The Feeling of being Alive

A standard porno with the bad acting and music and whatnot but partway through the action the camera pans to a millipede and hunting spider locked in a duel for survival, the sounds of sex fade out and the scene in the background blurs, epic battle music starts to play

the thing about eggs as a trans metaphor is that, like, if it cannot break out of its shell a chick will die without being born. we are the chick. the world is our egg. if we don't crack the world's shell, we will die without being born. smash the world's shell! for the revolution of the world!

I actually think the lack of race politics is probably the weakest factor in rgu (as well as the fandom) bc like. the dynamics of patriarchy are in fact inextricable from the logic of colonialism in many ways? and so it makes me feel crazy that everyone in ohtori is always like “let’s kill the one brown girl we know with knives for no reason” and then nary a single fan is like “this is surely not motivated by any sort of visual signifier of alterity that she may be assigned by a racializing gaze” and in fact some of them are even like “everyone who wants to kill her is right for that probably bc she’s evil”

thats because rgu's race politics is frankly bad and orientalist, see nanami goes to india to find spices episode. it is racist in a way that sort of beggars belief that the show actually intends to say something coherent about racialisation instead of just uh assigning the incestual sexual violence to the brown people in the show.

yeah, okay, maybe “lack of race politics” wasn’t the best wording when what i actually meant was lack of meaningful and productive race politics. because obviously making anthy and akio brown is itself a meaningful choice whether or not the creators intended it as such, and yet their racialization is never addressed, and the crass orientalism of that nanami subplot (in an episode that i would argue is one of the least significant of the entire show) being the only example of any sort of racial commentary whatsoever is clearly a bad look. i completely agree that the writers did not intend to say something coherent about racialization; it’s pretty clear to me that any sort of reading that can be inferred from anthy and akio’s racial alterity is one that lies beyond the scope of authorial intent. but i also think those readings that have been made over the years by brown and black women in particular regarding anthy’s role as a racialized subject are no less valuable for drawing conclusions and making connections from implications that are clearly present whether the writers intended it or not. im not saying that the text of rgu is itself anti-racist and performing such commentary — another example of rgu’s racism and orientalism is the egregious lightening of anthy’s skin in the movie, which serves no narrative purpose other than to piss people off! but i also think it’s a bit unfair to suggest that anthy and akio are depicted as brown due to their incestuous relationship when there are multiple pairs of incestuous siblings in the show, and their parallels to one another are central to the show’s themes. i do think the narrative choice to make anthy brown was intended to otherize her, and while you can certainly argue that this choice was implemented for orientalist reasons on the parts of the creators, i also think that reading further into a text that invites a multiplicity of readings and truly parsing through the implications of what such racialization suggests and entails can be a useful analytical endeavor, even if the writers may have been too myopic to understand certain implications of their own narrative.

oh and so back to interesting readings, when anthy and akio are about to be lynched by their neighbours in service of divinity it is very much like everyday scenes of caste violence in india. its resolution is also via the dedication of a woman to the temple who performs constantly which is very akin to slave dancers or devadasis in service to the temple.

devadasis go through a ceremony at puberty where they are marked as "temple property" held in common by the community by marrying them to god. they acquire some financial and social power that is denied to other women through the gifts of their patrons and were freed from the dangers of being widowed even if they tended to live much shorter lives. upper castes often mandated that dalit families give up atleast one female child to the temple. by the late 19th century devadasi was indistinguishable in colonial writing from prostitute. in many ways the 20th century creation of bharathnatyam was an attempt to make temple dance respectable by excising it of its eroticism and an attempted transformation of the social status of nautch girls from lower caste prostitutes to upper caste artists.

I actually think the lack of race politics is probably the weakest factor in rgu (as well as the fandom) bc like. the dynamics of patriarchy are in fact inextricable from the logic of colonialism in many ways? and so it makes me feel crazy that everyone in ohtori is always like “let’s kill the one brown girl we know with knives for no reason” and then nary a single fan is like “this is surely not motivated by any sort of visual signifier of alterity that she may be assigned by a racializing gaze” and in fact some of them are even like “everyone who wants to kill her is right for that probably bc she’s evil”

tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"

you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.

another thing that is so brilliant about akio’s car as a symbol is that in a car, everyone is seated, so everyone appears to be about the same height. but otherwise the show really exaggerates the height differences across ages, how akio towers over all the other characters. so the car is a perfect vehicle (pardon the pun) through which to facilitate the [logic of] statutory rape

when touga sits in akio’s passenger seat, they appear to be the same height. but when touga drives saionji, he forces him into a degrading little sidecar. and this is because touga and saionji are already the same height. touga wants to be able to exert power over those close to him to replicate the abuse he’s experiencing at akio’s hand, but he doesn’t yet have the finesse, the confidence, the ability to employ the illusion of equality. he quite literally cannot abuse saionji by treating him as an equal, because he already is his equal. whereas akio uses pedophilic logic to rape children, so it’s a crucial part of his playbook to groom those children into feeling powerful, like adults, like they actually want to be raped by him, muddying the waters of consent by making himself appealing, exciting even. saionji doesn’t find touga exciting or even appealing. he’s actually quite disgusted with him. he loves touga despite his obvious posturing and crude manipulation tactics. not that no one falls for touga’s facade, but at the very least, touga is trying really hard to make saionji the touga to his akio, and failing. anyone who actually knows touga well enough can see through his embarrassing attempts to be akio, pities him for the precarious, fragile ego he’s cultivated as a victimizing victim. touga cannot take saionji out for a spin in his shiny red car the way akio does with him. because he cannot actually drive. because he is still a child.

the way the inquisitor hunts dragons is almost too on-the-nose as an encapsulation of everything wrong with the game thematically

they had a character say, “mankind blunders through the world, crushing what it does not understand; elves, dragons, magic...the list is endless.” in the game. in the game they said that. in the game where they let you hunt dragons just for sport with no consequences while leading an andrastian army while being the unambiguous good guy. in that game they said that

inshallah these mercedes reliability issues continue and strike down those evil car forever and ever amen