Anime:

• DandaDan:

Here's the thing about problematic media- when you swing for the fences, sometimes you miss, but you can't hit a home run if you don't try. Ep 1's definitely a strike and problematic as fuck, but the rest of the show has been batting consecutive home runs (so far). It definitely has Things to Say about gender that are worth saying, and while I do think that screwball coming-of-age romance/sex comedy might not have been the best medium to tackle heavy topics like SA, I'd rather a piece of media take risks and be challenging while trying to say something important rather than play it safe and fail to say anything at all.

(Although, that said, screwball coming-of-age romance/sex comedy is already a genre with a whole lot of problematic baggage and I completely understand anyone being turned off by that. But the larger point is that we have to differentiate between problematic media intentionally reproducing harm vs unintentionally reproducing harm, because the latter can still have value.)

Like, for example: the Boss Alien using an extremely phallic... appendage to pump the Gig-Worker alien full of (what I can only assume are) brainworms that makes them start singing a jingle that's an ad for an energy drink as a mid-episode power-up to help them better, er, steal Banana organs from teenagers, the punchline for which is JAPANESE BUSINESSMAAAAAAAAN!!!; if that isn't the most metaphor for how capitalism reproduces patriarchy idk what is.

Context for that take, btw. And stuff like that is what makes Dandadan so good- there is a larger dialogue about feminism as the main narrative and thematic focus (the entire Acrobat Silky arc is such a beautiful encapsulation of how patriarchy encourages women to hurt other women, even if unintentionally; and that the only way to a kinder, more fortunate world is through empathy- Sakugablog has a wonderful blow-by-blow production notes article breaking down the AcroSilky episodes both industry-wise and storytelling-wise for those interested) but even the small throwaway double Ultraman/Regain reference joke has gender-related social commentary baked in.

• Ranma 1/2 (2024)

This show aged a heck of a lot better that Urusei Yatsura, that's for sure. Ranma overcoming his misogyny by applying the insights he gains from his experience as the other gender is even more relevant now than it was in the 80's, but the show hewing closer to the manga and giving a lot more interiority to the characters really helps a lot; I honestly don't remember the original being written or paced as well as this. It also helps that Ranma and Akane are largely more sympathetic characters than Ataru and Lum are. The retro-modern aesthetic and the animation quality overall is fantastic (especially the whacky fight scenes, MAPPA's animators did a really good job; I really do hope they aren't getting overworked)

Not much to say here, it's just a really solid show.

Manga:

• Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man is crazy good this week. <--- The last half-a-year, basically. Mid-point of part 2 was a bit slow but we had to let my boy cook cos it was worth it.

Where we're at in CSM btw, without context:

Show

• Centauria

Hey, y'know how we keep joking about a John Brown Isekai? This is the closest thing we're going to get to that. Imagine Berserk, but the main character is an escaped slave who was granted power by an eldritch sea demon when a bunch of slaver's decide to "liquidate the cargo" for insurance money and inadvertently draw the demon's attention.

Is it nonsensically edgy? Yeah, kinda, but it's also the single most based thing I've read/watched all year. Granted, I'm only 4 chapters in but I like what I see so far.

FUN FACT: The authors of Chainsaw Man, DandaDan, SpyxFamily and Centauria have all worked together at one point or another, and they all share an editor (Shihei Lin, who is interestingly freelance atm, even if all these manga are getting published on Shonen Jump's online platform where he worked formerly).

Given that 3/4 of these have been unfathomably based and absolute bangers (sorry SpyxFamily I'm docking points for not accurately portraying fictional East Berlin as the communist utopia it was historically) I am forming the Shihei Lin Defense Force: I will personally field any questions in defense of the creative decisions these authors have taken, and will counter any and all accusations that the above authors/works are exceedingly/inherently problematic by incoherently screaming into the Void before skulking into a dark corner, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth while repeatedly muttering "media literacy" under my breath.

(The exception, of course, being SpyxFamily).

(I thank God every day I never made a Twitter account.)

BECAUSE TALKING ABOUT SOME ACTUALLY PROBLEMATIC SHIT

• Drama Queen

Oh fuck me I had high hopes that Jump would keep up the progressive streak, but I guess it was only a matter of time. The is going off big time here.

The premise is that aliens have come to earth, taken all the good jobs and gentrified the place. The two MC's, who are racist against aliens, decide that murdering and eating the aliens is the way to go towards alleviating their economic precarity.

1. Yeah if you squint hard enough it could be anti-colonial instead of anti-immigrant, given the Japanese context, but there are too many right-wing dog whistles in the work (they took our jerbs, the focus on miscegenation in like the first 4 pages, the vaguely antisemitic suggestion that there's a conspiracy) plus it completely fails to make any of the structural critiques of racism necessary for an anti-colonial narrative (think Code Geass and how Elevens form an oppressed underclass)

2. Yeah maybe they're villain protagonists like in Death Note or Breaking Bad... except those stories made it EXCEEDINGLY clear that their villain protagonists were in the wrong from the get-go: there's no such indication here

Reading this is like reading a cracked-mirror version of Chainsaw Man: it's clearly using the same visual language and themes (the protagonists "very relatable" struggle with poverty, for one) but instead of getting its reader's to more deeply interrogate their relationship with capitalism through the challenging allegory of an abusive relationship, it just blames everything on immigrants and gleefully embraces misanthropic nihilism. Whooooo cannibalism let's goooooo!

Seeing something reactionary hijack something progressive to its own ends isn't surprising, but it makes me irrationally angry. Fuck this.

Damn I'd do everything in my power to avoid the TTRPG gulag since I think having to look up and/or memorize To-Hit tables is a fate worse than death

Getting my ass kicked by Fatalis counts right?

It's pretty important that we differentiate Marxist criticisms of liberal identity politics (which are valid) from class reductionist criticisms of intersectionality (which... not so much.) Amber's problem is that she keeps sliding along this scale into class reductionism.

Also yeah back during the subreddit days people were kinda weird about her.

Real gigachads invite their SO’s over to build gunpla and watch ZZ

Since no one gave the serious answer yet: term used by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari

In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed.

In the meme it's how the characters in these sorts of stories have become so alienated by capital that they need to resort to extreme violence to change their social relations (usually in a self-destructive way, because revolution is precluded by the material conditions in the imperial core in these narratives).

We'll have the first ever harmony session over this take

This is probably the coldest take ever posted in the history of this site

Since no one has mentioned it yet:

Chainsaw Man is a story about how our relationship to capitalism is the same as being in an abusive relationship, Manufacturing Consent is just grooming and that at the end of the day we have to eat the rich. (It's not explicitly Marxist but it's class conscious the same way shows like Parasite or Squid Game are.)

Imo Turn A is perfectly fine standalone. It'll help to be familiar with Gundam shows as a concept, but I think the core conceit is strong enough that you can go in mostly blind and be fine

Gundam are not explicitly marxist but political themes lean into marxism at times. Some shows better than others, I'm not a gundam expert.

Just to add, Tomino (the guy who made the original 0079 Gundam) had a similar background to Ghibli's Miyazaki (they're the same age and they worked together on World Masterpiece Theater) and was also active in the student union's in the 60's. All the stuff he made is extremely class conscious. "Everything he makes is marxist in some way whether he still calls himself one or not." applies to him as well, even if in public nowadays he's kinda ultra liberal.

The show I'd recommend from him is Turn A Gundam, which besides being a beautiful high-concept Sci-fi show (that I won't spoil) is also explicitly about settler colonialism.

Edit for basic fact checking lol

The capitalists trying to strip out the wiring is how you know they are leftist

I'm going to gently push back a little on Okarun being a Nice Guy- he's not Kirito or a generic isekai protagonist where he's a generic not-asshole that inexplicably makes women fall for him, to act as a vehicle for audiences to self-insert into. He's a socially isolated kid with low self-esteem who retreated into a niche hobby as a coping mechanism, his sole motivation at the start of the show was to make even one friend and he's only now grappling with the fact that his first genuine friend is someone of the opposite sex and that he might be attracted to her (<---- Episode 5, for those keeping score at home).

Also he has to deal with the absurdist situation that a ghost ate his balls.

Neat little thing about his character: the meta joke that Okarun's real name is the same as Momo's celebrity crush, Takakura Ken (think of the real life celebrity as Japanese John Wayne) is that his catch phrase "I'm an awkward fellow, after all" came from a commercial for family insurance, where the father figure played by the actor keeps failing to express his true emotions but it's obvious to the audience that he cares about his family (because he bought insurance). That's more his character's deal (rather straightforwardly being bad at expressing himself), rather than some Chainsaw Man style bait-and-switch Shonen character deconstruction.

Edit: But also also the general levity of the show seems to be at odds with some of the topics it handles (like SA) and I'm not sure it's a good idea to proselytize to anyone who watched ep 1 and decided it's not for them because people are definitely going to have strong reactions that are entirely justified, I just feel like doing so can come off as insensitive

Yes, the first episode is problematic. But the show overall has feminist themes that make it a worthwhile watch- the new episode op is talking about a case in point.

I really need to get around to that effortpost about how to approach problematic media

When Democracy is dying in thunderous applause but you're too media illiterate to realize it

To be fair to helltaker, the wrecker successfully got several user’s to point fingers at her when she wasn’t in a position to defend herself: if that happened to me I’d come out the gates swinging too.

Sulvor posted Carcosa’s proposals from elsewhere in this thread- I think most of us are waiting for Lyudmilla’s upcoming update post to review all proposed changes and plans of action.

Foucaults already replied with Egon's timeline but if you want my TLDR:

The root of it has been the admins/mods lack of transparency and overreach (both in the past and in this current incident), but honestly that kinda goes with the territory of operating a social space on the internet.

Additionally there's been a re-litigation of the site's age-old dichotomy between being a serious revolutionary org and being a shitposting chill-out space, as pushing towards the former is what is assumed to be the motivation for the admins overreach, but this time people are taking it really personally because the wrecker successfully got us to point fingers at each other and a lot of people have been catching strays.

RN it's probably best to wait and chill, Lyudmila will give us an update within a day or 2 with probably a better account of what happened and a plan of action forward. We can all decide what to do then

Yeah, I saw some of what was posted and it was really not cool, and it did a lot to rile up people and foster a sense of paranoia.

Also makes sense that an ex-mod (see edit) would know enough to talk like they were a current mod and (rightfully) cause the user’s to doubt the sincerity of the staff given how long it took to deal with (they ended up having to de-fed the linked instance to stop the harassment) + TC69’s ban wave was REALLY bad optics.

Our past mistakes come back to haunt us

Edit: Apparently the wrecker is probably an outsider, which actually is even worse because a lot of accusations were flying- we might have done their job for them