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NEWS: Dragon Quest Composer Koichi Sugiyama Passes Away at 90

Hey if you want to bring things back to anime, remember how Yoshiyuki Tomino made Gundam: Reconguista in G, and how that anime was a takedown aimed at the ultra-nationalists in Japan who want to rearm the country and resume being an imperialist power?

I'm asking because If people take issue with Koichi Sugimiya, they most certainly would take issue with Yoshiyuki Tomino given he harbors a lot of views people would find regressive: his comments on Jews and women being the most well known ones. I suppose anti-Semitism and sexism isn't necessarily related to Japanese nationalism, but it'd be a bit strange if that's where he would draw the line.

Vent wrote:

Hey if you want to bring things back to anime, remember how Yoshiyuki Tomino made Gundam: Reconguista in G, and how that anime was a takedown aimed at the ultra-nationalists in Japan who want to rearm the country and resume being an imperialist power?

Personal interpretation of a work is one thing, but it might be a bit much to try to speak for a creator unless they directly say something themselves. Has he ever actually came out and say he is against Jaoabese nationalism? I'm asking because If people take issue with Koichi Sugimiya, they most certainly would take issue with Yoshiyuki Tomino given he harbors a lot of views people would find regressive: his comments on Jews and women being the most well known ones. I suppose anti-Semitism and sexism isn't necessarily related to Japanese nationalism, but it'd be a bit strange if that's where he would draw the line.

But I have to muse, why do we have to respect the dead when, I'm sure, respect would have been more preferable to people when they were alive than when they are dead?

Posing the question a different way, should the mere fact of being dead make one more respected?

tsog wrote:

But I have to muse, why do we have to respect the dead when, I'm sure, respect would have been more preferable to people when they were alive than when they are dead? Posing the question a different way, should the mere fact of being dead make one more respected?

People taking part in grave dancing when someone they don't like dies is inevitable. No amount of "being a good person" prevents that because not everyone is on the same page or agrees on what a good person is. All that changes is whose doing the dancing.
Nobody is immune to being the subject of schadenfreude, let alone major public figures like celebrities and artists. Everyone posting in this thread is going to have someone smugly smiling to themselves when their obituary is printed. Personally, I don't understand the appeal of getting giddy over seeing someone I dislike dying. Maybe I'm just a doomer, but every death I see is just another reminder of our own mortality. We'll all die one day. I'm sure there will be people celebrating our own deaths because we all make enemies. No amount of trying to "be better" is going to change that. Live your life how you want and don't worry what people say. Life's too short.

I can find literally no credible sources in English about Tomino being an anti-Semite while Sugiyama's bigotry is well-documented.

I don't really have a horse in this race, except to say that it's become very clear to me in our present time that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, except that they aren't. And if you have the wrong opinion it will never be forgiven.

While I do find Mr. Sugiyama's opinions disappointing and certainly hurtful to many people, I also believe that it is still preferable to treat the dead with dignity because I believe that everyone brings some good to the world, in this case Mr. Sugiyama's music, and also some bad as well. I don't think any of us can know what led him to think the horrible things he did, but just looking at the response of his Japanese friends and colleagues, I do think it is unfair to say that those thoughts were a complete picture of him.

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

I can find literally no credible sources in English about Tomino being an anti-Semite while Sugiyama's bigotry is well-documented.

Forgive me, I thought it was one of his more well known extremist views

https://twitter.com/zeonicscans/status/1293302139800809472

I don't really have a horse in this race, except to say that it's become very clear to me in our present time that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, except that they aren't. And if you have the wrong opinion it will never be forgiven.

tsog wrote:

But I have to muse, why do we have to respect the dead when, I'm sure, respect would have been more preferable to people when they were alive than when they are dead? Posing the question a different way, should the mere fact of being dead make one more respected?

People taking part in grave dancing when someone they don't like dies is inevitable. No amount of "being a good person" prevents that because not everyone is on the same page or agrees on what a good person is. All that changes is whose doing the dancing.
Nobody is immune to being the subject of schadenfreude, let alone major public figures like celebrities and artists. Everyone posting in this thread is going to have someone smugly smiling to themselves when their obituary is printed. Personally, I don't understand the appeal of getting giddy over seeing someone I dislike dying. Maybe I'm just a doomer, but every death I see is just another reminder of our own mortality. We'll all die one day. I'm sure there will be people celebrating our own deaths because we all make enemies. No amount of trying to "be better" is going to change that. Live your life how you want and don't worry what people say. Life's too short.

I don't really have a horse in this race, except to say that it's become very clear to me in our present time that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, except that they aren't. And if you have the wrong opinion it will never be forgiven.

While I do find Mr. Sugiyama's opinions disappointing and certainly hurtful to many people, I also believe that it is still preferable to treat the dead with dignity because I believe that everyone brings some good to the world, in this case Mr. Sugiyama's music, and also some bad as well. I don't think any of us can know what led him to think the horrible things he did, but just looking at the response of his Japanese friends and colleagues, I do think it is unfair to say that those thoughts were a complete picture of him.

and not everyone can be an open minded saint like Hayao Miyazaki who goes out drinking with old Nazi soldiers from WWII and then pens a manga honoring them and their life after getting to know them.