Is Attack on Titan fash?
>>6734possibly?
but it sure does have the worst ending in human history.
>>6803yeah, it turns out their Hitler figure was just a soyboy incel who got cucked by a farmhand and caused a genocide out of sheer envy.
kinda funny ngl
>>6819both, it's liberal idealism.
all liberals are fascists.
>>7053>You know it's bad when One Piece has a better story.Kek, One Piece will end with the former ending you mentioned. Luffy will be so fucking powerful that he destroys the RedLine with One Piece and all 4 Blues will be reunited, resulting in the All Blue.
Also, I don't get how Attack on Titan had to go the "Eldians are so hated that all out genocide by one side had to be the only way". Could the Author not conceal his Fascist Opinions and write a good Story instead? What a mess
>>7057Maybe but OP isn't centered around this shit and its main villain is the oppressive monarchy while the plot is basically a huge king of the hill match.
> Could the Author not conceal his Fascist Opinions and write a good Story instead?The "Western" culture may have a liberal bias but the Japanese culture is basically result of a 800 years military dictatorship (shoguns + the empire), so it's extremely fash and manga/anime writers don't even see their blind spots.
>>7073Can you give some examples of fashy things that japanese writers inadvertently insert into anime
I want to know
Oh wow, it's much worse than what I've got from reading the plot in Wikia. That's Steven-Universe-tier bad.
The popular manga Attack on Titan has recently ended with a chapter 139 and has received a mixed reaction from fans, with some of the fans being really disappointed and voicing their frustrations all over the internet. The main criticism is that this last chapter assassinates the characterisation of some of the characters of the manga, including the main character, Eren. A part of the fandom speculates that this is the result of the ending being rewritten from a darker, more depressing ending, to a more happy-ish ending. I don't want to talk about the quality of the ending in general, but rather how the last chapter has betrayed its female characters and the manga's earlier anti-war and anti-genocide rhetoric. Warning: manga ending spoilers ahead in the rest of this post! CW: abuse, genocide
1. Female characters
There are three female characters that I think the last chapter betrayed in particular. First, Ymir; Ymir is a thousand year old girl with god-like abilities; however, she is also a slave to these abilities. The main character, Eren frees her from this slavery and asks her to help him commit global genocide (more on this later). Initially it seems that she helps in committing global genocide for two reasons: because she values freedom greatly and global genocide is a way to free the oppressed group Ymir and Eren belong to; and also because she wants revenge on the world. Before becoming a god, Ymir was a slave, owned by a man named Fritz who abused her, raped her and who kept her as a slave until she died. In the last chapter it is revealed, however, that Ymir did everything she did because she was in love with Fritz. I consider this a betrayal of her character, because it makes her, incapable of acting on her own, clinging to her abuser for thousands of years. Also, her strong yearning for freedom is removed: while previously it was shown that she is willing to risk her life to free some pigs from being slaughtered, now she doesn't care about freedom at all.
Second, Historia: Historia is the queen of the nation of Eldia, and the descendant of the Royal Familiy who possess magical powers. In the last arc she was hinted to be pregnant with Eren's child, however it turns out in the final chapter that she was pregnant with somebody else's child and her pregnancy ultimately is a red herring and doesn't add anything to the plot. Why is this a problem? First of all, a main character got completely sidelined to be pregnant for the duration of the last arc and does nothing, even though she is the Queen and the descendant of the Royal Family. Just as with Ymir, this removes her agency (but this would have been true even if she was pregnant with Eren's child). Secondly, the problem with Eren not being the father is that instead the father of her child is a former childhood bully of her. Just as with Ymir, an abuser is turned into a lover. While not as big of an issue as with Ymir, we are starting to see a theme her with female characters and unfortunately the same holds for the final female character, Mikasa.
Mikasa is Eren's foster sister, who is also in love with Eren. Her love is extremely obvious and Eren is shown not to reciprocate romantic feelings for here throughout the series. In fact, Eren tries to get stronger and become more independent from Mikasa. However, in the last part of the manga their paths diverge and Mikasa can't follow Eren's descent into global genocide. In fact, in the penultimate chapter Mikasa kills Eren. So what happends in the final chapter? Here it is revealed that Eren was madly in love with Mikasa (with no prior build-up) and that Mikasa cannot move on from Eren. Why is this a problem? Eren pushed away Mikasa before, going as far as calling her a slave and saying he always hated her. Again, Mikasa feels romantic love for someone that emotionally abused her. Unlike the other female characters, Mikasa has more agency, as shown in her killing of Eren. Ultimately, however, Mikasa cannot move on from Eren. I think this is a kind of lack of agency: Mikasa cannot be her own person, she is still tied to Eren.
In conclusion, the last chapter makes the female characters be in love with former abusers and by doing so, removes a part of their agency.
2. Anti-genocide/anti-war themes
The main character, Eren, commits a race-based global genocide and kills 80% of the global population. He does this because the world wants to kill his race, the Eldians, and he feels that destroying the hateful world is the onlly way to save himself and his loved ones. He is shown as a villain throughout the final part of the manga (except for the last chapter). He is shown to be in a state of depression over his actions, he doesn't want to do what he does, but he feels compelled because Eren wants certainty. He wants to make sure that his friends live and the only way to be certain is to kill everyone, even those that are innocent. But doing so destroys him inside. Even so, he keeps doing what he thinks is necessary. The manga shows this in a negative light: this global genoicde and Eren's actions are presented as the consequences of a world filled with racism, hate and war. In other words, if we can't stop racism, hate and war, we will have to fight until ultimately only one group survives. And this is bad for everyone, even the victors: Eren is mentally unstable and depressed and his supporters are shown as fascists. However, the last chapter reveals that Eren planned to lose and did it so that his friends could kill him and be heroes. His friends thank him for committing global genocide (!) so that they could live. Eren was a villain who became who he was because the world of Attack on Titan is an awful place─ retconning him to be a hero is non-sensical and paints his genocide in a positive light, when it was cowardly and an act of ultimate desperation.
In the end, I do think this ending wasn't the original ending. To me, this apparent last-minute change has completely messed up one of the main themes of the manga, which was decidedly anti-war, anti-genocide and anti-racism.
There is much more that could be said about this manga and the ending. I just wanted to add why I was disappointed with it from a social justice perspective; I think that this kind of critique wouldn't go well in the attack on titan subreddits and I just wanted to vent somewhere. The only hope for this great piece of work is that the anime adaptation fixes the ending.
>>7252Off the top of my head:
– jerking off the military is Hollywood-tier
– nationalist obsession with Japan's history, up to Imperial navel-gazing
– capitalism is never questioned
– benevolent kings/emperors/unelected leaders are frequent
– constant playing around with fascist style and imagery (Kill la Kill doing it "ironically" doesn't make it better)
– lots of "how far being authoritarian is tolerable?" plots/subplots
– lots of Nietzsche-like willpower bullshit
– lots of genes/bloodlines/other quasi-eugenics fiction
– the Great Man narrative is everywhere, even beyond shonens
– patriarchal treatment of female characters (hence, the insane number of insecure teens and incels in the weebdom)
>>7269A comment in respond to that one (I'll avoid greentext for readability):
Regarding Pixis' being modelled after the Japanese general Akiyama Yoshifuru; I think there is more to unpack here. In interviews, Isayama said his favorite work of all time is the historical novel "Saka no ue no kumo" by Shiba Ryotaro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_no_Ue_no_KumoWhile I haven't read the novel myself (it's really long), I've seen Japanese fans pointing out how the character of Pixis, and even some of the dialogue, is pretty much a copy and paste of Akiyama Yoshifuru from the novel. In other words, the character of Pixis is based off a fictional version of Akiyama from a novel, rather than the historical figure himself.
Why is this important, you may ask. It's important because Shiba's historical narrative had a enormous impact on the perception of national history in Japan. Shiba's narrative in many of his novels (and I've read some of them) can be summarized like this: "Meiji good, Showa (or rather 1931-1945) bad". In his novels, Meiji period is glorified as a period of triumphal modernization and overcoming of foreign power like Russia (while completely sidelining the issue of imperialism). On the other hand, Showa period is depicted as a period of fanaticism and brutality, where militarists hijacked the country and ultimately lead to its destruction (while also sidelining the continuity between Meiji and Showa period).
Shiba's novels sold tens of millions of copies, and his influence still continues to this day. I think one of the reason his narrative got so popular is because it allowed the Japanese populace to indulge themselves in nationalistic pride for modern Japan, while shoving all the "bad stuff" to the short period of 1931-1945 and treating it as an mere aberration in the history of modern Japan, ignoring the fact that what happened in that period was a culmination of everything that happened after Meiji restoration.
Since Isayama's favorite work is one of those novel, one can ask how much Shiba's narrative influenced Isayama's view on Japanese pre-WW2 imperialism.
>>7271>lots of Nietzsche-like willpower bullshitman it really makes me sad that willpower is associated with fascists more often
but with my willpower i will make it be associated with communism instead
one day!
>>7509i have never read him, what does it mean to be nietzschean
>>7512i don't know enough about will power nor do i believe ideas belong to anyone but why is will power associated with this dude?
reading that essay it makes sense why everybody on r9k used to talk about this man a lot
>>9811>But Eldians are basically enslaved in Marley and so that on top of the years of titan attacks makes Eldia mostly justified! >It's not the same as IRL China and Japan! It's obvious that the author will have to make up shit if he wants to portray Japanese imperialism in a positve light, which becomes very easy if you are talking about said historical era through an allegory within a piece of fiction. Look at the justification for the enslavement of Eldians. They have to be slaves because they are very evil which is because they enslaved people. This is just so fucking retarded. The real life justification for imperialism was always might makes right and/or dehumanization and/or white man's burden, because deriding people for their immorality is pretty hard when you are the ones who are committing atrocities against them. It's a lot more efficient or even necessary to place victims of colonialism outside of the shared space of humanity and therefore morals altogether.
The reason why Isayama has written it this way is because just like any proper fascist he is very good at projection. In this case, he is projecting the crimes of Japanese imperialism onto its victims so he can say that
we the Japanese are the real victims because we are forced to apologize for our war crimes. Of course many other things point to the Eldians being the Japanese like how they are the small island nation who committed crimes against the big mainland nation. SNK's holy walls are even a parallel to the Typhoons that destroyed the Chinese Fleet centuries in the past, acting as "walls" against invasion. Heck there are characters beign direct parallels to generals and officers of Imperial Japan, pic related.
Of course there is more to it than that, but Imma just link those nuances:
https://archive.ph/2PK2f >>9989They don't have actual lights,the flares don't produce light,they reflect the sun.
So you either slowly move around with shitty torches on horseback in the dark (which they show at one point),or you kill yourself with the maneuvering gears against a tree in the dark.
Also you have to slice at a very specific place that's one meter long and 20cm wide,making it unpratical if they were on their back except by crawling under,which most people would honestly be quite afraid of,but that's at least feasible,even if very hard without the gear,because you NEED that inertia to cut the nape.
Also Abberants exist,and if they're is only one at the time you're going out that can move at night,your entire corps get killed.
On top of that,it's been tested on TWO titans that they don't move at night,it would be something quite hard to push onto most people that "yeah sure,don't worry,just go kill yourself in the dark with a torch,everything is alright"
>>9990>they don't have actual lights <That feel when these retards make pneumatic grappling systems but can't create a fucking flashlight or independent flares the sheer STATE of these idiots.
>hard to push onto most people these fuckers go on suicide missions all the time and face severe consequences for refusing orders, a night hunt isn't out of the question.
>maneuvering in the dark is hard then have an elite team train to use them in the dark FFS. You don't have to make this a mainstream method, just use it enough to cull Titan numbers a little.
>>9989>>9990You know when you guys put it like that killing titans shouldnt be complicated in the slightest, eldia is really primitive compared to the rest of the planet especially Marley whom have domesticated pure titans for god knows how long. It makes sense why they had to be protected from the outside world, those idiots would have a better chance of eating or genociding themselves than being genocided by those dumbass pure titans after all all pure titans can realistically do is eat people, that's it
They cant organize themselves
They cant solve basic problems
They cant identify which humans are shifters
They are made of the same shit humans are made of meaning they're combustible and can be easily electrocuted to near death
They arent immune to fall damage
Most cant or simply dont know how to climb or dig
It's like watching an entire civilization lose a war to ordinary predators, youd assume something only fucking cavemen with sticks and stones would need to be scared of, not a society that caused genocides and massive wars around the planet in the name of eldian imperialism, fucking mosquitoes that can transfer malaria to that island feels like a bigger existential threat…
>>9993the only reason Titans are any threat at all is their insane regeneration and the fact that the 1m area of the nape needs to be totally cut out to permanently deleto them because (spoilers) that's the area of the actual human part's in the Titans - the head to be exact.
Also add to all this - Titans are literally lighter than they physically should be, as the head of a 3m Titan could be kicked by a tteenage girl like a football (soccerball), so technically a basic set of mines could knock Titans off their feet and on the ground people can pin them and cut out that nape.
>>10922he rationalized them by showing the horrors of it.
his argument was basically if one side engages nationalism and militarism marley then other nation will also engage in that in retaliation and thus cause tragedy in a massive scale. Aka a cycle of violence that is better to never start in the first place.
The problem is though he ends up saying that tfascism was justified with the fucking paradis getting destroyed ending. In other words, eren was justified in genociding the world, because if he didnt paradise would get destroyed. Now of course this isnt nescarrily bad if eren ends up being demonized by his friends family and huge portions of paradis, BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT LARGE PORTIONS OF HIS FAMILY AND PARADIS WORSHIP AND PRAISE HIM. of course it could be that the worship is shown in a horrific way, to show the scary reality that genocidal maniacs sometimes get worshipped by the population that these maniacs lead. The problem is that isayama doesnt even do that, instead the way erens friends praise him as if hes superman sacrificing his life to save the planet. Literally you have magna panels saying eren your a "real man", and thank you for being a genocidal monster for our sake. And this is coming from the character THAT formed a merry little band to oppose erens genocidal plans in the FIRST PLACE.
LIKE WTF
>>10930I was hoping this series was going the route of Fullmetal.
Sad to see the ending fucking sucks.
>>11487I don't think either are Jews, as pointed out by
>>9813 the main allegories are for Japan and China.
>>9670>this would mean that if you actually got stomped by a titan your chances of surviving would be well above 20%ii mean this is countered by the fact that realistically you are going to get stomped multiple times
so your chance of surviving is 0
>>11506 yeah a vax that turns non eldians into titans too
cant hate people if anyone is an evil titan shifter :^)
>>12386<I've read it …..
>>12387what?
>>12724>People who are turned off by media they don't agree with are lower than plebs.if that's the case then being a pleb is based. just because i'm watching something doesn't mean i can't feel repulsed by the shitty ideology espoused by it.
also snk isn't that good of a show, i find it too reliant on edge for my taste. maybe the later seasons are better but i'm tired of
>AIIIIEEEEEE LE TITANS ARE EATING ME AHHH>blood splatters, everyone's seething and crying >5 seconds of relative peace>AIIIIIEEEEEE LE TITANS ARE EATING ME AHHH >>13716THERES NO ANIME ONLY ENDING
ITS ALL A LIE
I WAS A CLOWN ALL ALONG
>>13989clifhanger just at the start of the rumbling for the next season next year.
I don't think they can stretch 3 chapters in 12 episodes.
>>6734In my opinion, it's not. It's just depicted how badly is the chauvinism between nations. Although it's still in WW1 era, imagine the Rumbling as Nukes in our time.
Now I know there are autists here that unironically think nuclear war is good for accelerating bla-bla-bla, but it won't bring nothing both barbarism.
For peace & socialism. Socialism or barbarism.
>>6761K-On! is overrated SoL, but if you like it you like it, and the animation at the very least is pretty good, especially for its time.
>hating on FLCLBlasphemy!
>>21517That’s fine, but you can’t say that for AOT for two reasons.
The ending we got was forced and out of synch with what would actually happen given the authors context for the worlds setup. Eren is fucking dead and the power of the founding titan is long since gone well before he has any reason to be able start a rumbling.
The fact that the rumbling occurs and how it changes the planet still fucks over any sense of consistency and manages to be a considerably less satisfying ending than if Eldia was straight up raised to the ground and the story ended off there.
The ending was shit and poorly thought out. There’s no excuse for Eren, his actions, the retconning and the plot armour it took to even create such a terrible conclusion. Hell I haven’t even touched into the fact that outside of the literal death of paradis island, basically anyone that didn’t already hate Eldia now has zero reason to not want to kill off the remaining Eldians, wether or not they’re even aware that plenty don’t support Erens actions.
>>21586>usually people with that fetish make the giants hot. Not necessarily, just mainstream. And I mean the main protagonist Titan-shifters are relatively better looking than the brainless NPC-normie titans.
>they are seemingly are the stereotypical foreign animalistic subhuman bugmen horde that is only there to destroy.LMAO, but even in those depictions there is the interracial element.
>>22257Yeah he’s absolutely a mild crypto fash at heart.
He openly designed a character after an imperial Japan invasion commander, noting that said war criminal was “frugal and respectable”. He also denied comfort women in Korea being a real problem, as well as saying that Korea occupation benefited Korea in the long run cause their population increased, and Japan was not anywhere near as bad as Nazi germany.
https://archive.is/eRg2RWhy have our main characters and extended cast act in an cooperative manner, some advocating peace or a better world like Armin, or The Volunteers relative to justice for their own nations and national liberation, only to end the show with genocide and perpetual war.
if the entire theme and point of the show is about freedom and oppression, then the show has failed by displaying an pessimistic ending, not a positive one of escaping the cycle of war, ending oppression and actually gaining freedom.
The plot could have been written better, the author chose not to write the story, not even attempt to mirror actual 20th Century History of oppression and freedom.
You know what, Eren doing a full rumbling was the only way to make the ending good. All Isayama had to do was fulfill the narrative promises made in earlier chapters and have him genocide the entire world and kill or permanently estrange all of his friends, and then destroy titan powers. He comes home and retires but is consumed by guilt and retires. Despite 'winning' all his friends are dead, including ones who would be on his side like Floch, except for Historia who not to be a shipper, (if we're talking pure shipping Ymir x Historia was the only couple with any chemistry ever in the entire series), was obviously meant to have a child with him. His hollow victory means he becomes an absent father and he despises himself like Reiner did. Over the years he comes to realise that the entire situation could have been resolved through diplomacy and that his friends were right. Historia dies of natural causes and it looks like a civil war is going to break out betwen the fascist survey corps and his fascist daughter who thinks Eren used to be a great man but got weak, and they are threatening each other with Nuclear bombs like TNO basically, because eradicating titans did not eradicate weapons of mass destruction. Resigned, he sits back and waits for them to kill each other. He had completely won but it meant nothing in the long run. But when he opens his eyes the bombs haven't been dropped. They'd sorted things out peacefully without genocide. The ending is positive and the future is bright, with people co-operating and building nuclear energy instead of weapons. The story's narrative is completed satisfyingly with Eren realizing he was wrong and finally smiling as a better world is built.
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