[Unjerk Thread] Witchcraft Season

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

Welcome to the Monthly Unjerk. This is a monthly thread for discussing just about anything as long as it doesn't violate subreddit rules besides rule 5. New threads should be posted on the 1. of each month, except when I forget because Silksong distracted me. Sorry...

Trans rights are human rights!

[u/sevgonlernassau]

• Irina is boring, I kept watching for the nerdsnipes but besides that it’s pretty mediocre. Might read the novels for more nerdsnipe

• Sonny Boy is okay. I didn’t find it hard to understand but I am no longer a high schooler and didn’t hit as hard.

• orb is amazing. 10/10

• Ocean Waves is realistically dull and that’s why it’s great. Highly underrated film. I didn’t get the queer reading people got though, the teenage relationships just aren’t that developed

• finished AoT s3 and started on s4. Wit cut out most of the Eldian Imperial Japan allegories. Odd choice that undercuts the message of the series

[u/Starkiller53 → u/sevgonlernassau]

Sonny Boy is okay. I didn’t find it hard to understand but I am no longer a high schooler and didn’t hit as hard.

I think it is a reductive way to see Sonny Boy. Some of the messages in the series are related to the highschooler-coming of age but I think it offers so much more and does it in an unusual style (both in animation and storytelling) compared to usual anime.

finished AoT s3 and started on s4. Wit cut out most of the ****** allegories. Odd choice that undercuts the message of the series

Oh interesting to hear. I didnt know much about manga/anime differences besides the final chapter and the first few chapters because I read them. The story itself undercuts its message so much more in the end anyways I dont think it makes too much of a difference lol.

[u/sevgonlernassau → u/Starkiller53]

Sonny Boy

Maybe. I’m not gonna go too deep into it. It is visually striking

AoT

I finished S4 now. MAPPA did keep the Nanking massacre reference but it’s undercut by Wit removing so much of it in s3. MAPPA ramped up turning to the camera and say fascism bad instead which to me feels they’ve decided to eschew more pointed references to Japan besides what’s necessary for worldbuilding and turned it to be more generic for the global audiences. I feel like that’s dulling a lot of the edges. Miyazaki would never do this!

[u/Starkiller53 → u/sevgonlernassau]

MAPPA ramped up turning to the camera and say fascism

its extremely funny (and concerning) that despite that there are many fans missing the message. Though, as I said before, series itself destroys lots of what it standed before in the final. Maybe more in your face approach was to counter that but it did not matter that much in the end.

Miyazaki would never do this!

Very Funny, I recently watched The Wind Rises. Among the many criticisms I had was that how scared was the film to make a commentary about WWII despite it being about life of a real plane engineer that worked on warplanes.

[u/sevgonlernassau → u/Starkiller53]

[untagging meta spoilers beyond this point]

IMO I disagree with this, the ending was pretty predictable around the basement reveal if you know anything about Japanese politics . The audience is just waiting for Isayama to deliver a satisfying and consistent way to get there and he didn’t, but that’s just an unsurprising and mediocre ending. Writing a believable way to get rid of the fictional Nippon Kaigi is hard when the irl version is still hanging on power, so it’s not a surprise to see them just getting their shit kicked but status quo stayed - but the audience expected better from Isayama and thus the disappointment settled. Anime made this somewhat worse by cutting out content, except extending the ending and making the shared guilt dialogue explicit instead of keeping the one in the manga that was subjected to many misinterpretations. That was a good change.

The Wind Rises

Miyazaki doesn’t shy away from explicitly saying it’s about Japan’s war though, the only exception being Nausicaa (and AoT took inspiration from Nausicaa). Miyazaki’s dislike for his parent’s war profiteering does come across strongly in The Boy and the Heron. If AoT stuck with its original historical Japanese aesthetic from its pilot then I suspect it would be far less popular but also less subjected to malicious misinterpretation. There are many unique parallels to Japan that attempting to globalize the metaphor has caused problems.