Forum - View topicBNA: Brand New Animal: A Racism Allegory That (Mostly) Works
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Yeah strongly disagree. You can't go "I'm a normal human too!" while also going "So sometime me and other people like me go on rampage and destroy everything, tehehe" and also "Oh we all have superpower with no downside, we're literally superior to human". The human who drove the beastman out in BNA are 100% justified in doing so (not to mentioned even without the syndrome beastman are shown to be extremely violent people). Not even going to touch the ending.
The entire point why racism makes no sense is because other races are exactly alike except for what are essentially cosmetic difference. Any deviation from that miss the point entirely. Oh and there's also the problem that they can all turn human at will (which is something they're born with) and in fact actually do so most of the time. Meaning they could live in human city without any problem whatsoever, they'd just be regular human (oh poor them, they can't turn into giant animal to smash stuff, /worldsmallestviolin). From a regular human point of view, they'd probably only hear about beastman when one of them would go on rampage in a city and cause tons of damage/death (because of the aforementioned super power and violent tendency). And even if you ignore all of that, the show has nothing to say outside the generic "exclusion = bad". |
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SnowWarren
Posts: 272 |
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Loved that line. Really enjoyed BNA but it does have it's faults. Storywise, no reason is given for their human forms being the default or preferred form. It doesn't try to make sense of the idea of looking like the race that has mistreated you most of the time and I'm now realising it was probably to aid the race allegory though it just raises more questions, but maybe the answers are in the BNA Zero light novel or the manga side stories. While Alan being a beastman does come mostly out of nowhere, I did spy one hint. Trigger associates the beastman with the colour blue when Jem uses the marker test on Michiru in episode 2 and Alan is seen wearing a blue suit throughout the series as well as having blue eyes. Could just be a coincidence, but I like to think they knew what they were doing. With Alan, I think they abandoned the allegory slightly to throw Shirou's own black and white mentality back in his face. This show likes to tear down any characters' preconceived notions of how things should be and punish them for believing in a half-truth. This happens to Shirou, Michiru, Nazuna and Alan. I like how the show doesn't necessarily call out their opinions as invalid either. Only the mayor seems to see the whole picture and is shown to be the most adaptable, realizing that both humans and beastmen must overcome these preconceived notions by learning to live together rather than walling themselves off from each other which will only cause them to fester. A season 2 could bring in more humans as supporting characters and antagonists to explore this more fully. |
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Johan Eriksson 9003
Posts: 281 |
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Yeah, I agree that it works pretty well. There is always going to be some problems with using characters who are intrinsically powerful in some way as an allegory for the oppressed because the whole point of marginalization is that there is no "real" reason to fear any minority but I can see the value in having a narrative that tries to make the marginalized feel like the things that make them different is not just "ok" but awesome. Mostly though I feel like this sort of thing works better when humans are the minority and the superpowered beings are the privileged class.
Also, the last twist just muddied the message and it was so pointless. They could have had Alan be human and still change NOTHING else, not even the final battle. They had already explained that Alan had access to a drug that turns humans into beastmen and that he had researched Shirou so just have him explain that "I used the drug to turn myself into a beastman and I also used the blood of 1000 beastmen to turn myself immortal". Boom, problem solved and you get the added metaphor of the rich and privileged exploiting the bodies of the marginalized for themselves. Still, I think this does a good job of exploring a lot of important aspects of oppression while also making it nuanced. I like that they included the bit about beastmen-groupies being just as bad with their ignorance and that they explored the issue of equity vs equality. I.E. having all the same rights as everyone else sounds great but sometimes that doesn't actually meet the needs of everyone involved. I feel like they added something to the genre and did somethng different from other media that had already used this metaphor like Zootopia and Beastars. Allegory doesn't have to be perfect to say something wothwhile. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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Apart from the twist around Alan, the other thing that irked me in the show was the Nirvasyl Syndrome. It sounds too close to the "biotruths" that people have used to justify discrimination and oppression. ie. A society of Beastmen is impossible because they'll eventually attack each other because biology! -> Why are there no great African civilisations? Must be because genetics (if you conveniently ignore history)! Even though the explanation comes from Alan, the show never says that this is bogus and the Mayor herself agrees with the conclusion after reviewing the data.
The "solution" is also a bit iffy. Using medical science to pacify violent or simply non-complaint people has not had a bright history. Rather than turn to science, I feel the show could have focused on what forced urbanisation does to the varying cultures of the different Beastmen, like what was touched on with the Pinga episode. |
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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I agree. Most fantasy allegories to discrimination never really work because they're so divorced from real world discrimination. The Humans VS Beastmen argument doesn't make much sense to our own world because 1. One side is significantly less numerous than the other 2. Pound-for-pound, one side is physically more dangerous and threatening 3. One side is shown to have the historical blood guilt on their hands. You will not find a situation with our own world that matches all three. Anything with race or ethnicity is going to fail #2, and while you can attempt to say #2 is fulfilled by men and women, in doing so you give up #1 in the process. No matter how you try to look at shows like BNA works, you can't ever look at them and instinctively say "Oh, that group obviously represents X!" without hurdling over the pitfalls and fallacies along the way. I can see why Trigger's creative staff try to downplay any social commentary angles in their works in interviews and insist they're just entertainment, because outside a general 'discrimination is bad' message there's not really much thought in any of them. I mean, Promare flat out ended with spoiler[the Burnish being cured of being Burnish. Saying "just cure the discriminated people of why they're being discriminated against and you'll end discrimination" helps no one.] I won't assume that's what they were saying in Promare any more than "just vaccinate the bad traits of a group of people away and you'll end discrimination" in BNA. People say it's good they didn't 'cure Beastism' so they didn't give up their identity, but the vaccination they did get was more or less a form of getting your pet spayed or neutered so they won't go crazy and mark their territory all over your house. It's dulling their natural instructs so they can live together without going crazy. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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A lot of the complaints here could work for antisemitism. Most Israelis are secular and dress in a way that makes them indistinguishable from all the other Lavantine groups in the area, and we all know the well-worn tropes of secret Jewish powers. A particularly strong analogy can be made to Germany's population, whose high assimilation and wealth (probably the most prosperous community of the whole diaspora at the time) did nothing to save them.
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Hal14
 Posts: 667 Location: Heart of africa |
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I thought about using 'white voice' as an explanation for why beastmen stay in human form, but it runs into the same problem as your analogy: that beastmen are using their human forms while in anima city, a beastman only city so their not trying to blend in, hide or be indistinguishable. So imo the reason is simply to make the MC, who is stuck in her beast form, stand out. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I did wonder if it was maybe for reason of animation, like it might be way easier to do crowd shoot if everyone is a human rather than mix of animal. |
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DavetheUsher
 Posts: 505 |
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Americans tend to be very ethnocentric so they see anything involving stuff like those as commentaries on America rather than Japan, which things like discrimination and immigration are topics there. It's a form of confirmation bias, like people thinking anime characters are white. That being said, we have interviews where the staff say none of their works are really political or based on anything in the real world, and that's more evidence than we have for the opposite saying they are, so using simple fact checking would suggest it's all purely speculative. After all, people will interpret things however they want in the end regardless if the creator says differently -- death of the author, and all that. So that's why you get people scratching their heads on things like Nirvasyl Syndrome or the Alan reveal because it doesn't fit in with the way they chose to interpret BNA up until that point. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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Hey if possible could we please get an article similar to this one for
Interviews with monster girls, and talking about special needs individuals and how the show use it's fantasy elements of the girls to talk and address the experiences felt by people with special needs please. I know its not a topical show or interesting topic to most people but. I really appreciate ANN doing a piece like this where people talk about the themes and subtext of an anime and how that relates to the author and their perspective and experiences. I would love to see something similar for beastars as well. The nice thing about having these types of pieces in addition to reviews is that it allows for a more direct and subjective conversation about the art that not everyone interacted with and how it affects the possible messaging of the piece. |
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JR-1
Posts: 70 Location: Southeast Asia |
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While there is something to be said about American's tendency to think about everything from their lens and the dominance of western ideas and thoughts in academia and criticism, the opposite goes true as well, that is thinking that any form of criticism that is informed by western ideas and thoughts, no matter how well-argued, as "pushing values on Japan". If "not everything is about you Americans" applies, the same principle should apply to "not everything is about your crusade against 'western values' "
There are a lot of that kinda of bad takes on BNA, but is this article not one of them IMO. I feel like it's more of a scapegoating by simply throwing this article in the same box as those bad takes, and not engaging the ideas within the article itself. Keep in mind also that the author is currently living in Japan and not a white American. Add that yes, in this case with Trigger being a huge fan of western properties, it's rather undoubtable that western ideas and thoughts slip into their works. They may feel they don't try to say anything, but that doesn't mean nobody can talk about those ideas and thoughts that does seep into their work. On the other hand, not deliberately thinking of trying to do a commentary can result in something that gives muddied implications, which is how I feel about BNA.[/i] |
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Dark Mac
Posts: 313 |
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I feel like BNA's more about Japanese people than anything. The Sylvastas are like America and the rest of the world and America post-WW2, trying to force Japan to Westernize and be more like them. The mayor is representative of the current Japanese government, with its anti-immigration policy trying to create a state made up entirely of Japanese people rather than intermingling with the rest of the world. It's not surprising to see nationalistic propaganda like this from the studio that brought us Darling in the Franxx.
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El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
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Japan as a whole is fairly nationalistic, both historically and contemporary It's not just Trigger. It's definitely worth remembering discrimination also exists in Japan, like any other country in the world, so any kind of message about that doesn't have to be American by default. That being said I tend to view overt themes like 'war is bad' or 'discrimination is bad' are not really political or controversial statements so I can see why creators wouldn't really label their stuff as such. |
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