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IShallRiseAgain posted:Did you actually read the manga or are you basing it on the OP? I think the first few colorized pages look so bad is because they had a bad colorist. Its the only explanation I can come up with for why they look so terrible It looks like a doujin half the time. Often the action will distract from the actual drawings, but it is definitely mostly made up of that rough organic style many authors have when they start out, only to be streamlined into something more consistent but also less "personal". In ten volumes Shingeki no Kyojin will probably look quite a bit like a cross between FMA and a less-inky Bleach.
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Jun 3, 2011 02:56
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I must say that I really enjoy how this manga sets up and then delivers exposition and explanations for how things are/why they are that way. Spoilered just to be safe; The neck-cut neatly sets up the position of the "pilot", but what really blew me away was the look of the 50m giant, (all muscle and sinew, no skin) and its instantaneous "disappearance", later being explained by size/appearance of giants being directly related to the mental and physical state of the one who "summons" it. Eren overextends himself at one point and only manages half a skeleton that decomposes within seconds when he relinquishes control. That said, this could turn out to be a bore if they don't engage with the 50m giant being another conscious agent with an agenda fairly soon. It would be neat if this was really just a fantasy examination of a sci-fi idea. The wealthy suspend themselves in an artificial reality as the world goes to poo poo around them; their predation on the poor taking on an absurd brutality as the "put human in me" protocols of their perfect biological cocoon-machines go haywire. Strabo4 posted:After reading Blame! and Biomega I don't give a gently caress how a manga looks anymore, its all about the story and characters.  This made you not care about art anymore? Alright. 
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Jun 4, 2011 16:05
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That translation is new, at least to me. "Yomiru" - so I guess it's not Ymir, which would be "yumiru", but rather Yomiel? One of the leaders of the fallen angels described in the Book of Enoch, who took human wives and fathered giants that ate people.
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Sep 15, 2011 16:43
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Kusaru posted:Welp, that'll teach me to trust anyone translating Giants to not be crushingly incompetent in the most astounding ways. 
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Sep 15, 2011 18:00
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DrSunshine posted:That's a silly name, and sounds incredibly, unbelievably, more Engrishy than "Advance of the Titans". well,  it's always been the english title
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Oct 19, 2011 17:10
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Squidster posted:Well, that certainly is the most awful and horrifying Titan design we've seen yet. I was actually rather impressed Isayama managed to do away with the fallout of the last plot event in a timely manner. I fully expected a three-chapter snorefest of desperate soldiers and downtrodden civilians before things would get moving again.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:27
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Berserk is very deliberately paced for the volume releases and absolutely nails it. Attack on Titan is either less focused on that, or the author is not quite as good at it as one of the masters of the medium. v v
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Apr 12, 2016 10:49
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I agree that it is good that it ended, because it is bad.
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Jul 10, 2016 07:45
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lmao this manga
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Sep 6, 2016 11:06
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The best way to view them is to pay Crunchyroll.
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Sep 19, 2016 17:29
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AoT has always been bad but at least it had the decency to often be inadvertently funny in its edgelordiness. There is some extreme comedy in the final chapter but it doesn't land -- a fitting end, I suppose.
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Apr 9, 2021 11:33
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Schwarzwald posted:https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvpj4/everyone-loves-attack-on-titan-so-why-does-everyone-hate-attack-on-titan Considering the ending (and to be frank much of what came before it) I am willing to give Isayama the benefit of the doubt - he may simply not make good choices and have a lot of unexamined ideas that he brings into the work. Those ideas add up to a fundamentally fascist worldview that is equally insufficiently examined, when considered from any angle other than speculation about authorial intent.
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Apr 24, 2021 00:33
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"its not fascist! its not fascist!!", i continue to insist as the protagonist dying a hero is gently reprimanded for his noble sacrifice of global genocide that paves the way for hypermilitarist ethno-states which will surely secure lasting world peace and transform into a corn cob Light trolling aside, I am interested to hear about the strong anti-fascist themes that not only balance out but outweigh the manga's deliberately fascist aesthetic and plot elements, because I must have missed (or more likely forgotten) most of it.
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Apr 24, 2021 16:05
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YF-23 posted:This is in spite of the series containing what I perceive as a decidedly fascist subtext and worldview. It's this. Zeke and Eren's ideological conflict boiling down to different flavors of genocide, the "good guys" ultimately triumphing through Mikasa's sublimation of her love into violence, the necessity of struggle - it's all presented through a fascist lens, and the "hopeful" note at the end rings hollow because in AoT's world force is the only thing that ultimately matters. It doesn't go out of its way to say "Hitler is good actually" (except for when it does), it just says "Hitler is" and presents no meaningful contrast, much less an alternative.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:17
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GimmickMan posted:In 1984 the Ingsoc party is so firmly entrenched in power and fascism is so ingrained into society that it is impossible to change. The story doesn't present a realistic way to change society for the better and the main character decides group-think is more important than individuality. At the end of the book, Winston Smith declares that he loves Big Brother before killing himself. I mean, 1984 primarily deals with the struggle under, if not against, fascism (even if ultimately unsuccessful) and the tension between the fascist world and the pre-fascist world, whereas AoT's plot is a series of reinforcing fascist actions in a broadly fascist context. But I'm sure they're directly equivalent anyway.
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Apr 26, 2021 12:45
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Do we know if the Mist/GotG inspiration change is separate from the earlier, bleaker end/delayed end due to the property's popularity change? Because I bet the issue of Isayama incorrectly assessing his storytelling chops and getting in over his head is more due to the latter change. Not that I have any faith an earlier and bleaker end would have been objectively good, but it probably wouldn't have been... this.
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Apr 29, 2021 08:07
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starting to think the guy who started going in real hard on holocaust imagery halfway through his "big zombies" plot might not be the sharpest storyteller in the shed
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May 12, 2021 18:12
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While I doubt Isayama is heavily involved with the anime adaptation, it's not unusual for manga authors to be. Some even write scripts for episodes. Regardless, the notion that the anime would a) meaningfully change the ending and b) make it not bad, is patently absurd. There is exactly no reason to believe this.
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May 12, 2021 20:36
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What's more likely: a successful author willfully nuking his work along with fan esteem and goodwill — due to editorial interference / [undefined reason] — or the author simply not telling the story you thought he was telling, with less skill than you thought he had?
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May 13, 2021 10:25
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Asuron posted:The first? I do not understand where this faith in the guy who thought it was a good idea to introduce Jewish ghettoes (but the Jews are Mindless or Genocidal Monsters, Ethnically) comes from. He can draw an action scene and write overly convoluted "actually I am the one standing behind you" twists, but nearly all themes and messaging hinged on the ending which, in turn, went into uncharted territories that he very visibly did not have the finesse required to successfully navigate.
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May 13, 2021 13:09
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I think that's a fair assessment, but I genuinely don't understand how there would be any good faith left. Nevermind to the point of inventing conspiracy theories about the production of the thing. I am curious.
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May 13, 2021 13:43
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Conspiratiorist posted:"Why, in his last moments, is Armin putting his dying best friend at ease rather than just telling him to gently caress off for all the trouble he caused?" Come the gently caress on. This is not what happens though. Armin remembers after Eren's death but the conversation happens before then, in the middle of an ongoing global genocide. Why is Armin putting him at ease?
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May 15, 2021 21:40
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Eh, you mean well but I do think accepting and normalizing the levels of paranoia seen in this thread and by extension the equivocation of "I didn't like this" with "this is incorrect, wrong, possibly criminal" absolutely is hurting media literacy and discourse in a broader sense.
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May 16, 2021 21:06
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chiasaur11 posted:Sounds simple. Not having read the additional pages, Occam's razor would dictate that the author is aware that he wrote himself into a bad ending. The idea that his editors would let him set the exact day and date for the end of his absurdly popular manga, only to freak out at the last second and force him to write a deliberately-bad ending that is somehow still consistent with what came before (especially considering the limited window he had given himself) — it seems nonsensical.
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May 16, 2021 21:37
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The additions definitely position cycles of violence as inevitable and inextricable from the human condition, retroactively casting the holocaust imagery not as a monstrous aberration but expected and normal. Truly 仕様が無い Not that that is a point a work isn't allowed to make, but lol at claiming it's not handled poorly or doesn't represent a fundamentally fascist worldview
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May 18, 2021 22:16
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Bifauxnen posted:So the series feels more like a Rorschach test, where one person can look at the Survey Corps shaped blob and see that stuff I wrote about "the heroism of dedicating your life to fighting a terrifying threat, even against impossible-seeming odds", while another person sees "glorification of militarism". Even I am getting tired of sounding like a broken record here, but it feels inaccurate to call it a collection of deliberately meaningless but evocative splashes of ink when there's the whole, you know, unvarnished portrayal of Jewish ghettoes circa the holocaust in there. In a story that climaxes in a global genocide that leaves central characters mildly conflicted. We can debate the politics all we like but it's incredibly poorly written, and I am convinced that many of the finer points people appreciated about Attack on Titan were either flukes, completely unintentional, or simple misunderstandings.
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May 19, 2021 18:09
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Schwarzwald posted:Isayama Hajime was absolutely over his head, but we're still talking about seven to ten years of "happy accidents" depending on when you think the manga went bad. Just because there are several points where the parodically grimdark zombie mech story jumped off a cliff -- that doesn't mean it was all that brilliantly conceived to begin with. Some parts were certainly functional at first (but even the basic hook of the ontological mystery of the titans is eventually soured by the centipede being whatever and Ymir's story having an absolutely insane resolution. Even ignoring the whole ethnic bioweapon thing).
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Jun 8, 2021 07:22
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Conspiratiorist posted:I have no problems with how Armin handled the situation. Regardless of his actions this was his lifelong friend he was dealing with, who was essentially sharing his dying words, and one of Armin's traits consistently portrayed throughout the story was his ability to compartmentalize things. One of several problems with the "Armin was humoring his dying friend" take is that the sequence is a flashback, remembered after the fact. Thousands were presumably dying during that conversation and Armin's response was "aw geez buddy you do you." That's not a character compartmentalizing or whatever -- that, and the rest of the ending, is disaster-tier writing that can absolutely be read as espousing a fundamentally fascist worldview, because the alternative is the author not dropping the ball so much as slam dunking it straight through the floor. For the record I'm in the "incompetent writer with some unfortunate unexamined politics" camp. Who ended up producing a pretty fashy work.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:46
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Are we really saying "AoT having fascist vibes is just a bad faith read" on the same page as tweets about conservatives appropriating imagery from the anime to show the murder of political opponents, and Judenstern-analogue merch being pulled?
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Nov 17, 2021 08:18
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I Love Annie May posted:I mean if you're so deadset on believing that AoT is superfascist and if you like it you agree with Isayama's fascist views, then it's fine. You can go ahead and spread misinfo all over the internet, but at least spare us this pity party where you go "am i the only sane person in this room?" when the whole world agrees with you on AoT. Two things here: Are the tweets fake or do they contain misinformation? Genuine question. Secondly, liking AoT does not make you a fascist (much like enjoying any kind of superhero comic does not make you a fascist), but by that same token, enjoying something does not preclude that thing from espousing a kinda fascist worldview. Ibram Gaunt posted:I think people are saying it's bad faith when the basis of the "it's actually fascist and isayama loves to kill jews" narrative comes from a disinformation campaign spread by lovely gaming journalists, OP. That's fair, I have no real recollection of the article in question. That Isayama is a poor author and likely (but not definitively) harbors some questionable ideas that bleed into his work is supported by the property itself (and arguably by how... politicians read and use it  ).
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Nov 17, 2021 14:46
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Paper Lion posted:if i were writing a wildly popular multimillion dollar media franchise spawning manga, i would simply research real life elements of my story before inserting them and publishing it I was going to say a thing but this is better put. Anyway, AoT is pretty fascist as an end product in both text and subtext (be that due to the death or incompetence of the author) and that this thread goes into a tailspin whenever this fact is brought up is a damning indictment of media literacy and analysis or whatever. The fact that you enjoy something shouldn't stop you from engaging with its themes.
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Nov 18, 2021 11:32
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Asuron posted:Again it’s this. It’s the same posters saying the same thing and at this point it’s clearly bait to argue a point they know is incorrect. This is me and I genuinely don't know that the point is incorrect. At this point I'm assuming many feel attacked because they think a work they enjoy espousing a fascist perspective is a moral indictment of them as people, but it is not. Nor does authorial intent factor into it, it is what it is. I am, again, genuinely curious about how AoT can, just as easily and with just as much good faith, be critically read as not espousing a fundamentally fascist worldview. Let's skip past the selective glorification of the military and its political strongmen, the realization of real-life fascist propaganda casting ghettoed minorities as being simultaneously superhuman monsters and weak victims-in-waiting, the preoccupation with race and royalty, the portrayal of peaceniks as naïve failures, et cetera, and go straight for the conclusion. The protagonist, driven to genocide, crumbles and leaves his work incomplete. He gets a pat on the back from his buddy, and the cycle of war continues over presumably hundreds of years — either because the protagonist didn't genocide hard enough, or because conflict is inevitable. (If there is a third reading please enlighten me, my impression is that AoT has dismantled most other perspectives over the course of its run.) Both options are pretty solidly Ur-Fascistic, so that's what we're left with: mostly-fascist action in a world operating on mostly-fascist principles. Fascism isn't necessarily "war and oppression is good," but frequently "war and oppression is inevitable." The latter observation can be made in a vacuum and not be fascist in and of itself, but AoT exists within the context of the rest of AoT. Is it a call to arms to right-wing extremists and proof positive that its author is a nazi? No. Is it propaganda? Probably not intended as such. Is it fascist? Yes. If there's a way to epically destroy this reading with facts and logic* I suppose I will soon be made aware that the aforementioned argued point is incorrect after all. Until then AoT will continue to be a pretty singular thing to me — I can't say I like it per se, but it certainly went places: you won't catch me ontological ideology-posting in the Naruto thread. * without dipping into isolated events not supported by the themes of the work or appealing to authorial intent or circumstance, I should say.
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Nov 25, 2021 15:06
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UnderFreddy posted:even if anyone replied to you with their disagreements on the subject, youd just dip out of the thread until someone brings up the subject again, for you piss out this opinion. Just like every other time. It's true that few actually engage, and I engage with even fewer in turn. If enough people say nuh-uh loudly and defensively enough maybe I'll lose interest for good, eventually.
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Nov 25, 2021 16:06
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Schwarzwald posted:"Conflict is inevitable" is not Ur-Fascistic. That's an axiom of basically every ideology outside of weird eschatological cults and End of History liberalism that even Fukuyama doesn't believe. To take this in reverse order, I don't think I've called the manga pro-fascist (but there's probably a careless post in this thread that says otherwise), just fascist. If I'm coming across as equating portrayal with endorsement then I'll try to do better, that is not my view. What AoT does at almost every turn is present violent action as, if not the only option, then at least only viable option — it's far from alone in this, but it conspicuously fails to present any kind of meaningful and consistent counter-thesis, which is actually deeply impressive considering the protagonist becomes the nominal villain. To be perfectly clear I am not demanding a message from AoT, just recognizing that it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and insisting that it is not a duck (or that child soldiers are a bad thing) is not supported by the thrust of the narrative. The author's complete capitulation in lieu of taking a stand is interesting and provocative, if not for the reasons he intended. To move further back, yeah that's my bad. I wasn't interested in relitigating those points and phrased myself poorly. Don't have much to say about the first point other than that an idea can exist across multiple schools of thought, and is of varying importance to those schools. EDIT: Maybe the question I really want answered is this: if not "fascist," what would be more accurate to call a work that depicts fascism, has essentially all sides in the conflict embrace genocide as necessary and justified with only minor disagreements on scale, and engages with overtly non-fascist ideas only in an effort to dismiss or dismantle them? LordMune fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Nov 25, 2021 |
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Nov 25, 2021 19:33
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GimmickMan posted:You assume that media can have only one objective reading, which always supercedes the author's intent. Thanks for this post! It's good, and I regret not being able to give it the detailed reply it deserves, right now. To address my place in it, you're probably right in that I'm coming across as too... absolutist. I don't think my reading is necessarily the only valid one, but I do think it requires significantly less guesswork about authorial intent and so on; it irks me to see this thread reflexively dismiss it as invalid — or even stupid or ill-intentioned. More than anything that is probably why I keep coming back to it — maybe calling people "media illiterate" over it is a bit harsh, but I'm not sure what else to call that reflexive dismissal. Pththya-lyi posted:I typed out a whole effortpost about how I've never seen anybody condemn the Avengers films as eco-fascism despite their failure to refute Thanos' Snap plan on any practical grounds, and isn't that interesting how the franchise most moviegoers seem to love gets a pass? But I don't want to waste my energy anymore I dunno, I've seen them condemned for a variety of reasons. Not to mention that superheroes — ubermensch — as a fascist concept has been thoroughly explored and is hardly controversial today.  Conspiratiorist posted:sorry, not interested in engaging at depth with someone who checked out from the work for half a decade, only coming back after smelling blood in the water to troll by needling people about "why, exactly" they didn't think it was all always bad That's ok.
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Nov 25, 2021 20:18
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Schwarzwald posted:As soon as the larger conflict is revealed, the story almost exclusively follows on the group of people opposing genocide, and who at several points engage with and dismantle fascist ideas. That's Gabi's entire character arc. Well, I'm glad Gabi had her arc, but it ends up a footnote because it's not something the story carries forward (ultimately opting for quasi-reconciliation between genocide opponents and genocider).
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Nov 25, 2021 21:08
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Eej posted:Isn't the world of Naruto technically a bunch of countries governed/protected by hidden soldier villages (of every age) holding an uneasy peace by each holding weapons of mass destruction pointed at each other and the main characters spend the entire story protecting this status quo? Many fantasy stories rely on backdrops that, when brought even slightly close to modern political ideas and structures, become at least proto-fascist because e.g. fascist ideas of strength and control are sort of medieval (read: adjacent to popular perception of various medieval systems, if not the reality). This arguably flies under the radar in Naruto in favor of heated rivalries and redemption arcs, while AoT surfaces its political struggle in an explicitly modern context, which imo goes badly awry when overlaid with manga tropes.
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Nov 26, 2021 12:28
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The author is dead for a reason, man.
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Nov 28, 2021 14:48
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Arbite posted:Well let me ask it as a question to the thread: If Eren's genocide had been complete and the epilogue had still shown the bombing a century later, would that have been better? I suppose it would have conclusively put the lie to Eren's concept of peace and actually supported the idea that the story's primary message is about the tragic cycle of violence, which the current ending only does by virtue of reader expectation and goodwill. EDIT: It would still have been bad. LordMune fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 10:09
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Man, what a page. We like to talk about the shoddy first translation, but accounting for differences in sentence structure it sure does pretty much say "thank you for becoming a mass murderer for our sake." The follow-up of "I swear I won't let this misstep be for naught" is a pretty weak condemnation (if it can be called that) in light of... everything Armin is supposed to stand for at that point.
LordMune fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 13, 2022 |
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Jan 13, 2022 23:30
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