The Good ‘US’ vs. the Evil ‘THEM’ as Fluid Constructs in the “Attack on Titan” Manga

Ameni Hlioui

Abstract


Hajime Isayama’s manga “Attack on Titan” represents one of the artistic literary works that questioned the politics of co-existence in the world. The manga tragically depicted the polarized world of Good US vs. Evil THEM humans and human-eating Titans co-exist in. In this context, Nietzsche (1886/2009, p. 81) [9] once said that “What an age finds evil is commonly an anachronistic echo of what previously was found to be good—the atavism of an older ideal.” This is what this article tries to foreground; the fluidity of morals and the inconsequentiality of the separation between Good US vs. Evil THEM when humans’ existence is at stake. Indeed, Isayama showed us that we all have the Titan gene and we all transform to a Titan that destroys everything the moment our sole existence is endangered. This study is based on Nietzsche’s perspectival view of Good vs. Evil and on Van Dijk’s US vs. THEM polarized ideology coupled with a quantitative inquiry of the frequency of this polarization in the manga text using the semi-automatic annotation software, the UAM CorpusTool.


Keywords


Attack on Titan, Good, Evil, US, THEM

Full Text:

PDF

References


REFERENCES

Attack on Titan. (2021, April 30). All chapters (1-139). Kodansha. https://kodansha.us/series/attack-on-titan/

Attack on Titan Episode Transcripts. (n.d.). TV Show Transcripts. https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewforum.php?f=882&sid=7e51117d1a02bb9b4196c20c01931828

Baker, N. D., & Jones, N. (2019). A snake who eats the devil’s tail: The recursivity of good and evil in the security state. Media, War & Conflict, 13(4), 468–486. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635219846021

Burnham, D. (2007). Reading Nietzsche: An Analysis of Beyond Good and Evil (1st ed.). McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Cantacuzino, M. (2011). The Line Dividing Good and Evil. Political Theology, 12(5), 770–777. doi:10.1558/poth.v12i5.770

Clark, M., & Dudrick, D. (2012). The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Hooper, R. (2016). Where do good and evil come from? New Scientist, 231(3089), 34. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(16)31610-4

Kacsuk, Z. (2018). Re-Examining the “What is Manga” Problematic: The Tension and Interrelationship between the “Style” Versus “Made in Japan” Positions. Arts, 7(3), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7030026

Nietzsche, F. (2009). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (I, Johnston, Trans.). Richer Resources Publications. (Original work published 1886).

O‘Donnell, M. (2008). The UAM CorpusTool: Software for corpus annotation and exploration. Almeria, Spain: Proceedings of the XXVI Congreso de AESLA. Retrieved from http://www.uam.es/proyectosinv/woslac/DOCUMENTS/Presentations%20and%20articles/ODonnellAESLA08.pdf

Rhonheimer, M., & Malsbary, G. (2011). The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics. The Catholic University of America Press.

VAN DIJK, T. A. (2006). Ideology and discourse analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11(2), 115–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310600687908

Vernon, A. (2017). Colossal bodies: re-imagining the human anatomy in Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8(5), 480–493. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2017.1355835

Weller, R. P., & Wu, K. (2016). On the Boundaries Between Good and Evil: Constructing Multiple Moralities in China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 76(1), 47–67. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021911816001182




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v27.2.3325

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2021 Ameni Hlioui

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.