“Hmm. How can we make our viewers hate this already despicable villain to the point that they want his head on a stick? I know! Let’s make him commit attempted rape on the hero’s girlfriend!”
To think this guy also voiced Dio Brando. I mean Dio’s awesome. This guy’s a scumbag.
“And commiting murder isn’t enough for this guy to be lower than scum. Let’s make him attempt to rape her too. Gotta make Kirito look like the hero somehow.” Oh, and apparently, this scene wasn’t in the novels. This was added just for the anime
Yeah, you Toonami faithful had to watch Sword Art Online‘s yet another terrible use of attempted rape to create drama. And I just want to say… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that modern anime has gotten to such a low point.
And the worst part is that it’s not just Sword Art Online. Numerous anime nowadays try to do attempted rape and pretty much all of them have done it badly. So… consider yourself lucky?
This isn’t Game of Thrones, people. You can’t just throw in attempted rape without any real meaning or purpose. That just being tasteless and that’s how you ruin your show. Like Sword Art Online was already ruined from the get-go, but it dug its grave even deeper with using it as part of a revenge fantasy and to make Kirito look like the hero. And don’t you dare say we’re supposed to hate the villain. There are other ways to make the viewers hate a villain. Forcing the audience to with attempted rape is not the way. How many times did this happen, twice so far? Yeah. At this point, it’s safe to assume that every Sword Art Online villain after Akihiko Kayaba will probably attempt to commit rape on the girl at some point.
And Valvrave the Liberator… To be fair, I cared less about Valvrave after that moment. Now I just want to forget it even existed. The people that saw it call it Valvrape for a reason, people. Yeah, I’m not gonna talk about it. Speaking of which, Cross Ange is utterly disgusting with it, moreso than Sword Art Online is (yeah, you Toonami faithful should probably feel lucky). They do it to “develop” its characters, Well, guess what? It’s not character development. Any development that Cross Ange does is turn these so-called strong, intelligent women into utterly detestable, hate-filled bitches. It’s more demeaning than anything else, and that’s the least of its problems, by the way. I’m sorry, how can people say Cross Ange is any good again?!!
And yeah, Kill la Kill had some risque moments. That bathhouse scene, for one. But you know the difference between the Kill la Kill fanbase and the Sword Art Online fanbase? The former doesn’t even bother to make any militiant defense to those scenes because we know damn well those moments were weird and unneccessary. Yeah, I think Ragyo’s an awesome villian and all, but those badtouch were…Yeah, the show could’ve done without it. To be fair, Kill la Kill probably wasn’t as bad as, say, Hellsing Ultimate. And that shit was downright sick in a crazy way. Wanna know why? Because Hellsing is a twisted show, so something like necrophilia would be expected.
I’ve said it once in my Winter 2015 writeup, I’ll say it again, because Maria the Virgin Witch is the only recent anime I’ve seen in the past few years that actually handled it in right manner, which is a damn shame. It actually handled attempted rape far better than every other anime that tried to do the same. Wanna know why? Because it has a purposeful sense within the context of the series and wasn’t done for cheap shock. And whatever reaction it did get out of me was the intended one.
For the love of God, people, rape is a very serious subject that must be taken seriously. You do not fool around with this kind of thing, ever. Either do it right, or don’t do it at all. If it’s done in a meaningful, respectful manner, you have something that’s better than 90% of anime nowadays. If it’s done for cheap shock or revenge fantasy… well, there’s a very special place for that kind of a show.
[the jinxed darkstar blog] 