Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Deca-Dence
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Gina Szanboti
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When we were first introduced to what was going on in the prison, I was totally having a soylent green moment, waiting for them to reveal that's what they were feeding the humans, kinda like how that heybot was making his hooch. I was relieved to find out that was not the case.
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Panino Manino
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While I was watching the episode I was already thinking, "can we really blame everyone that watching this anime and insist they can't see any parallels to capitalism/neoliberalism?", because... everyone knows the word "gulag" and associated with "forced labor camps" with the west great boogieman. Is what they know, is what they where taught. But how many times they were told about the all those labor camps, killing camps, and massacres perpetrated by capitalist nations? Very few, so can we really ask these random otakus to know that private prisons for profit are a thing in our real world? And about "totalitarian vibes equals communism" pff... Reminder that the corporation in this anime isn't "the government". Is just a big corporation. Just one, among many, it's the only one we know because is the only one we need to know. That world isn't "the world" also, or society, it's just the property of that one corporation. And of course, the goal is just the profit of the corporation at the expense of everything and every one else, how can anyone say that this don't resemble capitalism at all? At least shares it's same dire consequences? You even have Natsume that it's deemed "unfit" to do the work. Or you'll say that capitalism strives to integrate disabled people? Heck, it strives to get rid of able people! This episode is really what "the" capitalists dream of, and what already happens to some degree in parts of the world. A corporation becomes the owner of some piece of land or natural resource and controls the lives of it's employees. |
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Panino Manino
Posts: 748 |
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It is not a particular criticism, but it does contain elements of criticism, which works better for any criticism.
I want to point that this "centralization of power" only looks so oppressive for the beings living inside Solid Quake property. This isn't a "totalitarian WORLD", this is just a Shitty Corporation. When they make the exposition on episode two explaining what that "world" is you can see that there are other corporations in other parts of the planet. Any one of those can be more or less "totalitarian" than Solid Quake and this is a very relevant criticism to make about "our" capitalism today, with so may huge corporations with too much power violation our rights and well being and destroying nature to catastrophic consequences. Those Corporations have more power than governments because they use all their lobby power to force the government to neglect it's obligations with it's people and protect the "rights" of the Corporation. It's very annoying seeing people to this day insisting on making imbecile accusations about "communism", like if what people wanted were the excesses instead of just asking for the society under they live to improve a bit. But these people deny that and defend with all their mighty the "right" of corporations to make things worse for everyone. Insanity. |
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Yttrbio
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You do realize that communism happened, right? We don't have to guess as to what the consequences are, and its defenders can't be absolved from being considered advocates of the consequences. The fact that you cover your ears and say "la la la" doesn't make you not an imbecile.
If your criticism "X is bad" would be just as functional as a criticism "Y is bad" with a simple find/replace, then it's not a criticism of X, it's just a criticism of badness. |
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Panino Manino
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If "bad things happened under communist regimes, than 'communism' to any degree is bad", then the same can be said to capitalism or any other economic ideology? That's what I'm talking about, there's a lot of people that thinks and talks like this. Anything that they deem "communism/socialism" is automatically all bad, just bad, but they don't do the same to capitalism even if capitalism and the neo-liberal ideology is killing them right now. In this anime's last episode we seem a forced labor camp. This is bad per se right? No matter the regime? Than forced labor camps are also bad when they exist under capitalism, why can't we point and discuss this instead of diverting our attention to the boogieman? Not of worth will come for us talking and explaining, "actually, communism yada yada". |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3662 |
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Yes, but regardless of intentions, the show is communicating "forced labor camps are bad," not "capitalism is bad." There's nothing specifically capitalistic about this instance of the "tyranny is bad" trope, other than just asserting "this time it was a corporation with dictatorial control that did it, as opposed to a person/ideological movement/shady cabal of evil wizards with dictatorial control that did it." It's just a variant on name-calling.
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I mean... no? Almost every time there's a catastrophe of any kind plenty of people give money and time to help. They do even when the problem doesn't concern them directly, here everyone could literally see the hole and the monster coming in to kill them. It's beyond ridiculous that they'd just shrug their shoulder and go "not my problem", while people are literally killed right next to them. If anything, the problem in this situation would have been people trying to help but doing a poor job of it and making things worse as a results. For example, when the public is asked for information about potential people (either criminal or missing people) phone line often get flooded with people providing wrong information, sometime people will even make up fake information because their desire to help overwhelm themselves. Or when rumour of criminal roaming neighbourhood start propagating people will sometime form defence group which often end up harassing the wrong peoples. Not long ago rumours of people kidnapping children in India started spreading around, this ended up with multiple peoples being lynched to death (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44678674). The reason why these fail isn't because people don't help or because there's nefarious people at the top profiteering from this. It's because most peoples are incompetent/untrained and make everything worse by trying to help (ie why you shouldn't run into a burning building if the fireman are there). |
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Animegomaniac
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"Surrogate daughter".
.... oh yes, absolutely, surrogate daughter. And. Nothing. Else. It's not like this is a Anime Original from Japan or anything suspicious like that. Full disclosure: I thought it obvious they were an intended couple since episode 3.
I'm not watching it through any sort of economic allegory; That would be like looking at Dark City and saying "The real story is that the Workers... the people... have to take their means of production... the self producing city... away from the owning class... the Aliens" but that's not the story there nor is it relevent here. It's not that an economic order will be replaced by another order, it's that structured fate will be replaced by utter chaos. The Gears have to stop the means of production completely, not take it over. And while the Gears do that, the Tankers have to... Not die in the immediate future? At this point, it should be "help the Gears" but the show is taking its time with raising the Tankers' consciousness above ground level. |
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Panino Manino
Posts: 748 |
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OH NOOOOOO! I heroically managed to keep this away from my thoughts till now, why you had to remember me?! I always hope for the better, always, but always end disappointed. Recently I watched a late 90's dorama where the protagonist went to jail TWO TIMES and still ended married with the little girl. Now I can already see, after the incoming war, Kaburagi will lose his real body and end with his mind permanently inside one of the avatars, right? |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Honestly, before this review I wasn’t quite sure if we could draw a direct parallel between Deca-Dence and the real world capitalism it is telling us that it’s criticizing. This episode was particularly harsh; the game company has made it clear that not only don’t they care about the real life humans in the tank, they are willing to *cull* them, straight up letting them be killed in Gadoll attacks. Could anything in real life capitalism be *that* cruel? But while reading the review, I remembered an article I read recently about how the pandemic is killing “essential” workers, especially workers who work in meat processing plants. The article followed workers trying to organize with their unions in Delaware, one of the only states where meat processing plant workers can *have* unions, since most plants are set up in “Right to work” states where organizing is a fireable offense. They were demanding the very basic necessities they need to continue working while being protected from Covid-19: protective equipment (that the company would provide, because they had noticed that the company was taking the cost of masks and other basics out of their meager, minimum wage paychecks), space between workers, and contact tracing (that the company tell workers when one of their colleagues tested positive). Those asks don’t seem like a lot, but they weren’t getting that much. What their company was pushing for was legal protections from the government against being sued by employees and their families if they got sick at work. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/how-trump-is-helping-tycoons-exploit-the-pandemic |
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Covnam
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So did that hole happen from from the attack at the end of ep 5 or just during the unnecessary month skip (at least from the human pov)?
Yeah, this seemed odd to me as well. It's not like it's someone else's problem when they're the ones getting killed and want to stop it. I understand being afraid of getting attacked by Gadoll while repairing the hole, but that doesn't seem to frequent and most people just seemed uninterested instead of afraid. Also, I couldn't help noticing that it seemed like the only people that came were the very same butcher's association that Natsume went to and basically (literally?) no one else. Is that the only major organization in the tank besides the Power members and the outside repair teams? Considering the corporation is talking about the humans beginning to overpopulate, they sure aren't showing good examples of it in the show. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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From the "designer" point of view, human aren't worker, they're more like animal. When the number of deer in a natural park gets too high this can cause problem to the local fauna and endanger the deer population themselves. So ranger will try and re introduce wolf to control deer population. This literally involves culling deer but isn't really related to capitalism or anything like that. (Note that I'm saying the show isn't criticizing capitalism, it's just not doing a very good job at it) |
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Panino Manino
Posts: 748 |
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LOL like anything like that wasn't happening before the pandemic. Always happened. This system needs cannon fodder.
Yes, but almost always in those cases this is a consequence of human intervention. But anyway, Deca-Dence "isn't" a criticism, it just "can" be used to give examples of criticism, which for me is good enough. Talking about the episode, I didn't really liked this one. Some could say that what happened was an extreme case of "lack of class solidarity", but common... I can't understand why anyone wouldn't rush to help close that hole. With the possibility of monsters entering to destroy and kill at any time why would they behave like it wasn't their problem? Natsume and her friend did nothing, because you really don't need to try to convince people to help in that situation, is just logical. But one thing that I liked is that yes, they "killed Kamina" but at the same time they didn't and made him go crazy! |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
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Culling of "undesirables" by way of inaction is actually extremely common in capitalist societies! For example, the government took a long time to respond to the AIDS crisis because it was killing gay people and drug users, and they didn't care about if those people died. The high rate of Black maternal mortality. The Flint water crisis. British-controlled India. People with diabetes rationing their insulin, people with allergies not being able to afford an epipen. Homeless people dying of exposure and minor infections. Right now, BIPOC are disproportionately dying from COVID-related deaths. This happens because these populations are seen as less desirable and less worthy of protection by the people in power. The government doesn't intervene because they see the reduction in numbers as a good thing. Corporations don't offer accessible solutions, or actively facilitate this, because it's not profitable to try to support these groups. That's culling. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3662 |
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You should see how non-capitalistic societies deal with "undesirables."
Again, it's a criticism that is completely unspecific to capitalism. The question you should be asking is "is capitalism worse than the alternative," and there's frankly no comparison. Look at all the hoops those in power have to go through to "cull" their undesirables when they can't just declare them "enemies of the proletariat." The idea that the inaction of those in power would be worse than their action when you already assume those in power are willing to harm those not in power is nonsensical. |
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