• ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I often can’t believe some Japanese guy thought of this and was ok with making it. Like, really dude?

    Then I think of some American guy who wrote the book “It”.

    • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      [CW: child SA]

      spoiler

      JAPANESE CHARACTER AFTER JERKING OFF IN FRONT OF A COMATOSE GIRL: “God I’m so fucked up”

      AMERICAN CHARACTERS AFTER HAVING A CHILD GANGBANG: “This was totally a necessary scene”

    • Prometheus [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The explanation I’ve always heard was that it was his response to otakus jerking off to anime characters. I.e. women who can’t hurt you with rejection. This is who he sees them as.

      From an article in which he is interviewed:

      Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.

      Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”

      • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Holy SHIT that is a reactionary ass take.

        “Waaa we can’t murder and kill people for our fascist country and that’s why people read Dragon Ball in the subway.” grow the fuck up dude, not a single functional adult cares about someone reading Dragon Ball in the subway.

        I mean, most functional adults care about people reading pornography in the subway, but the misogynistic norms that imperial Japan probably I don’t know history that well reproduced had a lot more to do with that being a thing than any vague non-materialistic idea that not being able to have a standing army magically lead to people acting like children.

        Also who cares if they’re “children”, ffs. Not a remotely materially relevant thing. Just a vague distaste for someone’s vibes.

        • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The US specifically wanted to avoid the Soviets from entering the Pacific Front because they didn’t want them having any possible claims to Japan and potentially having to split the land akin to Europe. Pretty quickly after the US occupation there was a sizable communist movement seeking to gain power through election where they expected the US to hold up their public statements of freedom and democracy. In the end though the US cracked down on the leadership and essentially destroyed the movement. Though pretty pathetic now, the Japanese communist party still receives a decent chunk of the vote, though obviously nothing to actually disrupt the neoliberal hell.

          • CrushKillDestroySwag@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            You missed the part where the JCP tried to start a Protracted People’s War on Stalin’s orders, but the completely war-weary Japanese population totally rejected them and they ended up just giving the occupiers an excuse to crack down on themselves. Basically every leftist in Japan was considered a terrorist by the average person until the 80s when enough time had passed that they could rebrand as pacifists, but by that point the political machine of the Liberal Democrats had become all-encompassing.

    • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Tbf the whole point of that movie is that Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.

      • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.

        Or he’s a very traumatized child who has been thrust into an extremely unhealthy environment, and manipulated every step of the way, and that eventually breaks him. I’m not saying he’s a great person, but it’s pretty clear that he never stood a chance from the get-go. He still chose to do what he did in that scene, but it’s not done in isolation with everything else he’s been through.

      • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Stephen King struggle session! Stephen King struggle session!

        I’m not going to defend that part of It, of course. And he’s written a ton of crap that tends to follow along with when he got sober (good for him, but bad for his writing). But I gotta say, books like The Stand, ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and the first 4 Dark Tower books especially 1 and 4…. more than any other books I’ve read, I was unable to put them down. Like, I would try and find time on the toilet or waiting around some to find out what happens next. He absolutely knew how to tell an engaging story. And as someone else said, like him or not he defined the modern horror genre.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        The Dark Tower series is fantastic. Also, you’re in a definite minority. Steven King is well known as one of the greatest authors alive. He’s wrote duds but much of his work is regarded as great, like Pet Cemtary, Christine, and Salems Lot.

        • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I get that you have fond memories of reading his books but “one of the greatest authors alive”? Really? It’s horror schlock for teenagers, it’s fun but it’s not this groundbreaking literature you’re making it out to be.

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Lol. The dude literally defined a genre. Why do you think he’s got like a dozen movies made based on his books and several TV series?

            • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Amount of books sold and movies made doesn’t make him one of the greatest authors alive. Harry Potter sold well too and tbh they’re kinda mediocre books now that I’m an adult. Also by your metric the Twilight series is one of the greatest book series ever made.

              All of those are books for kids, maybe young adults, and those demographics don’t really have the greatest taste in art.

        • frogbellyratbone_ [e/em/eir, any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Steven King is well known as one of the greatest authors alive

          Your argument would be more persuasive if you knew how to spell his name :)

          He has a book On Writing that is very, very good. He goes through his writing process, discusses other authors, gives advice of the trade, etc. He openly admits he’s merely okay/good at writing and that there’s eons of better authors than him. He is being humble, but he’s not the greatest writer alive by any means. He talks a lot about luck, name recognition, etc. that continue to propel him, and other shit ass authors, ahead.

          The Dark Tower series is fantastic.

          Dark Tower rules. I still think Complete/Uncut The Stand is, bar none, the best shit he’s ever written without a doubt. I haven’t got to Fairy Tale yet tho.

        • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The Dark Tower series is fantastic

          i keep hearing this but i swear king has the dullest writing style of any author i’ve ever read. i suffered through the entire first book and when i got to the end all i could think was that i had picked up the wrong book by mistake bc there’s no way people could be lavishing praise on that shit

          to each their own ofc but king feels like one of those authors whose work is conceptually interesting but terribly executed imo

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            He may not be your cup of tea, but he is for millions of others. I just looked up his total books sold. It’s currently around 400,000,000. One of the top 20 fiction authors of all time.

            • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              did you think i was unaware of who i was criticizing or something? “the bible has sold the most out of any book ever, so that makes it the best book of all time. the super bowl routinely ranks among the most watched programs ever, so that must make it the best television ever aired”

              none of these are the arguments for quality you seem to think they are. popularity and quality are not the same thing. i already said i don’t begrudge his fans, i just don’t understand them. i’ve tried reading a handful of king’s books but i find i’d inevitably rather be nailing my dick to a wall every single time shrug-outta-hecks

        • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          See the turtle, ain’t he keen? All things serve the fuckin’ Beam.

          I do love the DT as a series, but I certainly like some books more than others. The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass are among my favorite fiction novels, while I’m not crazy about of Song of Susannah.

          And the patron saint of Hexbear, Matt Christman, is a Dark Tower fan.