It's absolutely just for the humans to kill the demons for survival when the demons can't continue their existence without eating them. Now I can understand Emma being against full species wide genocide, but she even complained about killing the nobles. All of Demon society genuinely benefits from that. Everything wrong in their society is the aristocracy's fault.
It's not smart but that's definitely what the author was doing with the farming thing. The opening for season 2 is really blatant about it with the rabbits (it's a catchy opening ngl). Cattle aren't mindless bugs either so it's something worth talking about, but what are we gonna do stop eating meat? Eat cricket meal for protein because rabbits have the capacity to be sad? Obviously the animal shouldn't be made to suffer and the death should be instant but you literally can't raise a human child without meat, and it's very difficult to take care of everything meat provides as an adult though it is possible. I think that's the deal with the demons too, they show the grotesque cruelty of the experimental and factory farms and the ignorant familial bliss of places like Grace Field farm, it's just clumsily handled and the way it was resolved was near insultingly easy. I'm not even sure what it's trying to say about any of this in the end, or if there was a point at all, it's just... flowery I guess? Some cool fights and some preposterously convenient bullshit happened and it was over. I wouldn't mind an ending without bloodshed genocide or continued human farming but you can tell the author just didn't know how to get there. Honestly a lot of what TPN was trying to do wasn't bad in concept, this could have gone somewhere, but god damn these manga authors need to start taking breaks midway through so they can plan out the second half of their series.
I'm curious about how the anime handles this in its much shorter runtime. They're cutting a lot but it could turn out to be for the best.
The comparison doesn't work because if the author wanted to make it work, either the Demons are so smart, beyond mortal comprehension or it is impossible for the two to communicate so neither one knows the other is sentient (other stories have done this btw, where two species think each other is the monster, because they don't even know the other is a thinking entity).
The problem lies in that the author doesn't make the connection that communication is key. The lack of it would cause demons to think humans are dumb animals and humans to think they're monsters. Bridging the lack of communication should be central to the story. It should be the primary goal. To see one another as sentient beings and not predator/prey, which is something we can't do with animals.
That's really the fuck-up of TPN, because the author mis-identifies the metaphor. Its communication. We can't talk with our food. We can't reason with it. We don't know if it thinks. We can only estimate. And even then, its almost impossible. If you want to go with the route TPN goes with, communication is the theme.
But then you can't have Grace Field and a lot of shit the anime/manga does. So you just have to drop the veganism metaphor, because its just not going to work with a form of communication present. the way to play it up is tradition, religion and the old ways vs. the new ways. Emma would represent a new way of thinking, something that could bring peace and heal a rift. The demon nobility and some of the humans represent the old way, who want to keep the traditions because it brings them power.
The core problem is that the area of conflict in the narrative is misplaced. Its not 'Man vs. Nature' (IE: nature to farm and eat), its 'Man vs. Society' (IE: The tradition of being cruel and holding onto that power, purposefully viewing humans as non-sentient even with evidence to the otherwise). So everything becomes really disjointed because the core narrative conflict is completely misplaced.
Or even just know where you want the story to end. TPN had such a great start, and it crumbled so fast as if the author had no intentions of writing beyond the Grace field house. The fact these soft, naive children somehow survived within that forest is laughable. I don't care if two "friendly" demons saved them, they should have lost at least half of the kids and showed the horrors they had to survive to find the way to the human world.
I mean, its pretty obvious to me the author had this great idea for this mystery and just completely fucked up once they got out of the house.
I don't know why this lesson is so hard to learn. If you have a mystery, you NEED AN ANSWER. Fuck me. I watched Mr. Robot for the first time a few weeks ago and it was quite clear upon re-visiting everything
the Elliot Anderson we're watching is basically just another personality, the strongest one, designed to protect the one who can no longer handle the real world, which is why he's given such control.
It could have been handled better by showing Elliot himself created the Mastermind with limited knowledge and GAVE the MM full control, that Elliot and the Mastermind are basically identical. But with the series being canceled before a fifth and final season, its hard to fault Esamil for kind of fumbling it a bit.
But the point stands, it was ALWAYS intended from episode 1 that the person we were watching was another personality. A lot of people didn't like this because we
see the real Elliot for like maybe 20 minutes throughout the whole show. But there's a fucking path, you know what I am saying? There is a plan, it makes sense. Elliot was ALWAYS an unreliable narrator. So we can expect something like this. Its not hard to plan, it really isn't. Its one of the more fun things to do, actually, when writing, in my opinion. Because that way when you go through it, it starts to go through this funky process where it grows on its own and goes in directions you can't even imagine. Its really cool. And the thing is?
It is NOT HARD. Throw up a white board with a fuckton of post-its. Or a white board. You can get an edgy black glass one on Amazon for 50 bucks if white isn't your style. MAP YOUR STORY OUT. By the middle of Grace Field with the introduction of the second Mother you should KNOW where your story is going. You should KNOW what the demon society is like.
In AoT, by the END of 'The fall of Shiganshina', you need to know 1) What the titans are 2) What the titan shifters are 3) The over-arching plot 4) Vague ideas of how you want to go about getting there. And I mean the author, not the audience, obviously.
These are critical junctures in stories where you need to know 1) The answer to the mystery 2) How you're going to get there and 3) Some sort of endgame (yes, you need an endgame THIS early. At least a vague idea. This will organically change. It does not need to be set in stone).
Stop with the school of JJ Faggot who makes mysteries but has no fucking clue where they go. I know its sort of cultural in Japan that the ending doesn't matter as much, but we're reaching points in some anime/manga where they can't even get the fucking journey right. By the middle of the first act, you should already know where the 3rd is going to head. If you don't, you fucked up and you really need to figure that shit out.
Its the same for TPN and AoT. Both authors had NO IDEA what to do after their initial mystery was solved. And it doesn't matter if one goes for hippy dippy faggotry (TPN) or super dark edge lord faggotry (AoT), neither will work unless you have concrete story ideas. A plan and an organic path of execution.
So it doesn't matter if AoT's tone changed. It wouldn't have mattered if TPN's tone changed. Neither would have been effective because they DON'T KNOW where they're going or want to lead.
Nah, it all went to animating Eren's head getting shot off.
Hopefully.
If they don't go full "ITS A BASEBALL" for Eren getting 360 no scoped by a girl in a crouching sniping position firing a sniper rifle that weighs just as much as she does, braced on her shoulder firing a bullet the size of her foot, than fuck this show forever.
I laughed for like ten minutes when I saw that shit. I have absolutely no idea how you can take this shit REMOTELY seriously once you see that panel. Its fucking hysterical. Its such a massive fuck up in tone and its played 100% straight. Its so beautiful.
If the 'The Fall of Shiganshina' is defining when the series was at its highest point, "ITS A BASEBALL" is the point where the series dies. For me, you can basically point to this event as AoT being completely unrecoverable, because it leads all the way up to Eren's retarded revelation to murder the entire world and somehow a nobody going "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE" and dead people coming out of PATHs to stop Eren. For...some reason.
God this series is such utter fucking trash, its beautiful.