okherugo

[okherugo]

Perfect Organism

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some fandom disagreements are like "I see your point but I think this other aspect of the narrative is more significant," and some are like "I don't think you can read."

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some fandom disagreements are like "I see your point but I think this other aspect of the narrative is more significant," and some are like "I don't think you can read."

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Dear video essay creators. A video analysis is when you analyze a piece of media. No no look at me. A summary, no matter how thorough, is not an analysis. An analysis requires you to draw conclusions about the media such as authorial intent, real-world parallels, discussion about themes/worldbuilding/character motivation, and so much more. You have to stop summarizing something and saying that’s analysis. The Gaylors are doing more critical analysis than you. Is that who you want to lose to? The gaylors?

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someone tells me they're an empath and I grab both sides of their head before frying their brain with my dark empathy electromagnetic waves

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they call me the nuance lover because I love nuance

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Someone in that poll said not to watch naruto bc it's queerbait and I hate to tell you this but naruto wasn't trying to queerbait you it's actually the number 1 example of "text is so misogynistic it becomes gay"

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JACK LOWDEN as River Cartwright in Slow Horses 4.01

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I'm sorry if I was overly harsh.

However, I do not like Katsura being referred to as having "shitty politics" and a "militant radical" because it's just demonizing resistance against colonialism. And whether people like it or not, these narratives can map onto real-world histories of oppression.

And I am from the global south and understand colonization first hand. My own people were colonized. I also actively support liberation movements - including real-world efforts like those in Palestine - so I’m not just speaking in hypotheticals. This is personal experience.

I also share frustrations with how Sorachi depicts the Joui - mainly how they're mocked, dismissed or presented as just as bad as the Bakufu for going against an evil empire. But yeah, I don't think that's what you mean.

the way katsura kotaro is a crossdressing suicide-baiting 0 retweets milf-loving lonely struggling shitty politics militant radical yet you'll never see him get the tumblr acclaim he deserves 😞

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Months after a viral haka was performed in New Zealand parliament, the controversial bill that sparked it has now been defeated. The Treaty Principles bill sought to redefine the which is New Zealand's founding document. The bill was brought by ACT Party leader David Seymour, who believed the current interpretation of the treaty gave more rights to Māori people than non-Māori New Zealanders. After two years of debate and nationwide protest, the bill was voted down by all but one party.

ABC News Australia

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watching Seven Samurai

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"Shitty politics" how? "Militant radical" how?

If you're talking about his "anti-Amanto" stance, he's not fighting against the Amanto because he hates foreigners, he's fighting against them because they installed an imperialistic genocidal regime and walk around with unchecked power. Yes, the Amanto are imperialists and colonizers. They forced Japan to open its borders at the threat of military annihilation, made the Bakufu sign unjust and unequal treaties which surrendered power to them, and then installed a puppet regime.

The treaties were meant to mirror the real world Ansei treaties Western powers forced onto the Japanese - which means foreigners exempt from Japanese law, fixed, unfair tariffs that crippled Japan’s economy, and loss of control over its borders and courts.

When the samurai class fought back, the Bakufu-Amanto government enacted the Kansei purge - a literal genocide which killed off any dissidents to Bakufu rule, including whole clans connected to the Joui - even women and children. Shouyou had his school burnt down and was arrested not for violence, but for teaching - because knowledge itself was seen as a threat to the regime. When they joined the war to get him back, all the students of Shoka Sonjuku were killed except for Katsura, Takasugi and Gintoki, and as we all know, Gintoki was forced to kill Shouyou. After, the sword ban was implemented and the Joui were forced into hiding after relentless persecution.

This context is important to understand that the Joui are not simply fighting against the Amanto/Bakufu because they're reactionaries longing for some great past, they're fighting because they're against oppression and foreign rule. The samurai are not in power, they've lost everything and their whole existence is outlawed. That's why Katsura clings onto his identity as a samurai - it's a form of resistance under erasure.

And even in present day Gintama, the Amanto elite are still colonizers, not quirky alien neighbors.

Just a few examples from the early chapters - Shinpachi is abused by his boss for still having honor as a samurai, and his boss is subservient to Amanto diplomats who mock samurai and say they miss picking fights with them. He has an internal monologue where he thinks to himself that their swords, status and land was stripped away by the Amanto. Otae's dojo struggles financially because her father owed money to an Amanto loan-shark. She's almost forced into sexual slavery by the Amanto, who uses floating brothels to escape the reach of law. Even Gintoki complains, saying, "The aliens do whatever they please," and "The world has gotten a lot more dangerous ever since you Amanto came around." Hasegawa is fired and forced to commit seppuku for punching Prince Hata - when Hata was literally walking around letting his alien pet eat people. Hasegawa explains in clear terms that Earth depends on Hata's finances, so they have to placate him however they can - even if it means letting his alien pet eat people.

Further arcs introduce trafficking, slavery, human experimentation, forced betrothals, systemic abuse, and more as facets of daily life because of Amanto rule. The people are not living happily with quirky aliens like in Star Trek, they are under colonial subjugation.

And if you're talking about the Zurump arc, I don't think you've looked past the surface of that arc.

A lot of people misread the Donald Zurump arc as Sorachi turning Katsura into a parody of a right-wing dictator - like the joke is that “Haha!!! Sorachi is saying Katsura is like Trump!!!” But that is not what the arc is doing. It is a deliberate bait-and-switch.

This arc is mocking the audience, or more precisely, mocking those who judge Katsura based purely on his surface-level aesthetic or rhetoric without understanding what he's truly doing or the context in which he's doing it.

What Katsura actually does is this - he abolishes the shogunate and hereditary rule, establishes a parliament and democratic system, says that every citizen is a "small king", writes a constitution, enacts revolutionary reforms (according to Matsudaira), and plans to pass power onto a young female successor - Soyo. He put on the Donald Zurump persona because, as Matsudaira explains, the people wouldn't accept the radical reforms lying down, especially since the country was in a fragile state after the war. Katsura was deliberately making himself a hated figure so he could absorb the push-back from detractors - the real reactionaries.

Soyo also explains that the people still cling to old customs and gendered limitations still exist, which is another reason why Zurump was needed. Katsura had to destroy the existing power systems before she could take over. There was no precedent for a female shogun, and Soyo hadn't secretly cultivated allies within the Bakufu for years or have an existing power base like Katsura did.

The whole plan was for Katsura to fake his death at the hands of Sougo at the end of his rule (the Shinsengumi were in on the "Donald Zurump" thing) and pass power onto Soyo. All of these actions - establishing democracy, ending hereditary rule, promoting gender equality, not consolidating authority but instead stepping down - they're all concurrent with leftism, not right wing politics.

Lastly and most importantly, he was also making an alliance with Shijaku, a literal Amanto revolutionary leader. Shijaku is one of the leaders of the Altana Liberation Army, a military alliance formed to fight the Tendoshuu - who are the evil shadowy puppetmaster overlords behind all the imperialism in the first place. Katsura was accepting foreign aid from Shijaku to rebuild Japan because he knew Japan couldn't survive on its own, and extending his intelligence network so he can prepare for the return of Utsuro and end the Tendoshuu, starting with the religion that they'd created, Tengenism.

All of this is not regressive or reactionary. In fact, all of it is internationalist, revolutionary, and you could even say, grounded in anti-imperialist solidarity.

Some see him as xenophobic, but I always read him as being against imperialism, not race. As I said, he rebuilt Japan with Shijaku's help, he never targeted neutral or unaffiliated Amanto, and he accepted Kagura and Elizabeth from the start. He could have gone all "Build the wall!!!" as Donald Zurump, but he didn't. If his rhetoric against the Amanto sounds harsh or incendiary, that’s because it’s supposed to. Resistance isn't supposed to be polite.

Anti-colonial resistance has always sounded radical and many anti-colonial revolutionaries in our own time were accused of extremism and hate, and then decades later seen as the heroes they are. Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, even Ho Chi Minh - they were all branded as extremists in their time but later celebrated.

So, no, Katsura doesn't have shitty politics nor is he a militant radical at all. In fact, he's one of the most principled characters in Gintama. He never targets civilians, only the systems upholding oppression, and in the end he gave up power to pass onto the country onto clean hands after completely up-hauling it and reforming it for the better.

the way katsura kotaro is a crossdressing suicide-baiting 0 retweets milf-loving lonely struggling shitty politics militant radical yet you'll never see him get the tumblr acclaim he deserves 😞

[okherugo]

"Katsura is a far right reactionary."

Did you even watch the show? The man literally lives in a colonial regime which subjugated and dis-empowered his people, survived a war which he only fought to get his teacher back, because the Bakufu arrested and killed off any anti-Bakufu dissidents, no matter how minor, to appease the Amanto overlords (Shouyou - at least publicly, was arrested for "teaching sword and pen" as it might "foment rebellion"). And in the end, Katsura lost the war and countless comrades, Shouyou was executed in front of him by his best friend, samurai were stripped of their swords and rendered jobless and penniless, and any further resistance was brutally crushed and they were forced to go underground. It was a genocide.

Even in the manga’s opening chapters, it’s clear that the Amanto elite hold absolute power, while ordinary humans are left powerless and disenfranchised. Shinpachi is abused by his boss for daring to still have honor as a samurai, and his boss is subservient to Amanto ambassadors who purposefully make Shinpachi trip to get him in trouble and freely mock humans. Otae's dojo struggles so badly she's almost enslaved by the Amanto pimp who her father was indebted to to keep the dojo afloat, who uses floating brothels to escape the reach of the law. She's forced to become a cabaret hostess to make ends meet.

Gintoki says that aliens do whatever they want, hinting at the legal immunity they have (which was also the case in pre-Meiji Restoration era Japan for westerners). Hasegawa recruits the Yorozuya to find Prince Hata's missing pet because Earth depends on Hata's finances and they have to kowtow to him, almost lets Gintoki get eaten to "save the Earth", and loses his job and is ordered to commit seppuku after he punches Hata when he finally prioritizes lives over a spoiled prince. Gintoki lives in a crumbling wooden house, while Amanto elite live in expensive high rise buildings, which get taller and more expensive the closer you get to the terminal, the ultimate symbol of colonization (it's used to literally suck the Earth dry of Altana!) Etc, etc. It's not subtle.

And even if (early) Katsura uses methods like bombing embassies and uses slogans like, "Expel the Amanto", it's not a case of Katsura hating foreigners because he wants to preserve Japan's racial "purity", it’s a traumatized, disenfranchised man trying to dismantle the imperialist structures that colonized Earth, stole its sovereignty, and destroyed everything he knew. You think real life anti-colonial revolutionaries didn't use similarly purposely incendiary slogans or target colonialist symbols of power? Vietnam for example, used rallying cries like "Fight to drive out the Americans, fight to overthrow the puppets", during the Vietnam war.

It's also worth noting that even from the start, at his most extreme, no one acts like Katsura would harm or kill Amanto simply for being well, Amanto, nor does he. Sakamoto sends him Elizabeth as a pet, Gintoki doesn't hide Kagura's true identity from him, Katsura is seen frequenting Otose's snack bar, where Catherine works, an illegal immigrant Amanto, Katsura interacts with Amanto normally in many early episodes (eg. with Prince Hata and his butler in the Okama arc and with a pig faced Amanto when he goes to rent a video). He targets systems of power, not individual Amanto.

He clings to his identity of being a samurai because it's what the Amanto imperialists took away from him when they conquered Edo, taking away the only method of resistance - not because of a reactionary belief in an idealized past. He doesn't believe in samurai superiority or enforce class divisions, he works with people of all classes and is shown to be aware of the class system even as a child - like when he shunned his prestigious military school which he won a scholarship to attend because it was full of spoiled nobles.

Finally, at the end, Katsura literally abolishes hereditary rule, says every citizen is a "small king", introduces revolutionary reforms (according to Matsudaira), writes a constitution, and steps down from power so the new generation - Soyo - can take over. The irony of the "Donald Zurump" persona is just that - it looks like Sorachi is mocking Katsura as a right wing dictator, but it's completely satirical - it's actually his opponents who are the true reactionaries (The chapter includes assassins who shout phrases like "You crook, warping our country’s history", "Take this divine punishment!" and who call him a "Traitor(s) encroaching on our country" - loaded nationalist and reactionary language).

As Matsudaira explains later, Katsura became Donald Zurump because, after the war and the fall of the Bakufu, the country was in a fragile state and they knew the people would not readily accept radical reforms, so Katsura was using himself as a lightning rod for angry rebels while he lay the groundwork for a new country. Soyo also explains that the people still cling to old customs and gendered limitations still exist, so Katsura had to destroy the existing power systems first before she could take over. Which he did. The plan was for Katsura to fake his death at the hands of Sougo (the whole Shinsengumi were in on the "Donald Zurump" thing) and pass power onto Soyo, but Takasugi...complicated that. Though it still worked out.

So...no. Not a far right reactionary. Not even close.

[okherugo]

@fromthemouthofinfinity 👍🏼