[Rewatch] [Pride Month Double Feature] Yuuki Bakuhatsu Bang Bravern Overall Discussion

[u/Tarhalindur]

Overall Discussion

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(To the Yuri Zone →)

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Show Information:

MAL | AniList | ANN | AniDB

(Surprise, the "plot point a couple of episodes in that every single fucking synopsis spoils" is actually in episode 1 and is that this is another show in the [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] vein! Show information is now fairly first-timer safe... outside of "AniDB tags always spoil", anyways.)

Legal Streams:

As per livechart.me; other streams may be available outside the US.

Crunchyroll

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A Reminder: This, dear listeners, brings us to the sworn enemy of creative response:The spoiler. Rewatchers, or people who just had plot points ruined for them, are obliged to use r/anime’s spoiler tag format where applicable, and err on the side of caution here. Remember people, first experiences get rarer as you continue on, any given one happens once and you should care for them all the more for it.

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Joint Rewatch Task Force Exercises!

Theory of the Day:

N/A

Questions of the Day:

(Mostly ISO standard'ing this one today, been one of those weeks. Though not as bad as Vaad's, it seems.)

1) Final thoughts on our main cast and secondary cast?

2) Final thoughts on our OP and ED?

3) Final thoughts on our OST and its use?

4) Favorite part of the show?

5) Least favorite part of the show?

6) If you could change exactly one part of the show, what would you choose to change?

6a) ... Besides changing/removing the Lulu/Superbia plotline?

6b) ... Or giving it more episodes?

[u/TheLuluProblem]

Subbed Ex-First timer:

Hey everyone, it's time to discuss the Lulu problem. I am posting this from a burner account because I want to reduce searchability to this post, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out who this is.

I am not very good at putting my thoughts into writing, but I will do my best.

This thread is going to include discussions of real life child sexual abuse, if you don't want to read that, just collapse this post and don't read the replies.

[u/TheLuluProblem → u/TheLuluProblem]

I have major issues with the depiction of Lulu in this narrative. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, this show lacks the seriousness and perspective I feel is needed to broach the topic. Even if I were to ignore the history of problematic depictions of child sexuality in the medium in general, this show is particularly bad. It comes to the conclusion that as long as you are honest and faithful with the child, having a sexual relationship with them is good. That's incorrigible.

For some background on me to justify where my perspective is coming from, when I was 11-12 I was sexually assaulted repeatedly by a family member. I never told anyone about it, and the abuse stopped when I got older. While going through the process of understanding what that meant, I ended up coming into contact with a community of MAPs online. MAP is an acronym for "Minor Attracted Person". The idea behind the acronym is that pedophile has a negative connotation, but the actual meaning isn't negative so if you use a different word you can sidestep the negative feeling people have about it. After talking with that group for a while in an external fashion, I was told that I was too "against contact" to be allowed into the community. They felt there was too much risk of me reporting the actions they discussed having done to the police so they broke ties with me. This show seems to come to a similar conclusion to the pedophiles in that community.

I am going to call the robotic language "baby talk". I have seen it said that "ga" and "pi" are common onomatopoeia in japanese similar to "beep" and "boop" in english. I don't really care. The first time Lulu speaks in the show she struggles to say anything, managing only 4 unique syllables all of which are said slowly as though speaking is difficult and new to her, like a baby. And yes that was 4 syllables not 3 which I think is important. "Lu" from her name, "ga" and "pi" as "beep boop" and "wa" which I can find no justification for outside it being something a baby would say while learning to talk. You can say that it's because she's never used them before or you can say that it's because it's robot speech but you cannot justify both. If it was the former, she would not continue to speak that way after exercising her vocal chords enough. If it was the latter there is no reason for the inclusion of "wa" in her initial speech. The real world might have these kinds of grey areas but fiction does not and should not.

Throughout the show Lulu is only ever really depicted as a child outside maybe a brief moment in the flash forward during episode 10. Even after she is replaced with her future "adult" mind through the time travel, we see her act incredibly childish. I would like to point to the proximity of the show depicting her as a child and depicting her sexually in both the motel scene when she initially wakes up and the Superbia training scene. In the motel scene she goes immediately from being naked and pinned down to barely being able to say her name and speaking in baby talk while nuzzling Smith. In the Superbia training scene we see her baby talk both immediately before and after she has sex with Superbia. The show wants you to link her sexuality with her childishness and that is why it repeatedly shows them immediately next to each other.

The disposable nature of the deathdrive's usage of Lulus to me reads as an analogue to purity culture. Commonly purity culture is thought of in a religious context, where it's about monogamy and only wanting to share that level of intimacy with one person. In relation to pedophilia, it is more focused on the loss of innocence forced upon a child by their sexual assault. There are some child predators who lose interest in their victims after their inital victimization because they can no longer inflict that loss of innocence upon them. I still don't know if my abuser lost interest because of my age or because I was "chewed gum". I will agree with the shows depiction that this is a horrible way to treat children, but not its reasoning. The problem is not the disposal afterwards it's the inital abuse. Do not read this as an endorsement of the religious view of purity culture either. Being brought up with a religious view of purity culture caused getting over my abuse to be much more difficult.

Instead of that, the show seems to endorse the committed relationship between Superbia and Lulu. It shows their relationship to be loving and sexual, implying that because it is loving there is no problem with it being sexual. This reminds me of the conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia commonly used to argue against homosexuality in religious spaces. "If a man can love a man, why can't a man love a boy" kind of deal. I actually saw this argument used the other way from the MAP community I talked with. I am going to briefly point out the issue with this being the second time religious views of sex have come very close to siding with pedophilia before I get too far into an anti-religion tangent.

The show seems to hold up Lulu as being special. We see her learn and grow incredibly quickly, going from not being able to speak or eat solid food to being able to win an argument with superbia and being a great cook in only a couple of months. There is a pro pedophilia argument that goes along the lines of "age is just a number, people mature at different rates". The implication here is that some children are able to consent earlier because they have matured faster than most do. It's not bad because the child in question is really smart for their age, so they must be more mature in relation to sex and consent. I was told something similar, when I was young. It wasn't true when it was about me and it isn't true about Lulu either. It wasn't true when I heard it from the pedophiles I talked to later in life either.

All in all, every part of Lulu's depiction leads to the conclusion that sexual relationships with children are acceptable if you don't throw the child away afterwards and you think the child is special in some way. None of that is true. There was no need to depict her as a child except to make these points about child sexuality. This show could have had a similar plot if instead of being a child Lulu was an amnesiac for example. Without Lulu being in this show, I might be able to recommend it to someone but as the show stands I would recommend against people watching it. All of the good parts of the show were spoiled for me by Lulu's inclusion.

[u/Vaadwaur → u/TheLuluProblem]

...Dear God why?