#anti eriei

[ryodan]

im sorry but can you explain to me why SNK is morally unacceptable? i love the series and i admit some scenes were hard to swallow, but i dont see how it's bad? i really respect your opinion and i want to continue SNK, but now that i read your recent post, im not so sure anymore. can you please explain it more (if you can ofc). thank you! have a great day^^

 Sure! Please note that I am in no way shaming people who enjoy SNK. I used to be a fan myself, the series has some really interesting philosophies going for it. It’s less about the series itself and more about the author. To answer this question, first let me talk about those philosophies. We will start with the similarities between German culture and history with SNK. In case you did not notice this series is very German-based, even all the names are of German origin, except for Mikasa who i’ll come back to. 

the show is set in a quasi Germanic society full of German architecture and even German war cries (Are you the prey? No, we are the hunters) as well as german names. This is where things start getting interesting. The political ideology of the show aligns itself with the beliefs of a notorious nazi. A man named Carl Schmitt. The thing I liked about this show is the exploration of these themes through this dystopian world. It’s like ‘what if these beliefs are the only thing keeping society from collapsing?’. Central to Schmitt’s philosophy and SNK’s civilization is the concept of what he calls ‘the political’. There are 3 concepts that he believed situate the political and create a ‘stable’ society. 1- Difference, conflict and inequality. 2- clear distinction between friends and enemies. 3- sovereignty. He highlights that since discord and inequality are inevitable, humanity at it’s basic nature is savage, and that for stability you must fight to survive. Remind you of something? To quote snk, ‘The world is a cruel place, if you want to live you have to fight.’ A constantly reoccurring theme. Further mirroring of Schmitts ideology that states it’s not politics’ job to fix inevitable inequalities in society since they will always exist anyways; instead a strong sovereign should be in control of the population, SNK develops the 3 walls which literally separate the different classes in society. Each wall system is it’s own cast system. The people in wall Maria are not as safe as the people inside wall rose and wall sina. While people are getting eaten on the outskirts, there are people sitting around playing chess. The parallels get real wack when you compare Schmitts idea that to situate the political what is needed is nationalism and survival of the fittest. The nationalistic duty of the warrior class is literally highlighted in opening 1 which looks and sounds like triumph of the will nazi nationalist propaganda. Really, just hear it.The literal lyrics of SNK’s first opening are about ‘having the will of starving wolves.’ To cut things short, SNK had the potential to be a series heavily critical of this guy’s ideology, or explore it in this world that allows for it. Too bad after the author’s political beliefs were revealed, neither seem to be an option. Why would a Japanese man write something so heavily linked to controversial areas? Lets go back to Japan’s history. Once upon a time, Japan was parading around with an imperialist army colonizing the East through brute military power. This included torturing of citizens and selling of women as sex slaves. As a result, many countries suffered because of this but a country in particular still suffers the backlash of this and even has tense relations with Japan to this day, namely South Korea. To quote a post written by a Jew ‘The idea of the walls and their fragility is meant to criticize Japan’s antiwar policy, and the Titans coming back after 100 years is meant to imply that if Japan doesn’t start having wars and breaking down their “walls” and conquering the East again, other countries will come to terrorize the region. What bothers me most having watched the first season of it is the line about “Living like livestock”. It asserts the notion that to live without imperialism is a form of complacency, like somehow the country isn’t living life to its fullest if it isn’t out pillaging and raping the peoples of Korea, Manchuria, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, etc’. Wait , wait. How the hell did we reach such a conclusion? This was unfortunately straight out the author’s mouth, he said some horrific things that upset Korean fans. Like literally all my Korean friends are vehemently against this series. The character called Dot Pixis is based on general Yoshifuru Akiyama, a famous war criminal during the occupation of Korea who Attack on Titan’s writer, Hajime Isayama, called “frugal and respectable” on his twitter account. Erwin Smith is named after a Nazi called Erwin Rommel who, despite occasionally defying orders he deemed “unjust”, was still a fucking Nazi and still took part in the Holocaust. The one that hits the hammer to the head is perhaps the most confound. Mikasa, named after the battleship used to fight a war that hurt the Koreans in very tragic ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Mikasa  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War. This man ended up being not just a person who is pro the nazi movement and the ideology it pushes forward, but also a man who condones the actions of an imperialist nationalist war movement through his work. He literally stated that the colonization of Korea and the east, despite how gruesome and bloody was ‘necessary’. You can imagine how disturbing this is for Korean fans of the series. Specially when Japanese Mikasa was almost sold as a sex slave..something the Japanese army did to their women..among other women from different nationalities such as China. What turned me off isn’t his shitty streaky fight sequences that some people call ‘art’, nor his cheap resort to hard hitting gore and hard to digest backstories instead of actually fleshing out a story and it’s characters to draw the audience’s emotions, but the ideas he wishes to push forward. Whether we like it or not, and you can ask any mass com major about this, media has a very direct influence on the way we think and see things. Y’all might end up quoting SNK not realizing you are echoing nazi propaganda. Hell, even if that isn’t his intention, I don’t care. I’m not supporting a man who is pro Nazi society. If the tables turned and SNK was based on what Israel and England did to Palestine, or France to Algeria and Lebanon etc, i’d be so angry to see people supporting it. ‘Is our blood so cheap just because it isn’t yours?’ (yes our bc my half arab ass sees all of arabs as our). Out of that sensitivity, I cannot sit here and just ignore all of that for shitty temporary entertainment which can easily be replaced with much better series with fan bases that don’t ship 15 year old erin with 30 year old levi. Sorry for the long ass post, but I hope this cleared stuff up.