• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    edit-2
    10 days ago

    It’s a good way of removing the features of something that are disgusting and replacing them with something likeable. A cute anime girl can’t be intimidating, and it’s hard to dislike her. Replace an invading coloniser that SA’s the local population with her and it becomes a fun romp in the periphery territories! Partaking in a fun romp is ok right? Even desirable!

    That’s the level of propaganda they’re going for. They’re aiming to make being the imperialist desirable and the fun side to be on, which gets the audience onto that side, and batting for it years down the line after committing their identities to it. It’s quite literally a mask for the intimidating presence of male patriarchal violence that you can’t remove from the situation if you depicted male soldiers.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      There are two things I’ve come to associate anime girls in online spaces with. One is good, one is bad.

      The good one is cool trans girls just wanting to be cute which is wholesome and valid.

      The bad one is cis dudes that seem to like them for male power fantasy reasons.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        9 days ago

        I actually want to expand this and say it’s basically identical to how animals were used to make countries and their actions less intimidating/bad. Depict a country as a rabbit, an eagle, a bear, etc. They’re disarming instead of scary soldiers.

        This is the same. It operates on the same level and the anime girls take it further. It’s also slightly enlightening when viewed this way because anime girls are also not really treated as human beings, they’re treated more like creatures. Creatures doing bad things to other creatures is another form of distancing from the reality of humans torturing humans.