>>7730
(Это вторая половина. В первой он просто сюжет описывает)
Despite being wowed by Studio WIT’s dynamic visuals and that undeniably badass first opening theme song, I could never get into Attack on Titan. But having read the entire manga, I acknowledge Isayama has some strengths. For one thing, his pencils are filled with pure energy and his inks are very good at capturing the pure horror that envelops the characters time and time again. For another, the tension successfully generated before each big plot twist is enviable. All these elements are only emboldened in Kodansha Comics’ English-language release, with Ko Ransom & Sheldon Drzka’s nuanced translations and the legendary Steve Wands’ potent lettering.

But well-dressed aesthetics and pacing can only do so much before you start to notice the ideas bubbling underneath the surface. Isayama’s work is full of anti-Korean, nationalist, pro-Japan subtext, parallels to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and subtextual references to Nazi Germany.

For one thing, there’s the so-called Pure Titans: that is, the random Titans that menace our characters throughout the series. Nude, creepily smiling cannibals, these Pure Titans are mindless, not even needing to eat to live so much as for fun. Many of them have grotesque or exaggerated features, from short arms to giant heads to ... large noses. And then there’s the Eldians living in ghettos, wearing star-embroidered armbands.

For another, military might is presented as the strongest, truest power of all. This goes far and beyond the typical theme in Japanese action media of the group of friends banding together, doing their best, and changing the world. Frequently, the military — particularly the Survey Corps that Eren and the rest of the main cast belong to — is presented as full of pure rational-decision makers and unquestioned commanders. The clearly unhinged soldiers, like Titan researcher Zoë Hange and the goofball Sasha Blouse, are mocked. But the certitude that they should lead is never interrogated.

Stepping back from the text itself, to what Isayama has said about the text, there are all sorts of uncomfortable parallels to real-world history. In a 2010 blog post, Isayama (who has always maintained the series was inspired by an incident where he was accosted by a large, drunk foreign man at a cafe) admitted that a supporting character, wily general Dot Pixis, was based on real-life Japanese general Akiyama Yoshifuru, who served in the Japanese Imperial Army from 1916-1923. Considered a hero in Japan — with Isayama admitting he found the general an admirable figure — for his actions in the First Sino-Japanese War, Yoshifuru was responsible for countless atrocities against Korea and China during Japanese occupations.

As the popular advice blog Ask a Korean detailed in 2007, said anti-Korean atrocities (continued long after Yoshifuru’s retirement) included the murder of then-Empress Myeong-Seong, rioting and massacring of thousands of Koreans living in Kanto after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the notorious “Comfort Women,” a euphemism for the hundreds of thousands of Korean women and girls who were kidnapped and used as sex slaves by the Japanese army (something widely acknowledged by everyone but the Japanese government). With that and the earlier, centuries-long history of hatred between Japan and Korea, small wonder then that when Isayama revealed Yoshifuru as an inspiration, and got into a Twitter flame war where he appeared to deny the notorious Nanjing Massacre, he was swarmed by death threats from Koreans.

For its part, China has simply banned Attack on Titan outright.

Then there’s the ultimate goal of the Yeagerists (who, incidentally, have a very fascist uniform sensibility) being to reestablish the Eldian Empire and take their bloody revenge on the world. Given the unavoidable implied parallels between Eldians in Marley and the Jews in Nazi Germany, the eventual apocalypse that the manga seems to be building towards is, subtextually, like something out of Alex Jones’ darkest ravings. That is, to say, it’s not hard to draw the line between the Yeagerists’ (who Eren, incidentally, seems to tacitly endorse) plan of laying waste to the world and the much-beloved right-wing talking point that the Jews (or as they dog-whistle, “Globalists”) either are already secretly controlling the world or are plotting to through finances, Hollywood, or whatever BS that leaks out of their demented heads this week.

These parallels haven’t been lost on the viewing and reading public. In an essay for Women Write About Comics shortly after the anime began, writer Vernieda Vergara pointed out that Isayama is old enough to have lived through the Great Recession (and, it should be noted, grew up during and after Japan’s 1990s economic bubble burst). The rise of his work also coincides with the election of current Japanese prime minister and right-wing militarist Shinzo Abe, who infamously reinterpreted Article 9 of Japan’s constitution — written by the U.S. after WWII, it forbids Japan from having a standing army — to give Japan the ability to increase its self-defense forces and attack when one of its allies is attacked.

But why are people seemingly only upset now, with the anime no longer at the peak of popularity and the manga winding down? Well, for one, the series still has a devoted fanbase. For another, we live in a world where hate groups, authoritarianism and nationalism are on the rise from the U.S. to Japan and beyond. And finally, since Titan exploded onto the scene, there’s been a surge of anime with right-wing leanings, from GATE (a sci-fi show centered around heroic JSDF agents that was actually used as recruitment material by the Japanese army) to the reemergence of the notorious Happy Science cult and the propagandistic anime films they fund to the themes some found in 2018’s Studio Trigger hit Darling in the Franxx.

Put simply, this stuff is on people’s minds and the signs are relatively easy to spot. As for why the outrage seems to occur in cycles? Well, like any popular Japanese property, there’s always the crowd who read the manga first and then the anime-only crowd. Given anime’s long production time — and Titan’s arduous cycle in particular (with a four year gap between the first and second seasons) — conversations about its themes are bound to take some time to resurface. Combine that with Titan’s staggered release across Crunchyroll, FunimationNOW, then DVD, then later Adult Swim, and this is a cycle that will keep happening.

Now, no one can clearly say what Isayama’s true intentions are except for him. But it’s hard to ignore the underpinnings of dystopian fiction when it stares you in the face. It looms over you like the Colossal Titan, serving as a reminder that, even in fiction (maybe especially in fiction), we have a responsibility as consumers to fully engage with what a story might be trying to say. And to consider whether that’s a message we want to hear.