Rin’s look of disgust.
Shinji being a sicko.
The justice served by Lancer (and more).
This was from an ANN review of episode 19 of Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works, and no, I’m not going to link to it. If you really want to read that review, look it up yourself, although I suggest not to. I’m not helping these clowns get revenue by linking to them on my blog.
What, so basically “bad guys shouldn’t do bad things because bad things are bad”? Shinji, who is clearly a sicko and desires Rin, should have baked her a batch of cookies instead?
Oh, please. Get out of your damned special little bubble. Writers shouldn’t have to dumb down their works just because aspects of it offends you. Why are people like you even in the entertainment industry, or in any position to “professionally” critique it? By all regards, we should have nothing but stories of people shaking hands and getting along. As much as I like Non Non Biyori and Kiniro Mosaic, it’d be a boring industry if every show was like those.
“Titillate the male audience?” What? I was cheering for Lancer when he punched Shinji in the face. The scene was disturbing and I didn’t want Rin to experience Shinji’s grimy hands on her, or more. I mean, there might be some sickfucks out there (like Shinji) that get off on that crap, but there are sickfucks that get off on murder too, which the Fate series has a lot of. And why leave out lesbians in your generalization? In fact, why complain at all? SOMEONE WAS FORCED TO COMMIT SUICIDE IN THIS ANIME, but you choose this particular issue to soapbox… Why, because it “triggers” you? Does it only matter when it happens to a woman? Oh, fuck off. Every time I see soapbox partake-for-an-agenda crap like this, I seethe.
Brace yourself:
[spoiler]
I’ve gone ahead and ignored this type of BS long enough, but I have to say it right now. Anime, manga, video games, etc… everything that I’m passionate about, I’ve distanced myself from most western fandoms of. And for good reason. Time and time again, whenever I try leave my safe haven on this side of the internet, I see shits like these: People with only a passive-to-no interest in a creative medium bringing in biased Special Snowflake-gender politics to complain about things, “westaboo” anime fans throwing derogatory statements to people who enjoy the original language and not dropping dead from hearing something foreign, self-entitled viewers who whine about muh standalone animation and will only ever have a mere passive interest in a franchise, edgelords who need nihilism in everything, etc. Much less people whining about “otaku pandering” yet when a series actually explores its characters, their ideals and their interactions with others, it’s suddenly a “snorefest” (Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works episode 19 being an example, actually!).
I’m honestly quite sick of it all. In the case of agenda-seeking so-called gender politicians, do you know what Japan’s answer to men drawing sexy women is? Women drawing sexy men. Do you see me whining about the existence of Free! or otome games? In fact, if you’re all about equality, why aren’t you complaining about that shit too? Do you see me complaining about anime males like Kyon being treated like human ATM machines? Or male protagonists being pushed around by women? I literally don’t give a shit about those things. Writers and artists are free to write and draw whatever the hell they like. Women can have their sexy men or women (depending on their sexual orientation) and men can have their sexy women or men. Who cares. It doesn’t matter.
I’ve seen radical feminists complain about Bayonetta being sexist despite women being the most powerful beings in that game, just because Bayonetta looks appealing to men (again, what about the lesbians?). Yet Moxxie from Borderlands is lauded for being some sort of ideal female character. Even though the latter sits behind a desk and makes dick jokes all day long, whereas the former is killing fucking gods and angels. These people are just butting their heads into something they possess no interest in solely for an agenda, without actually playing these games, or watching these shows, etc.
This “cis” straight Asian male (remember, that only makes me somewhat better than a “cis straight white male”!), “POC”, or whatever the fuck you feel like calling me this week has had enough of this bullshit. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Even video games like GTA, which I don’t even like that much, get crap from these types of people and it pisses me off. Violence against women? You realize these games let you choose whoever you want to kill, right? Men and women. Heck, you can even choose to (your mind will be blown) not to kill anyone!
I thought we’ve reached an age where geek subculture is at its peak and mature educated adults would be open-minded to people like me, who invest much of their interests in imaginative media, and wouldn’t label us as “strange”, “weird”, “creepy”, etc. But I was wrong, progression isn’t happening and we’re going ass-backwards. Instead of being just strange though, apparently I’m also a “potential rapist and a danger to women”. And because of my interest in Japan’s culture, their language, and their media, I’m some raving freak of nature despite it being perfectly fine to be interested in other cultures, like Mexican culture or German culture.
Anime, video games, etc… I am now starting to regret any of these becoming popular in the west. I can handle “fandumb” – there will always be fandumb – but when people start using the hobbies I love as an excuse to soapbox and further their own agenda, that’s when I put my foot down. Pretty sure every decent human being is all for equal rights regardless of gender, and are OK with “feminists” who fit the definition of one before the movement got hijacked by the modern crazies (you guys are technically… “egalitarians” these days, aren’t you?), but I don’t think any of them would tolerate people bringing in all of this radical victimization bullshit, thought policing, and first-world problems into their hobbies. Go back to complaining about “manspreading” or something and ignoring women actually being treated like shit in places like the Middle East.[/spoiler]
I know this post escalated pretty quickly, but honestly, I’m completely tired of being surrounded by this kind of crap.
竜国の戦場 ~オタクSPOT~ 
Sure, but let’s just not go overboard and try to equate Fate/Stay Night with “creativity”. It’s just schlock entertainment that we love.
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El Goopo: Fate/stay night, and the entire Nasuverse for that matter, is creativity for the writer, Nasu, regardless if you think it’s “cheap” or not (that fictional universe wouldn’t be that detailed or ever-expanding if he felt it was cheap). And for all intents and purposes, writers can write whatever they want.
To say otherwise is talking down on the various doujin circles and even anime/manga in general that enjoy what they “create”. Create. Creativity.
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This is pretty much exactly how I’ve felt for a while. It’s all frustrating on various levels, especially since the large (or at least vocal) majority are this way. I can’t even express how I feel without people thinking I’m being defensive or dramatic.
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@Firion: It’s especially infuriating when people start putting words in your mouth and skirt around your points. It’s like talking to a brick wall… a brick wall with self-entitlement.
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I imagine Rin didn’t react because: she had no way out of it and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a reaction (rapers like that)
Not that the person who wrote that will read this…
I agree with you about the double standard and hypocrisy when it comes to violance and rape.
The last part not so much.
it is true that we can write whatever we please, but it also true that this writings are in many ways a reflextion of how we see things, if most media depics violence againts females and to a lesser degree males there is a reason bihind it, your examples of male abuse are true but there are few compare to agression againts females.
Free has a groupe of shirtless male teenagers who provide the audience with fanservice, but there is a vast differenece between how this boys are sexy and how females are, they, unlike anime women, do not have a body that is impossible no matter how much you train to optain , there is also no one moment where they are put into submition or otherwise humilating situations to arouse the audience.
Same for the Otome genre, the guys that the main female character interacts with for the most part won’t be the ones getting dominated.
Media does influence their audiences whether we want it or not, that is why those feminist think like that.
I am not familiar with Bayonette, I am with other games and there is, again, a clear difference between the treatment males and females receive, males don’t have sexulized desings and outfits just because, males don’t have the camera or their chest and butts just because, I don’t mind sexualisation so much, what I do mind, and fully agree with those who complain about it, is the lack of equality, either you treat men like that as well or you don’t with anyone, that is my policy.
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@henslight: That’s exactly why she didn’t give a reaction. Rin is a strong girl.
To be honest, I’ve seen about an equal amount of violence between males and females in the media (in video games, vastly more male violence – especially in western video games where you’ll probably end up murdering a bunch of male mooks in a shoot-out). If a man punches a man, people will view that as masculine. If a man punches a woman, people will see that as abusive. We should also consider the context in which the writer actually adds these violent plot aspects. If it’s rape, is the rape being celebrated, or is it there to highlight how horrible the assailant is as a human being? This doesn’t mean the writer thinks it’s right to rape women, in fact, that’s the opposite. Same for child abuse, torture, etc.
In terms of media in general, there is no factual evidence to conclude that they are the cause of boys becoming rapists or violent towards women. If that was true, I would imagine a large number of the human population that have access to multimedia would be. Including a number of violent acts depicted on fictional television. I’m not denying that games like first-person shooters, for example, could influence particular cases of school shootings, but it’s not true all the time and causes of influence could apply to almost anything.
And in terms of sexualization, I can’t say with 100% certainty on whether or not male or females are sexualized more than the other because male fanservice goes over my head for the most part (and I don’t touch things like shounen-ai or otome games) because I’m straight, but I have not seen anything that keeps females from writing/drawing their sexy men, butts and all.
I have indeed played video games and watched anime with terrible helpless female characters. But I’ve also played games and watched anime with fantastic and strong female characters. Even Japan, which is often targeted for being sexist as hell in their fiction, manages to have their share of great female game characters, often in their RPGs. Drag-On Dragoon 3/Drakengard 3 has Zero, the female protagonist who utterly dominates her male harem, and the moment the localization came out here, so-called feminists and sjwarriors from Tumblr started accusing the game of being sexist to women for portraying the protagonist as “slutty” and also showcasing themes that offended them… For the most part, it seems like people are just looking for things to start a riot for the sake of it because video games and the like are popular, but aren’t interested in the hobby itself at all. There was a recent Batman comic cover that was forced to be censored because the Joker was being a danger to Batgirl. He’s… the Joker.
I don’t see anything stopping a female writer from writing whatever she wants, or anything stopping a female artist from drawing whatever she wants. I’m not going to claim women don’t have their own set of problems to deal with even in modern times, but as a person who actually does care about women being treated equally, the people who complain about “triggers” either do not actually care about the bigger problems at hand or have their priorities set backwards. “Factual feminists” I don’t have a problem with, since they’re the ones calling the ones above to begin with and at least make sense to me.
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I haven’t seen F/SN (yet — I kind of want to play the VN) but I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing for a while, particularly with the controversy over the recent Game of Thrones episode (which, full disclosure, I also haven’t seen).
I think it’s a little silly for critics to say that we can’t depict bad things happening, which is effectively what these people are arguing. Sure, there are ways of depicting such things that are “better” or “worse” than others, but regarding the point the reviewer you quoted makes about the situation being “titillating” to the audience — consider that, perhaps, that was actually the intention? But extend that thought a moment: how would someone who felt titillated by that scene feel after that? Guilty or a bit weird, probably; I know I would. That reaction is actually a very effective manipulation of the audience’s emotions.
These critics need to remember that 1) depicting something is not the same as endorsing it, that 2) people who do feel a sense of fascination, arousal or titillation from such scenes are probably (hopefully!) doing so out of primal, uncontrollable instincts rather than a genuine desire to see someone else suffer; the thing that is often missed is that said titillation is often followed by an attack of the conscience… and 3) just because someone enjoys something in entertainment does not mean that they want to go out and do it in the real world. In fact, entertainment offers a safe means of exploring even your deepest, darkest fantasies without hurting anyone; surely a more desirable outcome than going out into the world and doing something unpleasant and/or illegal.
You’re right that oversensitive people should consider their involvement in creative media, but so long as people are still around to call them on their bullshit, I think things will be just fine. 🙂
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@AstralFirelll: Great points. I agree, people need to realize the fine line between reality and fiction. Storytellers think about what they’re writing, not the other way around. I suppose it is a bright side that there are people who are willing to call out folks like the ANN “reviewer”.
Also, yeah, I recommend reading the VN, although the art looks a bit outdated (the Tsukihime remake is looking great as far as previews of the sprites go, and it’s a shame they don’t just update the Fate graphics after all of these ports).
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That is true, thought I was refering to violence of a sexual nature, my bad.
Indeed, it is not that they beleive the writers to be closet rapers, as you say a rape may be included because it has a reason to be included, the problem is that many times…it doesn’t, it is included simply for shock value, and the one who gets rape rarely is not a female.
Do you watch GOT? if you do you’ll know about a certain recent scandal wich serves as the perfect example.
“there is no factual evidence to conclude that they are the cause of boys becoming rapists or violent towards women.”
that is true, it won’t make you into a raper, what it will do though, is if media insists on mostly showing just women being rape just for the sake of it is contribute to what is called rape culture.
“I can’t say with 100% certainty on whether or not male or females are sexualized more than the other because male fanservice goes over my head for the most part”
I have an easy way to proove this, the figures, here is Sonico:
http://image.rakuten.co.jp/amiami/cabinet/images/2012/45/fig-moe-7630.jpg?_ex=60×60
She is tighted up, she is wearing little clothes, she is is showing her panties, she has an innocent look…search for male ones, actually don’t, there is none, in fact there was no erotic male figures since before Togainu no Chi (a BL game) and Free were made, but neither characters are depicted this way, on the other hand you can find millions of female figures just like this one, and much worse…
I’m not straight but enjoy any romance no matter the gender or sexuality so I am familiar with both, yaoi has huge, giantic problems trust me, some of this involves rape and double standards as well, I could tell you more but it would differ from the subject and I’m not sure you want to hear about it anyway 😛
As for the Otome genre, yep, that has it’s issues also,it has to do with weak females and strong males (not refring just to phisical strenght) as well, but same, I won’t go into detail so not to differ much.
True again, there may be few but we are thankful that such works that want to make a difference are being made.
yes I saw that cover, a disguting character doing something disgusting to a heroine, just like Shinji…what a sorprise (this is sarcams)
“I don’t see anything stopping a female writer from writing whatever she wants”
that is fine, but the goal is to have male writers help too.
it would depend on what trigger we refer to…sometimes I think it justifies a negative reaction, others like here it doesn’t and I call it complaining for comaplaining, that is fucking Shinji there, he kills and feels no remorse about it, we had known he feels lust for Rin since the beginning, he has her right there in front of him, all to his mercy…and you get sorprise he would attempt a sexual assault? -_-
I forgot to ask, what were you refering to with “the lesbians”? Caster and Saber? or other?
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@henslight: – I’ll agree to disagree on some points, since our personal experiences differ in regards to male fanservice. Although I don’t make it a point to search for otome series, BL manga and yaoi hentai, I have have seen noticed a decent number of those titles on season charts before or on databases and am very familiar with how big the otome game/fujoshi market is. This is purely anecdotal, but in middle school or high school, parents accidentally bought a BL anime DVD called “Sukiyo!” for me as a present because they knew I liked Japanese cartoons (the characters looked very feminine and the cover was innocent enough) and I take it that was as “moe” to a female audience as it could have to been to a male audience if the characters were girls. I can’t exactly say for certain, but that’s just what I’ve inferred. As for otome games, I have not yet partaken in playing one but if a number of shoujo and jousei I’ve read are any indication, I don’t doubt that hollow female protagonists exist. But I think male protagonists have their own “problems” too, such as being too indecisive, or in the case of series like Aki-Sora where the MC is moe-bait shouta, their personality traits can overlap with what feminists generally consider fragile in “generic” female characters who are shy. I personally think it’s an issue with mediocre writers rather than a huge movement to put women down.
– It’d be nice for males to create something that specifically caters to a female audience. Happens once in the blue moon, but usually it’s the other way around. Again, though, that is free will. Interestingly enough, Fate/stay night was originally going to have a female protagonist and a male king Arthur, as seen in Prototype. In fact, I’m pretty sure Nasu himself preferred it that way.
– The sjwarriors that coined the unnecessary concept of “trigger warnings” just wanted an excuse to get rid of things they don’t like in classrooms, media, and such under the guise of being “traumatized”. Which is essentially BS, for example I’ve seen a video of a feminist conference where males clapping could be considered a trigger for them. There are cases of psychological trauma, such as survivor’s guilt or a lot of turmoil war veterans suffer, but it’s a lot more complicated than these folks let on. In fact, people who are easily offended shouldn’t even be browsing the internet imo
– lol By lesbians, I meant the fact that when reviewers like these want to demonize males, they always conveniently forget about the lesbian audience as well. Why are the males the only ones that get “titillated”? It gives me the impression that they only acknowledge homosexuality when it is convenient for them.
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@Mikoto: that’s a cop out and you know it. By those standards the rants these people are writing are creative media too, and they should be perfectly free to write them without someone getting overly sensitive about them in turn.
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@El Goopo: – There’s an obvious difference between “creative writing” such as writing a fictional story and writing to review a fictional story, i.e. “journalism”. It should be expected for a “professional” reviewer not to complain about villainous characters doing villainous things. Literally storytelling 101.
If Nasu was making a statement about raping females being a good thing, then it’s reasonable for them to criticize it on a thematic basis, but this rapist gets karma in every storyline of Fate/stay night and is outright hated by most of the audience and cast.
– To say the Nausverse isn’t creative writing when the writer thought about the consistent in-and-outs about how his fictional world, characters, and history worked more than other works of fiction is just a tad bit silly, I’d say. It was also originally a Japanese text-based novel littered with Nasu’s unique use of language and dependent on first-person narration before it was ever an anime, which people just love to treat as cheap throwaway animation…
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I have to admit that while I ignore this drama for the fact that all the drama can drain one’s energy, but I have to admit that it’s very irritating, especially for someone who just want to enjoy media. Sure, I’m all for gender equality and social justice, but I think Radical feminists are ruining the whole movement and of course, the type of people you are mentioning aren’t making things any better as they keep pushing the goal posts that offends them. If you like media that have stuff that offends them or don’t agree with, they will bully you. Of course, they are doing this in the name of pushing their own agenda and have stuff censored that they don’t like or confirm to their views.
This post comes at a coincidence since a fellow Anime blogger who focuses on yuri Anime got told by one of these special snowflake types that it’s disturbing for a guy to promote yuri in a positive blog because men see women as sexual objects.” I don’t get whats wrong as we don’t see men complaining about women promoting yaoi in a positive light because they are sexualizing men.
Talking about trigger warnings, a bunch of feminists lashed out at an actual feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers (you should be familar with her) who was giving a speech at Oberlin over the wage gap. She suggest women to change their major to a STEM field like Engineering and of course, the social justice warrior feminists jeered at her saying “don’t tell me what to do!” The self-entitlement nature of these people annoy the crap out of me for the fact that they expect a high paying wage in a liberal arts major when those jobs do not exactly make a lot of money compared to STEM.
Also, I find the radical feminists complaining about Bayonetta rather hypocritical for the fact that her character design was done by a female character designer, Mari Shimazaki. Yep, it just shows that radical feminists don’t care about feminism since they are attacking women who are making strong female characters. To me, that energy can be used to fight for more women rights and gender equality in countries that don’t have it.
Aside from that, I pretty much ignore these people as it’s a waste of energy to engage in them as they will never be satisfied.
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@chikorita157: I think the hardest part about ignoring them is that they’re always trying to dig their way into our entertainment. Western entertainment especially, but even with Japanese entertainment they pop up with these kind of personal hangups whenever we get localizations (like the Akiba’s Trip 2 “trap” fiasco, all from people who probably will never buy the game anyway). Sometimes the companies just ignore them (Marvelous USA), which is cool, but sometimes they manage to get their way (Batman cover censorship).
My condolences to that anime blogger. It reminds me of that one time where someone in the comments section of my blog accused me of objectifying women for having cute anime girls as my layout and post images, despite her admitting to reading manga where guys fondle each other, and sexism wasn’t even the subject of the post. I really hate that double-standard.
I admire Christina Hoff Sommers for being one of the few figures out there that promote women in a positive light. It’s really irritating that people blame their own job decisions on oppression and think they deserve to get paid just as much as people in other fields, simply because the world apparently revolves around them. Lashing out at people trying to give them advice on the matter doesn’t help me like these types any better.
As you said, it’s a waste of energy trying to convince these people of anything, as they’re clearly willing to target anyone to further their own agenda rather than actually making sure females are treated equally in society. Shimazaki Mari, a woman, being the character designer of Bayonetta? “Obviously brainwashed by sexist Japanese men.” For all intents and purposes, I would love to just ignore them, but people calling them out on their nonsense actually seems to be the only way to keep things from going out of hand.
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@Mikoto
-Sukiyo…memories, that was one of my first contacts with a (crappy) shounen ai anime, what you mention, one guy that is clearly male and another that you can’t tell unless you see the crotch comes with many problems that I won’t list here, but trust me they are big.
But I would like to point a difference between this type of media and one like Fate, one is, like the Otome genre,written generally by straight women for other straight women, Fate on the other hand started as a VN with eroge content meant for a male audience, now it has reach such a level of popularity that is has become mainstream, this implies is it meant to be enjoyed by both genders, this said.
Are there as much bi male characters are there are females? is there a scene where a male is sexually assaulted by either a man or female? nop, that is the difference that I personally do find a problem with, I won’t ask for equality since the original source was meant for males, but at the very least I would like writers to attempt to make a difference.
You mention free will, this would lead to another discussion if I was to say every thought regarding it, to make it brief, I don’t really think that will is still free when you get into working with mainstream works.
Aha, I deslike empty shota moe characters be them male or female.
-“Fate/stay night was originally going to have a female protagonist and a male king Arthur, as seen in Prototype.”
I can’t judge a character by a 12 minute short, though personally I’m glad it didn’t happen, that Sayaka girl smelled like a classic vulnerable famale protagonist that would have her classic male honorable knight…that and I wouldn’t exchange female Saber for anything.
-I don’t consider those true feminists, feminism wants equality, when you have reach a point that you want to become what you are fighting against with, that you start to reject the help of the males who are in fact agreeing with you, then you are no longer representing what feminisms originally stands for…I have encounter what you describe many times, I won’t deny their existence, just know there are others who will approve of those male claps.
– I am a lesbian, however I don’t mean every word I say to be taken as a representation of every other gay female out there.
mmm here I’ll agree and disagree, I agree that obviously it is not just straight males who get aroused by this images, but writers have in mind, when they are planning to make their writings into a comercial work, the audience, Fate started as a work meant for a male audience, that it has scenes that may appeal to lesbians as well happens by chance, that is why usually they say things such as “meant for male gaze” this isn’t to say I don’t see your point, it is for that reason that I don’t tend to mention either gender when talking about scenes meant to aroused.
that and…
http://io9.com/10-stupid-arguments-people-use-to-defend-comic-book-sex-1636381824
See the third point, last paragraph, it aplies to mainstream anime as well.
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@henslight: – I dunno. Despite me not being interested in boy x boy relationships
outside of Touya and Yukito from CCS, I have spotted plenty of obvious male homosexual sub-context in anime before that writers clearly add in to please the fujoshi shippers. As for male rape, I’ve seen it before, though it’s usually men who are the assailants: example, Nakago from Fushigi Yuugi was raped by his father as a child. No where did I think Watase was trying to put down men though. The attempted rape in Fsn (and the rape in Heaven’s Feel, or Kara no Kyoukai): I don’t think males would necessarily care whether or not it’s a female or male, it’s just someone getting/about to get raped in the story to increase tension/turmoil and make us hate the villains. I mean, in Fsn, both instances were by Shinji – the one character sick enough to do such a thing the first chance he gets, and he is straight, so obviously they would have been girls. Adding even more rape for the sake of gender balance seems silly to me. We’d need to create a female sicko character that would want to assault Shirou. In the first place, I don’t even know if Rider’s succubus dream counts, or if the scrapped insane-Illya-raping-Shirou scene counts (either way, I’m not going to beg Nasu to put that one back in for the sake of having it). Then we have Gilgamesh who implies that he’d rape Saber – but that goes along with his ancient Mesopotamian epic: he was from the age of gods, and he raped dozens of newlywed women out of boredom using his “rights as a king” until his citizens begged the gods to give him something to do.-The Prototype novel isn’t that bad. If you liked Rin, I don’t see why you wouldn’t like Ayaka, since most of her traits carried over to Rin in the actual Fate/stay night (and Prototype Archer is/became Gil).
– Yes, sjwarrior feminists are the ones I don’t like. I don’t have a problem with “true feminists”, but I do have a problem with them using a moniker that’s now being associated with the sjwarriors. If they’re for equal rights regardless of gender, then they should call themselves egalitarians. “Feminism” was fitting back then because it wasn’t hijacked by crazies and females really didn’t have the same rights as males back then. But now, at least in countries like the United States, they do, and now it’s up to the women of today to maintain a woman’s rightful image of dignity to stand alongside men in power, without acting like spoiled self-entitled brats like the sjwarriors and trying to shame the men of today and turning them into “eunuchs” (these aren’t even the same men that oppressed women in the original movement, why hold them accountable for anything, it’s like me holding some random white kid responsible for the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam). These clowns are really putting a dent into the movement.
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What really gets me about this identity politics pesudo-criticism that’s so popular among critics now is just how lazy it all is. These people just talk about their personal hangups and pretend that’s legitimate critique or has any potential to start a discussion.
I mean: “I’d prefer it if my entertainment media didn’t expect me to derive pleasure from a woman being nonconsentually felt up.” That’s a personal hangup that says nothing about the work. And portraying it as a criticism is basically saying “This work is deficient because it fails to respect my personal hangups.” That’s lazy and that isn’t a criticism. It’s just a way to look smart and sensitive to social justice issues without having to put in any effort or thought. It’s a raw emotional reaction.
This focus on personal identity politics, feminism, and the bullcrap clamour for “diversity” and “representation” are, at this point, actively hampering discussion about these creative works we love. These social-justice-obsessed people try to force identity politics into every conversation about media, and it’s ruining the way we discuss media.
Where discussion and criticism used to require perspective and an open mind, “discussion” and “criticism” now only require a thin skin and the ability to rattle off buzzwords, and that’s my biggest problem with people forcing their identity politics into dialogue about entertainment media.
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@Timeenforceranubis: I agree, at this point people are just forcing the same personal politics and social sensitivity into every discussion and sucking all the potential substance that those discussions could have had from being about the actual work itself.
It’s like if I wanted someone to critique the composition of my drawing of a meadow with dandelions, and all I get are people telling me that my drawing is trash because they’re allergic to dandelions, so I should replace the dandelions with another flower and shouldn’t draw dandelions ever.
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@Mikoto ” I have spotted plenty of obvious male homosexual sub-context in anime before that writers clearly add in to please the fujoshi shippers.”
this has nothing to do with the subject at hand but…THANK YOU, you have no idea how happy it makes me to see a man who is not a BL fan who can admit to see this without fear or insecurity.
About it, excuse me if I sound repetitive but here lies a difference as well, it’s SUBtext, it’s not TEXT, it can be pointed to be there as much as you can say it is not, on Fate some think it’s there between Gilgamesh and Kirei or Alexander and Waver, as much as I wouldn’t mind this to be true I don’t see clear evidence (text) to say so, on the other hand we know for sure Saber, Rin, Rider, Caster, Sakura and some of the other girls are if not Bisexual at the very least hetero flexible.
There are cases of male rape as well but I have to try hard to think about any because they are rare, outside the BL Visual Novels genre (bad endings tend to have the hero raped) the only examples I can think of, to my knowledge, are the Utena movie and the Blood plus anime.
With females I can name a lot, this difference is statistics is what is alarming.
“The attempted rape in Fsn ”
You are forgetting when we are given a POV of Sakura’s mind when she was holding Rin prisoner with her slimy tentacle thingies, she admits to finding the situation arousing.
Then we have Caster and Saber, the latter was held prisoner as well, was given a new more revealing dress, put in a position with her ass sticking out and appears to be experiencing an orgasm instead of pain judging by her face.
I can’t possibly beleive there wasn’t a way to arrange this another way.
This isn’t to say I fount that situation offensive, if you want Caster to be a sadistic Saber fangirl then be it, I just mention this to set an example of the difference in gender treatment in mainstream anime.
Regarding feminisms…I’ll have to differ on one point, it is called like this and not another word that means equality to point that this absence of equality had to do with the fact that there was a clear difference in gender roles at the time, this difference being that women were considered inferior. (and still are in many countries)
“But now, at least in countries like the United States, they do”
Not really, this fight is not to change just what is easy to spot such as a difference in salaries or kids being taken care more by the mom instead of the dad, it is also to change conducts and thoughts in daily life, thoughts that both genders share that may appear harmless compare to the mentioned examples but that still contribute to this lack of equality, here,10 examples:
-a display of feelings is just for women.
-if you have a small dick you are a loser.
-if you are a man who fucks a lot you are a winner and if you are female you are a whore.
-women can take care of their appearance, men can’t, if you do you are not manly.
-having balls means brave, pussy means coward.
– if a man rapes a girl and this girl was showing skin it is her fault for exposing her body, not the raper for raping.
– a man who curses regularlly is disgusting because his speech is disgusting,
a woman who does so is disgusting because that is for boys.
– Same as the above, a man talking about shit? natural, a girl? disgrace.
– an opinionated man is a man, an opinionated woman is a bitch.
– men should be the ones paying in dates, always, no matter what.
And I could on and on and on…
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@henslight: Those are personal biases that you literally cannot just force a change in unless we have the thought police monitor everyone’s belief system, like racism.
I do not disagree that any of what you listed are hypocritical ways that people think, but the idea of organizing a system that controls everyone’s daily lives and does not allow anyone to dissent, ever, is alarmingly close to that of fascism. I don’t think someone should be monitored simply for hurting my feelings, for instance.
Women are getting stoned in the Middle East and mistreated in other countries, that’s something to be alarmed and active about, but in America at least, you could live the life of a woman relatively peacefully with the same human rights as a man does. Biases exist and as you described, they are not limited to negativity of just women, so in context of America, “feminism” is hardly a fitting term for support of human equality. Evidently in modern America, where both sexes are equally protected by written law.
Focus on promoting yourself positively, and don’t care what bigots say if you are in a country that allows you to have a voice. Raise your children to be people who respect human beings regardless. And don’t let them turn into little bigots themselves who make a big deal out of men spreading their legs or women taking up space with their purses on public transport when there are real issues in the outside world that need their attention. Some places still don’t allow gay marriage, for instance. Fight the bullies without becoming one and actually make a difference.
We already had a bigot-I-shall-not-name-here in the gaming industry that got away with benefiting from unethical acts, including scapegoating a “support” imageboard full of social anxiety-ridden male virgins for “harassing” her over the phone, even if they are in no condition to even pick up a phone, and embarrassed them all over the media even though all they wanted to do was be left alone in their little corner of the internet (even I didn’t know who they were until the news outlets bullied them). Of course, no one cared about media humiliation because they are male virgins, who are seen as jokes. But of course the media goes out of its way to censor said bigot sleeping with video game journalists and suddenly people are okay with that because reasons. Ugh. People like this operate under the guise of feminism and unfortunately these are the kind of people associated the term with now. I personally think it’s best that people who support true equality for everyone should move far away from having the same label as these people with clearly opposite intentions. I don’t want to see someone like Christina Hoff Sommers lumped in the same category as the people who think there’s no problem with making a little boy feel like a potential rapist.
Social justice feminists attack true feminists for ever considering males, especially straight white males. The difference is clear.
Back to creative media, say for instance as an artist, I love drawing the female form. What if I were forced to draw the male form because others felt like I should? It’s not like I’m putting down males down or anything, I’m just creating things I like to create. But, it’d be nice if someone who felt that there was a strange lack of artistic depictions of the male form would step up the plate and do something about it themselves, instead of forcing me to create something I don’t want to.
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The reviewer says nothing of the kind. Saying, “Please no more rape imagery,” is no stronger a statement than, “I really don’t enjoy watching that.”
Should reviewers put such remarks into their reviews? Maybe one can argue they shouldn’t, but it’s a clear personal opinion, and it says nothing about the use of sexual violence in fiction in general. You’re the one making that conclusion.
That reviewer isn’t opposed to sexual violence in fiction in general. She wrote extensively on it for her reviews on Maria the Virgin Witch:
It’s nice to see an anime that’s intentionally uncomfortable in its portrayal of sexual violence. Whether a rape scene “works” or not is always a matter of the viewer’s personal boundaries, but in all of my years of watching anime, I’ve rarely seen a show handle the issue as tastefully as Maria the Virgin Witch does. Maria’s assault is brutal, fully playing to the audience’s terror and indignation. The sound design carries the scene – rather than show our heroine beaten and chained, they cut to shots of her home as it creaks under the pressure of her fading magic. The tight framing never gives us a good shot of Maria’s body. A lot of rape scenes shoot themselves in the foot by giving the viewer salacious access to the victim’s form. The closest the episode got to making me uncomfortable were those shots of Maria prone in the wagon, but even then they’re meant to be indicative of the damage inflicted on her.
For this reviewer, rape in itself is not an automatic fail, but how it’s handled makes or breaks the scene. That’s a reviewer’s job, isn’t it? To judge and offer opinion on whether the studio’s handling of a scene adds or subtracts to the work?
In light of that review, the reviewer’s objection to showing Rin’s thighs in this episode is not a surprise. And in the context of the UBW anime as a whole? This is the show that had Rin’s butt waving in the air. This is the show that put a shot of Rin’s thighs into her conversation with Archer back in the first episode of this cour. This is the show that put Saber in that dress, with her rear end all but exposed, and inserted shots of Saber in that dress into conversations that didn’t involve her.
None of that was damning or awful, just eyeroll-worthy. Actually showing Shinji touch Rin on camera was about the same, really. Given the history the show has of fanservice, the choice to show that on-camera versus off- must be interpreted as giving more room for titillation. Perhaps not a lot, but more than the alternative.
Frankly, all the railing you do against this line of criticism could just as easily be turned around against you for your criticism of ufotable’s lapses in attention to the wider continuity: what does it matter whether Shirou has any white hair when he makes a pact with Alaya? What’s the would the point be of showing EMIYA with Ciel’s red cape? Another viewer might say, “These details are meaningless to me; I don’t care about them. It’s unreasonable to make any kind of stink about them.”
Of course, you know that you mean such remarks only as small criticisms. The same with the ANN reviewer, who spent only one short paragraph (out of a seven paragraph review) on the issue of Shinji and Rin. The rest of the time, she talks about pacing, about ensemble storylines vs. single protagonist storylines, about repetition and tone, about adaptation decisions in where to end scenes.
You’re the one blowing this up as though this was some huge, reactionary feminist rant. I get it: to you, this is something not worth criticizing. But just as I would not accuse you of having a sinister agenda in asking ufotable to pay more attention to Fate continuity details, I think you should consider that a person asking ufotable to rethink how they handled a sexual assault scene doesn’t have a sinister agenda, either. Both of these are things real people actually care about.
You wrote up a huge, angry rant about one paragraph in an anime review. You might want to consider: who is the oversensitive one right now?
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The reviewer says nothing of the kind. Saying, “Please no more rape imagery,” is no stronger a statement than, “I really don’t enjoy watching that.”
How is it not? It’s clearly implying that the attempted rape shouldn’t be there in the first place despite it going along with how dangerous Shinji’s character is. The leg shot alone is literally the only indication that Shinji isn’t driving his grimy fingers up Rin’s personal areas.
Whereas with “I really don’t enjoy watching that” – Look, I didn’t enjoy watching Rin almost getting violated. Not even in the VN where the bastard fucking licked her cheek too. But my reaction isn’t friggin’ “please no more offensive rape imagery, the women, oh the poor women!“. It’s me actually getting engrossed into the story and worrying about the characters.
Should reviewers put such remarks into their reviews? Maybe one can argue they shouldn’t, but it’s a clear personal opinion, and it says nothing about the use of sexual violence in fiction in general. You’re the one making that conclusion.
No, my point is that people like this tend to cherry-pick things they don’t like when it’s convenient for them.
The rest of my “huge angry rant” was about these types of people in general, like Anita’s criticisms of Bayonetta. I see this crap all the time now, seeing that ANN reviewer just broke the camel’s back and served as an opening.
“In light of that review, the reviewer’s objection to showing Rin’s thighs in this episode is not a surprise. And in the context of the UBW anime as a whole? This is the show that had Rin’s butt waving in the air. This is the show that put a shot of Rin’s thighs into her conversation with Archer back in the first episode of this cour. This is the show that put Saber in that dress, with her rear end all but exposed, and inserted shots of Saber in that dress into conversations that didn’t involve her.
None of that was damning or awful, just eyeroll-worthy. Actually showing Shinji touch Rin on camera was about the same, really. Given the history the show has of fanservice, the choice to show that on-camera versus off- must be interpreted as giving more room for titillation. Perhaps not a lot, but more than the alternative.
1) Caster is a sadist that gets a sexual thrill out of seeing Saber squirm and breaking another woman’s fantasies. If you know her background as Princess Medea, you would know that this would fit perfectly with her character. Nasu did not write the sex scenes in the original version of the VN despite the mass amounts of misinformed information (he just acknowledges that they happen in the main story he actually writes), and there’s no way he’d put that in as just fanservice just because he felt like it.
2) The gaze shots of Rin’s thighs earlier in the anime were in a lighthearted environment, not only that, but I can at least identify gaze shots of Lancer’s butt too. Just because straight males enjoy the female visual form and straight females enjoy the male visual form automatically mean they’ll just get aroused when a borderline rape happens? What?
Frankly, all the railing you do against this line of criticism could just as easily be turned around against you for your criticism of ufotable’s lapses in attention to the wider continuity: what does it matter whether Shirou has any white hair when he makes a pact with Alaya? What’s the would the point be of showing EMIYA with Ciel’s red cape? Another viewer might say, “These details are meaningless to me; I don’t care about them. It’s unreasonable to make any kind of stink about them.”
Because it actually (mind blown) has something to do the show’s plot and world-building, and the subject character in-question? Missing details and the like can lead to misinterpretation by anime-only viewers which I’ve already seen happening, which affects the flow of fan discussions of the work (some people actually care about that). In my impressions posts, I point out the important things (I feel) that are left out of the anime to help anime-only viewers stay informed when discussing these works with others who have read the source material, Fate/Zero-entry fans included, or hell, simply if they just wanted to know more about it. Lastly, the biggest difference between myself who does casual thoughts about UBW and actually like it, and this reviewer is that I’m not toxic towards people who like the things I don’t and blast the negative tone hard just to incite an reaction.
ACTUAL tweets from the sjwarrior reviewer:
the only thing that makes me happier than making f/sn fans mad is making brett easton ellis fans mad
Maybe I just have high standards b/c I study literature, but the prose in F/SN is really inexcusably bad.
Some parts are the result of the translation, but others (like the godawful repetitiveness) cannot be.
I think the sexual violence is actually falsely represented as the only misogynist stuff in F/SN. Even w/o it, that series is sexist.
Nasu has stated in interviews that his idea for the Fate route was Saber “discovering her femininity” through bangin’ Shirou, which is, um-
-kindaaaaa a super sexist proposition. Man writing about WHAT IS FEMININITY. Turns out badass King Arthur is a sad little girl inside. ):
It’s not just the sex scenes, it’s bad attitudes about women & sex implicit from the game’s worldview.
“No ideological bias” is really just code for “conforms with the dominant ideological bias.” We live in air so it’s invisible.
Review “without ideological bias” is the new “objective” review.
In regards to the franchise, people who aren’t merely passively interested in Japanese media stopped taking her seriously right when she blasted Nasu’s writing from mirror-moon’s fan translation, among other things that break her credibility when it comes to her remarks about this series, which would just be me reiterating what people have been saying since she’s been doing these reviews.
In regards to the reviewer, she’s a stuck-up ass who thinks her standards are above absolutely everyone else’s. If this is the mind behind the “professional” words, I honestly don’t want to read any more of it. There are even more toxic people out there that bring in the same gender and personal politics into geek subculture and trying to see it in every little thing to create drama, etc. and I was doing a damn good job of ignoring them and not saying anything of the contrary for quite some time. The answer is: no, I’m not being overly sensitive. Not when it comes t this, at least.
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Let me quote the reviewer:
Finally, Shinji’s assault on Rin was gross and unnecessary. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been (no blushing or squirming), but the shots of him feeling up her legs were clearly meant to titillate the audience.
The shots. The primary objection is to putting those actions on screen. And while the reviewer does say that the assualt is “gross and unnecessary,” I’ve already quoted material from her in which she is explicitly okay with the use of sexual violence in other works. This is far from a blanket prohibition on evil people doing evil things, and your characterization otherwise is nothing less than a distortion to make a point.
An action being in-character or consistent with established backstory is not in itself a complete justification or defense of something being put into a work. What does Caster’s sexual fixation on Saber add to the story beyond getting to see Saber in that dress?
I’m merely using the context and history of what a show has done to try to determine what feelings it might try to get across in a particular scene.
I can easily imagine an argument that is just as dismissive of that worldbuilding and minor details.
“Worldbuilding? Who cares. No reasonable person would be annoyed or disappointed that a tiny detail in some hidden away backstory wasn’t conformed to. It’s small potatoes compared to the ideological distnace between Shirou and Archer.”
It’s really no different than the argument you’re making.
“Sexual violence? Who cares. No reasonable person would be annoyed or disappointed that Rin is shown with Shinji’s fingers almost up her skirt. It’s small potatoes compared to Lancer punching out Shinji for it.”
“But messing up those details could confuse new viewers and could encourage more fruitless conversations! That’s unpleasant!”
“But showing Rin being touched like that is pandering to people with rape fantasies and could encourage more rape fantasy in anime! That’s unpleasant!”
Unsurprisingly, people care about different stuff on the Internet. You care about interaction with the new fanbase. She cares about gender issues. I don’t see how what you care about is intrinsically more important, or more worthy of saying, than what she cares about. And yes, you don’t only care about interaction with the new fanbase. Neither does she only care about gender issues.
You’ve concluded she’s trying to incite a reaction merely because you vehemently disagree with her and because she expresses her dislike of the Fate fanbase, but in spite of that dislike, she’s been very positive on the series overall. This is the lowest grade she’s given to an episode, and she gave it a C.
Perhaps there’s a wider problem with people being unreasonable, but this reviewer did not come anywhere close to saying that rape can’t be presented in fiction period, or that bad guys can’t do bad things period. She remarked primarily about the presentation of the scene, which you distorted into a blanket prohibition on sexual violence in general, and to neglect how that presentation could play upon anime’s history of fetishizing sexual violence is to be willfully ignorant.
Has there been far worse stuff produced? Sure. That does not mean, no matter how consistent this assault was with Shinji’s character, that the story is better for it. Think about it: this sexual assault was used basically to setup a gag that’s become an amusing gif.
Think about it. They used sexual violence to set up a gag. People are raped every day, and there’s a show that uses sexual violence to set up a gag.
I don’t think you have to be “oversensitive” to think there’s something a little off about that.
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The shots. The primary objection is to putting those actions on screen. And while the reviewer does say that the assualt is “gross and unnecessary,” I’ve already quoted material from her in which she is explicitly okay with the use of sexual violence in other works. This is far from a blanket prohibition on evil people doing evil things, and your characterization otherwise is nothing less than a distortion to make a point.
An uncomfortable assault scene is an uncomfortable assault scene. Unless it’s celebrated, then what is even the matter?
If Ufotable really wanted to arouse rape fetishists, they would have threw away the original scene entirely.
Rin would have been raped, experienced body betrayal and moaned in ecstasy (and either started to like it or continued to hate it depending on how fucked up you people think Japan is), and then Shinji would have left her to cry as the camera showed the demoralized visage of the destruction of a strong girl.
But that didn’t happen. He just touched her thigh and he got the shit punched out of him by a mythological hero.
An action being in-character or consistent with established backstory is not in itself a complete justification or defense of something being put into a work. What does Caster’s sexual fixation on Saber add to the story beyond getting to see Saber in that dress?
Uh, because that is something Princess Medea would do after all that crap she’s been through in her myth? She wanted to break Saber’s mental pride as a knight by dressing Saber up as a vulnerable female. What, you want her to peel off her toenails one by one instead? Chop off her limbs?
Like, what the hell, are you expecting every work to write their characters out-of-character just because it offends you?
I’m merely using the context and history of what a show has done to try to determine what feelings it might try to get across in a particular scene.
Completely different types of scenes with completely different types of context. Great job. That’s like saying the classic comical “tsundere hits main character with a mallet” is a reason to assume that a later scene where a mallet is used to smash someone’s skull open is meant to be funny too.
I can easily imagine an argument that is just as dismissive of that worldbuilding and minor details.
“Worldbuilding? Who cares. No reasonable person would be annoyed or disappointed that a tiny detail in some hidden away backstory wasn’t conformed to. It’s small potatoes compared to the ideological distnace between Shirou and Archer.”
It’s really no different than the argument you’re making.
Huh…? Yes it is. Those actually directly affects the depth and understanding of the plot and characters, and helps fill in plot holes and untold aspects of the characters’ motivations.
How Shirou changed skin color and got a tan is an semi-helpful detail to know for a fan who isn’t just passively interested in the Fate/stay night series and wish to talk about it with other fans.
Whereas gender politics have fucking nothing to do with Fate/stay night.
“Sexual violence? Who cares. No reasonable person would be annoyed or disappointed that Rin is shown with Shinji’s fingers almost up her skirt. It’s small potatoes compared to Lancer punching out Shinji for it.”
Yes, because the rape wasn’t celebrated and the rapist wasn’t fucking given a pat on the back. He gets punched in the face.
He’ll get stabbed and turned into a monstrosity later too.
He’ll get murdered by his little foster sister who he’s raped all his life.
He got stepped on by Berserker in the Fate route.
Of course having his grimy fingers up her skirt is annoying. You’re supposed to hate Shinji as a villain. He’s not some throwaway harmless gag villain, he’s an actual threat with no compassion in all of the routes. I got annoyed when my favorite character had her heart ripped out too. This isn’t a story about holding hands around a bonfire and singing Kumbaya, be prepared to get shocked/disgusted or don’t watch at all.
“But messing up those details could confuse new viewers and could encourage more fruitless conversations! That’s unpleasant!”
???? What bizarro world did I land in where confusing viewers is a good thing?
“Fruitless conversation”. lol Of course you wouldn’t care about the plot or the character interactions, it’s all about the gender politics in this anime called Unlimited Gender Works where seven Masters gather together to share their diverse backgrounds and gender identification. Don’t forget they summon People Of Color!
“But showing Rin being touched like that is pandering to people with rape fantasies and could encourage more rape fantasy in anime! That’s unpleasant!”
“In a show that revolves around a ritual that involves murder! I sure do have my priorities straight!”
TRIGGER WARNING: ejaculating to murder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_murder
You’ve concluded she’s trying to incite a reaction merely because you vehemently disagree with her and because she expresses her dislike of the Fate fanbase, but in spite of that dislike, she’s been very positive on the series overall. This is the lowest grade she’s given to an episode, and she gave it a C.
Because calling it sexist at every little opportunity she can is the most positive thing ever.
She generalizes the whole series, including the VN and Nasu, as sexist. Despite only ctrl-ing through the Fate route to find sexist lines on a live stream. She loves Fate/Zero even though the women in that series did jackshit, except for Saber.
The only reason she doesn’t give it a worse rating is probably to prove that everything non-Nasu is superior.
10/10 reviewer, would recommend to Kotaku
Perhaps there’s a wider problem with people being unreasonable, but this reviewer did not come anywhere close to saying that rape can’t be presented in fiction period, or that bad guys can’t do bad things period.
Rape can be uncomfortable as long as it doesn’t offend. ◔_◔
Bad guys can do bad things as long as they keep to personal boundaries like good little bad guys!
She remarked primarily about the presentation of the scene, which you distorted into a blanket prohibition on sexual violence in general, and to neglect how that presentation could play upon anime’s history of fetishizing sexual violence is to be willfully ignorant.
Anime’s history of fetishizing sexual violence to pander to cis white males, ammirite?
Has there been far worse stuff produced? Sure. That does not mean, no matter how consistent this assault was with Shinji’s character, that the story is better for it.
A good anime has inconsistent characters. Gotcha.
Think about it: this sexual assault was used basically to setup a gag that’s become an amusing gif.
A lot of scenes in this show become gifs.
People make gifs from a ton of shows
There’s a gif of Gilgamesh ripping out Illya’s heart
What is even your point
They probably gif’d it because they hate Shinji and loved that he got what he deserved.
Think about it. They used sexual violence to set up a gag. People are raped every day, and there’s a show that uses sexual violence to set up a gag.
I don’t think you have to be “oversensitive” to think there’s something a little off about that.
It’s. A. Series. That. Has. Murder.
Orphans are zombified.
A woman got her neck twisted
A small girl got her eyes slashed, got stabbed, and then had heart surgery
A demigod got murdered 12 times by a dude who killed a bull and other peasants
A woman and her boyfriend got skewered by swords by a dude that got skewered by swords and then hanged
Same man killed Middle Eastern terrorists and homeless people
The blue man committed suicide.
Assassin comes out of Assassin and then eats Assassin.
Assassin takes blue man’s heart and eats it.
Old Man Worms eats people and shits out a new body
Wormgirl murders half the city including goldie
Wormgirl murders Old Man Worms but didn’t really and then he commits suicide
Boy gets his arm chopped off in murder attempt, but gets a new arm from his other self who got murdered and then murders a demigod, and then goes on to murder the girl who saved him from a guy who tried to murder him but is now trying to murder him
And then he murders a dead man.
[spoiler]Do you realize how baffling you people sound to non-Tumblr people when you complain about the “insensitivity” of rape in this series?![/spoiler]
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“Those are personal biases that you literally cannot just force a change in unless we have the thought police monitor everyone’s belief system, like racism.”
Nothing is personal, you weren’t born into the world and instantly thought “I am a man and I shouldn’t cry, and she is a woman so she should” this ideas are installed into society and the sources have to do with a patriarchy that made rules that affected women on a larger scale and men themselves in a smaller,subtle yet very much existing,scale.
We don’t want to manipulate people to think WRONG WRONG ME NOT THINK THIS we want people not to repeat what others taught them as a parrot just because, to sit down and try to think by themselves why do I have such a thought?
About the term feminism, if you don’t like to use it to represent yourself I won’t tell you to do otherwise, all I want is to see more and more people realising some of our thoughts are, as you say, hypocritical, and think it twice every time we have them.
“Focus on promoting yourself positively, and don’t care what bigots say if you are in a country that allows you to have a voice.”
I wish it could be that simple, I don’t live in the USA, I live in Argentina, and here like in other Latin American countries despite having the same law for both men and women, despite even having same sex marriage approved, sexism, really hurtful sexism, is still so vivid…so I wish I could do as you say, but I can’t.
May you be refering to Anita and a certain gaming site that said “We won’t exclude homosexuals or attractive women” because if you are…I won’t go there.
I’d say it depends on what kind of artist you are, a self published or underground artist or a mainstream artist that works with a mainstream company that has the power to influence countless of people all over the world?
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@Muphrid
“The reviewer says nothing of the kind. Saying, “Please no more rape imagery,” is no stronger a statement than, “I really don’t enjoy watching that.”
Should reviewers put such remarks into their reviews? Maybe one can argue they shouldn’t, but it’s a clear personal opinion, and it says nothing about the use of sexual violence in fiction in general. You’re the one making that conclusion.”
Are you really this fucking stupid this level of cognitive dissonance is outstanding. You literally quote her saying “Rape Imagery” she also said she found those shots disgusting you fucking idiot work on your reading comprehension.
“That reviewer isn’t opposed to sexual violence in fiction in general. She wrote extensively on it for her reviews on Maria the Virgin Witch. For this reviewer, rape in itself is not an automatic fail, but how it’s handled makes or breaks the scene.”
Ah I see! So you mean when its done in the context she approves of then it’s okay. Yeah no hypocrisy here!
“That’s a reviewer’s job, isn’t it? To judge and offer opinion on whether the studio’s handling of a scene adds or subtracts to the work?”
Yes it is. But that’s not what she’s doing. She’s coming into this review with a preemptive bias and prejuding the artists intent. Trying to play it off as a sexual fantasy for straight white males. When it can be played as just an uncomfortable scene establishing a villian but nope she automatically jumps onto the objectification card!
“And in the context of the UBW anime as a whole? This is the show that had Rin’s butt waving in the air. This is the show that put a shot of Rin’s thighs into her conversation with Archer back in the first episode of this cour. This is the show that put Saber in that dress, with her rear end all but exposed, and inserted shots of Saber in that dress into conversations that didn’t involve her.”
Oh the horror! Fanservice meant to appeal to men?! How horrible!
“Frankly, all the railing you do against this line of criticism could just as easily be turned around against you for your criticism of ufotable’s lapses in attention to the wider continuity: what does it matter whether Shirou has any white hair when he makes a pact with Alaya? What’s the would the point be of showing EMIYA with Ciel’s red cape? Another viewer might say, “These details are meaningless to me; I don’t care about them. It’s unreasonable to make any kind of stink about them.”
Maybe because his criticism is based on the show and not some misinterpretated scene that she believes is meant to contribute to rape culture of women. Ever think of that?
“You might want to consider: who is the oversensitive one right now?”
Oh the irony of that statement. Seeing as how Nash Gier got shit for merely stating his tastes in women or flipping out over a fucking t-shirt. You people are fucking hilarious.
“This is far from a blanket prohibition on evil people doing evil things, and your characterization otherwise is nothing less than a distortion to make a point.”
Pot calling the kettle black.
“What does Caster’s sexual fixation on Saber add to the story beyond getting to see Saber in that dress?”
It established that Caster thrives on mental torture rather than physical torture. What could break a female knight’s pride more than being put into a humiliating pose and a frilly dress?
Just as the attempted rape scene establishes that Shinji is a sexual deviant who should be hated. Since he treats women like objects. Nothing says villain faster than treating women badly.
“I don’t see how what you care about is intrinsically more important, or more worthy of saying, than what she cares about.
It isn’t but last time I checked ANN has more influence and draws more traffic than a WordPress blog. Hell SJW’s like you have more power overall in politics, media, the court room etc that I find it funny that you guys think your view isn’t important.
“You’ve concluded she’s trying to incite a reaction merely because you vehemently disagree with her and because she expresses her dislike of the Fate fanbase. Perhaps there’s a wider problem with people being unreasonable, but this reviewer did not come anywhere close to saying that rape can’t be presented in fiction period, or that bad guys can’t do bad things period. She remarked primarily about the presentation of the scene, which you distorted into a blanket prohibition on sexual violence in general, and to neglect how that presentation could play upon anime’s history of fetishizing sexual violence is to be willfully ignorant.”
Seeing as how SJW’s freak out over every tiny thing that comes their way how is Mikoto supposed to act? Especially since after finding something problematic they call for a censorship ban. There’s nobody that can be ignorant about your issues since you never shut the fuck up about them and try to force them down everyone’s throat.
“Think about it. They used sexual violence to set up a gag. People are raped every day, and there’s a show that uses sexual violence to set up a gag.
I don’t think you have to be “oversensitive” to think there’s something a little off about that.”
Expect when men are set up as props of rape or abuse then you don’t give a fuck. Your bias is so obvious its pathetic. God you sound like a religious apologist.
Ride on white knight mangina ride on.
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Some of the comments here are a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. People actively dismissing discussion about elements pertinent to the world and story because their personal hangups and the personal hangups of the reviewer in question are so important.
Rape and rape imagery in anime makes me uncomfortable, too. Difference is, I don’t portray a show as deficient for including it, because there are more important things to talk about in media than my personal hangups.
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An uncomfortable assault scene is an uncomfortable assault scene. Unless it’s celebrated, then what is even the matter?
If Ufotable really wanted to arouse rape fetishists, they would have threw away the original scene entirely.
Rin would have been raped, experienced body betrayal and moaned in ecstasy (and either started to like it or continued to hate it depending on how fucked up you people think Japan is), and then Shinji would have left her to cry as the camera showed the demoralized visage of the destruction of a strong girl.
But it wasn’t. He just touched her thigh and he got the shit punched out of him by a mythological hero.
So you think this assault was too minor to consider worth any reaction?
I never said anything of the kind. I said that just because an action is consistent with the character doesn’t mean that putting that action into the story improves the story. You’re telling me what Caster wants to accomplish; I’m well aware of this.
Are you telling me it’d be okay for Heroic Spirit Simon Legree to take Saber and try to humiliate her by painting her in blackface and treating her as a slave? Merely because it’s consistent with his character?
How Shirou’s hair color changed is as relevant to the story of him clashing against Archer as gender politics of Japan in 2006 is–it’s not relevant one iota. It’s a meaningless fluff detail that anyone who looks at the piece can recognize as merely a necessary cogwheel to justify Archer’s appearance, to justify that bit of misdirection meant to fool the audience. It doesn’t mean anything.
But I’m not asking people not to be interested. I’m not telling people that what they’re looking for in fiction needs to matter or be relevant to be worth their interest. You are.
And even if I take the premise you’re pushing–that an issue has to matter to the story, more or less, to be worth commenting upon–Nasu’s attitudes toward women in general can be of interest. His attitude toward Saber sheds light on issues he had writing Fate route, for example.
A sexual assault doesn’t need to be celebrated by the characters on the screen for the narrative to endorse it or tolerate it as a means of sexual gratification.
What is the situation here? Shinji is a prick. He’s always been a prick, but right now, he’s second fiddle to Gilgamesh and thinks he’s in control when he’s not.
You want the audience to hate a character? Make him into a rapist. Make him into an abuser. It’s cheap and easy and doesn’t take long to develop. Everybody hates rapists. Everybody wants to see them defeated. You just snap your fingers, and they’re a villain, and beyond that desire to rape and violate, there doesn’t need to be much there. There isn’t that much there for Shinji–not that matters in this route, anyway.
Why, do you think, did the reviewer approve of a rape scene in Maria the Virgin Witch but not here? Yes, not showing the actual attempted violation directly is part of it. That indicates a certain compassion and respect for the target that other media don’t do. But just as important is tying the rapist’s motivations into a greater ideological framework. The rapist in Maria is a cog in a larger organization; he’s just following orders and trying to advance in power and stature by doing so. The intended victim is a maverick, working outside the confines of authority, and for that, she must be punished. The attempted rape is a direct clash of those ideologies.
But here? Shinji’s just a twisted dude.
That’s the problem, with both Shinji and Caster here. There’s nothing beneath the surface of their sexual violations. There’s nothing the story is playing on. It doesn’t tie into a greater theme. It’s just “shocking.” Shocking without any substance.
Is the reviewer right to suspect that, without any substance to back up Shinji’s assault on Rin here, that the motivation must be titilation? Perhaps not. I read much more callous indifference in the matter than anything else. Sexual assault? Sure, why not? That’s the attitude, isn’t it? It’s treated with only slightly more weight than a car running over a dog in the street.
I merely summarized what you stated would be the negative consequences of ufotable failing to get all those nitty-gritty details just right.
There’s a reason murder victims don’t complain about the oversaturation of murder in media. They’re kinda dead.
But rape victims? There are plenty of those floating around. Victims of sexual assault? Unwanted touching? Violations of all manner of human decency? They’re still around.
You’re basically saying that you value a flat depiction of sexual assault, without any intellectual substance behind it, over those people. Real people. Real human beings. All just so you don’t have to admit that Nasu could’ve done better.
I never made any caveat involving “personal boundaries.”
You’re acting as though Shinji not assaulting Rin would be inconsistent with his character. Or that Caster not dressing up Saber would be inconsistent with her character.
Or that, you know, you’re acting as though Nasu didn’t design Shinji, that he didn’t decide to put Caster into the story and didn’t know what he would use them for. The characters are not immutable constructs that bind the author to do what is consistent with their nature. The author can change characters he originally designed however he sees fit. He doesn’t have to make Shinji a lecherous rapist if he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to have Caster try to sexually humiliate Saber if he doesn’t want to.
Nasu wanted both of those.
That’s the inescapable conclusion.
Nasu wanted Shinji to assault Rin. He wanted Caster to humiliate Saber.
And I, and ayone else, have the absolute freedom to criticize him for it. Defending these choices with mere “consistency” is to act as though Nasu had no other choice. In Shinji’s case, that’s totally indefensible. He designed Shinji. He has absolute freedom there. In Caster’s case, he was under no obligation to choose Medea to be the Caster servant.
And for what? To make Shinji and Caster more evil. That’s it. That’s all it is. To make us hate them and root for their downfall.
Clearly you think these actions are not enough to be considered verboten, that a character must do far more senseless evil before you consider the action too heinous to justify merely the effect that the offender is considered evil for it, and no other narrative purpose. Maybe you think that should be just murder. Or violent torture. Or degrading behaviors and indignities far beyond putting someone in a revealing outfit against their will or touching them with ultimate intent to rape. By all means, you tell me what that line is for you, if it even exists at all.
I fully appreciate that you’re saying folks are unduly concerned with rape and sexual violence and gender politics, and that they’re not concerned enough about murder shows, in your opinion, that such people are arguing from a position of bad faith or warped perspective or whatnot.
I fundamentally disagree with the notion that we should treat sexual violence in media as casually as we treat other forms of violence right now, and I’d be willing to entertain the notion that we should treat non-sexual violence in media more seriously–perhaps, yes, as seriously as I’m treating sexual violence in these arguments.
But I would apply the same test I suggested above. Does the violence serve a purpose beyond merely painting the perpetrator as evil or shocking us with their actions?
Orphans zombified? No problem with it. That Shirou would’ve been one of those victims makes the situation intensely personal and motivating, more so than knowing who did it.
A woman got her neck twisted? It hints there’s someone else around far more powerful than either Shirou or Rin anticipated. Probably didn’t need to be done that way, though.
Ilya? The eye slash was senseless, just as senseless as Shinji and Caster.
Berserker? They’re in fair combat. Only the last kill may have been drawn out in the anime to serve only the purpose of shocking people.
Caster, Kuzuki, and Archer? These are far more surprising for the fact that Archer can do such things.
I could go on, but note that Shinji trying to rape Rin or Caster putting Saber in that dress? Neither of those are key plot points. Rider, Berserker, Caster, and Kuzuki? Those definitely are. The worst of the ones above is Ilya’s eyes. I consider that an excellent non-sexual example of gratuitous violence.
Feel free to put forth your own test or concept for what is gratuitous or without intrinsic value.
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It’s too minor to fucking accuse the studio of trying to arouse the male audience.
Plus, why would a rape fetishist get off on rape not even happening?
Please think.
And I’m telling you it’s fucking stupid to expect a Servant like Bluebeard not to do things they would do just because it offends you.
I didn’t think him killing children in Fate/Zero was very pretty but IT MADE SENSE. What, do you want one of those villains that let the heroes slip past the jaws of death because he’s “letting them live this time! Muhahaha!”?
Characters should act the way they are supposed to act. I’m starting to think you people actually did expect Shinji to bake Rin a batch of cookies.
Because that would have not done anything to break Saber’s mental resistance of the Command Spell. If you were actually paying attention to the story, Saber is able to resist Caster’s Command Spell because of her mental resistance to magic, and the whole reason Caster does that bullshit in the first place was to break her spirit.
Fucking pay attention to the story.
You just said why it was relevant to Fate/stay night, dipshit. Magecraft is an artificial means of reenacting miracles that has the potential to alter a human’s look through excessive use.
Shirou’s skin got darkened and his hair pigments died because of his constant attempts at mastering his one magic to its full potential. Withstood pain to create many weapons. When Archer Shirou makes a contract with Alaya at the nuclear plant, the better decision would have been to give him at least some white hair, because he’s already been through a lot of shit at that point and white hair is a great use of canon to show that visually. It’s more relevant to Fate/stay night than fucking gender politics, and Shirou’s changing skin and hair through excessive use of projection is a detail that specifically appears in other Fate works.
But obviously someone like you who barely has but a passing interest in the franchise wouldn’t care. It’s just a quick way for you fucks to shove gender issues down everyone’s throat. Cancer, cancer everywhere. It has no meaning for you because it doesn’t have a dick or vagina.
A majority of the strongest characters from the Nausverse (Tsukihime, Mahoyo, Kara no Kyoukai, Fate, etc.) are predominantly female, so the assertion that Nasu is a sexist is absurd.
Shirou in the Fate route was forced to take a stupid chauvinistic stance because he couldn’t bring himself to tell Saber the real reason why he couldn’t let her fight (his deep-rooted heroism complex being triggered the night Saber got curbstomped by Berserker twice), so he resorted to using an excuse which conformed to what his culture dictated as natural. He realizes his stupidity in the middle of the route.
The Fate route was pretty vanilla and not as great as the other routes, but not because Nasu is a sexist, it was because at the time he was trying to push for a boy-meets-girl story. Writers, gasp, improve, and looking back on it, he’d rewrite it if he ever gets the chance. Like what he’s doing with Tsukihime.
Yes, I am such a lunatic for expecting discussions of a work to be about the work, rather than about personal hangups from people who shouldn’t be indulging in these things to begin with. Fuck me.
SHINJI GETS PUNCHED IN THE FACE FOR ATTEMPTING TO RAPE RIN.
HE GETS KILLED BY SAKURA IN HEAVEN’S FEEL WHEN HE ATTEMPTS TO RAPE HER (FOR THE 100TH TIME)
How does that endorse anything about rape? It’s saying THIS GUY IS A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING, RAPE IS NOT GOOD.
Oh god, this is the type of secondary that makes every other decent secondary look bad. There is a reason why Shinji is such a sociopath, everyone will find out in the Heaven’s Feel film(s), hopefully. But right now, what other reason do you need for Shinji to assault Rin other than the fact that HE IS A SOCIPATH AND HAS ADMIRED RIN FOR A LONG TIME?
“Only for the shock factor”? Did you miss the part where Shirou is fucking pissed that Archer left one of their love interests in the hands of a bastard that’d have his way with her? Something that the current Shirou would never do? Tohsaka was in danger and Lancer needed to get the fuck over there before something happened.
Raping someone to increase their status, raping someone because they want to have their way with the victim, holy shit, rape is rape and there are never good reasons to fucking rape somebody. And here, he doesn’t even do that. He just touches her thighs before getting punched by Lancer. It’s not like the the viewer is supposed to start hating Shinji at this point either. He’s already supposed to cross the line for the viewer during the Fate route where he sucks all the student dry of mana and sends Taiga to the hospital. Uotable recommends reading the Fate route before watching the UBW anime, like its VN version. The reviewer fucking skimmed through it to make fun of lines she thought was sexist.
The reviewer herself said in her review of Maria The Virgin that these rape scenes are okay as long the keep it within personal boundaries.
Which means she expects writers to walk on eggshells all the time for the sake of her own personal hangups. Oh boo hoo, stay away from these things if they offend you this much. The world doesn’t revolve around you people.
Your pro-censorship bullshit is the exact reason why I wrote this post to begin with.
There shouldn’t be a moral line for fiction, it’s FICTIONAL. You SJWs and your god damned thought policing. Good luck finding characters from mythology that don’t contain things you spoiled American brats would think is offensive by today’s standards.
You are a hypocritical idiot beyond reasoning. Murder victims are dead so people can’t get offended durrrrrrrr
How about the murder victim’s families, genius? Or survivors who witnessed brutal murders? Or children who were forced to commit murder at some point of their life? That is the most ignorant, heartless thing anyone could ever say under the guise of social justice. Fuck you.
Guess what? Your self-entitled bullshit applies to almost anyone. If we were too hung up over people being offended by anything we create, we wouldn’t create anything at all. I didn’t want to get into this, but just FYI, you’re talking to a person who was taken advantage of as a child right now. Go to hell. (I’m not “triggered”, I’m fucking pissed.)
So you really do want to limit a writer’s right to create, and would prefer to have nothing but stories where people shake hands and no real danger exists. With your radical prudishness in play, no writer would have the balls to try anything bold.
I’m fucking done with this discussion. Entertainment is dead.
(P.S. You apparently can’t comprehend that Illya’s death was sadder and less bitter BECAUSE she was blind.)
@Timeenforceranubis: Some of the comments here are a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. People actively dismissing discussion about elements pertinent to the world and story because their personal hangups and the personal hangups of the reviewer in question are so important.
Rape and rape imagery in anime makes me uncomfortable, too. Difference is, I don’t portray a show as deficient for including it, because there are more important things to talk about in media than my personal hangups.
^THANK YOU
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It’s presenting the victim as a sexual object at a time of violation. There is simply no other reason to do so other than titilation.
Characters act the way their writers write them. You keep presenting this argument as though writing the characters consistently absolves the author of all responsibility for their actions, as though what they do and how they do it in no way reflects upon the author’s attitudes and opinions.
Shinji touching Rin like that is not, in itself, an author’s endorsement of sexual assault. Clearly Nasu thinks such things are bad, but not bad enough to avoid presenting the victim as an object of sexual desire not just for the abuser but for the audience.
You say this as though I was making any point about how effective this would be on Saber, neatly dodging the actual argument: that such an effort would be widely seen as vile and reflective on the author as nothing short of deliberate angatonism of race relations.
It’s more relevant to you. None of these details are essential ingredients to telling the story of a boy facing his future self. Any fantasy story is full of such things: little details that have to be pinned down for internal consistency but whose choices have no real significance or meaning. That’s what a great amount of worldbuilding is, when taken to an extreme.
Who said Nasu was sexist? Not the reviewer (said the series was sexist, or that Nasu’s concept for Saber’s route was a “sexist proposition”). I certainly have said nothing of the kind.
Though I will say this: I think people are either more or less sexist and not “totally sexist” or “totally not sexist.” Nobody’s perfectly lacking in biases.
Are we not talking about a work’s tone and attitude toward women and sexual violence? Is that not something that is about the work?
Whether people like it or not is personal, yes. Some people like heavy worldbuilding pieces. Other people don’t. That’s personal, too.
Some people like heavy action and others don’t.
All these things are part of the work. No audience member put them there. You keep complaining about people injecting gender politics into a work. That’s not how it happens. The work’s tone and attitude toward such subjects is already there, and all people are doing is analyzing and ferreting it out.
The difference between that and something you feel matters? That you don’t care about it. It’s that simple. You don’t care about it. You wrote this whole post and continued this argument merely because some other people on the internet care about something you feel they shouldn’t, and they’re using that as an avenue for criticism you feel is unjustified–or even conspiratorial–only because you don’t care about what they care about.
No litmus test you suggest of a point of interest being “about” the work or not will convince me that such concerns are invalid. I may say they’re not universally shared or appreciated, but that’s all.
Shinji’s issues are not relevant on a thematic level for this route. He is so ancillary that Gilgamesh could’ve found him walking on the street to turn him into a meat monstrosity.
So Shirou reacts to that. That hardly matters as much as everything else going on in that scene. Think from a writer’s standpoint for a minute: why must Shinji be there? So Kotomine can be involved without Lancer knowing he’s involved. One can easily rearrange the scene so that Kotomine is there from the beginning and Archer merely doesn’t mention who exactly is guarding her. You lose Shirou’s reaction to that, but if that avoids a pointless sexual assault scene? I do that in a heartbeat. Or, you know, I write Shinji to have a more interesting idea in mind to prove his superiority to Rin.
Because that’s what Shinji is really about, right? It’s about him proving his superiority to Sakura and Rin. They may be greater mages, but he can still rape them.
That’s all well and good, but in this route, that has nothing to tie into. In HF? That’s different. At best, I could say that Shinji’s assault scene here hints at his issues in HF. I still think it’s too disconnected from that to be worth it.
I’d be interested to hear if you ever watch that rape scene and think it’s anything like “walking on eggshells.”
I’ve already made clear I don’t object to an assault scene that has the intellectual and thematic backing of the story, nor does the reviewer. That’s a far cry from censorship. That’s criticism.
Then you have my sympathies.
I still maintain that sexual assault survivors are far more ubiquitous than witnesses to murder or child soldiers. That does not mean that their concerns are more valid merely by sheer numbers. It just means they can be louder.
People disliking something they see in media is a natural reaction. It’s up to content creators to decide if they want to listen or not, and people can crticize them (or criticize the critics) accordingly, just as I’m criticizing you.
But you’re the one suggesting that some section of criticism be verboten and instantly disregarded in all cases. I have not suggested that some form of content be forbidden absolutely, nor has the reviewer.
Nobody has the right to be free from criticism. I said what I think people should do, delineating what I will criticize them for if they don’t. That is all.
Again, you push my wishes and others’ to an extreme for the purpose of ridicule. I’ve said repeatedly I’m okay with the concept of a rape scene.
I think you put too little faith in authors. Great authors of our era have always pushed boundaries and exposed themselves to criticism. They decide what criticism they will ignore and what they will heed. Maybe you have an argument against other people’s criticisms, but you have nothing here. I pointed to an intelligent and compassionate depiction of a sexual assault, something that the reviewer you’ve taken to task specifically approved of. The use of sexual assault in fiction is in no way threatened by this critic, nor by people who hold attitudes like hers with respect to these specific instances.
As far as Ilya, I’m well aware that her death is sadder because she’s blind and can’t recognize that she’s touching a rock and not Berserker. I was speaking of Gilgamesh’s choice to slash her eyes as senseless. And Ilya’s helplessness there is another of those cheap and easy methods to generate an emotional response–sympathy, in this case, where Shinji assaulting Rin was a cheap and easy way to generate disdain for him. Both of these are brainless emotional manipulations with no intellectual or thematic backing behind them.
Good day.
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So brilliant.
I’ve been an extremely vocal Anti-ANN crusader for some time now (it comprises most of my twitter feed these days). Seeing other people wake up and smell the ashes make me very happy.
Gabriella Ekins is by far the worst cog in the ANN machine, which is really saying something.
Keep spreading the good word. These people have poisoned this community for far too long.
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@ZekeFreek: No problem.
More examples of self-entitled brats:
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I’ve seen a lot of fake SJW posts and always thought that they were blatant strawmen. These people are far more disturbing when I see them in real life, however.
Mikoto did a good job defending the show. There’s something about the SJW philosophy that I want to address, though.
Let’s take the most reasonable wording of the progressive critic’s argument, that objectionable themes that are not depicted with proper context and nuance must be criticized in light of their connection to society. And there is something deeper about this argument that disturbs me, even if I agree with a hypothetical progressive critic on the technical execution or nuance of a work. Words like “nuance”, “proper”, and even “criticism” are subjective, and I do not want artists to be held to what turns out to be a subjective, narrow minded viewpoint.
The objection raised was not to the depiction of rape itself, (hence why ANN critic deemed Maria acceptable) but to, what I assume, the apparently contradictory message that sexual assault is bad combined with a sexually suggestive shot of the girl being targeted. Maria, having removed the second element, passes the progressive filter. And I will say no: both depictions are acceptable. Rape is terrible, but it is undeniably sexual in nature. It’s an evil action paradoxically mixed with something that was formerly enjoyable. This paradox causes frustration at the illogical arrangement of the world. This frustration is one of the reasons why people create art. Think of all of the violent and gruesome movies out there, or works like Berserk and Blade of the Immortal. This style of depiction of rape is a cruel, simple thing. It has been overdone, and often done poorly. There is no nuance behind it, and the point was never to be nuanced. This style does not say “rape is bad” like a television PSA says “smoking is bad.” It is a mirror to the world, showing humans how depraved we are, and how creative we can get about being evil. The feminist analysis of this depiction of rape ignores this interpretation.
Critics say they don’t want to “ban” anything. The argument above stretched on only because it was questionable whether Rin’s sexual assault was supposed to be “titillation” or not. Then what would these critics think of rape doujins, that are explicitly created as fap material? I don’t read these works, and I doubt they are ever nuanced works of literature, but I don’t say that people are sexist, or “reflect or contribute to sexist attitudes in society” for enjoying them. We have the ability to hold despicable thoughts in our heads and remain good human beings. Art is the depiction and remixing of ideas, ideas that are often contradictory, and subject to different interpretations. We should have the right to look at and experience these ideas separate from ourselves and our actions. The vast variety of art we have today relies on this practice being respected.
ANN critic says that the Maria rape was interesting because it focused more of the effect on the victim. I actually agree; we should find different ways of doing things in art, even though the choice of removing the sexual element from rape has been done before. The reviewer, however, also implies that this depiction was superior not only because of a technical choice, but because it preserved the dignity of the female character. Yes, I’m sure that fictional female character, whom the all powerful writer god decided would be raped, is very appreciative of her rape being off camera so the writer god’s colleagues wouldn’t accidentally be turned on to their voyeuristic male perversions. Why not go all the way? By this logic, the fictional female character’s dignity would be further preserved if nothing bad ever happened to her at all. Art is sometimes a very undignified thing, not restricted to a few sanitized forms. I would rather a lot of shit pieces of art come out than only a few acceptable types.
The poster above says that Nasu “wanted” to put certain elements inside his work. That’s an interesting choice of words. Without directly saying it, our poster can conjure up the image of the artist supporting sexual assault, then deny it when confronted about it. Cultural critics, and most critics in general, have got art backwards. Most artists do not take identified critical elements and mix them up into a work. Artists are, of course, influenced by the world around them, the works of other artists, and even elements identified by previous critics. Critics can point out technical flaws, thematic inconsistencies, or even moral objections. But art always comes before the elements the critic identifies. The critic’s subjective interpretation is subordinate to the artwork. To suggest that the artist is beholden to these interpretations is backwards and insane.
It figures that the style of criticism that would become the most widespread is the kind that gives the critic the most power for the least amount of work. This style of critique gives the critic an unusual amount of moral authority over the artist. I’m tired of these feminist “Mad-Libs” style critiques that preach to an authority outside of the quality and execution of a work of art, and who change their language when questioned. Let’s recognize these people for who they are; not ambitious censors, but moralistic critics with narrow tastes and viewpoints, who are trying to become authorities of art. These people will hopefully never have the power to mass-ban objectionable materials, and maybe they don’t even want to, like they often say. But it is their attitude towards art that I disagree with.
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