I hear a lot about people disliking shows with child protagonists, especially as they grow older. It’s funny because I actually quite like stories with young protagonists. Even like to write characters like that. Mind you, I was in highschool until 2018 and tend to stay interested in media for a long time so maybe it’s just that my favorite shows were made for younger me. Still, I guess someone has to write the kid’s shows.
What actually bugs me is all the bleak deconstructions you see popping up so often. Like, speaking of magical girls, there’s deconstructions coming out the wazoo for that, or there was for a while. Everyone wants to be the next Madoka Magica. I think it’s time to give it a rest. I feel like a ton of them don’t even know what they’re trying to say aside from “look! It’s dark now! Give me money!” A lot of them do shit like have the magic cost years off of your life or some shit (that was a show, I forget the name). That fails as a deconstruction completely because well, magic can do whatever you want.
Mecha shows do it too. Not every show needs to be Evangelion. That’s the only one that did the deconstruction right. Maybe I don’t WANT to have every show be a deconstruction of common childhood family. I feel like a lot of the authors have never heard of suspension of disbelief. A few deconstructions are perfectly fine, some are great, but overexposure is a bitch. I feel like I’m in the 90s.
What exactly would be a deconstruction of Mecha. I seen,watched and played many both western and Japanese, lightheaded and dark, fighting giant monsters or just other humans, that I don’t think there is enough common tropes among them to deconstruction Mecha as a genre unless you just go after certain types. I’m probably just getting what you mean wrong. U.C Gundam and Battletech are still my favorites.
Brigand is territory I am too weak and baby to touch, especially after watching his videos and the sheer number of times he had to beg the dev for a fix because the game borked too hard for him to get past an area.
All that for weed money, man, follow your dreams, Brigand dev.
Anyhow, about the mecha deconstruction, Gundam has pretty much always had tones of War Is Hell, even the more nonsensical stuff like G Gundam. My introduction to Gundam was SEED and 08th Mobile, which are both unambiguously, “Hey. People are actually being killed. On both sides. This shit sucks.” I feel like Evangelion is less a deconstruction and more taking the already grim tone of mecha anime to its extreme conclusion (also biblically accurate angels, because why not I guess).
“Extreme pacifism” is not an anti-war message, though. If your country is being invaded then war is still bad, but you didn’t start it. That’s even MORE anti-war, because, presumably, you’re seeing the effects the war has on your people.
Using the example that we’re ALL thinking about, “that the Ukrainian people are fighting back is great” is not a pro-war message; “that they have to fight back at all is terrible” is an anti-war message.
I think it’s possible to have no pro-war and no anti-war message, at least not the kind you beat the audience over the head with, but it’ll probably still come off as anti-war, because war tends to be scary and painful and full of death, and people generally dislike such things.
I think there’s a distinction to be made between just general pro-war messaging and being willing to stand for you convictions or defense. The latter, I think, can be a fair thing to present to the reader, but I think just giving carte-blanche to most pro-war content can attract the wrong kind of crowd, or give the wrong sorts of ideas to a reader.
Sorry, but do I understand correctly that you think a pro-war message is something good?
War in itself is inherently evil and shouldn’t be idolized in any way, it is a bloody affair that brings out the worst in people that should stay buried (see atrocities committed in Ukraine right now on a daily basis).
So I rather take an anti-war message that a pro war message.
I agree with that, defense of one owns convictions and own country is the maximum of “pro-war” that should be depicted.
War is not inherently evil. Sometimes war can be a force of positive change, or a necessity. Sometimes there’s no peaceful solution, and all the anti-war blustering becomes meaningless. Peace can be even worse than conflict under the right circumstances. Blind opposition to war in all circumstances is foolishness. Another thing I can’t stand is when people act like the sole determining factor is who fired the first shot, as though there’s never a reason to fire in the first place.
Then explain your point more in detail next time. Because you sounded a lot like a jingoist there.
“Armed Neutrality” is something I can’t disagree with and find good actually and find pacifism a less than ideal ideology to have.
But saying “I am for pro-war message” and letting that statment stand that way gives the wrong signals to users reading your comment.
I’m actually kinda confused because I’m pretty sure anti-war does mean “armed neutrality,” and pro-war means “I am a xenophobe.” Maybe it’s just a difference in term usage and not ideology.
That’s a common false equivalence. “Anti-war” can also mean “avoid war at all costs, never fight, peace in our time, appease the dictator”. There were people opposed to fighting the Nazis purely on the basis that you become more evil by involving yourself in the conflict, and a lot of people who oppose foreign intervention are similarly inclined.
Huh. Ok, now I have no idea what anyone thinks who says they’re anti-war since apparently anti-war means multiple different things. I just assumed they all meant armed neutrality.
