[SPOILER ARLERT: Don't read this if you haven't read the scans and don't want to be spoiled]
I think we can start by saying Isayama is a nationalist and I've heard people say the way he draws Titans is somewhat anti-semitic.
The lesson of this serie also seems a bit reactionary, the fact that "walls work" for example, even if they end up not working so much in the end.
The genocide versus self annihilation aspect is also to be discussed I guess. On the subreddit, you can see many people that are pro Eren, pro destruction of the entire world. I guess if one thing can be said about this series is that there are really no actual good guys, everyone is a killer and all factions suck; whether that's good depiction of politics or not, I couldn't say.
As long as you keep in mind that its a story about giants that's really about germans and jews that's really about Japanese Imperial apoloogia - yeah, they come through. Isayama is supposedly on record saying his original inspiration was being lurched at by a drunken foreigner. So.............
So the cartoon making people who live in the decaying society of a former axis's power have incoherently used fishiest imagery to try to express their ennui and sell toys and the message is aesthetically strong but kinda confused and meaningless?
Its a bit deeper than that my friend. Anime literally rose phoenix like from the ashes of Imperial Japan with the first feature length anime -war propaganda, of course- making its debut around the same time as the firebombing of Tokyo. In the ensuing decades, Japan's practically unchanged and unrepentant fascist leadership have been defanged by American occupation a ban on offensive wars,and a commendably pacifist population. But culturally, anime has colonized hearts and minds better than Tojo's finest ever could. It started out as propaganda and has never stopped. A Japanese citizen who saw that first full length anime after the war ended claims to have been moved to tears by it's effectiveness. One of the things that make it so effective it's is use of eyes. They teach you in sales and advertising that nothing communicates as well as a human face. Now how many anime images leap to mind that are nothing but a face filling an entire screen. And even though anime is seriously cheap to produce (one of the selling points from a producer's standpoint) you will notice that the most attention is paid to animating pupils. Those giant headlight sized pupils that just instantly establish empathy. Even the seriously cheap anime will have some gorgeously rendered and oversized pupils. And Japan has used those adorable moe eyes to make everybody forget that the first bunch to take off in the Argo (Yamato) weren't volunteers. And it works, even in sites of former Japanese atrocities like China and Korea anime is huge. Just as long as idiots like isayama can refrain from being the pigs that, well, they are encouraged to be from on high. Wanna go down a messed up rabbithole? Google "moe military jdf". Anime is not only successfully used for military recruitment in Japan it is also used for advertising townships and locations as an anime set in a specific verifiable location can bring in tourists both foreign and domestic. Shit's for real bro. It works and is being used to promote fascism.
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Looked for it myself. Not too hard though. Didn't find the quote but a few articles mention a previous job at an internet cafe where said incident was supposed to have occurred. Can't wait to actually learn Japanese. Am exited to not be limited to English language sources and would love to get a genuine Japanese-lefty perspective on the whole anime thing. Janae!