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Haha no worries I’m sure op appreciates it lol. Yeah, this is something I’ve also been like hrmm, because you’re absolutely right, it portrays the options as a binary: either the world is nuked for a female only world or things return exactly to the way they were before, with no indication of a change in plans (because certainly no one outside of Lisa has made any specific statements on what they’d change, other than a general sort of ‘we’ll get there eventually’). Surely there are other options, but so far, we haven’t been presented with them. And with the specific situation that’s occurred, I keep thinking “gosh I wish we could hear from what the ordinary women think about all of this.” Because I struggle to imagine that some of Lisa’s followers wouldn’t be like “well I agreed because I wanted freedom, but maybe not in this specific set of circumstances,” or women who chose not to join her thinking “Well, I chose to stay behind, but then the men who were here chose to assault and murder women left behind, so maybe I need to actually get more radical” or "holy shit my government officials met a magic witch with access nuclear weapons who said she wouldn't use them in exchange for making our already unbalanced government in terms of gender unbalanced but in a different direction and rather than step down and give up their own power, changing one unfair reality for another reality, they chose their own power and let the apocalypse happen." Like there seems like there’d be a breadth of opinions among them that would pop up that would line up with neither the church nor Lisa, but we really haven’t seen any of their thoughts at all. Sometimes we get Becu thoughts, and sometimes we get Tachibana thoughts, but I’d really be interested in seeing what the non-Becu non-Tachibana non-Church women think about all this.  

Yeah, there’s been a sore lack of both trans women and people of color in the series that’s hurt the impact of writing Lisa as a non-inclusive feminist, and far more attention has been focused on ideas of her “taking it too far” rather than the brief moments we’ve seen of her espousing terf ideology. Like, there’s historically been many issues with feminist movements, but it’s been things like eugenics movements, racism, classicism, homophobia, transphobia broadly, transmisogyny, to name a few. There have been some feminist organizations that have used violence as a tactic, the one that comes to mind at the moment is the use of arson by the Pankhursts, but of course the level of violence that is enacted by Lisa is figured as literally apocalyptic. Figuring members of the church as her opponent’s muddles whether she is being opposed on the basis of her beliefs, her methods and tactics, or a combination of the both. Her rejection of the male witches demonstrates a lack of intersectionality within her feminism, as the named men have all been either explicitly shown to be queer, or implied heavily to be queer, but such little detail has been given to characters such as Cyril and Erskine and their reasons for joining the witches Sabbath that this emphasis falls a bit flat. And, again, the absence of trans people, especially trans women, and women of color also makes it kind of struggle to solidify who would be victimized by her ideology. Mikhail kind of intrigues me in this as well. So far he’s been presented as a gender non-conforming man, one who is on the more reform based side of the church under Cardinal Heisenberg. With how Dante’s childhood experiences with homophobia as part of the church, one would assume Mikhail to have gotten some sort of pushback for his gender nonconformity, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t been a part of the narrative at all. Which, again, creates a sort of interesting situation wherein Lisa behaves discriminatorily on the basis of gender non-conformity, but the church which opposes her hasn’t been shown to engage in that at all, something which is pretty at odds with real life issues present. Mikhail is, of course, in general kind of odd in having relatively no backstory in comparison to other similarly relevant characters (perhaps excepting Barbara, who while has had hints of backstory, has also not had much of anything shown).

Arima Aruma seems to be a fan of Ursula K Le Guin, as they’ve referenced her work several times, and it’s possible they’re trying to do some sort of commentary in the line of Ursula K Le Guin’s essay 89a About Anger, about the role anger played as a weapon in second wave feminism, but how it should be used cautiously. If so, I think they’re bungling the point a bit on that one, if only because “lesbian from the 1500-1600s who was burned to death as a witch” is a character whose anger is so incredibly justified that like. I mean yeah. Of course she’s angry. She should be. She had no rights over her body or societal power or the right to be with the one she loved and she was murdered in an incredibly unjust legal process. Like no kidding. And for me, that’s where specifically her opposition being people who haven’t faced similar situations as her. Like, have Verge, and Cyril and Erskine, and Char argue with her sure, but Marco??? (Separately, where is Manon in all this? She’s on Lisa’s side but we know so little about her that I’m sort of like what is her deal). And yeah, I agree, framing the church as the positive side when it’s historical and contemporary issues are present ends up seeming to diminish any critiques of Lisa’s non-inclusivity. If her biggest problem with her worldview is her failure to be inclusive, then having 2 of the people fighting her be an incel adjacent misogynist and a high ranking priest who espouses the kind of misogyny commonly found in the 1500s and currently holds his position partially because of the ineligibility of his coworker on account of her gender is a poor choice if meant to be taken straight.

I fully understand giving up hope in it turning around at this point. I’m still holding out hope, but I’m also the type who has been like “woah… what incredible satire…” only to later be informed it was intended to be satire at all (Ryu Murakami’s books… it’s just… they work so well if you read them as satirical…). Anyways, this is the list of things I’ve been considering that are still bugging me and I could see as some sort of twist that could or could not happen.

A significant portion of the destruction that Lisa enacts is specifically retributory, and uses the failings of society against itself. The absolute most obvious is her use of nuclear weapons against America. A Japanese author writing the destruction of America by nuclear weapons feels absolutely charged, and Lisa even points out that it’s the usage of weapons they created. She’s using a weapon on a nation that once targeted civilians with that same weapon against their own civilians, and it is a weapon she would not have had access to without their own creation of it. Many hold Lisa responsible for the murders enacted in the fall of society against women, but again, I suspect in her own view, those same women being murdered would have been safe had the society they chose to remain with been at least half as good as they had envisioned it. Instead, staying behind and being killed while being lumped into the rest of the women who left I’m sure to her serves to prove her point. Her usage of the Nephilim is the usage of creatures birthed by humanity against them. Lisa’s own power is directly proportional to the number of women victimized by the church, as she seems to be powered by their rage. Had there been fewer victims, she would’ve been weaker. Had there been no victims, she wouldn’t have existed at all.  

False fairy tale endings have been a recurring theme this arc. We have seen a false arc with the successful joining of a heterosexual union, that then cuts to both Verge and Lisa, both queer and (if you count the fairy tale Virgilius the Sorcerer), both associated with Fairy Tales and the idea of storytellers. Lisa’s character is a fairy tale character whose ending was incapable of giving her solace and who has continued to exist after it. Baba Yaga as a figure is a fairy tale figure. We get a “The End” with Josh dying, only for him to be returned to life. With this in mind, it is perfectly possible that the “Final Battle,” where everyone comes together and defeats the singular, easy to hate villain, is also a fake out ending. Defeating Lisa does nothing, if, as she stated, what happened to her could and does happen to women all over the world, a statement that was framed by the narrative as sympathetic.

Satan still needs to do all his plot relevant stuff, and structurally speaking, he is this arc’s antagonist, not Lisa. For every arc, the antagonist has been the demon lord of each arc’s sin. There have been other characters who’ve played a role, like Tachibana, or Verge, but they’ve never been the primary antagonist. It has always been the demon lord. And, so far, not only has Satan barely had screentime, but every one of his desires has been barely touched on this arc. We still need to find out the deal about his wife, he presumably is still trying to exist in his own body on earth, etc. And he’s seemed barely stressed this arc whatsoever. Additionally, he has been associated with misogyny repeatedly this arc. He touches on Josh’s phrasing in relation to Imuri as being misogynistic, and he coordinates the assault against Lisa.

So far, Lisa’s lack of sympathy has been due to the violence of her actions. However, should everything become a dream, then while she intended harm, the harm will be nullified. She’ll be at the same level as a character like Bel, who similarly tried to end the world. So then, how is she to be treated? Should she be considered in relation to her intent or her impact? Should she be treated more cruelly than someone like Imuri, who has also lead plenty of people to their death? I do get the sense that these will be questions that have to be grappled with, especially since Josh has only just begun to think of Imuri’s culpability in the loss of numerous lives. He loves her, and so he forgives her. He does not care for Lisa, and so he can be against her.

The use of the Malleus Maleficarum feels too incredibly on the nose. Normally, I’d say, well maybe the author just didn’t think it through. Except that Arima Aruma has clearly at least read about the Malleus Maleficarum, if only because the expression of misogyny that Marco expresses is directly tied to the kind of misogyny that the Malleus, and it’s author Heinrich Kramer, espouses, and because the witchcraft lore we’ve seen in series borrows from it. Specifically, views of women during Kramer’s time often focused on women’s sexuality. Women were thought of as naturally insatiable from a sexual perspective, rather than later developments in misogyny (and some earlier) which thought of women as more tabula rasa when it came to sexual desire. Kramer, specifically, harassed the hell out of a woman prior to writing the Malleus, accused her of being a witch, and in trial disproportionately focused on her sexuality. Fortunately for her, she was of high enough social standing, and there wasn’t the kind of bizarre paranoid social situation that you sometimes see make witch trials go totally off the rails, that it got shut down and Kramer got sent elsewhere by the Bishop who had put him there in the first place. But Marco’s form of misogyny is exactly of this style. It’s very old school, it’s not the sort that views women as objects to be consumed like you might see from contemporary misogynists, but specifically views Imuri as an insatiable and evil sexual being who would take advantage of Josh and ruin his rationality. That’s like textbook Malleus. Lisa, as a victim of a witch trial, being attacked by someone wielding a power and personality of a book and person that is held very much culpable for women’s deaths feels intentional to some degree.

There’s been no resolution of the plotline regarding having a seat at the negotiating table, but that idea has come up often enough that it feels relevant to me. Like this arc started off with Josh not being able to understand the reason why people feel strongly in political positions between a white nationalist group and an lgbt rights group. We then had a literal negotiation scene, and Char point out that Josh still doesn’t understand the privileges that have allowed him to assume he gets a say in things. We see Josh repeatedly assume he gets to decide things and multiple characters point out that now that he both has less power and little to no connection to the issue he’s not really the one to be deciding things. This whole idea doesn’t seem to have seeped into him even yet. In the Pride arc Josh talked about voting, which to me seemed more representative of a sort of “one person in many” decision making process that we haven’t seen enacted at all into problem solving so far.

The theme of a seat at the negotiating table has also been wrapped up in feeling disconnected and distant from other people’s issues. As above, Josh can’t feel connected after leaving the church to other people’s political causes. This theme has recently been reiterated in the extra files in the most recent file. One of Josh’s coworkers addresses that she has long felt like problems in other countries have felt far away and distant, but with the instability occurring, she’s realized that was never the case. Thematically, this idea seems to have been supported by the narrative—that issues across the world are interconnected, regardless of how close they may be to one’s self, and ignoring them because they feel distant isn’t helpful.

So far, there has been a recurring theme of whether or not characters are capable of imagining another form of the world. The source of the demon lords fall is shown to be Satan expressing doubt, something which shifts their view of the world. Dante’s advice in the first chapter to Josh is to fall in love in order to change not the essence of the world but his interpretation of the world. Imuri wishes for a love that will change her entirety, something which Lisa addresses wondering why she should change when rather the world should change. Both Lisa and Verge refer to becoming storytellers of the world. Bel tries to change the world through literally shutting it down into isolated dreamscapes. Asmodeus’s thoughts on Sarah reveal her incapability of conceiving of a world without victimization and hierarchy. Lisa so far specifically imagines another world, but those opposing her haven’t really suggested their own vision for a world. They don’t want her world, but there’s no real reimagining of what the world could look like.

Satan is in Dante right now and we still have at least one more really bad thing that has to happen to Vergilius and Dante (tragedy part 2). Dante has been confirmed to be partially in control in there. To me, this suggests a complication to the “let’s exorcise Satan” plan as established.

There's been a bizarre lack of engagement with the substance of her beliefs. Like, when Mammon went on his evil Tate core misogyny, he got pushback. Beelzebub's worldview is directly argued against, including in a previous fight led by Mother Rosa. When Bel goes on his incel adjacent misogyny, Imuri argues back on the basis of the substance of his ideas. But neither the sympathetic nor the unsympathetic ideas that Lisa espouses seem to be engaged with whatsoever. When she makes a comment on Mikhail's clothes, the most we get in response is "I don't get what you're saying." Idk it's just interesting that she just sort of gets brickwalled. Like damn is no one going to deconstruct the negative aspects of her beliefs or acknowledge the separate sympathetic aspects of her beliefs? It's not like the fact that they're in a fight has impacted this before, this has been the consistent structure of fights, in a very like magical girl esque "we fight and I come to understand why you are the way you are and reject aspects of it after understanding it" structure (which like Lisa's memories is a very forceful "see my point of view" moment). Instead we get "we didn't gather here to refute your beliefs" which, sure, but we've seen the beliefs and worldviews of every other antagonist grappled with. Instead, it's as though everything Lisa says is like water off a ducks back. It simply has no effect whatsoever on any of the cast, neither positive nor negative.