Youjo Senki

Now started Youjo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil). I’m not sure I’ve seen one war-themed anime. It’s not that I hate the subject, although I do, but that I always thought it fit terribly with the anime conventions. I think the best way to portray war is probably the literary one. Focus on the people and consequences of war, rather than the action of combat. But I don’t even think brutal suffering makes for very good life lessons, since surviving alone seems a moot objective to me. In any case, anime tends to avoid showing physical and even mental suffering, making war pieces seem childish.

I think I picked up this anime mostly because I realized I’ve never seen something quite like Akagi. Also I always wanted see a reincarnation story where the protagonist remembers everything and is super determined from the start. I always disliked stories where they fall into old patterns, thinking such a story would be better told without the whole reincarnation gimmick.

Since I’m not familiar with war anime, I don’t even know the answer to this question: Do Japanese media in general root for the allies or the nazis? By some osmosis my guess is that at least in anime the authors pick nazis as POV mostly because they are more evokative, but take great pains to disguise things and never say anything that could be interpreted as support for nazis, or for the allies to that matter. Actually I think that’s a very good position that western media would be well advised to follow

Modern Germany has apologized for the wars to the extent that you wonder if they have any self-esteem left, but I’m not really so sure about the situation with the Japanese. Perhaps their neighbours feel like they never really owed up to their actions like the Germans, justified or not. I really think it’s a lot about characterics of the civilization — even if the Japanese won’t say aloud they are sorry it doesn’t mean they aren’t. Yet unsaid things have impact too, and I wonder if new world wars would break that the Japanese might take sides you didn’t expect.

On the topic, I fear it somewhat likely that a 3rd World War will start on my life time, and maybe even a 4th. The main reason being that humans are not really showing the amount of leaning I would expect after surviving the previous wars. It’s not enough that people don’t want another war, they would need to take determinate action today to prevent it, and they aren’t.

Damn I like Tanya’s attitude towards God, or Sonzai X as she calls it. It’s such an admirable position to fight the god when you know he is real. There are many works about this, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read a good one that goes beyond some abstraction of the god. I think it might take the ultimate character to be willing to go to Hell to oppose a God that only accepts you if you submit. In human terms, authority is evil and the one who can fight it is a hero.

This Ep3 ED is superb. Been recommended to me by Youtube for ages and I always loved it, but if I had seen it for the first time when watching this anime I would have been totally blown away. The OP is terrible though.

Watching more, and I’m thinking everybody is acting very rationally and yet it’s very exciting.

In this work the world runs by smarts, as it does in real life, with the MC thinking that smarts will put her into the safe sidelines, like in the imagined version of real life. Aptitude always translates into power. The only way to refuse power is to cut your aptitude, say by resigning or declining a mission. But ironically people who are used to doing their best will automatically advance to those high positions.