Anime deconstruction

AttackOnTetris said:

Not at all sir. Look at my favorites/ratings.

PoeticJustice said:


Just because you like something more, doesn't mean it has more depth. I like hunter x hunter but I am not going to tout it as some philosophical masterpiece. And pretentious is not a legitimate critique bruh.

AttackOnTetris said:

My point was that I wasn't being ironic, so you can check my favorites/list. I wouldn't be ironic about a favorite would I?

And Hunter x Hunter is very philosophically deep although it is more subtle about it.

If you look at the political portrayals between AoT, HxH, and NGE for example, one sticks out as being incredibly shallow with an Illuminati-esque cabal secretly controlling the United Nations whose end goal is to gather human souls for an unknown reason. Deep like a comic book villain.

PoeticJustice said:
The focus of Eva isn't even politics. That is like watching Iron man complaining the romance is weak. It is a character study if anything. You watch characters and how the behave under certain scenarios.

Agafin said:
The word "gay" has literally changed from "a state of happiness" to "being a homsexual" thanks to popularisation and now it's officially and nearly universally used as such. Sorry but words do change.

AttackOnTetris said:
Hedgehog's dilemma is just clumsily ripped from Schopenhauer and used in a completely non-compelling way (at least from my perspective).

AttackOnTetris said:
That is one of the reasons why I use the word "pretentious"; the skin-deep religious symbolism is another.

AttackOnTetris said:
And the reason I bring up the political portrayals is that NGE is praised for its supposed realism yet it doesn't even capture human nature at the societal level. Most of the characters themselves don't even act like real people.

I know people that do act in that way, so I consider it compelling. I guess something that conflicts with your personal experience is never truly going to come across to you as genuine.

That's certainly arguable. Angel's Egg does a much better job with its Christian symbolism.

For every time you look at a character like that and think of it as unrealistic, just go to literally any other mecha show and look at how much more unrealistic that character is by comparison. Look at the backgrounds of the characters in Eva. The whole point is that they're human characters thrown in alien situations. Expecting them to act like your casual shounen heroes in situations full of such confusion and stress is nothing short of foolishness.

AzureDaora said:
Well, I haven't watched EVA, but from what I've heard about it and with the "psychological" tag it has, I don't think it's supposed to capture "human nature in the societal level" and more like "mental destabilization" from events that are not experienced daily. Kind of like Madoka Magica, really.

AttackOnTetris said:
It's not that people don't act that way but more the pretense of name-dropping over something that's pretty obvious [to me]. It comes off as "I read something about old psychology and now I'll put it in my anime". Shinji developed an avoidant personality but of course that doesn't sound as poetic.

AttackOnTetris said:
Apart from Shinji, I don't get what you're trying to say. I said "most of the characters" for a reason because I really do think Shinji is a great protagonist.

AttackOnTetris said:
I don't even have a problem with unrealistic characters, but if the realism is the show's selling point, I'm just rebutting that by saying almost everyone surrounding the protagonist is unrealistic.

AttackOnTetris said:
Using "shounen heroes" as a basis for comparison is hilarious too, as well as making the straw man inference that I expect them to act like "shounen heroes". Simply being a few steps more realistic than stereotyped "shounen" is not praiseworthy.

AttackOnTetris said:
Fair enough points there. A lot of this comes down to personal opinion, but what I will say is that if it's supposed to be realistic, Asuka and Rei ruin that for me. And the whole deconstruction thing being anti-Mary Sue type characters doesn't resonate that much with me, maybe because I haven't experienced a whole lot of them. Even every character in AoT has their flaws and it isn't a show known for characters. Gon's naive idealism is portrayed as a weakness even if he superficially fits the wonder child mold.

TheBrainintheJar said:


This has been a really interesting debate. I'm an NGE fan but you make valid points.

I agree the characters of NGE aren't very realistic. They're exaggerated. I'm okay with that. I think that's the point. It doesn't want to phisophical, it wants to capture Mecha's epicness and do it right. So instead of giving us bold heroes, it gives as flawed human being to make it more intense.

These are people who aren't sure they will win. They are afraid and don't want to do this, which makes their fight more emotionally intense. It's not just a muscular guy just mowing down mooks.

It's 'psychological' in a sense that the epic is personal - how do these characters cope with this? - rather than general - whee! They saved the world!

TokonatsuYuu said:

I think Shinji is pretty realistic.. But Asuka and Rei no. They should have developed misato more IMO. She could have complemented Shinji better more than the 2.

PoeticJustice said:


Asuka is a realistic character. I did a research paper on narcissism and she pretty much fits the definition to a T.

TokonatsuYuu said:
I think Shinji is pretty realistic.. But Asuka and Rei no. They should have developed misato more IMO. She could have complemented Shinji better more than the 2.

PoeticJustice said:
@TokonatsuYuu



Basically everything she does is to get some sort of validation. The validation that she never received from her mother.

Takuan_Soho said:


That sort of misses the point of the entire series. All of the three main characters could power an eva because they were completely isolated. Had Misato better related to Shinji, then Shinji would have stopped being a Eva driver. Had they developed Asuka or Rei more, both would have stopped being pilots.

The ultimate goal, of both the series and the first movie, was the same (though with different means). It was about transcending the isolation of individualism and being able to completely connect with another human being. In doing this, Shinji would be healed, there would be no more war, no more eva attacks, and humanity could evolve to the next level.

TheBrainintheJar said:


This has been a really interesting debate. I'm an NGE fan but you make valid points.

I agree the characters of NGE aren't very realistic. They're exaggerated. I'm okay with that. I think that's the point. It doesn't want to phisophical, it wants to capture Mecha's epicness and do it right. So instead of giving us bold heroes, it gives as flawed human being to make it more intense.

These are people who aren't sure they will win. They are afraid and don't want to do this, which makes their fight more emotionally intense. It's not just a muscular guy just mowing down mooks.

It's 'psychological' in a sense that the epic is personal - how do these characters cope with this? - rather than general - whee! They saved the world!

Doomdoctor said:
On the topic, can we call katanagatari a deconstruction?

AttackOnTetris said:

I agree with your perception on the strengths of NGE. I may feel at times it tripped over its own feet especially toward the end but I am not a hater of the show.

I also may have been spoiled by seeing Attack on Titan and Code Geass before NGE, and both just seem quite a bit more "epic" than NGE. But then again they may not have existed as we know them (especially AoT has a big NGE influence and in my mind it's a mecha, only the mechas aren't actually mechas).

YandereTheEmo said:
For instance, words like pig, cow, sheep, and chicken originated from a rural germanic tongue, while words like pork, beef, mutton, and poultry originated from french dialect. Both groups creating these words were, in essentiality, referring to the same things, but used different words to qualify them depending on what fit their natural dialect and generally felt comfortable to say. This is a keen example of linguistic frailty. Over time, in order to qualify certain things for the sake of simplifying interactions, these rural workers created words to define their tangible animals, whilst the upper-class utilized different words to do the same.

YandereTheEmo said:
Words aren't reality, as if they were, the contradiction between different groups' use of words and language would be a contradiction of two realities.

YandereTheEmo said:
The more you move away from the purpose of the hypothetical, the more you express your charlatanry. Just because you cannot envision it does not make it an impossibility, that's flawed reasoning.

TokonatsuYuu said:
I see. But I do find the chemistry between the 3 to be lacking.

TheBrainintheJar said:
Check post #189 - I can't believe I missed this theme of isolation in NGE. It put the series in new light for me.

Takuan_Soho said:


But they aren't the same thing in English. The Germanic words represents the animal, the French words represent the eatable meat. So this example says the opposite of what you were saying.

Most likely the reason the words were brought into English was because merchants needed to distinguish that they were not selling the entire animal, but were only selling the eatable meat and it was easier to take the french words than invent new ones.

Yes, its called misunderstandings, whether individual, cultural or linguistic. The only way to resolve these is for both groups to agree to call the same thing the same thing (or at least agree that x word means y word in the other language).

The one example you gave above, had it been true, would have proven my point.

Though I do think we do have a bit of a misunderstanding. I am not saying that cow has to always be cow in English, I could see that after a long period of time the word could change (as words have evolved over centuries - though mass printing has slowed this down dramatically). But that would be a natural accreted change, my argument is against a sudden conscious change. That is what I believe cannot occur outside of tyranny (and with evil intent). And Orwell backs me up on this. Had you read my argument it should have been clear (in that I both specified "today" as the time change, and agreed that over time a word could change meaning).

Agreed on by whom? Agreed on for what reason? If every person of a societal group honestly believes that a cow will, from today, will be called a pig, then yes, the word would change. But what are the odds that such a conversion would occur? Short of tyrannical imposition, I cannot envision why anyone would want to change "cow" to "pig".

Conventions are not frail. Something agreed upon by millions of people over hundreds of years is not frail.

That is what Deconstruction seeks to do.

I'm going to skip the rest of your post because 1) I don't want to be too long and 2) frankly, you seem incapable of carrying on a discussion without resorting to name calling and rudeness

Why? Just because the "mass" of people today think that "war is peace" doesn't make war = peace. If you believe that meanings can be overwritten so easily, that past meaning can be forgotten so easily, then why is your definition better than mine? What sort of racist sexist bigot do you think you are?

In changing Cow to Pig you are the one deviating from "normality", your failure to understand this is what undermines your argument and exposes you as a tyrant.

I personally do not want to call a cow a parrot. Cow is perfectly fine, there is no reason to change the word. So please don't pretend that you desire to call a cow a pig is "natural". It is not. The only reason for the change would be a political reason, and that ultimately is a tyrannical decision.

YandereTheEmo said:
I'm missing the part where I've resorted to rudeness and name calling at this point

YandereTheEmo said:
While the french nobility only saw them in the form of meat, and thus named them relative to what they were eating, the germanic, rural workers dealt more exclusively with the animals themselves, hence the distinction.

YandereTheEmo said:
But this isn't a substantiated fact--this is an assertion, a hypothesis, if you will.

Takuan_Soho said:


My apologies, I didn't realize that the word "charlatan" was a positive one in your dictionary.

Yes, it was a hypothesis, which is why I said "most likely". The word would have entered the vocabulary because there was a need to differentiate between "swine" and "pork", my hypothesis is the most simple explanation of what happened.

Your hypothesis is also not "substantiated", and I think it is even weaker because I can identify the exact source of the hypothesis.

It occurs in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Find an etext of Ivanhoe and then search for the first use of pork, it spells it out completely.

But here is the thing, Scott was an extremely political writer, the context of the writing of the novel was to elevate the native english (in Scott's case the saxons) at the expense of the french (the normans), it was not based on historical fact, but rather was a product of 19th century romanticism (which interestingly encompassed a heavy dose of nationalism) and Scott's political views of contemporary British society (On this, Wikipedia's entry on Sir Walter Scott (see the novel subsection) is actually pretty good).

So, once you understand this, let me ask, which hypothesis is the most likely to be true.

YandereTheEmo said:
I apologize if you took offense.

Takuan_Soho said:

Stop being whining. Have the balls to admit you were being offensive.

Let me provide you with positive example: you are a whining little twit, rather than try to understand the opposing viewpoint you retreat to trying to take individual words out of context. You are a pathetic worm. Crawl back underneath your rock before I decide squashing you is worthwhile.

No, it is not based on "historical" evidence.

An "honest" evaluation of "historical context" would expose that 12th century understanding of language is not the same as 19th century understanding. No 12th century Saxon would have felt the same way a 19th century writer would feel. That you cannot understand this differnce really makes me doubt your intelligence.

Allow me to give you this hint (though based on your writing I doubt you can understand): thoughts have a temporal basis. Certain arguments can only be made at certain times.