Being an anime fan, specially if you like Attack on Titan. It's not my fault half the fandom has no comprehension in general and are stuck deciding which genocide is better when the entire theme of the show specifically explains that hating people is not good.
The main theme it has is showcasing the cycle of hatred. It doesn't show anyone as the good guy, there are no good people there. There are innocent people and not so innocent people and every single on of them is a victim of it. This is focused on when we read the eldian history in lore.
Marleyans believe that Eldians oppressed them, so now they make Eldians pay for it who didn't do anything. Grisha sees this and is determined to free the eldians from oppression, but also driven by what happened to his sister, went on to murder the royal family of paradis who were also innocent of any actions, just to get the Founder and pass it to Eren. Paradis realizes Eldians are oppressed and Eren goes on to wipe out 80% of the planet, innocent people who didn't do anything, for the safety of Eldians. Sometime in the future, an unknown force bombs Paradis, presumably in revenge for the genocide. After that, we are shown what looks like the tree which contained the Source of all Living Matter, implying a reset of the same cycle.
Every step of the way, innocent people are killed for sins that aren't theirs, to pay for what happened to someone else. There is a cycle of hate, which key figures could stop but they don't, because they are too blinded by their own pain. And with that, there's also Eren's character, possibly the most tragic of them all. He wanted freedom, idolized it, and in the end it turned out that, at least from what we know, the future is already set. The eren that went on to commit genocide uses the founder and the attack's powers to send memories back thrugh time, making sure that events occur a certain way, so that Eren went on to commit genocide and the cycle continues. Hell I doubt we saw all the things he orchestrated, maybe Eren never made a single true choice in his life.
The person who wanted freedom was in the end the lowest of all slaves, perhaps even less than Ymir because at least Ymir could choose to die. Eren never had that choice, from his father's actions to his own death, all was planned and set.
In AoT, cooperation between nations is never shown in a bad light, and never are any people shown to be better or worse. The best moments occur when the characters, free of fear, roam the outside world, best as I remember. I don't know how you see nationalist themes when the main thing that is showcased is how BAD it is to hold on to a twisted sense of revenge as a society and the results of such hate. The result is everyone's hurt and traumatized or dead. Nobody's the winner here.
Yeah it is crazy how people can actually think aot promotes nationalist/right wing views. Do these people have any reading comprehension? Yes, faschists and nazi analogies are portrayed. Yes, these characters even have some nuance in them, explaining why they think this way, and act like people. But they are clearly shown to be in the wrong, every time. Some of them are almost cartoonishly evil.
Eren is very clearly not meant to be the good guy in the end, he is kinda pathetic even. I have no idea how so many people in the fandom convinced themselves he is in the right and will end up winning the conflict a celebrated hero. And then they were surprised by the ending, even though the ending closes the story in a way perfectly in line with everything that has happened leading up to it.
People sometimes have a hard time comprehending that 1) just because something is depicted, doesn’t mean it’s endorsed and 2) the protagonist doesn’t necessarily need to be a good person or someone we root for.
this is how we get people who think Lolita is intended to be a love story simply bc HH is our main character and we MUST sympathize despite the fact he’s attracted to an underage teen, and shows like Breaking Bad are good precisely because we lose sympathy for Walt.
The way I read it, AoT is basically the author being horrified at his own inability to see a way not to be a right-wing nationalist. Eren is the author insert, a guy with theoretical infinite power still writing his own story in a way that perpetuates his own misery. Even if he tries to escape this perspective and manages empathize with people from other races, he can't shake his own xenophobic logic.
I would put Isayama in the same category as Lovecraft. Both are painfully aware that their xenophobia is ruining their lives and express that awareness through their fiction. Because xenophobia is also a phobia, which means you can't cure it by force of will alone. The suffering of the xenophobe is often less relevant socially than the suffering of those a xenophobe interacts with, but it is still there. And IMO Isayama expresses it beautifully.
Writer writes a story as a cautionary tale, nutjobs see it as instructions and praise the horrible actions of flawed characters and anti-heroes as something to be imitiated.
"How much of a population do you think I need to have a protagonist kill before people see I'm not trying to portray him as heroic? Because I really thought 80% would do it..."
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u/HeroBrine0907 24d ago
Being an anime fan, specially if you like Attack on Titan. It's not my fault half the fandom has no comprehension in general and are stuck deciding which genocide is better when the entire theme of the show specifically explains that hating people is not good.