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top 10 anime betrayals

Like, this show's always been about the toxicity of the otaku mindset. It's always been critical of the misogyny and objectification that defined the worst of Subaru's instincts and refused to let him off the hook for them.

But I don't think I expect it to be this naked about it.

Like, there's no sugarcoating the parallels here. There's no misinterpreting the common ground between Regulus' attitude toward Emilia and how Capella's calling out Subaru. The Archbishop of Greed outright says that Emilia's physical attractiveness and desirability is the only thing that matters about her, that she exists to be objectified by him in every sense of the word. And on the other side of the capital building, here's Capella confronting Subaru with the same subconscious way he's been looking at her.

It would've been so easy for Lust to be an evil seductress like basically every incarnation of her in fiction. But instead, she's something genuinely horrifying: a reflection of how our physical desire poisons our sense of morality. For all Subaru's high-minded talk of being her gallant knight and loving her honestly... I mean, let's be blunt, he wants to have sex with her. He's attracted to her on a sexual level. And that lust is as core to his morality towards her as his more nobler intentions, maybe even more so. Like, would he still love Emilia as much if she wasn't attractive? Would we? Is the fact that she's a cute anime girl the actual reason we become attached to characters like her? How many of anime's iconic Best Girls would still earn so much affection without their adorable faces, their moe voices, their frequent flustered blushing to show how innocent they are, their breasts shaped at whatever size their artists deem the most desirable?

And if that sounds extreme, just consider how many incel gamers have been losing their mind lately over Western games choosing to design their female characters with actual realistic bodies and features (that are often plenty physically attractive in their own right!) instead of making them all look like Dead or Alive extras. Look how quickly this "fandom" turns on fictional women for the simple fact that they can't jack off to them, regardless of context. It doesn't matter what stories those women have to tell, what human connections they offer through their trials and growth. It doesn't matter whether they're well-written or not. If these chuds can't beat their meat to the Star Wars Outlaws lady, or the Silent Hill 2 trauma victim, or how Lara Croft looks in the Netflix cartoon, then as far as they're concerned, these characters are fundamentally worthless.

And Capella has their number dead to rights.

Do we actually love Emilia? Do we love her courage, her kindness, her refusal to give up, her willingness to brave the deepest darkness to believe in a better world? Or do we just love the bombshell beauty all those traits are served packaged in? And how can we disentangle those feelings to love her- and characters like her- for who they truly are instead of becoming just like Regulus?

In other words: