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kylermalloy · 10 months

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im so curious of ur attack of titan presentation. 👁️

In reference to this post

Omg Yuki—the way I genuinely considered sitting down and making a PowerPoint presentation 😂

I won’t. I could—but I won’t.

There’s a ton of cute presentations on this website about “why you should watch this show uwu it’s so good and the characters are adorable and it’s got a great message you’re gonna love it!” and, well…that’s not Attack on Titan for me.

Aot is…a curiosity to me. I do really like a lot of the characters, the animation and music are gorgeous, and the story is sufficiently intriguing. And yes, ultimately, it does have a message I can get behind (War Is Bad. Stick to the classics.) but it wasn’t a show that grabbed me instantly. I had to simmer in it for a while—and I do mean a while.

I suppose mostly what I want to talk about is the Disk Horse, which I kind of hate to do because tumblr is allergic to nuance—but. I also like to talk. So here I go.

(This is going under a cut because I CANNOT shut up. Also, I’m going to get into some dumb fandom drama nonsense and I would like to hide that in order to maintain my dignity.)

I actually first became aware of aot BECAUSE of the discourse. I had more posts on my dash claiming that it was a Bad Show and Don’t Watch It than posts that…actually told me anything about it.

Eventually as I started easing into exploring anime, I decided to check it out. Out of morbid curiosity, mostly. I wanted to know what was so bad about it.

For the first three seasons, I was a little clueless. An annoying protagonist with questionable morals? Main characters attached to some sort of military organization? The protagonist being the Exceptional One, the savior because of his unique abilities? …guys, these are all standard shonen tropes, and I’d only watched like…five animes at that point (I’ve now watched, like, ten. My immersion rate is s l o w.)

Then I reached the end of season 3, and I wen “ohhh.” Not because everyone who’d been insisting it was Bad were right, but because I could actually, finally see what they were talking about.

I hear the word “allegory” get thrown around a lot when it comes to aot, and…honestly, I don’t think that’s the right word. An allegory is a direct, deliberate parallel with either a real life event, or another story. Aot is not an allegory of anything. Now, does it use some real life elements as worldbuilding and narrative devices in its own story? Yes, and sometimes to a “yikes” effect.

But this is a fantasy story that takes place in a fantasy world about races of people that don’t exist. The parallels can be drawn, but it’s not an intentional allegory.

Think of the difference between Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis was very clear both in his writing and when talking about his work that it was a Christianity allegory. Aslan represents Jesus—created the world, died for its sins, all knowing, all powerful, does not always intervene, eventually edged out by a false god at the end of the world, etc. etc.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings took a lot of inspiration from his experiences in World War I. Read anything about LOTR, or watch any of the movies’ supplemental material, and that’s one of the first things you’ll hear. BUT—did old John Roald Roald intend it to be a one-to-one allegory? No.

The orcs are not the Germans. Humans and elves aren’t the English and French. This is not a fantasy retelling of real-world events—it uses elements of real-world warfare to enhance its own narrative. The faces in the Dead Marshes. Frodo’s life-altering trauma. The hobbits’ return to an unchanged safe haven, only to find they have changed irrevocably. Sam’s/Faramir’s introspection on the “evil” of the men they fight.

Aot does the latter, not the former. And while using imagery we associate with Jewish persecution and the holocaust…isn’t a choice I would have made when writing a story, it wasn’t a deliberately anti-Semitic choice.

We can talk all day long about how it’s not a wise choice, and how the implications can have ramifications—but this wasn’t something the mangaka did out of long-held prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious. I mean, do you really walk away thinking we’re supposed to HATE the Eldians? (If so, get better reading comprehension.)

I guess that’s what my Attack on Titan presentation should really be—teaching people how to read and therefore understand the themes and story correctly. Either that, or I could just make a ship chart and explain why Armin deserves to bang every single character, and in what order he should do so.

#asks #beloved yuki #there! now i don’t have to worry about your url changing lol #<3 #like. listen.#i’m not saying there’s no problems with the narrative #I’m not saying there are some things that make me go *teeth emoji*#but does that make the story evil? worthless?#no that’s reductive #attack on titan #also i have a terrible contrarian streak #if someone tells me not to watch something or that it’s bad? i’m gonna watch it and find SOMETHING good about it #and if the best part is the silly ships and aus that i create with my friends? so be it

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