I’m in a funny sort of position with Shingeki no Kyoujin. The third season (or fourth cour, whatever you want to call it) was rather good. Certainly it was the best since the first cour, and arguably even better in some respects, if no doubt less exciting. Yet I seriously considered not covering the fourth season (or fifth cour, whatever…) because I know what’s coming is so vile, so offensive that I’m going to be dropping the series at some point anyway. To stay with it right up until that moment, or just end it on a positive note? Not an easy decision, to be sure.
Factoring into that is whether I want to be a part of the discussion, which will surely be an unpleasant one, when Isayama reveals the core truth of this series and in doing so his true worldview, and it turns out to be worse than even the most pessimistic among us could have imagined. The Isayama defenders will come skittering out of their holes and viciously attack anyone who disagrees with them, perform contortions that would do a circus performer proud to interpret Attack on Titan as something besides what it will so clearly have proven itself to be. Whether to speak out or to avoid that cesspit altogether will likewise be no easy decision.
But then, here we are. And for the nonce, Shingeki remains a pretty darn entertaining series. My sense is that since the last cour was the show’s most measured and- well, not thoughtful but certainly thought-driven – this one is going to be balls-to-the-wall action. I mean, we’re basically starting at very point in time and space where all that thinking has placed the narrative on the point of a major confrontation. A reckoning, even, in more ways than one. Of Eren with his past, of the story with the secrets in his basement, and of former allies now turned enemies.
First headline for me with this season premiere, though, is “Armin finally gets some respect”. That happens all too rarely in this story, where he’s one of the few characters that actually tries to see around corners rather than lower his head and ram into brick walls. And as rare as it is, I have to give Erwin (nope, still not dead) a dollop of credit. He’s still the worst commander in anime, but he is smart enough to realize Armin is smarter than he is, and that to waste that intelligence would be a(nother) act of criminal negligence on his part.
It’s one thing to see Armin’s intelligence acknowledged (I mean, duh) but quite another to see him actually put in charge of a platoon of fighters during a combat mission. Needless to say watching Armin struggle with this is way more interesting than anything involving Eren or (ROFL) Mikasa – he’s an actual character with an actual arc that’s more than simply being an expression in the plot equation. If somehow humanity does survive all this (and it’s refreshing to see Isayama in his crude way have his characters actually acknowledge it’s debatable whether they deserve to) Armin is the sort of person that should eventually be at the highest levels of leadership. And learning to deal with his own feelings of inadequacy is obviously a prerequisite to that ever happening.
It’s Armin who keeps the team from walking into the trap they suspect is waiting for them, though it ends up being sprung anyway. Because Armin spotted the warning signs and the broad outline, Reiner was forced to spring the trap before he intended – which would potentially be the only thing giving the Survey Corps the chance to survive it. It’s interesting to see such a major confrontation at the very beginning of the season – it certainly leaves a lot of time for the aftermath, both on the battlefield and off. An aftermath I’ll probably stick with, I suppose, because after persevering through some really shoddy stretches, I just can’t bring myself to drop Shingeki while it’s actually good.
Arabesque
April 29, 2019 at 5:01 pmIt’s really hard to not comment on the part that’s in store for the series in the future without spoiling, in particular the parts you noted (correctly) to be so offensive it really does take some elaborate mental gymnastics to justify. But I shall try.
(Editor’s Note: I thought long and very hard about deleting this, because to me, it does rise to the level of a spoiler. But I’ll leave it. Just be aware – if you read on, this comment will spoil events in the manga that have not happened in the anime yet. It’d be doing you a favor IMO, but it’s still a spoiler. Continue at your own risk. – Enzo)
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I had always heard the rumors about Isayama and his views prior to the twist, the usage of WWII Nazi generals and figures as inspiration for some characters. I had heard about his editor or an assistant who expressed some very right-wing views on the war, and I know that he had moments where it was very suspect where what he was preaching. I had initially dismissed them as being coincidences, after all, maybe he had just used German names that he thought was cool. We can’t really control what others do or say, and there was no direct evidence at the time that Isayama himself expressed those views. Maybe that was just an unfortunate mistake, a misunderstanding, or an incorrect reading of the series.
And then the “revelation” came about, and that infamous double page spread, and there was little doubt as to what Isayama was referencing and alluding to in his story, and the things that came after and how he had decided to frame everything and all the events that had occurred.
I will say that while I don’t think there are any stories that are taboo, it all comes down to a matter of execution. If you are going to be using such a topic, and alluding directly to events that we are still dealing with the aftermath of, and a resurgence of the same views that led to the tragedies that had occurred to minority and marginalized groups, then you better make damn sure that you nail it and not screw up.
Isayama screwed it up bad.
It is a shame, since I did think at one point that AoT was really a cool series, and did think its success was a good thing for the industry and helping it break into the international market, bridging the gap and maybe changing the content into being more diverse. Instead, it stands as a reminder of how far views in Japan about WWII is still an issue that needs to be addressed.
Simone
April 29, 2019 at 5:08 pmI’m not sure I follow here – perhaps I didn’t read the manga closely enough. I get why the general plot direction can give that feeling, but what’s the “infamous double page spread” you’re talking about? I don’t remember anything specific.
Danger
April 29, 2019 at 6:07 pmI would love to discuss your post, but I don’t think this is the place to do it. I’ll just say I think Isayama HAS been clumsy in using sensitive themes up to the current story, but don’t think he holds to those right-wing worldviews as you and many others say — there’s just too much up the current point in the story that points to the contrary.
Agree on some parts being handled clumsily though, and he definitely fetishizes (at least on a visual level) the military. I also think he’s grown and gained perspective on what kind of story he’s been wanting to tell since the beginning, and has been strengthening the humanistic core of the narrative the longer its progressed.
Simone
April 29, 2019 at 8:09 pmWell, thing is, I can still see how the [REDACTED] seems a really close metaphor for the [REDACTED] which ties in to the kind of beliefs we hear commonly from the Japanese right wing, but yeah, thematically, the whole thing pushes also in different directions.
Still, pretty impossible to discuss this without spoilers.
Derrick
April 29, 2019 at 10:13 pmcharacters being idiots are annoying enough, but in this anime it’s the whole civilization…
this is spoilery without spoiling. I hope.
Guardian Enzo
April 29, 2019 at 10:18 pmLOL, yeah, I’m cool with it.
Armin is really like a character from a whole different series.
Simone
April 29, 2019 at 11:31 pmWell, they manage to get cornered and killed in droves by slow, clumsy, stupid giants, and their best weapon to fight them is a contraption that is more likely to kill its user than the enemy (though it makes for insanely cool action scenes). I think we can easily write them off as “too dumb to live” (but then again, that’s basically a staple of every zombie apocalypse story, or zombies could never win).
Orion Taylor
April 30, 2019 at 4:14 amEnzo, I really hope you continue blogging this, even past the reveal. It is important that a coherent argument is *continually* made as to why this is propaganda and not parody, and I think you are well suited for that task. Also, your SnK posts act as forums for discussion that one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
blargnobia
April 30, 2019 at 5:37 amWell said. I imagine it’s difficult for bloggers to maintain a balance between being critical of a show, and outright disliking it. (Even if the “but if you don’t like it why are you blogging it”-crowd can’t tell the difference.)
The manga really does take a horrible turn, but I still read it every month… it’s sort of interesting looking for signs of Isayama’s deranged political ideology. (Tbh, I’m not sure if he knows his own ideology. There’s a certain ambivalence in his writing.) Anyway, Enzo, I’m glad you’re still blogging this show. It’s refreshing reading your critical commentary, even though the series is a vapid trainwreck.
Orion Taylor
April 30, 2019 at 6:11 amI’m not sure how bad I should feel about this, but I still look forward to the new chapter each month. IMO, just at a superficial level, the series got a lot more interesting in the past few years. Your/Simone’s/Enzo’s comments last season really opened my eyes, and as of late I’ve been trying to read SnK more critically instead of just consuming it as passive entertainment.
Your comment last year about SnK possibly being an apologist allegory still comes to mind when I think about the series. It seems like the sort of thing that should be more thoroughly discussed in the future, once we don’t have to worry about spoilers, which is part of why I really want the forum to be open once the anime gets to that point.
Simone
April 30, 2019 at 6:25 amMy impression at this point is simply that Isayama is in a bit of cognitive dissonance, as in, he has certain values that while pessimistic are not outright imperialistic or militaristic, but also kind of has a blind spot when it comes to Japan.
That said, I can also understand that while right now the movement for remilitarisation belongs exclusively to the nationalistic right-wing, in a world in which the USA are outright saying “fuck off, we don’t care for nobody now” and with China on the rise, someone in Japan might not feel exactly safe knowing they don’t even have a proper military. Then of course it easily degenerates into the Nippon Banzai brand of imperialism (why just defend when you can attack?), but I can see how that can build up on grounds of somewhat justified nervousness due to the major geopolitical shifts that seem to await us in the next years.
TheYepMan
April 30, 2019 at 8:24 amFrom what I could gather from posts and articles and the like, it’s more that Isayama’s beliefs align with the uyoku dantai but so far can only be inferred from the narrative of his work, as the only indication of Isayama holding those ideologies that is not the manga itself are several social media posts from an account that was believed to be his, but I’m not sure if it was proven to be so.
And then there’s the thing about confusing far-right ideology of Japan with far-right ideology of Europe or USA. One has to take into account how the Japanese populace has been educated, the amount of real information vs. the amount of propaganda they’ve been exposed to, etc. I’ve seen a lot of people sort of piling Isayama, and also fans of his work, together with the alt-right crowd (and well, there *is* considerable overlap of western anime fans (therefore AoT fans) with the alt-right, which complicates the analysis) – but we have to understand that in dealing with AoT, we’re dealing with a different kind of right-wing, and that even if Isayama isn’t outright writing ultra-right tract, he might be taking a dangerous “both sides” approach from a Japanese POV and that that’s why the discourse is in disarray and sort of dominated by AoT fans and Isayama apologists.
Though, that’s just what I’ve been able to see.
Guardian Enzo
April 30, 2019 at 8:30 amOh, it’s much more than that, as you’ll see. I would consider what’s coming to be unambiguous, outright, and very specific.
Guardian Enzo
April 30, 2019 at 8:05 amThat’s very nice of both of you to say, and I do appreciate it. I do agree that there should be voices out there calling this series and its creator out for who and what they are when the truth of that becomes inescapable. But I also know how unpleasant that conversation is going to be, and how difficult it would be to continue watching the show after that watershed moment. I suspect just doing that would make me feel filthy.
The short answer is, I don’t know yet. I’ll know when I see how I feel when the time comes.
blargnobia
May 1, 2019 at 9:31 amI understand. Saying that the conversation is going to be “unpleasant” is probably the understatement of the year. (You can see a tiny bit of that in this comment section, even though we’re trying to be vague and unspoiler-y.)
I don’t think I’d be willing to blog about a sensitive topic like SnK politics.
Red butterfly
May 1, 2019 at 11:04 amBut.. if you read the manga, you must know it’s not what happened.
tangle
April 30, 2019 at 8:06 amNote: I would feel badly deleting such a long comment, but it’s way too specific regarding stuff that hasn’t happened in the anime yet. I’ll leave it up, but I’m certainly not going to respond to the specifics of it (I’ll just say it’s circus-caliber contortionism IMO). Read at your own risk because IT HAS SPOILERS.
-GE
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Since you brought it up in the opening paragraphs, I can’t help but comment about it. Given your dislike of the series I don’t expect you to be favourable to the post-twist story but I’d like you to at least evaluate the twist with your own eyes before dropping it. I wouldn’t trust quick summaries, I’ve read some that are missing extremely basic facts of the story.
As to Isayama’s point of view and the story being right-wing propaganda, I remain unconvinced. People have taken this stance since at least the release of the anime, but it always seemed like an extremely willful reading to me. It initially rested on (1) the resemblance of Erwin and Pyxis to Rommel and Akiyama Yoshifuru (who was retired long before WWII) to argue he was glorifying both of their RL counterparts, when the only strong connection is that they’re all generals and Pyxis an alcoholic, (2) the story being about soldiers (give me a break), and (3) that titans represented foreigners to Japan, which is exactly the opposite of what ended up being the case. After the basement twist people now argue that the story is a holocaust allegory (I would say it’s not an allegory at all, see below), therefore Isayama is a Nazi, but they very rarely give the exact train of argument as to why this is the case. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given that even something like Maus got flak for its animal-head characters, so Isayama doesn’t really stand a chance. But if he is a Nazi, why do the vast majority of characters remain Eldian? Why is there only one major Marleyan character? Why does he insist on complicating the scenario with things like Reiner being half Marleyan, the Sasha/Niccolo romance, making both sides multi-ethnic, giving Eldian characters widely varying attitudes to their dilemma, etc? Isayama is not a subtle writer, but he is capable of ambiguity, and I’m sick of people attributing a simple motive to Isayama without at least showing with strong argument that it’s true. When someone like Dan Olson puts forward such a low comprehension argument as “Eren wants to sterilize all Eldians,” (not likely IMO), “therefore Isayama is a fascist,” all I can do is roll my eyes. Now, I’m not saying your reviews fit this same mold, and I think you can put forward a much stronger argumentation than the average non-fan of SNK. I can very easily ignore criticisms of SNK like “it’s walking dead with giants” because they’re shallow, but your criticisms about say Erwin are more convincing because they come with thought and argument.
In the end, that was a very long-winded way to say I’d like to hear YOUR thoughts on the matter. I don’t expect you to be swayed to loving Isayama’s writing, but you may be at least a little surprised.
The strongest argument in this vein is the Season 3 military coup executed by the protagonists, but even this is ambiguous. For one thing, it was a coup against a non-democratic government, so it’s not a right-wing victory over a liberal society, it’s just a change out of who’s running an authoritarian state. For another, while the protagonists execute the coup, they do not hold power in the new government. Zackley is the new ruler, and he’s clearly painted as a man without sound principles (to say the least). Historia is merely a figurehead and a slight check on Zackley’s power. It’s hardly an argument that “if my guys were the ones wielding absolute power, things would be great,” especially given recent manga events of the government de-stabilizing again. Levi + Hange’s torture of the military policeman is the most troubling element of the arc, but it is an committed in revenge, and in recent chapters it’s been brought up as something that’s submerged Hanje in a cutthroat world she’s not equipped for. And I never liked Levi much. Yet strangely, I almost never see this strongest argument brought up.
Now, for allegory. I argue that the post-basement is not an allegory at all, and was purposefully written to be impossible to cleanly allegorize. In the Eldia v. Marley situation you can make many possible historical comparisons, from Germans/Celts v. Romans (drawings in Grisha’s flashback), North Korea v. U.S. (Walls as isolated rogue state possessing weapons of mass destruction), Japan v. Asia (an island that once held a vast empire on the mainland), America/Europe and Japan (Eldian king’s relation to the Hizuru), and yes, Jews and Nazis (to an extent). Yet he keeps the technology level pre-WWI (extremely primitive cars, no tanks or fixed-wing aircraft), and introduces lots of ahistorical elements (Eldians as slave-army rather than extermination targets). Even the armbands people point to as the smoking gun of the Nazi allegory don’t work – Nazis used armbands to identify themselves! In Nazi Germany proper Jews were identified via the yellow star sewn on the clothes, not an armband. Yes, some Nazi-occupied states used armbands to identify Jews, but the yellow star is by far more prominent. So we have a massively contradictory “allegory”, followed by a story and characters mired in ambiguity, all to argue Isayama is a right-wing nationalist against who, exactly?
TheYepMan
April 30, 2019 at 8:32 amAaaaaand this is exactly what I was talking about in my post above.
Thing is, people are very quick to lump Isayama together with the “nazis” – and well, Japan was part of the Axis after all – but the current state of the Japanese right-wing is not the same as the neo-Nazi or the alt-right movement (albeit there *are* overlaps), and it’d be more accurate to analyze Attack on Titan from the lens of the uyoku dantai instead of the lens of the alt-right.
How similar is the message of AoT to the different right-wing ideologies in Japan? And if it does touch neo-Nazi ideologies, from what angle does it approach them, and is that angle compatible with the uyoku dantai ideology? That’s the kind of analysis we need to make instead of letting ourselves fall for either “trap” of saying “it’s alt-right” or “it’s not alt-right, therefore it’s OK”.
TheYepMan
April 30, 2019 at 8:41 amAlso I notice you mention Dan Olson. I don’t know how a comment like this could be received, and I’m glad that this username is not one known by acquaintances of mine that are very much into the left-wing YouTube video essay “clique”, but I’m gonna have to say it:
Regardless of the intentions of the aforementioned video essayists, I think it’s better if people stop paying too much attention to them.
Regardless of their approach and their intention, they’re still people, they’re still just broadcasting opinions that are based on other thinkers’ (published) opinions, and they’re far from perfect themselves (let’s not get into the absolute mess that is the discourse on, say, Harris Bomberguy, who Dan and his friends hang around with and collab a lot with).
They love to attack more alt-right-aligned content creators (which is good) but they’re very similar to them – people “selling” opinions to “patrons”. We should jump over their part of the discourse and use our own critical thinking and analytical skills to examine media, in this case, Attack on Titan.
Sadly… AoT looks bad anyway.
tangle
April 30, 2019 at 11:52 amThanks for the considered response. I don’t really have anything against internet personalities as such or sometimes outsourcing one’s thinking (we all have our moments of weakness), but it miffs me that such strong accusations are made so often based on very flimsy analysis, as if the initial spread of Grisha’s flashback and a “yikes” post can substitute for a deep argument. And I don’t even think my writing above is even that “deep”, I’m just pulling surface elements that confound the (nonspecific) argument off the top of my head.
Personally I think Isayama probably has sort of that “centrism at all costs” perspective you mentioned above, but it remains to be seen exactly how things shake out (though I’d be willing to bet money Eren does not, in fact, sterilize everyone). Personally I know nothing about right wing Japanese politics (other than the loudspeaker vans with slogans), and if there were such an analysis out there viz a viz Isayama, I’d be interested in reading it. The only English long-form articles I’ve seen worth reading on SNK are these two, and only the first one really touches on these questions (and its quite old by now).
https://whatismanga.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/25-the-amoral-logic-of-shingeki-no-kyojin/
https://www.comicsgrid.com/articles/10.16995/cg.83/
Goh
April 30, 2019 at 10:25 amGood comment man. It’s despairing reading the willful (or maybe not) misreadings and the overall confusion in here, so I felt like I had to recognize your effort. What you said should be obvious, but it sadly isn’t. One then could go further and truly give AoT the respect it deserves for having one of the most emotionally affecting stories ever told, but we are clearly far from that point.
Simone
April 30, 2019 at 6:52 pmSince we’re saying spoilers, SPOILERS.
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To me, the bit that really feels closer to the Japanese right wing is if you read Eldia as a metaphor for Japan. In that logic, it all fits: (deleted) used to be brutally imperialistic, but once defeated it was humiliated beyond all proportion to their crimes. Now they’re shunned and persecuted, surrounded by enemies who want to finally annihilate them in revenge for their past crimes, AND they used to have a ruler that was basically a puppet of the enemy and was so peace loving to be self-flagellating and suicidal, to the point of basically wanting the death of his own people because he thought they deserved it.
Now, here’s the thing; the conflict in AoT in the manga at this point is certainly rather varied and nuanced, there’s a lot of factions, no one’s truly “good” or “right”, it’s just a clusterfuck the way long histories of resentment tend to create. That part IMHO is spot on and not in itself ideologically skewed or problematic (if, again, all rather bit dark and pessimistic). Even (deleted) sterilisation plan doesn’t mean much, it’s not like the author endorses it, or thinks it’s fine.
I think the issue here is simply the fact that to set up the premise that way and establish a comparison between (deleted) (who are literally set up for genocide and on the mainland are treated like Jews in Nazi Germany) and Japanese is victimistic and paranoid. Sure, Japan doesn’t have a military, and sure, it has some reasons to feel threatened by North Korea and China and kinda alone in its position in Asia, especially with the US abdicating seemingly all foreign policy responsibilities. But it’s nowhere near THAT bad, and to push that view is not too different from those that shout “WHITE GENOCIDE!” because there’s a bit more immigration than in the past years. So basically that’s why I said I think he’s got a blind spot – his view of historical and human affairs doesn’t seem wrong in general, but he seems to just stop weighing issues properly when it comes to Japan, exaggerate the dangers and wrongs and minimise the faults. Then it’s complicated anyway because in principle “why should I be punished for the faults of my dead ancestors?” is not a wrong argument, it’s just that people tend to polarise in extremes so you get either “suck it up as apology to those whom you hurt” vs. “WE SHOULD RULE THE WORLD AGAIN”, both unreasonable positions that someone is bound to reject.
Guardian Enzo
April 30, 2019 at 7:27 pmI think I’d like to cut this off here. This is not the right venue to be having this conversation – maybe when the time comes.
Danger
May 1, 2019 at 5:55 amDamn. I missed the party.
Well, I’m eager to discuss when the show gets there, because I’m honestly at a loss when people call Isayama an imperialist sympathizer; I really want to hash this one out, because it’s rare that I find myself at such a dissonance of opinion from people I generally agree with. I think Simone put it best with him having a “blind spot”, though I’m not entirely sure I buy into E______ being a direct analogy to Japan, as
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Japan has a DIRECT analogue in this universe.
AAARGH, I’m done.
Danger
May 1, 2019 at 5:58 amSorry, my post didn’t come out as intended, and I can’t seem to edit it.
Feel free to edit/delete as you wish.
Red butterfly
May 1, 2019 at 10:59 amSorry for the mistake I will surely make!
I was really…baffled when I read your text. How is it possible to read AOT as right-wing propaganda? I really don’t get it.
I think it’s a pity to look at a complex work through the prism of a rigid ideology. You miss all the subtleties of the thoughs. AOT is much more complex than the average manga story, there is no good and bad…only people trying to survive.
I don’t know if you know in details the story that follows this arc, but if you do then you deeply misunderstood it, and if you don’t, then… you’re speaking without knowing. Which is precisely one of the theme of Isayama’s work, one of the fundamental theme even : people not knowing getting trapped, as Armin said it in this episode. You saw, moreover, how much Armin was important in this last chapter. If he’s not the character we see the most, it’s because Isayama choose to give a special place to each character in the leading trio : Mikasa is the physically strong one, Eren is the protagonist, Armin is the intellectual with ambitions others than fighting only, but also humble and quiet. And Isayama choose to make him reserved and modest so his actions can surprise the audience even better. Armin is a key character. Through him, Isayama shows that humility wins.
As for the double page you talked about, I see what is it.. and I fail to see how it proves anything about Isayama’s ideology. Any person talking about this double page to maintain AOT is right-winged is, in my eye, intellectually very deficient.
Guardian Enzo
May 1, 2019 at 11:13 am“Intellectually very deficient”. What a fascinating choice of words.
In any event, as I said, this is not the time to be having this argument so I’m cutting it off. And denial is more than a river in Africa.