Those Island Devils: Attack on Titan and its Blood Libel Problem
For the record, I was so optimistic. I was racing through Season 4 of Attack on Titan, hopes high and breath bated, anticipating the big reveal. I had every faith that the necessary plot twist was going to happen and the record would be set straight. I was counting down the episode numbers until the big reveal that all humans have the power of Titan transformation and the ability was not Eldian-specific. Everyone in the world had the potential to transform but the powers-that-be within Marley chose to obscure that fact and weave tales of crafty Eldians consuming children’s blood in order to justify sequestering them behind walls and within ghettos. The obvious employment of blood libel tropes against the Jewish-coded characters would be revealed to be discriminatory rhetoric applied by empires to coerce the public into participating in genocide. This would explain why Marleyans stood by and consented to the premise of Paradis Island, essentially this universe’s equivalent to the Madagascar Plan, and did not oppose the brutality: fear drives evil, every time. I was patiently awaiting this epic moment where all the themes of the cycles of war and violence, racism and ethnic cleansing, and the complexity of human nature were tied together in a beautiful, Titan-sized bow.
But then it never came. I watched an admittedly epic and entertaining season finale (two episodes) and was left thinking, “Wait, but how does that resolve the tension of the previous seasons? When is Isayama going to deliver on these themes?” It took me some hours of processing everything I had just seen to realize that he wouldn’t. Instead of the progressive, politically informed, fantastical narrative I was promised by the previous brilliance of AOT, I watched as the show decided not to subvert anti-Semitic tropes, but instead to confirm them. I watched a show in which the Jewish-coded characters were blatantly oppressed with blood libel rhetoric which ended up being entirely true and factual. The Jewish-coded characters were, in fact, the only humans who consumed the flesh and blood of others, especially children, and were dangerous enough to destroy the world. In fact, one of them did. One of them killed eighty percent of the human race because he inherited powers gained by murdering children and used it to brutally wipe out most of the world.
And unfortunately, as I expected, the fandom ate it up. If you weren’t already aware, allow me to be the bearer of bad news: media literacy is dead. The fans were overwhelmingly thrilled by this ending and obsessed with these concepts. The masses had tuned in for a gory, high stakes experience and were reveling in every second of impressive animation and bloody beheadings. Incredible fight scenes, relationship angst, dynamic characters, the justification of facism, obligatory beach scene, costume changes…checking all the boxes for a globally popular anime!
In another work of mine, which is currently in progress, titled “Rulers and Titans: Plato’s Republic in Attack on Titan” I detail the ways in which seasons 1-3 of AOT allude to the flaws in Plato’s idea of the Καλλίπολις, the ideal city-state. I find many things about this show philosophically complex and thoughtfully employed. I mention this to make it clear that I did not enter into this with a hatred of Attack on Titan or the intention to deem it subpar. I once had very high opinions of it, accompanied by high expectations. I was extremely disappointed to have to call one of my favorite animes of all time, “dangerously anti-Semitic.” I’m not enjoying this either. I’m finding it discouraging to use such terms but I must do so because it is objectively true: Attack on Titan is disrespectful to Jewish history and thoughtlessly employs symbols of painful aspects of that history only to ultimately fail to make truly progressive arguments about the nature of Jewish oppression.
Isayama Hajime, the creator, has handled so much world building in fascinating and intelligent ways that I trusted him not to employ symbols he didn’t understand to make a point or to embellish his story. However, it seems that this trust was misplaced because he chose to utilize tragedies of Jewish history, like the Warsaw Ghetto, the Holocaust, and the Madagascar Plan, while being completely unaware of the trope of blood libel or worse, choosing to utilize the trope uncritically. He wrote Jewish-coded characters seemingly without consulting with Jewish people, whom I am certain would have pointed out the obvious blood libel implications of Titan powers and explained how the story in its present state doesn’t work as a metaphor with the message of anti-racism. Instead, the story-as-is adds legitimacy to the idea that Jewish people may have been dangerous to their neighbors and communities, and therefore measures to prevent harm could be reasonable avenues to take.
The specific defintion of blood libel is the idea that Jewish people use the blood of Christian children in their religious rituals, but since its first usage in 12th century medieval Europe, the trope has evolved. The general notions of Jewish people using or consuming blood for nefarious purposes, as well as kidnapping non-Jewish children, are all part of blood libel. German fairy tales like “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rapunzel” are both examples of blood libel. The witch is preparing to eat Hansel and Gretel and Mother Gothel has taken Rapunzel away from her parents to use her power for her own magical rituals. The appearance of the witch and Mother Gothel are both traditionally dark, curly haired women with large, hooked noses. They are explicitly Jewish-coded, and Hansel, Gretel, and Rapunzel are consistently drawn or depicted as sweet, innocent, blond(e) and blue-eyed children, enforcing the idea of Aryan children being endangered by Jewish villains. The accusation of blood libel has historically been incredibly dangerous for Jewish people and has led to great loss of life.
In Attack on Titan, the Eldian people have been oppressed by the Marleyan empire because of their ability to transform into Titans, terrifying creatures of great strength and size. Many live on an island, far from the mainland, and face the constant threat of extermination. Those still within the empire live in internment camps and ghettos and must wear armbands to identify themselves as Eldian. The Holocaust parallels here are explicit and undeniable. The Titan abilities serve as a metaphor for power, and this power is inherited by select members of the Eldian community. Their armbands are different in color from other Eldians, due to their service to the Marleyan empire. The Titan abilities are inherited rather violently, with the previous bearer being literally devoured by the next candidate who carries on as its new bearer. The elements of cannibalism, bloody sacrifice, and the fearfulness with which the Marleyans regard the bizarre powers of Eldians, brought about by gory means, bears explicit association with the trope of “blood libel”.
As I was considering all the ways the anti-racism allegory falls apart here, I was getting flashbacks to reading about and watching playthroughs of Detroit: Become Human. These scenarios are eerily and disappointingly similar. Here’s the rundown:
Man wants to create a work of fiction and chooses to use real-life symbolism, imagery, and thematic elements of oppression and the resistance movements which responded to them in his work.
Man writes a story where the oppressed people could actually pose a potential danger to the dominant group, instead of the rhetoric of harmfulness being weaponized against them.
Man creates a universe where his oppressed people maybe should be monitored in some way but codes them with references to marginalized groups in the real world, leaving readers to wonder “Does he just not know enough about these things to use the imagery or is he actively siding with the oppressors here?”
Detroit: Become Human tries to equate anti-cyborg sentiment with racism, but when there are perfectly rational and understandable reasons within the game to be suspicious of cyborgs, the allegory falls apart. Or worse, it tries to imply that racial discrimination is logical and understandable. In the real world, fear-mongering about the Other is used to dehumanize and belittle marginalized people while stoking feelings of resentment and defensiveness in the ethnic majority. To do so, those inciting this fear lie about how the marginalized community is inherently violent and dangerous, which ends up violating the rights and dignities of the victims of such rhetoric. When this dynamic is utilized in fictional settings, authors have often made the mistake of validating the fears of the dominant group about the minority which is affirming the vitriol of the oppressor. This confuses the audience about the solution, because in the real world, human rights activists can point to the falsehood of racist claims and encourage people that neighbors from different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds are not inherently threatening. They can advocate for multiculturalism and ideological pluralism, understanding that co-existing is entirely possible. When games like Detroit: Become Human and manga like Attack on Titan make the marginalized a genuine threat, the anti-racist messaging becomes confused.
Once again, I would rather not have been forced to call a show I was really enjoying “a disastrously uninformed and inappropriate employment of Jewish history”, but here we are. We have arrived at the end of Attack on Titan’s story and the trope of blood libel, as employed in the show, has not been subverted or critically examined. Rather, it has been affirmed by the plot and subsequently, handled carelessly. For a show that does such a fantastic job with the nuances of resistance, power, violence, and other elements, this misstep is quite disappointing.
