jfc
I often can’t believe some Japanese guy thought of this and was ok with making it. Like, really dude?
Then I think of some American guy who wrote the book “It”.
[CW: child SA]
spoiler
JAPANESE CHARACTER AFTER JERKING OFF IN FRONT OF A COMATOSE GIRL: “God I’m so fucked up”
AMERICAN CHARACTERS AFTER HAVING A CHILD GANGBANG: “This was totally a necessary scene”
Does that really happen in the anime? I watched the anime series (no movies) and I don’t remember it at all thankfully.
It’s in the End of Evangelion movie. It’s not in the TV series, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the comic.
The difference is that Evangelion is actually good unlike anything King ever wrote
The Dark Tower series is fantastic. Also, you’re in a definite minority. Steven King is well known as one of the greatest authors alive. He’s wrote duds but much of his work is regarded as great, like Pet Cemtary, Christine, and Salems Lot.
I get that you have fond memories of reading his books but “one of the greatest authors alive”? Really? It’s horror schlock for teenagers, it’s fun but it’s not this groundbreaking literature you’re making it out to be.
Steven King is well known as one of the greatest authors alive
Your argument would be more persuasive if you knew how to spell his name :)
He has a book On Writing that is very, very good. He goes through his writing process, discusses other authors, gives advice of the trade, etc. He openly admits he’s merely okay/good at writing and that there’s eons of better authors than him. He is being humble, but he’s not the greatest writer alive by any means. He talks a lot about luck, name recognition, etc. that continue to propel him, and other shit ass authors, ahead.
The Dark Tower series is fantastic.
Dark Tower rules. I still think Complete/Uncut The Stand is, bar none, the best shit he’s ever written without a doubt. I haven’t got to Fairy Tale yet tho.
See the turtle, ain’t he keen? All things serve the fuckin’ Beam.
I do love the DT as a series, but I certainly like some books more than others. The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass are among my favorite fiction novels, while I’m not crazy about of Song of Susannah.
And the patron saint of Hexbear, Matt Christman, is a Dark Tower fan.
The Dark Tower series is fantastic
i keep hearing this but i swear king has the dullest writing style of any author i’ve ever read. i suffered through the entire first book and when i got to the end all i could think was that i had picked up the wrong book by mistake bc there’s no way people could be lavishing praise on that shit
to each their own ofc but king feels like one of those authors whose work is conceptually interesting but terribly executed imo
King is hit or miss but by sheer quantity he has more great books than many writers in their whole catalogue
Stephen King struggle session! Stephen King struggle session!
I’m not going to defend that part of It, of course. And he’s written a ton of crap that tends to follow along with when he got sober (good for him, but bad for his writing). But I gotta say, books like The Stand, ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and the first 4 Dark Tower books especially 1 and 4…. more than any other books I’ve read, I was unable to put them down. Like, I would try and find time on the toilet or waiting around some to find out what happens next. He absolutely knew how to tell an engaging story. And as someone else said, like him or not he defined the modern horror genre.
I don’t think the show ever sympathized with Shinji. Well, at least I don’t sympathize with him and I didn’t interpret the show that way.
The explanation I’ve always heard was that it was his response to otakus jerking off to anime characters. I.e. women who can’t hurt you with rejection. This is who he sees them as.
From an article in which he is interviewed:
Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.
Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”
“Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains
They lost it to China and the Soviet Union. But maybe losing the inter-imperialist rivalry hit them different.
The US specifically wanted to avoid the Soviets from entering the Pacific Front because they didn’t want them having any possible claims to Japan and potentially having to split the land akin to Europe. Pretty quickly after the US occupation there was a sizable communist movement seeking to gain power through election where they expected the US to hold up their public statements of freedom and democracy. In the end though the US cracked down on the leadership and essentially destroyed the movement. Though pretty pathetic now, the Japanese communist party still receives a decent chunk of the vote, though obviously nothing to actually disrupt the neoliberal hell.
Holy SHIT that is a reactionary ass take.
“Waaa we can’t murder and kill people for our fascist country and that’s why people read Dragon Ball in the subway.” grow the fuck up dude, not a single functional adult cares about someone reading Dragon Ball in the subway.
I mean, most functional adults care about people reading pornography in the subway, but the misogynistic norms that imperial Japan probably I don’t know history that well reproduced had a lot more to do with that being a thing than any vague non-materialistic idea that not being able to have a standing army magically lead to people acting like children.
Also who cares if they’re “children”, ffs. Not a remotely materially relevant thing. Just a vague distaste for someone’s vibes.
Tbf the whole point of that movie is that Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.
Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.
Or he’s a very traumatized child who has been thrust into an extremely unhealthy environment, and manipulated every step of the way, and that eventually breaks him. I’m not saying he’s a great person, but it’s pretty clear that he never stood a chance from the get-go. He still chose to do what he did in that scene, but it’s not done in isolation with everything else he’s been through.
ASUKA HELP ME PLEASE ASUKA HELP ME YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP ME (SINCE I DON’T KNOW WHERE REI IS)
🖐️
I’m so fucked up
I can relate to that loser in many ways, but I think the biggest hurdle that prevented me from fully taking the show seriously or it having any impact on me was the scale of the larger problem.
Like yeah, he was depressed, lonely, and abused, but at the same time… there are also literal demons about to the end the world. Yes, yes I know they’re metaphors for whatever. But come on. You cannot make the problem so grand, so earth shattering, and expect me to care about his depression. It’s the equivalent of feeling sorry for Jesus because he got nailed to a cross - suck it up, or else we all suffer.
Unironically, get in the fucking robot.
Though I guess this circles back to the problem of Omelas. Hmm . I looked this up to see if anyone had made more coherent analysis comparing the show and story, but surprisingly, not many.
“I would like to end the world because my father is a dick”
Get in the robot Shinji. This is literally the fate of all mankind, including yourself. Your options are to let everyone die and then you die 3 minutes later or get in the robot, be scared, and possibly live.
if we have to conscript child soldiers and we choose to conscript child soldiers maybe all mankind should fuck off
I don’t care if the Nazis razed their homes, killed their families, and will literally kill them tomorrow unless this position holds, I will not have a 14 year old boy join the Red Army. - robot_dog_with_gun
Child soldiers suck but if the only other option is literally just them being killed it’s a moot point.
I think that’s part of it? Like I haven’t seen it but Shinji’s choices are objectively wrong but also make sense because he’s a flawed human. So you’re supposed to disagree with him but also sympathize but also disagree with him.
I definitely agree. I can understand why people relate with him now that I think about other morally gray characters I can empathize with. For example, Joel from the TLOU. He basically doomed mankind, but if I was in his situation I would’ve done the same exact thing, even if I had the knowledge of what the consequences would be.
So people making the objectively wrong choice and putting everyone and themselves at risk is too unrealistic too you?
No, it’s not unrealistic. But I feel like something high stakes like this would resort in extreme measures. Mr. Robot is basically Hacker Evangelion, and I think it shows a tad bit more realistic situation - the protagonist and his colleagues are constantly tortured, harassed, manipulated, etc. to do something because the stakes are high. Similar things happen in Evangelion but I don’t know, maybe i expected humanity to treat their teenage saviors like Jesus.
