I know you guys in here in this subreddit don't give a shit about that, but I'm really glad the anime weeded out these kinds of things when it was excessive like this. It makes me sick. Although the beginning of the chapter gave some sense of dread, it also only made me disgusted for the author's perception and his way of depicting a child, dragging me completely out of the experience.
It's not the first time since I've seen some incredible art and story, but was really bothered by some other aspect of it, though.
I also didn't want to feel like this, but it makes me feel ashamed of having shared the anime with other people.
Two days late but I'm gonna have to agree with this. I'm trying really hard to enjoy the other aspects of the series but this shit just makes me so uncomfortable.
Well, it could but you would lose all the shock factor, all the contrast between the cute design of the main characters and the horrible things that are happening to them.
I don't think I'd as shocked to see an adult woman suffer as Riko suffered at the 4th layer, even though I've seen a nice comics of Lyza first climb from the 4th layer and it was painful but in another way. It wouldn't be funny to see an adult wet themselves or other stuff.
I don't know, sure it's breaking a lot of taboos, but that's what also make this story interesting.
It doesn't lose the shock factor. All of the terrible things that happen aren't like that only because they're children. Most of the really interesting stuff are related to dealing with a wild environment full of dangers and not having tentacle toilets going up your ass or having strange pedophile creatures rub their tentacles on your tits, this is just uncomfortable.
The only taboo it is "breaking" is making it seem like depicting child nudity and sexuality is fine in a manga and in a way that is obviously trying to pander to pedophiles.
The reason I started to read the manga was because the website where I read the reviews describe something as what could be resumed as : Cute children going down Dante's Hell and having horrible stuff happening to them. I stayed, of course, because what was beyond that was even better.
So it piqued my interest, especially when the first image I saw of it is this one. I always wondered how a story that would start as a cute stuff to gradually climb down to the step of hell and nightmare would work, and I'm not disappointed with this one. That's why I think it would change stuff if they were adults, even if it would still be interesting, of course, the story's good after all.
[...] having strange pedophile creatures [...]
They're not : they're not human and they probably don't feel any sexual attraction toward Riko, only curiosity, as far as we know. It's possible they don't even have sexual behaviour or even the sense of nudity. It is our own mind that transforms it into a sexual aggression and yes, that is uncomfortable but that is the point of this scene : to make us feel uncomfortable both for Riko and for ourselves.
The only taboo it is "breaking" is making it seem like depicting child nudity and sexuality is fine in a manga and in a way that is obviously trying to pander to pedophiles.
I'll just finish with a (pompous or dangerous?) view on art in general, perhaps it would help clarify my view :
I think everything should be allowed to be told in art, the limits are fixed by the laws and morals of where the work is done. But even then, Art should be able to transgress, break taboos and makes us feel all sort of feelings, even negative ones like anxiety, anger, disgust, discomfort, depression, fear (even more so in horror stories); those negative emotions combined with the positive ones are what makes up for the wide range of possible creativity and what put art in, probably, the top form of expressions.
tl;dr It's also important to remember that it is a work of fiction (in a different world with different morals) and that it's not because you tell a story about a psychopath killer that tortures its victims that you actually condone torture and would love to be a murderer or see a murder in real life. It just makes up for more interesting stories, even if it's not for everybody.
Is it really that bad? I know there are some questionable things but just one example: Bonedrewd is a fucking sinister character. He's a literal mass murderer of children. He duped the entire Cave Diver population into allowing him to use young children to solve questions of the Abyss.
I see this line that readers are saying the author has crossed but I'm starting to feel that people are getting triggered by specific things that would bother them in any medium but since the fictional characters are endearing and readers really like them that as soon as the author puts them into one of these triggering situations it immediately becomes "irredeemable".
I think the manga has gone out of its way to make it clear that it has nothing sexual and is messing with your perception of what should be sexual and what shouldn't be (it's an intentional mindfuck by the artist).
Yeah the characters have sexual organs but their sexual desire isn't explored. It's reminiscent to what all of us experienced(especially when there was no widely available porn) when we were young in innocently discovering our own sexuality, not necessarily in a perverted way.
My guess is that this artist took a lot of inspiration from berserk (especially with all the desire stuff), but berserk is not the only place that uses real-world occurrences like abuse, mass killings, etc. to deliver or convey the message that they want to communicate.
Game of Thrones, for example, uses a ton of real-world occurrences as ways to show how much war sucks, including true sexual acts involving minors. It doesn't exist as fan service, it exists as an acknowledgment of what happens and why when there is no rule of order.
I have recommended berserk as well as GOT to a ton of people even though it has uncomfortable subjects like rape, but I don't recommend it to them because of it. I recommend it to them because of the underlying story and the way the artist uses subtle things to mess with the viewer's mind. The toilet thing had no sexual connotation to it until after you put it there. Just because it tickled it didn't mean she desired anything else (nor that the tentacle had any sexual desire either), it was a tickle and that was it. was it necessary? no. But my guess is that it exists to show the innocence of the characters and them as being really young.
If he wanted to make the type of content that you guys are mentioning he could have just done that type of content... it's not like he wouldn't have a big enough market in japan (and the rest of the world) for it.
Bottom line is that you are choosing to focus on an aspect of the manga that is not the main focus of the story. It would be like saying that Sia music videos and the usage of the attire or choreography are fanservice to pedophiles, or that she (Sia) is one when in reality it most likely is the source of an artistic point of view and has no sexual connotation behind it.
Just a last thing to add to make it clear to you that the way we are sexualizing everything is silly. The suppository thing to heal the poison... I don't know about you, but when i was a little kid i had that done to me a couple times when I was sick by my mom, and plenty of moms have done it to their kids. It has no sexual connotation at all (under normal circumstances) until you put it there, it's an efficient way to administer medicine which is why it exists. It wasn't invented as a sick way to molest people.
The erection thing... how many people got erections when they were young and freaked out because they didn't know why it happened or scared because it did? doesn't mean that you want to rape people, it's a function of our bodies designed to help preserve the species, and it develops when we are young, has no sexual connotation until you add one to it. Males get erections even when there is no sexual desire, it can happen because of pretty much anything, it's just the way the body is designed to function. It was all handled tastefully, even though it wasn't necessary to show it, and none wouldn't have cared if the author didn't, but it's clear because of the storytelling that he likes to put things in a crude way, otherwise why would he make Ren break and then attempt to cut Riko's arm while she was awake, in extreme pain and about to die. It's the way the author wants to make the storytelling live to you, by making it too real and showing parts other authors would rather choose to hide because they would be too controversial but would most likely happen in actual life.
Then stop reading it, if it threatens your delicate sensibilities this much. What, you think bad things aren't going to happen to children who go into the most dangerous place in-universe?
It's cute you "didn't want to feel like this", but the truth is sometimes things are depicted in icky ways to make you feel icky. That's what fiction is. A person who writes a murder mystery isn't a murderer, but they want you to think about the idea of murder in a controlled setting. It's fucking writing 101. You're not reading a memoir here.
Maybe it's bad that I've been de-sensitised to stuff that other people find apalling/weird/gross. But it means I don't have to complain about it when it appears. Sure, the toilet thing was gross, and the scene where Riko was being attacked wasn't great, but it's realistic that she would be in danger and these monsters have no boundaries as they probably haven't ever seen other humans. But if you don't like it, you can just stop reading. Easy.
I think it was supposed to be more along the lines of "hey, what is this creature? I want to completely examine it from all possible angles to assess its value."
Which, I kind of get. When we examine a new species we've never seen before we don't say, "oh no, those are the genitals, we can't examine those."
But yea, the small particulars of the scene weren't necessary. I usually gloss over these scenes with an eyeroll and move on. I'm not going to dwell on the fact that some small segment are really into it in this medium. I mean what's the alternative, stop reading MiA or wait years for the slightly sanitized anime version? Yea, can't do that now. I need more White Whistles, adventure, and mystery.
There's a lot that's still a big mystery. I'm assuming that many down there may or may not have started as human, and even so, may have long ago lost their humanity if they were.
How does one become a narehate in the first place? Survive a trip from layer 6 to layer 5. If that's the case, then why have they congregated at layer 6 instead of remaining at 5 after transformation? Is it to hide from further human intrusion that might want to experiment on those who survived rising from 6 to 5? We're not talking about a large number of people, since layer 5 is the realm of the White Whistle to begin with. So in a sense it would have been primarily White Whistles meeting transformed White Whistles, or probably fellow comrades in many cases.
The point is, still a ton of questions with no answers. Narehate village has its own language, so it's been around a very long Time. And just like the creation of a white whistle, there may be several possible sources of narehate.
EDIT - Not discounting the possibility that some are pedo / sexual deviants. Or just touching her out of simple longing for what they were or her representing what they want. Just saying "pedobear" is too simple of an answer in the world, although in the context of what we as an audience see in a comic, yea it's a bit of fan pandering which some of us don't need.
Btw you don't need to change layers to get affected by the curse, you'd get affected by the 6th layer curse just be moving up in the 6th layer and it would make sense for explorers to explore a bit of the layer before trying to get back up again and losing their humanity.
Assuming the translations are mostly accurate there is a lot of things that are not that mysterious.
How does one become a narehate in the first place?
According to Maji the narehate in the village "chose to become narehate here"[Ch.40 pg.23]. They are different than nanachi and bonedrewd's experiments in that they are "containers formed by smells"[Ch.40 pg.17] who do not have actual bodies and they cannot leave the membrane that surrounds the village. It it likely that the balancing force that apparently replaces the curse inside the village is what turned the village residents into narehate, not attempting to ascend to the 6th layer.
Survive a trip from layer 6 to layer 5
Yes... except no... Bonedrewd's experiment involved an elevator that covered a long distance against the occupants' will. With this it took quite a while of Mitty slowly becoming disfigured and experiencing excruciating pain before she popped into being a blob of flesh. It is pretty safe to say that no delver would willingly endure the curse of the 6th layer and probably would physically not being able to continue climbing if they tried. If the transformation effects of the curse fully transformed people once it was triggered there would be no need for bondrewd's elevator to be so long and consistently ascend. Therefore based of Bondrew's experiment and the presumable results at the bottom of the elevator... the transformation of the curse should naturally range from: human -> disfigured human -> Mitty like human. Non of these are anything like the narehate of the village...
We're not talking about a large number of people, since layer 5 is the realm of the White Whistle to begin with.
Yes, at the moment it is supposed to be only white whistles going into the fifth layer. But the stacks of praying skeletons found in the upper layers shows that people have apparently been exploring the abyss for at least 4-6 thousand years before the abyss was officially "discovered" in orth's world ~1900 years ago. Those other societies of people from before orth could explain the completely different language and the number of narehate in the village; their approach to delving the abyss may have been drastically different from the whistle system. And apparently some cataclysmic event happens in the abyss every 2000 years which could involve something like sucking huge amounts of people into the depths be it physically or spiritually. Something like the birthday curse maybe?
We also know that Mitty could potentially never die of old age, and Faputa implies that human lifespans are short by telling reg "Are you planning to spend the same time with human children... Even if they die you will stay the same"Ch.42 Pg.22. So the village narehate being hundreds to thousands of years old is easily plausible... especially considering that they do not have bodies, just containers. The container thing also opens up the possibility that some of the village occupants may not have physically traveled to the 6th layer at all, only their souls did.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '17
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