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Attack on Titan Creator Hajime Isayama at Anime NYC

"I am aware that the ending of Attack on Titan was quite controversial. I am open to receiving people's honest opinions. However, I would appreciate it if you'd be kind to me."

Just don't visit twitter

tintor2 wrote:

Just don't visit twitter

I think all the annoying people are leaving recently so it might end up being better now.

I dodn't have much problem with the ending myself. But if it is pretty sad to see a creator have to specifically ask his western audience not to be mean to him when he shows up to a convention. Of course there were people who took that as a challenge...

The part about Yuki Kaiji is interesting. I don't remember ever hearing of another case where an anime adaptation directly influenced the direction of the source material.

tintor2 wrote:

Just don't visit twitter

I genuinely have never seen a fandom as toxic and as self-absorbed as the AoT fandom.

And yes, ANN was a part of this ... I recall reviews criticizing AoT for "getting the Holocaust analogy wrong" when the author had already stated that he never intended such analogies in the first place.

Whether we are to believe Willy's new version of history as being any more concretely true than Marley's is also hard to know at this point, and I continue to be both curious and wary of how the show is basically framing the Eldians as the villains and victims of their own story. I'm holding out faith in the show's intentions, however, especially given how episodes like these do such a fine job of utterly laying bare the broken foundations of nationalistic ideologies, particularly fascism. Reiner and Eren's journeys reveal fascism for what it is: A murderous and self-defeating parody of the society it pretends to care about. Fascists seek to cast the most powerful and terrifying projections of themselves onto their friends and enemies alike, but at the end of the day, their work is built on the backs of hateful fools and broken children, spurred on by men with impotent egos and a crippling lack of imagination. The violence they cause may wreak havoc for untold years to come, but their legacies remain as flimsy and fleeting as shadows cast upon the wall of a stage.

Attack on Titan, to this point, has not peddled or glorified fascism, though I do think it has always attempted to understand it, and to weigh the inevitable costs of such a poisonous movement on the adults — and most importantly, the children — who might be suckered into dying for a fascist or nationalist cause. It asks us to seriously empathize with men like Reiner, who has done objectively deplorable things for the sake of a country that would not even regard him as human, though now he has been reduced to a crumbling wreck before his old friend. Reiner falls to the ground and begs Eren to kill him, because he wants to die, and because he knows that the storm of hellfire that Willy is out there prophesying is coming for them; it's already here, in fact, and standing on two good legs again. He knows that thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom Eren openly acknowledges are completely innocent, are going to die the horrible and terrible deaths that Eren promised him four years ago, and Reiner can't even say that it was because he wanted to save the world. He was just a selfish little boy that didn't want to die a failure.

Or - to recall ANN's column attacking Final Fantasy 16 - being criticized for not having any black characters.

TheSleepyMonkey wrote:

The part about Yuki Kaiji is interesting. I don't remember ever hearing of another case where an anime adaptation directly influenced the direction of the source material.

that actually happens a lot. Oda created Franky in One Piece because he liked Kazuki Yao voicing Jango and Mr. 2 Bon Clay so much he decided to create Franky specifically to be voiced by him and join the Straw Hats so he could become part of the main cast rather than just sporadic appearances with the other two characters.
Plus there's the whole Broly thing.

Watches first episode of She-Hulk. (Note that he didn't say that he watched any others).
Decides that he is tired of Marvel.

Not a coincidence.

tintor2 wrote:

Just don't visit twitter

I think all the annoying people are leaving recently so it might end up being better now.

I don't have much problem with the ending myself. But if it is pretty sad to see a creator have to specifically ask his western audience not to be mean to him when he shows up to a convention. Of course there were people who took that as a challenge...