The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the Federalist says the anime series Demon Slayer is favorable to men being masculine. It also lets know that the Transformers franchise, regrettably enough, has fallen victim to LGBT propaganda:

Modern schools systematically neuter boys. So does the media they consume. Take the male-targeted TV show “Transformers: EarthSpark,” in which two of the characters reveal they use “they” pronouns and identify as non-binary.

In that case, I'm hugely disappointed with Hasbro for exploiting machines as an excuse for injecting this propaganda into the indoctrination system. I have more on that subject below. For now, let's continue with the main subject:

Enter “Demon Slayer”: a Japanese shounen anime series available on Netflix that I’ve been watching with my 7-year-old brother. I’m the oldest of nine children, and for a 23-year-old, I’ve seen a lot of kids’ shows. But “Demon Slayer” is special. The series values everything the West no longer does: courage, family, strength, and masculine virtue.

“Demon Slayer” follows Tanjiro Kamado, an adolescent boy whose loving family is murdered by demons. His little sister Nezuko is the only survivor… kind of. Nezuko is turned into a demon herself.

To find a cure for his sister and protect innocent people around him, Tanjiro becomes a demon slayer. Motivated by an innate protective instinct, he nearly gives up his life for his little sister on multiple occasions.

One issue I have here is that this is being broadcast on Netflix, which I have no intention of wasting money on a subscription for. But I do hope to watch this in the future, and even today, there are plenty of Japanese TV shows and films with more of a sense of sophistication than what you see in the USA for years.

One of the worst tropes of Western media is the hero sparing his enemy at the last moment, only for the enemy to somehow die by accident another way (think “Spider-Man: No Way Home” or “The Lion King”). Like a real-world hero, Tanjiro is not apprehensive about killing those who threaten his loved ones, when necessary.

When the Green Goblin in Spider-Man murdered Gwen Stacy in 1973, Spidey backed away from possibly killing him, and Norman Osborn was stabbed by the dented front end of his goblin glider, which he'd tried to impale Spidey upon (and then, years later, Norman returned, and not for the better). You could make the argument that, for a long time, if we take superhero comicdom as an example, there's only so many where the heroes won't kill villains, not even minor ones. Although during the Bronze Age, there were times when villains in Batman would be killed by their own deathtraps intended for him, and he'd be left to ponder how they impaled themselves on their own swords. It was only when the Punisher, now rejected by many PC advocates, including his own co-creator Gerry Conway, that you'd begin to see a hero in mainstream kill dangerous criminals, and Wolverine could be seen doing this too. Even Daredevil, by the Bronze Age, may have been written having a few kills in self-defense to his history record. But the point can be made that PC on the USA side of the ocean made for quite a bit of absurdity, and hysteria over whether superheroes should kill even the most lethal criminals. This is a moral wrangling mangakas in Japan haven't hindered themselves with.

There is, however, a part at the end I'm decidedly taking issue with:

To parents: “Demon Slayer” isn’t perfect. It’s gory, a little scary, and contains a few instances of scantily clad women (which seems to be an unfortunate staple of anime). But in a media sphere that desperately wants my brother and your sons and grandsons to grow up weak and cowardly, it’s overall a positive alternative to American children’s television.

Umm, I think any complaints about scantily clad girls are trivial, and a leftover from an unfortunate time when conservatives were still making petty issues over something that happens to reflect femininity, and girls' love of fashion. I wouldn't complain about that, if anything, and I think the series producers' willingness to respect male heroism and defending a woman's dignity is very admirable. Let's hope Japan will retain that for a long time, in addition to hoping they can improve their low birthrate.

Since the issue of pronoun distortion propaganda in Transformers was mentioned, here's another item about that from the Daily Caller:

A viral clip shared Thursday on Twitter by Libs of TikTok shows Nightshade, a non-binary identifying alien robot, telling Sam, a self-identifying she/they, about preferred pronouns.

“My pronouns are they/them,” Nightshade said in an introduction to Sam.

The two characters sat down atop the roof of a building. Sam shared the sentiment that the world is a “scary place” where it is “hard to know whose dangerous or not.” Nightshade agreed, disappointed.

“Hey, it’s ok. I know I’m safe when I’m with my friends or other non-binary people,” Sam said, comforting Nightshade.

[...] Another segment from an earlier episode shows a human character tell Optimus Prime, a robot character, that Nightshade uses they/them pronouns.

“He or she just doesn’t fit who I am,” Nightshade said.

Optimus Prime apologized, referring to Nightshade as “they” in an act of affirmation.

When they speak of "pronouns", that alone gives away where they're going, and it's the PC junkyard. Hasbro should be utterly ashamed of themselves for ruining a famous toy franchise that was significant during my childhood. Why, it's a slap in the face to the memory of Henry Orenstein, the Holocaust survivor who'd overseen development of the line for Hasbro in the mid-1980s. By stooping this low, Hasbro and the animators working for them have only ensured the spark would go out, and it's time to stop buying the toys so long as they keep this up without apology.

Labels: animation, Europe and Asia, golden calf of LGBT, licensed products, manga and anime, politics