• Soap_Owl [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    What? I always though Goblin Slayer was good for being the only anime to portray sexual violence as bad. Did I get proven wrong by history?

    • Cromalin [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      it's super horny about the sexual assault. it's very uncomfortable.

      and because i'm incapable of not taking any opportunity to shill for utena, you should watch utena if you want an anime that treats sexual violence as bad. it's very good

      • Soap_Owl [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Utena good no doubt.
        I disagree about the rest though. It is like that one french movie. It depicts it more graphically. Definitely more graphically than is actually a good idea. However most anime is gleefully about sexual violence. Even regular anime has women's bodies being routinely violated as a joke you know. I am sure the work didn't handle it well enough, but there is enough there that the show being anti violence is a common read.

        • Cromalin [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          i just noticed, how did you format your post like that?

          • Soap_Owl [any]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Like This?
            Or more in the way if the other oher parts?

            If it is the first part it is haveing a few spaces after the line break.
            I dont think I ment to do it intentionally actually. It I guess is like the old bug food formatting glitch

            • Cromalin [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              hmmmm.
              does this do it?
              guess not

              this maybe?
              nope

              oh well. thanks
              oh, hey. thanks!

        • Cromalin [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          it definitely seems like at least someone on the animation team was trying to titillate. and some of the audience for sure took it that way. idk, i haven't seen the whole show, i just think from the way it was framed it's kind of sus.

          if you say the way it's written takes the sexual assault more seriously and is better handled than the isolated clips i've seen, that's fair. i just think that it's part of the problem in at least some ways

          • Soap_Owl [any]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            There are so only so many animators who you can hire for this kinda project and their primary practice with thise kinda material would be hentai so it makes sense.

            No doubt the fumbled the execution but I think it still manages to get the point across. honestly think a lot of the reaction is anime fans being made uncomfortable about situation they would normally watch anime showing positivly and becoming edgelords aboug it. Then regularish internet people seeing them being terrible and decided, correctly, not to investigate further

            Even the coments for that reddit post are fairly close to what I said. Some edgelords, some people saying it was simply overdone and made them uncomfortable. I dunno what to tell that one user but scenes of sexual violence should be shocking and make you feel uncomfortable. So I feel like my read is upheld even if the production didn't stick the landing. It is just burned into my brain that an anime came out where violence is treated as bad and everyone's brain has been so cooked by the awful infustry that that no one cared

            • Cromalin [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              the fumbled the execution

              that's what i'm saying. it doesn't matter how well it was written, the anime is still clearly part of the broader problem of the anime community being horny for sexual assault. you might be totally right about how well written and sympathetic the rest of the show is towards rape victims, but i'll never know, and neither will plenty of other people who the show filtered out by having a sexy rape scene right off the bat.

              and so with most of the audience who sees rape being depicted as hot as a bad thing gone, most of the audience is made up of shithead perverts, which means it doesn't matter how good the writing is. the show might be saying rape is bad, but it doesn't want to alienate the large audience of shitheads in the anime community. and you need to pick one or the other, you can't have both. it just doesn't work like that

              • Soap_Owl [any]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                I personally felt they did a pretty good job about not making the sexual violence attractive. That doesn't matter to the discourse though. But we are both clealry not the lumpen otaku. And any reasonable and healthy person would agree with you that the show hadn't earned your trust yet. And capitlaism fucks it all up as you can buy sexy waifu dolls of the characters. Which is at oods with the writing and story. The writing is where it is good though. there are story arcs about PTSD and how no one takes violence against women seriously. How the poor are ignored by the government and have to bear the brunt of the violence. There is a sub plot about how there a are shonen heros off fighting a demon king in colorful armor somehwere but that is a rich mans war and the plot ignores it. The protagonist views his work as something bwtween necessary and unpleasant clean up and mutual aid. There is so much good stuff there that could have been wild if any otaku could absorb it. It makes me sad that it failed at that though.

                • Cromalin [she/her]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  that's fair. from what you're saying i think the show has a more severe version of the neon genesis evangelion problem where it's saying something about sexuality in anime while also profiting from from the horny anime fans, except significantly worse.

                  • Soap_Owl [any]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    2 years ago

                    Oh fuck, I didn't think if it like that but that is a good analysis

      • Soap_Owl [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        No. It is weird though. Cause regular anime is horny about sexual violence. Look at it's contemporary SAO. Goblin slayer only portrays it is as bad and uncomfortable. To the extent that there are multiple story arcs about dealing with ptsd and society ignoring victims because it is uncomfortable. I dunno what the breakdown is but when you look at the discourse for the show there is a sizeable group of people that read it as I did. So I don't think I am just idiosyncratic in my read of it.

          • Soap_Owl [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            That doesn't feel right to me. In an industry like anime where you have have clear and obvious scences portrayed as positive I think is not that. I just looked up a hentai site and if the postings can be taken as a valid measure of community feelings people are genrally not into it. Where you can find hentai with the same themes just one click over. Lots of it. If you want I can make a graph. I would say it is better than game of of thrones of which it is mostly contemporary. And way better than the rest of the anime which it is contemporary to. This is by anime standards a strong subversion off the tropes involved. And I am fully lib brained about it. It cooks my noodle that this is the only anime to show sexual violence as anyway bad and people complain about it the most.

              • Soap_Owl [any]
                ·
                2 years ago

                I agree that it is a fumble. But look at SAO if they wanted to just do a stright up ecchi scene they could have. People who are fans of this kind of thing don't click on it on hentai sites. So the experts disagree. I think that those poses are the cheapest to get overworked artists to draw so they just went with it because they didn't see it as a large part of the product. But we are talking about a small part of one episode where the rest of the series is about how messed up that was. I am saying the writer is part of a genere where sexual violence is so prevelant where their work felt subversive to them and I feel that is the context to examine it from here.

                  • Soap_Owl [any]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    2 years ago

                    We are talking past eachother then. The art studio, the production company, and the author clearly had different ideas about what the product should be. I feel that the work as a unit does have a valuable critique of the anime industry.

                      • Soap_Owl [any]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        I really think you saw the scene, found it distasteful and theat means the anime is bad. Whereas I think it was distasteful and that scenes of sexual violence should be distasteful which means the anime is good. It is simply ultimately unimportant as the discourse as large doesn't care about the work. Does it makes sense though where I am coming from about it even if you think I am wrong?

                          • Soap_Owl [any]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            2 years ago

                            If they wanted to make full out porn they would have done it an no one would have complained. They probably would have made more money. The rest of the text of the work shows this is bad. It is bad. Everone is in agreement that it is bad. It is to my knowlge the only anime where multiple epsidodes are devoted to pstd, how sexual violence is bad, and how people don't listen to survivors. Obviously they didn't stick the landing or there arguments about it. I feel like as it doesn't really matter it is praiseworthy that they set out to show sexual violence as being bad.

                            Maybe I am broken then. Cause when I watch that scene I don't find it at all exciting. I know I see lots of other people saying this in the discourse. So this is not some idiosyncratic take of mine alone.

                              • Soap_Owl [any]
                                ·
                                2 years ago

                                Of course manga is better written we are grading on the curve of anime.

                                If the rest of the show didn't go on to be way better than average I would have to agree with you. There is always the problem that depecting things you don't approve of is hard. Every piece horror media deals with that. Obvious it wasn't a total success but it is readable as a scene trying to show the horror of the situation. But ultimately the direction of that scene is not the full discussiok of the work. And I feel the rest od thr work has intresting things to say.

                                I think bezerk does Casca dirty on how it handles her arc. She is definitely fridged. Where as we have mutiple female characters here who are survivors and it treats them as having valid emotions and working through their trauma in multie ways some healthy and successful.