@@FDSignifire Sure, sort of. He technically didn't go back in time, but I'm sure you know that and it'd just be semantics. My point was, he didn't shape the future. To me, at least, that line implies that he has way more control of his situation than he actually does. He needed the founder and manipulated past inheritors of the attack titan to get it, cool. But the question you should be asking is, why did he need the founder?
@@FDSignifire I will say, I didn't read the manga, but I am caught up with the anime. So, if there is some big revelation right at the end that changes the entire perspective on this point, then I've yet to see it. So, I could be wrong here, but unless that is the case, he actually did not really have a choice. It was either rumbling or lay down and die like the royal family wanted.
@@FDSignifire It seems like you somehow missed the fact that Eren had future sight, and wanted a specific "ending" of this never-ending conflict while keeping his friends and loved ones as safe as possible. The actual, factual, LITERAL text of the friggin story is that Eren can see the future, and just like Dr. Strange in Infinity War, sees ONE path to an ending where his friends are safe. So he takes it. Even if he knows it makes him the villain. It's literally a God Emperor of Dune/Code Geass ending, how is this missed on you?
One time I told my therapist I really related to this character from an anime I just finished, that the characters name was Rei and asked if theyd seen Evangelion. Their response was to silently turn and point to a figurette of Rei
I feel like Vinland Saga is a great alternative to Eren's message. It's also about a young boy who experiences trauma, uses it as his core motivation, and then gets his revenge on the world through violence. It's also about this same boy realizing that vengeance didn't really satisfy him, and having to grow up into a person who is actively seeking something better and healthier. It's so good, I really recommend it!
Well considering Erens original message was thrown away and this psuedo code geas trash was slapped on and Vinland stuck to its own guns and original intent... yeah of course its better
For me, Shinji from Evangelion was a really important character. He embodied a lot of the parts of myself I hated, and seeing him repeatedly learn to love himself flaws-and-all was cathartic AF to see. That combined with the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion's creator Hideaki Anno genuinely helped save my life a few years back, hearing stories of people in a similar, if not worse place pull through it all and come out ok
I watched the Evangelion Rebuild movies and I was left crying by the end of it. They broke me and made me rethink what I’m doing with my life and what direction I’m going in. Evangelion is the first media I have ever seen that truly brought me to tears and made me rethink my life. I share your experience with Shinji. I related with him on a deeply personally level because I have the same personal issues he does (running away from my problems, indulging in escapism, feeling worthless , isolating myself from other people).
The fact that Hideaki Ano was dealing with a horrible depression and created Evangelion as his way to get therapy explains a lot of those messages. That's an amazing anime and I love it
Having just finished watching Attack on Titan, there's something to the idea of Eren having a choice that I think is getting overlooked. From the moment he's touched by Historia, and has the memories of previous titans awoken in him, he starts heading down this deterministic path (or rather was always on it) that reflects the author's very cynical and bitter perspective towards people in general. Eren had a choice as much as anyone in the series, that is to say, no one really has a choice. People will find ways to be shitty to one another, and cause enormous pain and suffering. That's no meant to absolve him. He's obviously the villain in the series and not some stoic loner serving a higher purpose. He's a monster, he's aware of that, and he claims he's powerless to change that. Whether that's true or not is less disturbing to me than how Eren isn't particularly special, and therefore seems like a commentary on what it means to just be an average guy in the world, and how that more broadly means humanity is generally pretty bad. This series is defined by death so starkly that, especially in the earlier parts, people are constantly trying to find value in their death. One of the first things we see is the Scouts returning from a mission, and when the leader is asked by a grieving mother if her son's death meant anything, he tells it was meaningless. From there we get millions of deaths, none of it meaning anything as humanity never learns the lesson and continues to find reasons to kill one another. Eren Yaeger is just one link on that very long chain, and even him witnessing that opening scene doesn't teach him anything. Eren is someone who is trying to be special, realizing he isn't, and then going on to commit atrocities because everyone mistakenly believed he was the special key to a better future. I get the impression that Isayama doesn't care for people. Or maybe society in general. And it's one of the more grim anime I've watched in a while. Anyway, I say all that to instead offer another alternative to Attack on Titan that has a more positive depiction of breaking free from the cycle of violence. Vinland Saga is an absolute gem, and for my tastes something preferable to Berserk. It isn't quite so depressing and moody, and deals with a lead character healing in a way that not only looks inward, but also outward.
I very much agree with your analysis. Isayama himself had a very interesting answer to the question of whether Eren has a choice. He says that when he started writing the manga he had a plan for how it would end. As he grew older and more experienced his worldview changed, but he still felt bound to the original plan he had. He was in charge of the story, but didn't feel like he had the power to change its direction. Eren probably did have a choice, but he felt like he was on a path he couldn't turn away from, so he kept moving forward without looking back. You mention you think Isayama doesn't care for people or society, but I think that is only a partial analysis. A major theme in the story is "the world is cruel, but also beautiful", which is examplified in the two main characters of Eren and Armin. Eren is someone who sees the world as cruel and believes it is kill or be killed, whereas Armin always tries to see the best in everyone and find compromises. He is someone who can find value in simply existing. I also think that is a main message of the story, examplified in the final conversation between Armin and Zeke about how life isn't just about survival and continuing the species. It is the small meaningless moments that truly give life value
I actually think that Isayama has started to care a lot about people and that’s why he apologized for the (manga) ending and cried about it. The story is very much his allegory for his own personal growth and while he couldn’t change the pessimistic ending he originally decided on, the way he portrayed the journey to that ending shows an increasingly optimistic view. It also explains why it’s so messily written. I think it’s perfectly fine to criticize AoT for this messiness but to oversimplify the message as “fascist” is ignoring a lot the themes present
Attack on Titan is not one of the more grim anime that exist, and reading incorrectly into a work doesn't give you carte-blanche to suddenly start conjecture about the author's psyche for which you have no real knowledge of. Cue erroneous belief of Junji Ito being some macabre or disturbed individual on the basis of his works along that same line of logic. If your takeaway from AoT was "Eren is just a normal guy and so all the bad things he does are emblematic of the author's views on how normal guys act" then you probably just glossed over all the chapters without reading the boxes with words in them, or maybe you didn't even read the manga at all and just read a Wikipedia summary. The entire ending of AoT depicts Eren as the exceptional, albeit mostly unwitting, mastermind behind the entire series, villainously pitted against the heroic band of ACTUAL everymen from various countries and backgrounds teaming up to defeat him and his ideology or mindset. Did you just stop reading at one point? Are we just going to pretend like Eren didn't lose? That entire band of protagonists is just invisible to you, that whole part where, uh, they win because they're the good guys is completely lost on you so that you can read your own delusional authorial endorsement of Eren's atrocities? The sentence "none of it meaning anything as humanity never learns the lesson and continues to find reasons to kill one another." can only be uttered by somebody who read the first 75% of AoT and decided the ending was Eren's victorious genocide. He quite literally loses to a group of humanity who DID learn the lesson and, despite HAVING reasons to kill one another, rally together to defeat Eren. The earliest chronological event in the series is Ymir being chased into the forest by a pack of angry dogs, wherein she receives her Founder powers and creates the Titans. The last chronological event in the series is a child venturing into the forest, but this time accompanied by a dog, a companion. The whole story rejects the bleakness and grim you keep ascribing to it, and calls attention to a brighter, better future through cooperation, showing that humanity can overcome even the most devastating of losses. I'm not going to speak to how well it makes this point, but it does make this point. And I will not speak to how the work embodies Isayama's mindset, that is for him and him alone to opine on, and I highly doubt you have any clue what his view on humanity is given you didn't even finish (or start?) his work. As for Vinland Saga, I find your recommendation to be very telling of your own media literacy. It's a good piece, but as soon as Thorfinn magically reaches his "enlightenment", it becomes a boring piece to the point where I am no longer sure what the message of the last 30~odd chapters has been other than a very, very drawn-out effort to demonstrate how good of a good boy Thorfinn is now. It is an idealized piece of fiction that very heavy-handedly beats you over the head with its core themes of redemption and pacifism over and over again. "Look guys, Thorfinn gets abused and he doesn't fight back, pacifism good!" is a great point, but if that is the ONLY point your message has past the timeskip then I'm not sure why the series continued beyond Thorfinn's arc as a slave. I am not surprised that you would prefer a series that quite literally beats the main character to near-death with the same played-out hamfisted message over one that has the subtlety and complexity of AoT. In any case, reading authorial support into the undeniable and defeated villain of the story is definitely one of the ways to read a work, ever. Since you read Berserk, do you think that Kentaro Miura's view of humanity mirrors Griffith's actions?
I really appreciate this take. You've explained very clearly why I couldn't keep up with AOT after a certain point, just waaaay too much pessimism and death. The combination of determinism and fatalistic pessimism and like, IRL learned helplessness. There's certain people I can't be friends with because of their refusal-to-try-anything-new pessimism, and there's some fandoms I just can't soak my brain in, otherwise I get... hm, tainted is a strong word, but like, maybe infected by it. Like a virus that I then have to fight off internally to get back to full health. Yeah, that's it. Watching super-grim and pessimisitic anime, or any media for that matter, feels like eating rotten food. It's gonna fuck me up, man.
@@novakaizr Oh dang - isn't that kind super sad, then?? The author himself couldn't get out of the fatalistic 'bad ending' he had early on decided for himself... And Eren couldn't either. Not to get too philosophical about it, but I wonder if having Eren's voice in his head, as he had to keep writing the manga, I wonder if Eren dragged down the author, and kept him from writing Eren a happier ending... AOT feels more complete as a work with that background knowledge of how the author grew over time - that he himself couldn't escape the determinism of having a pre-planned ending, and not finding the power to escape it, when it probably WAS possible, but it was too scary to try... Dang. That's impactful stuff, dude.
Got my roommate into anime and she asked me "Is there any that doesn't have objectification or rape?" Rewatching my own recommendations to filter them for her was eye opening. There's a lot of anime where sexual harassment or even assault is indulgently shown, or treated like a joke. In shows for teens. Now I ask myself her question any time I watch a new show.
Becoming an adult and eventually being forced to reexamine the shows I enjoyed as a horny teenager was a really eye opening experience. There's so many shows I loved that I just can't justify anymore and don't reflect my current tastes in the slightest.
I used to be able to keep it in my head, but these days I have a spreadsheet of "So you want to get into anime?" that I can use and it's got a shit ton of "Shitty things in this anime you might forget about" so I can filter based on whoever's asking.
Tell her to watch Silver Spoon, the show is about a city boy going to an agriculture highschool, it feels very grounded and the characters are all likeable with their own personalities and motivations. The creator of Fullmetal Alchemist made this, need I say more? (DISCLAIMER: It has come to my attention that some of these shows may still have some sort of pervasive content or content that might make your friend uncomfortable, so please look into these anime at your own transgression. ) Also, regardless of genre or tone, here are some other sexual harassment-free anime as far as I recall: Kino's Journey 2003 (Let's not talk about the mediocre remake. The 2003 version is full of ambiguity about philosophy and morals, even the main character looks androgynous) Girls' Last Tour (Comfy post-apocalyptic anime with an underlying existential theme) Ascendance of a bookworm (Probably one of the few isekai anime without sexual harassment, it feels like a shoujo show but it's isekai and the mc is super cool) Monster (Great gritty suspense drama about a doctor hunting down a past patient.) Odd Taxi (Great storytelling and writing, characters are all animals and every character's story intertwines with mc.) Trigun Stampede (Recent 3d adaptation of the original story, both are great, original is slightly pervy) Basically any Studio Ghibli movie, my favourites are Porco Rosso and Howl's Moving Castle. Some things by Shinichiro Watanabe. Spy x Family (Spy with an assassin wife and a daughter with mind reading abilities.) Humanity Has Declined (Cute vibey lowkey trippy) Yuru Camp (Wholesome camping girls) Hakumei to Mikochi (Wholesome little forest girls) If they like shounen, then Hunter x Hunter, Jujustsu Kaisen, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Attack on Titan, Assasination Classroom, Dr. Stone, Jojo's Bizarre Adventures etc.) I have edited this list based on replies and fell like most anime I initially included with sexual themes have been removed. Just remember I'm just a guy trying to give some suggestions guys haha, feel free to give your opinions in the replies though.
@@tiaan7183 Some good suggestions but I would honestly caution against recommending Made in Abyss. I like the show overall but it has some extremely questionable depictions of the (underage) main female character that I found pretty icky, and definitely holds me back from recommending it to the sorts of people who would be sensitive to sexualization/objectification in anime.
@@Leap623 I guess that's fair, I honestly don't even remember anything like that, that said I watched it years ago and haven't watched the movie yet so I'll trust your judgement on the matter.
i've always loved Eren....as a character, the moment that boy started commiting war crimes i knew i couldn't root for him no more, but it was cool to witness his descent into madness
Interestingly in CHina his fans are the other kind of redpilled, they believe that Eren has showed them the only way forward is revenge against everyone on a contry-sized scale. Yep, They see fatherland China as Eren.
@@KrSaPoww what do you mean, even eren knows that hes wrong in the manga. Every single character that matters knows eren is wrong and calls him out. People who side with eren are largely antagonistic forces. The whole point of eren is that he is playing the villain to scapegoat the rest of his people, its explicitly stated he is wrong and the villain and thats the point.
@@rodo1252 no they try to make him the villain. Again this is another comment section that tells you he was evil but then what should’ve been his option? no one wants to take the approach of being the general. This is why I wish Erwin was still alive, because I think he was the most competent. He most likely would’ve took a more reasonable approach, but at the end of the day lives would have been lost in order to protect what was being attacked for no reason. Eren could also see all outcomes, so we are ignorant to that fact of what he saw for every single outcome. I would like to have think that there was a better option than the one he chose, but we don’t know.
Ah the old, "Wow, the filmic language of discussing male insecurity happens to look just like male power fantasy. Sure hope nobody misinterprets it!" problem. Cue Travis Bickle, Jordan Belfort, Arthur Fleck, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, the Driver, etc...
I'll be real, I don't even think Drive is a movie about male insecurity. I've watched most of the films mentioned and I 100% agree, *especially* with Travis and Patrick. Something a lot of people miss about Drive though, is that it's just a romance movie. Boy meets girl, boy and girl like each other, boy does everything to protect girl against the obstacles preventing them from being together. However, because it was adopted by the "white boy shooter" archetypes of dude thanks to the violence in the movie, this is *so* often forgotten. The movie itself, though, doesn't really critique the Driver or seem to see him as insecure. He's quiet throughout the movie, he's good with Irene and Benicio, he even makes friends with Standard despite his feelings for Irene and *never* tries to step on Standard's toes in regards to his relationship with Irene. He has a good relationship with his mentor figure and only really throws a tantrum when Shanon reveals that he told the mob about Irene. Idk, though, maybe I missed something but the character never really came off as a critique of male insecurity because the movie is about his romance with Irene, not really The Driver. The fact that we know so little about him I think demonstrates how he personally didn't matter to the story.
I'm convinced this is at least partially due to the actors they get to portray the characters. When you read the books, what ends up being subtext in the movies is often explicit. In the book, Bateman is explicitly a loser who doesn't command anyone's respect. That's more implicit in the movie. I think it's purposeful on the part of the directors to leave the parts out that make the main characters look like losers, and I think it's unfair to put the blame (if there is any) on the viewers for "misinterpreting" the message of the movie which is hidden to an audience which isn't familiar with the book and which (and I think this is MUCH more important) isn't A PRIORI prejudiced against the behaviour and motivations of the male characters you mention.
@@brzt4256 Oh, I certainly agree that the blame lies on the directors. If a large portion of the audience is not getting the message, it's because you didn't communicate it well enough. As you say, there's a general reluctance to make a movie that portrays it's male lead as a non-aspirational loser, combined with the men who get these parts already generally being thought of as more aspirational. There's a great scene of (possibly unintentional) irony in Fight Club, where Brad Pitt looks at a fashion model with ripped abs and says something like, "Is that what a real man looks like?" in a movie where we see him with his shirt off to expose his chiseled physique multiple times. Of course men are going to empathize and identify with these leads, often missing the subtext that they're not great people in the process. Most fiction targeted toward boys and young men is some variety of heroic power fantasy, so it tends to be our default lens for analyzing a work with a male lead. It takes some real effort to get past that and give the audience thr message, "This guy sucks, even though the movie is all about him and we're going to follow him around getting to see why he's like this, so naturally you'll build some empathy toward him. Don't be like this guy."
I know you said sorry to the femme's in the chat but there was a huge missed opportunity to highlight how anime is one of the only genres of media that portrays men being femme, queer codded and strong without being evil.
I learned a lot about my own masculinity through series like JoJo because of how it lets me view masculinity separate from societal opinions on what colors or clothes or hairstyles I wear. I am a straight cis male, but my room and wardrobe is full of pink and plush. There were lots of different factors that made me comfortable with myself, but JoJo made it COOL. (to me)
I’m so glad someone said it This is honestly probably one of the biggest reasons for anime’s popularity, and it isn’t discussed much online due to the weird homophobia and misogyny in the space
Too many people conflate protagonist with hero, and cannot separate the two, especially when there's a transition where they begin as a hero. Eren is a good character, but a monsterous person
THANK you. I was reading AoT as it came out and the number of people in the comments of the chapter where he heel-turned that couldn't grasp that he was the villain while also the protagonist was so incredibly frustrating.
Your video reminds me of something my mom always told me and my brothers -- "It is easy to be mean. It is much harder to be kind. In this way, kindness is almost never a weakness." It made me think of this when you talked about Beserk and how it is easy to be an edgelord.
To anyone who is interested in another manga with dark story with empathy at the core, but more in the form of a thriller in the vein of seven, I can also recommend Monster. It's less over the top than berserk (for one, there aren't monsters or even much blood) but it's still a story about facing evil and the choices we make in the face of it. It's a great read. for those who don't know, It's about a surgeon who finds out a child he saved grew up to be incredibly evil, and he has to leave everything behind to get to the bottom of it. It takes place in central europe shortly after the fall of the berlin wall, and it explores the legacy of authoritarianism, the trauma of war and manages to do so in a way that maintains hope in humanity without shying away from the worst.
I lead a black male community of freshmen and sophomores at the University of Connecticut. I would love for you to be a guest if not virtually for my class. Many of the topics you texted me ended up talking about from emotional IQ to nihilism. It's so much to unpack for boys transitioning into adulthood but your videos have been a great tool to share with my student!
"He was too weak not to do it, in reality he was a weak man who happens to get control of immense power". I think this is a perfect summation, and hopefully what the authors true intentions were. When I read the last chapter, this is the conclusion I walked away with. I was in a slightly different boat reading the last arc. I was off put by his actions but I was sort of waiting for the twist where this is all a ruse and he's gonna do something heroic and save the day. Then I read the last chapter and realize... oh snap, there is no real twist. Yeah he has "Reasons" in his own mind but they are weak and so is he. That's when it solidified for me he was the actual villain and had been the villain the whole time. Narratively, I've found this really interesting and warrants discussion. I like stories that aren't wrapped in a nice bow and confront themes and even highlight "bad" (as in bad guys win) endings. But I have to agree with you, watching people some how empathize and justify Eren is the wrong talking point. It's really the same kind of folks who idolize the joker. Eren and the Joker aren't to be pitied.... they are pitiful.
@fixthefernback8030 so its ok for his people to be killed and tortured and used? To be treated as sub-human? I havent seen a good answer for any of that
At 11 minutes in and, to "What are all these young boys and men looking for when they end up choosing anime?" The answer is they're looking for Yu Yu Hakusho, a story about a young boy growing despite the world not wanting to give him a chance and overcoming a man who despite being a villain was the epitome of everything the main character wanted and looked up to by realizing that the strength to never be pushed around is meaningless if he becomes incapable of loving the friends around him. It's a shame that we've become so oversaturated with harem isekai and similar such shows that it's become the thing they'll find instead.
Nah... You just see it as consumer out in the west or outside of Japan, Japan entertainment media was always filled with numerous example of average mediocre works since the beginning. You just don't see it often because only the best of the works in Japan would break through the global reach sensation before the internet era, leaving you with the feeling oh man we use to have it good! Japan only produce masterpieces, but now what.
@@adikurniawan1816 That was literally only true in the previous millennium. It's been a good couple of decades since you could know everything coming out in JP and a solid decade since you could easily access it. Don't get me wrong, there is such a thing as quality bias, where people go "things were SOOO much better back then, look at *cites extremely influential bit of media that has survived due to being really good in a sea of average tosh like we deal with nowadays*", and to some degree the same thing is true of anime. But the filtering happens by every anime watcher, not just the japanese ones. That being said, your comment has nothing to do with OP. OP cited one such anime that strongly influenced people in a positive manner, and would push people to keep watching anime. Because they look in anime for something that western media doesn't often provide.
@@frustratedsquirrel “Young boy attaining self worth and learning to love and be loved in order to punch a villain in the face really fuckin hard” fans solidarity.
@@Gamfluent It's all I need. I don't need to explain the intricacies of why someone who says the sky is purple & made of baguettes is full of shit, do I?
@@Gamfluent You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about; spouting actual nonsense. I'm genuinely not sure if you're just rage-baiting, but if not you clearly only know what you've been told by other people who don't understand Berserk. Go read it. If you already have, read it again, you missed something.
I didn't read the manga, but I think AoT pointed out clearly enough that Eren was wrong. Every character around him told him he was wrong. Armin (maybe that was Anime only) told him that Eren keeps looking so far into the future that he can't see what's right in front of him. This implies that Eren did have better options but refused to see them. Another key scene is the commander's speech during the rumbling. He talked about how it was society that created Eren as he is in the first place. During his speech, Reiner's mother realized that she was wrong for using her trauma as an excuse, too. It was mostly Eren and some soldiers who continued at that point. The problem is not the show. It's the people who don't want to understand it.
I agree, I think it's fair to view Eren negatively. But I dont think he's trash, or that he became trash in the final season. His choice to genocide the world is horrific and unforgiviable, but I dont see a whiny "weak" manchild doing that in the story, I see someone else. Someone who gave up on healing both himself and the world, rather than someone who is purely driven by his own truama and despair. Honestly, the sneako/tate comparison was miles off imo. The only real connection I see there is that Eren might be somewhat antisocial
It is only Eren who could see the future not you. If your country is being attacked for no reason, what would you do.. nothing? I don’t agree with Erens ultimate choice, but I also don’t know the choices that he was able to see. People who are saying that Eren is wrong never give their opinion on what should have been the action and the outcome from that action. Just sideline politicking.
@@niles2467 no context to your statement and also no alternative or solution you presented of course lol. Arm chair general. You act as if Eren wasn’t literally being attacked with planes flying above pardis head before the rumbling started. I have a possible alternative that would have been more feasible but you and the RU-vidr have no common sense or analysis/solution of your own that Eren could have done. Read my first comment. You of course never gave your opinion. I assume you would agree with Zeke s plan or agree with just being bombed while Marley kills 100% of your people for no reason.
This was a cathartic watch. So much discussion is happening right now about exactly what you discuss in this and I couldn't help but feel as though I was going nuts before seeing this. So many people are saying "Eren had no choice" or "what would you suggest he have done differently?" or "he had to do it to save his friends". No? Like genuinely, no. The fact that anyone could look at attempted omnicide and think that was the correct option is just really troubling. It's really scary. Thanks for making this one, you rock F.D.
@@BobWillis-tw3nx Bruh. Your comment is genocide or be genocided like the world is a video game that giving a prompt with only those two choices. I will take asisine any day over genodical apologia. There were plenty of alternatives to genocide - mutual aid, building up their own community. Even in AoT, the King who built the walls in isolation is a better strategy than killing 80% of the population and dooming the world to war that doesn't even protect his friends. Like whut.
I fell in love with Berserk as a woman who has gone through trauma because I felt the spirit of the silenced Caska as the person that I was and felt the rage and desperation of Guts as the process of trying to save myself from myself. The scenes where Guts devours himself and the people around him as the berserker deeply resonated with the part of me that was unwilling to process.
@@madiea8074proper nouns aka names do not fluctuate…her name was and has always been spelled Casca and if the OP was familiar with anything other than dubbed crap they would know that, but god forbid you ask a woman to read subtitles or a manga…LOL
what gets me the most about Eren is his first coherent, impactful idea was that everyone deserves to live free because they were born into this world. he felt so strongly about that, it was his own imprisonment that inspired the rage but he knew he had as much right as anyone else therefore this radically humanist idea made home in his heart. then he had to be booted up by the Plot Force and lose his character so that. idk itd look cool if he pulled a mysterious joker genocide ig
The general idea of a freedom-loving kid because a genocidal maniac is quite interesting. The problem is not Isayama writing a story but rather people thinking Eren is right. It's the same as people thinking Light was right. I think Lelouch from Code Geass worked better than them because he had a stronger moral compass, human bonds he cared about (mainly his sister) and was facing a greater evil. And never attempted genocide.
@@kevintanza6968 im gonna disagree on that. "freedom loving kid to genocidal maniac" is already a weak premise, its a problem if it reflects real life Genocides that happened or are still happening (with all of its political, cultural, components) and its a problem if it doesnt (instead staying in a comfortable fictional bubble). it needs to be executed well either way. and isayama just simply wasnt equipped to write that story. without even involving his alleged politics (things he shared online about ww2) its clear he just didnt approach it with the nuance it requires. the story is in shambles when you ignore the genocide part too, character arcs that are muddy as shit, laid down themes that reach nowhere, relationships blurry and shallow. its a hype monster through and through, what keeps you watching is the already established consumer mindset where youre looking for a short break to turn your mind off because thr second you sit down and try to engage with the material you cant grasp any value other than shock value.
I loved anime as a girl because it’s just so unselfconsciously sincere. It’s like watching someone’s daydreams. This is what makes the anime I love transcendent and the anime I don’t (admittedly shonen) seem “cringe”.
Calling anime weird is cringe, generalizations like that are ridiculous, especially coming from someone that hates being stereotyped. Not to say there are not really weird animes out there.
One thing I've noticed is a lot of media in this area will prevent a cruel world that is inherently unfair and have a protagonist be victim to it, but then the story makes them like the strongest person ever and the protagonist no longer has any problem with how cruel and unfair the world still is. It's inherently sending the message that the problem was not that the world is cruel but that the protagonist wasn't at the top of the food chain
In life you do have to try if you want to be more than an object blowing in the wind. That's just accurate, at least from my point of view. Granted, I know there are a lot of young adults and women who think this stuff is too toxic to enjoy.
@@JohnSmith-mc2zzhere is something self-destructive if you find yourself enslaved and you first thought is "i need to be the top slave so i don't get beaten up" instead of trying to flee the system
@@ihavenojawandimustscream4681 I think young people just want to thrive and older adults want to be free of their demons. I think the whole sigma thing is not meant to be taken literally. There are definitely lost people out there who hate themselves because of their appearance or think they need "black air force energy" to succeed and I hope this content creator is able to reach some of those people.
Id like to add onto this the Elrics from FMA. Both are young boys that experienced trauma and yet the whole way through their motivation is to make up for the mistakes they made and to do right by each other. Never once do they seek power for powers sake. In fact, not only are they blatantly offered near limitless power several times that they refuse, but Eds ultimate answer for how to fix what he did to Al is to reject his individual power entirely and instead admit that his greatest strength is the people that he cares about and that care about him.
It’s interesting that the mangaka is a woman but created so many male characters with depth. It’s rare to see good female characters in shonen unfortunately.
Ed and Al are two of my favorite characters in fiction for this reason. Like they are just genuinely good people who try their best and I love them for it.
@@mhawang8204 This is why I actively seek series with male protagonists written by a female writers. I find women write male characters I find more interesting and more relatable than yet another power fantasy.
You know that line in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie where Rocket declared "Everyone's got dead people!" to call out Drax who, I remind you, is similarly traumatized? That's the anti-Eren moment that's lived in my head for years
@@Joe-gw9wh Eren's plight was never actually about his mother's death. The final act of the series confirms and solidifies this. It was about his desire for true freedom, and the depths he'd allow himself to plunge into to get it. Mixed with the fact that, his future was decided from the moment he was born, it's no wonder he went mad and became genocidal. He was never free. He was just part of a path that was determined for him. It was he himself who sent that titan to eat his own mother, from the future, so that he'd harbor the burning hatred necessary to get him to the point he'd eventually end up at, with control over the Founder and a desire to trample the world outside the walls.
I'm suprised you perceived the rumbling to be portrayed as cool I had the complete opposite impression: it showed the horrors and the tragedy with innocent civilians like the refugee Ramzi and his little brother being trampled to death. Adding to this the background music that evoked the feeling of absolute tragedy (not that this was necessary at this sight)
the entirety of season 4 i think is like that, it's intensely depressive, the first three seasons are supposed to follow as propagandising the AUDIENCE to root for someone who the fourth season reveals in no unclear terms is a genocidal fascist. by the time eren unleashes the rumbling, he should be dead to the audience, and the cliffhanger allows the sheer weight of the tragedy he's brought about to really sit with them.
I had the same idea. It was horrific. Also as someone who remembers season one, people actually made fun of eren for crying. I never got the impression that people thought he was cool until the time skip. To me it was always Mikasa and Levi who were the cool ones.
The Rumbling is cool to those that like Eren in that way because that is Eren when “realized”, Eren as an active character, Eren being a mastermind who does the impossible and assemble everything needed for the Rumbling to happen. That is it. He looks like that cool, detached sigma character some people laud. Furthermore, for all the Rumbling is an apocalyptic event, it is still both an event that is awe-inspiring, and the outcome of of what was then understood to be a sigma character as the ultimate mastermind, even so far back as Eren Kruger’s second conversation with Grisha Yeager.
Vinland is absolutely worth it and has a pretty great anime adaptation. It matches berserk in stellar character growth and self reflection but avoids berserks earlier pitfalls and rough edges. Berserk is still my favorite in just what it meant to me and the imagery and world building but I absolutely admit Vinland Saga (and Vagabond) depict masculinity even better.
The thing is people never get past the edgy nihilistic part to see where guts ends up so they judge Berserk in its early stages anime doesn't help either 😂😂
I feel like Musashi's depiction in Vagabond fits that more. Guts isn't as outwardly edgy by the time we get to where we are now in the story, but he's still just waiting for something to go wrong, and it definitely did, lol. We'll see if he rubber bands any time soon.
I respect your opinion and I agree that Berserk is peak, but I have to apologize and hope you understand what I mean when I say that I hate it and that I don’t think anyone needs to replace eren with anyone because I think it’s essentially running away from the issue. It’s great that eren sucks. Confront it. Learn from it. Let eren’s story put things into perspective. I agree that eren’s fake machismo inspiring young men is BS, but for me that doesn’t mean that it’s a waste. If anything it opens the door to discussions that need to be had if you are to become a goddamned adult that understands people so that you can live with yourself when life confronts you with how hypocritical the foundations of society are and the contracts we make everyday in order to exist in it.
I get you. It's like you are saying that people should see this series, watch this character Eren Yeager and tell their children, "See that guy? Don't be like him. He's a failure." Because eren did fail. He failed to understand life and change his character. He failed to understand the world from the view his mother Carla used to see.
@@jyotirani8187 yes, as much as it’s great to learn from examples of where being optimistic the correct outlook, eren serves as a perfect reminder to reflect and act accordingly so that our nature doesn’t dominate our daily life and rob us of choice. Not that we should be absent an identity, far from it, but to indulge so as to forgo reason or even the wishes of our loved ones is an extreme and we need the example of what not to do. Eren’s flaws are a greater lesson than the virtues of more positive examples for young men. But I agree with signifier that the worst takeaway from this is anyone who took away the wrong message from eren and saw his behavior as a positive.
@EndorphinSauce agreed. Before the start of season 4, I used to think of eren as a character similar to thorfinn from vinland Saga. A guy who eventually lets go of his hatred and lust for revenge and decides to have an optimistic view of life. He changed dramatically during season 4, but not for the better. The problem is that he is the main character. His portrayal till season 3, at the very least, was a portrayal of a typical Shonen protagonist. But people fail to understand that he became a villain in the final part. A villain from whom you should be disgusted. People fail to understand that just because he is a main character.
I know it's not Shonen, but Fruits Basket is legitimately one of the best representations of masculinity in the Anime space. Even though the boys and men aren't the primary character, the space that these boys and men are given to go through intense social and interpersonal problems is incredible to watch. And because the arcs take the whole series, the audience gets to sit with their discomfort in relating to the deficiencies and experience the satisfaction of watching them grow. And with a fairly large sized cast, there are plenty of guys to identify with.
@@critanddam9031oh, yes, exquisite rebuttal. I now know exactly why Fruits Basket is not a great example of masculinity through your wonderful use of metaphors and comparisons. Please, do tell me more about this trash heap dumpster fire in less words this time. I too wish to feel so enlightened, free from burden of thought, unbound from the need of using words to convey thoughts and arguments.
FD Signifier telling those manchildren that they don't in fact look like Eren but instead look like Patrick Bateman might be the greatest compliment they've ever received, in their eyes.
i think eren is one of the most finely written characters in all of fiction. i also do not believe for a moment that he was ever supposed to be sympathetic after the time skip. it pains me to see so many people fully believing that what eren is doing is somehow right or justified
@@mspaintlive8995 i'm going to watch the finale in a few days. i've been hearing that he's portrayed as more sympathetic in the anime than in the manga. i'm curious to see how i feel about it btw mad respect for the kraft punk profile pic
@@mspaintlive8995you can sympathize with someone and still believe their actions are wrong. It's not mutually exclusive. I sympathize with reiner, but he massacred civilians when he broke down the wall, which was wrong and something he is responsible for. idk it's ok to have nuance when dealing with people doing horrible shit IMO.
@@ImrdIstt.SH.You heard wrong. Although Eren is portrayed somewhat sympathetically on a personal level in terms of his backstory (which was already there), the show is clearly anti-rumbling unlike the manga. Eren is a tragic villain. The changes to the Eren-Armin scene couldn't make it more clear. There are people out there who think Homelander is a protagonist. I don't think creators should be blamed for how some people will misinterpret their work. Anime handled it about as well as they could have while staying true to the source material.
Isn't the problem here media literacy and the inability to engage with subtext more than the writing in and of itself? To that extent I'd agree actually, I like that the anime ending was less subtle and provided more context as opposed to the manga because I don't want a legion of fascist 13 year olds, but implying that these kids detract from the story is like saying Andrew Tate made the Matrix into a worse movie
exactly. if people can't engage with the level of nuance and complexity of the writing that has been present throughout the whole series, why should that detract from the story itself? I think the story very clearly portrays eren's actions negatively, and if your only recourse is "he looks so cool doing it" then you dont have an argument. The story doesn't shy away from showing the horror and gruesome nature of eren's decisions, if someone comes away from the story thinking "eren is such a chad," that's on them. I'm sorry but if you have literally every other main character in the story shouting at the reader "this is bullshit" every other page and you still manage to miss the point, that's not the author's fault
If I can touch on the brief aside about the treatment of women, a lot of people say "those are just jokes, you're taking it too seriously". But manga legitimately formed how I saw sexual harassment growing up. Yes the characters react negatively to those who sexually harass, but it's treated as being on the level of bad manners. Manga sex pests still get to hang out with everyone, get continued access to their victims, and are still treated as part of the found family. I thought it was no big deal, since that's how it's treated in the media I read. Thank god someone set me straight before I hurt someone.
Agreed. It's for that same reason that I absolutely cannot stand the portrayal of characters like Mineta from My Hero Academia. The guy literally gropes several women onscreen, yet all the adults in the show just treat it like an annoyance instead of punishing him with expulsion/arrest. There is no way that a continued repeat sex offender can seriously be allowed into a school for heroes.
idk mate, that sounds like a you problem. Or, to put it in a more civil manner, I think that's something that is not a problem for many people. Hell, at the peak of the "is into anime" and "is socially daft" graph, 12 years old in my case, I felt bad for accidentally brushing the back of my hand over a friend's cousin's arse because she was coming besides me when I turned around to leave a dock. Let me reiterate: I felt bad for a mistake that she probably didn't even notice, despite at that very fucking time being HUGE into soul eater. And if you know the show, you'd know how horny it is. And if you don't, then realize it's penned by the Fire Force mangaka and now realize how horny it is, and gropey and stuff. Hell, one of the first things that happen in the story is that one of the main characters gropes his partners' breasts in frustration that they're differently-sized and iirc he's not even smacked for it AND is portrayed as really cool.
"What is means to be a person who is a man, rather than a man first." That line made me cry. It's such a simple concept, but it's really hard to contextualize when you live in a world that constantly wants you to be _the_ guy. Thank you for making these videos, FD.
With alphabet people being a thing that thought process has truly lost all meaning and value due to people valuing the title of man more than the people whom were born In to It
@@Westile For sure, historically. Though at the moment it's in a transition period where there's a bit of the opposite happening - transgender and non-binary people being overly focused on in a way that confirms gender boxes. There's still people going "you can be a guy in a pink skirt or a girl with a bald head and still be a guy/girl", but there are also so many girls that use the non-binary label to try and escape female stereotypes instead of being themselves as girls, or trans women who relate to feminine things more than physically being a woman undergoing hormone and surgery. So LGBT people can be both helpful and harmful at the same time in different ways, I guess.
@@jessy1982 (edited for conciseness) There's a problem in those situations, but queer/trans people ain't it, chief. It's prescriptiveness, lack of support for others who are considering changing their gender expression or pronouns-either to something new or something they've already tried. Those social pressures are what you want to target. When they're reduced, there'll be even fewer people transitioning due to social pressure than there already are. (Likewise with detransitioning due to social pressure.)
I watched one of Sarah Z videos recently about how shipping and character worship are the main reason why people will try to excuse their favourite characters bad behaviour. Some people have a hard time divorcing their appreciation of how compelling a character and the character’s morality.
People who misinterpret Erin are the same people who misinterpret 'Fight Club' except without the 'Fight Club' fanboy belief that "anime is for nerds LOL".
Unfortunately the landscape for shojo (girls') anime in Japan is rapidly deteriorating. Gone are the days when you could reliably expect 3 or 4 highly anticipated, well-funded, widely viewed shojo series in a season. Now each season is seeing fewer and fewer shojo releases, and those that are released have lower budgets and resources behind them. The ratio has firmly tipped in favor of shonen anime. Even the romance genre is dominated by seinen (young men's) series like Horimiya. As someone who has not watched and isn't really interested in watching most of the shonen series mentioned in this video, I feel abandoned as an anime fan. And as someone who paid for fansubbed VHS tapes back in the mid-90s, it really hurts. There was always something unique and fabulous about shojo anime, and it feels like it's being lost, bit by bit.
This as well as the constant objectifying women as fan service in anime and the pdf file propaganda japan puts out made me stop watching japanese anime for chinese. At least chinese anime is unique, and doesnt put panty shots or lolis in the anime.
@@immortaledge8830 Unfortunately I am heavily invested in the "Japanese" aspects of anime after living here for many years, but I have heard that Korea and China have been picking up a lot of slack when it comes to series for women and girls. I may have to bite the bullet one of these days.
A lot of seinen stories, like Horimiya and Bloom Into You, are actually shojo stories that categorize themselves as seinen because it's more profitable for the authors that way. the shojo label may be dying, but shojo stories arguably have a larger audience now.
This argument would hold weight up until the point where Eren see's the memories of his dad and the future of what he is about to do. Plus Levi has age and experience on his side. So i'm sorry but this is a B.S. viewpoint. Also you're not factoring the trauma Eren has to deal with being the only person on Paradis Island who can transform into the very monsters his people have been plagued by outside the other shifters who are enemies (with the exception of dark skinned Ymir), only to realise those same monsters ARE in fact his people, in conjunction with the memories of his father before coming to Paradis Island.
@@matthewaddai5336 thats also indirectly caused BY himself and symbolic for how his own spiraling conviction dooms him - and the editing in dawn of humanity seems to make it very clear which moment turned him towards hate
@@matthewaddai5336 The author himself would disagree with you, I've watched literally every interview he's ever done, he hated himself as a person up until the end of the series (right when he got married) and he used Erin as a way to express himself. Erin is not justified in his feelings, he is literally a representation of the author and his desire to see individuals "rise up" against oppression. For some reason, he doesn't like *people working together* to dismantle oppressive systems. *He specifically said he like seeing INDIVIDUALS rise up* The author said in his own words, "I've become a bit of an adult now, huh?" when he was writing Levi's backstory.
Okay so there is a theory going around that might change your view or not. It gos like this Eren is in a time loop which is proven by 121 and 138 which is shown that he has been through this before and has seen multiple outcomes but decide not go with them because it ends up with his friends suffering and him dying. So he chose this outcome of the story because he wanted to let his friends live happy lives, I doubt he cared about the rest of the island and cared more about Ramzi and the eldians living outside the wall. He probably didn’t care about wether it was right or wrong.
Attack on Titan used to be my special interest, and then Yuuri On Ice was my next one. I still wouldn't describe myself as an anime lover, more like a specific anime lover. I remember spending feverish late nights listening to the soundtrack and reading fanfiction, crying because of how deeply harrowing and haunting this story was for me. When I felt miserable, it was there to comfort me and make me feel better. I'll admit I found Eren compelling at first, but then started feeling weird after that scene where he ignores Mikasa before the battle of Trost. I think the way he treated Mikasa in general was really a turn-off for me. Even at the beginning of the anime it struck me as strange the way he treated her. I was also blown away by the fact that people kinda glossed over how unbalanced Eren was right from the beginning. Like, what 9 year old stabs two men to death like that?? But people act like he just "suddenly" turned crazy when he was like this the whole time.
Exactly, he never really changed the core of who he was. You could put his monologues from the first arc in the show and it would still fit with his actions. Eren was always like this, he just changed his trajectory onto the people that caused this
Levi even clocked Eren as a dangerous person that is useful solely because he had the Titan-shifting power and at that time you needed to have a Titan to battle a Titan.
I gotta play devil's advocate here. When asked, "Why the fuck did you murder 80% of humanity," by Armin. Eren specifically says, "Because i am an idiot who has been given immense power without the responsibility to wisely use that power." Quite frankly, it sounds like Eren was used to forewarn young men what might happen to them if they give in to despair. I think the way they showed Eren at the end of series, reverting him back to little boy of the sense, was a way to show that the strong person facade cannot and will not last forever. He admitted that he didnt actually want to commit genocidal suicide, and he wanted to live his remaining years with Mikasa, but alas a 19 year old idiot was given power he couldnt not nor should have been responsible for handling.
There's a whole big discussion to be had about authorial intent, but I think a big part of what F.D. is pointing out is that, whether it was intended this way or not by the author, Eren's portrayed in a way while undertaking his genocidal plan that makes him look *really cool*, and if there's one thing that's consistent about pop-culture fandoms its' the tendency for large segments of them to misinterpret characters looking cool doing bad stuff with them being good or praise-worthy, which is how you then end up with the contingent of people unironically saying "Eren Did Nothing Wrong, He Had No Choice". I happen to agree that contextually the intent really probably was to make Eren a cautionary tale, but unfortunately the execution made that intent too easy for a good chunk of the audience to miss, and consequently read him as the hero all along.
It also is noted that Eren had to say that in the anime as opposed to the manga, where Eren’s feelings remained for the viewer to figure out. However, it had to be spelled out because it looked like Eren’s actions were condonable or a necessary evil, because he did eventually do the Rumbling, and that means he seems like an effectual person enforcing his will, which is what those “Literally Me” people want - an effectual person who enforces their will on the world no matter what.
I love the care and support you provide to men and boys, dude. It both warms my heart and encourages me specifically. I've been going through it lately, and my sense of identity has taken a beating. I'm trying to rebuild it, and this helps.
There was a gaming video essayist youtuber that goes by KBash who speculated that the reason teenage boys are drawn to kind of edgelord protagonists defined by pain is because being a teenager is rough and it's considered weakness to ask for help, so they're drawn to characters that naturally draw sympathy without appearing weak, and that's an observation that's always stuck with me
Another view would be that those characters are chosen because they are strong or take the pain without taking much Ls or deal with conflict in a manner that seems appealing like being drawn to a role model or inspiration to see that the climb isn’t as difficult
I was disappointed that the idea of Eren being a slave to his desire for freedom was never brought up at all. I would've expected that point to at least come up as a way to signify that Eren messed up and he was in the wrong. He never reached that goal, he only achieved this delusional point where he thought he attained freedom.
Actually, that is a good point. Eren always pursued his childish version of freedom, intermixing it with the legitimate plight of the Eldians and the urgency of the Marleyans imposing genocide on the Paradisians. The reason this was never figured out is because the plight of the Paradisians, Eldians, and then the Paradisians’ genocide obscure the ugliness of Eren, to make it look like he really had to do what was necessary.
When I was young I was a big Vegeta fan. I was socially awkward and thought of myself as dark and brooding, so an angry, edgy character like Vegeta joining the good guys appealed to me. Now I’m an adult and I’ve mellowed out and now I just find Goku’s pure enthusiasm for the things he loves to be much more appealing and emulatable. He’s just a big dumb guy who loves to train and loves his family and friends. And he achieves greatness and the ability to protect the ones he loves through his own hard work and passion.
It is so obvious come early Buu saga that Vegeta thinks he needs to be an evil person to be a realized, powerful person because under Frieza’s command he was either a cruel, realized warrior or he was dead.
It's a shorthand for explaining that there was no peaceful outcome for the scenario that was put forward in this series and Eren, as a character, was never going to let his people get killed off or just die out. Every arc gave us his answer to those solutions/ outcomes. So when what are basically the Axis powers gave him a "kill or be killed" ultimatum, we know what he's going to choose. Especially since his ability gives him 100% accurate predictions of the future's outcome. Anyone who watches AoT can clearly see it's not about morality and neither is its pessimistic world. And while it's certainly a more entertaining story & unique for it, I don't know why we're pretending that anyone is using it as a moral parable. The WWII aesthetics aren't just for show here. Hilter is literally the leader of Marley and going to wipe them out. But in this case, there are no Allied nations. This story and world bent over backwards to make a peaceful outcome impossible for the Eldians w/out the titan powers and even those were actively trying to kill them. Why is no one addressing what the actually scenario was that led up to the Rumbling?
@@CtisGamingbruh, isn't he the one who decided eldians shouldn't continue to exist? He had no choice but to take the potential futures of all his "friends"? Eren was mentally ill, and coped by going as far down the rabbit hole as he could, while calling everyone else deluded because they couldn't understand why they all "need" to die. We ALWAYS have a choice, we could commit an atrocity, or we could just, not? what gives him the right to decide that for everybody else anyway? The king was wrong for locking everyone up without their consent, but Eren is right for the rumbling because "he had no choice! He had to!"? This is exactly what the video is about, Eren just keeps getting more angry and bitter, but refuses to reconsider anything about his beliefs, despite how miserable they make not only him, but also the people he keeps insisting he cares about. Eren is a very flawed, damaged, warped person by the end, not a particularly good person, but a very interesting and well written character.
@@jasonrobinson401 no one is saying Eren is Right, people just understand WHY and HOW he got to that point; again he is seeing past present and future all at the same time. No matter how he walks the path it ends the same. Eren and the author state is numerous times
@@TommyNicoletti unless that gets expounded on in the next season, it's a major, MAJOR writing cop out. "No guys! You just can't see the future and past like Eren could! There was a reason he "had to", we're just not privy to it, because Eren doesn't think it matters wether or not others know!"? The only reason it was "preordained" is because he's too damn stubborn to even reflect on the repercussions of his own actions, unless he can view it all as a big scary bad dream, wherein EVEN HE doesn't know why he did it all. Eren: I have to kill all the titans! His friends: but Eren! You've become the titans! Eren: huh, guess I've gotta kill all of you now too, isn't that whacky and uncharacteristic? I'm doing it for a really really good and real reason though, but I won't tell you what it is, because I think you all shouldn't be involved with this decision, despite your lives literally hinging on this action I'm taking of my own volition. Maybe not everyone thinks he was right, but I know for fact that some do, because I've had arguments over the subject, arguments that might as well have been with wall rose, because they always end with "but Eren had no choice!" As though he lacked any semblance of free will or something, which I might actually be willing to believe, based on how little he considers things in his life, dude lives by the motto "doesn't matter, move forward (wherever the hell that's supposed to be), put everything behind you". I wanna see adult Eren meet kid Eren, maybe in some sort of nightmare sequence, because that kid that just started out in the scouts, would titan shift and kill fascist Eren without a second thought, specifically for threatening his friends and family, they're barely the same person anymore, like some twisted version of Thorfinn from Vinland, only he got WORSE instead of better.
I'm NB, but as a "girl" who grew up watching anime with two older brothers, I appreciate your take regarding women's representation in anime. It was super weird seeing this literally play out in real time with my brothers, but not really having the language for it... and not being taken seriously when I brought it up. I remember complaining about fan-service as a teen and my concerns were contributed to my being insecure and met with many an eye-roll lol. will def share the video with all dudes in my circle.
It's not often taken seriously because viewing it as a "problem" is entirely a choice. Guys instinctively understand not to take that stuff seriously because it's just an anime and brush it off to just enjoy the story the writer is trying to tell.
@@jonnjones8263 Guys don't "instinctively know" and viewing it as a problem isn't a "choice" -- it's a literal problem that alienates part of the audience at best and reinforces objectification of women and other misogynistic concepts and expectations within men at worst. It's like saying white people "instinctively know" that casual racism in a show in no big deal because being bothered by it is a "choice". Like wtf, you don't instinctively know, you're just unaffected and don't give a shit. Also dunno why so many people can't comprehend simultaneously liking a piece of media overall while still being critical of certain aspects. It's not that hardm And one shouldn't have to "not take seriously" an aspect literally written into the media to "focus on the story they're trying to tell." How about he writer doesn't put that shit in in the first place if they're so concerned about the story they're trying to tell? Jfc I can't believe it's the year 2023 and people are still using these fucking absurd thought terminating clichès to justify misogyny.
@@jonnjones8263you didn't even try lmao. It doesn't bother men because it's not their representation and bodies being objectified and sexualised to hell and back - nor is it serious, real life events that affect them being ridiculed and made fun of in the shows. To them it's like having a side dish they can enjoy with the main course. So of course, they "choose" not to have a problem with it
@@Kadaspala if male shonen fans at large have to acknowledge all these issues in anime it'd make them feel guilty for liking these things and they'd have to admit that yes, representation of women and young girls in anime is very fxcked and rooted in misogyny. So they need to deny and delude themselves
@@Kadaspala Of course they do. Otherwise I wouldn't hear so many people complaining about the fact that men don't care about these "issues". It's only an issue if you make it one. It only alienates them because these are a group of people that have decided that cartoon sexuality should be treated as some sort of attack on real women. Which in my opinion is silly. I mean we don't treat cartoon murder(which is an objectively worse crime) as if it were actual murder. Why do the same thing with anything sex related? It's pointless. Theres any number of real crimes depicted in media. Yet we don't go scrutinizing every little thing and treating it like some big issue. Except when it comes to fanservice or sex scenes.
One of the reasons why I love Tanjiro is because he's so empathetic despite the trauma he went through. It's inspirational for someone who's been focused on revenge for awhile.
SPOILERS: I never read the manga but just finished the anime. My interpretation of Eren is that while he did have a choice objectively, from his point of view what he did was all that he could do, and this is a deliberate criticism of the idea of freedom: by being a person who wants freedom for both himself and the Eldians, he is inherently a prisoner of fate. First of all, it is pretty clear to me that he never really wanted to kill all humans. If he had wanted to do so, he would have touched Zeke at their first meeting in Marley and unlocked the Founder there and then to just kill everyone unannounced. He would have been completely unrivaled and catching everyone by surprise, it was a done deal. Instead he went through this contrived plan which he knew would lead to him failing. So my interpretation of that is that he saw into the future and could see that only by causing this massive dramatic event could the cycle of war be broken, at least for as long as people remembered the horrors of it. My interpretation of the credits scene is that only AFTER his tombstone was lost within the tree did the world fall again into war. That loss of the tombstone representing his story being forgotten. Ultimately, it is the same question at the heart of all of SNK: where is the line between doing something horrible, and letting something horrible happen?
This is a really positive interpretation, thank you! Kind of touches on the Hunger Games thing where Katniss becomes a symbol of freedom, and thus her every move is "managed" by the people around her, using her. The message being, when you sign up to become a symbol, you lose your own free will... Like how it could be argued that a complete nobody in a rural town has more freedom than a celebrity, because of how many eyes, and how much judgement, a celebrity has to live with. That's a somewhat more hopeful ending, if his tombstone kept alive the memory of the horrors of war, and prevented them, for a long time. And it ended, yes, but maybe that period was a time of peace. And just because something ends, doesn't mean it was meaningless.
My interpretation is not that he wanted to be defeated but that he could not do anything about it. He saw the future, he saw his defeat and he did not want to be defeated but he could not change the future. You are forgetting his statement, "I would have destroyed the world even if I didn't know you guys would stop me." It's not that he wanted to be defeated. It's that he can not change the outcome, that is, his defeat. If he could change the future, he would have won against the alliance. Eren's view on the world is pretty nihilistic. His main reasons for his actions were his insecurities. He wanted to see an empty world and could not because of humanity outside the walls. His idea of freedom isn't the right to live freely but to force his freedom on everyone. To force your ideas of freedom on the lives of others is as good as tyranny. He is not a character that should be pitied but is pitiful, its pathetic. He is, overall, a pathetic character and not the kind the people should strive to be in their lives.
@@jyotirani8187 Eren had plenty of opportunity to win if he had wanted to. Again, him and Zeke were right next to each other alone in Marley with no one else expecting anything. Zeke even tells him to do it then but he tells him to wait. Regarding him saying he would have destroyed the world "anyway" the key word is "anyway". He means that in his mind what he had done was as good as destroying the world and that he still believed this was the only way even if he were to survive it. The line is there to rule out suicidality - he didn't do it to die, he did it cos there was no other way. He let them beat him so that the world would be as well off as possible. He even said "20% is the most you ever manage to save".
@@WhosBean and that is the character of him that I hate. To think that there is no other way. There were ways, ways that could have saved the island for 50 years or more, he just did not take it because it did not suit his character. He forced his plan on others without their opinion or choice on the matter while he constantly obsesses on freedom. That seems to be hypocrisy. To talk about freedom while forcing your ideas onto the world, friends and enemies alike without their choice in the matter.
I think anime like Jojo’s Bizarre adventures really gave me courage as a NB person to feel epic in my more gender non-conforming/femme clothing. Rock Lee from Naruto did the same for me, and I think if you grew up with any level of disability, seeing Rock Lee fight like hell in the Chunin exams was a transformative experience. I had to work way harder in school and face bullying because of a really bad stutter I had, but watching Rock Lee prove himself while also being quite genderless was incredibly inspiring and made me want to, unironically, keep moving forward.
I think that Hirohiko Araki deserves more credit for the positive influence that JoJo’s has had in this regard. It’s makes being yourself and/or finding yourself cool, and so many of its characters represent this (especially the Joestars).
Shit. Also grew up with a disability and I loved Rock Lee's chunin exams fight to pieces. Never put it together before but I completely relate to what you said
First manga to have foreigners be the entire cast and one of the first in shonen to have black representation, strong female characters (Lisa Lisa’s role was still held back by editors), a leading female cast, and a plethora of LGBTQ representation! Araki has always been a pioneer and it’s no surprise that his unique style was featured in the Louvre! Dude is beyond amazing (and is probably a vampire)
Seems Eren gets his fans from the same group who think Tyler Durden and Walter White are also cool and based. That misinterpretation is a problem, but I don't think it makes the show fascist. I think he definitely had other choices, but he didn’t imagine or even want another choice. Eren says as much by calling himself an idiot, full of hatred and trauma he never tried to heal. Remember that scene right after the rumbling starts? Jean warns Hange that if they stop Eren their island will get destroyed (true), and Hange slams their fist on the table screaming "Genocide is wrong!", and the room goes silent. I always thought that was the thesis of the show. The fact that so many agree with Eren is scary. It tells us how many people are actually okay with killing 80% of the world. Maybe we watched different shows, because that scene with the baby on the cliffside made me cry.
@@strayiggytv there's enough of us that we have our own groups, so I don't need them to love me back. I'm a self fulfilled woman with good friends in my life so no matter what you say to me I'm already validated. I don't need you or anybody else to do that for me . Also I have really good friends who are white who love anime too and do not judge me or criticize black people in anime. So YOU don't speak for all white people.
Eren could have EASILY just… asked for help. The second he saw the future, he should have turned to his friends and team to outline EVERY detail he saw. That’s all he had to do. Ask for help.
EXACTLY. People act like he couldnt just... ask for the help of the people that loved him, more so when many of those people had great talent in... planning. People act like Eren became some tactical genius because of his little "peek" into the future, like we don't have many fiction stories exploring the determinism of "predicting" the future, I mean... not like there one of the pillars of modern science fiction deals with it, "cough"Foundation"cough"... but sure, killing billions because that is "the only option" is really easy when you don't see yourself as one of those dying.
You don't get it.... Eren did let his friends come up with plans. NONE OF THEM WORKED. Armin lead the diplomacy plan, didn't work. Politicians said Paradis Eldians should be culled. Mikasa lead the military plan, didn't work. They needed 50 years to catch up with the rest of the planet. The Survey Corp/Government was let to have a plan. Their grand plan was to turn Historia and her children into a breeding ground for future titans like Fritz did to Ymir for 50 years while they caught up. And Historia would let them because that's how fucked up her head is after the life she's had. They wanted her children to eat their own children to ensure Paradis had protection. Are you reading this? Eren didn't tell them about his plan for two reasons. 1.They wouldn't understand or believe him and 2. It needed to be convincing. If he had told them to kill him they would've hesitated. That's why he tried so hard to get Armin and Mikasa to hate him in that meeting they had. Armin literally catches on immediately after and tell us, the audience, that maybe Eren wants them to hate him. Like, catch up, dude. Sure, he could have said something but he needed Zeke to believe that he believed in his neutering plan and the Yaegerists allowed Eren to move freely on Paradis while doing so. Y'all forget that Eren literally did nothing to nobody and Marley still convinced the planet to combine military forces to go to Paradis and kill everyone. THAT'S when he posted up to become a martyr. Also, one huge thing no one noticed. He did ask for help. He asked Mikasa what he meant to her. That was him literally asking her to run away with him but she cowered out and said she only saw him as family not romantically.
I think you assume Eren was, somehow, healthy enough, emotionally speaking. When trauma hits you, can do plenty of damage that can affect you even in thing you didn't consider an issue, that's why a person can go down the downward spiral, apparently, for no reason. I have "anecdotal evidence" of it, outside the anime characters discussion, a whie ago in my inner circle of friends I got an acquaintance who really was cool guy, doing great in job, about to get married, not a showing off dude despite he got many things of himself to brag about, and suddenly, he "finished" himself, but not only ended himself, he did it in the worse possible way, truly was a shock that destroyed his family and traumatized very bad his fiance (sorry if it is the bad term, I'm not native speaker). I mean he never show signs of any serious problem, I repeat, his girlfriend soon to be wife when to a breakdown because nothing remotely turn on any alarm. His parents broke up, and uncles, nephews fought over the money and properties he left. The only thing he has to do was to ask for help, but he didn't, why? we never know.
@@dystervarg5257 Almost the entirety of Season 3 is Eren asking help. He learned to do it in Seasons 1 and 2, but he gave up on it to follow his ruinous destructive path.
Haikyu is an anime I would encourage ANYONE - but especially boys - to watch. The messages there are positive, challenging, and encourages expression of emotions that is refreshing to see. Plus the sports-stakes are high but at the end of the day, every character is just a teen or a man, just another person, who has their own story and struggles.
Honestly watching it was a delight because it reminded me of when I was in a rugby team. Best two years of my life, even with less-than-ideal teammates. One of my biggest regrets is needing to drop out when I got into highschool because I moved too far away.
the thing i like about eren’s character and the whole “he had no choice” thing is that IMO if a different person had fallen into the amount of power eren had, they COULD have changed things or done things differently. i think he simply wasn’t smart or strong enough or knew how to do things any other way than with violence and hate. because that’s who he’s always been. “he had no choice” not because he was bound by fate, but because he was bound by himself. it’s important to note that not only is erens trauma not unique among shounen characters, it’s not unique among other AoT characters either, and yet they’re not trying to commit mass genocide. (to be fair though i’m going off of the anime’s ending, which was changed a little bit on the manga author’s request)
And I think we see this theme of "It's not a choice, but it would have been for soemone else" is fairly over arching for many of the characters. Reiners entire charavter arc has that feel. Destroying the walls killing marco was a choice, but he had to do it becasue it was him, an honorary marleyan. He quite litterly breaks under this guilt. And the conflict of his duty and his humanity eventually cimes to a breaking point until he's just Reiner, a protector. The differenc between reiener and eren tho is that reiner was coerced to become a warrior whilst Eren chose to become the attack titan, with time travel. Eren wasn't born a special person, but he was born different. If Eren was born in marley the only thing that would have changed is the massive walls for a fence and barbed wire, and the titans for marelyan guards. And of course the scout regiemnt for the resitence (forgot what it was called in the show)
That's not how time works. If you see a future calamity that is going to happen, and you make actions to prevent it from happening, then you won't be able to see that future calamity in the past and thus won't make actions to prevent any calamity. So you end up where you started making zero progress. Not to mention its a fictious world where giant naked people eat regular sized people who spin like beyblades. But God forbid a character is extra . CrAzY.
@andrewedward5181 there's a lot of time-based stuff in AoT that doesn't rly make sense (I don't see it as a flaw, the story isn't focused on that) the whole attack titans power to see the memories of future users is a paradox and doesn't make logical sense. Not to mention they ARE memories, not just foresight. Meaning they're flawed and biased and users can explicitly choose which memories to show previous users and can use that to manipulate events (eren does this). And yeah, all the characters go through insane amounts of trauma, but notice how most of them still don't want to commit genocide?
@@peach_total tl;dr = The show and Eren make 100% sense. So long as you don't be a hypocrite with your logic and actually watch or read AOT. 1. The only thing timeline related in AOT is the attack titan's powers. Memories, as definition, is something that is just remembered from the past. If you've actually watched the show, you would see that they consider, but do not put the emotional and biased aspects of the memories forefront, they only 'see' the memory - just from the person's point of view. Its not paradoxical and is done well, because every single future vision we see comes to pass - if not it would create a time loop. 2. Putting the blame solely on Eren is illogical in terms of his attack titan usage, because realistically all attack titan users before him (numerous) all chose genocide (if we go by your logic that anyone else in Eren's position would have not chosen genocide). The fact that the story of AOT was just a a snippet of GENERATIONS of AOT's story is implied by the creator with the title of the manga's first chapter name as well as its counterpart. If you've even read or watched AOT... 3. Its funny you say that time related stuff in AOT doesn't really make sense. When its a world full of giant mindless naked cannibals and regular sized humans spinning like beyblades, easily handling 10gs+ like its nothing. But you expect someone who saw the dead, bloodied corpses of his friend at 9, had to stab the attacker of said friend at 9, had nightmaric visions of him eating his own dad (who went missing and he didn't know why) at 9 - later finding out he BECAME A GIANT NAKED HUMAN AND ATE HIS OWN FATHER, saw his mom get eaten by a giant naked woman at 10, found out his close brothers in arms - who he opened up to about his traumatic childhood - were literally the same people who were the ones responsible for the deaths of so many people and his mom at 15, after hating titans for years because of how much destruction they brought upon paradis, he found out he himself could turn into one. And ultimately ended up dying before he could even finish a singular year of college. Like what do you expect from a 19 year old with NOTHING going for him FROM THE AGE OF NINE😂? Like imagine telling a ten year to be kind after going through shit like that, you'd get lynched by people for being insane. Y'all probably think Levi is like 22 or something 🤣🤣. Not like paradis could even do anything if they wanted to against Marley themselves, they are wayyy inferior to Marley in every single aspect and the founding titan is completely useless because of Karl Fritz. Which, again, if you've watched the show you would know this...
Well the anime ending of AoT agree's with you on the idea that Eren is too dumb to resolve the situation, and is unable to trust others enough to solve the problem. Instead he sacrifices himself and 80% of the world in order to resolve generational trauma because no matter how powerful one person or even a small group is, unless the people of the world en masse are willing to work together to resolve issues there will be no lasting peace. The credits are clearly anti-war and hopeful that humanity will find a new dream that isn't corrupted by lust for power. So overall I'd say the show was very anti-facist, anti-colonialist, anti-slavery, anti-ethnic cleansing, and anti-capitalist. It was definitely pro-socialist, pro-meritocracy, and pro-humanization of fascists though, which I understand many would disagree with as resolutions to the complex problems presented in the show.
"is unable to trust others enough to solve the problem" and why should he trust others to resolve a problem so dangerous with such high stakes?. Him trusting his friends to resolve problems haven't ended bloodless before, the death of the original levi squad, armin's fake out death. "anti-facist, anti-colonialist, anti-slavery, anti-ethnic cleansing, and anti-capitalist" I can see all of this except for the anti-capitalist claim, I don't think the show is very anti-capitalist.
@@LibrarianSankore that's the point, he's letting his past trauma inform his decisions. Just because he has a personal experience(s) where trusting others ended in failure, doesn't justify genocide. And he's too blinded by his rage and trauma to understand that it is not his place to do the things he's doing
@@alovesupreme76 sure but at the very least people have to understand that Eren had good reasons to believe in what he decided to do, rather than is just acting out or something. His decision wasn't just emotion and wasn't just rational but he had pretty good emotion and rational reasons, even viewed independently of one another to do what he did. Which is why the finale has him saying he did what he did cuz he was an idiot or in a less self deprecating way, cuz he wasn't smart enough. If he was smarter and more optimistic he might have been able to think up a better solution but that the only sure solution he could think up was what he did.
Dude watching a silent voice destroyed me! That scene where all of the Xs fall off the faces of the strangers around him, and he finally sees them as real people. I cried like a baby xc
I don't think eren is supposed to be a role model. He has been depicted in an uncanny light from season 1, we just didn't notice because anime clichees. Something has always been wrong with him and unlike guts, he doesn't get better. He's kinda like gon from hxh.
He’s not supposed to be at the end. But the author did a bad job of making this clear for the audience. Wether you wanna debate that’s the fault of the reader or not is a different story tho.
Exactly, Gon is like a serial killer in the making. I like how one video who analyzed him that said with his mind set he would have joined the phantom troupe if they found him first before Kilua and Lorezeo. He goes along with whatever seems right to him at the moment and then when the world doesn't respond in that way he breaks to pieces when that thought process is challenged. The whole Kyte thing.
I think this roast on Eren doesnt really work. He brought up some good points. But it feels more like soemone roasting who Eren is inside the mind of an edgy teen making memes dunking on social justice movements, than actually criticizing Eren. Eren is indeed horrible, but he's not the same horrible as Tate, and I doubt he would be best buds with that actual manchild.
Now that I’ve finally watched through AOT, I have a weird feeling about the “He had no choice” rhetoric… Like, I watched the last episodes first (the ACTUAL last episodes), and then watched the show from the beginning just to fully grasp it, and… I just can’t bring myself to understand it after watching all the way through lmao. Like, the last episodes kind of give this story of “It was planned out and happening from the beginning, so Eren and Zeke were essentially just possessed”, but the earlier parts of Season 4 just serve to show exactly how many options Eren DID have. He actively sought out the power that would allow him to lay waste to the world, and then was surprised when he “snapped out of it” and saw that he had turned into the “filthy bad-person” that he had spent the entire span of the show judging and/or killing. He had ample opportunity to realize that he was just on the other side of the same coin, but he ALWAYS felt superior to everyone else. That isn’t more clear than when he confronts Armin and Mikasa after he attacks Marley, WHICH HE DID ON HIS OWN MIND YOU. In short, fuck Eren Yeager. He a bitch. EDIT: Eren was never even a smart character either. While everyone else was SLUGGISHLY realizing that there must be a reason why they were trying so hard to kidnap Eren, Eren was too busy teeth-yelling about “slaughtering them all” and acting like he was just embarrassed that he’d been beaten by people who were obviously better fighters, with more-powerful titans…
Hey, I commented my interpretation of the show in regards to the no choice. Let me know your thoughts. "Someone please respond. I see the top comments discussing the manga but i only watched the anime. I thought there were time travel paradoxes happening where he wasn't able to change the future or the past because that would lead to a paradox (wouldn't end in the exact same position he is currently in). Erin also said psycho things impling that he wants the destruction but this was just his attempt to show he had free will, and this was his choice , when in reality it was all ready written. Not as sure about this but Erin seemed to have the ability to look into the future like doctor strange, where he saw all futures and this was the best outcome possible (overweighting the value of his friends and eldians lives), because a war was inevitable. At least with this scenario, many years after Erin's death there was a post apocalyptic solar punk world/studio Ghibli world where the person who came across the titan powers looked to be in a good mental state, so maybe can use the titan powers better. All the characters and himself hated him for what he did but we can see that he still didn't havea choice. Two things can be true. To me, this is the only semi satisfying ending possible, so will remain the reason in my head otherwise Erin's character development just didn't flow. Maybe just too much cope from me? Please let me know if you think he had a choice, and what they were based on information on the show. Let me know if there was too much cope here and there are in anime reasons this couldn't be correct?"
Yeah it's really sad how facists and terminally online leftists both missed the point in the exact same way. These takes are really a test to see people's levels of media literacy
@@TheLapisLord is the ending at the same level of quality as the rest of the series? no. Does it work? yea for the most part. It's defiantly not the edge-lord fodder that fd presents it as and neither does the ending doesn't ruin the rest of the series. I understand the manga is worse but it seems like the intention was the same but it works much better animated + it's the second go around.
@@TheLapisLord yeah, if you think AOT is even remotely fascist, you unironically didn't get it and should seriously consider doing some introspection. Because it's a huge red flag
Here in Brazil, a lot of young men were arrested for sharing cp and stuff like that on Discord, and one particular figure prepared a whole Eren look for the time he got arrested and appeared in the news, he straightened his hair, wore a sweater with the fictional country symbol on and was straight up emulating Eren's mannerisms during the arrest, giving a look of disdain and an air of superiority Details are more complex, but basically he knew he would get caught, so he set up all his contacts from that Discord server and acted like he had a masterplan to get them arrested and come out as a hero, like he was playing some 4D chess game Also lots of young women were commenting on social media how "good" he looks, I'll just leave that
Eu acho que Eu lembro disso foi aquele cara que agiu como um protagonista de anime e tinha um Tom zombador quando sendo entrevistado (i think i remenber this that guy who was acting like a anime protag and using a mocking tone while being interviewed
Listening to this, I think FD signifier should watch Vinland Saga, I think the manga indirectly deconstructs and dismantles the typical anime tropes pretty effectively.
Oh absolutely. Before I watched it, I never thought the phrase "You have no enemies" could give me chills. Not sure if I can wait for the next season before I read the rest
And also Tokyo Ghoul (the manga, not the anime) this 3 series really go from "full on edgy" (with diferent flavours of power and pain) to "I've learned how to heal and grow to be better" in such a way that has had such a deep impact on most people that have read them. They really make me glad of finding out about anime and manga as a teenager, I feel like i've grown up alongside those characters in ways I couldn't imagine before, fuck, i'm so fucking grateful to the authors that crafted those stories.
it really is an examination of the highs and lows of masculinity the toxic side of it and the truly positives it can bring one character at the end of the farmland arc states he wishes he can one day be as kind and strong as thorfinn like what a real man should be.
I don’t think it’s quite fair to blame the story because fans of the character cannot properly dissect the authors intention. Part of what made Eren a compelling character was the juxtaposition of the cool way he’s depicted with the evil things he is seen doing. You could criticize the author for giving him as many logical outs for his behavior, but it declares him the villain and morally incorrect for what he does. Whether certain people can see that or not is on them. That said, having not seen Berserk, I think an even better character to compare him to as a positive role model would be Thorfinn.
I was a bit surprised by the scene of Mob idolising Tsubomi alongside with, y'know, Mineta et al on the aside about misogyny. I feel that one of the biggest central themes in Mob Psycho is precisely him having to grow out of his one-sided ideation and actually engage with her as a person. Felt to me that the story does come around to very explicitly denounce that as unhealthy behaviour. It doesn't just get brushed aside Also shoutout to the pervy insufferable old guy in Ranma being treated as a jokey joke haha so funny lmao but kind of being the main reason why me and the missus dropped that stuff halfway through (after S1 that anime just seems to steadily drop all of its strong points and just keeps getting worse, unfortunately) EDIT: The video is now talking about Mob Psycho 100 and I can't seem to stop getting goosebumps. DANG that show was good, what a bloody masterpiece
An empathetic portrayal of masculinity is a big reason why Chainsaw Man has been such a massive hit in the States. Denji might be the most and most empathetic portrayals of a realistically flawed teenage boy I've ever seen in ANY medium. Denji is far from perfect- he's an incorrigible horndog, he's incredibly crass and obnoxious, and he's realistically homophobic as you would expect an abused lower class teenager in the 1990s to be - but he's also an incredibly sweet, kind-hearted and gentle spirit, he NEVER pervs on women for cheap fanservice or tries to spy on them naked or any of that awful shit anime usually does, and he makes a point very early on that he doesn't want to have sex if it's not with someone he really has an emotional connection with. (I should also mention that the female characters in CSM are fucking unparalleled in shonen, they get depth, complexity, and realistic sleaziness-of-moral-character that is usually reserved exclusively for the boys in shonen.) Moreover, his goals are far more simplistic and mundane than basically any male shonen lead- he doesn't want to be a hero, he just wants to live a normal life with a girl who loves him as much as he loves her - and yet the story never looks down on him for his lack of ambition beyond wanting a girlfriend who respects his emotional needs. He's the anti-"Alpha Male" without being an uwu Tumblr fangirl "softboi". I'm not surprised that so many teenage boys love that series, it's one of the few I can think of that genuinely respects teenage boys for their wants and needs and treats them as neither rapists-in-training, Homer Simpson cavemen, or a worse version of girls. (Also, the romance subplot that's happening right now between him and the female protagonist of part 2 is the cutest fucking thing ever and I continue to pray to Fujimoto every day to please let them have a happy ending.)
@@Rad-Dude63andathird yea it’s a rhetoric question I only said it because it’s wild to judge a show off of one clip if you don’t even know why it exists in the first place.
FD, this was such a great and insightful video. I’m a 22 year old guy who recently stopped being a brain broken conservative. Anime is strangely enough one of the things that got me out of it. Watching cool stories like death note and AOT made me really check myself and make sure i wasn’t rooting for the bad guy. What do you know, turns out I can be the bad guy too. Thanks for providing insightful commentary that more or less backs up my experiences as a man and hesitant-to-admit anime enjoyer.
Anime can give fresh perspectives you've never seen in America media. It often makes you ask questions of yourself. It's what got me into it in the first place
Cool thing is that There are basically no White people in anime. If you wish there was more diversity in entertainment watch anime. (Also when I say White I mean European.)
Light isn’t nearly as bad as eren. He was shown as a narcissistic villain the whole show but his goals were good. Pedos, r4pists , war is a real problem and he got rid of it all by the end of the show, it’s shown that he stopped all wars in the world and saved how many million families who live in countries like that. Light was a good guy to me, and no human can get a godlike power like light did and not become an asshole. I really liked light‘s character
man I hate to be a hater but the "roasting" segments just completely take me out of taking you seriously, its just random interruption of immature projecting or something along those lines while simultaniously trying to make a long and elaborate, really interesting argument. and to be honest, you are correct, but from the wrong angle. you really glance or at least seem to overlook most of eren's reasoning other than his past. yeah the ending is fumbled, but during the moment it wasnt complete ridiculous reasoning. the story really makes a good job making the rest of the cast the heroes, trying to prove eren, and the viewers wrong, essentially. eren's excuses aren't complete dogwater either. I guess some people really do argue that "he had no choice" which is wrong. in my eyes I'd say he "felt" that this was his "best" choice. which I believe any reasonable viewer could understand this difference.
looking into it a little further, its a story of causal paradox, what happened in the past shapes the future but the future is what it is because of what happened in the past, so ultimately, "he had no choice" makes total sense.
Late to the party but this was such an amazing educational production and I can't rave about it enough. The way you thread the needle between Anime good vs Anime bad is absolutely incredible and I really can't say enough at how much you've taught me about how to view the world in a more nuanced way is fantastic. I'm a girl-dad so I may have already been deprogrammed quite a bit, but videos of men, like you, teaching boys how to be men, like you, gives me incredible hope for girls, like mine...which if you want to ever indulge in some serious "power fantasy" struggles, dream some of the nightmares of being a girl-dad in this age. The thought of unleashing absolute rage just thinking about what could happen to my girls would probably put up some serious character arcs in these stories...no lie. Your content has been incredibly important in my own growth of trying to navigate the scary world of the not-insignificant minority of the patriarchy-preservation class. Something much needed to suppress my own toxic tendencies. Thank you for helping to spread your message of love for humanity.
Your username reminded me of the channel CinemaTherapy - they're two white guys, but with the therapy angle, they're a great resource for showing off how men can talk about emotions, give them names and proper contexts and stuff. Maybe you would like them? :)
Great Teacher Onizuka was the one that inspired me to be a teacher. I came from a rough background and hated school, and honestly when I started teaching in an inner ring suburb, I was the only teacher that came from an emotionally and physically abusive home. Every other teacher came from healthy two parent homes. I connected with a lot of the "bad kids" simply because I knew what it was like. But the story of GTO who probably couldn't give two shits about what he taught, but how the students felt really hit home for me. And not surprisingly, one of the ways I connected with a lot of them was through anime. When you lack real life positive role models, you look to fiction and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
It has that 90s anime disease of sexualising literal children which really hampered my enjoyment of it. Which is a shame because it has a lot of greatness to it.
@@SadBirbHours oh for sure. Super problematic, but I'm also great at compartmentalizing. The underlying message and theme of the anime far overshadowed the problematic stuff.
This is me but with sonic and Spider-Man. Real male role model was awful, so I sorta just looked to them and internalized and copied they’re behaviors because to me, they were what a good person was actually like and someone i should try to strive to be to the point where the persona became inseparable from me. My biggest beef now is just being jealous that al my friends got to have this spiderman like figure around to help them when they’re down and vibe with when I didn’t. It’s crazy the impact these characters can have on kids
Why are we pretending this show was somehow catered to incels? The comparisons with Gabi didn’t clue you in that Eren is just indeed repeating horrid cycles? Love your other videos but I feel like you saw the weird amount of Andrew Tate bros praising Eren and that tainted your viewing of this show into…whatever the hell this video is. People are pointing out there was more clarity at the beginning of the show, but if you couldn’t tell like halfway through S4 at the LATEST that they weren’t trying to have Eren be some savior or whatever the hell, that is on the viewer, not the show.
Everyone forgets that Armin went through just as much trauma as Eren and came out the other side with a decidedly 'no to genocide' grindset. He also lost his home in Shigangshina, his parents were killed for trying to make a balloon, he's physically weak and unskilled in a world where intelligence is not valued (Levi is humanity's greatest soldier because he's strong, not because he's smart), experiences pretty much all the same losses and challenges that Eren does, and even ends up getting the same thirteen year death sentence that Eren does. And he chooses empathy and curiosity instead of violence.
Eren was depicted as an insecure little man by the end of the story , but in the political situation they were in , the good guy Armin would march his people toward annihilation then and there. Conflicts throughout history didn't get solved by people being the better man, people went to war until the cost of conflict was so unbearable it's preferable to cook up some concession and negotiate , even the one going right now at we speak. The Eldian kings punished the children for the crime of his ancestors , effectively cut off diplomatic option. The people on the island couldn't even get into the negotiation table . Eren listened to the world calling for his people's genocide in a basement underneath the theater. And about Guts , as cool as he is , HE'S LOSING OMEGA HARD , even though he got help from all kind of people and even the elves. Eren bought his friends 50 years.
@@ZZWWYZ A major theme of AOT is how a limited perspective causes people to make stupid rash decisions. Eren goes to one Eldian Rights Group disparaging Paradis and listens to one speech by a Marleyan disparaging Paradis and thinks the entire world believes the same thing. And yeah, the ambassadors of recently conquered nations were applauding the speech. You think they were sincerely happy being conquered or perhaps just… putting on a show? A diplomatic solution surely existed… Eren just didn’t have the perspective or the desire to seek it out. In fact he actively validated Tybur’s hatespeech by embodying the threat of Paradis in front of the world. It’s like it a Jewish man stormed the Nuremberg rallies and ate a baby in front of the crowd, or if a black man stormed a KKK rally and raped a white woman in front of them. Eren made things safe for his select group of friends, except Sasha lol. He bought 50 years for them and in the process made Paradis an enemy of the world for centuries to come. He brought to power a fascist regime that will undoubtedly kill many more people like Armin’s parents and Erwin’s dad. He killed countless Paradis Eldians during his coup, robbing them of their most fundamental freedoms by turning them into titans. He is a massive failure. He failed his goal of protecting his friends when Sasha died. Guts is not losing hard. He’s experiencing joy and healing from trauma. He could have let Griffith walk and enjoy the rest of his life together with Casca and it would be a win for my man.
@@Inerrant1 that's a bunch of assumption or your own head canons. By your own headcanon of Eren possibly find some secret diplomatic allies, despite being completely isolated from the rest of the world, I could also say that the years Eren bought for Eldians could have allowed them to develop diplomacy and integrated with the remaining rest of the world or settled elsewhere , that's a better deal for the Eldians than having their enemies decimating them while their leaders believe they deserve it. And the idea " oh some of the ambassadors are secret sympathizers " are a bunch of non-sense. telling your mom before saying goodnight that you support the Eldian means nothing , that's not being a political actor. It's the privileged, weak moralists idea that they can just "secretly condemn bad things " while doing nothing . And Guts is LOSING , he's suffering from PTSD because Griffith humiliated him on Elf Island. And the moment the Elf went away another faction immediately went in to ally with him . The Eldians didn't have such luxury
During the Eren section, I couldn't help but think of the immortal Buffy quote (taken from the episode, "Lie To Me", where she's trying to dissuade a terminally ill friend from committing mass murder for a chance at immortality) - "You have a choice. You don't have a good choice, but you have a choice". The Passion of the Nerd does a really great breakdown of that episode and the underpinning philosophy behind it. Great video as always!
I am also an elder anime fan, before RU-vid I was one of the burners who converted fansubs from the internet to DVD and VHS to distrubute at cons. I loved contributing to the community in that way! I'm glad you made this video!
Thanks to folks like you, I was able to view these stories all the way back in the 80s. I'm 40 and I still watch all the seasonal anime, but they're is nothing that will compare to the OVA boom and the great and complex shows and specifically movies that helped shape my interest in art and other cultures, and lead to my love of auteur directors that shaped the best cinema of all time.
Totally get your take on Eren, and yeah, he’s not a hero in any sense of the word. But that doesn't erase his complexity as a character. Child Soldier: Since 15, right? Earlier if you count the training. Trauma: Eaten alive, watched his mom die, ate his dad. Burden: Forced to be a symbol of humanity, deaths for him, killings for him, a legacy of memories and doctrine-all pre-16. Mental State: End of Season 3, his mind is broken. No clue what's right. Rejection: Thought Mikasa might be his out. Nope, family-zoned. (Ouch) Desperation: Mind’s a mess, no will left, he follows the only path he sees. Isolation: Could've reached out, talked it through. Couldn't see that. Regret: In the end, even he admits his actions were needless and dumb. Irony: Craved freedom, became its prisoner. Saying Eren is a villain or crazy wouldn't be wrong. But saying he's a horrible character, or that Attack on Titan is worse for it? That’s missing Isayama's craft. The guy gave us a character that feels real. Flawed and broken, but real.
I think what’s scary about Eren is how he’s essentially a gaslighter. He was so efficient at it that even fans with the full context of that series world fell for it
@kharithagoddess6591: They didn't fell for it. You're too optimistic. I think that it is their sensibility. They like it like that, this is what is scarier. Don bullshit yourself. There is no gaslighting there. It is self-gaslighting ...
@@ogungou9I have to agree... I was going to ask the OP to explain but I think you hit the nail on the head. I didn't read the AoT manga and I don't know anything about the author. As such I was willing to listen to FD in his AoT referenced videos. But then he said he didn't watch Season 4 Part 1, and Season 4 Part 2 has not been released yet. That's what leaves me scratching my head... Did Eren Jaeger make Jargerists or was he the front man for the belief system they had all along? FD was in the military just like myself. For me (I actually watched the 4th season part 1) the themes like the futility of vengeance, there is no good war, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, etcetera were unmistakable. The show is literally doing the opposite of gaslighting or creating a red herring, because there is always a character that interjects with an exposition dumping question. All of that makes me wonder how FD can keep taking the position that he does AND it makes it obvious that the real life Jaegerists held those beliefs to begin with.
Berserk, Vinland Saga and Vagabond have been some of the best manga I've read over the last couple years showing immense growth in angry, traumatized boys/men
I'm gonna checkout Vagabond if you mentioned it anywhere near Beserk and Vinland. Got about 5 eps left on Vinland, show made tear up a few times. Hopefully Vagabond don't pull that hard on the heart strings. 😆
Early attack on Titan was specifically written to remind the reader of Evangelion, making us oversympathize with Eren meanwhile subtly dropping the red flags that he is more like Griffith (if you watch closely you can see it in the early chapters)
the brilliance of eren's character is that those red flags were always there from the beginning of the story, we as the audience are able to let it slide because he's on our side and we understand what he went through. That's the brilliance of throwing us into the story from the beginning experiencing the tragedy and trauma with eren through his eyes, which situates us squarely in his corner despite his obvious flaws. He's never encouraged to confront his hate and trauma because they're in such an soul-crushing environment that they are constantly fighting for survival and he needs to use that untamed hatred to win and stay alive, and the enemies are non-human. By the time they learn the truth of the world and realize their enemies are human, the damage is already done. Eren is who he is at that point. He's already experienced unimaginable trauma repeatedly and is never healed. He needed therapy as a kid BEFORE the fall of shiganshina, then all the events of the series up to season 4 just pushed him further and further into deranged sociopathy (idk if that's the correct term to describe it but you understand the idea). Isayama flips it on us and sees the arc of eren's character to its natural conclusion. All the seeds of his character are seen to fruition. The signs were always there. And we weren't forced to confront how sinister his character is until his actions become too large to ignore, and by that time it's too late.
I love Eren as a character because he demonstrates what happens when you fail as a protagonist. He's a fully fleshed out villain where you clearly see how he fell into what he is, the entire backstory is all there for you and it's understandable. He's what happens when you have these "anime moments" to grow, to get stronger and progress yourself as a character and move past what you've been through and you... don't. You cave, you wilt away in the face of your past trauma and instead of getting back up and trying again you make the worst decisions possible and eventually it eats away at you fully. If other anime protags are proof that you can overcome and grow and be "stronger', Eren is the warning of what happens when you capitulate to your negative desires that are influenced by what has happened to you. It's great because it is real and believable; one of my favorite things about Evangelion is that the end of the series along with EoE is like a never ending hellscape even when the characters eventually "win"; not everything is perfect. You don't come out of hardships perfect and unscathed on the other end like a lot of anime can portray. Things are nasty, ugly, and sometimes people just flat out do not get better. Eren is a great representation of that. The problem in this case is that Attack on Titan absolutely skyrocketed in popularity to a point that I don't think ANYONE could have expected in their wildest imagination, and there's a nation of edgleords clinging to his character. It's like all the people trying to be like "Thanos was right!". Nah, he wasn't man and you're missing the damn point.
I find it so funny that Attack on Titan tries so hard to paint Eren as a hypocritical and terrible man, but a large portion of the fanbase still thinks that he is in the right...
Is it funny Or is it the entire point of the show? Haha Youre trained to percieve shonen guy as hero Questioning and undermining that is the whole point so it makes sense people are mixed up about it
The point Geoff makes in his intro really got me thinking. Western toxic masculinity seems so very isolating, because every man is in competition with every other man and the ideal is to be an "island" or "peak of the pyramid". Anime masculinity tends to focus a lot more on comradery, portraying other men as not always rivals but sometimes allies who help you improve, or cover your weaknesses. Anime guys can even get emotional and show weakness around their male friends sometimes, and that's super discouraged in western masculinity. And defeated opponents are sometimes not discarded trash or subjugated wimps, but future allies, where you work out your differences and become peers, and that just feels so wholesome (which is why Golden Kamuy is the most wholesome anime, in between the war flashbacks and people getting their faces ripped off by bears)
in parts that's really about the collectivist vs individualist differences between western and eastern philosophy. there's a lot of give and take to both focuses, but realizing the importance of both is, in my opinion, key to becoming a more wholistic, better person
That’s really interesting to note. I just finished a anime called Rainbow and it highlighted the aspects that you described with male camaraderie since these boys had been thrown into a correctional facility and had to survive off that said camaraderie. Haven’t seen something like it but it sticks with me especially in the later half when the same boys have to find their life path after leaving the facility. Just beautiful writing and characters
01:07:52 the ironic twist of fate, as his determination to acquire freedom turned him on a pre-determined path, thereby losing any freedom at all as he gaslit himself to think that this is the only way, seemed to me like a cautionary tale on single-minded pursuit of 'ideals' (for lack of a better word). Or like a divine punishment.
also thank you for mentioning shoujo specifically and made it clear that in this video, "anime" mostly is just used to refer to "shounen". a lot of people dont even bother to make the distinction or acknowledge that the shoujo demographic exist, and then complain why "anime" is only the popular/favourable demographic of shounen. 😭 most shoujo nowadays unfortunately got adapted only into dramas instead of anime, which tends to not have as much of an overlap of audience with manga readers. and as always, one of the biggest thing why shoujo is so often overlooked, or relegated into just one genre or trope, or dismissed altogether, is-can you guess it-misogy...? ny!! thats correct!! good job! 🥰
I was so happy that Kuragehime and Chihayafuru got a shout out! Also, with isekai as a concept, there's a whole 'nother conversation to be had about how differently that same push towards being self-consciously trope savvy and dealing in wish fulfillment manifests in shoujo isekai
@@XiaoIsMyHusbandBTW thats because neither is a genre; theyre a demographic. theyre as much of a genre as a "kid's book" or "adult novel". it says nothing of the genre, which can be anything, and only who its main target audience is. the only reason shoujo seems to fit a certain box is because it's made by women and for girls, so ~obviously~ it cant be as wide in selection and as varied as stuff for boys and men, since all that we're interested in are romance and pretty things. (sarcasm) in all seriousness though, legitimately shoujo "fit into certain box" bc outside its own audience so little people are willing to give it a chance and explore the demographic. so it gets judged by whats mainstream and popular and gets assumed that bc X or Y is shoujo then thats just what the whole demographic is.
I was waiting for some acknowledgement that anime is more than just shonen(even tho I like a lot of them), it is frustrating to see people’s complaints with Dragon Ball or Attack On Titan be used as critiques of all anime
How nobody understands Eren character? Eren is meant to be a hypocrite and a monster. Isayama used Eren as a morality check for the fanbase, and he succeeded, just look how divided the fanbase is. The problem is that people believe he is a chad, but no, he is a fragile man. Again, he is a hypocrite and a monster, he refuses to heals, he refuses to listen, and engulfs in the trauma. But that’s the reason why I like Eren, we don’t have a character like this in the manga Industry
That’s definitely why a lot of people probably didn’t like the ending, Eren shows that he isn’t a cool emotionales Chad and he never was. Also that happens with a load of characters. People seriously think they are the good guy when the actual media is like ‘no they are not’. :(
@ @rosegiogio9255: Since the beginning. In French we called that "a va-t-en-guerre" ... In french we have: Conscientious objector status, since joining the army was compulsory...
The fact that attack on titan was written in such a way that made genocide somewhat understandable is problematic. However, given the choices Eren was presented with idk how you can blame him for what he did when the only other option was watching his entire race be eliminated 🤷🏾♂️
Came for the Eren roasting, stayed for the genuinely intelligent and well thought out discussions about masculinity. Might fuck around and binge the rest of your content.
@@Gamfluent Not even sure what you were trying to say in the last half of this reply but tbh I kinda expect an Eren fan to type like a world glass glue eater.
I think TotallyNotMark has an interesting read on the first few chapters of Berserk That Guts doesn't act the way he does because he believes it's right, but because he has to convince himself that he is that callous to protect himself from caring about anyone else while experiencing the Hell in which he lives
Fun fact: your description of Isekai almost perfectly fits "The Owl House" which has me howling with the "all the girls want to have sex with them" line because Lumity.
I hate the fact that you're 100% right. I had already considered that TOH is an isekai, but I didn't realize that Luz herself is technically a perfect fit for the standard protagonist role, except for her having a somewhat interesting personality and being a girl.
@@samt3412 (Not So) Fun Fact - Isekai until the early 2000's was primarily a Shojo genre. Innuyasha, Magic Knight Rayearth, Escaflowne. Even El-Hazard was more focused on the relationships between the male characters than the Kewl Powerz. IT was still selling a Power Fantasy, but a very different kind. Then again "Trapped In Another World with My Overpowered Abilities That Makes Me Awsome" is literally John Carter of Mars and a huge chunk of 19th century Boys Own Adventures, so Isekai is a super-old genre.
How to make Isekai for dummies: - Dark haired protagonist (no facial hair!) - Mainly female companions (busty elf girl, loli girl, beast girl) - Main character is OP (either due to magic power too good or because too fast)
On the same note, Star vs the forces of evil started like the trope of magical being living secretly on earth, but at a certain point became an isekai.
I mean, for those saying "Erin had no choice" first up, he's a fictional character written that way, so the author clearly had a choice to write him that way or not. Secondly, within the story, his various friends choose not to support him and directly act against him when presented with exactly the same "problem". To them, committing an act of mass genocide isn't an acceptable solution to the threat they face, regardless of how shittily the world has treated their people.
I’m not sure what the point of this argument is. First of all, Erin didn’t have a choice. That’s literally the entire point of this story, regarding time travel and determinism. Secondly, as you yourself already said, the *protagonists of the show turn against him* because genocide is obviously wrong. The fallen hero is a common trope in fiction that goes back at least centuries. Walter White is another such character. ‘Protagonist turns bad guy’. What’s the problem here? That some immature reactionaries on the internet will look up to him? Okay. And..? Immature reactionaries also look up to Patrick Bateman, and every other aesthetically attractive bad guy. I see the same themes and morals in AoT as you get in Naruto, and thousands of other stories. Namely that violence begets violence, which begets more violence. It doesn’t make Erin Yeager right. It doesn’t make Pain (Nagato) right. In fact, it makes them flat out wrong, which is stated explicitly. It’s a real-life issue that happens and needs to be grappled with. That’s the sign of a good story.
Man the true reality of the situation is that final part of the manga wasn’t written that well. That’s it and people don’t want to admit it. “Eren had no choice” well and how about that whole 50 year plan or something? Get the coordinate powers, destroy the world alliance military, go no further than that and work to rebuild Paradis and try to make positive relations with the other countries. They give NO SATISFYING ANWSER TO WHY THAT WOULDN’T WORK. Oh it’s because Eren didn’t want to sacrifice Historia? SO MAKE IT FUCKING CLEAR, WE KNOW ALMOST NOTHING TO WHY EREN DID THE THINGS THE WAY HE DID. And there is no subtext bullshit explanation to all that, it’s just bad storytelling.
@@Jownbrownisekai It’s clearly explained that they live in a deterministic timeline. This means Eren can see the future, but is powerless to do anything to stop it. Secondly, the genocide serves a CRITICAL role in the story-telling! The show is all about the cycle of hatred bred from war. Reiner and Berthold’s attack on Shiganshina turned Eren into a monster. Us, the audience thought it was noble when he was killing Titans. Then we’re forced to reflect, rather harshly, when that same wrath is unleashed on people. We realize Eren, and ourselves, were wrong all along. Or right, for the wrong reasons, etc. Now, when you go back and watch Seasons 1-3 you kind of get uncomfortable with Eren’s savage “I’ll kill them all. Every last one of them” speeches. That is masterful writing in and of itself. Caveat: I agree. I wouldn’t have written the end quite like that. But I’m never going to take points off “because bad fashies on Twitter/RU-vid think Eren is good actually.” That’s absurdly childish.
I was so happy you spoke about Berserk! At one point I thought of Eren's evil turn to be very similar to Griffith's shift in Berserk. Keep teaching us to see "the underneath of the underneath".
Wasn't the whole point of Eren to shit on self-centered anime fans? Jean tells him he is selfish snd acts on his emotions very early on in the manga and his enture downfall reflects that until he becomes a truly pathetic sack of shit crying over his step-sister. He's supposed to be a loser gifted with god powers that ends up failing because he's such a loser.
I saw in real time how anime went from being relatively niche and nerdy to one of the biggest mediums of entertainment in the west and it was honestly great. Being a relatively popular black kid in a predominantly white school also gave me another layer of perspective because it wasn’t hard to notice how people thought it was cool or interesting whenever I said I watched anime and read manga, yet it was weird and dorky when other kids did it 😂.
How old are y'all, because unless you're like mid 30s or up, I don't think this is really true. It may be your experience, specifically, but its not *the* experience.
Anime has been fearlessly creating good guys that do bad things and bad guys that make good points for a long time and this makes for far more compelling stories. It was inevitable for people to get bored with traditional tropes and gravitate towards fantasy that somehow actually feels more real.
Being 39, Married with a child I have found, being vulnerable, emotionally open and consistently willing to work on my communication, far more valuable than any of the tough guy stereotypes I was raised with. Like all things I think there’s a balance that needs to be found because my wife is not looking for a partner who’s going to crumble at the drop of a hat. But the biggest moments of growth that I’ve ever happened to me to better my life and my relationship have come from those attributes listed above.
Always good to hear wisdom like this in men. I'm glad your child has a positive role model. The tough guy caricature (it's a caricature at best, because it's not a real, complete person) is meant to control people. It's fear, control, selfishness, it's based on a sense of victimization, and it lacks empathy. It's not psychologically healthy for the man or anyone around him, and it very often proves that such a man has little insight into his own emotions and insecurities. But the work you are doing on yourself is about living WITH people and because you actually care about other people. And it involves much harder work than the oversimplified ideas of masculinity, which mostly serve to run away from getting a real look at oneself.
My parents were terribly role models for a lot of what’s talked about here and across all of FD’s vids. So even as a kid, I understood this and internally just idolized fictional characters mainly sonic and Spider-Man, (but later goku, deku, kamina, naruto, reigen etc) to the point where I become so self sufficient and outspoken, I became my own cheerleader, role model big brother figure. While it definitely benefitted my later relationships a ton, if I ever have a kid, they’re definitely gonna have a luxury of growing up with a guys who’s actually willing to grow, change and being emotionally honest enough to communicate with others and show humility.... However as I age, I grow more and more envious that everyone else gets finds that role model or friend in me, that I never got to have myself because I’ve always been stuck alone being the main and often only person rooting for myself to make it. So i kinda worry, since I’m still in that toxic black familial environment, how long will it be til I’m actually able to sleep comfortably at night and live a life like you guys? Sometimes I wonder if spiderman’s influence is wholly positive, with how I’ve also seem to inherit his tendencies of cutting off everyone to protect, and constant dredging through tough environments and situations on his own, because results only end well when it’s just me doing all the work. It’s helpful sure, but one person just can’t rely on themselves forever. I’m at a point where I keep trying to pick who I put trust in carefully (and will never stop doing so) but it only ever seems to blow up in my face. Like I literally can never fully trust anything good that comes into my life and just always expect something bad to happen right around the corner, and I’m rarely wrong about it. I guess I just envy people like you and while I’ll keep working for things to get better, I wonder when I’ll actually find the peace of mind to have what you have. Because if all my life is just going to be this, it’s not healthy and I’m better off opting out tbh.
@@theradionicrevival8068 This world is better with people like you in it. And all that you give will come back to you in some way. It will be recognized if you persist. Trust me. There are people who already see it, but they just haven't told you. You may also be underestimating how easy it is for other people or how comfortable other people are. In fact, I find that the most caring people often don't sleep soundly because they are the ones that feel it all, take in everyone else's troubles, and are upset by how poorly many other people act. They are the ones who think about all the things that less thoughtful people just ignore. It's important for you to recognize the importance of your positive intentions and actions even when other people don't. Where I found a lot of my self worth was in service to other people. In times that I feel really down, pessimistic, even depressed, I find that the best thing for me is to look for a way I can help someone. And you don't have to sacrifice yourself. Even the simplest service can surprise other people and help you see that you are a powerful agent of positive change, and that it makes a difference. And the more we all do that, the more we help create an environment that is supportive to us too. We need you, don't give up.
The thing about Berserk the edgelord beginning arc. The last page you see is him walking away from the battle. And it is revealed that his face is frowning and full of tears like a child. Even in the first arc he knew he wanted to blow the lid on this archetype.
While there is validity to the criticism of Eren Yeager apologists, this is a very American way of viewing the world. In terms of good guys and bad guys. Eren is neither a good guy or abbad guy, he is an absolutely tragic, maybe the most tragic product of his environment, I think that's what was intendyand it came across.
he’s definitely deeper than just pure evil, but he’s 100% a bad person. Pretty sure he was sociopathic from the beginning, violent against anything he perceives as a threat for his friends or family. “ill kill them all” is a fine sentiment against literal monsters, but there is nothing that could excuse genocide, even if eren had a reasonable motivation. i think that’s why iseyama chose genocide as his last act. To make it clear that eren is unredeemable.
