Disclaimer; I'm never going to watch or read the rest of Attack on Titan. I think it's a gross, misanthropic story. So if I'm completely wrong about the conclusion let me know n the comments
Since "media literacy" and "How could you say my blorbo is a fascist?" are constant and inescapable on the net, I was once again drawn in to the "Is AoT fascist?" discourse.
I stopped watching AoT during the first season because it's a story of a bunch of valiant heroes grimly marching to their deaths in a war of annihilation against a teeming swarm of sub-humans who exist for no other purpose than to crush the light of civilization in an orgy of mindless violence.
Which is to say, the straightest possible portrayal of the fascist world view.
But many in the discourse argue that this isn't fair, the author clearly shows that the protagonist is the bad guy, people are dumb and media illiterate. Well, I don't want to watch four seasons of gorn just to weigh in on weird anime discourse, so let's just look at a summary of the conclusion of the story.
Let's see... minority with tainted blood who once ruled the world with an iron fist gains control over superweapons and immediately uses them to exterminate all of pure blooded humanity, even though he didn't have to, as human history is a zero-sum clash of civilizations in which there is no possible alternative but an inevitable war of annihilation between those of pure blood and those of tainted blood. Also apparently The Jews The Marleyan Royal Family secretly set the whole thing in motion.
No fascism detected! What a relief! It's a good thing the author expressed his view that racial war of annihilation is the only possible conclusion to the inevitable clash of civilizations! I was afraid he'd look directly at the camera and say "Everything that Hitler believed is correct and I have written a story reflecting that".
Like, seriously, the story starts with the Jews Eldians engaged in an auto-cannibalistic war of annihilation, and the story ends with the protagonist, once noble and heroic, revealing his true Jewish Eldian nature by annihilating humanity for basically no reason. "Eren is the bad guy!" Yeah no shit, that's exactly what the author said; The Jew cannot overcome his nature and will inevitably destroy the world no matter what. He set up a story where we sympathize with the hero, and then in the end the hero is shown to have inevitably turned in to a monster as the power of his tainted blood leads him to destroy real humans. It's Race Realism: The Motion Picture
Or maybe I'm totally wrong. idk, because I don't want to watch 40 hours of miserably nihilist murder porn written by someone who pretty obviously hates humanity.
Final thought; Isayama is Zach Snyder if Zach Snyder hated humanity.
For my next trick I will explain why Fullmetal Alchemist; Brotherhood is apologia for the crimes of Imperial Japan
Edit: I have observed that a lot of people are assessing AoT's message based on what the characters say or do. I was recently introduced to the idea of "Diegetic Essentialism", an emerging, often unconscious, belief among many people that media can only assessed within the context of the story, with the characters treated as though they were real people instead of puppets of the authors. Thus, "Isayama depicted all sides as miserable fascists" is considered important, rather than examining the world the author created and what that says about the author's beliefs about humanity and life.
Here's the post that introduced me to Diegetic Essentialism. From our buds over at /r/Sigmarxism, of course. I'd been struggling to articulate something I saw for a long time and this gave me a name for what I had seen.
https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/r/Sigmarxism/comments/11wt3kp/the_plague_of_diegetic_essentialism_or_how_i/
Interesting read, even if I had no opinion on AoT since I haven’t watched much of it nor engaged in the discourse at all. Not necessarily because I’m averse to le grimdark (I like Berserk so…) but because the whiplashes of trying to shock you by showing established characters getting eviscerated in gruesome detail got old past the first Titan attack.
I will say I like you pointing out how something so obvious as authorial intent is almost always overlooked by defenders of a given piece of fiction.
As someone who loves that anime and has rewatched it on a couple occasions, I hate the way the Ishvalan genocide is handled with a passion.
I would say, and this may be a stretch, that as horrible as the world is Berserk is fundamentally optimistic and has a positive view of mankind. Guts whole thing is that he never gives up even when he comes literally face to face with incomprehensible Eldritch evil. He's not a hero, he's just some guy who happens to be really good at killing, but he's doing the whole irrepressible human spirit thing, trying to help Casca, trying to help his friends. Admittedly, it's been a long time since I've read Berserk, but the core message I remember, aside from all the cool violence, is that you can keep fighting even when it seems like it's hopeless, and you're not a fool for doing so.
AoT says it's all pointless, violence is all there is, and humans are scum. Berserk says fuck that, I am going to kick the metaphysical embodiment of evil in the nuts and keep going.
I can handle a lot of violence, but the why of the violence matters. Like that scene in the Golden Age arc isn't to show that humans are evil, it's to show that raw, unfettered ambition is horrible and destructive. Griffith isn't bad because humans suck, Griffith is bad because, in despair, he decided to kill all of his friends for one last chance at power. Guts, Casca, and many of the other characters value their comrades more than any of their ambitions, and Guts in particular doesn't give in to despair even when he is totally, utterly fucked. All his friends die, but Guts goes in to Shonen Protagonist Determinator mode and escapes when all fate and destiny says he should have been both physically and spiritually slaughtered. And then he just keeps going. Guts is a foil to Griffith's nihilistic hopelessness. Guts says that we don't have to give in to evil, we don't have to give in to fate, we don't have to give in to a world of cruelty and oppression. We can fight, and there is honor and dignity in that fight, even if we ultimately lose.
So, to me, Guts is a positive, supportive figure for people facing hardship, loss, and pain. I've got some chronic illnesses I'm probably not going to survive. I might live a long time, maybe even beat the average, but what's most likely going to get me in the end is things I've been carrying inside me all along that I'll never be free of. Guts represents a figure, literally disabled by the loss of his eye and arm, who just keeps going in spite of his hardships. He's not pathetic or pitiable, he's not trite inspiration porn, he's a much larger than life heroic figure of a disabled person using a giant goddamn sword to cut metaphorical evils in half. I don't want to be like him, he's a shonen protagonist. But i can imagine nodding and fistbumping as we pass each other on the street, on our way to fight our respective demons one more time.