EvilTaytoMan posted:

So one thing I'm not clear on, is the King shown in this chapter the one who makes anyone royal who inherits the Founding Titan become a pacifist and isolationist or was that a different king, like the one who moved the Eldians to Paradis in the first place?

Elias_Maluco posted:

This is the first King Fritz, "2000 years ago". It was one of his most recent descendants who flipped and made the pacifist vow

It is the same the way, though, since they inherit the memories of all the previous titan holders

Elias_Maluco posted:

Is also interesting that Ymir herself was never eldian, she was a slave to the eldians

edit: this is the kind of stuff that makes problematic to draw comparisons between the eldians and real life persecuted minorities. The facts we are presented are: they really did oppressed and terrorized the world, and now we know they were like this from the start

edit 2: just to be clear: Im not saying Isayama is a fascist or meant this or that. What Im saying is that post-basement reveal, there was a lot of parallels draw between their situation and the situation of historical persecuted peoples, for obvious reasons. And we know persecuted minorities are often accused of horrible past or present crimes in order to be dehumanized, for the cruelty against them to be right and justified. And with eldians it is exactly like that, except that is all true: they ancestors are really guilty of horrible crimes and they are literally not exactly human

Turin Turambar posted:

I don't think there is any particular morale judgement or ideological stance from Isayama's part. He just took the realistic approach: 2000 years ago, there weren't 'good' or 'bad' guys, the ancient times were more cruel than the modern world, and warlords forging their small kingdoms and slavery was as common as the blue sky. Of course they used the titan to conquer their neighbors and gain power, the same as any other kingdom or empire would have done in their place.

TheHan posted:

The story’s so strong on its own that you can’t help but ask “Why is it drawing parallels to these specific people and these specific events?” And it’s the one thing that hinders enjoying the series 100%. People are always gonna be extrapolating what Isayama means to say with his story since he set the pins up in the first place, especially when the best case scenario is “he’s using these elements to seem cool without considering the wider implications” and worst case is “He’s nazi”

Elias_Maluco posted:

Is also interesting that Ymir herself was never eldian, she was a slave to the eldians

edit: this is the kind of stuff that makes problematic to draw comparisons between the eldians and real life persecuted minorities. The facts we are presented are: they really did oppressed and terrorized the world, and now we know they were like this from the start

TheHan posted:

The story’s so strong on its own that you can’t help but ask “Why is it drawing parallels to these specific people and these specific events?” And it’s the one thing that hinders enjoying the series 100%. People are always gonna be extrapolating what Isayama means to say with his story since he set the pins up in the first place, especially when the best case scenario is “he’s using these elements to seem cool without considering the wider implications” and worst case is “He’s nazi”

tweet my meat posted:

I like how "is considering the wider implications and also is not a nazi" doesn't even register as a possibility for you

TheHan posted:

Those popular idioms “best case scenario” “worst case scenario” and “medium case scenario”

Conspiratiorist posted:

I don't think these mean what you think they mean.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Have you considered that, over the course of 2000 years of history, the Eldians perhaps at some points had more benevolent rulers than Fritz, and more amicable relationships with their neighbors rather than unbridled aspirations of conquest and genocide?

Kruger's point stands: of course the saintly Ymir story was a fairy tale self-aggrandizing the Eldians, but if they had indeed engaged in a 2000-year campaign of genocide towards other peoples, why are there still Marleyans alive, today?

You're being very myopic and naive, and not just in the context of the series.


lmao

TheHan posted:

Those popular idioms “best case scenario” “worst case scenario” and “medium case scenario”

TheHan posted:

It’s ok to critically view the media you consume, friend. If you got a different reading from the Eldians wearing armbands and living in ghettos being retribution for crimes that we now see were definitely committed then let’s hear it.

Schwarzwald posted:

Do you believe that the manga has adequately demonstrated that the Eldian ethnicity as a whole is jointly guilty of King Fritz's tribal war of conquest two millennia ago and that the Marleyan government is justified in forcing them to live in ghettos and in (quite literally!) dehumanizing them?

tweet my meat posted:

You described two bad scenarios, neither was a best case scenario.

Schwarzwald posted:

Do you believe that the manga has adequately demonstrated that the Eldian ethnicity as a whole is jointly guilty of King Fritz's tribal war of conquest two millennia ago and that the Marleyan government is justified in forcing them to live in ghettos and in (quite literally!) dehumanizing them?

Gantolandon posted:

The entire point of this chapter is showing that "Eldia" is an artificial construct which everyone uses however they see fit. The shifters and the "Subjects of Ymir" were neither benevolent overlords, nor tyrants who conquered the world for their benefit – because they never had any agency. They were used as tools and weapons by the Fritz family, until one of the consecutive kings felt sad and decided his slaves deserve a collective punishment for the crimes of his family. He regretted their crimes so much that he brainwashed some of his subjects and used them to set up a new order with himself still on the top and left the rest on the mercy of the people his ancestors subjugated.

Ethnicity explicitly doesn't matter here – we saw Marley being ruled by an Eldian noble family and using the Subjects of Ymir in the same way as the Eldian Empire used to. There were never any independence movement that overthrow the oppressors and established a new country, the ruling class just divided their subjects between each other. The Empire never really stopped to exist, it just started to pretend it's something else and used its shed identity to keep its slaves docile. The entire narrative with the "devil race" or "benevolent race" is false, created for the benefit of the current ruling elite.

TheHan posted:

Thing is, I don’t think it’s done a very good job saying one thing or the other, which is the problem. Isayama set up the question of “Who’s really responsible for this?” And implies both sides had a reason for what they believed. At the same time he drew a whole dang lotta parallels to Jewish people and the holocaust and once you’re there you can’t really both sides that. Pinning the whole thing on one guy is marginally better but still doesn’t mesh with the real world parallels made, which is what makes me assume he’s using imagery without considering the wider implications, rather than actively malicious.

Dias posted:

Eeehh, is it "both sidesism" tho? I think some of the things that are pretty clearly portrayed by the last few chapters are that the Children of Ymir are not to blame for what Eldia has done, their persecution by Marley is NOT justified and that Eren doesn't buy into either "peaceful genocide" or Ymir supremacy. IMHO, any reading that says the subtext implies any of those things is completely ignoring the text, and isn't really worth engaging anyway;

TheHan posted:

Depiction isn’t the problem, it’s why draw parallels to the Jewish at all? This is a fictional story about fictional people in a fictional world but for some reason he threw in this specific real world thing.

Viridiant posted:

No one in this thread is saying that Isayama is a fascist who supports persecution of the jews, but we are saying that he's doing a clumsy job of distancing his narrative from those views. I've spent the last couple years telling people "No of course it's nonsense that AoT supports nazi ideology" and this reveal is going to make doing that harder.

Elias_Maluco posted:

Considering that each new king inherits the wishes and memories of all previous kings through the Founder titan, I find that unlikely. More likely is what Chameleon said above: guilt building up through generations of kings doing terrible things finally hitting the point where the king flips and makes a vow to stop all that

Schwarzwald posted:

"Who's really responsible for this" is the wrong question to ask. The atrocities in Attack on Titan are shown to be the result of generations and generations of systemic problems compounding on each other. There is not single person or people who are "really responsible," no one could possibly be held accountable for that. Even King Fritz is presented as an unexceptional tyrant, like so many in history. He did not invent tribalism, slavery, or ghettoization*. There's nothing unique about him other than being in the right place at the right time.

Moreover, I think the manga, rather than setting up that question, is quite critical of it. The character who thinks the right thing to do is to discover the person really responsible is Gabi. She's a hurt child with a gun.

* (What these things have in common is that they are dehumanizing. The actual solution, according to the manga, is to recognize each other as people, like Eren does with Ymir.)

Turin Turambar posted:

Because the ghetto image was powerful and it fit the story very well.


I mean, now you can't use the concept of ghetto and oppressed people because in real life there has been ghettos and oppressed people? Seems crazy to me.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Conspiratiorist posted:

Basically TheHan wishes the Eldians had been black so they didn't need armbands.

Viridiant posted:

For a while I've thought a good reveal would be if actually anyone could become a Titan once injected, Marley just says that only Eldians can become Titans to cement the imagery of them as monsters.

The definition of what an "Eldian" is was made more questionable by this chapter.

Viridiant posted:

Depiction does not equal endorsement but creators do need to take care in how they portray certain things. Even the most blatantly obvious "this thing is bad" can be taken as the opposite depending on how it's presented. A good example would be neo nazis loving loving the imagery in American History X and how "cool" it makes pre-reformed Edward Norton look. This reveal does make me worry because it doesn't do a very good job of making the Eldians' persecution look unjustified from the point of view of someone who would buy into that in the first place. (I am NOT this person)

This falls into the same trap of "both sidesism" that Bishock Infinite did. (Vague spoilers for Bioshock Infinite) "Yes, this group of people are being unjustly persecuted, but are they not also capable of horrible things? REALLY MAKES YOU THINK, DOESN'T IT?"

Granted, this is doing a bit better of a job of that than Bishock Infinite did.

No one in this thread is saying that Isayama is a fascist who supports persecution of the jews, but we are saying that he's doing a clumsy job of distancing his narrative from those views. I've spent the last couple years telling people "No of course it's nonsense that AoT supports nazi ideology" and this reveal is going to make doing that harder.