#that juli puts on himself is his own perception of his assault over god's in-story

[cacaitos]

i think it's rad that juli screams and wallows so much for a god that didn't answer him at any moment except by his own impression both for his own supposed condemnation AND forgiveness.

and that not only so pressed by the made up imprsssion of the guy he made in his head he also, as his most significant and material show of love he devoted himself to the person he will never and can't ever meet again. like yeah in theory they will in heaven but in practice is living for the dead, the ever moving goal of the immutable, platonic divine.

isn't he a romantic.

[hellsparadiseessays]

Aza Brothers Week - Day 5

I released that essay on r/Jigokuraku back in early July, about one month after the infamous chapter 56 got out. It wasn’t a fun topic to tackle, so as a result I’m leaving the warning I put at the start of the essay before the cut. Because chapter 56 was not ok. Though keep in mind that I’m not mad at UG for it - quite the contrary, his intent is clearly not to make the chapter sexy. However, I heavily suspected the fandom to not find it as obvious because well, we have our own cultural issues. And considering how this essay has been received, and the stuff I noticed even in the Japanese side of the fandom... Well, this essay is in my opinion much needed to explain why chapter 56 is more brutal that it seems. It’s also a good follow-up on yesterday’s post, which stopped at chapter 55. 

Warning : This thread will contain references to rape, so if the topic is sensitive to you, I suggest you avoid reading it. This thread will contain spoilers for the most recent chapters as well, so read it once you’re up to date with the manga to avoid being spoiled and know what I am talking about.

Chapter 56 - A commentary on power and powerlessness

I have been keeping it to myself (and occasionally kinda raged about it on Discord join us) ever since chapter 56 was released, back in April. I’ll be honest with you, despite me joking with everybody else on Discord, that chapter really hit a personal chord and I had a hard time working on this commentary because of that. Let’s just say I regularly had to stop and come back to it a few days later, once I got my head cool again and my brain fully functional – I didn’t want my emotions to get in the way of the analysis.

Here we are now, ready to tackle a difficult topic: the borderline rape of Chôbe by Rien. And I say “borderline”, only because it was Chôbe who successfully did his Chôbe thing. He remains in a dangerous position, one I certainly don’t envy, and one that he himself strongly dislikes.

This commentary will be divided into three parts: firstly, the use of rape as a comedic device in mainstream media and how it trivialises a situation that, in fact, has dramatic consequences. Then, we’ll study Rien has a character through his past and present actions, to establish the nature of his interactions and the way he perceives himself. Finally, we’ll address Chôbe’s reactions while facing danger, and how he deals with his emotions.

I. Rape as a comedic tool

One of the many reasons why this chapter makes me uncomfortable is my personal fear for jokes made about that sort of situation. Why, you may rightfully ask? Because it is very much present in mainstream media, be it in Japan or in Western countries. Considering Reddit is mostly Western-oriented, I chose to pick a reference that focuses on rape in Western media to build my argument around, and I strongly suggest you to watch the video before you continue with this commentary. “Sexual assault of men played for laughs”, by Jonathan McIntosh from the Youtube channel Pop Culture Detective, thoroughly explores the issue through the lens of North American media, which have an area of influence that goes way beyond North America itself – especially with the massive worldwide use of internet. While not all the items of this video fit with the commentary at hand, it nonetheless points out an especially interesting argument: the man who failed to be a man – the one perceived as in control of the situation -, is subjected to various mockeries because it’s fair after all, he wasn’t really being a man when it happened, so he failed as a person.

I think we could even see this issue as a double insult to both men and women with that issue: 1) women can’t be in control because it’s not their role, 2) men who aren’t in control are perceived as emasculated, and thus the jeering is entirely justified because how dare they consider themselves men, right? Basically, this sort of joke is based on a perception of power and who is supposed to hold it. And power is what sexual assault is about. It’s not about lust or provocation. Sexual assault is the act of abusing your power over someone else to the point of robbing them of even their intimacy. This is something that tends to break people, or at least seriously damage them. Yet, this loss of power is something that remains mocked or silenced. And while women are starting to speak up, it’s still rare to see men open up about it. In Jonathan McIntosh’s video, the example of Terry Crew in reaction to the Harvey Weinstein affair and the following #Metoo movement is telling: losing power (what is perceived as such), especially as a man, is still treated in a demeaning manner that should only be mocked or ignored, not as something serious that can affect the victim for years and have a negative effect on their life in general.

Sexual assault of men as comedy is destructive, yet still awfully present in the series and movies we watch – even kids’ shows. Yes, you read it well. Kids’ shows. It gives a certain inclination to joke about rape – especially when it happens to men -, by internalising the issue and not realising how demeaning it actually is. It’s even visible in the most mainstream manga and anime (Naruto’s 1000 years of pain, anyone?) and we’ll play a little game about that: in your comment, I invite you to point out sexual assault as a joke in a manga/anime you know (and maybe enjoy). Keep in mind that I’m not doing that to slam the creations or their authors, it’s just to point out how surprisingly common it can be. I also wish to point out that, in chapter 56 of Jigokuraku, UG didn’t go that way at all. On the contrary, he made it clear that Chôbe was in danger and painfully aware of it throughout the chapter, while Rien... Was being Rien, with his own perception of who he is and the power he holds.

II. Rien: the perception of power

Now that we’ve established the basis about the way sexual assault with men as victims is perceived (especially in the West, a point of view vastly predominant on Reddit), we can start digging on Rien’s case of A God I Am.

As soon as Rien gets his first appearance (chapter 26), his status is made clear: among the boss level characters we’ve seen so far (Ju Fa, Tao Fa, Zhu Jin), he is one cut above and presents himself as the uncontested leader, the patriarch of a family who rules and serves punishment when he deems it necessary. From his point of view, he’s the head of the Tensen family as well as (potentially, it depends on Jofuku being alive of not), the ruler of the island – or the head scientist of the giant laboratory that is Kotaku. It means that Rien isn’t just the most powerful being on the island (though the notion of power can be discussed there, considering the power system used by UG), he also perceives himself as such and demonstrates it with an iron hand: the way he treated Mei before she escaped is good enough as a proof.

Behind his position as the head scientist, he shows a ruthless cruelty and a readiness to not even consider other people as persons. Mei herself, suggested as being one of the first successful experiments by Jofuku – and thus being “family” to Rien -, gets banished, mutilated and used as a living experiment material for the very thing she dared openly call out (the massive use of humans for experimentations). Rien even openly states, in chapter 26, that he’s the only one with the right to punish family members when Ju Fa injures an already weakened Zhu Jin. It gives us an idea of what Rien may mean by “punishment”. Go against his will: die or become an experiment. Disobey him: get severely injured if you’re part of the Tensen family, I heavily suspect death may be the sentence when you don’t have that luxury – and so does Chôbe. Until now, Rien has thus been shown as having a general behaviour that could be qualified of sociopathic: being indifferent towards others to the point of not seeing them as people, dehumanising anybody, using the “we’re family” or “I’ll tell you everything” tactic to try and keep people on his side. Interestingly, between him and Mei, he’s the one who has spend the most time with the other Tensen, and it is visible in their behaviour as well: they show similar sociopathic traits (Mu Dan’s experiments he seemed to find most amusing, Ju Fa qualifying Chôbe of “it” and “livestock”...).

However, no matter how godly Rien thinks he is, he remains surprisingly human and this has been shown to us through the point of view of his latest victim, who managed to do what, I suspect, no other character in the story would have been able to pull off without seriously getting in trouble for it (meaning: die immediately): he momentarily reversed the power dynamic to save his skin for at least a moment.

III. Chôbe’s status as a victim and how he handles it

Since the start, I’ve been claiming left and right that Chôbe is probably too smart for his own good, but it’s not just that. It’s an accumulation of everything that happened to him and his brother. Chôbe is very intimate with the notion of powerlessness. He’s been living it repeatedly since he’s a kid, slowly losing his place in society until he became an outcast. As a consequence, the way he thinks isn’t based on honour or revenge: it’s about survival, first and foremost.

The first time we see him go full survival mode is when he and Toma momentarily run away from the Sôshin that are outnumbering them, to find a better position to fight. In that chapter (chapter 9), we witness another way to survive that is very much Chôbe’s own method – no other character has done it, not even Toma -: instead of resisting a power stronger than his own, he integrates himself into the equation by mirroring the person who’s displaying power over him. By doing so, he creates an impression of kinship he can exploit to his advantage. As a kid, he mutilated himself to the point of losing sight in his right eye and being seriously scarred to “pretty himself up” by looking more like the bandits who were planning to harm Toma and sell them both. Doing so created a strong impression in their captors’ mind, and Chôbe used that impression to claim a place among the bandits – a first step towards claiming his power as an individual capable of thoughts and choices back. By integrating himself like that, he managed to become the leader of the pack, the chief of an entire village of bandits, causing so much trouble it warranted death penalty for him.

This method of mirroring the person holding power over him is visible again during the entirety of chapter 56. This chapter starts with Chôbe being captive, literally tied to a bed and clearly uncomfortable for many reasons: he’s been beaten to the point of passing out after having been treated like a wonderful unicorn (not a person), wakes up in an unknown place, tied to a bed in a peculiar position. By that point, Rien already marked a lot of Creep Points, and Chôbe has a lot of reasons to find the situation disagreeable. But it’s not enough, and Chôbe ends up facing actual blackmail: cooperate or become Tan (which is pretty much like dying, but worse: your life force is sucked out of you while you’re in a fake wonderland. Chôbe had a taste of it and saw what it looked like while he was in the Tan pit, both him and Toma weren’t enthusiastic about the situation and quickly got out of the pit). During the entire chapter, Chôbe weighs his options and stalls time by asking questions and gather more information on his situation to pick the best option to stay alive. It’s a daring move, to do that while facing the local godly being, but Chôbe isn’t stupid and understands having the choice of cooperating means he has value somehow. And to squeeze all the information he needs from Rien, to better weight his option and understand what’s going on on this unnatural island (he realised it’s unnatural in chapter 54), he does what we’ve already seen him do in the aforementioned bandits’ village flashback: he mirrors the one having power over him to gain some agency back through deception.

That’s where something we’ve seen him do a lot happens: he smiles. Mind you, it’s not a genuine smile. Chôbe isn’t really a smiling person, we’ve seen that everytime we’ve got even the smallest hints regarding his true feelings. However, Chôbe uses his mask as a tool for deception and picked this habit as a kid: a grin to the bandits even though his face was heavily injured to convince them of keeping him and his brother, a grin when he steels himself while facing the Sôshin, a smile when he tries to deceive Gabimaru before suddenly attacking him. It’s the vicious, weaponised grin of someone who figured out what to do and where to go, while keeping others’ attention down. He even smiles while sweating when he is nervous, at the end of chapter 55, because he has no idea what’s going on but somehow he’s tied to a bed and someone one-sidedly decided to have sex with him (yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, Rien didn’t care about his consent, because Rien doesn’t see him as a person). However, during chapter 56, we slowly see him integrates himself in the equation again by imitating Rien’s moves to numb his wariness under the guise of complying with the cooperation request. His actions mismatch his thoughts exactly for that purpose: his first thought is about a way to escape, but he realises it may be too dangerous for him. So he renounces - for now - to by himself some time and repeats his mantra, to adapt and figure things out, and gives Rien what he wants because it’s the only viable option for survival.

Since then, qualifying his attitude towards the Tensen of “bad faith” could be an understatement. He may be willing to concede certain things under the threat of death, but he will still have the guts to stand his ground, even while facing a whole group of people who could kill him – and openly threaten to do so. It takes a certain kind of madness to do that sort of thing, and oh, it’s exactly what the bandits said about him when he purposefully injured himself just to prove a point. Chôbe is too smart for his own good, but he still manages to get his agency back when it’s stolen from him, and that’s what makes him incredibly dangerous, even for the Tensen. Even in real life, it takes a certain kind of character to pull that sort of thing off. Still, despite all of his wrong, what happened to Chôbe during his childhood as well as chapter 56 qualifies him as a victim, and UG handled it incredibly well, making it tragic (if not outright nerves wracking, at least in my case) instead of using it as a comedic tool. Thank you for that, UG.

This commentary took me about... At least 10 days just to be worked on, despite the very small amount of references needed for it.

Without giving away too much information, I empathise strongly with Chôbe’s predicament and generally find him very relatable, at a personal level. His tactics are easy to recognise not just because they’ve been made fairly clear by UG, but also because there’s a pattern I know all too well in them. So yeah, that commentary tackled some difficult topics for me, and I had trouble keeping a cool head while writing it. It was a difficult birth, chapter 56 still makes my skin crawl. However, I hope you found this write up informative or entertaining. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts, answer my little challenge (an example of sexual assault played for laugh in a manga/anime you know), ask questions, scold me for yet another Chôbe rant...

[daigina-3]

I just want you to answer this or make another post with ALL of Isak's problematic things/wrong things he did and the developement and everything he did better... from s1 to s4. And even Even's because these noorhelms seems to think we only see noorhelm's problems. First of all, noorhelm didnt have a development. Isak and Even did. Explain to these assholes why we love Evak but not Noorhelm even when Evak had problematic moments too.

Okay I have a minute to answer this cause I’m on break.Okay listen. Listen. Sometimes I use a hyperbolic tone because that’s one way humor can be expressed in the English language. This means I will exaggerate what I say. Does this mean I don’t hate William/Daniel/Alex/ whatever? No, they’re all Bad characters. Badly written in their development, their actions, their reasoning, their capacity to invoke empathy. Bad. But also I’m not out here trying to start a war with absolutely everyone in the world who likes William and all his boring, played out reincarnations. I don’t know if someone’s been tryna fight with you, but idk I just don’t like people coming in here being like “SHOW ALL THESE ASSHOLES WHATS GOOD” like. Bruh chill? I can’t see why noorhelms stan, and sometimes I poke fun, but as long as they’re not jerks, in reality who cares? Do not get me wrong. I hate William and noorhelm and I’m not looking forward to season two of Skam austin. I think Julie is a deeply flawed writer if she can’t see what she’s doing for a second time with this guy. I think she’s putting her own weird perceptions above what makes a good story and a good character. I have hope the writers of Druck will make major changes like Chris (the actor who plays Alex) discussed recently in a video on insta. Let us pray. But next time you ask can we?? Like take a moment to fuckin breathe lmaoNow, I don’t think you’re wrong- in that EVERYONE in SKAM is flawed. Even and Isak as a couple are flawed, and some things were never resolved. Like Even doing Sonja wrong and cheating on her. It’s shitty, it’s a position Isak didn’t want to be in the middle of (again), it’s something Sonja never deserved. And we get a little closure when Sonja apologizes for how she talked to Isak, that she’s not mad anymore. But what’s more than that we get to empathize with Even- we get to hear from his own mouth how he thinks Sonja is controlling, we get to see in his little physical cues his regret, we get to see what he means when Sonja herself invalidates Isak and Evens relationship. Even did a bad thing, but as an audience we don’t villainize him because we can relate to him, empathize with him, feel sympathy for him. Breaking away from Isak and even because they’re not the only people in this damn show- I fucking hated season 1 Jonas. He was such a fucking asshole, and every time I watch a new version of Skam I hate him sooo much lmao (not u German Jonas, I love u bby you good). Especially OG Jonas- he invalidated Eva’s feelings, insulted her intelligence, made fun of her to her face with his friends (when she was clearly self conscious), and escalated her paranoia with lying and then blamed her completely when she acted on that paranoia (Although we know Eva shouldn’t have done some of the shit she did). But we see moments of them bonding, we see Eva fighting back (the video game scene where she mouths off to him and he’s like WHATS UR PROBLEM???), we also Jonas being told the way he spoke to Eva was wrong, and they ultimately leave the relationship on equal and peaceful footing. We also see them fuck in a fucking CAR WASH JULIE WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK???? weird ass My point is everyone in Skam has flaws and the way William stands out (I’ve said this a million damn times this is probably the last time I’m gonna reiterate my self) is that Williams mistakes, flaws, etc are never addressed directly. More often than not any conflict involving William is resolved when William isn’t even THERE. He’s an asshole? Someone else tells Noora his tragic backstory in a really long boring clip. Noora thinks the bottle thing was too much? She ends up talking it out with SANA instead in what is the longest boringest clip of all time. He has a part in Vilde’s spiral in s1? He claims it could never be TOTALLY caused by a couple words he says (despite Julie showing us the opposite in s1 when she QUOTES him and we know him saying she’s not good enough carried significance with her) and the whole thing is over. He never, himself, shows the kind of vulnerability, apologizes, admits fault, etc etc. the most unforgiving instance being how he treated Noora (TWICE) in relation to her sexual assault, both times icing her out and pushing her away, effectively punishing her further and making this about HIM. The first time is never discussed, and the second we got the vague “we talked about everything” bs which like?? He gets his own damn CLIP and you can’t even reference one line of what they talked about? God Julie I fuckin HATE YOU MAN WHAT TH Yeah anyway. Let this be my officia last testimony on my feelings about Williams stupid fucking character, I don’t got the energy to talk about his dumb ass for a long ass time, I have to save it for when Julie makes me mad all over afuckingGAIN in s2 so. Also don’t be an asshole to people over a fucking TV show guys.