Isekai and Lesser Nobility

There were a lot more layers to the Feudal Class system then people realize.  Something like Game of Thrones tends to focus on the Royal Families and those that would be equivalents to Prince or Arch-Dukes or maybe even Dukes.  

But below them are ranks like Marquess and Count/Earl which are often the titles claimed by those Pseudo Nobles of certain forgotten genres of 19th Century literature I've talked about before, as well as Vampires.  But further below them are ranks like Vicount, Baron and Baronet.  So it eventually gets to the point where depending on how wealthy or important the land you hold Peerage over is, holding that title may not actually make you anything more then the most famous person in your local area.

So I actually find it interesting that there is a subgenre of Isekai and Quasi-Isekai where the protagonist is born (or reborn) into one of these lesser Noble families.  My first exposure to this was the 8th Son show, but then I noticed it was a big part of Jobless Reincarnation as well as The Hidden Dungeon only I can Enter.  In that latter show just the difference between Baronet and Baron is treated as really significant to a degree I find kind of funny.

In Marxist terms I guess these kinds of Nobles were kind of the Feudal equivalent of the Petite bourgeoisie.  People who are nominally by the most technical definition part of the ruling or owning class, but Marx still considered their class interests ultimately aligned with the Proletariat even if they don't realize it.

I don't have anything profound to say about it, but it's interesting and maybe something Leftist Anime Fans more well read then I am should consider looking deeper into what they have to say about Class.

Economic Revolutions in Isekai

Anime that are talked about as being about Economics in all genres tend to be the ones that seem the most Pro-Capitalist, largely because Market Liberals Get-Keep who gets to be considered an Economist.  The Anime that are the most Anti-Capitalist don't really get into the actual weeds of Economics, Capitalism is just a Machine that people feel very angry emotions in opposition to.

But this can often feel the most pronounced in Isekai and other Fantasy Anime of this Isekai era.  Whether it's the nation building Isekai like Realist Hero or the Japanese Gordon Gekko character of High School Prodigies, or just the unforeseen consequence of starting a small business like in Ascendence of a Bookworm.  The notion that introducing Capitalism into a Feudalist Society is a necessary part of "Modernizing" it is a recurring theme.

And the thing is it's a theme a lot of Leftists aren't even fully prepared to disagree with, because the Marxist Analysis of History also maintains the assumption that Capitalism was a necessary improvement over Feudalism.

Now I have come to grow suspicious of the kinds of Socialists who think Capitalism is objectively worse then Feudalism because certain reactionary objections to Capitalism often get wrapped up into such narratives.  The question of which is worse or better between those two Class Based modes of productions doesn't really have a simple answer and is besides the point because the goal should be to make something new.

What I have come to really object to about the Marxist analysis of history is the assumption that you can't go right from Feudalism to Communism, that Capitalism needs to come first for Industrialization and so forth.  Sometimes people argue the failures of the Bolshevik Revolution came down to trying to apply a Marxist approach to Socialism in a society that hadn't been Capitalist yet.  But the thing is the Bolsheviks were operating under the assumption that they had to do Capitalism first, they were simply trying to Speed Run it, and the Mensheviks would have mostly been the same.

I believe the Socialist Revolutionary Party are the faction that should have won the Russian Revolution because they had ideas for how to truly make a Communist Society out of Tsarist Russia without needing to do rapid rushed industrializing first.

There were also Communist theorists and philosophers well before there were Liberal/Capitalist ones, Communist Revolution was proposed at the height of Feudalism by John Ball.  In fact Communism is a truly Ancient idea thanks to Zeno's Republic which was a response to Plato's Republic and Laws whose ideas were basically where Feudalism came from.

So I'd really like for a change to see an Isekai where the modern visitor to a still Feudalist Fantasy world leads it directly to Communism with no Capitalization necessary.

Update October 2024: I recently learned about William Morris a Victorina Era English Marxist who was also a Medvialist and wrote some Proto-Fantasy stories that influenced Tolkien.  Maybe his works could provide good inspiration for what I'd like to see.

Batman 66 WAS Bad Actually (but not for the reason you think).

The problem is that for a few decades everyone had the wrong understanding of why it was Bad.

For the last decade or so internet discourse about Batman 66 has been about defending it because it's okay to have Batman stories that are fun and goofy and not so Dark, and I agree with that.  The problem is from my point of view there is no darker take on Batman then Batman 66.

Chuck Dixon who was born in 1954 recounted once on the playground when the show started saying in reference to it "that's not my Batman"  An eleven or twelve year old Batman fan in 1966 before any truly Dark Batman stories ever existed (even those early Kane and Finger stories are not what you've been told they are) would not have been saying this on the grounds that the show isn't dark and edgy enough for him.

Saying the show was faithful to the Comics of it's time seems justifiable on paper at first when you narrow down "it's time" to being not the whole Silver Age but the Jules Swartz era that started in 64.  The problem is a specific aspect of the tone.

You see Silver Age Comics could often be goofy and silly and dumb, and were often I think self aware of how goofy and silly and dumb they were.  But the core premise of the characters themselves was never the butt of the joke.  They were sincere, as were the Schumacher Batman films, and the Brave and The Bold Cartoon and the Justice League Trapped in Time animated movie, there was a core emotional resonance they each took seriously just like my favorite goofy and silly and dumb Anime or The Princess Bride.

The 66 Batman show was inspired by William Dosier and his friends laughing at the 40s Batman serials, not laughing with them.  They were not an affectionate parody of the comics but a heartless mockery of them.

A Batman who's response to watching someone die is to make a lame pun is far more of a cynical deconstruction of the character then any dark and edgy stories where he kills, because most of those take the concept of Batman killing seriously and have something to say about it, the message in Batman V Superman is that Batman should not kill, the message in Batman 66 is "who cares it's a dumb premise you shouldn't take seriously" they never even consistently kept track of it's Batman's attitude towards a criminal dying.

But people of Dixon's generation who didn't read the Comics or weren't as savvy to all this developed Nostalgia for it without actually understanding what it was doing as did younger generations watching the reruns.  And then as the fans who resented the show wound up getting what they wanted from Bronze Age and Post-Crisis alternatives that were visually Darker at the same time they slowly forgot the real reason Batman 66 was offensive.  

Then came the backlash to the relentlessly Dark DC stuff of the post New52 era lead by youtubers who only see cynicism and nihilism in scenes that are poorly lite with blood and scowling everywhere and so to them Batman 66 must be a happy optimistic Batman because it has bright shiny colors and characters who smile.

Kuudere are Stoics?

I’m pretty usual among modern people interested in Ancient Stoic Philosophy in that I’m mainly interested in their Metaphysics and in the Political Philosophy of Zeno’s Republic (which later Roman Stoics disowned) rather than what it means to live like a Stoic.

But as is often the case with me, the thoughts I do have on the subject relate to Anime.

First however I need to comment on how the casual understanding of a Stoic Demeanor causes Stoicism to be misunderstood.  Stoicism isn’t about having no emotions or suppressing them.  It’s simply about having them under control, trying not to make emotionally impulsive decisions, or in debates to not make arguments that are emotional rather than logical.  

The Roman Stoics I don’t like probably would agree with what Ben Shapiro means by “fact don’t care about your feelings”, but Zeno Stoics would not, they would understand that Gender is based on more than just your sex organs, as would Paul based on Galatians 3.

One of the articles in Stoicism in Early Christianity argues that the very Emotional Characterization of Jesus in The Fourth Gospel doesn’t conflict with a Stoic reading of The New Testament but supports it.

And so in that context we come to my thesis that some Kuudere Anime characters are the true Stoics of modern popular fiction.

Kuudere is mainly a description of a character’s demeanor (which is where the Stoic comparison begins, all Kuudere are Stoic in that casual sense) and so can refer to a variety of different kinds of characters.  Some I suppose are the bad misunderstanding of Stoicism I referred to above, some are really Rei Ayanami clones, and some just come off this way because they’re Introverts.  And like Tsundere it seems to have originally referred more to the specific character journey of some Visual Novel Love Interests, being at first cold and seemingly indifferent to the protagonist as opposed to the hostility of the Tsundere.

But the Kuudere characters I’m thinking of when I refer to myself as a real life Kuudere are ones who are not unemotional or suppressing their emotions but are in fact entirely motivated by their emotional desires, just in a particularly calculated way.  For some their Tragic Flaw is their tendency to place the emotional needs of their loved ones ahead of their own.

To be trendy I think I’ll mention first the most recent addition to the Anime Kuudere canon, Misuzu Gondou of Tomo-chan is A Girl.  She’s the reason I watched the show, the actual main couple bugs me.  She’s the smartest character in the show, but spends much of the latter part questioning herself.  She’s also just really fun to watch.

Shizuku Sangou from Kampfer is fun in how she’s perhaps the least susceptible to the Tragic Flaw I mentioned above.  She decides she wants the protagonist pretty quickly and does not hesitate to act on it.  But she’s also the one most motivated to advance the plot because of her past girlfriend who died.

Ayase Kishimoto from Chaos;HEad is perhaps the closest Anime character to my Christian Stoicism thesis.  She is a fan of a fantasy novel that seems like this world’s version of Narnia so she’s constantly interpreting the show’s Sci-Fi concepts in religious sounding ways while talking almost like a Prophetess.  Unfortunately what the Sci-Fi premise of the Chaos: shows is can be interpreted as Platonist, though I feel Steins;Gate in the same universe has an ultimately Stoic take on Fate.  So maybe there is a Stoic impetration of what's going on Metaphysically in Chaso;HEad and Chaos;Child??  I don't know.  [Occultic;Nine very potentially has a Stoic understanding of The Soul and the Afterlife.]

And that brings me to the culmination of this post, Setsuna Kiyoura of School Days.  Like most School Days characters she is better handled in the original Visual Novel than in the infamous 2007 Anime, but for the most part she is still essentially the same character. She’s the smartest character in the story and is principally motivated by her loyalty to Sekai but that is complicated by her own feelings for Makoto.  The circumstances under which Makoto has sex with Setsuna in the VN are very different from the Anime, in the VN it’s a very unique premise for a love scene that I find very emotionally moving.

She is my Avatar on most websites because she is the best.

Update: April 13th: 

I didn't originally plan for this to be one of those posts I'd come back to adding new sections later, I really felt that Tetrad would be sufficient to convey the idea I was trying to get across.  But I've since watched the first 5 episodes of Re:Creators and already I find Meteroa Osterreich to be possibly even more of a Classic Stoic.

It's interesting how her not the male nominal protagonist or the Asuna looking deuteragonist is basically serving as the leader of the group, the one figuring things out and doing most of the talking when they have to negotiate with the SDF and the Government.  She does it all with a very calm and cool demeanor but she does have emotional motivation for her role in all of this.

Update May 2024: I have decided Miyu from Prisma Illya is also relevant to this thesis.  However that Anime is one of the most difficult to get into if you're not used to certain.... aspects of Anime.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Mahou Shoujo as a Genre name really doesn't work.

Mahou Shoujo as a term to refer to a type of Anime or Manga was first coined by Toei Animation to refer to a string of shows they aired in a specific timeslot on a specific network in the early 70s the first of which was Sally The Witch a show stated to be inspired by Bewitched but it's functionally more similar to Sabrina The Teenage With.  But in terms of Manga source material Akko-Chan actually came first, it too was basically a Sit-Com with some magic in it.

The term become informally associated with similar shows not made by Toei, but was not applied at the time to Cutey Honey even though that was Toei.  Then in the 80s another Genre of Anime was born that would become linked to this term though I haven't bothered to see if it was at the time, the Magical Idol Genre with Creamy Mami.

When Sailor Moon took over the timeslot of Goldfish Warning! in March of 1992 it wasn't already one of the most iconic and recognizable brand names to ever come out of Japan, Toei revived the Mahou Shoujo branding for Sailor Moon since both words technically applied to help sell the show.  Sailor Moon was associated with this term for Marketing reasons not because it was conceived by it's author or adaptors as a continuation of their legacy or genre.

This is why it irks me when I see people say "Sailor Moon wasn't the first Magical Girl".  Because it's technically accurate yet misleading to people who don't already know what you're talking about.  Sailor Moon absolutely is the first of what she is, well Codename Sailor V actually came first, the Sailor Moon franchise is the first of what people mean by Mahou Shoujo when they are using that phrase of Sailor Moon and countless other shows that came since like Pretty Cure and Madoka Magica.

Now Sailor Moon didn't emerge in a vacuum, she was a daughter of Genres and Trends in Japanese media that had been going on for awhile.  But prior Mahou Shoujo wasn't one of them, or at least was far from the most important of them.

The grandfather of Sailor Moon is the Transforming Hero genre, which was and is a mostly Tokusatsu genre but has it's notable animated manifestations.  So Cutey Honey is part of Sailor Moon's lineage, but she's not a missing link between Sailor Moon and Salley The Witch, she's a link between Sailor Moon and Kamen Rider.  The creator of Kamen Rider was Ishinomori Shotaro who was the mentor of Go Nagai the creator of Cutey Honey.

But there is another perhaps more directly relevant link between Sailor Moon and Kamen Rider and that's the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series specifically it's 1990 instalment La Belle Fille Masquee Portrine also written by Ishinomori.  Tuxedo Unmasked has a very good article on it's influence on Sailor Moon.

https://www.tuxedounmasked.com/what-magical-girl-was-sailor-moon-based-on/

So I'm not saying we should abandon the term, but we need to realize it's not useful as a name of a Genre.  Sally The Witch and Creamy Mami and Sailor Moon are not all somehow the same Genre simply because this term was used to described them.  

The first two Magical Girl genres had American equivalents emerge organically at about the same time as their Japanese versions.  But when talking about them everyone understands that it's silly to pretend Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Gem and The Holograms are somehow slight variations of the same thing simply because both involved Girls using Magic.

On TVTropes the more specific term used for the kind of Magical Girl genre that Sailor Moon started is Magical Girl Warrior.  But because of what I see as the genre's core values I'm uncomfortable with associating it with the word Warrior.  Because of it's actual Parent genre Magical Transforming Superheroine would perhaps be better.

And even in Anime there are shows not called Mahou Shoujo even though both words apply just as much, like Slayers, but they aren't genres who's defining shows were made by Toei.

Fascism is Heroarchy

The problem with Umberto Eco’s attempt to reconstruct a hypothetical Ur Fascism is that the actual Ur Texts of Fascism were never lost but were in fact preserved and celebrated, and Eco’s guess about what shared traits of the many 20s and 30s movements called Fascist were key to identifying it were in fact wrong.

The actual Ur Text of Fascism was the Heroarchy philosophy of Thomas Carlyle, I’m not the first to suggest this by any means, many Nazis during the 30s in both Germany and Britain saw the connection at the time.  But I feel there are lessons to be learned from this connection.

Now I have in the past made a big deal out of distinguishing Nazism from Fascism, and I still believe the differences do matter, but learning to understand how much Carlyle is the key has helped me to accept that they are sibling or rather cousin ideologies and Carlyle is their Grandfather (and perhaps the other Grandfather is Proudhon).

Thomas Carlyle is most famous for being the author of the Great Man Theory of History.  A theory of history generally discredited today even though its influence on pop history and historical fiction still persists.  That theory is itself part of Fascist ideology, Fascism at its core is about trying to identify the right Great Men of the present to put in power and then blindly follow.  But Carlyle didn’t talk about only that subject, his political philosophy he literally called Heroarchy, essentially a type of Monarchism but that favored Meritocracy rather than the standard familial inheritance of traditional Feudalism.  And he was openly Racist and Antisemitic with even hints of Marcionism. 

During his own lifetime his writings and ideas were very popular not just within his own country of England but also in Germany and across the Atlantic in the former colonies, especially in The South, and even more so post Civil War Neoconfederate Ideology via George Fitzhugh.  Mussolini and the other founders of Italian Fascism may have been less inclined to explicitly cite Carlyle than their cousins in countries speaking Germanic languages.  Georges Sorel’s philosophy is an important middle man in understanding how Hero Worship gave birth to Fascist movements in Romance Language countries, alongside Integralism, and a key middle man between him and Carlyle is William James, but I maybe don't need a middle man because Sorel had probably read Carlyle directly. Ironically Sorel himself ultimately disapproved of Fascism and praised the Bolsheviks instead. Houston Stewart Chamberlain also wrote openly about having been an avid reader of Carlyle. Nietzsche borrowed from Carlyle while also criticizing him. J. A. Hobson was influenced by Thomas Carlyle. Henry Hyndman was also heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle and he founded Brittan's first National Socialist Party. John Ruskin was also a friend of Carlyle.

Fascism and Liberalism both value Meritocracy but with different ideas on how that Merit ought to be determined and measured, the Left needs to reject Meritocracy altogether.  Understanding the role of Heroarchy in Fascist ideology also helps us understand why there is disagreement about if Fascism is Individualist or Collectivist.  You see while Fascism represents the Far Right on most specific policy issues relevant to the modern world, when it comes to the broad philosophical Individualism vs Collectivism dichotomy Fascism places itself in the center as the compromise, they believe the State needs all the people to be a single Body Politic, but they also believe those Great Men need to rise up to be the Heads of that Body. Modern critiques of the Great Man Theory often treat it as an individualist error but Carlyle himself was no fan individualism, not any Liberal understanding of it anyway.

CulturedThug is the name of a former YouTuber who was somewhat prominent in the AltRight as a self described Fascist, and unlike a lot of other self described Fascists who I don’t think actually understand the word any better than those using it as a generic insult CulturedThug is very well read, if I had to give anyone the dubious distinction of being the contemporary Philosopher of Fascism it would be him.  I bring him up here mainly because I watched a video once where he lists his favorite movies, now most of them he did not explicitly claim to like because he saw them as Fascist movies that spoke to him as a Fascist, but the top 3 he did, and they were (I may be misremembering the exact order) the 2002 film Hero starring Jet Li, Conan The Barbarian starring Arnold Swarzenegger, and John Boorman’s Excalibur.  All three definitely are in different ways modern manifestations of the kind of Great Man Hero Myths that Thomas Carylyle fixated on, and so them being the kinds of movies to speak to modern Fascists shows fetishization of that kind of Hero Myth is still at the heart of Fascist identity.

This is not to say that all stories about Heroes are inherently Fascist whether they were intended to be or not, a lot of this is tied to specific ideas about what makes a Hero that overlap a lot with Toxic Masculinity and fetishization of the Heroic Sacrifice.  But they are amorphous enough that you can create a fairly Fascist compatible Hero Myth even while trying to be Leftist or succeeding in getting lots of Leftists to praise the story you wrote. The etymology of the word Hero simply means Defender or Protector, that obviously is objectively good, it's the stuff people like Carlyle wrapped up into the concept that is the problem.

In general I feel Anime Culture has very different ideas about what makes a Hero that I feel allows most Anime to be safer from these issues, especially when I look at how many of my favorites place so much emphasis on rejecting the necessity of Sacrifice.  And yet there are exceptions, everything I’ve said above in this post only adds to the reasons to be concerned about shows like Attack on Titan and Gate.  But actually digging into this Carlyle as the root of Fascism thesis has caused me to become self reflective about some characters and sequences I’ve liked in shows not usually thought of as being part of the Fascism in Anime discussion.

First is the infamous Grail Dialogue which is episode 11 of Fate/Zero. Iskandar is a very popular character in the fandom, you’ll be hard pressed to find a YT video essay on this Dialogue that doesn’t take the position that he “won” the debate, that his argument on what makes a good King is vindicated as the correct one.  Now my personal view is that the most correct position is the hypothetical fourth left unrepresented.  But my point here is that Iskandar’s position when you really break it down is Heroarchy, it is essentially Fascist ideology boiled down to its simplest expression, but because he doesn’t preach it in while earing a modern Military Uniform most viewers don't notice and many were actually swayed by it.

And the sad thing is even my favorite Anime Genre to refer to as Antithetical to everything wrong with western ideas of Heroism is not immune.  Yuki Yuna Is A Hero I have referred to as my favorite Magical Girl Anime in the past, and I still love the show.  But I’ve come to realize a lot of what happens in this saga is essentially the Stab-in-the-Back-Myth applied to Mahou Shoujo.  Any story so built around your Heroes Sacrificing everything for society yet being constantly betrayed by that society should always raise a red flag.  Now there are certain Anti-Fascist ways to read the story even when you're aware of this connection, but I felt it was important to bring up.

However the real reason I think it’s important to talk about this relationship between Fascism and Hero Myth is because it helps explain how a story can knowingly or not teach or reinforce Fascistic ideas in the story it tells with it’s Heroes even while draping it’s Villains in the cosmetic iconography of certain past specific Fascist regimes, or even explicitly identifying them with one.  You see in modern popular fiction the Nazis have been semi-disconnected from the original political project of the NSDAP.  Both actual Nazis and Space Nazis are in the popular imagination now just new Dragons to be slain by modern Heroes in making modern Hero Myths.  Sometimes they are even literally hoarding Gold just like Fafnir.

That’s my issue with the discourse surrounding the song Be Prepared in The Lion King, that film gets to be considered Anti-Fascist by default because Triumph of The Will is referenced during the villain song.  But the problem is this is a film where the villain is a queer coded “degenerate” member of the ruling class colluding with the foreigners who don’t belong in the kingdom, it’s a story where the villains upset the natural order of things but putting the rightful King back on the throne magically restores everything.  It is exactly the kind of Hero Myth that Fascists love. Basically if you're gonna have the main villain be a different "race" from most of their minions, it's really messed up to then call them Nazis since you're the one who just did a Nazi propaganda trope.

Even Casablanca I think needs to be criticized more, this is a movie where the actual reasons people today consider the Nazis uniquely Evil aren’t relevant at all.  As far as this film is concerned the Nazis main sin was invading and taking over other countries, where the principal Refugee in the story isn’t depicted as any kind of marginalized person but a White Man who simply opposes them because of what he believes in, those beliefs themselves are not explored in depth either.  But if that’s why the Nazis are bad then the very setting of the film undermines any notion that the French have moral superiority, Casablanca was a French colony the actual indigenous people of which are not represented in the film.  There’s actually something deeply wrong with lionizing a defiant display of Patriotic French Resistance on soil the French themselves stole.

And yes all this also applies to Star Wars as well, after all Star Wars has become so married to the Monomyth thesis of Joseph Campbell, and modern criticism of Campbell has its roots in how much Campbell’s ideas also derived from Carlyle. Modern Internet Neoreactionaries have always seen themselves in the Rebels and their bad understanding of Socialism in The Empire, and I’ve already talked about why they aren't without good reason to do so.

Even in Andor which so many Breadtubers now think is so special, so good even compared to other Star Wars at being Anti-Fascist and Anti-Capitalist.  In episode 10 Luthen the character played by Stellen Skarsgard gives a speech to his informant that everyone has been simping for as one of the best Anti-Fascist Speeches of all time.  But to me it’s exactly that kind of monologue that should raise a red flag. It is a part of the understanding of the Heroic Sacrifice in the minds of people like CulturedThug that it’s sometimes your conscience, your very morality that has to be sacrificed.  And no I’m not against acknowledging that a resistance movement may have to do some morally gray things, that you can’t change the world without getting your hands dirty, but justify it with normal utilitarian arguments rather then preaching a Sermon about how you’re sacrificing your soul for the salvation of the future.

It has always been my position that Star Wars stories set after ROTJ are more interesting when they deal with the political difficulties of building a New Republic in the aftermath of the War.  But as I look at where Disney SW has been going in it's post ROTJ stories, it seems like it's usually the Soldiers of the Rebellion who are the ones who are right and the Politicians should have listened to them.  And that demilitarizing so soon was one of their biggest mistakes.  And maybe the old EU timeline was no different, I'm no expert on it.

The current backlash to Harry Potter has helped open people’s eyes on this, the Slytherin/Voldemort ideology is coded as being Nazi like, yet the text literally contains Nazi propaganda in its depiction of the Goblins.

But before that and even still to an extent Breadtubers are only prepared to process the idea that a story could have Nazi villains but be counterproductive to actually opposing Fascist ideology when the problem was the villains being too cool.  And that was the basis of the freak out a lot of Leftists in the Anime Community had over Dies Irae in 2017, that yeah the Nazis may be villains but they’re cool sexy Bishonen villains who the Fujoshi are gonna turn into Ernst Rohms in their Doujins.

I’m not sure what I think about Dies Irae, I didn’t feel like I understood what it was trying to say when I watched it and now I don’t properly remember all of it, and fans of the VN hated the Anime as an adaptation to begin with, I’m not gonna play the VN I don’t even play the VNs of Anime I actually liked a lot more than this.  But there were moments in there that as I recall them now make me wonder if maybe it was trying to be self aware about the very issue I’ve been talking about, acknowledging that these Nazis fetishize that very kind of story this genre of fiction has its roots in and was perhaps trying to say something about that.  Or maybe it was just pretentious lampshade hanging, IDK someone who understands the original VN will have to answer that.

Update April 2nd: I've continued this train of thought a bit on my other Blog.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2023/04/plato-and-fascism.html

Update April 5th: I started a Thread about this on a Message board where you can see me discus the matter further.

https://sfdebris.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=7352

Update May 27th: Thing about this post is that it was never meant to stand alone, I'm hoping people will look into the already existing arguments for the connection between Carlyle and Fascism as well as knowing something about the Caligari to Hitler thesis and Starship Troopers discourse and criticism of Joseph Campbell.  I simply wanted to add my two cents to that already existing conversion and then use it to talk about a few Anime and some Star Wars.  And hopefully maybe inspire some Video Essayist to go even deeper.

I definitely made a mistake in the Yuki Yuna section.  Citing the stab-in-the-back myth specifically doesn't hold up because that whole thing is about who to blame for losing a war when the Heroes in YuYuYu didn't lose, they Won pretty unambiguously.  So the situation is more like Italy who was on the winning side of WWI but didn't get what they were promised by the Allies so felt rather screwed over, especially the Veterans.

My prior post on Gate I linked to ultimately doesn't talk about the scene that is most actually what I'm talking about in this post.  The most Fascist scene in Gate is the Diet scene, where that whole storyline is about demonizing the Civilian Government for daring to question the Military. [Update November 2025: I loved the Ahsoka show, but it does have a seen that is exactly the same problem as Gate's Diet scene.  And I'm not alone in seeing it as Fascist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSs3pqaLmVI&pp=ygUSQWhzb2thIGRpZCBGYXNjaXNt]

Update August: I recently rewatched a bunch of the Anime Tanya The Evil and it certainly reminds me of aspects of this.  As does my recent looking into the Openly Fascist sympathies of The American Legion during the 1920s.

I originally didn't want to actually link to the video of CulturedThug talking about his favorite movies, but the truth is the context of exactly what he says in it is important, that's my point more so then the films themselves.  So here it is.  Again only the top three does he explicitly say are Fascist movies in his view, but what he says about one or two others also speaks to the Heroarchy mindset.  The list also includes some of the usual suspects of movies Fascists like that Leftists say the Fascists don't understand.

However I don't think the "the movie actually condemning the very thing Reactionaries like about it" thesis works for those top 3.  Hero was literally State Sponsored by a very authoritarian State and Excalibur is Arthurian Legend taken at face value.  With Conan an Anti-Fascist fan could try to say it's villain is who actually represents Fascism, but that just brings us back to the Nazi Villain problem.

Update November 2025: Here's a recent Video Essay on just one way in which Hero is Fascist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8LXMRZZLT4

Early 2000s Anime revival project

So one of my mission statements for 2023 was to play a role in sparking the overdue 20 Nostalgia cycle revival for early 2000s Anime.  An agenda I started talking about in late 2022.

And I have indeed spent a good deal of the first three months of the year rewatching, finishing or watching for the first time various early 2000s shows, Noir, Madlax, El Cazador De La Brujha, Witch Hunter Robin, Burst Angel, Pretear and even the dreaded Elfen Lied.  

But I've unfortunately limited most of my talking about those shows as I watched them to my Mastadon account,   When I joined Mastadon it felt like it had a lot momentum behind it to potentially become a real competitor to Twitter, but it seems like that hype has died down.    However it's format still feels better to me to express thoughts that are too long for a Tweet but also not fleshed out enough to be worthy of a Blog post yet.

Each of those I listed I enjoyed, but I can't exactly recommend them all equally or in the same way.

Noir is the only one that's a true 10/10 Masterpiece, even it may not appeal to everyone but I feel you'd have to be pretty biased against it to not at least respect it.

Madlax, El Cazador and Burst Angel are great shows to recommend for when you just want to remember how wild Anime of this era could be in a way you don't see anymore.  They are each in my view undeniably Fun if you aren't a critic with a chip on your shoulder constantly trying to outthink them.

Witch Hunter Robin is as I've said before a very atypical Anime on many levels, if you're into the idea of a show with a standard Police Procedural format but with Supernatural elements then this is the Anime I'd recommend.

Pretear is I feel another essential overlooked piece in the puzzle that is the history of the Magical Girl Genre.  My last post about it on this blog focused on some criticism I had but I still love it and feel everyone presenting themselves as an expert on or superfan of this genre who hasn't seen it yet needs to remedy that ASAP.

Elfen Lied is something I may need to devote an entire post to in the future.

These obviously aren't the only Anime I've been watching.  I've been keeping up with currently airing Anime and watched some other modern shows, and after becoming a fan of Tubi watching on it both the Trigger film Hells and the movie Napping Princess.

And of course I've spent a lot of my spare time watching and rewatching scattered Detective Conan episodes from all over it's run.  Of course that actually overlaps with the Early 2000s project.  And I've decided to adjust my initial statement on exactly what parts of Detective Conan count as Early 2000s in context of my willing to be a bit creative in counting stuff as early 2000s when they're chronological really late 90s stuff that's looking forward or mid to late 00s stuff that feel like throwbacks.

I'm going to informally declare that in terms of episodes of the main series Early 00s Detective Conan/Case Closed begins right after what Fnumiation dubbed stops (Funimation did dub further with their movies) as well as right after what you can watch on Filmrise and Cruncyhroll's "season 1".  Those first 123 episodes are true 90s Detective Conan.  Episode 124 through most of the 300s are early 2000s Detective Conan as well as movies 3-9 the first half of the numbered OVAs and the Time Travel of the Silver Sky TV special which was a sorta recap episode to promote both the 8th movie and episode 356.

Unfortunately none of that era of Detective Conan is legally streaming anywhere which makes it hard to properly recommend.

I do intend to continue this mission, and in the future note it on this blog more.  There is plenty more out there to explore, and I want to give rewatches to some of the early 00s show I'd discovered last year that inspired me to do this in the first place, principally Rumbling Hearts and Comic Party, specifically I want to rewatch them soon after giving a proper rewatch to To Heart.

I have my DVDs of To Heart and Comic Party currently sitting next to my Nanoha DVDs, Nanoha's first two seasons are another good example of Mid 00s technically but feeling like they have some of the early 00s spirit still.