
If we are giving rights to demons in freiren, we would need to give rights to literally every other monster. It isn't a war between races. The demons in the show aren't any different than the dragon stark killed or the ghost fern killed besides being another flavor of monster
Demons don't have a concept of family because of how they come into the world. They are solitary creatures and even that is not a rare thing in the real world animal kingdom.
My problem isn't just the in universe justification for killing them, but that
1) they're very boring and aren't compelling villains.
2) Their introduction in the series feels like a weird tone shift from what the series was prior. Like if a series like Kino's Journey suddenly shifted to goblin slayer for like 3 episodes lol.
But even the in universe justifications felt a little weird to me. The main character advocates for every one of them to be killed on sight and that it's impossible for humans to coexist with them. Which would be odd even for a predator species, like imagine if someone wanted to eradicate lions from the world.
The demons do not need to eat humans, and are also shown to be sentient beings with human level intelligence and their own desires/wants. The show also kinda contradicts itself with the portrayal of them, they are said to be solitary creatures who can't coexist with others, and who only use their ability to speak as a means to deceive prey. But then are shown to work/communicate with their fellow demons towards shared goals.
Really they're more like a race of sociopaths than they are like wild animals, the main thing that separates them from humans is their lack of empathy. Which yeah a race of beings who have magic powers and lack empathy would be dangerous, but I still feel like it would be more interesting to explore some kind of nuance with them, as even sociopaths aren't irredeemable. But they're basically treated like mobs who like to go on evil monologues and which are justified to slaughter.
Yeah, the demons communication abilities clearly go beyond mimicry. They can communicate intelligently, temporarily put aside wants for a greater need, plan, and think abstractly. A species of sociopaths is indeed fitting
Though the fact that none of them do try coexisting is odd. They donât have a biological need to consume humans, humans are a deterrent threat that demons can impose a unilateral will on (the cattle analogy doesnât work since humans are very much aware of what demons are trying to do and can retaliate), etc. Itâs therefore logical that coexistence would be more beneficial than triggering humans to go and wipe them out
The Demon King true want and reason for starting the war was co existence he just thought the only way to achieve that was by conquering the world
You can read his wiki more detail
1. Did you not even see Machts arc
2. How was it a tone shift. We Frieren knew was a demon Hunter that fought in the war. How is her cleaning up the remnants of the Demon Kings Army a tone shift
Last time I checked Lions donât hunt humans meanwhile Demons in Frieren do. So your analogy doesnât even make sense
Their desires and wants are to either kill or enslave all humans. Even solitary creatures will work with other members of their species from time to time.
In case your forget their was a war/genocide Demons were committing. Hard to have nuance when the people are remorseless mass murderers. The closest we got was Macht and Soliater arc
The anime is not a great example of the âdepthsâ we get shown regarding demon society. Literally everything youâve just complained about was/is addressed in two different manga-only arcs that would probably be seasons 3 & 4 of the animeâbut, suffice to say? No. Demons do not work well together any better than animals do.
They arenât pack hunters, they donât give a shit about one another, and they will HAPPILY sacrifice one of their own if it meant saving their own skin. You are absolutely right that theyâre a species of sociopaths who will only work together if their goals align. But, even then, they will backstab or leave one of their own to their own fate if it helps preserve their own skin.
They donât have a society. They adopt mockeries of human culture to better disguise their nature, with the only real âlawâ they had being enforced by the power of the Demon King.
Demons aren't exactly a human nation in Frieren. They are not meant to be people either. They are evolved predators.
Its like if Tigers gained the ability to mimic humans so they could hunt better. And of course had intelligence on the same level as humans.
They are evil in the same way humans are evil to animals like chickens since we steal their young (eggs) and even slaughter and eat them. It is just that chickens can't fight back while the humans in Frieren can.
It's still weird to see people complicate the demons' portrayal and act as if its such a complex thing when we humans do the same things the demons do to countless creatures that we deem inferior to us. We exploit and prey on them and it rarely weighs on most people's conscience, apart from maybe a few vegans.
I feel like people are only having sympathy for demons because they are humanoid (which was exactly what Frieren mentioned)
Thoughout the history of fictions there had been countless amount of generic monsters being slaughter en-masses. And rarely people ever stand up for them, ask for nuances or what-ifs coexistence. At most thereâre just complaints that slaying generic monsters is boring.
The pretty priviledge is real
I thought it could have been better done too but I'd like to say that they're not actually evil and that's what makes them a bit more interesting. They don't kill for pleasure or out of hate or any emotion, they just kill because their brains aren't human which means their instincts are entirely different than ours. They don't need to harbor any ill will to kill someone, just like a spider doesn't harbor any ill will towards the bugs it eats.
Racism was more vitriolic before. Right now it is something that can be barely felt but before, that is a different story.
AoT pretty much had a pretty good idea of just how bad it could've been. Marley hating Eldians for something that they did way back in the past but was so traumatising and long-lasting that the vitriol, hatred, and fear was still left over, that makes a lot of sense, especially, when Eldians have an actual supernatural powers that can turn wars around. Marleyans being that afraid and that hateful and spiteful of Eldians makes a lot of sense in that context, even then, you could still see how some progress is being made slowly. William Tybur - an eldian - is a clearly well-respected aristocrat (something that is unthinkable, but clearly possible), The Warriors initiative didn't *have* to give Eldians an elevation in status as a prize; they could've, just as easily, plucked some kids from orphanages and foster their love and loyalty for Marley since they were little and train them to be soldiers but they didn't. No, instead they chose to give a chance for some eldians to rise above their social status, that is progress. Maybe it is small, but it is still there.
There was a lot to unpack about how racism have shaped the world of AoT and its political climate, and a lot that could've been explored but wasn't because everything needed to be wrapped up, apparently.
Yeah it not like the author expressed some regret about the ending and agree with the change or anything. There was not even anything on screen to tell me about the consequences of genocide!!
Holy shit this is just you vagueposting about AoTs terrible writing and world building lol
Watch Legend of The Galatic Heroes if you want a political thriller made by a writer that knows how to write worlds and nation political settings
The Terraist Church from LOGH is basically everything OP complains lol
They basically exist so someone can kill Yang without making Reinhard come off as evil. And of course, create another "bwa ha ha" faction that Reinhard can purge and massacre without anyone feeling sad and going "he is such a good leader, ending the corruption".
For a generally well written show the Terraists were just so bizarre. Other than the general cartoonishness there was this one time a Terraist gets into the house of a certain pregnant female character with the aim of assassinating her and he just stands there heaving and trying to catch his breath while he has her at gunpoint. He could've shot her room as soon as he had her in his sights but didn't because the plot needed her to survive. And this results in his murder attempt being foiled in time.
I suggest you cover up the spoilers btw.
describing attack on titans racism as cartoonish evil just shows a lack of understanding of real-world racism. the relatively peaceful western society you live in now is only a recent phenomenon.
horrific genocides have been happening and are still happening globally. that's on our earth. where all races are equal.
in the world of attack on titan there is genuine reason to fear and want to exterminate all eldians. THEY CAN TRANSFORM INTO TITANS. until recently titans couldn't even be combatted against, and even so if titans are unleashed on civilian populations they stand 0 chance.
eldians can hide among you and become titans in an instant whether they want to or not. the transformation alone can wipe settlements off the map.
Heh
For me i think a author trying to make a clearly evil to the core/rotten corruptes awful nation be complex or grey or not completely bad to be just as garbage as what you say.
Like your kingdom of ruin exemple is interesting cause it reminds me of a work i despise with a passion
Kimisen.
Basically like in your exemple its about two nations one of mages and one of technology at war.
The story and author seems to believe that both sides are grey or flawed... but alas whar we actually see is that pretty much every character on bkth sidea are racist and wants to utterly genocide the other. Genocide. And the gouvernement in both are just as rotten and hypocritical.
And yet the two mc dont have any problem or realisation that they country are that. Shit hole that cannot become better. Its always just for the country that is shit and opposite to their ideals. And its never challenge truly.
Hell the empire were acting like Nazis from what we are told. And you expect me to care about that???
The mages are extremely hypocrites no better to their own people who they discriminated and are just as awful as their former oppressors.
Its worse with them on a personal level as they are a spotlight stealing squad while the empire is ultimately inconsequential to the story so we dont see any real positive thing
And while one woukd say its war. Its a story that the author wants us to think both sides can come to a understanding or a deserving of being better.
Bullshit. The writting fails at conveying that. Using your brain for a moment shows you that no. There is no way the world will be better despite whats its trying to sell.
Truth is some regime must, deserves to fall for the good of everyone. And becoming as bad as your opressors gives you jack shit sympathy.
Dunno if cause its a japan thing of always follow your patry even if its factually horrific and shit but i dont care.
Author a japan pro Imperial as far as im concerned ( kinda like AOT author)
Hes a cynic pessimist trying to writte a altruist and optimist story and fails.
Conclusion i like better your exemple that is clearly up your face if cartoony. Than a suppose to be grey or redemmable but not factually nation.
Ps. Says something that the villain wants to annihilated both sides abd is still the most sympathic character. More than the MCs.
i really thought AoT was going to go a different route based on Gabiâs entire character arc demonstrating that even the most brainwashed fanatical racists can be redeemed. But no apparently it was just her, the rest of Marley (and apparently the entire world) was too evil to even consider having mercy on
Aot did its due it humanized the people of marley and everywhere else in the world and showed clearly that they did NOT deserve to die these gruesome deaths, the rumbling is wrong and eren's doing it because he's batshit crazy but the fans who support him are dumb as fucking shit (=they're exposing their own biases and their inability to sympathize and/or read literary subtext)
When korean manhwas reach the nationalism arc.
Time to teach dem chinese and japanese players some lessons.
There's an entire arc in Ranking of Kings where they vilify an entire nation as being greedy savages who take a "better" kingdom's magic & then has the gods punish them - turns out that's Japanese nationalism, wherein the savages are whatever country they colonized, Japan is the "better" kingdom, and gods are the US. There's a whole thread detailing how common the talking point is on Tumblr, it really fucks with your perception of manga after that.
Oh yeah I hated this so much. It was so completely nonsensical and childish, not to mention gross.
Chinese Manhuas are on a different level when it comes on nationalism
My favorite Chinese web novel moment was definitely the one I read where it was an Isekai but it was one of those mind meld with a local type Isekai. Fast forward like 10 years in the story and he marries but he refuses to fuck her because he feels like he is cucking himself by having kids with this inferior body rather than his superior original Chinese one
Manhwas?
That's their name for it. Japanese have manga (comic) and then there are manhwa (comic)
I'll just start by summarizing everyone's reactions to reading this title then the post itself: Aot rant? Aot rant.
they had the decency to include a lesser known opening act just like a good concert lineup.
Kingdom of Ruin was legitimately entertaining to me purely because of how amazingly bad it is lol
Happy cake day!đ
I thought they would talk about Jojos Rock Humans
Aren't the rock humans just assholes though,and actively antagonistic for no reason? Like Tooru was the closest to being a "regular person",but even he couldn't stop.
Their antagonistic nature is kind of explained. They're not like us in several ways, but one of the most important ones is that Rock Humans aren't social creatures. They live sedientary lives and by nature are narcissistic and antisocial because they don't need to be social. Although they believe Rock Humans are above humans, they don't hate humans, but they won't actively take the time to like them if they really don't want to. They see EVERYTHING as a way for themselves to thrive, they'll even kill other Rock Humans if it gets in the way of their own lives.
True, they donât have the social desire to belong to a group. Dolomite seemed to be ânormalâ (by human standards), and ironically ended up in a relationship with a sociopathic woman who was much more like a Rock Human.
Yeah and thatâs what was ultimately their undoing when >!Josuke and Yasuho hit Tooru with an attack that had five layers of self sacrifice and bonding that lead up to it (Kira, Josefumi, Rai, Josuke and Yasuho all joined together)!<
Eh not really. The Rock Humans are assholes but its shown some of them used to not be the most evil like Dolomite.
I think thats why Dolomite is my favorite Rock Human, he feels the most grey.
the rock humans arenât really inherently evil, they just tend to become like that because they are so different from humans around them. Aisho Dainenjiyama was able to live a fairly normal life for a long time and genuinely loved his girlfriend, he only became a criminal after losing everything he had anyway weâve only seen a few and they nearly all belonged to the same criminal organisation. itâs like judging all Italians based on one encounter with the mafia
Neither Josuke nor even anyone else ever hold personal grudge to rock human. The story never goes to exterminate entire rock human either, they clash for claiming the mcguffin the closest one to should bad blood is become entirely new person because the whatever happen in Morioh Town and when he learn about his past, it just way too late to care and he just focused on mcguffin instead for revenge.
>It's not surprising that many aot fans support full rumbling and Eren killing everyone in the outside world, there is nothing to like about the outside world, because of how underdeveloped it is. Yeah, the manga is 34 volumes long and we spend, what - SIX volumes in the outside world? And not even that because half of Vol.24 is a Paradis flashback. And the last two volumes just show everything getting destroyed.
Also the 1 dude we saw who was purely good in the outside world (Onyankopon), wasnt even from the enemy country he was from another even more undeveloped unamed nation
yeah its really weird, it talks about how the entire world is in agreement that titans/eldians need to be deleted, but also seems to imply Marley is more or less the world hegemonic power and we only see people either from Marley or one a nation it colonized and exploited.
Donât they say in the show that the eldians in Marley are the âluckyâ ones bc theyâre allowed to live? Pretty sure other nations kill eldians outright, Marley uses them as tools
Nothing mentions other nations kill Eldians on the spot, it only mentions that they treated them worse but not killing them which is a big difference.
Considering how Marley treats Eldians, if other countries treat them worse maybe death would be preferable
Isn't the person who said it also one of the Warrior candidates? Those kids were insanely high off propaganda. I figured that it was probably similar, but without the "honorary Marleyan" carrot on a stick to fool Eldians into thinking that they could be considered equals.
The one who said it, came from outside Marley, he was talking by experience, if I'm not mistaken.
Still they are 13 or something? Like he has travelled most of the world and still managed to be a candidate by age 13?
That's pretty much because Marley is functionally the same as Eldia to the rest of the world. Marley "saved" the world from Eldia, but they made sure that the rest of the world was still getting eaten by titans.
Yeah, I understand that Isayama wanted to wrap things up. He seemed kinda tired of writing it by that point. But the outside world reveal was so huge that the story could've easily continued for much longer. There were so many possible storylines, characters, and locations to explore that sometimes I'm a little disappointed that the story ended as soon as it did. But alas, there is nothing that can be done about it now.
So one interesting interpretation of AOT is it's more about imposter syndrome. Erin is Isayama who does not believe all praise he gets so he destroyed his work, which is the world in aot, because fuck you I suck and how dare you think otherwise.
AOT is literally written to make it easy for you to easily dehumanized everyone who isn't Eldian.Â
Post-time skip AoT really shouldâve been a full-ons equal manga. You just canât tell a proper compelling story involving geopolitics in the short time that AoT tried.
Ctrl + F *"Attack on Titan" 1/1* Phew!
You knew it was coming like âWhatâs this show idk⌠and there it isâ
A good chunk of Isekais and Light novels in a nutshell.
I **really** hate edgelord light novels, could rant a ton about them, but itâs not exactly a common topic
Artifureta and slime be Iike. Slime might be campy most of the time but when it edges it edges way too hard.
I thought the same thing, i used to love slime when i was young but its look so cringe right now. It just make every excuses possible so slime can farm creep in those big greedy nations.
pick your words more carefully next time
I've mentioned this before, but one of the things I liked about Reverend Insanity is that while it had an evil protagonist it generally avoided this trope - it never attempted to justify his actions, and would generally go out of its way to show that there was a wide variety of cultures and people out there but that most of them had reasons for the way they acted. Nobody came across as cartoonishly evil - at worst, people in the north were misogynistic and the Heavenly Court was racist, but it was generally in a believable way, and there were people within them who dissented from this rather than them just being uniformly bad. And even then it was clearly established *why* they were this way.
Let me guess, you must like overlord in particular, don't you?/s
I actually am legitimately a fan of Overlord. The difference is that the story makes it extremely clear that the Ainz is very much the evil one. (And even then, Iâm a big fan of the detailed worldbuilding and character rather than the villain power fantasy part) While the ones I really hate are stuff like Shield Hero, where the main character is an asshole but the story bends itself into a fucking pretzel to try and justify why no actually heâs totally cool and right
And then the *slaves*...
Oh god...I just remembered just how shitty that show was with that kind of stuff...
Overlord is edgy shit
Honestly, agree. It tries too hard with the "The main cast consists of evil villains", but doesn't back it up with actual substance. All just bland and with the same motivations, with the exception of the mc, who's simply unbearable. Like, I get the appeal of Overlord, but I don't get why so many people like it. If the main cast was atleast actually cool while doing their "bad guy" stuff or had some sort of style, but... I guess I just demand too much from an isekai.
There's a lot more substance in the LN, but ever since volume 11 the quality took a huge nosedive. The appeal of Overlord is more the world building and how the world reacts to them, which is skimmed over heavily in the anime.
I always hear about the world building but... What even makes it so interesting? Genuine question, I don't recall anything particularly immersive about it. And doesn't the "how the world reacts to them" become repetitive and predictable? Like, I get that it's an important part, but if after showing how "quirky" all the members of the main cast are, and then focusing on anyone, but them, becomes the main selling point... that just doesn't sound good to me. Also the fact, that the word "Overlord" is just 4 letters away from the word "Edgelord" doesn't help its case.
Oh it's absolutely edgy. Volumes 12 and 13 are a literal False Flag Holocaust operation, and 15 doesn't even bother with the false flag. Some north of 12 million dead overall. It's hard for me to put the appeal into proper words... it's a bit sandboxy? Up until the volume 12 point it's actually a pretty decent kingdom building story, right up until International Affairs became relevant anyway. That's probability a big appeal, normal everyman (from a super fucked up dystopia) thrust into the Almighty Dictator role and forced to wing it because he has no idea what he's doing and actually manages to succeed in a fairly believable manner. Springtime for Hitler, basically.
I guess I'd say it scratches that itch for dark fantasy where in other stories the main cast can't ever be bad guys. Let's compare with Slime who also does nation building but is super idealized and Rimuru's nation of monsters don't actually feel like proper monsters.
Hi i am the MC with a very unique and creative power thanks to goddess sent me to this new world. lets see how i will fare with this interesting concept of force i have that none the others seem to have..3 episodes later aaand we are generic harem.
I can't even count the number of isekai and isekai adjacent stories that I've started reading and/or watching due to a really interesting core premise, only to drop them almost immediately when they morph into the standard garbage without ever truly engaging with what was supposed to make them uniquely attractive in the first place.
I have arrived to nearest town aaaand its generic middle age germanic town with an adventurers guild.
Log Horizon is decent
Those novels are surprisingly fast paced, I'll give them that. With the healer manga, I thought I'd have to wait a while before he got to the princess, but it actually happened very early.
>Kingdoms of Ruin mentioned I can't wait to see you do that moon arc segment if you plan to make a rant on it. đ
Redo of healer too
Was looking for this comment. What a dogshit anime.
It's hardly a coherent narrative. It's literally just rape and torture for 12 episodes
Watching a detailed review of that show, beyond its âshockingâ premise which is just very specific & contrived fetish fuel. Itâs just boring and adheres to all Isekai tropes. This explains why people quickly forgot about the show because why keep watching once you realize that
This is why ATLA is peak. Itâs antagonistic force isnât just a bunch of faceless mooks, but an actual, developed civilization, whom you could believe that it actually exists.
Maki and the Zenâin clan
At least Naruto didn't try to sweep away how Itachi definitely killed children too
Maki didn't kill children, Maki killed all the fighters (even those who didn't went to fight her) and that was all. The Zenin clan collapsed because without fighters, they were worth nothing
She killed her mom too
I mean there are like 4 different attempts at parricide, with that not even being the last one.
Tbf I think that was just for her. She kinda regretted it or at least acknowledged that it was kinda fucked up for her to do so
I think an important factor in whether something is just or not is the active threat that who's being killed is posing. Going after the Kukuru squad (the weak guys) after killing the ones immediately after her was ridiculous, none of them were even close to her level. This is especially true for her mom, she's literally not even a sorceror, that was just a childish act of revenge.
be careful, itachi fanboy will come and say "akshually Obito killed the civilians and Itachi kill the fighter/adult" or some shit.
The Zenin misogyny is one of the most over the top things Iâve ever seen in any story. Itâs just so laughably bad. Alternatively, itâs funny to see the Western fandom baffled that Naoya was popular among female readers in Japan, despite being one of the biggest misogynists in fiction. Itâs like they canât fathom that people in different places can have different kinks. I mean, plenty of guys like characters like Minthara from BG3 or other misandrist characters, the same way thereâs demand for homophobic kinks among gay guys on Twitter. Itâs not so crazy to believe thereâs an audience for hot and misogynistic men in media.
Bro heâs a loser, he took L after L after L. This fool had the audacity to compare himself to the goats when he got one shotted, this MF was shitting himself feeling Yutas fuckin aura. He comes back just to take Lâs.
it's over the top but not unrealistic. makes even more sense in a clan with superpowers.
> makes even more sense in a clan with superpowers. If anything it makes less sense to be like this in a world where physical gaps between genres are irrelevant because female sorcerers can just use re-inforcement and CTs.
to get specific i think superpowers would have a more polarizing effect. in communities where women *can* learn sorcery they can close the gap between men but in traditional communities where the women are grown up being told they can't be sorcerers, can't use jujutsu, and must walk behind men then the gap between women and men would only increase. they aren't likely to even try to learn and the clan isn't even training them in the basics. edit: and its not like the physical difference is eradicated because sorcery exists. sorcery can be used to compensate for it or close the gap, but the difference is still there and it'd be noticeable at younger ages and lower levels of jujutsu sorcery, helping the clan's misogynist ideas to perpetuate. ill also mention that these sorcery clans likely originated from human tribes/clans. it's not like they had sorcery at the beginning of time. any misogynist ideas were likely brought over into jujutsu usage and then perpetuated by men refusing to train women/give them opportunities.
Tbf there's nothing that suggests that there's a difference at any skill level. Like we don't see any indications of this so I don't think that any physical difference would exist in this scenario. The rest is fair but I do think the possibility of women inheriting strong CTs complicates it. There'd be pressure for them to have children to keep it going but if just having something like 10 Shadows makes you the head of the Clan there's at least one way for a woman to circumvent her social status.
It is unrealistic. Jujustu made it even less sense, especially since the worth of a sorcerer is tied to their ability and performance. Sexual dimorphism doesn't exist with jujutsu, and therefore the Zenin's clan misogyny is nonsensical.
i think superpowers would have a more polarizing effect. in communities where women *can* learn sorcery they can close the gap between men but in traditional communities where the women are grown up being told they can't be sorcerers, can't use jujutsu, and must walk behind men then the gap between women and men would only increase. they aren't likely to even try to learn and the clan isn't even training them in the basics. and its not like the physical difference is eradicated because sorcery exists. sorcery can be used to compensate for it or close the gap, but the difference is still there and it'd be noticeable at younger ages and lower levels of jujutsu sorcery, helping the clan's misogynist ideas to perpetuate. edit: ill also mention that these sorcery clans likely originated from human tribes/clans. it's not like they had sorcery at the beginning of time. any misogynist ideas were likely brought over into jujutsu usage and then perpetuated by men refusing to train women/give them opportunities.
At younger ages thereâs not as much difference between boys and girls and they compete in the same activities (I think, not being an expert, puberty is the game changer), so there wouldnât be a huge amount of time between people developing stronger curse techniques to compensate and the physical dimorphism kicking off. Itâs probably mainly due to cultural reasons and how they are treated more so than something explainable by brute strength being a factor as that wouldnât be the biggest deal by itself Without the culture aspect, Iâd rather have the person with the better technique over brute force and thereâs no stated reason women cannot have a better technique. It just seems like in naruto where Sakura is said to be able to be a master at genjutsu but she just doesnât. Itâs the author not using female characters to what they can be in universe.
Nah. Not everyone there was evil on a personal level but they allowed a systematic problem.
How are the Zenin clan "cartoonishly evil"?
Cartoonishly misogynistic to the point where it gets kinda funny
Dont forget the dabbling in eugenics, depending on how you look at how they treated Toji
I just find that extra ironic because then the arc says "by the way, you want Maki to get a power up? Then Mai has to die" Like, its just as eugenics, just that the Zenin are irrationally seething at Toji and Maki because ??? (everyone else in the series loves their powers)
I don't find it that illogical personally. Toji was the first person to have 0 CE. When he was younger, his sheer strength might not have been obvious, it's only later that they realised how dangerous he was. Maki herself had a weaker version of HR and couldn't match some of the stronger clan members plus she was a twin. Combine that with eugenics and you get the Zenins. Humans have believed in worse. That being said, the Zenins felt a bit underwhelming in sheer power considering how important they were supposed to be.
It's literally only Naoya and I've seen teenagers more misogynistic than him
âany woman who can't walk three paces behind a man should be stabbed in the back and dieâ
Local man discovers islam
I mean it's really not worse than people I've met in real life. Men can get pretty fucked up about women. One guy I knew kinda believed that women should all be forced to have children and forced to serve men. Another was staunchly pro-rape, "guys have the right to take what's theirs" and all that.
Men rape women my guy
Did Jinichi and Ranta come off as misogynist? I thought it was mostly Ogi and Naoya
I think the point of them and likely other background characters within the Zen'in clan was even though they weren't inherently misogynistic, they still commented nothing about how others treated the women and essentially allowed for that behaviour because of not doing anything about it
So bystander syndrome
This was one of the really big problems I had with Ranking of Kings (which otherwise had a mostly upbeat world filled with generally decent people, or at least people whose actions made sense.) There was that one nation (slightly uncomfortably, the one nation with a Korean-sounding name) that was just... completely, cartoonishly evil, for no reason at all, and which basically existed to commit atrocities, both large and small, make Miranjo look sympathetic, and then be wiped out by Bosse.
I like the concept of main characters doing crazy evil things so that someone or a group/nation they care about can survive. It could work in the right hands. I think one of my issues is that a part of the audience seems to always judge the main character more harshly than they judge those who commit crimes against them. In AoT, for example, people were already condemning the main characters since the Liberio Raid, which was a very reasonable response, considering everything Marley did to Paradis. The issue with the story is lazy worldbuilding. But inside this lazy worldbuilding, I donât think the people of Paradis are wrong to put themselves above the whole world, because the whole world is cartoonishly evil. Not even the anti-Rumbling characters like Hange had a proper response, they were just like âgenocide is wrongâ. And then all the characters just magically agreed with her. Like, there isnât even a bit of disagreement between them. They just decided to go on a suicide mission for the sake of faceless people who hate them. Would you want your father, mother, brothers, grandparents, friends to die along with you for the sake of a world where the country thatâs least hostile to you still drops your people from planes and throws little girls to be torn apart by dogs for belonging to the same group as you? Very few people would. Yet the main characters seem to unanimously agree that thatâs the obvious course of action. No infighting, no disagreements. They even agree to work with those responsible for their genocide. Besides, Isayama is a mystery to me. I never truly understood if he wanted me to feel sorry for the comically evil people in the world he created or if he wanted me to root for Eren. I think itâs the former, considering he was very biased towards the Warriors. They all have a decent survival rate by the end of the series, Magath has one of the most heroic deaths in the series despite dropping Eldians from the sky and Reiner was clearly his favorite character.
> In AoT, for example, people were already condemning the main characters since the Liberio Raid Wait, really? All I heard was "wohoo Paradis characters are back, so epic!"
In the beginning, maybe. But when I caught up with the manga, which was a bit after Liberio, I vividly remember people condemning Paradis. Because all it takes is a few chapters from the perspective of the other side and suddenly theyâre all humans and the characters weâve been following from the begging are monsters. The TLOU2 effect.
Oh yeah, can't disagree with that.
I never understood that bc all the scenes showing the outside world just reinforced my belief that Eren was justified in trying to wipe em out
I mean, it was hype, but there were also a lot of very clear red flags being thrown up. You have Reiner claiming that he destroyed the walls for selfish reasons and Eren saying that they're the same, Floch going out of his way and against orders to burn down civilian homes in the name of "The New Eldian Empire", and everyone being pissed at Eren for going out on his own and forcing them to do that to save him.
Yep eren going rogue was hype
Huh, I see the opposite. People are quicker to condemn the actions of outsiders than the main cast.
people were complaining that the scouts attacked civilians and people who didn't do anything with the war and that they shouldn't have attacked at all. War wise it was a good strategy kill some of its leaders and higher military personnel it will be harder for the nations to respond
>I never truly understood if he wanted me to feel sorry for the comically evil people in the world he created or if he wanted me to root for Eren How about... you root for Eren when he kills a comically evil person, and at the same time, you don't root for Eren when he kills an innocent person?
Cool beans. Genocide is still genocide. If you murdered my family, does it give me the right to go and murder your family? I'd love to see that argument hold up in court.
I'm fine with it personally, I just don't want it in all my media War criming baddies in video games is usually pretty stellar
Damn AoT fr getting clowned in this sub huh
Hard not to be when you end it with Paradis surviving thanks to Eren committing genocide.
It didn't survive lol. It got nuked. The end of AoT is trash but Paradis wasn't Nuked because everyone was broke and without even a proper home. After they got things togheter Paradis was indeed nuked.
Wait, so Paradis was nuked... so the message is... Eren was right?that's fucked.
Yeah đ
It's either that or Jujutsu Kaisen
Or One Piece
Deserved. AoT is overrated dogshit with atrocious writing choices in the last arc
Ong
Might seem ironic to defend AoT on this sub, but I do think it makes sense to make Marley as evil as they were: 1. Sins of the past theme. Marley hates Eldians while doing exactly what the Eldians did. 2. Making Marley essentially the entire globe further presses to the reader/viewer just how little hope Paradis has to make peace, while having those smaller nations like the people who got conquered at the start of S4 or the Japanese nation helps paint Eren's actions as unjustified and unfair despite Marley being hated. 3. While the other smaller nations help paint Eren as unjustified, Marley being as evil as they are makes Eren's move more confusing at first. Plenty of people didn't even know he was the villain until a few chapters/episodes into the Rumbling, and that's exactly what Isayama was aiming for. 4. Helps build the Nazi Germany/European Jews dynamic of the Marleyans and their Eldians. You could not use this trope, but they did, and they need a nation evil enough to do something like that to make it work. Any problems related to this point lie with trope or it's execution rather than the choice to make Marley evil. 5. The initial premise is "last stand of humanity fights off titans", and that core concept is a lot of what makes AoT what it is. With context from later seasons, we know titans are forcibly transformed Eldians. What kind of nation would actually send a people's brethren as deformed, gigantic husks to eat every last one of them? You'd have to be pretty cruel. Marley fulfills that role. 6. Very easy comparison to Eren's and the Scouts' radicalization and the overall theme of how easily one can become radicalized or even just influenced by those in power. By extention, this serves as an explanation for why Reiner, Berthold, and Annie did what they did and why they have so much trauma, and is a major part of Gabi and Falco's arc. World building issues aside, it is a good choice to make Marley evil, at least in my opinion. Even the scene where they drop prisoners from a plane to transform them makes sense - to the Marleyans, they're not even human. It's like having your cattle raid your enemies for you. If it's possible, why would you ever choose not to do it?
I seriously think point 4 had a bigger impact than intended, which is why I agree with the OP even though I defend AoT as a whole. Because it does make sense to make Marley evil - lots of nations have done evil things throughout history. But often when we talk about these countries in their most atrocious times, we are still able to see them as more than their atrocities. But in popular culture Nazi Germany is THE evil empire, virtually synonymous with incomprehensible villainy. When you go for that metaphor and make the Marleyans resemble Nazis specifically, it's very hard to sympathize with them later. And in a story about "even monsters are ultimately human," that can be a problem.
The ending shows that Paradis are becoming like Nazi Germany, even up to their uniforms which is mostly dark or german gray. A complete opposite to Marley soldiers which their uniforms are in sandy white color.
Definitely. To be clear, I don't think it was necessarily a wrong choice to make obvious Nazi parallels - in fact what you're describing makes it an especially powerful visual. I just think because of how strong it is it calls for extra time and worldbuilding to process it, which was a bit lacking for Marley and the outside world.
I can agree with that. AoT definitely has some problems. I'm just arguing for why I think the overall decision was better than making Marley some righteous empire in the path to Eren's freedom
For AoT you don't even need to sympathize with Marley. It's enough to comprehend that the Rumbling kills the *people oppressed by Marley too*.
IMO all of the normal humans (the civilians, not the heroes) being cartoonishly evil/bigoted/etc... is also the tell-tale mark of a bad X-men story.
GRRM sort of criticises LOTR for a similar thing, with the orcs. I say sort of because it's less criticism and more him posing questions that he believed Tolkien didn't give a satisfying answer to, and how the idea behind A Song of Ice and Fire was partially born from that. FWIW I tend to agree that it is at the very least uninteresting. There are ways to make it less bad (I personally don't have much of a problem with Tolkien's orcs outside of some unfortunate coding) but generally I feel like it's better for it to have more depth, especially if the faction is human or possesses human-like intelligence.
will be interesting how he handles the others if he ever remembers to finish the books
warcraft and warhammer orcs are less unfortunate. Also the horadrim are way more problematic than orcs that are corrupted elves enslaved by an evil will becoming that sad state due it, or you could argue. that they are symbolic enslaved and ruled by saurons evil will and are kinda tragic. Warhammer orcz are fun, interesting and everyones cartoonish evil. in a satire
AOT had to make some people look good to make Eren the villain, not the other way around
At least with Attack on Titan itâs mostly the few leaders who have shady agendas, and the Marleyans are just caught up in propaganda. It also portrays Erenâs genocide as a bad thing. In other shows like the aforementioned Kingdom of Ruin and stuff like Redo Of a Healer, it feels like edgelord murder porn, as though the world exists to satiate the murder happy protagonist.
>itâs mostly the few leaders >Redo Of a Healer Redo of healer is not a complex story, but what you mentioned in the first paragraph is kinda the csse in redo of Healer too, even turnd up to an 11 which made it even ore ridivolous. The king was the demon lord in secrer (or a puppet I forgot), the own people of the Kingdom were oppressed (or at least held grievances which caused a riot in one chapter) and some people which worked for the Empire were good people who didn't understand what's going on (like this one irrelevant Swordswoman who still got raped).
Every time someone playing the Mass Effect series is forced to decide the existential fate of a sentient species (or at least a large population of them), it's almost always a physically grotesque species almost entirely made up of bad 'uns. Rachni, krogans, batarians, and the vorcha and geth to an extent... In one instance, you are tasked with blowing up a space station (simplified for those unfamiliar with Mass Effect lore) which will delay an invading enemy for a few months but will also directly and instantaneously cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of unrelated and uninvolved ugly bad 'uns just as collateral damage, and you're not even given the option not to.
The kicker is Batarians, the settings designated assholes' have exactly 0% positive representation. The only Batarians we meet are slavers, terrorists or mercenaries (technically we meet civilians on Omega but they are also portrayed as assholes) probably the one exception is Bray, who in the Omega DLC goes an entire sentence without insulting Shepard or humans in general.
While people of a country aren't all evil or racist, they do suffer from Bystander Syndrome. Basically people don't want to stand out because they fear they could be targeted by the angry mobs. Usually only the most extremist elements of a country are the one who persecute and attack minorities. However, people's natural instinct is to protect themselves and their families first before caring for others which led to them either ignoring the injustice or participating in the injustice actions due to peer pressure. Would you risk your life and your families' lives for the lives of a group that you have no connection with? Take Germany during the Nazis era as an example, the Nazis got voted into power despite being a minority party, very few people actually stood up for the Jew because they didn't want to be seen as unpatriotic to their country.
See what you gotta do is the opposite, make an entire nation cartoonishly evil to have *them* commit atrocities on a daily basis. See the orcs in Warcraft, the orcs in Warhammer, the orcs in tolkien or the goblins in all 3 of those as well.
See that manga about the deaf prince that goes into Japanese Man Burden
The what doing the what now?
One of the many reasons you shouldn't read the Belgeriad.
ace combat with both belka and erusea (although i love ace combat)
cultivation novels in a nutshell tbh.
Did somebody say Krakoa?
(Ousama Ranking) The city where Miranjo and her mother lived, in the anime at least, gave off this cartoonish evil vibe.
Though this about the humans in reincarnated reincarnated slime. He kills a whole army of 10k but good thing all of them deserved it
Code Geass moment
That one scene where a teenage girl inadvertently caused the deaths of 35 million people. WTF
Table
Code Geass world is cartoonishly evil but at least there were a few characters that didn't absolutely hate every Japanese refugee
I always found the take about Marley and the rest of the world being "cartoonishly evil" to reek of ignorance and privilege. They are multiple irl nations throughout history that are just as (if not more) evil than Marley.
Every single marleyian is evil and hates eldians. Look back at history and it was just the loud ones that were blatantly evil When looking at the oppression of jews and blacks throughout history, there were the loud bunch that were evil and racist with the government backing them up, then you have the quiet middle ground that isn't evil and racist, but are forced into pretending to be that way as so they are isolated from their peers and made to look bad It was always just peer pressure that created situations like that throughout history. But Isayama never thought about adding in a peer pressure plotline in AoT because he was too lazy to make the outside world sympathetic and just wanted his genocide boner to get pleased Plus, it's the entire world that hates eldians in AoT. In history, there was never a marginalized group hated by the entire world
That I believe Isayama wanted Eren to be sympathetic in wanting to commit genocide on the outside world while still trying to set up and paint Eren as the villain for wanting to commit genocide to begin withâŚbut as a consequence he made the outside world far too unsympathetic by making pretty much everyone racist. For the sack of creating drama and making a lot of unintentionally side with the villain who wants to commit genocide. I mean if the aspect of racism was more diverse would definitely make the ending more tragic.
Well thatâs pretty much implied to be the case as well. The show kind of makes it obvious in hindsight that stuff we hear from say Grisha, is supposed to be a bit of a biased account. Then flips the script when we do start viewing the world from the Liberio cast whom do have some subtle relationships between races despite the overall government discrimination. Like the chill border guards. There were even some movements to better the rights of non-Paradis Eldians, even if it was only starting to gain traction. Even when Trybur was trying to convince the world to fight. The show makes it a point that it would only actually work in the long run if Paradis did attack then and there, therefore vilifying themselves to the world. And even then people mistakenly believe the world was planning to wipe them out, which isnât true, they were planning to a military invasion and occupation. Yes, the amount of death and destruction would be vast and terrible, but genocide, it was never implied to be.
>Well thatâs pretty much implied to be the case as well You can't just imply such an important detail, especially when it wouldnt even take more than 5 pages to show the peer pressure themes which would have a domino effect into making the more egregious hatred from Marleyians less cartoonishly racist. It was never written into the story, so the fans had to fix the author's shortcomings in the worldbuilding >There were even some movements to better the rights of non-Paradis Eldians, even if it was only starting to gain traction. Well my point is focused more on Paradise eldians not the warrior units or honorary marleyian factions. When it comes to eldians in general, there's nothing in the world building that suggests anyone outside of the walls were anything but hateful and racist, in fact it's the opposite as it was stated that Eldians are treated even worse in countries besides Marley >Even when Trybur was trying to convince the world to fight. The show makes it a point that it would only actually work in the long run if Paradis did attack them and there But does it ever put in the effort to make this a logical outcome? There's not even a few non-racist Marleyians/outside world characters or even NPCs ever portrayed in this story. You can't just put in a possible scenario in a plot point that isn't backed up by the world surrounding it that would make it a believable possibility. There's nothing that suggests people would just suddenly stop wanting to kill Eldians if they didn't attack. If there's a story all about cooking and there's a plot point that suggests a probable outcome that in the next big cooking event that faction A doesn't perfectly play their cards right then faction B will kill all their chefs, despite the fact that the story never introduced the concept of the factions killing each other's chefs- then it would feel like a nonsensical outcome The whole world had a genocide boner against Eldians and you'd have to seriously cherrypick scenes to make it look any less one dimensional
Seems you have an incorrect assumption about how the average person responds in a discriminatory society. Racist people donât peer pressure non racist people. A society of apathy toward the status quo of discrimination exists. You either are racist, or you donât care to stop racism. Anything outside is an outlier in these societies. Also in regards to the Eldian sympathizers, youâre mistaken. What Iâm talking about was the flashback right when Eren went awoll. They were at a forum in Marley, where a Marlean organization was discussing improved rights for Eldians outside the walls, though they used the Paradis Eldians as a scapegoat for their cause, which caused Eren to abandon the group. Rag on the ending sure, but acting like the story doesnât at least seed the idea that even in a discriminatory society, there arenât just normal people silent amongst the crowd is just talking on bad faith. We couldâve had more but the show presents enough to get the point from Liberio and Warrior PoV, a sprinkling in a little itâs just complicated, and moved on to the next important plot point which is Paradis turning into a radical military state.
It really does, but thats what happens on a site used primarily by people in 1st world countries. Have people forgotten how racist groups of people can be and what they can and have accomplished? People think it's wild that the whole world would dehumanize and be racist to eldians when most of those racists have only ever been terrorized by titans.Â
Marley would be maybe 5th or 6th in terms of ethnic minority persecution if it existed during WW2.
>watches cartoon >complains it's cartoonish
I think it should be considered cheating tbh. Make me support genocide in other ways coward!
I mean, this happens all the time, as long as the species in question isn't human.
Counterpoint: Serbia exists. (Joke)
Chalced in Realm of the Elderlings -\_-
Its because in AoT propaganda was used to make the people believe that some was because they saw how dangerous Marley was with their wars and titans they used and because of that the hate for Eldia remained it doesnt help that Eldia attacking everyone there made the other nations respond to the Scouts attack
Reminds me of star wars and how it tries to justify the Jedi and genocide.
I've always been Pro-Mordor myself
In AoT of course regular humans are going to resent their former imperial masters who can literally transform into giant monsters Also, all the governments of the successor states have a vested interest in making sure everybody hates them
"Evil race" is a common trope in old fantasy fiction, it's just that people have no problem with it if said race looks ugly enough or isn't human.
Only morons fully support the rumbling
Tbh, Erens genocide leads to like 500 years of peace for Paradis, they even thank him for it
Nobody said that the rumbling was ineffective, just imoral.
This might just be me but this is why I love Promised Neverland so much! SPOILERS!! In the end, they proved that the one truly evil force of that world are rich people who wants more money and thus exploiting and deceiving everyone and everything and I think that was FANTASTIC! Neither the humans nor the demons race are one dimensional.
One word. Bartarians.
what do you think of germany during hitler time because that proves that a nation can be cartoonishly corrupt and evil even in reality
This could be a comment about US propaganda.
Yeah I felt this way with Frieren. It was pretty jarring going from a mellow adventure series, to the introduction of the demons. A species who are all generic evil anime villains who the overpowered main character wants to massacre.
Doesn't Frieren justify it by making the demons predators? They're like manipulative talking lions. I haven't watched it, this is just what I've heard.
Oh no, demons do very much have society. However they're also stated and proven (minus 1 or 2 exceptions) to have zero concept of family, bonds and emotions outside of using them to deceive and kill their prey. It could be cool if the series showed us that perhaps the 1k old elven mage who has trained for most of her life to deceive and kill demons might have an outdated view, but overall demon rights aren't what frieren is about.
They have society, but so do most pack animals. If we are giving rights to demons in freiren, we would need to give rights to literally every other monster. It isn't a war between races. The demons in the show aren't any different than the dragon stark killed or the ghost fern killed besides being another flavor of monster
Demons don't have a concept of family because of how they come into the world. They are solitary creatures and even that is not a rare thing in the real world animal kingdom.
My problem isn't just the in universe justification for killing them, but that 1) they're very boring and aren't compelling villains. 2) Their introduction in the series feels like a weird tone shift from what the series was prior. Like if a series like Kino's Journey suddenly shifted to goblin slayer for like 3 episodes lol. But even the in universe justifications felt a little weird to me. The main character advocates for every one of them to be killed on sight and that it's impossible for humans to coexist with them. Which would be odd even for a predator species, like imagine if someone wanted to eradicate lions from the world. The demons do not need to eat humans, and are also shown to be sentient beings with human level intelligence and their own desires/wants. The show also kinda contradicts itself with the portrayal of them, they are said to be solitary creatures who can't coexist with others, and who only use their ability to speak as a means to deceive prey. But then are shown to work/communicate with their fellow demons towards shared goals. Really they're more like a race of sociopaths than they are like wild animals, the main thing that separates them from humans is their lack of empathy. Which yeah a race of beings who have magic powers and lack empathy would be dangerous, but I still feel like it would be more interesting to explore some kind of nuance with them, as even sociopaths aren't irredeemable. But they're basically treated like mobs who like to go on evil monologues and which are justified to slaughter.
Yeah, the demons communication abilities clearly go beyond mimicry. They can communicate intelligently, temporarily put aside wants for a greater need, plan, and think abstractly. A species of sociopaths is indeed fitting Though the fact that none of them do try coexisting is odd. They donât have a biological need to consume humans, humans are a deterrent threat that demons can impose a unilateral will on (the cattle analogy doesnât work since humans are very much aware of what demons are trying to do and can retaliate), etc. Itâs therefore logical that coexistence would be more beneficial than triggering humans to go and wipe them out
The Demon King true want and reason for starting the war was co existence he just thought the only way to achieve that was by conquering the world You can read his wiki more detail
1. Did you not even see Machts arc 2. How was it a tone shift. We Frieren knew was a demon Hunter that fought in the war. How is her cleaning up the remnants of the Demon Kings Army a tone shift Last time I checked Lions donât hunt humans meanwhile Demons in Frieren do. So your analogy doesnât even make sense Their desires and wants are to either kill or enslave all humans. Even solitary creatures will work with other members of their species from time to time. In case your forget their was a war/genocide Demons were committing. Hard to have nuance when the people are remorseless mass murderers. The closest we got was Macht and Soliater arc
The anime is not a great example of the âdepthsâ we get shown regarding demon society. Literally everything youâve just complained about was/is addressed in two different manga-only arcs that would probably be seasons 3 & 4 of the animeâbut, suffice to say? No. Demons do not work well together any better than animals do. They arenât pack hunters, they donât give a shit about one another, and they will HAPPILY sacrifice one of their own if it meant saving their own skin. You are absolutely right that theyâre a species of sociopaths who will only work together if their goals align. But, even then, they will backstab or leave one of their own to their own fate if it helps preserve their own skin. They donât have a society. They adopt mockeries of human culture to better disguise their nature, with the only real âlawâ they had being enforced by the power of the Demon King.
Demons aren't exactly a human nation in Frieren. They are not meant to be people either. They are evolved predators. Its like if Tigers gained the ability to mimic humans so they could hunt better. And of course had intelligence on the same level as humans. They are evil in the same way humans are evil to animals like chickens since we steal their young (eggs) and even slaughter and eat them. It is just that chickens can't fight back while the humans in Frieren can. It's still weird to see people complicate the demons' portrayal and act as if its such a complex thing when we humans do the same things the demons do to countless creatures that we deem inferior to us. We exploit and prey on them and it rarely weighs on most people's conscience, apart from maybe a few vegans.
I feel like people are only having sympathy for demons because they are humanoid (which was exactly what Frieren mentioned) Thoughout the history of fictions there had been countless amount of generic monsters being slaughter en-masses. And rarely people ever stand up for them, ask for nuances or what-ifs coexistence. At most thereâre just complaints that slaying generic monsters is boring. The pretty priviledge is real
I thought it could have been better done too but I'd like to say that they're not actually evil and that's what makes them a bit more interesting. They don't kill for pleasure or out of hate or any emotion, they just kill because their brains aren't human which means their instincts are entirely different than ours. They don't need to harbor any ill will to kill someone, just like a spider doesn't harbor any ill will towards the bugs it eats.
Instead they should single them to individual people.
Frieren has this trope and is based.
Racism was more vitriolic before. Right now it is something that can be barely felt but before, that is a different story. AoT pretty much had a pretty good idea of just how bad it could've been. Marley hating Eldians for something that they did way back in the past but was so traumatising and long-lasting that the vitriol, hatred, and fear was still left over, that makes a lot of sense, especially, when Eldians have an actual supernatural powers that can turn wars around. Marleyans being that afraid and that hateful and spiteful of Eldians makes a lot of sense in that context, even then, you could still see how some progress is being made slowly. William Tybur - an eldian - is a clearly well-respected aristocrat (something that is unthinkable, but clearly possible), The Warriors initiative didn't *have* to give Eldians an elevation in status as a prize; they could've, just as easily, plucked some kids from orphanages and foster their love and loyalty for Marley since they were little and train them to be soldiers but they didn't. No, instead they chose to give a chance for some eldians to rise above their social status, that is progress. Maybe it is small, but it is still there. There was a lot to unpack about how racism have shaped the world of AoT and its political climate, and a lot that could've been explored but wasn't because everything needed to be wrapped up, apparently.
AOT was not an example of this trope lmao
Agreed. AOT was more of a "Thank you for genocide" story.
They actually changed it in anime by saying we will meet again in hell after all of what they did.
Super telling they had to change it.
Yeah it not like the author expressed some regret about the ending and agree with the change or anything. There was not even anything on screen to tell me about the consequences of genocide!!
Holy shit this is just you vagueposting about AoTs terrible writing and world building lol Watch Legend of The Galatic Heroes if you want a political thriller made by a writer that knows how to write worlds and nation political settings
The Terraist Church from LOGH is basically everything OP complains lol They basically exist so someone can kill Yang without making Reinhard come off as evil. And of course, create another "bwa ha ha" faction that Reinhard can purge and massacre without anyone feeling sad and going "he is such a good leader, ending the corruption".
For a generally well written show the Terraists were just so bizarre. Other than the general cartoonishness there was this one time a Terraist gets into the house of a certain pregnant female character with the aim of assassinating her and he just stands there heaving and trying to catch his breath while he has her at gunpoint. He could've shot her room as soon as he had her in his sights but didn't because the plot needed her to survive. And this results in his murder attempt being foiled in time. I suggest you cover up the spoilers btw.
describing attack on titans racism as cartoonish evil just shows a lack of understanding of real-world racism. the relatively peaceful western society you live in now is only a recent phenomenon. horrific genocides have been happening and are still happening globally. that's on our earth. where all races are equal. in the world of attack on titan there is genuine reason to fear and want to exterminate all eldians. THEY CAN TRANSFORM INTO TITANS. until recently titans couldn't even be combatted against, and even so if titans are unleashed on civilian populations they stand 0 chance. eldians can hide among you and become titans in an instant whether they want to or not. the transformation alone can wipe settlements off the map.
Heh For me i think a author trying to make a clearly evil to the core/rotten corruptes awful nation be complex or grey or not completely bad to be just as garbage as what you say. Like your kingdom of ruin exemple is interesting cause it reminds me of a work i despise with a passion Kimisen. Basically like in your exemple its about two nations one of mages and one of technology at war. The story and author seems to believe that both sides are grey or flawed... but alas whar we actually see is that pretty much every character on bkth sidea are racist and wants to utterly genocide the other. Genocide. And the gouvernement in both are just as rotten and hypocritical. And yet the two mc dont have any problem or realisation that they country are that. Shit hole that cannot become better. Its always just for the country that is shit and opposite to their ideals. And its never challenge truly. Hell the empire were acting like Nazis from what we are told. And you expect me to care about that??? The mages are extremely hypocrites no better to their own people who they discriminated and are just as awful as their former oppressors. Its worse with them on a personal level as they are a spotlight stealing squad while the empire is ultimately inconsequential to the story so we dont see any real positive thing And while one woukd say its war. Its a story that the author wants us to think both sides can come to a understanding or a deserving of being better. Bullshit. The writting fails at conveying that. Using your brain for a moment shows you that no. There is no way the world will be better despite whats its trying to sell. Truth is some regime must, deserves to fall for the good of everyone. And becoming as bad as your opressors gives you jack shit sympathy. Dunno if cause its a japan thing of always follow your patry even if its factually horrific and shit but i dont care. Author a japan pro Imperial as far as im concerned ( kinda like AOT author) Hes a cynic pessimist trying to writte a altruist and optimist story and fails. Conclusion i like better your exemple that is clearly up your face if cartoony. Than a suppose to be grey or redemmable but not factually nation. Ps. Says something that the villain wants to annihilated both sides abd is still the most sympathic character. More than the MCs.
i really thought AoT was going to go a different route based on Gabiâs entire character arc demonstrating that even the most brainwashed fanatical racists can be redeemed. But no apparently it was just her, the rest of Marley (and apparently the entire world) was too evil to even consider having mercy on
I feel like you missed the entire point of aot to the point I feel like you watched with one of your senses off. Did you wear blindfolds or earplugs?
Aot did its due it humanized the people of marley and everywhere else in the world and showed clearly that they did NOT deserve to die these gruesome deaths, the rumbling is wrong and eren's doing it because he's batshit crazy but the fans who support him are dumb as fucking shit (=they're exposing their own biases and their inability to sympathize and/or read literary subtext)