It's just so... Blatant. You know?

Like, yeah sure a kid with no understanding of the subject matter will go "guns vs fantasy knights woooooaw coooooool" and not think further. But it takes the tiniest critique to make it all look kinda sus. They aren't actually helping anyone in this fantasy world they're exploiting and manipulating them while stealing the resources from their land and carefully making sure they don't learn any of your technology because that might enable them to gain power.

It's just so in your face that at some point in a lot of people's lives they'd end up learning a bit of left stuff and being like "hold on a minute" when they think about the show again. Unapologetic colonialism is not a good propaganda angle. From the original author's perspective it's pretty good writing because it's EXACTLY what I'd expect from a modern military dealing with fantasy world people (although a little bit friendlier and lacking the kind of "savages" and racist stuff it should have). The military didn't write the original work I think, they only helped fund the anime as an experiment for new angles to help the military but it's not really a good look. I kind of defend the show from that angle.

Now, Rory is problematic herself because she's supposed to be the 1000 year old loli archetype but I've always found it hard to see her character as a child, she doesn't look that way in design and she behaves like she's an 80 year old sassy lady so it's like... Ok? She's probably the best version of this archetype that exists at least so it makes it somewhat ignorable.

OHHHHHH wait there's actually a JSDF soldier that marries a preteen because there's no laws in fantasy world. I forgot that. That doesn't make the military look good either though????? lmao

Fun show. I give it Junkfood/10