Based Camp - The Obscure Anime that Argued Women Secretly Want to Be Slaves (& Other Offensive Anime Themes)

00:00:00.000 a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right? But no,

00:00:04.960 I don't think it's a show about slavery. It's actually a show about women and the way our 0.99

00:00:09.760 society treats women. What if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born, 1.00

00:00:16.840 preferred to be submissive to another group of people? What if that, and what if our entire

00:00:22.680 planet shamed them for that instinct, made them feel like garbage for that instinct,

00:00:26.740 made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these perfect politicians, 0.96

00:00:31.660 these perfect citizens, which is what the deers feel they have to be.

00:00:35.340 But it's all hollow for them. It's all a facade because what they really want is someone to believe

00:00:42.660 in a worthy master to serve. And that is such an offensive idea. You could never say that. I mean,

00:00:50.740 I did. I'm going to get canceled for this episode, of course. Look, I'm not saying I agree with that,

00:00:54.620 but I'm saying some people feel that way. And it is an interesting concept to explore.

00:00:59.220 Would you like to know more?

00:01:00.320 All right, Malcolm. So today we're going to talk about various anime shows and what they mean about

00:01:04.620 larger society because, and I think you've made a really interesting observation about this,

00:01:09.260 fiction in the past used to be meaningful and something that we talked about in English class

00:01:14.700 because it said something very profound and meaningful about society that was often subversive

00:01:20.420 and that often couldn't be said out loud. So you had to say it through allegory. You had to say it

00:01:25.100 through some like fantasy world or fictional story. And everyone had to infer the meaning,

00:01:31.380 the societal commentary. And now that doesn't really happen in that much in fiction. It's all like

00:01:35.760 I've got to give some context for this. So first, this is actually our second recording because we

00:01:39.680 both forgot to hit record the first time we were doing this. And so parts of this are going to sound a

00:01:45.040 little rote. I'm sorry about that. But we did want to do another anime episode because the last one,

00:01:51.400 well, it wasn't one of our most watched episodes. People were like really into it. They were like,

00:01:55.200 actually, like, I'm really nerdy about this stuff and I appreciate you guys talking about it.

00:01:59.320 So we're like, let's go deeper into this.

00:02:01.920 But I think for non-weebs in this audience, and it's not like I'm a nerd too, but I do think that

00:02:09.140 Malcolm is right in that if you want to see genuinely unique social commentary, you're going

00:02:15.500 to see more of it in anime than you are, especially like also, you know, in Western media these days,

00:02:20.480 so much has been sort of like bankrupt and hollowed out by the woke cult, essentially, that you're not

00:02:26.460 going to see social commentary. You're not going to see subversive ideas in literature or in

00:02:31.560 mainstream Western media. Where are you seeing it anime? So that's why even if you're not into anime,

00:02:35.860 we recommend, well, considering some of the shows that we talk about, or at least considering the

00:02:40.440 analysis. We'll add interesting ones and we'll talk about them later so people don't need to

00:02:44.800 actually watch the shit, okay? And this actually comes to a point. Somebody, our last one, they 0.97

00:02:49.400 were like, oh my god, I can't believe the Collinses. Don't just watch Izekiah, but they watch

00:02:53.020 bottom tier Izekiah flop. Izekiah. Izekiah. Izekiah. Izekiah. Izekiah is a form of like Japanese

00:02:59.580 tapas. Okay, whatever. This is Japanese, born in Japan. Anyway, so we-

00:03:05.860 No, no, no. But I wouldn't have had the revelations I had from that last anime had it not been such a

00:03:11.040 low tier anime, had it not been such a low quality anime, because the low tierness of it stripped out

00:03:16.740 all of the nuance and engaging plot. So I was able to see what the core of the genre actually was

00:03:22.620 with no scaffolding around it.

00:03:25.080 Yeah, like in other words, lowbrow media is based and pure and straightforward about everything.

00:03:31.060 And we like that.

00:03:31.900 Yes. And it can often do things that other media wouldn't. And so this came, got me thinking,

00:03:37.040 like, what anime have I seen where I might not have seen it if I was screening for quality?

00:03:42.700 One that came to mind was one that some people mentioned in the comments, which was Thermae Roma.

00:03:46.940 True classic. Best thing ever.

00:03:48.820 Thermae Roma has a terrible Netflix adaptation. Do not watch it on Netflix. Find the original through

00:03:52.660 some streaming site or something. It is god tier anime, but the animation is basically stills.

00:03:59.400 Yeah, it's low effort. It's low budget, but it's brilliant.

00:04:03.680 But what it does is it's not just like a good learning opportunity, but it's like a good historic

00:04:09.180 learning opportunity because it's contrasting through time travel, the Basque culture of Japan

00:04:14.400 and the Basque culture of ancient Rome. And it is both humorous and informative.

00:04:20.540 But probably one of the most interesting plots I have ever seen in any show combined was one of the

00:04:28.380 worst, most boring shows I have ever seen came from an anime from 20 years ago called Dears.

00:04:36.140 And this anime.

00:04:38.200 It's that old?

00:04:39.660 Yes, 20 years old. Let's see when it came out.

00:04:42.520 When did the Dears anime come out? 0.90

00:04:48.380 2004.

00:04:49.500 So it's, yeah, 19 years old at this point.

00:04:53.240 Wow.

00:04:53.780 Which is wild to think about. So this anime, to understand how low tier this anime was,

00:05:00.080 back then, you did not get much sexualization of women in mainstream anime. 1.00

00:05:06.540 You would get like the transformations in something like Sailor Moon or something like that.

00:05:11.960 But like this level of sexualization was actually pretty rare.

00:05:18.060 Except for that one anime I'm thinking where he was a scientist who was a little girl and the girl who turned into a spaceship.

00:05:23.540 But we're not going to talk about that one.

00:05:24.860 Are you saying that Dears was pretty sexualized?

00:05:28.480 Yeah, that one was pretty sexualized. It's the only other from that time period I know of that was like as sexualized as Dears.

00:05:33.600 No, Dears was more sexualized because like many of the characters wore like kink get-ups most of the time. 0.99

00:05:39.060 It was almost borderline like pornography for the time period.

00:05:44.940 Now today it would be considered very mainstream anime in the amount it was sexualized.

00:05:47.960 But back then, low tier writing, low tier that, but the plot insane.

00:05:52.080 And so she was talking about how anime can sometimes go into things.

00:05:55.580 And the point of media is to challenge our preconceptions about things.

00:05:58.760 So if we look at the closest show to Dears that has come out in Western media,

00:06:03.200 it's, I think it's called like Area 51 or something.

00:06:05.080 It was about those aliens that crash-landed in Africa and then were basically treated like apartheid blacks were in Africa.

00:06:12.560 And it's like, wow, that is super on the nose and you are not, there isn't like some big group of watchers of this that were like,

00:06:19.160 I used to be pro-apartheid and now I'm anti-apartheid. 0.50

00:06:23.300 And then I watched this movie and I realized the whole thing for me.

00:06:27.640 But in this anime, it just, I'm not going to go too deep into it because we're going to save that for later in the episode.

00:06:33.140 But in this anime, the aliens that crash-landed on Earth are actually bred and designed to be a slave species,

00:06:41.260 to be a servant species to another species.

00:06:44.940 And they cannot achieve fulfillment or real happiness without doing this.

00:06:50.520 However, landing on Earth, they believe due to Earth's history and the biases of the people of Earth,

00:06:56.840 that if the people of Earth learn this about them, that they will treat them poorly and potentially even force them to leave.

00:07:04.240 And so they feel constantly sort of oppressed and bigoted against and have to hide their true identity,

00:07:12.520 which is slaves who want to be slaves.

00:07:16.180 And that's really interesting.

00:07:17.660 Like, that's so much more interesting than like the house elf way of doing this in Harry Potter or something like this.

00:07:22.540 Because it genuinely causes you to ask questions, which we will get to later in this,

00:07:27.380 because it combines this with a bunch of other themes, which lead to other interesting things.

00:07:31.700 But other animes that cover topics that like-

00:07:35.080 Why don't you want to just dive right into this?

00:07:37.340 Why don't we just dive into what this is about?

00:07:38.860 Because it will lead to more people watching.

00:07:40.140 What you do is you drop a few breadcrumbs, then you cover it at the end of the episode.

00:07:44.100 You typically want to break up an idea like that.

00:07:47.980 But to another anime, because you were mentioning this in the unrecorded bit,

00:07:52.480 that you were like, oh yeah, this is really a topic you couldn't touch on in the way it touches on it in Western media.

00:07:58.000 Yeah.

00:07:58.320 So another anime that I think is really good at sharing subversive ideas through anime,

00:08:04.760 like in modern media, is Beastars, which is like most animes.

00:08:08.880 It takes place in a high school setting. 0.95

00:08:10.120 It's basically, imagine Zootopia, but in a high school setting and super fucking dark. 0.93

00:08:15.420 Like because actually there is, we'll say like, you know, the equivalent of human trafficking 0.96

00:08:20.100 with like there are some predators who will actually pay money to kill prey in this world.

00:08:24.940 And the high school students who go to school together are in active tension where predators will-

00:08:31.220 This is really-

00:08:33.640 Really tempted to kill prey.

00:08:35.000 When you-

00:08:35.660 This is really important.

00:08:36.640 It's a world in which the different species of animals are actually systemically different

00:08:42.560 from each other and in some ways a threat to each other.

00:08:45.980 And this is really important if you're going to talk about things like sexual differences

00:08:49.080 in humans.

00:08:49.860 You can look at something like Zootopia where the solution is that actually any threat that

00:08:56.020 some of them posed to other of them was completely artificial.

00:08:59.320 And contrast this with Beastars where when we live in a society where when a woman goes out 1.00

00:09:03.860 at night, she is genuinely at risk.

00:09:06.540 In our world, at risk of another part of our species, men, targeting her, preying on her.

00:09:14.680 This is-

00:09:15.260 And finding out how to structure our world in which it heightens these differences between

00:09:20.740 individuals.

00:09:21.740 And says, okay, if there really are systemic differences between individuals, if there really

00:09:26.200 are things like night markets where the predators go to basically eat other humans or buy meat from

00:09:31.620 other humans that have been dug up in graveyards or in other ways smuggled into this.

00:09:35.240 Like, how do you live with that?

00:09:37.060 How do you have that as a coming of age ritual?

00:09:39.440 But what's I think even more interesting about the show is one of the main characters is Prey, 0.98

00:09:44.300 is basically like a slutty rabbit. 0.91

00:09:46.360 And they really, because you can't talk about this in modern society, but she, while being 0.97

00:09:53.220 Prey, also really like plays around with the dynamic of being Prey and often tempts people

00:09:59.420 and baits people in a way that makes her demonize throughout the school, but also like gives her 1.00

00:10:04.920 various advantages and in a sense power over other people.

00:10:07.580 And I think it really plays with the concept of, you know, like blaming the victim.

00:10:11.880 You can never talk about a woman being victimized in some way and her having a role in that

00:10:17.320 victimization.

00:10:18.220 It makes it very clear that she is an active predator and yet she is a diminutive prey.

00:10:24.480 And that I think in a lot of shows like this, they would have an individual act this way

00:10:29.460 and they would either completely shame it, just be like, she's a bad guy.

00:10:33.980 Like this is what would have happened if this was done in like an 80s scary movie, right?

00:10:37.260 Like she'd be the first to die.

00:10:38.380 Or they would have a character act this way and be like, but she's an empowered woman. 1.00

00:10:44.080 And it doesn't take either of those easy routes.

00:10:46.860 Her actions actually do hurt some of the people around her. 0.53

00:10:50.720 At first you see her being bullied and you think it's just slut shaming. 0.99

00:10:54.200 And then you see the real damage she is doing to other people's lives and real systemic damage.

00:11:01.080 So for example, in the first episode, so this isn't giving that much away, you know, you learn

00:11:04.640 that she had broken up the relationship between an endangered species with another one of their

00:11:09.600 kind in sleeping with this girl's boyfriend. 0.94

00:11:13.040 And that that's why this girl is bullying her. 1.00

00:11:16.540 And you're like, oh shit, like that was kind of justified bullying. 0.99

00:11:20.300 I hate to say it. 0.99

00:11:21.160 Like sometimes if you are actively going out and targeting people who are in relationships

00:11:25.620 and that you learn that she is doing this to gain a feeling of power, but that she actually

00:11:32.580 yearns almost for self-victimization because she feels like right in her role as prey, which

00:11:39.140 is also a very interesting emotional subset that I think we as a society are shamed in talking

00:11:45.820 about or engaging.

00:11:47.220 And I won't go too deep into what I'm referring to with that.

00:11:51.160 But what I will say is throughout this, we're going to get spoilers.

00:11:55.200 So just spoilers, spoilers, spoilers throughout this when we talk about things, but keep in

00:11:59.240 mind that there's been a great study on this.

00:12:01.120 And it's one that Simone always cites to me, which has completely desensitized me to spilling

00:12:04.660 spoilers, which shows, what does it show Simone? 1.00

00:12:08.100 That people actually enjoy content more when they have been exposed to spoilers.

00:12:13.140 So I love spoilers.

00:12:14.120 I always want to know what's going to happen.

00:12:16.180 I enjoy things more.

00:12:17.000 Of course, Malcolm has grown up in a family where spoilers are worse than killing the

00:12:22.760 family dog.

00:12:23.640 So I understand that many people are very against spoilers, but not in this house.

00:12:29.360 Not in this house.

00:12:30.440 So another anime that I think is really interesting in regards to the concepts it touches and very,

00:12:38.960 very relevant to this show is an anime called Franks.

00:12:43.300 This is a studio trigger anime, so absolutely wild.

00:12:46.140 Like they typically are.

00:12:48.320 But as to where it's relevant to this show, the first area is you see in it, you at first

00:12:54.580 believe it's just a bunch of young kids in a school fighting in mechs against aliens.

00:12:58.580 And as it goes on, it unveils more and more about the world.

00:13:02.520 So it starts as like the most generic anime you could imagine.

00:13:05.880 Yeah.

00:13:06.300 And then it begins to unfold and you see more and more.

00:13:09.380 And these kids had originally thought that they were like kids who were recruited into this,

00:13:13.320 or at least this is the impression you get, by their parents, by a society that's threatened

00:13:18.220 by these aliens.

00:13:19.280 And as time goes on, what you learn is, no, they aren't actually.

00:13:24.140 What they are is the people who they are trying to protect because they accidentally get into

00:13:28.080 their settlement at some point.

00:13:29.880 They've lived for thousands of years.

00:13:32.460 And do the young people fighting these mechas not know that?

00:13:37.180 No, they don't know that.

00:13:38.180 Whoa.

00:13:38.900 Well, they may not know that.

00:13:40.560 Like they genuinely are unaware of what's going on in the adult world.

00:13:44.020 And these people have, because they've lived for thousands of years, you know, they've all

00:13:47.260 been in relationships with each other multiple times.

00:13:49.240 They live with this enormous ennui.

00:13:51.140 They all seem to not hate their lives, but they live completely passionless and sympathy-less

00:13:58.180 existences.

00:13:59.060 Because they have been around for so long, not only do they take almost no passion other

00:14:04.680 than like that bleeding type of passion you might get was the 50th, 60th person you've

00:14:09.540 had sex with. 0.50

00:14:10.580 But they also, this was sort of like this sad passion they get from the things that do

00:14:15.580 give them passion.

00:14:16.260 Like it feels very hollow and it's portrayed as very hollow, but they are unable to value

00:14:20.900 the lives of these people who haven't lived as long.

00:14:23.600 And what this shows, because to them, there's these little blips that they created in a lab.

00:14:28.520 And yet it contrasts it with like the dynamism you see within these individuals' young

00:14:33.400 lives, young love for the first time, you know, finding out who you are, sexual identity

00:14:39.560 for the first time, you know, exploring friendships and betrayal and all the stuff you would see

00:14:45.520 in a high school anime.

00:14:48.040 And it just contrasts this enormous passion in these disposable young people versus this

00:14:53.620 ennui and these people who have extreme life extension technology.

00:14:58.740 And I think that this is actually kind of an inevitability that we keep learning about

00:15:03.440 with life extension, but it's so rarely framed this way among the life extension proponents.

00:15:09.720 How is a person who's lived 1,500 years really going to see a baby or a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old?

00:15:16.700 Will they really have the capacity to value their lives in the same way we value other human

00:15:20.820 lives, us young people?

00:15:22.080 Will they really have the capacity to enjoy life anymore in the same way?

00:15:25.360 Even as a person who's in my mid-30s, I can tell you, I don't enjoy life with the same amount of

00:15:30.960 fire and gusto I did when I was, you know, 15.

00:15:35.060 And I see it in our little kids, the amount that they really, you know, so, and in the show,

00:15:40.780 eventually this old society dies out and humans start breeding again.

00:15:45.980 Like this is seen as the solution to life extensionism is pronatalism,

00:15:52.680 is intergenerational aging and death and growing again.

00:15:58.520 And that is, and behind all of this is human sexuality, which I also think is a really interesting

00:16:06.780 and human gender, which are major themes in this.

00:16:09.400 The robots that they are using to fight in this war, they can only be piloted by a biological male 1.00

00:16:16.360 and a biological female or a male assigned to birth and a female assigned to birth.

00:16:19.900 However you want to use these words, like biological might be an offensive way to put it,

00:16:22.840 but like cis male and cis female is also the wrong way to put it.

00:16:27.240 Because there is a gay character in this.

00:16:29.120 And she tries to pilot a mech. 1.00

00:16:31.100 Well, I mean, a lesbian would still be cis if she was born. 1.00

00:16:34.640 Okay, okay, so yeah, I guess there's no like intentionally trans characters,

00:16:37.680 but it's made really clear in this, you have to be with the opposite birth gender for the mechs to work.

00:16:42.900 And even if you have an attraction, even if you're like, yeah, but for me, I'm attracted to girls, 0.98

00:16:49.640 that mechs won't work.

00:16:51.160 And I think that that's capturing an element of this, an almost inescapable element of the human history,

00:16:58.620 where if you're dealing with this one group that's fighting for sort of intergenerational human dynamism,

00:17:05.360 they can be as tolerant as they want to people of different sexual orientations,

00:17:12.180 which they are in the anime.

00:17:14.760 But it doesn't change the way that those people are able to participate

00:17:19.140 with current levels of technology, at least in this sort of intergenerational dynamism.

00:17:24.220 I totally forgot, but actually the show does address this late in the season.

00:17:28.020 There are same-sex couple pairings that work, but only with additional technology and like cutting edge stuff.

00:17:35.380 And in some of these pairings, it's even heterosexual couples, but with the woman topping the man.

00:17:41.440 And that was really fascinating.

00:17:42.900 They went there with those themes.

00:17:46.000 And I actually looked it up afterwards, I want to make sure I remembered it.

00:17:48.740 And the first comment I saw was somebody on Reddit being like,

00:17:51.240 I watched the first half of Brinks, does it somehow get less problematic?

00:17:56.720 And the first comment was like, oh, my sweet summer child, you have no idea.

00:18:01.840 Another theme of the show that I found very interesting is that at the beginning of the show,

00:18:06.320 many of the men will want to pilot the meccas with the same women who are seen as the best pilots. 0.91

00:18:13.440 And they do this not because they like the women or anything like that,

00:18:16.400 but they see it as a status game amongst the other men.

00:18:19.400 And obviously, this is much to the chagrin of both of the women who are seen as the high-status pilots 0.72

00:18:24.520 and the women seen as the lower-status pilots.

00:18:27.380 But as the show goes on, it becomes clear that everyone pilots best with one person who they are uniquely compatible with.

00:18:34.460 And the desire to pilot a mecca with another person's compatible pilot or with multiple pilots

00:18:43.980 increasingly looks juvenile and obviously not optimal.

00:18:48.600 The message being that it is juvenile for men to choose a partner for status rather than compatibility.

00:18:55.980 And that basically they're, as they say in another movie I really love,

00:19:00.040 we're in this for the species, boys and girls.

00:19:02.680 And it's not about individual status games amongst other males.

00:19:06.780 I was watching some clips from the shows in AMVs that's animated music videos where people will restring parts of anime over popular songs,

00:19:15.700 which is a core way I listen to music.

00:19:18.000 And I have been shocked by how based some of the quotes I see are that I didn't realize how based they were in context

00:19:26.620 because I thought of it as just normal quirky characters being quirky in an anime.

00:19:31.280 For example, it is so relentlessly pronatalist you get lines like,

00:19:36.100 if you don't have a partner, find one.

00:19:38.760 And if you can't find one, take one by force.

00:19:42.220 Or relentlessly monogamous.

00:19:45.140 When you kiss someone, that's a statement they belong to you.

00:19:48.060 So you should only kiss the person you love.

00:19:50.960 But I love that because those are all themes that you would just never see in a Western show.

00:19:57.060 You would never see these themes in a Western show.

00:19:59.620 And it is fascinating to explore them.

00:20:02.600 But in a way, I find these themes are sort of muted in that they are just thematic and aesthetic in that show.

00:20:09.860 It's more saying this is good, this is bad.

00:20:13.540 You know, now we're going to get to Dears, which is very different.

00:20:16.980 Oh, circling back.

00:20:18.300 Okay.

00:20:18.860 Circling back.

00:20:19.820 Simone was asking, Malcolm, why don't you just finish talking about it now?

00:20:23.460 No.

00:20:23.960 Because it's good plot structure in terms of how you deliver a podcast.

00:20:28.400 You have to give the bait, show why it's interesting and they should keep watching.

00:20:32.420 And then you say some interesting things as meat in the middle.

00:20:35.200 And then you close it off at the end with tying back to the original bait.

00:20:39.220 Which you've got to make it juicy or people won't continue to watch.

00:20:42.320 You see, story structure, Simone, story structure.

00:20:44.500 But so Dears, as I said, slave race, crashes on Earth. 1.00

00:20:50.240 They feel the need to hide this.

00:20:52.520 It turns out that one of these slaves is defective and is essentially meant to be discarded.

00:21:00.040 Like turned to ooze and then returned into usable product.

00:21:02.840 And she accidentally is dropped out and she is found by a human.

00:21:06.620 And this human ends up bonding with it.

00:21:09.980 Like he becomes its master.

00:21:12.220 And what you realize is the way it's defective is both considered a defect worthy of recall.

00:21:17.220 So the mastership wants to destroy her, liquidate her, reform her and give the fixed version to the guy. 0.97

00:21:23.160 Which obviously as a human, he's not super cool with that idea.

00:21:25.840 But also sort of a god among her species.

00:21:29.860 And what makes her a god is a superpower that she has.

00:21:33.520 Which is also her defection.

00:21:35.300 Which is that she can, whenever she wants, choose who she wants to be her master.

00:21:41.320 Oh, interesting.

00:21:42.460 Now, she can only choose one master.

00:21:44.440 Okay.

00:21:44.780 But she gets to choose that master.

00:21:47.480 At a time.

00:21:47.840 She can initiate the engagement ceremony on her own without being pre-programmed or command from the central ship.

00:21:54.800 Okay.

00:21:55.040 Like normally you would be assigned by the central ship.

00:21:58.220 And this is the way the other aliens are-

00:21:59.920 So in other words, normally it's arranged marriage.

00:22:02.220 She can choose her husband in this world.

00:22:04.620 But it's still, it's not like a serial monogamy world.

00:22:06.960 Once she chooses her master, that's it.

00:22:09.240 Yeah, that's her master.

00:22:10.260 Okay, okay, okay.

00:22:11.280 And it explores interesting concepts like this.

00:22:13.220 Like another one had had a master who actually was, back in the day when she was an actual alien, you know, in one of these.

00:22:19.920 From another planet.

00:22:20.480 And the master had died and she can't recreate a connection.

00:22:23.000 And so, yeah, it's sad.

00:22:25.200 So the show, Deals, was like a lot of stuff where you're like, oh, that's really interesting.

00:22:28.980 But what's fascinating about the show is what this is obviously supposed to be about.

00:22:36.760 So a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right?

00:22:41.600 Which is an interesting thing.

00:22:42.960 And it would be interesting if that's what the show was actually about or the themes that it was getting at.

00:22:46.980 But no, I don't think it's a show about slavery.

00:22:48.860 It's actually a show about women. 1.00

00:22:51.240 And the way our society treats women. 1.00

00:22:54.340 What if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born preferred to be submissive to another group of people?

00:23:02.900 What if that?

00:23:04.040 And what if our entire planet shamed them for that instinct? 0.85

00:23:07.200 Made them feel like garbage for that instinct? 0.59

00:23:09.100 Made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these perfect politicians, these perfect citizens, which is what the deers feel they have to be. 0.98

00:23:17.720 But it's all hollow for them.

00:23:19.480 It's all a facade.

00:23:20.660 Because what they really want is someone to believe in a worthy master to serve.

00:23:27.980 And that is such an offensive idea.

00:23:31.080 You could never say that.

00:23:32.800 I mean, I did.

00:23:33.580 I'm going to get canceled for this episode, of course.

00:23:35.520 Look, I'm not saying I agree with that.

00:23:37.040 But I'm saying some people feel that way.

00:23:39.160 And it is an interesting concept to explore.

00:23:41.560 But yeah, I really liked that framing.

00:23:44.740 And then on top of all that, they say, and imagine that your superpower is one that every woman has, which is that they can choose who they want to spend their lives serving. 0.85

00:23:57.440 So it shows sort of like a be happier for what you have than a lot of people frame it as being.

00:24:05.080 It's not a bad thing to live your life in service to somebody else if that's what you want.

00:24:09.260 And I'm not saying all women are born this way.

00:24:11.540 I'm just saying that if we are realistic and we look at the data, and we've obviously done the data on this, a huge portion of women desire relationships in which they are the subordinate partner. 0.54

00:24:22.500 But you can also choose to look at it from the perspective of, and this is a chapter from the Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality, humans as a slave race.

00:24:30.160 You point out in that book that there were a lot of actually selective pressures encouraging most humans to be comfortable with and well adapted to essentially being a slave to someone higher.

00:24:43.560 So I'll word this differently.

00:24:45.460 Most of the selective pressures throughout human history were applied to the humans of the lowest social status, not the humans of the highest social status.

00:24:52.400 You were much more likely to lose access to mates or much more likely to be killed if you were a low social status human who messed up than a high social status human who messed up.

00:25:01.840 And because of this, the selective pressures applied to our species primarily applied to people in surf-like roles.

00:25:08.380 But they do show up in people with super senior roles.

00:25:12.320 I mean, like in the past and in European kings, they were still slaved to God.

00:25:16.780 They served God.

00:25:17.740 So like you can even see it in various echelons of various cultural clusters.

00:25:22.240 We as a species feel uncomfortable without a master often.

00:25:25.960 And then you see this in the king saying, well, my master is really God.

00:25:30.080 Or in the present, my master is really the people.

00:25:32.920 Exactly.

00:25:33.360 Everybody has to be a servant to something.

00:25:36.900 And that's really fascinating.

00:25:39.000 Are we a slavery?

00:25:40.480 Are we meant to be?

00:25:42.620 And we live in a culture, especially United States.

00:25:46.480 I mean, I would say Japanese culture is a little bit more amenable to hierarchy.

00:25:50.340 But in the United States, it's like super not okay to be a boss, the entrepreneur, like the one calling the shots.

00:25:57.200 And that does create a lot of tension, perhaps unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, not just for women, but also I think for many men.

00:26:05.160 Yeah.

00:26:05.340 So, you know, something I was going to say is my brother.

00:26:08.560 He had this idea and I was going to share it with him on the show, but he's, you know, we don't want to get him canceled or anything.

00:26:13.620 So we're not having him on the show anymore.

00:26:14.680 And the idea was really interesting to me.

00:26:17.420 It was what if aliens find humans?

00:26:19.860 And the thing when we first meet aliens that they're most shocked about about humanity is they're like, oh, you're a swarm intelligence.

00:26:26.140 What does it feel like to be part of the swarm intelligence?

00:26:28.640 And most humans are like, I don't think we're a swarm intelligence.

00:26:31.600 And they're like, what is the internet?

00:26:33.060 How did you build this spaceship?

00:26:34.760 How did you build this product?

00:26:36.200 How did you build this company?

00:26:37.580 Hundreds and thousands of you working together, all contributing little bits of ideas, all communicating.

00:26:42.680 You are a swarm intelligence.

00:26:45.100 What do you mean you're not a swarm intelligence?

00:26:47.200 And I found that to be a really interesting concept of what actually turns out to be weird to humans is one of the things we expect to be weird about aliens.

00:26:56.140 They come here and they're like, oh, why are you guys all like looking for masters?

00:27:00.300 Yeah.

00:27:00.440 That's a really weird thing.

00:27:01.740 Why do you all flock in the same, you know, mimetic direction and watch the same shows?

00:27:05.260 We get classified as a slave species, like a slave species that desperately desires a master.

00:27:11.240 So that's fascinating.

00:27:13.940 So I love those themes that it is able to explore.

00:27:17.660 Another thing that it explores, which is way ahead of its time, is a teacher who is constantly trying to push her sexuality on the students.

00:27:26.760 And the students who are-

00:27:28.120 Is this in which anime?

00:27:29.820 Dears.

00:27:30.140 Okay.

00:27:31.280 I'll have a little like shot of it.

00:27:33.080 It's very clear.

00:27:34.240 And students who are completely nonplussed by this, they're looking at this like, oh God, not again. 0.99

00:27:39.220 You know, not one of these stupid things where you try to sexualize a situation or just here to learn. 0.87

00:27:44.540 So also another very problematic anime from Western standards. 0.96

00:27:50.140 Wow.

00:27:50.940 People, now we've gone through the main anime we wanted to touch on.

00:27:55.420 Oh yeah.

00:27:56.400 Another reason why I would say it does make sense to sometimes, I think much more than with Western shows, continue to watch an anime, even if it seems kind of bog standard at the beginning.

00:28:06.080 Animes are much more likely to have like wacky plot reversals.

00:28:10.600 So one that I would think of here would be Shuffle. 0.99

00:28:13.940 Anyone who's seen Shuffle immediately knows what I'm talking about.

00:28:17.160 So Shuffle starts as like this slice of life harem comedy.

00:28:21.900 And people are familiar with harem comedies, right?

00:28:23.620 We've all seen them, you know, where one guy is dating many women.

00:28:26.700 Now, typically the convention-

00:28:27.760 Not necessarily dating, like maybe like, oh no, I live in a house with like 15 gorgeous women, that kind of thing. 1.00

00:28:32.820 And they all have a crush on me and now I need to choose, you know, that's typically, but typically within a harem comedy, the convention is that there's one character that like obviously is the one he's going to pick in the end.

00:28:41.760 And then all the rest are more just for jokes.

00:28:44.000 And in Shuffle, he ends up choosing one of the characters, like actually choosing one.

00:28:49.460 And it's not the one who's like supposed to be his main one from the beginning.

00:28:53.120 And then she has like a mental breakdown and tries to kill everybody. 0.83

00:28:56.980 Oh, you mean the one who should have been the one? 0.82

00:28:59.680 Yeah.

00:29:00.240 Oh. 0.99

00:29:00.860 And it shows you, I think really interestingly, what would happen if you actually pulled this harem comedy shit on a real girl? 0.99

00:29:07.660 Amazing. 1.00

00:29:08.620 That she would immediately go crazy and try to kill everyone?

00:29:12.520 I don't think women's murderous capacity is realistically as high as you think.

00:29:17.220 Though I think maybe from a fantasy standpoint, I actually heard a fun theory today that like the reason why women are so into real crime podcasts and documentaries and stuff is like they are fantasizing about the real crime that they themselves are too weak or low testosterone to commit. 0.99

00:29:35.180 Essentially.

00:29:35.920 Interesting theory.

00:29:36.800 That is an interesting theory.

00:29:38.560 Well, I mean, okay.

00:29:39.300 So we can talk about like an anime that got multiple seasons that I actually like.

00:29:43.160 Somebody here was like, oh, why don't you talk about, I can't remember.

00:29:46.960 It was some like dark anime.

00:29:48.420 And I was like, oh, I don't know.

00:29:49.540 I don't love animes like that.

00:29:50.600 And I was like, oh, well, I guess I did really like When They Cry.

00:29:53.940 It was just the one that was just murdering like every day.

00:29:56.640 It's like Groundhog Day, but with murder.

00:29:58.680 Episodic.

00:29:59.140 It later becomes like individual episodes are mostly disconnected from each other.

00:30:03.160 And it's the same characters, but they're in different stories.

00:30:06.140 And every story basically ends with one of the characters, all the characters are young kids, you know, killing most of the other characters in very gruesome ways.

00:30:16.080 Great.

00:30:16.560 If you want to, you're like, I don't get why this would be entertaining.

00:30:19.580 Imagine like the Arya Stark plotline.

00:30:21.980 You know, you might like it. 0.98

00:30:22.920 You're like, oh, young girl goes through some shit, becomes really resilient, ends up murdering a lot of people, trying to save everyone. 0.98

00:30:30.060 Imagine that, but it was just over and over and over again until you begin to like become sort of numb to the brutality of what's going on. 0.99

00:30:38.140 Oh, God, no.

00:30:39.540 Now, as an adult, I don't know why.

00:30:41.180 I don't think I'd like it as an adult.

00:30:42.420 I think it's one of those things that was like fun for teenage me, but would be horrifying for adult me.

00:30:48.600 But if we're talking about, okay, I'm going to give a few anime recommendations that are like slop.

00:30:53.240 If you want.

00:30:53.960 But hold on, the theme of this, and I want you to hold to it, is slop that has subversive or interesting commentary on mainstream society.

00:31:01.800 She can't keep me from adding one that's not controversial here.

00:31:05.460 A complete bog standard anime worth checking out, if only because Roberta has strong Simone energy, is Black Lagoon. 0.82

00:31:12.500 If you like Kingsman-y, James Bond-y sort of stuff.

00:31:16.420 Okay, I can't think of any of that.

00:31:18.140 I do not know how I forgot this one, but the second season of Gurren Lagann, which is also one of my favorite anime.

00:31:23.000 I actually think the first season of Gurren Lagann, which is just sort of mecha show, it has some unique things, but it's pretty bog standard, if considered a classic.

00:31:33.480 But the second season is really interesting, because it takes place after the heroes have won, after they have reconquered the world from the alien, furry bad guys.

00:31:44.220 And now they need to reestablish a society, and actually deal with, like, politics, and humans just being terrible, and everything like that.

00:31:51.940 And I really like such a comically heroic, you know, good and bad anime first season, then completely translating into a, oh shit, what do we do now that we've won situation.

00:32:04.320 In part with them realizing most, if not all of what the villains of the show had done, are things that they now need to do, that they are in a position of power.

00:32:13.880 With, as I think happens many times in the real world, you know, whether it's Winston Churchill or Samistocles, the populace of a democratic country turning on the person who made their very freedom possible in times of peace.

00:32:26.040 I can suggest a few that we didn't suggest last time that might be interesting.

00:32:32.160 Well, a good one for mainstream society commentary is Psychopaths, if people are interested in that.

00:32:36.720 I'm just not even going to give anything on that, that's just, like, a high-quality anime.

00:32:40.560 And Future Diary, that's another, like, high-quality anime with good commentary.

00:32:46.860 And we already mentioned Goblin Slayer, whether or not that has good commentary that is timely and relevant.

00:32:52.720 It has very timely commentary, but not commentary that we can talk about, because it's too cancelable.

00:33:00.480 No, no, no, no, no, no. We're talking about his persistence. We're talking about his persistence.

00:33:05.100 His mission-focused and his persistence. Don't you dare say anything else there.

00:33:09.380 We're definitely not saying anything else.

00:33:11.540 Cut some lines here. And what else would I say? Oh, Shaka no Shana, I definitely recommend.

00:33:16.340 It's another, like, high-quality anime. But I don't know if it has, like, themes that I'd really recommend.

00:33:21.960 Can you think of any other with themes where you're like, these themes were really interesting?

00:33:25.620 Sadly, I've just not watched that much anime, so I cannot.

00:33:29.280 I mean, we already talked about through Isekai anime, like, what that means about larger society.

00:33:32.920 So I would say that entire genre is pretty good at revealing some deep-set problems in many developed societies.

00:33:41.360 But that's it.

00:33:41.840 Since who knows how long it's going to be before we do another anime episode, there is one plotline that gets regularly covered in anime that I feel has been done criminally poorly every time it's been done.

00:33:54.140 And it's just a gripe I have that I need to get out there so hopefully somebody can do this right.

00:33:58.660 So it's a plotline that I saw first competently introduced in Rosario plus Vampire, but it was later redone in Demon School.

00:34:06.180 The idea is, is a human gets sent to a school full of monsters or demons or magicians or something like that.

00:34:13.260 And if it's found out that this human has no magical powers, that this human is going to be killed.

00:34:19.260 And they have to hide that they have no magical powers from the school around them.

00:34:25.600 You know, I'd prefer to see them do it using modern technology that the world doesn't have a full grasp of yet.

00:34:32.100 Like, whether it's gunpowder or explosives or anything like that, or magnetism, etc.

00:34:36.660 I think that'd be really cool, but the way it's done in Rosario plus Vampire is just powerful monster girls end up getting crushes on him and end up hiding for him that he's a human. 0.85

00:34:45.280 And then in Demon School, it's just all luck.

00:34:48.100 He has this enormous luck armor and never does anything through his own competence, which is really sad.

00:34:54.860 I have seen one anime that might be doing this that is next on my watch list, which is called Mashable Magic and Muscles.

00:35:02.060 But in this one, he seems to be hiding himself, or I don't even know if he is hiding himself, just by being incredibly strong, like physically strong in a world where everybody cares about magic.

00:35:12.160 All right, well, Simone, I love you to death.

00:35:14.600 I may even, if I'm able to get away with it, do this episode with the outro from Dears, because I think it's a great outro, and I don't even know if anyone cares about that property anymore.

00:35:24.220 And you are absolutely amazing, and I love that you love nerdy stuff.

00:35:30.360 I love that whenever I walk by your room at night, there's anime on, and it's ridiculous.

00:35:36.200 And I just adore that about you.

00:35:39.200 It's wonderful.

00:35:41.380 You are spectacular.

00:35:43.000 Have a good day.

00:35:44.460 You too.

00:35:45.220 Goodbye, sir.

00:35:46.120 Goodbye.

00:35:46.380 Let's go.

00:35:47.000 Let's go.

00:35:50.320 明日もハッピー.

00:35:54.000 Go, go.

00:35:55.940 不思議なハッピー.

00:35:59.640 みんなみんないらっしゃい.

00:36:02.460 ハッピーコスモス.

00:36:05.260 きっと私のふわわは感じたんだね.

00:36:09.640 それは天然だって.

00:36:12.780 偶然だって.

00:36:14.280 飛んで飛んで騒ごう。

00:36:18.900 ハッピーコスモス。

00:36:21.580 絶対無敵でぽよよよ。

00:36:24.780 間違えても気にしない。

00:36:29.180 だったらなんとかなりそう。

00:36:33.180 まわりのことは。

00:36:36.280 はい。

00:36:36.960 はい。

00:36:37.560 がんまわない。

00:36:40.420 悪い。

00:36:41.040 空の彼方へ。

00:36:43.780 ときめき探して。

00:36:46.800 高く高くね。

00:36:49.840 3,2,1で行くんだよ。

00:36:52.700 未来の地図は。

00:36:55.460 どこにもありません。

00:36:58.240 だから元気な。

00:37:01.080 笑顔で。

00:37:02.720 進みましょう。

00:37:03.740 ご視聴ありがとうございました。

00:37:13.580 チャンネル登録をお願いいたします。

00:37:16.000 b

00:37:16.340 チャンネル登録よろしくお願いします。

Based Camp - November 20, 2023

The Obscure Anime that Argued Women Secretly Want to Be Slaves (& Other Offensive Anime Themes)

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Summary

Transcript