Who was right about Attack on Titan?

[@AManOfManyCats]

I need to pin a comment here to warn about the flashing light effects that appear in the video! Several people brought it up, so I want to post a little warning.

[@17-MASY]

Thank you for the history and information about Japan. In a different positive POV of AoT: Did you notice how it teaches us about Freedom, Did you notice how similar are multiple events in AoT to the situation in Gaza/Walls? If you consider Eren to be a child who's mother was killed by Z1onist Tanks/Titans, and go from there? Take it from the perspective of the Palestinians being the people of Paradis searching for freedom. And remember Palestine will be free🇵🇸.

[@maryz9319]

Bruh why so much of the wiggle effect in pt 2? Im fighting to keep the video on by not looking at my tv and just listening but am struggling. It is making me nauseous. It's a shame that I'm about to close the video entirely. it is very interesting and I do not want to! Gonna stop casting it and try and just listen to the audio through my phone to see if it helps. 32:58 This video on attack on Titan is providing me the first clues to understanding what just happened in the US president election a few days ago 😮

[@AManOfManyCats]

@maryz9319 So it was incredibly hard for me to get this thing to wear KZbin but allow it to be viewable.And in order to do that , I had to do some creative video shit that I learn doesn't always look great.. So in future videos , I'll be trying to do different tactics to avoid the youtube blocks. But it was incredibly difficult. They don't like me at youtube lol I would hardly recommend the books that I draw from if you want to get some more perspective on current political developments. Both authors, Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder are professors and writers that I really enjoy and I find their insights to be invaluable.

[@maryz9319]

If it's any consolation, this video does work well as a podcast/audio only format​@@AManOfManyCats I'd just hate for people to be turned off by the video the video due to the editing, and miss the info. It is very very good content presented in a very engaging way.

[@ga4667]

struggling to watch it with the squiggly effect too. harder for me to follow with it just as audio

[@blargh65]

It's simple: if I see FD Signifier shout out an essayist, I download the video for my next open and listen to it all shift

[@AManOfManyCats]

Hope its an enjoyable and insightful listen!

[@nelsongutierrez2699]

Here for the very same reason

[@FloetryFox88]

I always trust FD's recommendations 💯🙌🏿

[@spurdosparde7949]

FD co-signed it, gotta give it a watch

[@exorcisttypebeat]

A very well-earned cosign IMO

[@spantigre3190]

I really wish people in the angloshpere would be better at recognizing that the vast majority of Japanese media primarily uses Japanese culture as a reference point.

[@AManOfManyCats]

This is definitely something that I think is important to talk about. Like for people like me who live in America.Everything is generally very America, centric.And we want to impose our own history and our own viewpoints on history on everybody else like they think the same thing and have experienced the same thing. When in reality this just is not true and it oftentimes really hinders our analysis.

[@LP-zn8sc]

A big one for me is death note. It's actually a extremely pointed response to the lost generation and cult killings in Japan. But if you aren't Japanese and don't know about that or their general youth culture wars you miss out on most of what the show tries to say.

[@AManOfManyCats]

@LP-zn8sc This is a really interesting insight. Because, to be honest, I had heard a few things about deathnote but they were all kind of very vague. If you can link me to some reading.I wouldn't mind reading a little bit about the inspiration for the show and that connection!

[@zeroisnine]

I always find it funny that people think that this somehow a uniquely western quirk

[@AManOfManyCats]

@zeroisnine I don't know if people think it's a uniquely Western quirk like I never found it to be.I think many social groups tend to do that.Kind of thing like you know look at things more from their own perspective. I just think since Western opinion and Western society (I guess you could say? maybe that's a bad way of putting It) has been very prolific and widespread in a lot of regards in the modern era I think we encounter it from the western perspective more particularly if we live in the west? That's probably kind of Jumbled but I hope it sort of makes sense what I was trying to say.

[@lucianofrancesco4742]

The "kill or be killed" message of Attack on Titan was apparent from the start. The amount of people that justify what Eren did using this exact same false dichotomy is frightening. I'm Italian and (as you all can imagine) we also have no shortage of revisionists around. Japan is just one of many countries that simply refuse to confront their pasts.

[@AManOfManyCats]

It was very strange to encounter people on youtube or in comments who were trying to justify genocide and often times linking that to the real world.. Just very scary stuff to encounter.. Obviously as a dumb dumb American I don't always have the best ear to the politics occurring in other countries, But I have been peripherally following European politics and I have to say that I definitely sympathize with what's going on in italy right now and across much of europe for that matter.. A lot of the same shit is happening here in the US And for someone like me who is pretty well versed.In 20th century politics, it feels like the modern world is doing.Its best to cosplay the nineteen twenties and thirties...

[@JulianDanzerHAL9001]

though the end kinda portrays choosing to fight to survive as a dangerous thing and choosing to risk your life to argue for peace as a better thing it admits that situations can exist in which this dichotomy can appear tempting but I don't think you can effectively demonstrate how dangerous an ideology is without also showing that it can be tempting an ideology that is not tempting is effectively harmless after all

[@lucianofrancesco4742]

@@JulianDanzerHAL9001 I would agree with you, if not for the way Eren was seen at the end by Armin and Mikasa, almost as a tragic hero, a necessary evil. The "kill or be killed" theme was strongly established since the begininng and was never really challenged. Sure, in the end Armin and the others decided to work for peace, but what does Isayama shows after? Destruction and death, again and again and again, for centuries, with the titan power awaiting to be awakened once more. The world stuck in this never ending cycle of violence and brutality. This is what I immediately got from the ending. In my opinion Isayama truly believes in this false dichotomy; the world he created is a perfect reflection of that.

[@randomusername3873]

​@@lucianofrancesco4742only psycopaths and abusers would have a problem with the concept of self defence

[@JulianDanzerHAL9001]

@@lucianofrancesco4742 stopping a genocide is the obvious thing to do to most people - aside fro msome weirdos, some of whom will unfortunately misread and celebreate any story with fasho aesthetics in it - the idea - quoting from doctor who "you've got a tiem machine, I've got a gun, lets kill hitler" is absolutely obvious and inarguable, like yes, duh being willign to stop a genocide DESPITE it going against their personal feelings is what makes these cahracters aspirational because its easy for most people to distance themselves from historical atrocities in hindsight and say "of course hitelr was evil, of course I would have stopped him if I ahd been there and if I had been able to" but then as soon as their friends or family members fall for similar ideologies their personal emotiosn are more important than even arguing against fashism and portraying fashists as evil mosnters you ahve nothing to do with is not going to help with that

[@nabieuyl]

On a reflective (and perhaps overdrawn) note, the idea of "becoming what you hate" exhibited in AOT through the victims (Eldians) becoming the perpetrators (Paradis' militarization and Eren's eventual geneocide spree) is literally actualizing in the real world... and yes, we're talking about the geneocide in Palestine. It's mentally numbing when you realize a people cursed with past atrocities can down the line repeat said atrocities unto others, instead of denying the cycle of violence. If there's one thing Isayama has done right (conscious or not) it's reminding us that no amount of human progress can undo the pervasion of such ideologies.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Yeah, I honestly think that with a bit of better writing and a bit of better authorial intent obviously.. Attack on Titan really could have been an unequivocal anti war and anticyclical anime. Now obviously I feel it fails outright at that. But I think all the pieces could have been arranged that way that had been the goal from the outset.

[@teiull9388]

@@AManOfManyCats this is why i think a ton of people are confused by the ending of the anime, hell I was insanely confused by it, because for most of the show it felt like the main themes were "war is bad and ilogical, killing is wrong even when "justified, etc, esp S4, so when chapter 139 dropped and(especially) when I read the scene where armin, the show's moral core, FORGIVES eren because "you killed 80% of humanity for us 🥰🥰" it just rubbed me like character assasination, the main aspect I liked about this show was its themes and plot twists, but the final chapters felt like it did not deliver on any of those, like the plot twist that ymir created mikasa's headaches is a big case of...ok? what does that mean? why did ymir do that? huh? what? how does this make sense?

[@people2chronically-online]

Paradis is Palestine 💀

[@people2chronically-online]

@@AManOfManyCats 2:04:30 take your own advice lil bro, you know nothing, today aot is fascist

[@AManOfManyCats]

@people2chronically-online i think you're tryin to say "isn't"... like your current statement is correct tho, it is fascist today cuz aot is fascist everyday lol Glad you watched the video tho

[@infinite_array]

"Japanese fascist is mad that whales aren't being eaten" wasn't on my KZbin Video Essay bingo. Damn.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Right 😂😭 When I was reading his work I was having like a mini aneurism!

[@benjaminherrera1987]

Wasn't that a joke in south park? i'm dead

[@RikipediaGO]

It surprised me when it showed up, but makes a lot of sense. The regulations on whaling are probably seen as international overreach against Japan's national interests

[@CraftyArts]

I dont know how you can watch something and not think beyond surface level about its ideas or concepts. Wall 1 baffles me

[@AManOfManyCats]

I've encountered people like that in like almost every sort of media circle that i've ever been in or seen and like I don't really get it either. It was a sentiment that cropped up quite a lot though in comments that I saw. So it's definitely a pretty popular position even though it's a rather confusing one lol

[@CraftyArts]

​@@AManOfManyCats I picture two types of people. Ones who are poor, squeaking by with little time to look beyond whats in front of them now, which I can relate to, or comfortable privileged people where the system has generally worked for them ie straight, white, "I just wanna grill" memes.

[@AManOfManyCats]

@CraftyArts Yeah I think there could be a lot of just desire for escapism without really having to feel anything serious in terms of like potential conflict with media as well. I mean, like if you work all day and you just want to enjoy some anime sometimes you don't really want to think about if there's other stuff going on you just want to enjoy the thing. I tried to be sympathetic to that at the end.I say that i'm not calling anybody a fascist if they enjoyed attack on titan because like a lot of people might have watched it and just not really thought that critically about it. Like you're a fascist if you express fascist viewpoints andis worse fascist shit. But like a lot of people I feel like probably don't put a lot of thought in the stuff because they just want to relax an enjoy something.

[@kadeemk4679]

"Entertainment purposes only"

[@gregorysteffensen3279]

There are some smooth brain ass anime fans in particular -- like it exists in every community but anime fans in particular seem to have run with it

[@aquamelody8]

**Me (Chinese person) excited to see points about Japanese fascism being not the same as Nazi fascism finally be talked about** Thanks for taking the time to make this and do all of this research. My family was directly involved against Imperial Japan, so I really appreciate more people understanding what we went through and in turn, understanding more about the structure underneath post-Imperial Japan today.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I definitely think it's a lot of stuff worth talking about and as a person who grew up in the united states for most of my life I think that we here in the states and probably in a lot of western countries in general tend to wanna make everything about our own history specifically.. So like I feel that's why a lot of people were quick to overlook or quick to not look too deeply into the parallels to chinese and japanese history and particularly chinese and japanese history during the second world war. The more I watched the series and the more I looked into the history in politics around it and in japan in general , the more I became convinced that it was drawing far more heavily from things that were closer to the author and closer to japan. Thanks so much for watching the video and dropping a comment! 🙂 Hopefully i've said some things that help expand the conversation and help us talk about it in a more realistic way.

[@lichtsprecher]

Wait until you find out about the first anime Japan ever made and why Seo made it

[@AManOfManyCats]

@lichtsprecher Oof, The uncomfortable history of manga too. I don't know if you ever read John Dower's "war without mercy" But he touches on these uncomfortable origin points.. shall we call them. Some of the comics he shows in the book are... well they certainly exist

[@kayinoue2497]

I think one of the big difficulties about western consumption of Japanese media like AoT is a lack of perspective and context. It's not readily apparent to a casual western viewer that AoT is regurgitating themes of revisionist history about Japan's imperialism. A lot of westerners just aren't even familiar with the fact that revisionist Japanese history narrative media is like... a whole genre of Japanese media. And you did an EXCELLENT job of examining this aspect of the analysis of AoT and the context within which its author made it. In addition, this video did a lot of lifting on the discussion of what fascist ideology actrually believes. A+ work.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I agree, there's not generally a good base of historical knowledge around Asia if you grow up or like in like the US for example. I had to do a lot of reading and draw on quite a few historians who had paved the way. Really glad you liked the video, thank you for the comment and the praise!

[@Dave102693]

I was feeling like it was doing a lot of historical revisionism, like how the Eldians are both conquerors and victims, but in a confusing away. Aot reminds me of FML in a lot of ways in that regard.

[@jfspiresbeta]

@@AManOfManyCats People don´t know about militarism and how Japanese fascism was different than Italian and German. And Japan tries to hidden all war crimes.

[@snipermonkey2517]

I totally agree, and count myself included here. This is why I really appreciated this video and all of its context.

[@juanpaez9981]

I honestly don’t see this video as Criticism. At least not in the traditional sense. This is just a discussion of the themes and historical context of the show that are slapping you in the face. The problem is that people don’t want to accept that their favorite show may have fascist themes. I like AOT even more with the historical context. Not because I’m sympathetic to fascism but because it’s interesting.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I definitely agree there is a lot of denial around the show and so I was trying to be pretty even handed and not come at it like i'm attacking the viewership. Cause like I get that.A lot of people don't really critically digest the things they watch they just want to have fun. But obviously with this piece of work we're missing a little bit if we're not looking into these deeper elements.

[@Dave102693]

Just like people want to deny it was confirmed that the Eldians were colonizers of everyone, including the ancestors of the Maleyian people, and that's a part of the reason why the world hates them. I mean if Founder Ymir Fritz said that was the case, then people should of accepted that, while understand that relatiationory jenociding is also just as bad.

[@dansmith1661]

What people didn't like was that the ending was among the worst ever in media, with Eren being a manbaby who didn't want to live with the consequences of his half measures.

[@juanpaez9981]

@@dansmith1661 People not liking the ending is one thing but i think this video was focusing more on whether or not AOT has fascist undertones. Before the ending fans weren't willing to even engage with the idea that AOT with the idea that fascist politics may be worked in to the show.

[@exu7325]

@@Dave102693 What Marley is doing isn't retaliatory though, it's self-preservation. One that's completely justified by the end of the series.

[@FDSignifire]

30 min in...

[@AManOfManyCats]

Honored you'd watch it! Been an admirer of your work for a min and your thoughts (along with Lost Futures) were some of the first I encountered where I thought the show was being looked at with some actual diligence.

[@FDSignifire]

I can tell you went a lot deeper. I tried to keep my analysis of the fascist undertones light cause it's not an area of expertise for me. This is an example of why that was smart. You clearly had waaaaay more knowledge of the deeper texts and details of this discussion. I just noticed the... Smell of things. ​@@AManOfManyCats

[@AManOfManyCats]

@FDSignifire You were one hundred percent on the right track with everything you were saying in my opinion and I think that you are striking at some of the really deep philosophical undertones of fascist philosophy in general. I'm a bit of a nerd for this kind of stuff and I also do history for school so I was pretty well versed in it to begin with, but as you'll see at the end of the video there was a lot of stuff that I had to spend weeks digging through to get a better handle on what was going on. I also had to build on a lot of work in order to do this so like I don't think that I would have been able to put together something so complete without seeing the work of other people who came before me and then doing a lot of research on top of that. Like Rodam Knower, the historians work on Tsushima completely confirmed a bunch of things that I was already cooking up and really made grappling with a lot of this stuff doable.

[@FDSignifire]

This was great I reposted it... Good luck with the hate mob to follow

[@AManOfManyCats]

@FDSignifire I certainly do expect there to be a bit of a weeb storm if it gets any real traction However, I'm grateful for your help directing people from your community towards the video! Should balance it out... somewhat lol

[@ryanmartiliano2601]

knowing this is your first video, i can't wait to see how you evolve cause this is already great

[@AManOfManyCats]

I definitely have some sound recording issues to work out lol I have a few things on the burner though. Like I read all 900 something pages of project 2025.. wanna talk about that in the next few months hopefully.

[@howdoimadeaccount]

​@@AManOfManyCats yup its an incredible video but definitely consider switching up/more interested background music and you probably shouldnt use apologies of infodumps as a transition into more infodumps im guessing most people are here for the history/information

[@people2chronically-online]

And yet aot ain’t fascist

[@fahlgorithm]

As a socialist who really enjoyed AoT you mentioning the lack of Liberal, Socialist, or Anarchist organizations depicted in the show helped me wrap my head around my thoughts of the ending. I am not sure it was intentional but I really felt that we saw a show with "the bad ending". It left me asking what is the solution then? Whether it was intentional or not the show pretty clearly said: "Fascism can only create a never ending cycle of violence". I know some fans thought the solution was full genocide but the show pretty clearly denounced that as any sort of solution. For me it just reinforced the idea that Fascism is the problem and the answer are other forms of government and organization. I think if alternative forms of government were shown and picked as a solution the show would have a much less impactful message. I would hope most of the people watching would leave the show thinking there has to be some other way of organization which could lead to a lasting peace. I know I sure did.

[@AManOfManyCats]

To me it definitely demonstrates that if you reject egalitarian thought you can kinda corner yourself into some bad shit and out of some good solutions.. Its the kinda ideological nonsense that could have one crying over the genocide they're doin while not particularly enjoying it.. Thats a lil bit how I think the author might be in his mind, like a lotta conflicting ideas. Which like is very human if it is also toxic and not great for him imo. Thanks so much for checking out the video! Its really wonderful to share thoughts with folks. Ive had an overwhelming positive response even from many who disagree and I like to think im contributing to expanding the discussion!

[@donovanmiller9380]

I absolutely agree that it is presented as this cautionary tale. As everything we know becomes inverted and twisted to feed the altar of nationalism. I love the anti-war themes presented in this show.

[@LittleNamMan]

@@AManOfManyCats There is also a lot of things to consider narrative-wise in regards to Eren, Reiner, Flock, and other characters that completely have nothing to do with fascism that are more tied to individual freedom and the idea of what makes someone morally good versus morally evil. While Erwin is portrayed as "a glorified character of a historical figure", he is also told outright to be the cause for a lot of damage, he is a monster. Levi calls this out, and even Flock too. Flock wanted to kill Erwin for what he put all of the scouts through, but in the end saved him because he believed that the only way they were ever going to win a war against monsters was by becoming monsters themselves. This becomes the very reason why he ends up joining the Yeagerists. Eren and Erwin are set up to be inherently flawed, under the guise that they don't have a choice but to fight or die. But can we really blame them for simply wanting to live? The only motivation that you could consider as inherently flawed was Eren's entire reasoning behind doing the Rumbling. His motivation has no direct connection to the politics around him, as his very reason for starting the Rumbling in the end comes down to his own personal desire for freedom. He was disappointed once he had figured out what lied waiting for him in the outside world, and saw only more walls that kept him not only caged, but posed a threat to his freedom. This disappointment and desire to be free led to his desire to wipe everything away, coming at the cost of everyone else's freedom. Isayama even stated this as one of the main ideas he thought about for his ending. How can you blame someone for being morally evil if, by nature, they were born to be this way? Can you really blame any sole human for being evil if they were born evil to begin with? If so, what gives someone that claims themselves to be morally good the right to pass judgement onto those who they perceive as morally evil? This also comes up as a point of discussion between Eren and Reiner's reunion in Season 4. They only do the things they do because they have no choice. They don't like what they're doing, but they have to fight so that the ones they love can live happy lives. They're being used by higher powers that use their own desires against them, whether it be to protect one's own friends and family or due to an inherent desire to be free from the shackles of one's own existence. Do we blame these people who participate in evil acts because they are evil acts, or do we try to understand that they never had that choice in the end and come to the conclusion that this was always going to happen? This is also why the government is brought up as being the main root of these problems earlier on in the story. A higher power corrupting the minds of average people with their own desires and dreams is something established early on, that later becomes something grander and more dangerous as the series goes on. Eventually it culminates with Eren being the final instigator of this ideal. He is forever a slave to his own innate desire to be free. Eren in the end could never be free, and so long as those with higher power remain locked to their own dreams and desires, disregarding the dreams and desires of those around them, in the end it only leads right back to a never-ending cycle of war. _(Sorry for the essay to those who don't like reading. To those who did read this though, you're cool and I hope you gained a new perspective from this!)_

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

i mean the ending is tied to both contemporary apologia for fascism and in particular fascist-japanese extraction of themselves from german fascism. the show literally infantalizes the genocide - it dismisses it, but only on the grounds that it would be childish to assume that the forever war that fascism frames as inherent to existence can ever have a final solution the overarching thesis of attack on titan, punctuated by its incredibly grotesque ending, is that fascism is so total and overriding and inescapable a truth that only a lost and sad little boy would believe they could end it. so go pick up your gun, idiot, because if you don't shoot the Others they're gonna shoot you first :|

[@tractorKing]

30 minutes in, this is one of the reasons I thought Eren's foresight powers were lame. As if the anime itself wasn't already bursting at the seams with a "keep moving forward" inevitability, Eren's given a power that all but seals shut the series into a violent determinism.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Yeah the whole thing really made me think of timothy snyder's discussions on inevitability politics and when I saw the show it got all this stuff that I had read rushing into my brain again.

[@iantaakalla8180]

I love Attack on Titan, but basically, the point is The Rumbling. No alternatives, no possible ways for peace, nothing. Everybody hates the Paradisians, Eren has a bloodthirst channeled into ostensibly helping his friends, that’s it. For all the complexity of Attack on Titan, it is just about justifying why The Rumbling must happen. And after that, you just have an apathy about everything. Nothing better will happen save, let’s say, the integration of Paradisians in the already-established-horrible humanity. Even if it assiduously covers every angle how human prejudice and warlike tendencies perpetuate stuff, and is powerful in that context, Attack on Titan is horrible in that it asserts the absolute extinction must happen for progress to be made, and it all will happen anyways.

[@kyo1546]

​@iantaakalla8180 I think that's what Isayama intended for sure, but if you step back and look at the dialogue around the Rumbling by the characters it really just seems that Isayama is only doing the textual equivalent of throwing his hands up and going "Idk how to achieve world peace other than killing everyone else." And he doesn't even believe that because even without Titans as a threat and no firm knowledge of what's beyond the water the people of Paradis STILL fought with each other for power before anything else. The biggest failing of the manga is Isayama's general apathy bogs down every resolution, he sees all of the problems just fine but he has no hope for the future. Which is probably why it's such a hard manga for westerners to properly pinpoint because we are getting a snapshot of the mindset of citizens who fall for fascism instead of the mindset of a leader trying to spread fascism.

[@people2chronically-online]

That’s literally the point lil bro, eren is a slave to freedom

[@people2chronically-online]

@@kyo1546name one peaceful option that saves the eldians

[@glizzygoat]

IDK how FD finds small but really well reseated essayists but i’m here for it 🔥

[@samba-v8c]

For real. I wonder if his KZbin recommendation algorithm is already trained to get stuff like this.

[@DukeDukeGo]

he's tagged for inspo in the description, and you can get notifications for that. Although at his channel size, I would turn that option off

[@AManOfManyCats]

I finally decided that what I should do was to reach out to him on twitter because he's one of two people that I really wanted to watch the video. Like I know that sounds kind of weird and maybe like parasocial lol But as someone who had admired his work for a long time and as someone who had agreed with his takes on attack on Titan I was like really interested to get his eyes on the video.

[@stephenbarrett5357]

no one is discussing the thirst trap at the end of the video and i'm personally blaming the decline of media literacy. but seriously- i learned so much about fascist philosophy and revisionism in this video. i'm gonna be thinking about deterministic nihilism, the rejection of peace, and the idealization of rural living for a while especially. thank you for giving me a new lense to see the world through.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I'm really glad that it gave you some stuff to think about and some new perspective! Developing that larger perspective has been a huge portion of my journey into understanding fascism. If you want some interesting reading I would highly recommend "Discourse on Colonialism" by Aime Caesar. It is in my opinion one of the most under appreciated but also highly insightful looks into the nature of what fascism is.

[@Aleks96]

Peace is not always possible. Pacifism is dangerous and denies human nature. If you want peace then don't be an easy target.

[@MeeraReads]

I didn’t ignore the thirst trap but the choice of outfit reminded me of Seymour from FFX so I didn’t say anything (until now, this is said lovingly)

[@platinumbubbles6152]

This has to be the most thorough analysis of AOT I’ve seen and I was heavily engrossed in your research and arguments. I can’t wait to see what other projects you might have for the future!

[@AManOfManyCats]

Very glad you enjoyed the video and it definitely took me a long time to research this and get all my thoughts out! So i'm very happy that people are appreciative of all of the work that went into it ❤

[@people2chronically-online]

Aot isnt fascist

[@platinumbubbles6152]

@@people2chronically-online where did I say it was? Damn, you’re so butthurt over liking facist media that you’re commenting on a video you probably haven’t watched on a comment you definitely didn’t read cuz I sure as hell didn’t say it when I was merely complimenting the research and argument structure of the video. It’s such a short comment too you can check at a glance. Schools really don’t teach reading anymore huh?

[@brendann9223]

This is the AOT video I’ve been waiting for, thank you

[@AManOfManyCats]

Very glad you could watch it!

[@Steve-yn3cs]

What gets me frustrated about this issue is that many people saying the show is Anti-fascist, don't have, like you said, the basic understanding of Fascism, Japanism, Japanese Revisionist history, the history of Manga and Propaganda in Japan, and many other parallels to the country in World War II and Post World War II. Many people's basic understanding of Fascistic ideologies stop at Hitler and Mussolini. It doesn't go beyond that. The fact that all the information presented here isn't known by mainstream casual consumers of AOT says a lot about why this discussion is "controversial" (It's not supposed to, it's clear as day for anyone who understand the context this Manga and anime came from). But oh well, many AOT fans have this knee jerk reaction to any form of criticism on the show (which I still like to a degree BTW), so I don't even bother. This is a great video.

[@GuyWhoLikesTheSnarkies1435]

Came here because of FD's community post, stayed for the *"If you don't love me at my [Rommel jpg], then you don't deserve me at my [Smith jpg] "* summary in the first part😤🔥 Just subbed to your channel, still 20 minutes in rn but hopefully your debut piece will do numbers!

[@paulallen2611]

You had me at "many cats".

[@AManOfManyCats]

Cats are a good thing ❤️

[@Pajarocaro]

Me too honestly

[@Xman34washere]

This one needs to hit the algorithm

[@AManOfManyCats]

My the youtube gods take pity on my humble rambles about anime ❤️

[@danny.nedelk0]

After watching the first half of the video, I almost wanted to stop watching the series. I'm glad I stuck for the second half. I think this is a great example of what can happen when a writer doesn't have a clear political message and identity but wants to feature similarities to real-life events and people. Thanks, FD, for recommending this!

[@AManOfManyCats]

It's definitely a complicated series to watch. After finishing it and after doing my project there is a part of me honestly that has a strange desire to sit down with the author and just like talk to him. I didn't really want to make the video too much about the author but I did read a lot of interviews with him and a lot of his viewpoints on his own work. And just from that, I do view him as like a deeply conflicted individual.And he definitely was somebody who was very vulnerable to a lot of this ideological bullshit when he was growing up. And so a huge part of me is curious as to like if he's had reflections on the show.And if maybe getting older has caused him to look back at his work and view it as maybe something he's not supercomfortable with? Obviously I have no idea but it did make me very curious

[@iantaakalla8180]

At the very least, the fact that the anime basically makes clear the work of Attack on Titan was never about justifying Eren. But the fact that it took a rewrite does make a person wonder.

[@bennogb5069]

@@iantaakalla8180 what exactly needed rewirting? The Armin and Eren dialouge in the anime? It literally just made clear the intent behind the interaction, it did not change the intent only make it more understandable.

[@hollowsteel]

@@AManOfManyCatsI honestly agree with this, especially given how the anime changed a lot of the finale’s dialogue. Armin’s discussion with Eren is different from in the manga, with the key one being: Eren admits that he’s an idiot for turning to violence, Armin acknowledges how he had a hand in pushing Eren forward (especially given his rhetoric in season 1 “to rise above monsters”), and then armin outright states that they’ll likely end up in hell for what they did (keep in mind they’re also the characters with the two highest kill counts). I would also say that, it honestly does seem like AOT is critical of western fascism, while also preferring eastern fascism. It’s strange, that’s for sure.

[@ShadowTheHedgehog_05]

​@@AManOfManyCats this, isayama has said in plenty of interviews that eren is literally just him, like wayyyy too much of erens character is apparently isayama.

[@TheRJB0]

I don't think I have ever learned so much from one video about a subject I thought I understood. This slapped.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Really glad you enjoyed my thoughts, I have had an interest in the topic of fascism for quite some time as well as an interest in the second world war. So I have had the opportunity to engage with some very wonderful thinkers as well as a fair bit of the primary sources and writers.

[@hobbitronic]

I always feel like the most worrying stuff is the thinly veiled reference to anti-semetic tropes. [a group of persecuted people marginalised for a percieved threat to the world who actually have world destroying powers and a desire to conquer humanity]

[@iantaakalla8180]

That is actually a good point; Eldians, specifically Paradisian Eldians, fit far too well the idea the people that is at once far too weak and yet cataclysmically destructive that fascism rhetoric like to pull. That is, they for the most part lack any power to retaliate against outside forces except for Eren Yeager, but can assemble a combo of powers to destroy the world through Eren Yeager. Eren himself is also technically the weakest of the Titans at the beginning, but he very literally had the power to get the power to start the Rumbling by being a Titan shifter.

[@nope19568]

there were actually some Jewish people that truly advocated that six million germans should die as reparations to them and now the zionist movement is crushing palestine through religious justification that only they care about, hurt people who go unchecked by others hurt other back

[@Bojoschannel]

It's not purely anti-semitic, obviously that's what the average western would believe, the same logic gets used today when talking about the "arabs", the backwards, primitive people that if the US ever stops bombing will take over the world or the "woke left", which is made up of sissy broke millenials or whatever, yet control very institution in the world. it is a basic argument from fascist playbook, an argument that is critiqued in attack on titan constantly during the later seasons

[@dansmith1661]

Tropes exist and persist FOR NO REASON.

[@LoopyDreamz775]

I doubt Most people who watch AOT would look at eldians that way.

[@VuNguyen-fv5jl]

Commenting for algorithm. I’ll turn this on during my commute to work

[@AManOfManyCats]

Grateful for the watch and comment!

[@leul1551]

Just finished part 1 and im excited for the rest because my impression of the show was that the author does hate war but genuinely can’t imagine a better world so he did indeed make his art about fascist bs

[@AManOfManyCats]

I definitely think that he has some pretty extreme dissonance in his mind. I try to touch on the fact too that he does show some stuff that has a pretty strong anti war tone, But it just gets overridden by the fact that ultimately at the end of the day. He does adhere to some definitionally fascist worldviews.

[@leul1551]

Okay yup great video, the second to last section is very damning 😬

[@Postmark3]

This is an incredible video. Very well researched. I cant wait to see more from you!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I tried to put a lot of thought into it and ultimately, when I was reading the series initially and watching a lot of the other videos around it.I came to the conclusion that not a lot of people had done very much deep, reading or research they'd kind of just been eager to put out an opinion. And there was a guy called lost futures who I thought did a really good job at examining the anime on a deeper level and so I wanted to build on that work and try to bring some better put together opinions to the table. FD Signifier had also done some good work analyzing Erens character, so I felt like there was a handful of people out there, but that the discussion just needed to be built up a bit. I would also say I was pretty influenced by that essay on reddit that I covered. Like I thought that they constructed a really well put together case and I was very surprised that essay hadn't gotten more traction given how well researched it was.

[@joelman1989]

Bro there is no way you hit it out the park like this with your first video. Damn! The research. The editing, the way you break it down so someone with little knowledge of AOT and (embarrassingly) history could follow and understand the the deeper topics. Which is another thing loved because I rarely see essays get this deep with actual philosophy and text to analyze. Like I’ve never even thought about my own position when it comes to nihilism and whether war is inevitable or progress is futile. I’m pausing ever few minutes to let it all sit and consider my own stance on a philosophy. And what that means about the way I approach politics. But then you just keep building on it all. This was way more than just about AOT. This was like a guide to media literacy and thinking critically about propaganda and politics. They always tell you to just start creating, that your first several attempts will be bad. But this is proving that thesis wrong! I need more.

[@AManOfManyCats]

To be fair I built on the work of a lot of other people, historians and commentators. Like that's why it was really cool that FD watched the video because I watched his thoughts on attack on titan and thought that he was really on to something. So while the video definitely is my work and I am very proud of it because I feel like I was able to put together something rather definitive on the topic. There is no way that I would have been able to do this all alone if other people hadn't have done so much research prior to my taking a look into it. It's great that we live in an age where I am able to not only access all of the physical books and texts that I need in order to do analysis but that I was able to access the writings of historians and scholars from all across the world.

[@joelman1989]

@@AManOfManyCats I agree I think that’s one of the good things about this platform. Kind of like how academics build on each others work. But they’re not always doing analysis on pop culture like that and I think that’s just as important as analyzing stuff from the past. F.D is my favorite KZbinr and I love his videos too. And this went more in depth on the fascism aspects and I did really enjoy that. I watch a lot of essays and this is one that will definitely stay with me. You have a new subscriber man! I’m looking forward to your future videos if you stick with it. Hopefully this doesn’t burn you out. Starting off with a fully researched and tightly edited two hour deep dive on a contentious subject, couldn’t have been easy haha.

[@AManOfManyCats]

@@joelman1989 It was no easy task for sure, however I have been injured the last like 5 months so tbh it kinda kept me alive while it was killin me to make XD

[@konstantinriumin2657]

Also, first half is very vague.. Like, yes, ideas like "life is constant struggle", "human problems and behaviors persist across history","rural life is better on spiritual level that urban life","people are by and large sinners", "through trials and tribulations people learn and grow and become better/wiser/stronger" are present in fascism, but they are so universal and old that linking AoT to fascism through them sounds like a very weak argument. Like, the basic christian worldview (or, perhaps more importantly for Japanese worldview, basic buddhist worldview, which of course shapes cultural perception even for atheist people) has almost all of these. Someone like Hayao Miyazaki, who was marxist and is open and loud critic of Japanese rearmament and supporter of pacifist constitution, has all of this in his works. And it feels like in AoT this "pessimist nihilist worldview" is mostly a premise to make setting more dramatic and to portray struggle against it (which you do not mention at all, even though it is a large part of like half of character arcs in the story) as a grand challenge. Basically, seeing someone say "let's all be friends" in optimistic world doesn't hit as hard as in dystopian world. Again, in my opinion AoT begins challenging the "dog eats dog/kill or be killed" mentality fairly early on. I think in the end of the female titan arc Armin begins questioning the whole "survival at any price" idea. While Eren, the protagonist, is resolute in his vision of struggle until the end, his comrades grow increasingly weary of it. In the end, almost all of them betray Eldia (aka Japanese empire in your parallelism), and we are clearly meant to think of them as better people because of it. So, it's quite possible that Isayama was to some degree "wehraboo", but of more benign type, the ones who actually believe in clean Wermacht and chivalrous Rommel, and not crypto-nazis who actually support "dirty" Wermacht and use clean one to launder the overall nazi reputation. (Same tendency can be seen in Japanese "empire-boos" i guess?). But by the second half of the story Isayama clearly grew critical of people who accept "cruel world" as a centre of their view, not as a concept to struggle against. His sympathies lie with those who do not succumb to the "kill or be killed" darwinistic struggle that fascists embrace. Characters who profess "fascist-like" views (like Annie or Berthold) are revealed to do so either out of intense self-loathing (in case of Annie) or despaired resignation (like Berthold), in both cases it is not seen as revelation of correct worldview, but more like a personal weakness. So, overall, i tend to agree that AoT has a lot of influence from militaristic and fascistic sources, but story overall makes a point against subscribing to fascist worldview, and supports more positive, altruistic and hopeful approach. And neo-nazis who followed the manga hated its latter part for it, only following it because they through "their side" (Eren and Floch) would win I hope you understand what i mean, even if i worder some parts confusingly or made some mistakes.

[@gigabit6226]

this comment perfectly summarizes how I feel, thank you

[@theswagman1263]

Eren did pretty much win. He has Armin and Mikasa's respect at the end despite committing global genocide, and saves most of the main cast through doing so, even if Paradis is eventually destroyed. Where in aot's story is this "altruistic and hopeful approach" you speak of, that isayama supposedly supports? the pacifist and hopeful character that Armin is ends up thanking the perpetrator of the worst crime imaginable, this is not a rejection of fascism

[@gigabit6226]

​@@theswagman1263 Are you referring to the manga ending? In the anime ending, Armin is clearly NOT thanking Eren. Armin is trying to make the most of a situation that he would never have wanted to happen himself. So Eren does not have Armin's respect, and I thought the anime made that crystal clear. You can lose respect for someone entirely, even if it's someone you loved and will always remember. The "altruistic and hopeful approach" is that the ending is hopeful. Human conflict will not end, but we should still try to achieve peace.

[@theswagman1263]

@gigabit6226 yeah I'm meaning the manga ending, since I think that better reflects isayama's original intent. I don't see how an ending that shows the cycle of violence endlessly continuing is hopeful, it just feels like more of the same nihilistic outlook on humanity.

[@gigabit6226]

@@theswagman1263 I'm pretty sure Isayama has expressed several times that the anime is meant to be his intended version, and that he oversaw the changes to the script. Wasn't he running on pretty low sleep when he was writing the manga's final chapters? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I understand where you're coming from, but to me the point is not that everything is meaningless, but instead that you give it meaning. There is definitely a layer of nihilism, but it is kind of optimistic. Think back to Armin's conversation with Zeke, and Zeke's realization that he would have liked to live longer to enjoy something as simple as playing catch with his friend. It's also symbolized by how the crowds of people save the baby from the rumbling. They knew the baby was going to die, but they still try to keep it alive as long as they can. Even Erwin's speech has this sort of optimistic idea: our deaths will be given meaning by those who come after us. I think when people say the meaning of the ending is that "the cycle of violence never ends," they're missing the "BUT that doesn't make our lives meaningless, and that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to achieve peace" I hope this makes sense

[@user-dy5me8gi7j]

This is the best analysis by far that really digs into all the bad vibes i could not explain about AOT. So many others just seemed to be cherry-picking specific details without addressing the underlining ideology. Never apologize for context. We live in context.

[@AManOfManyCats]

We live in contexts is a wonderful line! I think it's incredibly important like I do history for school and so context is a really huge part of the historians craft and like being able to make realistic assessments. I'm very glad that you enjoyed the video!

[@8lec_R]

Inb4 the hate mob comes. Love the video. Only 30 mins in. LF always hits the nail on the head. Great work so far

[@AManOfManyCats]

Thankfully the response so far has been basically entirely positive. I'm sure there will be some backlash, but I think that F.D putting it in His audience really helped get it in front of people who could appreciate the work without getting weird about it

[@AudreyGalaxy]

very excited to watch this! the most non-controversial aot take is, of course, that revo is a legend and all his music goes unimaginably hard

[@pharawoahthesecond7551]

This is not a drill it's out it's out.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Finally XD

[@sloshcore]

recently finished watching the anime (i had read the manga when it first ended) and AOT is very special to me as a series because of how long ive been following it, but i always had my issues with the themes and this video really helped put a lot of it into words. when i first started it i was like 12 and not paying much attention to any deeper themes or philosophies, and now its all pretty glaringly obvious to me, and you gave a lot of really interesting context that added to that. i love media analysis and i love hours long video essays so this was basically the highlight of my day. great work!

[@iantaakalla8180]

I suppose the fact that the sixth opening mapped nicely to the American idea of “the quiet kid” should have been the hint. (The sixth opening being about ending the world, but as the complicated emotions of a person being bullied.)

[@iantaakalla8180]

That is, Attack on Titan may have positive ideals, but at the end of the day it does justify the mindset of a person who wants to end it all, no matter what, and is absolutely justified in doing so. (Because for some reason somehow everyone who is not Paradisian is willing to hate them and for some reason people just happened to want to attack Paradis then and there).

[@anonymousmurphy]

I was firmly in the camp of “this is a cautionary tale about people with good intentions becoming fascists” right up to very end, when Armin forgives and validates Eren’s fascistic genocide. It was then I realized it wasn’t a fascist cautionary tale, but rather a fascist apologist one.

[@sophia-fuckthehandlesystem]

Plus, the fact the Eren only ends up rumbling the countries that were clearly based on Arabs and East Asians. The people he ends up sparing are Eldians (obviously) and Marleyeans, who literally have Holocaust imagery all over their country. On that note, the way the Eldians are treated in Marley is obviously invoking the ways Jews were treated in Nazi Germany, but Isayama ends up doing more apologia and Holocaust revision by making the Jewish allegories actually have had an evil empire and oppressed the Marleyeans at one point in history, as well as having ‘secret powers’, which, as a Jew, just makes me uncomfortable. I really loved the first few arcs of the manga and tried to ignore the subtext, but after the timeskip especially, it just got really fashy.

[@geordieinjapan]

then the world ends and we see forgiving fascists wasn't the right answer afterall.

[@Joemama69420blazeit]

@@geordieinjapani mean it ends with paradis being destroyed by (one could presume) foreign forces, which seems kind to imply that Eren shouldve committed full genocide.

[@randomusername3873]

Literally self defense "Fascistic"

[@runakovacs4759]

I can also see a parallel to the Weimar Republic. Overtly harsh war reparations can foster fascistic retaliation (although in case of Paradis, much of it was self-inflicted with the king)

[@CraftyArts]

another thing that comes to mind is a lot of people get defensive thinking liking something with a fascistic message or setting somehow reflects negatively on their character, taking it as a personal attack on their identity. Life is full of ironies and I love me some Dredd, Warhammer 40k, Starship Troopers and especially AOT while in real life not believing in nation states, borders, the current warmongering with the ukrainian v russia and Palestinian israel conflicts, and vouching the idea of a one world government with no billionaires allowed.

[@skyaero8773]

In my opinion one of the best traits to have as a person is the ability to entertain a idea or philosophy without agreeing with them. I completely disagree with the facist worldview and their philosophies, I find them pretty abhorrent, but getting a better perspective of them through this video was really interesting. The more you understand a position the better you can counter against it. Plus Warhammer 40k and AoT are just fucking cool settings and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

[@Darkenesis]

Just riding the FD Sent Me Train. Never seen Attack on Titan, wasn't planning to, but did watch the whole video. Kind of blown away by the depth of the essay here, wow. Looking forward to the next one.

[@mariannaj.6572]

I've just finished the video. You have dane incredible work linking so many different aspects of AOT to Japan's history. With this new context I've actually gained a new perspective on the subject. Thank you for doing all this research and sharing the sources.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I'm really glad that you enjoyed it and that you were able to get something out of the video! It definitely took me a little minute to put together but I tried my best to say everything that I could say.

[@CosmicPersephone]

55:40 I'll be honest I feel like if you watch/read AoT with the perspective of Eren being an unreliable POV it can be read as an exploration of how fascism can take root in people, particularly young men who feel inadequate. I'm fully willing to accept that that might just be wishful thinking on my part and that Hajime Isayama didn't ever intend for that to be the case but I don't think it's completely unsupported by the text either. That being said I really enjoyed this video and found it massively informative. For example I had no idea Erwin was based on an actual nazi (puts all that crossover merch of him posing with Hello Kitty in a new light that's for sure). While I'm sure I'll probably always have a soft spot for Attack on Titan I know it isn't perfect and I still appreciate knowing exactly how deep it's issues go.

[@yggdrasil2]

The way you pointed out how AoT fails at criticizing fascism does give me the impression that Isoyama is coming from a somewhat well-intentioned place (though I don't know the guy ofc). It's like he knows the very real pitfalls of fascism but thinks it can work under the right circumstances.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I feel like the charitable read is that he has a lotta fash takes but also thinks that at the end of the day fash end goals are bad. (Sorta a man in conflict with his philosophical morals take on him) Personally, I don't read him that charitably, but I didn't to stray to much into like, tryin to prove the guy feels a certain way about things. That's hard to prove. The text and the work itself on the other hand by virtue of being a text just does say certain set things so it was easier to prove that it did or did not express certain values. And like at the end of the day I think people are more arguing over what the text expresses than what the author thinks? Idk maybe I'm wrong about that or wording it poorly.

[@yggdrasil2]

@@AManOfManyCats Nah, I get what you're saying and I wasn't trying to refute the video, more just add a little thought that came to me while watching that I find interesting.

[@yggdrasil2]

@@AManOfManyCats And I know I've said it, but it bares repeating: Great video!

[@AManOfManyCats]

@yggdrasil2 To be honest it's something I thought about a lot when I was making the video and like originally I had wanted to maybe say something about it or try to talk about it. There's the infamous tweets that may or may not have been made by him and theres quite a lot of speculation on his opinions. I feel like people often do have really complicated opinions when it comes to stuff like that so it's very hard to nail down exactly what people think.

[@yggdrasil2]

@@AManOfManyCats IIRC it turned out those tweets were made by someone else.

[@Popyman51]

Can't wait to watch this! My girlfirend and i finally got around to finish the show not too long ago. I was really distrubed by how the author ended the manga. The anime worded things differently and pretty easily fixed it I feel like. Ive been meaning to dive more into just what the mangaka's intentions were. This seems perfect :D

[@AManOfManyCats]

Hope you enjoy my thoughts on the series!

[@AmericanKitty1]

This is an incredible breakdown of AOT's themes with a wonderful amount of research and detail. I learned so much more about history than I expected I would. Thank you so much for sharing!

[@coffeelix]

I personally feel that an overlooked element of the story is the underlying philosophy it seems to present us. Namely, existentialism. Basically the view that firstly there are no objective moral truths in the world and secondly that you're radically free to choose your own moral values. As such, there is no group of people who are objectively right, only people with competing sets of values. In the real world, existentialism is a difficult position to argue for, because it tends to work itself into a contradiction. However, I think what Isayama tries to present in the story is a world at war, pushed to its limits, where existentialism becomes a tempting philosophy to adopt. Almost every character embodies something contradictory - Eren and Erwin are both good examples of people who are clearly portrayed simultaneously as start as heroes but become monsters. Gabi and Reiner are good examples on the other side of the coin who start off "bad", but end up "good". Both Marley and Eldia are shown to simultaneously be the oppressed and the oppressors. Even the titans themselves, at first thought to be unequivocally monsters, are actually just other human beings. Now, I think it's important to note that the Nazis often warped and selectively used this philosophy to push their own "might makes right" agenda (e.g. the association with Nietzsche is an often misunderstood one, given Nietzsche's often clearly anti-nazi views). As a result, I think there's room for an interpretation that Attack on Titan isn't trying to moralise any particular ideology, but rather display how Nazi ideologies can propagate in a world where moral absolutes seem (note, only seem) to be contradictory. I think Eren essentially does this by warping his obsession for freedom and his "kill or be killed" mentality into the fascist tropes we see. I think the overall topic of contention is whether Eren's actions are supported or not by the show, and I honestly think that they aren't. Eren quite clearly takes on the role of a villain, and the cast we end up following are Armin, Jean, Levi etc. - all people who want to stop it. The show quite clearly portrays the Rumbling as "the bad ending", an absolutely cataclysmic event for the world. Victory is achieved when it's stopped and Armin and co. all begin diplomacy with the rest of the world. I think the fact that war eventually breaks out again has been subject to the unfortunate (and naive) misinterpretation that if only Eren had 100% completed the Rumbling, he would have ended all war. In reality, it perpetuates because we see the cycle of the titan powers beginning again, and I see this as another Eren falling down the rabbit hole of existentialism. The titan powers are the embodiment of a "might makes right" mindset (and note that they were seemingly gifted by an evil devil in the story, not some righteous angel). Conflict will continue to exist so long as there are people who think that might makes right, that ideologies have to be fought for, and I think this is the reason the cycle continues. Even if Eren's existentialism is correct, then that means there is no objective moral truth, which means even within a seemingly ideologically unified group, there will still inevitably be subjective moral disagreement which will lead to conflict. I think if that's the case, diplomacy will always be a better way of resolving conflicted values than fighting, and so Armin etc. are portrayed as the good guys. There are some other interesting elements of the existentialist interpretation, such as Eren ultimately being shown to be a hypocrite, given that he has absolutely no freedom by the end of the show (as a result of determinism), disproving his existentialist ideology. I also like to think that characters like Jean, who decided to step up and walk the righteous path quite early in the story, find some objective moral truth in the middle ground and thus should be the characters we look up to (and they are, in fact, the characters who the narrative eventually aligns us with as we follow them stopping the rumbling). I do think Isayama failed to effectively show us that the Yeagerists clearly had the wrong approach, given how many people still (absurdly, imo) think they were right. But I think there was always a difficult line to tread where, if he was to show us how these ideologies spread, humanising every character was a necessary move to help us step into their shoes. He does make it clear that Eren and Erwin eventually abandon their humanity and become the true monsters of the story, but I do think that it could have been made clearer, because I really don't like the number of people that still think Eren was right.

[@yum8666]

Intresting. I look at aot as an absurdist story. To me its more of a greek trgedy than it is a political commentary trying to preach something. The world of AOT is inherently cruel and absurd. It is not only deterministic but also cyclical. The origin of the Titans is nothing but a mere organism, The entire world is on loop and is forced to play out the same way over and over again making all the actions of all the characters meaningless. And yet they all still desire to create meaning and fight for it. But why do we keep fighting? Why did sysiphus keep pushing the boulder? Why did Eren keep carrying that boulder despite having the foresight to know that eventually it would all come crashing down and he would kill millions for an eternity? Because the small moment of peace at the top of the hill is worth fighting for. Even if we are trapped in a perpetual cycle of violence if going around means we get to throw a ball again with the one we love, or wrap a scarf around the one we love, or run through the wind with the ones we love then its worth it. It was inevitable that pardis would fall and that eren would have no free will, but he was still free to own his fate which was ironically to rebel against the absurdity that is his reality. Sisyphus is doomed to push the boulder forever, but he can still rebel regardless against his fate and therefore also own it. The facist aspects of the story in my opinion is a part of it, but not the main focus. The nazi parallels are to show how we enforce meaning despite reality being indiferent to our beliefs hence why there is so much death around eren despite him believing he was the hero in the first part of the story. Furthermore its to show how the titans/ jews/ "cruel" world were never evil but instead the narratives we enslave ourselves to made them evil. The titans are just a weird biological phenommion not a [product of the devil. Jews are just people not demons. The world is just the world not cruel, we only see it that way because we are forced to create narratives to better understand it. "There is no such thing as truth in this world. That is our reality. Anyone can become a God or a Devil. All it takes is for someone to claim that to be the truth." - Eren Kruger. Therefore trying to figure out if AOT is pro or anti facist is silly because its neither. Isyama intentionally showed facism in both a negative and positive light. He is not trying to preach or convince his readers of anything, he is just trying to comment on it and let us readers claim the truth.

[@coffeelix]

@@yum8666 love that interpretation, I think you’re really onto something there. The story is quite absurd and Eren is a very sisyphus-like character, doomed to repeat the cycle. It makes sense too considering that Absurdism and Existentialism are very much two sides of the same coin. Plus there’s the whole angle with Zeke about whether it’s even worth living in such an absurd world - the Myth of Sisyphus is literally a story about whether we should keep living under such circumstances. Camus argues against Zeke’s worldview and says we should keep pushing forward, matching Eren’s view. [Edit: I totally missed Eren literally carrying a boulder at one point too, that’s definitely seems like an intentional reference]. I totally agree with you too that Isayama isn’t preaching a message here, he’s holding up a mirror to reality and letting us make our own judgements. The philosophical angles you mentioned I think really highlight that. Maybe the only difference with the absurdist take is that Camus says “one should imagine sisyphus happy”, but I can’t say Eren really seems happy by the end of the show. Would love to know your thoughts!

[@yum8666]

@@coffeelix Maybe not happy but he at least seems at peace at the end knowing mikasa is the one to end his suffering and that his friends will get to live long peaceful lives.

[@greenhouseghostie]

I loved AOT not because I agreed with the characters or was satisfied by all of the choices made by the author, but because it made me stop and think about war and conflict and "otherization" in the context of the real world. By the end of the show/manga I had come to realize that I disliked basically every character for one reason or another, and that was likely due to my fundamental disagreement with the author's views. This video provided a lot of context that I had never been aware of up until now, and it explains that sneaking suspicion that I was unable to fully verbalize before. I still love the show, but I feel like I will be able to interact with it in a completely different way now.

[@NoirDetetive]

As it goes neither manga nor anime are politically neutral, but raise this topic among weebs is always troublesome. Almost if they are in denial. You see, for some reason Japan as a whole hold some special place in the fantasies of right-wingers and die hard conservatives because they picture the country as this monolithic prosperous capitalist economy in an ethnically homogeneous land. They overlook the serious issue of how the crimes from the Imperial past were erased from public discourse in modern Japanese society while politics offered only a half-break with the past. In fact, without risk of exaggerating we can say that in Japan there was a lot more continuity between the old fascist system of empire and the new democratic order in the post-war era than was ever the case in Italy and specially with Germany, but the Japanese themselves are aware of this. Filmmakers and writers used their work to meditate on these issues sometimes taking direct opposing sides (in Cinema this is notoriously patent with Yasujirō Ozu and Masaki Kobayashi on the right-left divide) and with Manga and Anime isn't different. This idea cultivated by otakus that anime is above politics, has nothing to say about the past or the present or is devoid of any meaning sounds naive to me to say the least. There are few things more pro-status-quo and conservative than Ghibli films while 'Akira' will always be a leftist classic.

[@ShadowTheHedgehog_05]

Yeah, it's like FD said "Attacking a weebs favorite anime is like attacking they mama"

[@JunLo-tu1sz]

Miyazaki has always been staunchly anti-war, anti-revisionism, and pro-environment. In what way is he conservative??

[@EleiyaUmei]

Your last sentence confuses me because my focus when watching Ghibli movies is on pro-empathy, environmentalism and anti-war messages but I can see the "pro-status-quo" aspect in Spirited Away where the exploitative, dehumanizing system of the bathhouse is never toppled, the main characters just end up leaving the system on the system's terms. Do you have more arguments more your statement, though?

[@EleiyaUmei]

@@JunLo-tu1sz Conservatism is not the exact opposite of what you associate Miyazaki with; it can be used to mean conserving institutions which are systems of power and when you look at the ab*sive system of power that is the bathhouse of Spirited Away and how it never is attempted to be changed or toppled, this can be interpreted as "pro-status-quo" or "conservative". But yeah, I also want OP to name some arguments for their statement.

[@xXsnowberrieXx]

Great video! I've also watched LostFutures1's AoT videos and love having more people talk about fascism in the anime. I get so annoyed when the discussion focuses on Nazi Germany and never mentions Japanese fascism but I don't know how to put it to words. I'm frustrated with the entire anime community. So many anime fans are obsessed with Japan but have no idea or just don't care about the war crimes and colonial history. Japan has a track record with historical revisionnism. It's got to be convenient for them to have millions of people fall in love with their nations cultural export and I say this as someone who watches anime.

[@sanitygone-l9y]

gonna be watching this shit like it’s a movie

[@AManOfManyCats]

There definitely was a lot to say. I ended up having to watch a whole japanese drama in order to make the video XD So it went from being something that I thought was gonna be like 40min to its current length lol

[@cawcaw9089]

finally a video long enough for me to watch at work! as someone who became an aot fan back when the first episode came out, the idea of aot having too much fascist/ww2 imagery for it to be a coincidence has been a topic since the first seasons, its kinda interesting to me the type of reaction many ppl have at the suggestion, but i guess no one wants to think their favorite show might have “sinister” undertones or smth, personally its not my favorite show and ive always been on the side that “suspected” but i appreciate it for what it meant to me back in middle school. cant wait to watch this and yes im commenting for the algorithm

[@AManOfManyCats]

Thank you for the algorithm boost. It definitely helps youtube notice me! I'm glad you liked the long video form too I really enjoy the long form stuff and so I was trying to make something that was engaging as well as meaty since it's a topic that really has a lot going on.

[@Jojo-tf2zp]

Lost Futures shoutout hell yea!! They did sooo much work pulling the pieces apart, as did you. Incredible video, I'll need to watch it twice because there's a lot there I don't want to miss. Excited to see what you have in store next.

[@count_rizzula]

This is besides the main point of the video but I was so enthralled during the section where you discussed the monarchy. Hearing you talk about the theories and ideas of monarchy and facism was easily the most interesting part of the video (liked all of it of course).

[@AManOfManyCats]

It's something that doesn't really get discussed that often right? Like we tend to talk about how fascism acts in like a post conflict state, Like once we're already at war with fascists.We talk about what they think. But people don't take much time to kind of dive into the broader spectrum of how fascists think about hierarchy and society as much. And like their strange endorsement of monarchy which pops up in quite a few fascist writers really does make a bit of sense. It's like incredibly common for fascists to reject the ideals of the enlightenment and reject the idea that groups should not be ruled over by their "betters" And so it makes total sense that they would need to construct some kind of ideological framework where they can bring in older institutions and structures of hierarchical dominance.

[@ejl_98]

Check out the work of Agamben. You’d dig it.

[@robinisntfly5]

great video man! i hope the shoutout from FD signifer helps your channel

[@AManOfManyCats]

It has definitely already boosted the traffic! I was just thrilled that FD would watch the video I have been a big admirer of his work and find him to be a great and a fantastic thinker. So the fact that he would take the time to check it out meant a lot to me.

[@robinisntfly5]

@@AManOfManyCats hell yea! ive loved his vids for a long time. im glad he is shouting out smaller creators. especially because the algorithm does its best to hide them.

[@なぎ-j4d]

I was surprised that Tomohiro Machiyama, a film critic who influenced Isayama, was not mentioned. In fact, I've never seen any English-language critique of Attack on Titan that touches on him. Isayama himself stated that Machiyama was the model for Hange, Zeke, and Ksaver. Moreover, Machiyama was personally chosen by Isayama to write the script for the live-action movie. To understand what kind of person Isayama is, I recommend researching Machiyama.

[@IbanezV70CE]

By the end of the video I had completely forgotten that this was a video on AOT.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Ibanez! Nice brand. My S series is in pieces but I have a baritone with some emgs that's pretty sick. Yeah I was worried that trying to include a necessary amount of context might take the reader out of the initial starting point of the video.. But like as a historical nerd, context is extraordinarily important in understanding just about anything and I wasn't really sure I could properly get across the environment that exists around the author and the show and japan and our perceptions of history and all that without getting a bit deep in the weeds.. I suppose crafting the perfect video is definitely a learning experience and i'm gonna put all of my learning from this one into future videos.

[@ColdComplaints]

THANK YOU!!! For a couple years I’ve been wanting to make a video discussing Attack on Titan from the viewpoint of Japanese politics and history since so much of the readings have been from a western perspective. But I never had the time or ability to really research it. You’ve done an amazing job and I’m glad someone finally made a video nailing what the Eldians really represent!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I'm really glad that you enjoyed the video particularly since you were interested in the non western historical aspects that hadn't gotten a lot of attention! If you ever do feel like taking a whack at the topic and making a video in the future, I would be happy to discuss stuff with you or offer any insight that I can!

[@ColdComplaints]

@@AManOfManyCats Of course! Great work on this, you really killed it with this video and I look forward to what you do next.

[@spacecolon7760]

Feel incredibly validated by your analysis so far! Am excited to finish listening tomorrow at work

[@AManOfManyCats]

Really glad that you have enjoyed it so far! And I hope the latter portion is equally as insightful!

[@isaacmartinez143]

It seems popularly accepted in the community that Isayama claims Erwin is based off Ozymandias (from a “Erwin Smith MOOK booklet”) & modeled off of “one of the Secret Service members who appears in the music video for Paris Hilton’s “Paris for President.’ With his neatly side-parted hair, I tried to make him look like the embodiment of American Justice.” He goes on to say he wanted the leader of the scouts to be like Captain America or Superman which is its own sort of bias but how do you square that with Erwin Smith = Erwin Rommel?? Genuinely asking cause the Rommel comparison was very compelling to me - had to do some digging on my end.

[@AD_Eight]

It’s like the coke ad thought experiment at the beginning of the video, in aggregate the character leans more into the aesthetics of the Nazi military leader than Watchmen.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Well, if you take a brief minute to pause the video.When i'm talking about him you can actually see that a lot of people have made some lists of the crossover between the two characters and it's pretty staggering. However, there are a few tells that were not included in my video.I'm going to do a short about it. But when they capture the female titan they're actually using a particular tactic that Rommel was fond of using in the desert campaigns of north africa.. It's hyper specific and it's one of the most talked about and focused on things about his tactical prowesss if you read about his war fighting. So like apart from the historical similarities, and the fact that they have the same back story and farhers who were teachers, look almost identical (obviously smith is a lil sexier) And the fact that he portraits him as doint a coup.. (a popular rommel myth) Eventually when you weigh it all out, At least for me there's no denying that the character was inspired by Erwin Rommel. Like sure, there may be other inspiration for the character.But he's ninety percent lifted directly from Erwin Rommel, Which is why he fits into the mythologicalized version of Rommel that we see invented by the nazis and workshop post war to such a T.. Now I cannot obviously garner a confession from Isayama.. But to me it's undeniable. Additionally it also is a perfect mirror for akiyama. They match each other on so many levels not just the military aspects but like the roles they fill in post war society and mythology around the armed forces they fought with.

[@isaacmartinez143]

@@AManOfManyCats Appreciate the response & completely fair take! Makes unfortunate sense to me.

[@ghoster7600]

Wow did expect the algorithm to give me this video but I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed how you made this video!

[@shiloh6915]

My dude, I love your video and all the amazing research. I’m afraid to share it because the flashing black and white lights make it almost seizure inducing. I understand it was to avoid copy right, and I totally appreciate that, AND I appreciate its disappearance for qoute reading and how audio friendly this video is. Also, the discord meme format is amazing. Im half way through and will finish soon. Thank you for this amazing treat and video 🙏

[@AManOfManyCats]

Yeah trying to get around that copyright was a real hassle, My mom is kind of older and when I showed it to her and her boyfriend, they said the same thing they were like it's really great.But some of those scenes were hard to watch on the eyes 😂

[@potatoweaver4116]

Im not saying I disagree with you, but more that you lost the plot a little. I would have liked to see more discussion about the show itself compared to what was presented here. This video felt a little unbalanced at times, like only 30% of it was actually about AoT. I understand it was all ultimately about AoT right, but still there was too much talking around AoT and not enough directly analyzing AoT. For example, you barely talk about the actual plot of AoT, I know this video is about the discussion around AoT and not necessarily about the story of AoT, but in-order to do the former I feel it's important to do the latter. I guess to sum up what I'm saying here is that way too much of this video was about context, when the actual text and subtext hardly get any attention. Maybe dive a bit deeper into other important characters and talk about important events in the plot. People who believe AoT is an anti-war show talk about Armin has being the principal character to represent this idea, so the fact you don't really talk about him at all feels like you're ignoring an important side of the discussion. Lastly an analysis of at least two people with opposing opinions would have been fantastic. You said this video is about the discussion around AoT, but in reality it was more about your own interpretation of AoT and historical parallels, which is fine, it's just not what you promised at the start of the video. I'll also admit that I only got to 1:30:15 in the video before I stopped watching, mostly because of the above mentioned issues I had.

[@AManOfManyCats]

So I would encourage you to watch the rest of the video since you're not that far from the end just in case there's anything else in there that peaks your interest. But I will say that I understand your complaint. Even just doing the analysis from the angle that I was doing it, I was left with probably like four hours of material or more that I had to cut down. And so going into the project I had to make a big decision about whether or not I was gonna try to analyze the show from more of a plot and structure perspective, as opposed to trying to analyze it to find out if maybe it could be classified as fascist and to address the discussion around people making that accusation or defending the show from that accusation. In the future I actually do think it would be interesting to do a project where I focus on the material purely as like a story and not like in terms of implications either historical or political or at least don't make those the main focal point. Because I think there is a lot of stuff to say about attack on titan that I definitely was unable to say or didn't get into the territory of talking about. Even though I do think I was adding pretty completely to the area of the discussion that I was trying to address. Thanks for checking out the video in any case.

[@donovanmiller9380]

I agree with the complaints here. It was an interesting video to watch, and I appreciate the historical context relevant to the story. If you want more literary analysis of aot, Watch kotoro's mystery shack's analysis series. He does a lot more literary analysis relevant to the themes of the story.

[@artemis3964]

Mystery shack mentioned raahhhhhhh🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@outeremissary4438]

The AMV is absolutely incredible. Fantastic video overall, loved the attention to historical context and expanding far beyond what I had seen be a part of English language discourses about the series, but god that ending was so much more than I could have dreamed lmao

[@AManOfManyCats]

@outeremissary4438 Im very glad you enjoyed the amv XD I wasn't really sure who'd make it to the end but I wanted to do something fun and kinda classic internet weeb lol

[@ropesdiscussions3052]

I'm very glad you made this video. I only recently finished the series and I wanted to share my thoughts on it but now I don't have to. You put in work that I wouldn't have.

[@GrayCatbird1]

Well, FD has sent his rabid followers along. The fascist aspects of Attack on Titan and how they’re handled have always been a point of fascination for me. My personal thesis up to now has been that Attack on Titan is what an antifascist/antiwar story written by a fascist (sympathizer) would look like. I’ve yet to watch your video, hopefully I get to sit down to do so very soon

[@AManOfManyCats]

I think that the author definitely holds a lot of contradictions in their mind. Like ultimately at the end of the day my personal impression is that they are a pretty far right leaning kind of guy. But I think that even people like that and I guess on a broader sense.Most of us in general grew up in a pretty liberal ethos (Like not like a liberal in the american political sense but liberal in the more traditional sense) And like that liberal ethos clashes with Fascist and right-wing assumptions so you get a lot of convoluted stuff out of people.. So my guess is there probably is something like that going on with the author even if he is more right leaning like I think. And like I think that's present in previous work too like I tried to talk a bit about it occurring in Saka No Ue No Kumo, Like the show has a really human element in spite of being very prowar. It's that convoluted message cropping up.

[@FDSignifire]

That's actually a pretty good summary

[@vexorian]

​@@AManOfManyCatsI don't even think "anti-war fascist" is that much of a contradiction. Of course Fascists can be anti war. Fascists are good at finding problems to complain about. The difference is that a fascist's view of war is to blame it on the othered groups and a fascist's solution to war is to propose a final solution. Eg: This is how some support of Israel's current approach to Palestine is manifesting.

[@mr.jayjay2401]

​@@vexorian💯

[@Sh1ranu1]

final thoughts?

[@mra4521]

1:13:58 now I am reminded of Chris Hayes’s essay that was illustrated by The Nib: “The Good War on Terror”, which is about all the pop historical revisionism the USA did about WWII through stuff like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan in the 1990s and 2000s.

[@asmodeus2695]

I remember watching aot when it came out as a 12/13yo and loving the show as it helped me reintroduce myself with anime and was a bonding activity with an older brother in a foster home i was in at the time. After season 1 finished i didn't really engage with it again for a couple years until i saw a few posts online about isayama's political leanings and decided to read what was available of the manga at the time. Iirc it was around the time where they had just gotten outside and the history of the eldians was first being introduced, and even with no real understanding of the history of japan and the parallels it was actually drawing upon when reading it (i didn't end up learning that until a few years later when i was looking into analysis on atla) with the author in mind it felt impossible to read in a way that didn't feel like a fascist call to arms. And to be honest thats the part that always confused me about the discussion around aot. Clearly the work wants you to to engage with it meaningfully else it wouldn't spend so much time on its discussion of human nature and would just be a gorefest/horror, and if you do even with only a western focused understanding of fascism the parallels between the messaging of aot and early n*zi rhetoric pre ww2 are striking. great vid btw can't wait to see what else comes from you!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I really agree with what you're saying about the work really wanting to be engaged with and that was something that stood out so hard core to me when I started reading the manga and watching the show! Like there is panel after panel of very serious discussion that is completely directed at the reader and it blew my mind that a lot of people We'rent talking about the work from that perspective. It definitely felt like an intentional unwillingness to engage with the work which I guess.I understand to a large to agree even if I don't agree with it like I kind of get why people might treat media that way.

[@NeverDie-q4w]

Wow, what an absolutely amazing video! I really appreciate the effort added to stress the creator being a conciouss actor in spite of whether he wrote AoT with the intent of it being fascistic. As a fan of manga I really think one of the most frustrating aspects of online engagement is the infantilization and patronizing of Japanese authors by a sizeable amount of fans (cough cough Trash taste cough) of thinking that theyre just making Manga and anime without any real thought or agenda, so I think this video greatly helps put into context that for some people! Thank you for your hard work! I cant wait to see more from you if you make more!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I'm really glad that you liked the video! Thank you for taking all the time to watch It too.Because it did end up being rather long XD

[@杉乃かふん]

Machiyama, whom Isayama calls his mentor, "I go on Twitter as a radical leftist." I would have liked to see Isayama talk about his beloved Machiyama rather than the model of Akiyama and Erwin. As a Korean, this issue is much more serious.

[@gaijinwilly]

Love the vid man! I think you might have done your research aha. Thanks Unc for pushing out such a great video

[@AManOfManyCats]

I had to sit down for quite a long time on this one. Many a book and many a google search XD I am very grateful to FD for helping to promote the video because youtube is kind of difficult to navigate and to get your voice out on. And like I felt like I really had something to say on this one.

[@gaijinwilly]

I’m genuinely glad to find a thoughtful video on such a tough and divisive piece of media. Sending y’all nothing but the best of vibes dude!

[@AManOfManyCats]

@gaijinwilly Well, thank you so much! I am really glad that you are enjoying it!

[@DerAndres]

It’s such a weird experience as a half korean living in germany watching AoT and seeing this Video. I remember that my mother talked about the atrocities done by japan in korea, because her mother witnessed them. At the same time I remember that we used to watch anime nevertheless. In german schools you obviously have an extensive part of history class about WWII and Nazi Germany, but out of personal interest I always loved researching about history on my own as well. I‘ve also watched and read all of AoT over the years that it came out. I really appreciate the load of work you have done and thank you sincerely for your contribution to the discourse surrounding AoT. I‘ve been part of numerous discord calls of friends and friends of friends with very strong opinions. I wholeheartedly believe that all discussions that are so heavily opinionated and about topics like politics, history, etc. would (obviously) benefit tons if they did a fraction of the amount of research displayed by your Video. Thank you so much for this Video, i had an absolute blast watching and learning from it!

[@LoopyDreamz775]

Love this video, I’m glad more people are talking about AOT and the many…let’s just say problematic elements, I also really love the clarification of who the eldians truly represent near the end and who Erwin represents, Cause at the back of my head I always knew but wasn’t 100 percent sure now I know. Tho I really hoped you would have touched on the Armin and eren scene near the end of the show, cause to me that was honestly what got me down the “Is AOT facist” rabbit hole, that was a Massive WTF moment for me personally. “Hey Eren I know you just G cided half of the population but I just wanted to say I forgive you honey bunch 🥹” Like whoa? You can say that’s Armin being a sweet little Christian boy but that was to me out of Armins character and it felt like someone was speaking through him.

[@EleiyaUmei]

I feel like there's a pattern of main characters forgiving people close to them for "G ciding" in Japanese media... (At least I saw it happen in the game franchise Hakuouki which is a revisionist romance situated around the end of the shogunate).

[@weprywepry]

This is definitely the best analysis of AOT that I've seen and has helped me to rethink a lot of aspects of the show. Of course I don't agree with everything you say, but I absolutely agree with your conclusion. The discourse surrounding this show is nothing short of bizarre, not to mention lacking in the academic backgrounds required to make informed and cogent arguments about such sensitive material. I'm working on my own project about analyzing AOT as it relates to Judaism and I certainly plan on citing my sources. It doesn't sound like AOT holds your interest as much as it does mine, but nevertheless I appreciate your efforts!

[@aruraven]

Wish I could like this twice for all the work, that ending and the Touhou jazz. Good job!

[@AManOfManyCats]

Really glad that you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the comment it all helps! I'm also glad that you liked the music.It took me a little while to put together the right tracks , but I think I got the vibe I wanted 🙂

[@MourningCoffeeMusic]

“The enemy from within” comes to mind..

[@TehAxelius]

Thanks for this video. I fell off the AoT train pretty early and after finding out about the author's twitter opinions I never cared to revisit it, even as people would say "I don't think it is fascist", often those who had barely any interest in Japanese society or history outside of anime itself. I contemplated trying it again, but also knowing that my own knowledge of Japanese Revisionism wouldn't be enough to properly engage with it. Now, I actually might, as a piece of political media.

[@JulianDanzerHAL9001]

29:50 set in an alternate early 20th century its actually a rather peaceful ending portraying a rather hopeful time that many cahracters can live out their lives in I mean there are wars right now to any story set in the 1920s right now is the future you can try to amke the future as peaceful as possible for as many people as possible but clearly no hero in the past has somehow managed to ensure world peace forever or else there would be no wars and people who claimed to be such a hero have tended to do more harm than good

[@D-A-K]

It's wild how, even as someone trained in the study of history, the Rommel propaganda still got stuck in my brain at a subconscious level. I ften thought of him as like a gentleman soldier, somehow detached from the atrocities he and his country committed. Propaganda is powerful stuff.

[@AManOfManyCats]

@D-A-K There are a ton of myths surrounding the second World War and this is not unique to the second World War or any side of the war. Like Ill say this a lot probably in future videos, but people are storytellers and like we deal in myths a lot of the time because we need a simple and sometimes a unifying story. And like Rommels mythology is shaped during the war, Both by the nazi and by the British. But importantly after the war there's a ton of integration that has to be done with West Germany into the budding nato alliance and the rising cold war west. Rommel the "gentleman" and the idea of the " Honorable german officer who's just like all of us on the allied side only he fought for the nazis because of some cruel twist of historical fate" are big helper myths in that story. This is how you get a lot of the writings that come directly from nazi generals characterizing the war particularly in the east from their perspective. Many of these guys are writing because they want to be seeing as or used as some kind of useful advisor against the USSR. (You've probably seen some of these writings floating around) I grew up with a ton of these myths too. Like as I became interested in history as an adult I've had to do tons of reading to get a better picture. And I'm sure you know, since you've gone to school for history like there's always debate and there's always further study and we're always refining our techniques to understand the past better. Kinda like how modern scholarship has destroyed the lost cause myth. Yet the lost cause is still hotly debated online, because as you say propaganda is powerful and a lotta the time we don't really think of how deep myth is in our basic forms of communication. Thanks so much for watching the video!

[@clayongunzelle9555]

All of Erwin's so called heroic acts were completely undermined by his final discussion with Levi. He wasn't a hero fighting for humanity he was a selfish man fighting to find answers to the questions that he had and it's not until Levi tell him to give up on his own dreams that he does his final charge which was probably the only heroic things he did.

[@Dave102693]

And that’s why he died be for having is questions answered

[@Human-pj4md]

Exactly. The problem of violence and kill or be killed is certainly presented in AoT, but the way out is also explained. Everyone is a slave to something, and the only way to be free and break the cycle of violence and war is to give up on one's own dreams and die. Erwin did it at his end and gained some redemption. Levi understood this so he let Erwin go, but Floch couldn't understand so he perpetuated the hatred. Armin was able to let go of his dream, and Levi saw the good in Armin, so Armin was saved. Eren couldn't let go, so his worst tendencies destroyed everything until his friends could stop him. Mikasa's dream was a life protecting Eren, but she had to go even further than Armin by killing Eren herself. Mikasa gets to live until old age, and Paradis(which couldn't let go of Floch's ways) gets destroyed after her death. They even show a child with a pet dog in the final frames, so AoT is not a hopeless story.

[@clayongunzelle9555]

@@Human-pj4md the maker of this video doesn't understand this, they are just reaching just to make their point while ignoring important facts in the story

[@Human-pj4md]

@@clayongunzelle9555 The video maker seems to specialize in learning history, and from his other comments he doesn't seem used to analyzing the story itself. I think he mostly just sees how the story references real world events, people, and ideas, but he doesn't go more than surface level with analyzing how the ideas are used in the story, and he doesn't even seem to pick up on ideas that don't have an obvious historical basis. He's missing a lot of the story because he only focused on the historical references.

[@GazpachoSoupDuJour]

A remarkable achievement, to cover so much ground and still open the door to further discussion! I felt AoT's fascism in a scene rather late in the series where Eren lays out his philosophy of freedom as inherently exclusionary and derides Mikasa as inferior for her Ackerman heritage. It says a lot to the strength of this video that I come away from it not disappointed that this wasn't explicitly covered, but actively encouraged to do further research and cover this aspect myself.

[@AManOfManyCats]

There's definitely a lot more room in the conversation.For more topics and more voices and i'm just happy that I was able to contribute something to that because I felt like I had a few things to say that were kind of new or at least maybe would offer some perspective that hadn't been too well trodden. I'm definitely looking forward to more discussion about the series going forward!

[@Human-pj4md]

Attack on Titan is my favorite show. I guess you pointed out how it resembles some bad things, but I'm not convinced it actually is meant to support the bad things associated with what some aspects might resemble. The idea that everyone is a slave to something, and one must give up on their dreams and die were not discussed in your video, and they were my main takaway from the show. Eren is the one who gave in to the evil which by your analysis should be related to fascism, but Eren was the final enemy in the show. Attack on Titan might present the real temptation fascism is to some people, but ultimately the ones who give in to that violence and dispair are the villains ofthe story, while Armin and the alliance make peace, and Mikasa has to kill Eren because of him giving in to his violent tendencies. If eldia is truely analogous to emperial Japan, then AoT shows how evil imperial Japan was, as it's fairly clear those war crimes actually happened. The idea of false history in AoT is mostly falsities that covered up the evil of eldia, and the circumstances of the renunciation of war.

[@MoonSystem-They-It]

As someone who hasn't seen AOT, but is kinda interested, I can't wait to dive into this!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I really hope you find it interesting, took me quite a min to put together lol

[@ShadowTheHedgehog_05]

I highly recommend it, it's the game of thrones of anime especially cause of how the ending was sadly handled If you can ignore how terribly the final arc was handled then you could hopefully get the same messages I did from it and enjoy it for what it was

[@Iowa2006]

@@ShadowTheHedgehog_05 I enjoy the idea of making a thing out of 'it's the Game of Thrones of X, right down the horribly mangled ending that practically ruins the whole thing"

[@Soulkinthehuman]

​@@ShadowTheHedgehog_05 I gotta disagree. I thought the ending was very nice, but had some flaws.

[@abhayb.6289]

Great video! Well done thanks for the hard work

[@AManOfManyCats]

@@abhayb.6289 Very glad you liked it!

[@Gibilloarrate]

My God this is exactly what I was looking for, that connections from Schmidt to the nothingness. Thank you very much, if you hadn't make this video I should have to make it

[@AManOfManyCats]

I had the exact samd feelings going in XD I was like "I need to make a video on this!" Very glad you enjoyed it!

[@Gibilloarrate]

@@AManOfManyCats really loved your takes, which go beyond the references, specially all the paralels with the Eldians in other countries. Ia always thought it was an antisemitic reference (a family of Eldians secretly controls the antiEldians LOLOL) Sincerely, for me the author feels like a nationalist with a los of fascist sincere believings that wishes that the world wasn't like that, and that's why the text is sometimes confusing, with its pacifism. It's even sad For me the reveal of the themes in the last season was devastating, previously I could ignore the red flags... my only hope now is that the One Piece isn't the comeback of an empire or something like that. I hope not, but one never knows

[@nadroq6320]

I was one of those people that was uncomfortable about the fascist reading of Attack on Titan, I wanted to believe that the series is actually antifascist. But not even 30 minutes into the video I gave up, I didn't know about the heavy implications about Erwin and the militar nazi

[@AManOfManyCats]

I think a lotta people got something positive out of the show, which is ultimately I think a reflection of the fact that most people are not into fascism and don't like it. I think the series has a lot of dissonance and conflicting messages which makes it easy to read in stuff from either side of the argument and I imagine the author himself is kinda confused politically and doesn't have a great exposure to history.

[@ShadowTheHedgehog_05]

Same here man. I guess I'm happy I could have loved it for years because of the themes and messages I took in and how it shaped my views for the better, I'm happy I also could get educated on all this as well. FMAB replaced AOT on my "best pieces of media ever!1!1!" list cause it's really similar to AOT but the MC didn't become an edgelord and said "HELL NAH" and fought for humanity and actually united the world together to fight ignorance and hate, AManOfManyCats should cover Fullmetal Alchemist one day

[@gigabit6226]

@@ShadowTheHedgehog_05 I think the main difference between FMAB and AOT is that AOT is basically a cautionary tale. Even though AOT had a bleak ending where the main character is impossible to forgive, I found the message for fighting against hate equally powerful.

[@lynesaurus]

Just finished the Erwin section and to be honest, this makes absolutely no sense. Did you just equate Erwin Rommel and Erwin Smith because their first names are "Erwin"? Because that's what it sounds like. You described what Rommel did in the war, then say how right propaganda displays him as a "badass". You then use that as evidence that Erwin Smith is a metaphor for Erwin Rommel because Erwin Smith is also portrayed as a "badass". Sorry, but that is such a dumb equivalence. Narratively, the characters in AoT at this point in the story are trying to find the truth in the world, and what better character to lead them than Erwin Smith, the man whose dream it is to do so. This is the core of his character and is also the source of his flaws; that he would sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve this. With that being said, in what way is this character supposed to be Erwin Rommel? If we want to take Isayama's thoughts on this character, he says that Erwin Smith was inspired by Captain America, a fictional character known for beating up the Nazis. This is why I can't take the "wall 3" arguments seriously. You have to perform immense mental gymnastics to even make a point. I tried giving this video a chance, but I just can't take it anymore when videos like this are constantly making false equivalences and uses that equivalence as a basis for their arguments.

[@AManOfManyCats]

So did you look at the visual aids? Smith and Rommel share a lot, they are both sons of a teacher, allegedly great masters of the strategy and tactics specifically of mobile warfare, tho the real Rommel did not coup Hitler both Smith and Rommel are portrayed as doing a coup... But additionally, when one googles Smith's birthday one will note its listed as oct 14... which is Rommels date of death... These are all highly specific and demonstrate authorial intent.. Additionally they share a very very similar face structure and overall appearance. (More so than any Ive seen of watchmen characters or cpt america, tho im no watchman or marvel expert) But as I tired to stress in the audio part of the video, Smith is a near perfect animated avatar of the mythologized version of Rommel that was created by himself and the nazi party and adopted and rifted on by many others during and importantly post war... I hope this helps clarify a few things, I encourage you to rewatch the video as I think Rommel pairs very well with the authors very ahistorical understanding of another leader in the series Pixis aka Akiyama Yoshifuru..

[@alie0330]

​@@AManOfManyCats I dont't know man I give it a strong maybe. I think the oct 14 is strong evidence, but I don't see the likeness. I don't think it should be surprising that the character who represents an idealized commander is similar to real life idealizations of a commander. I don't think its as a strong as a 1-1 as it is with Pixis where its more obvious he is glorifying Yoshifuru, while I think claiming Erwin represents a glorification of Rommel is inaccurate. My guess would be that Isayama based him on Rommel in some earlier draft and made changes over time. Maybe Isayama is just ignorant enough he failed to make a accurate depiction of rommel,

[@nuna632]

i once read in a thread abt aot on reddit: "to a certain extent AoT's weird conflicted ending is the author trying and failing to work through the appeal that genocidal ethnonationalism has for him"' and i think this is one of the truest words ever lol

[@recursiveslacker7730]

That’s on the mark. He would reject any explicitly fascist government you put in front of him due to his moral compass, but is resigned to the perceived truthfulness of fascism’s underlying assumptions. It’s a work created from despair, in a way.

[@kaisontoro9665]

This was an absolute banger of a first video

[@phatandlazycow9284]

Excellent work, looking forward to listening to what you make next

[@hikupptheoverthinker]

*hearing about Yoshinori Me-Holy fuck, this dude is real!? Good lord

[@AManOfManyCats]

He's right , he's like a fucking cartoon character XD It's like apart from the fact that he is a character in his own Manga he's like a goddamn cartoon character..

[@hikupptheoverthinker]

This is why, "The truth is stranger than fiction", holds so much weight, because like... people are really like this. A lot of people see certain characters in fiction as only being able to exist in fiction, but they all come from something real. Work food service for a few months and it becomes clear as day. Great video.

[@NatsumeS9seki]

Hello, I am currently halfway through your video, and I think it is one of (if not the) best essay made on the topic! Back in 2023 I wrote a master thesis on the themes of trauma and memory in AoT, and I would have killed to have access to sources like your documentary. I am really looking forward to see which conclusions you reach at the end of it, specifically because you have touched on a lot of topics I have also discussed (and we also cite the same sources: I had to comment as soon as I saw you referenced "Forgiving the Culprits"). I can already tell we might disagree slightly on a few notes, but that is what makes a good dialogue on a subject. Great job for real, thank you for this video essay! I hope we could discuss it in some way or form one day.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Wow that really means a lot and is some very high praise.If you would compare me to masters thesis work 🙂 Obviously I drew from people's academic work quite heavily! I really hope you enjoy the end of the video even if we don't reach the same conclusions. I like to think that I'm helping to present some stuff that hasn't been talked about as much or maybe not seen by as many people. Because the discussion just seemed very lacking to me.

[@NatsumeS9seki]

@@AManOfManyCats The work you have done certainly looks comparable to me, both as far as the effort you have put in and the quality of your findings are concerned 😊Still have about 1hr to go, but the research for the Japanese sociocultural background you have carried out seems quite on point to me; and it is true that AoT really adheres to some of the principles of revisionism... although I am of the opinion that the series leans more towards the "cautionary tale" perspective towards the end, either because it really believes in it or because it wants to cover up some spicy controversies. I do believe, however, that the author who started writing in 2009 and the one who finished doing so in 2021 (and beyond with the anime) are somewhat different people; in my opinion, the way the series approaches the topic of fascism or nationalism has changed together with its author's stance about it. I can already tell you the video is golden, regardless of your interpretation (which is still precious, you're already making me think about stuff I hadn't thought about, that's what literary criticism should do imo)! Discussion on media is not about who's right and who's not, since there's no such thing. The main problem with the discourse surrounding AoT is precisely this, given that everyone just wants to shout louder than the other party and the conversation about it remains quite shallow as a result. To me, you're surely doing the exact opposite. Keep up the good ass work. If I write again about the series, I'll make sure to cite you 😝 Also, you might want to check out Apocalypse in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction by Motoko Tanaka as a source if you wanna keep doing stuff about anime! Incredible overview of the modern and contemporary Japanese sociocultural landscape

[@NCRonrad]

Solid essay and documentary critique 📚

[@ramenonegaishimasu]

What a great fucking video dude well done. This might be my favorite video on Attack on Titan from now on!! Thoroughly insightful!

[@AManOfManyCats]

Very glad that you liked the video I definitely put a lot of myself into making it so hearing that people enjoyed.It is extremely gratifying ❤

[@Ghostfacee_619]

Man I genuinely expected to see more videos on the channel with how well edited this video is. If this video is your first time, then welcome to yt. If you plan on posting more videos, I will glady sub and watch them. Expert analysis of text and sub text as well lending to the videos long but easily digestible length. Genuinely good work. I look forward to more from you.

[@AManOfManyCats]

I got other things cooking up right now. I need to get my sound set up figured out. I have made KZbin stuff before, but it's all just like goofy things talking about the ice in fire book series. So this was my chance to get to do a serious project that I wanted to put a little more into.

[@Dan_Roland]

Just finished part 1 and idk I wanted a stronger case beyond both men having the same name and rank. Maybe this is just how I interpret the show but I disagree that Erwin’s portrayed how Nazi propaganda portrayed irl Erwin. AoT Erwin is made a little sympathetic in the beginning but the Annie capture operation makes it clear he’s insane and willing to sacrifice civilians to achieve his ends. He shows incredible valor and intellect but the horrific consequences of his actions are always shown, S4 Flock being a big one I’m sure you delve into later.

[@TheAngryMontage]

and the show later literally portrays him as a "devil" and criticizes him (he even admits it himself..)

[@hankkingofmischief4372]

@@TheAngryMontageand the show also says that being a devil is a necessary and good thing

[@jamesdempsey1330]

20k views, 900 subs, THAT subject, hooboy. Strapping in to check it out.

[@jamesdempsey1330]

Yeah, that was.... Pretty goddamn definitive. Wow. I never really knew about Manchuria.

[@AManOfManyCats]

@jamesdempsey1330 It definitely was a revelation for me to read about. Like when I was doing the research.I had this feeling that I was going to discover this. But I had never read about the repatriation of japanese colonists in any sort of real detail. And so like I knew repatriation happened but I didn't really know the details. And these are the kind of details that would be taught in, for example, a Japanese History class in Japan.But probably wouldn't be taught in like a normal american high school history course. And like I think we all have heard of the interned japanese in america, But. I had not personally heard the story of many of those in Manchuria. So again.Once I started to dig into it I really became convinced that there was a serious historical connection here and that the author was commenting on something more than just European history.

[@jamesdempsey1330]

@AManOfManyCats but also. How was there EVER any meaningful debate about whether or not this is a fascist show? Like, there's complications and degrees and informed-by-the-worldview nonsense you can trot out. But when you build a bunch of your prominent cast that way it kind of stops being a question of if and merely a matter of degree. Like. The things you're laying out in the video seem like something any serious ww2 history nerd should have been shouting into the debate back when the show was first airing. It's amazing.

[@toxin4609]

52:23 using the “We get out from this forest” panel is very strange to me. You imply it’s an example of “fight, keep moving forward, kill or be killed” when it’s the exact opposite in the context of the story. It’s a callback to when Sasha’s father chose forgiveness and understanding, rather than choosing to kill Gabi when he learned the truth behind Sasha’s death. His words are very clearly meant to symbolize that people should learn to put aside their hatred for one another and children shouldn’t have to bear the weight of those sins, not that people should keep fighting their enemies.

[@kabirarya5381]

I disagree a lot with this video, which is one of the many reasons I feel it's wrong. Even during the ending, when Paradis is taken over by the jaegerists and becomes a fascist state, you see it use many of eren's statements which were akin to kill or killed, and this is quite obviously portrayed as bad, Sasha's whole family seems to disappointingly look at the paradis forces. there are so many times that the story of AOT offers other perspectives to kill or be killed it's astounding that this is a take away, you see it as early on as marlo saying to reiner and berthodlt "we haven't even talked yet", to yuri saying to kenny about how the hate between them melted away when he bowed to him and actually tried to understand.

[@toxin4609]

⁠@@kabirarya5381Yeah, I think coming out of AOT thinking Eren’s words are supposed to be the thesis is a very shallow interpretation. One thing that bothers me about this analysis is that it suffers from the same problems as Lost Future’s attack on titan video (which talks about the same thing) where he presents a lot of historical context but when it comes to actually analyzing the series in relation to that, the points lack any real substance or are just flat out inaccurate. Like saying Erwin is portrayed as an unambiguous good guy when he's responsible for a lot of civilian casualties in s1 and lead so many people to their deaths in pursuit of his own selfish dream. he even says he cared more about proving his father right than humanity’s survival. He also makes another mistake Lost Futures did by cutting Mikasa’s “this world is cruel, but it's also beautiful” motto to just the parts that feature “this world is cruel”, it feels like a dishonest and deliberate exclusion.

[@giornogiovannax4124]

bro made a freaking magnum opus of a video eessay before hitting the 2k sub count!!!

[@AManOfManyCats]

I had a few things I felt like I could say and then I hit the research part and it became a larger thing than I thought XD Workin on somethin rn to hopefully keep things rolling. Major thanks to FD tho, because he really brought in all the exposure.

[@giornogiovannax4124]

@@AManOfManyCats who;s FD?

[@AManOfManyCats]

@@giornogiovannax4124 FD Signifier, he's a big tuber here and someone I'd watched for a minute. He does cool stuff if youre into video essays.

[@syvxnico]

Incredibly well done video essay!! I learned a hell of a lot

[@AManOfManyCats]

Really happy you liked it! And im glad you were able to get some new info out of it!

[@BumroyV2]

This is a fantastic video, and I'm excited to see more from you in the future. I do have to say that some of the filters you applied are quite aggressive. The old-time film aesthetic in particular has this pulsing flash to it that could probably affect those woth sensitivity to flashing lights. I don’t have that, and it still made my head hurt a bit. Just something to keep in mind going forward.

[@AManOfManyCats]

Yeah, I'll probably try to play around with some of that stuff in the Future It was very difficult to get past the youtube copyright bots. And so I had to go a little bit hard on some of that stuff. And so I had to go a little bit hard on some of that stuff. If I'm covering topics in the future, though we're I'm not having to use so many potentially copyrighted clips.I think it'll be a lot easier of a time. When I went to upload the video I had to spend a whole week uploading it and editing it XD It was a minor nightmare

[@Adisa_CriticOwl]

I'm very conflicted regarding the real people parallels you explained in this video. Before, I thought that as you explain, the author had a fascist view of the world (humans suck, the only choice is to fight, enemy/friend) but at the same time thinks this is tragic, rather than idolising it as fascists tend to do. This is a bit controversial because in the earlier seasons the army is definitely shown as overall a positive force, with what seems to me a very 180 turn in the final season. But it is worth noting also that while Eren is the protagonist, the secondary protagonist Armin which acts as a narrator and takes the center stage at the very end, is not a fighter at heart and has a very much more positive outlook on the world, and though the anime might sometimes portray this as naive it does at the end (in my opinion) embrace it as the only way to truly move forwards - towards peace. Sorry for the long comment, I have many more things to say, but I'm thinking it over. I do think that for me, much of the meaning of the anime is informed by the ending - which I see as condemning the cycle of hatred and push for peace and diplomacy, though with an undertone of futility in the very end. Unfortunately, the ending has not been interpreted by everyone in this way, and maybe they are right and I'm projecting my own vision (which is everything but fascist) on it. I think the last conversation between Armin and Eren is very explicit on the author's developing feelings on the whole topic, especially about Eren self-diagnosing with being an idiot, and that's why he did what he did. He is an idiot that believed the only way to be at peace was to kill all the enemies to protect his friends. That's definitely an apologetic depiction of fascism, but still to an extent self aware of the fact that it is wrong and stupid.