If any followers or passers-by to this post are currently fans of Hetalia and/or Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin, as a former fan of both, I am begging you: extricate yourself from those fandoms and stop consuming those properties as quickly and quietly as possible. If you can bring your friends and mutuals along with you, even better! It is simply not worth it (and downright dangerous) to be consuming what is essentially fascist propaganda at all, never mind now, when we’re seeing a global rise in fascism.
for a lot of people, attack on titan was their first introduction to anime, so its global reach cannot be ignored. that has led to a lot of fervent people trying to defend this show without looking more deeply into what we are saying. if you’re about to do something stupid like comment on this post when you don’t truly know what anyone is talking about or you just feel annoyed that we are knocking your favorite anime, read this first and then decide if you really wanna make that stupid comment.
The fascist subtext of Attack on Titan can’t go overlooked
from forcing an entire group of people to wear nazi armbands to the author’s own personal beliefs, do not sit here and say we’re looking too much into it. fuck off. fascism is on a global rise and it should scare you, and any decent person with common sense should be against any type of media depiction that is advocating for fascism/nazism/war crimes/ethnic cleansing. it’s beyond “it’s just a piece of fiction.” MEDIA INFLUENCES REAL LIFE. if you think media doesn’t influence real life and real life opinions, you are seriously deluding yourself. i don’t really know what to say beyond that.
qanon and the rise of the proud boys (a literal pro-fascist group) should be enough proof that we don’t live in a fucking fishbowl when it comes to fascism.
So I’m teaching English right now, and I just had my students write an essay about their heroes. A couple of my students picked Attack on Titan characters, because I let them choose fictional characters as well. One picked Eren Jaegar. He said that he admired that he was willing to do whatever it takes to protect his family and his homeland. When describing the lengths Eren was willing to go to, this student explicitly included MASS GENOCIDE in the list. And I uh. Well I sent him to guidance.
I understand the appeal of these franchises. Hell I used to be into them myself. But please realize that when you consume fascist media, you’re internalizing the same messages my Eren Jaegar fan student has. When you’re being repeatedly asked to sympathize and root for characters that are bad people who do terrible things, you start to excuse and rationalize those behaviors. You start to be desensitized to actions that should rightly elicit horror in you.
I’m not saying that watching Attack on Titan automatically makes you a genocide apologist. I’m not saying that we can’t think critically about the media we consume. I’m not saying we can’t have media from a villian’s points of view either. What I AM saying, is that framing is important. And unfortanely it’s almost impossible to get away from the positive framing of fascism in AoT and Hetalia. And if you spend too much time in a warped frame, you’ll warp to match. It’s really not worth it to keep engaging in that material.
I think it’s worthwhile to also mention that my student’s aspiration is to become a soldier. He wants to emulate Eren Jaegar in the defense of America. And I hope you can see how dangerous that mindset is for an armed forces member. A soldier should be able to make tough choices. A soldier should NOT be willing to do “whatever it takes” with no limits, self-justified by a sense of extreme nationalism. Yeah. That’s what you’re internalizing, folks.
TLDR; Don’t keep watching and producing fan content for franchises that promote fascism. Please. Respect yourself more than that.