JPT 1311 Blog

Never thought that we would be watching something that I have actually seen before, pretty awesome.

Edgerunners is quite the heavy show, themes of addiction, class divide, crime, dystopian levels of capitalism, and family. I will begin with the addiction that is rampant in Night City. Whether it's drugs, sex, or cybernetic implants, it seems everybody in the city has some kind of horrible vice. They know it is not good for them but they continue doing it because they either need them to survive or they are the only source of "happiness" in this world. David's death is the best example of this, he adopts more and more cybernetics to keep up with the crew and to survive, but no matter how many he gets it ends up killing him in the end, just like addiction in the real world it starts with one but you need more and more until it eats up your entire life.

The reason David felt like he needed to start getting cybernetics is because of a brutal level of capitalism that Night City is built on. Every single thing is commodified to the point that first responders will leave you to die if you haven't purchased the right package from them. And that is exactly what happens, David's mother dies and he is left with all the burden of catching up on all kinds of expenses while his only family just died. For Christ's sake she was cremated in a vending machine and spit out like a can of soda. The point here is that David felt like he had nowhere to go in his current life and when an opportunity to improve his life through crime, he took it. If he never would have lost his mother and they weren't behind on their payments, I would like to think it is unlikely he would have accepted Lucy's offer.

Crime is also just as frequent as addiction in this city. The police seem to be just exist for show or to serve the corpos. Like I said earlier, it is the nature of the city to push those at the bottom to living a life outside of the law, and with so many of these people, it has gotten to the point where it is pretty much accepted as a part of life for all. It's commentary on police corruption and societal systems that don't focus on providing avenues for stable lives for those who aren't as well of as others, i.e. education, rehabilitation, or general financial aid.

The divide between the corporations and everyone else is very stark in the world of Cyberpunk. It is what feeds this ever hungry capitalism that pushes so many people to addiction and crime. And no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to legitimately ascend to the status of corpo from where someone like David is. His mother pretty much devoted her entire life to work, to the system to try to generate enough money to get David through a nice school that would allow him to legitimately reach the top floor of Arasaka Tower. But it is impossible, those at the top have made it that way. That's why there isn't some grand plot to fight the system and bring Night City to it's full potential. Instead Lucy wants to escape. Escape as far as possible and that place is the Moon, not Antarctica, the Moon.

The last thing I will talk about is how important family is in Edgerunners. David starts by losing everything, but finds a new family in the crew. Maine adopts a father like figure, teaching David and supporting him until the end. Even though they commit all kinds of horrible violence an incredibly strong bond is formed with many of the members. David finds actual happiness when with the crew and appreciates the connections, willing to give his own life for them multiple times. I am sure he loved his mother, but it was different from what he gets from the connection with the crew.

Alright, that's it from me, awesome anime,. and I can't believe we only have one more left.

^^ a perfect shot

This is my third time watching Perfect Blue, and it’s still a straight banger. Directed by the GOAT, Satoshi Kon, this anime film is absolutely mind-blowing, and it’s one of my favorite anime movies of all time.

What I love about Perfect Blue is how it messes with your mind. The story follows Mima, a former J-pop idol, who's trying to make it as an actress but is haunted by her past. The film blurs the lines between reality and illusion, and it's so intense and suspenseful that it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. The final twist and chase scene goes so crazy, and it’s the perfect climax.

The direction of the movie is also top-notch. Satoshi Kon is a genius when it comes to storytelling. He uses visual cues, symbolism, and changes in perspective to create a sense of unease and uncertainty. The pacing is spot-on, with quiet moments of introspection followed by wild and surreal sequences. The animation is also stunning, especially for a movie that came out during the 90s. The visuals are vivid and dynamic, adding to the overall intensity of the film. One of my favorite shots is when the stalker in the beginning seems to be holding Mima in his hand.

This manga is so unhinged. It is far-right revisionist propaganda written for the purpose of downplaying Japanese war crimes and defending the Imperial Japanese Army's actions during the war. I have never felt more frustrated while reading something. The fact that this thing has the audacity to deny the existence of the Nanjing Massacre is completely abhorrent. It goes even further and tries to excuse everything that the Japanese military did during WW2 and even tries to frame the Allies as the true bad guys during the war and especially during the postwar occupation of Japan.

Sensoron is an attempt at criticizing and reversing the "brainwashing" of Japan due to Western postwar propaganda. However, this manga itself is a piece of propaganda. It employs an arsenal of blatant logical fallacies and insane mental gymnastics in a poor attempt to excuse or disprove all of Japan's crimes during WW2. (The author even compares photos of war crimes to UFOs??? What is this far-fetched connection?) The fake-photos section is a treasure trove of cherry-picking and composition/division logical fallacies, where he proves a couple photos false and from there makes the outlandish claim that the ENTIRE massacre must therefore be false too. The author does make some good points in that it is important to not believing everything one sees as absolute truth and that basic fact-checking is an important aspect of journalism and education, but his application of that idea to disproving Japanese war crimes is completely unhinged.

The section about testimonies had a tiny bit more validity than the fake-photos section. But it still contains numerous instances of logical fallacies and a pervasive mindset of overextrapolation. Once again, he discredits a few selected cases of misinformation, but then immediately engages in his own attempt at misinformation by extrapolating to conclusion that ALL claims of Japanese use of "comfort women" must be false, which is a very grand conclusion that cannot possibly be reached with the selected evidence that he gives. Of course, he does make semi-reasonable points in regards to how emotionally charged and inconsistent testimonial evidence is and can be. However, that is not to say that all testimonies should or can be immediately disregarded as pure fiction.

Your Name (Kimi no Na wa)

This is literally my favorite movie ever. I’ve seen it a countless number of times and can’t recommend it enough to anyone who hasn’t had this viewing pleasure. The animation looks absolutely stunning, the music is the type of beat I still hum to this day, and the characters are fun and memorable. The anime revolves around Mitsuha and Taki, two teenagers living in different towns and times who mysteriously swap bodies. They are tasked with preventing a comet disaster from occurring that would kill Mitsuha and her whole town. They prevail and eventually fall in love with each other, making for a really wholesome and fun watch. The anime talks about a vast array of themes including the possession of power, the idea of fate, modernity vs tradition, and sexuality and its connotations.

The idea of power is prevalent throughout the anime. Power is something that exists everywhere and is a force that a person can exert. With this in mind, the question becomes who holds power, or better said, who has the ability to control fate and exert a force of change? When the two main characters switch bodies, the power to control the lives of Mitsuha and Taki respectively shifts to the other protagonist. They are no longer in direct control of their lives, and are subjects to the power exerted by each other. Thinking of this idea on a larger scale, the entire cast is at the mercy of the power exerted by fate and destiny. Since Mitsuha lives in the past, fate has exerted power and control over her by controlling how she will die. It’s initially fated that her town will get destroyed. However, this power is subject to resistance in the form of Taki’s character. His determination to meet Mitsuha and save her town switches the position of power from fate/time to Taki. He, using Mitsuha’s body, helps devise a plan to save everyone. However, when he switches back to his own body and Mitsuha takes over the town’s evacuation effort, the position of power is given to Mitsuha, where she can now determine her own fate.

The idea of fate goes hand in hand with this idea of power. The red string of fate, a popular symbol for the control of one’s destiny, is a prominent theme in this movie. Mitsuha’s grandmother describes how strings represent time, how strings flow but can sometimes come undone, meet new ends, and reunite to form new threads. The idea is symbolic of destiny. Strings are the flow of time that represent the timelines in which certain events are meant to happen. However, certain “masters of fate” (string weavers) can cut the timelines, change them, and create a new future. Since Mitsuha is a string weaver, literally, she holds the power of fate. This is also symbolized with her red hair tie which is an alias for the literal red string of fate. She symbolically shares this power with Taki who is given the red string by Mitsuha. He wears fate on his hand and uses that power to change the course of history. When Mitsuha unravels her hair tie at the start of the movie, she undoes the current timeline. Taki, by wearing the hair tie, is making a new timeline by having the string meet a new end. At the end of the movie, when he gives Mitsuha her hair tie back, she wraps it around her head once more, solidifying the new flow of events.

Taki and Mitsuha contrast each other in not their bodies, but also in the locations, cultures, and ideas each character was raised in. Taki’s life is very modern and is rooted in a city where traditional beliefs are not the main focus of life. Conversely, Mitsuha lives in a rural town surrounded by nature where religious practices and traditions encompass a large facet of her life. Though the idea of a body swapping adventure sounds fantastical and nonsensical, the movie has many allusions to Japanese spirituality for its explanation of the phenomena. The movie alludes to the notion that many facets of life such as fate, time, and salvation are tied to spiritual practices and how believing and partaking in old traditions are the key to understanding and controlling such concepts. It is implied that someone living in a modern setting is devoid of such understandings of the world and thus incapable of changing the world nor their lives compared to a person of spiritual background. As a result, the movie suggests that we need tradition and spirituality in our lives in order to be true masters of our own lives. For example, Taki, in order to save Mitsuha and her village, had to commute from the city to the nature filled town out in the countryside. Once there, he was only able to get another chance to save Mitsuha by drinking sake made through traditional means in a shine.

Finally, the movie touches upon the idea of sexuality. Though I have talked about this topic a lot in the past few posts, I will say this anime has a similar mindset as other anime where it suggests that there shouldn’t be a gender norm. When each main character switches bodies, the people around Taki and Mitsuha notice how each of them act either more “masculine” or “feminine.” Their bodies act differently and show different sides of people that exist within them. Not all boys are super tough and unaccepting of emotion while not all girls are soft and frail. This show challenges the idea of conformity and encourages you to express yourself however you want. The fact that friends and families of each main character seem happy (for the most part) about their differences in behavior critiques how society should accept people who don’t conventionally fit into any preexisting mold of gender.

I cannot rate this with a good conscience ❤

I have autism and Hetalia is my special interest so this is literally 3k words long and I have absolutely no regrets. I could have gone on longer but I wanted to remain relevant to the class. If you don't reply to me I will cry.

I'm gonna break this into a few sections so you can skip around. I'm going to try and stick to just season 1 with this discussion, which won't be too hard cause it's the most insane one. Also, I just want to say that I wrote this all before I read the attached article and I'm now seeing that I literally could have written that article because I know everything about Hetalia.

When do we cross the line between stereotyping and just straight-up racism?

Hey, why are we idolizing WWII Germany?

Oh, we are portraying war as silly and funny, okay cool.

Is this Japanese Nationalism? (a surprisingly controversial argument)

The Sub and the Dub are 2 totally different shows

The Fandom (and linking back to other class-related terms)

Okay I'll name one good thing

Alright, let's get started.

1.

A lot of people will argue that Hetalia is not racist at all because they are making fun of everyone. If you are portraying all of the countries as their most common stereotypes then it evens out in the end. I would argue that this is in fact, not the case. Especially when you set your show during WWII. I will give Himaruya credit in that he mostly focuses on European countries to make fun of, making a lot of the stereotypes less so targeted at minorities. However, a lot of these jokes are still highly insensitive and frame some countries in a worse light than others

Just look at the difference between how Northern Italy is portrayed as opposed to Germany or Japan. Or how France is a predator, Belarus is into her literal brother, and Spain is seen as a creep. It is often times mocking an entire country's intelligence, appearance, or personality. While it is not always that serious, it does lead me to the second point.

When you personify a country and mock it, you aren't just mocking a piece of land, you are mocking an entire population of people. These jokes may seem harmless but they can still be hurtful. While I don't believe that liking Hetalia translates to your actual views on world events, it can unconsciously impact your real-life thoughts and behaviors.

(also why does Britain see imaginary magical creatures, what is that referencing? According to the wiki, it is some popular folklore story of a rabbit who lives on the moon but like.. what? If Himaruya was doing this much research into these countries' cultural backgrounds why is he portraying them like this?)

2.

This show portrays WWII Germany in too positive of a light for my liking. I've noticed a trend in anime where they seem to love Germany (or Germanic aesthetics) a lot (AOT I'm looking at you). Now I'm not well-versed in the interpersonal relationships between Japan and Germany, but the idolization is not it. The way that Japan in this show is portrayed as being literally obsessed with Germany is the biggest example (Italy is also shown having an immense appreciation for Germany and is often gushing about his positive qualities, even writing him a song while he was being kept prisoner). But I mean look at how Germany is portrayed, even his stereotypes are mostly positive, he is hardworking but helps out his fellow allies, makes great food, and is super strong. His only negative trait is that he sometimes doesn't understand social scenarios and that makes him very awkward. However, he will always go out of his way to try and better understand his friends (like Italy) by purchasing books to try and help him learn the appropriate way to act in scenarios).

This is 10x worse in the dub but we will get there. When one of your main characters, the one you are portraying in the best light, is a literal war criminal hot anime boy, you can understand why I would be concerned. I mean they gave him the whole blonde hair blue eyed appearance like come on. Now I'm not going to go into depth on fandom or anything here but Hetalia knows that its demographic is young tweens (primarily girls) so how can you be surprised when this portrayal of Germany leads to WWII fanfics sympathizing with Germany and 14 y/o girls in German military uniforms doing questionable things. (also Germany becomes a canonically gay character in Hetalia in like season 4 or something and that just makes me so mad, like yeah, of course, the gay character is WWII Germany that so cool) (okay, I would like to clarify that technically Sweden is the only confirmed gay character. Sweden is bad representation though because he has one-sided feelings for Finland and makes him uncomfortable by constantly referring to him as his wife)

3.

I mean yeah, obviously this isn't going to be an accurate portrayal of history but some of this is just totally misinformation.

Austria invading Germany is literally just Austria annoying him in his house for a really long time. But also there's like actual wars... and like all of the events of WWI are canon... and like there are some really serious episodes

Also, we literally see a bunch of countries going to war personally, like fighting on the frontlines. Which to me confirms that these people are all literal murderers, like mass murderers lowkey.

Do you know how many weird USSR jokes there are throughout this? So many. Lithuania is pretty much just in a running gag where he keeps getting manipulated by Russia into coming back to live with him. (Yeah, there are so many USSR fics as well).

ALSO! why is the American revolution portrayed as the saddest thing to happen thus far, the storyline is stretched out from episodes 16-20 and it is all drastically different from the tone of the rest of the show. Britain is literally on his knees crying saying that he can't shoot America (which also implies these countries can physically harm/kill each other). Like that is the war you wanted to make all sad and sentimental? Why? Is this how Japanese people think that we view the Revolutionary war? Because that is a pretty inaccurate view.

Anyways back to the original point. Some historical events should not be played for laughs sometimes. It is incredibly disrespectful for actual victims of these tragedies to portray these events as funny or goofy.

Though I will give credit because Himaruya does make all sides of the war look like idiots who have no clue what they are doing, which is a sentiment I can get behind.

4.

As a both non-Japanese and non-Korean person I can not really give my opinion on this however I can share with you both sides of the argument. This is mostly in relation to the original comic strip, but has some relevance to the anime as well. I just wanted to bring it up because it is interesting to me. (This is briefly mentioned in the article but I wanted to expand on the argument).

You may or may not have noticed that there is no South Korea character in this show, however, there was in the original comic. In the comics, South Korea is a pervert who is constantly touching Japan and he also takes credit for the inventions of other countries. Now I'm obviously not going to go into the past history of these 2 countries because that would be incredibly long but the South Korean National Assembly reviewed Hetalia and determined that it was a "crime against South Koreans, akin to slander". So yeah, South Korean people were not happy with this portrayal and the character was inevitably removed from the anime before release. (This is a real picture of the South Korean National Assembly reviewed Hetalia, the corner shows South Korea groping Japan inappropriately)

There are two opposing views to the Japanese Nationalism take and I'll link them both (Belittling Japanese Nationalism Hetalia: Axis Powers is the title of the first one)

The first one pretty much argues that Hetalis is not Japanese nationalism because it paints Japan in just as negative of a light as all of the other countries, no one is left out of being made fun of. Japan is seen as socially awkward, emotionally repressed, and obsequious.

The second argues that Japan is often shown to be more intelligent than other characters as well as often being of the voice of reason (especially compared to China) and most of his negative attributes are not nearly as harmful as some others in Japan’s case, even his “negative” stereotypes are inoffensive, as they pose no threat of meiwaku.

I think we see in the dub that Americans are a little more willing to make fun of themselves. Though there are a few good Japan self digs, like the capitalism joke in one of the first episodes.

5.

Oh boy I've been waiting for this.

The dub is 10x more offensive than the sub. Most people consider it a crack dub.

So many of the jokes are rewritten that it is practically a different show. The sub is from a Japanese perspective and the dub is from an American perspective.

First of all the accents in the dub are so bad like it is actually atrocious. Japan is really annoying because not only is his voice stereotypical but he always says 'nani?' instead of 'what?' as if that is a normal thing that people do. The narrator is the best part of the dub and she is hilarious.

So I don't really feel comfortable even typing out the jokes here so if you want to hear them I included the time stamps for the three nazi jokes I remember in season 1 (the last two being worse).

Episode 1 (1:35:1:38)

Episode 7 (2:13-2:19)

Episode 48 (1:28-1:31)

Those are just a few examples and it gets worse. The dub literally had no reason to include these jokes because there is not even an insinuation of them in the sub and it makes literally everything a million times worse.

I will give the dub some credit for being so utterly ridiculous that it's funny. I will provide a few timestamps for the funniest jokes that only appear in the dub from the first 19 episodes (but I really recommend looking up Hetalia dub funny moments on youtube because some of them are really priceless):

Episode 13: (1:45-2:05)

Episode 14: (1:12-1:22)

Episode 17: (0:59-1:15) (2:06-2:11)

6.

Now I've had this post typed up for a bit and originally I wasn't going to talk about the fandom but after reading the article that he assigned (and going through the fandom unit), I see that there is a lot of reference to fandom in particular so I want to at least mention it.

Not the 2 biggest problems with the Hetalia fandom are racism and the fetishization of gay men.

As mentioned in the article, there have actually been multiple fan incidents of them dressing up in WWII German military uniforms Germany/Prussia cosplay, and standing in front of temples with fake guns or doing nazi salutes in convention photos (If we want to bring racism and fetishization of gay men together there were two people who kissed in a holocaust memorial museum in Italy and Germany cosplay... there is no picture of this so it might be a rumor but it was well-known so it is worth mentioning). There were also a lot of people using imperialist Japan flags in cosplay/fanart and writing incredibly inappropriate fanfiction about real-life events.

If you would like to see any of these incidents feel free to look up "Hetalia the Boston Incident" I don't really wanna include the photos here.

The fetishization is not unique to the Hetalia fandom, but it is amplified to the max. Obviously, within Hetalia, there are almost no female characters, so this leaves only male characters to be shipped with one another. Now suddenly Germany is an uwu gay bean and not an actual war criminal. At the moment of writing this Hetalia has 32105 M/M fics on ao3 which is only one of the three fanfiction sites, with ao3 not even becoming popularized until after the peak of the Hetalia fandom. (the most popular ship being America/England who refer to each other as brothers in the show as England raised America, showing another problematic part of the fandom). I would argue that Hetalia has one of the gayest fandoms (My Hero Academia is giving it a run for its money though) and I agree with the article that it is inaccurate to say that this is only done by straight cis women. The fact of the matter is a lot of queer teens used Hetalia as an outlet to express their own sexuality through these characters. The straight women that do fetishize BL are likely only doing so because anime creators suck at writing good female characters.

I think that the "level of gayness" turns straight fans away from watching the show (again MHA is the same way today) as it is hard to interact with the fandom without seeing some yaoi content. However, many people view this as something wrong or cringy, when in reality it is a normal part of fandom culture. When gay people have such little content that is actually gay, you cannot blame us for creating our own through characters that we like/relate to. Again, I think the only issues that arise here are the problematic ships that give young people a bad impression of relationships (abusive, incest, pedophilia, etc) or the arguable problematic ones like China/Russia or Lithuania/Russia as again these are real countries with real political relations. (However, I will never forget the time that there was Russia/China fanart on the news, maybe they approve and I shouldn't be complaining)

The thing is, Hetalia only seems so bad because the fandom is so large and so young. A lot of shows have fandoms that sexualize the characters and have kinda problematic fans, but the sheer volume makes things seem worse. This is something that we covered when we watched Genshiken, but there is a lot of negative stigma behind this fandom in particular, but it is just a loud minority that gets a lot of news coverage between fandoms.

It also raises the question "Is a show responsible for the response of its fans?"

Because while Himaruya has no control over what people do with his characters or how they interpret a plot, if a majority of people are leaving your show spouting vaguely racist rhetoric and interpreting your show one way, isn't there some validity in that interpretation? I think a creator has to be aware of their audience, which in this case is a very young and impressionable audience who might not understand how offensive some of the things they are doing really are. They don't hold the same ability to separate fiction from reality.

That being said Hetalia had a large impact on fandom culture as a whole, largely starting things like 'ask a character' panels (along with like homestuck but we don't talk about her). If you go to any convention you will probably find a Hetalia cosplayer, and if you watch any dub there is probably a voice actor from Hetalia there.

I also want to mention Hetalia is also a fandom full of cultural capital, If you don't know every niche fact, you're not a real fan, If you haven't read Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart you haven't even met the entry-level requirements to be a fan. There are also no characters that are too sacred to be altered within the fandom. If you want to put Germany in a maid dress have at it, if you want to see all the characters as girls you're in luck cause Himaruya literally drew them. Fanfictions can take place anywhere from WWI to the present day and you can put any characters in any scenario and make it believable. There are thousands of pieces of fanwork, fan art, fangames, and fan AUs. These characters are malleable to fit your personal preference and there is really no way you could be mad at this as Himaruya does this himself, with no real established canon.

a Hetalia fan once said, "No one cares if Hetalia was written by a Japenese Imperialism apologist when you're 31 chapters deep into a human Au soulmate fic about Austria inviting Prussia to see his boyband perform in Berlin"

Himaruya is also the king of moe characteristics because he turned these Hetalia men into any cute thing he could think of, Chibi versions (Chibitalia), female versions (Nyotalia), and cat versions (Nekotalia). He has no reservations about drawing the characters in a dress or in cat ears. He gave the characters human names to allow for more standardized human AU's and made a DS dating game. He encourages fans to take his characters and use them in their fanworks as they see fit, canon is up to interpretation itself. I think Himaruya himself was a huge part of fandom culture (not that I could tell you cause no one knows anything about the guy) and saw how the female characters were often treated by fans and turned it on its head, allowing for females to sexualize the males this time.

Also, none of the male characters in this show resembles a Hegemonic form of masculinity. Even the most masculine character in the show (Germany) can be seen doing more "feminine things" like wearing a dress or proposing to a man. Which, you know, I guess is a good diversion from things you would typically see in an anime of this nature (but again there are a lot of instances of characters being feminine being played for laughs, like a man being girly is something inherently funny). Feat. Germany proposing to Italy with a tomato ring.

7.

I am Hetalia's biggest hater, however, I cannot deny the impact that it has had on my life and how much I love to talk about it. Hetalia is what introduced me to anime and fandom (and tumblr) for the first time. I met a lot of people I still talk to today because of this show. It encouraged me and a lot of other people to actually get interested in history. Thanks to this show I can identify every country in Europe, and it was a lot easier to remember historical facts if I just imagined the Hetalia characters. Also, Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart is a literary masterpiece and there is a reason it almost has a five-star rating on goodnotes (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22064556) I love you George DeValier I hope you're doing good wherever you are.

I would like to make it abundantly clear that despite everything I've said that might make me sound like a woke blue-haired liberal, I don't really think this show is some horribly racist show or that the people who enjoy it are racist. I just wanted to provide a deeper outlook on the impact a seemingly dumb show can have on real people. I can't really blame the show for the terrible response of the fandom and it did honestly get better in later seasons that are not focused on WWII.

Despite all the bad stuff, it is a relatively funny little 5-minute watch, and you can really just jump in at any point you want to. If you don't take it as seriously as I do you might even enjoy it a little.

If you actually read this far I have major respect for you, I'm really excited to see what the general consensus on this show is.

Prussia and South Italy were my favorites in case anyone cared

If you're wondering why I didn't do my presentation on Hetalia despite my extensive knowledge, it is because I would be incredibly biased and I would go off the rails I think.

This was quite an experience, I’ve never just watched through the cutscenes of a game before. I definitely enjoyed the story of the game and found the larger emphasis on action to convey emotion intriguing.

Analyzing through the lens of the article paired with today’s viewing we can see aspects of all the methods mentioned by Cobb to help promote a more harmonious relationship between humans and the natural world. Firstly, Cobb explores the idea of deep ecology. This is shown in Xenoblade’s interconnected relationships between the Blades, Titans, and humans. Titans provide land for humans to live on and eventually make Blades. Humans wield the Blades and the Blades eventually become Titans. Along with this the awakening of the Aegis can be seen as a consequence of the imbalance in nature and its cycles caused by the actions of humans. Humans must instead work with nature’s rhythm instead of trying to control it.

Secondly, Cobb shows how romanticism could be used to appeal to human’s emotions in order to persuade them to protect nature for it beauty and awe-inspiring aspects. The game does a really good job of supporting this idea with its scenery and soundtrack. Throughout the cutscenes we watched we witness vast and diverse landscapes, from rolling plains to towering mountains. Along with this the soundtrack in the game include various natural sounds such as birds chirping and rustling leaves that appeal to human’s emotions.

Lastly, Cobb talks about using renaissance science and its emphasis on empirical research and experimentation to gain a better understanding of the environment around us and mitigate any damages that we have already caused. This wasn’t as clear to me in the cutscenes we watched but we see the use of technology throughout and its interconnectedness to present day.

This film has a heavy environmentalist theme. It is a post-apocalypse story that follows Nausicaa, a young princess of the Valley of the Wind, as she tries to bring harmony between nature and humans.

The world is in a post-apocalyptic state where a gradually spreading toxic forest emanates toxic spores that are dangerous to human life. This Sea of Decay is also populated by insects and defended by the Ohms, which are giant insects (There's a lot of insects in this film). Industrialized civilization seems to have destroyed itself in an event called the Seven Days of Fire using Giant Warriors, which seem to be analogous to nukes/WMDs. It is an obvious message that humanity's greed, wars, and ignorant destruction of nature will lead to our own destruction. However, nature is very resilient in the grand scheme of things, and it will eventually recover. This can be seen with the Sea of Decay, which is the Earth's way of cleansing itself after humans have polluted it. The Sea of Decay, on the surface, is hostile and deadly to humans, especially the spores. But that's only because the trees of the Sea of Decay grew up on polluted soil and water, and the spores they release embody that deadly pollution, which is the product of past humans.

The humans in the film still don't understand nature and doesn't seem to have learned anything from past mistakes. Instead of appreciating nature for trying to cleanse the Earth, they deem it as their enemy. Factions like the Tolmekians want to destroy the Sea of Decay, even though that is the very source of the pure water that the humans rely on. The Tolmekian's actions is a critique of militarism and how war can only bring destruction and cause more problems than it might solve. It is also a critique of the blind violence of industrial human civilization, who frequently fall back on violent means to destroy anything that they perceive as obstacles, instead of trying to genuinely understand the root of the obstacles and overcome via peaceful and more thoughtful means. It is ironic that as human civilization progresses, especially in terms of industrialization, they become more barbaric in their treatment of nature. Furthermore, the humans in the film are split into different factions that are all busy fighting each other instead coming together to solve the collective problem of the environment. It is a critique of how despite being faced with a common problem, humanity still has this tendency to remain fragmented in what is basically tribalism, and each separate group only fights for their own greedy needs instead of working together.

The film also has a heavy generational critique. It is the past humans that have utterly destroyed the environment, and the newer generations have to live with it. Furthermore, in the film, Nausicaa, who is representative of a younger generation, has to fight and fix the problem by herself, despite the problem being originally caused by those older than her. The adults, for most of the film, are busy bickering with each other, starting wars, and angering nature, while Nausicaa, the young princess, has to fix of their problems and at the end even sacrifice her life. Nausicaa is also an environmentalist ideal. She is in tune with nature. She tries to understand nature's perspective and look for peaceful methods of coexisting, such as her secret lair of those supposedly toxic plants. Those peaceful methods often take much more hard work to pull, but Nausicaa nonetheless never wants to use the easy method of sheer violence as a solution. And the only times that we see her use violence is against other humans and not nature.

This movie is an absolute masterpiece in terms of every single aspect. Animation, music, story, acting; everything is 11/10. To this day, I still think this movie has some of the greatest shots in all of cinema. Evangelion is a confusing series when you try to think too hard about what’s happening, but at its core, it is very simple: it’s simply about learning to accept oneself and finding meaning in one’s life full of hardships. Even though the series as a whole doesn’t have anything close to a perfect plot, it captures raw emotion so well and shows how complex the human psyche can be.

The first shot in the movie shows an object falling into the water, which is meant to mirror Kaworu’s death in the previous episode. Shinji looks extremely depressed, likely contemplating suicide. Then, the hospital scene in the movie truly shows how broken Shinji has become. All throughout the series, he has never made any decisions for himself, and he has internalized everyone’s else’s hegemonic masculinity, as shown by how he tries shaking Asuka awake and tells her to call him an idiot like always. When he finally exposes her breasts, he finally makes a decision for himself, but having no idea what to do, he resorts to his primal instincts. Not cool, Shinji.