Is Attack on Titan FASCIST? (No, it isn't, just hear me out).

Enough of this madness.
So, in the last few years, and again leading up to the recent anime finale, Attack on Titan has been accused of a variety of unsavory things, in my opinion highly unfairly. Since nothing is ever simple and there is a lot of nuance to this conversation, here's a video that's over an hour long going through Attack on Titan's themes, the historical and political context surrounding it, why there's genuine cause for concern when it comes to Eren stans and how this controversy has become incredibly silly, self-righteous, misinformed and quite frankly just exhausting in its lack of basic media literacy.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
04:50 - The big twist of it all
11:41 - The Imperial Japan of it all
22:01 - The Hajime Isayama of it all
28:42 - The pins of it all
41:19 - The Eren Jaeger of it all
52:25 - The weirdos of it all
57:25 - The Ending of it all
01:07:50 - The conclusion of it all
01:11:51 - Outro

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiyama...
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A7%... (Japanese Wikipedia page for Yoshifuru, to double-check, since the English one seems lacking in citations, most of which are taken from here)
Website for Matsuyama Kita High, the school Yoshifuru became a principal of and the source for most of the Japanese Wikipedia Article, can be checked with machine translation: https://matsuyamakita-h.esnet.ed.jp/
Link to the chapter "The “Jewish Problem” in Japanese—German Relations, 1933–1945" written by Gerhard Krebs for the book "Japan in the Fascist Era": https://link.springer.com/chapter/10....
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/202...
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...
Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun : Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era: https://labordoc.ilo.org/discovery/fu...
"Time off: Jews of Japan":    • Time off: Jews of Japan  
Original 2013 post from Musings that are Seldom: https://seldomusings.wordpress.com/20...
Original tumblr post by the brave internet sleuth mentioned in the video: https://yorozuya-gin-chan.tumblr.com/...
Original interview by Isayama stating his inspiration for the story when he had a scuffle at an internet cafe: https://web.archive.org/web/201311022...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Original Isayama blog post about Yoshifuru/Pyxis, can be checked using machine translation: http://blog.livedoor.jp/isayamahazime...

Avatar art by   / biamello.art  


#attackontitan #hajimeisayama #shingekinokyojin