Attack on Titan

[Sharmat]

Where were you when kino of the century came out? I'm personally of the opinion that AOT is the most important piece of media to come out in decades, possibly being the first step in shaping an authentically zoomer culture free from the mental tyranny of millennials and gen Xers. Fittingly enough, historical development through the rejection of the "wisdom of your elders" is a recurrent theme in the show. Grisha rejecting the meek subservience of his parents, Eren going further than his father was capable of, Ymir rejecting an eternity of subjugation and siding with Eren. it's clear that a key aspect in AOT is the necessity of breaking historical cycles in order to redeem human existence. 

Its probably best to not say everything I have in mind in the OP and ask the rest of you: what do you think of the show's themes? What possible implications will the shows popularity have on the opinions of it's young audience, if any at all? If AOT (and other contemporary media) will be the basis of a cultural decoupling for Zoomers, what do you think the end product will be?

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I think this would also be a useful thread to discuss the remaining episode(s) weekly, or anything you find interesting about the show generally.

[FruitVendor]

It's amazing how when something fresh and new comes around it completely obliterates the stuck sclerotic USA cultural exports like "masked dancer" and marvelshit "Wandavision" even on their home turf. When I saw the 1st episode on crunchyroll years back if you told me it would be the most watched show I would not believe you.

Tackling the idea of historical guilt and monopolization of tragedy against you is a trope that 100% needs to fleshed out and explored by people who are dissident thinkers and want to be subversive to the system.

I personally believe this one of the many upcoming cultural victories and might be a fertile ground for a new cultural "silent majority" to grow out of and decide things as zog continues to own goal itself by propping up geriatric rappers for superbowl adds and boring washed up talkshows that nobody cares about.

[FruitVendor]

Also curious how the ending will be handled, the manga ending is atrocious tbh. 

[Image: https://imgur.com/rsqTlRy.jpg]

[Sharmat]

Also curious how the ending will be handled, the manga ending is atrocious tbh. 

[Image: https://imgur.com/rsqTlRy.jpg]

*SPOILERS*

Not sure if you're aware but the ending has been updated with a few extra pages. There's a fast forward scene where the now developed Paradis is carpet bombed in an unknown war, and is apparently completely flattened. A kid finds the tree where Eren is buried and it's implied he's going to make contact with the spinal worm again. I actually like the ending this way because 1) it shows that only Eren's plan would've been capable of breaking the meaningless cycle of human history 2) it invalidated the alliance ending completely.

[Guest]

I don't mean to sound condescending, but has anybody here seen Mobile Suit Gundam? The original series?

Japanese popular culture has been down with Hitlerism and rejecting impositions from the past for a long time. Hasn't ultimately changed much. At the very least we can say that these people are in touch with their passions as socially constrained artists, if not free people. Japanese science fiction, action, and shoujo has been on this kick for decades. Keiko Takemiya's To Terra is extremely pointed about saying this stuff. It's a story about new and dynamic youth declaring war against the whole old world because it's that or be destroyed under it. And of course in Gundam characters directly acknowledge Hitler and compare their actions to Hitlerism in a fashion we're obviously meant to think about rather than reflexively despise.

I could go on about Japanese examples forever, but the other interesting place to go is western/american examples. Stories about violent uprisings and bursts of energy and gamer moments directed at useless corrupt oldfags used to be common, but the point I want to hit home here is that while japan's tradition is old and perhaps ineffectual, but America's tradition just died.

Japan might be a miserable shithole suffering under a stifling hegemony, but they still seem to know it on the whole. What really hurts is that they took a lot of cues on this from the west. Without Carrie and The Fury there's no Akira. But now beyond Akira we have Promare all of these decades later. They haven't fixed it, but they haven't forgotten either. What's the Western Promare? I can be generous and say that 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' is the obvious successor to The Fury, but that's not an asses-in-seats film like Promare, it's a niche work for nerds like me. People aren't crying out for works to fire up their blood anymore.

On old Amarna I was probably going to make a thread on this tangent i'm running here. So as to not divert this Titan thread I'll probably make that here.

AoT is cool, but it's ultimately less interesting if you think of it as Bio-Gundam. Still it's great that stuff like this can get made anywhere, work that actually owns real human feelings, even the hitlerian ones.

[anthony]

[quote pid="137" dateline="1645263677"]
I don't mean to sound condescending, but has anybody here seen Mobile Suit Gundam? The original series?

Japanese popular culture has been down with Hitlerism and rejecting impositions from the past for a long time. Hasn't ultimately changed much. At the very least we can say that these people are in touch with their passions as socially constrained artists, if not free people. Japanese science fiction, action, and shoujo has been on this kick for decades. Keiko Takemiya's To Terra is extremely pointed about saying this stuff. It's a story about new and dynamic youth declaring war against the whole old world because it's that or be destroyed under it. And of course in Gundam characters directly acknowledge Hitler and compare their actions to Hitlerism in a fashion we're obviously meant to think about rather than reflexively despise.

I could go on about Japanese examples forever, but the other interesting place to go is western/american examples. Stories about violent uprisings and bursts of energy and gamer moments directed at useless corrupt oldfags used to be common, but the point I want to hit home here is that while japan's tradition is old and perhaps ineffectual, but America's tradition just died.

Japan might be a miserable shithole suffering under a stifling hegemony, but they still seem to know it on the whole. What really hurts is that they took a lot of cues on this from the west. Without Carrie and The Fury there's no Akira. But now beyond Akira we have Promare all of these decades later. They haven't fixed it, but they haven't forgotten either. What's the Western Promare? I can be generous and say that 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' is the obvious successor to The Fury, but that's not an asses-in-seats film like Promare, it's a niche work for nerds like me. People aren't crying out for works to fire up their blood anymore.

On old Amarna I was probably going to make a thread on this tangent i'm running here. So as to not divert this Titan thread I'll probably make that here.

AoT is cool, but it's ultimately less interesting if you think of it as Bio-Gundam. Still it's great that stuff like this can get made anywhere, work that actually owns real human feelings, even the hitlerian ones.
[/quote]

I accidentally signed out. I wrote this in case you're wondering.

edit: also what's wrong with the quote function here?

[Sharmat]

[quote pid="137" dateline="1645263677"]
I don't mean to sound condescending, but has anybody here seen Mobile Suit Gundam? The original series?

Japanese popular culture has been down with Hitlerism and rejecting impositions from the past for a long time. Hasn't ultimately changed much. At the very least we can say that these people are in touch with their passions as socially constrained artists, if not free people. Japanese science fiction, action, and shoujo has been on this kick for decades. Keiko Takemiya's To Terra is extremely pointed about saying this stuff. It's a story about new and dynamic youth declaring war against the whole old world because it's that or be destroyed under it. And of course in Gundam characters directly acknowledge Hitler and compare their actions to Hitlerism in a fashion we're obviously meant to think about rather than reflexively despise.

I could go on about Japanese examples forever, but the other interesting place to go is western/american examples. Stories about violent uprisings and bursts of energy and gamer moments directed at useless corrupt oldfags used to be common, but the point I want to hit home here is that while japan's tradition is old and perhaps ineffectual, but America's tradition just died.

Japan might be a miserable shithole suffering under a stifling hegemony, but they still seem to know it on the whole. What really hurts is that they took a lot of cues on this from the west. Without Carrie and The Fury there's no Akira. But now beyond Akira we have Promare all of these decades later. They haven't fixed it, but they haven't forgotten either. What's the Western Promare? I can be generous and say that 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' is the obvious successor to The Fury, but that's not an asses-in-seats film like Promare, it's a niche work for nerds like me. People aren't crying out for works to fire up their blood anymore.

On old Amarna I was probably going to make a thread on this tangent i'm running here. So as to not divert this Titan thread I'll probably make that here.

AoT is cool, but it's ultimately less interesting if you think of it as Bio-Gundam. Still it's great that stuff like this can get made anywhere, work that actually owns real human feelings, even the hitlerian ones.
[/quote]

No I havent seen Gundam, that sounds great. What series do I start with, the original one? Also, I'm aware there are other shows which have done the "breaking of historical cycles" trope before, it's just a relatively new concept in Zoomer-targeted media and AOT is the first one to break out in the true mainstream with it as the most watched show in the US. There are a litany of other points which AOT does excellently as well: subjugation through collective guilt, the real meaning of individual freedom, civilization as a form of self-domestication, etc. None of these themes are necessarily original on their own, but they come together in such a great way that I think it's a great injustice to reduge the show to just "Bio-Gundam".

[BillyONare]

@anthony What is the significance of Promare?

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@ToubouBogomilist Which Muv-Luv is recommended?

[Trep]

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/SRx73FY/IMG-6905-2.png]

[anthony]

@anthony What is the significance of Promare?

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@ToubouBogomilist Which Muv-Luv is recommended?

Promare is a more optimistic take on Akira, The Fury, Carrie, Scanners, Slan, etc.

It's a movie about society's most sensitive members having so much repressed life in them that it starts to explode outwards violently, the opening sequence makes a point of demonstrating that these are socially frustrated types this is happening to.

Society is able to progress enormously beyond the initial disasters of explosive individuals, but it needs to build itself more and more around being ready to crack down on these types as soon as they emerge. And they can't stop emerging because as Lio says at the start of the movie, "the flames are a part of us, we have to burn".

The main firefighter hero Gallo is a pretty great guy, but he's also obviously a dumbass. Not in a bad way, it's just what he is. He's a brute-simple, robust kind of guy, and his look is very eager dog-like. Big puffed out chest, always smiling. In contrast Lio is extremely feline, his hairstyle makes his head look bigger than his shoulders, his dress is fancy, his body is fine and lithe rather than broad and powerful.

Gallo isn't a bad guy, but his robustness is a double-edged sword. He's insensitive, kind of socially retarded, and he's going to be one of the last ones to ever notice that something's wrong with the world. He really has to be beaten over the head with this stuff before he catches on. Again compare that to Lio, who feels the wrongness of their world so acutely that his body will react with explosive force against it whether he consciously wants to or not.

And their world is revealed to be wrong. The explosive people, the 'burnish', are actually responding to a natural force inside the planet that's trying to express itself through them, and the frustration of this force is threatening to destroy the world. Two guys know this, Prometh and Foresight. Both names that suggest knowledge, awareness, power, whatever, but one is corrupt and one isn't.

Foresight built himself up as the great champion of normalfag humanity against the threat of wild outsider weirdo burnish who might explode and kill everyone, but is eventually revealed to be a burnish himself who betrayed the rest and hides his true nature. He's an exceptionally sharp, sensitive, and gifted character, but rather than allow his innate gifts/inclinations to flourish, he builds a life around forcing himself to be normalfag of normalfags.

And rather than use his knowledge to save the world in a harmonious or natural state, his plan to survive the coming disaster is to abandon the world as they know and build a new one, part of this plan involves taking other burnish and hooking them up to machines to serve as living batteries. The image of these brilliant guys being painfully drained of life to fuel a deranged dream of a future society that will never work I think is the key to getting this movie. This is the first world as experienced by sensitive misfits.

So far we have a movie about a rogue nerd (or burnish) who suppresses his nature and enslaves the rest to chase a retarded utopian dream. Framed this way do you see how this could be about Bill Gates?

Back to the heroes, Lio and Gallo realise that they're quite different, but also that their ideas of living their best lives don't necessarily clash anywhere near as hard as what Foresight has planned, and by finding the work of Prometh (the other vision of the future their society didn't take) they learn that it's possible to save the world if the burnish lean further into their nature than they ever dared before.

While Lio and Gallo fight Foresight we go back to the image of the burnish trapped in the machine, only now rallied behind Lio they can willingly coordinate for one big burn that doesn't hurt them, or anybody else. Hierarchy, planning, and cooperation don't hurt these guys, they can peacefully work inside a greater vision, it just has to be one that agrees with their nature.

End of movie the corrupt, life-denying plans of Foresight are revealed and the big free burn harmonises the natural energies of the world and ends the apocalyptic threat without hurting anybody. The whole world is briefly engulfed in flames but nothing burns or dies.

Promare, like Attack on Titan, is vision of a fuller life that's denied to us. That, I think, is why anime keeps winning over all other popular culture. Why I think that Promare is particularly interesting is that it's so recent, and it's so optimistic. "If we set our best free from the machine we'll be fine". I don't know if I believe it, but I think it's neat someone could suggest that in our time.

[BillyONare]

@anthony thank you for that superlative review. I also love that movie, as well as TTGL and KLK.

[cats]

"It's over."
[Image: https://i.imgur.com/mkACHzE.png]

[DCreighton]

"It's over."
[Image: https://i.imgur.com/mkACHzE.png]

The direct, surface-level reading of Kill la Kill falls very much along the lines of what Anthony has said here, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

[Fudgepipe]

@anthony What is the significance of Promare?

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@ToubouBogomilist Which Muv-Luv is recommended?

[...]

The normies talking about the trendy new battle shonen are so much less embarrassing than this lmfao

[anthony]

@anthony What is the significance of Promare?

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@ToubouBogomilist Which Muv-Luv is recommended?

words

The normies talking about the trendy new battle shonen are so much less embarrassing than this lmfao

You would get a lobotomy if you thought it decreased your chances of scaring the hoes. You're already halfway there with this cringing refusal to take anything seriously. You are an embarrassment.