[Akka]

Originally Posted by Red_eyes

All the focus has been on the queerats issue, but even until the end, the fundamental issue that was presented at the start of the series is never resolved.

I thought that was the point : it's not a problem you can "resolve" in some magically easy way. Every single person being a potential nuclear blast in the middle of the community is something you have to build your entire society around, and there is no deus ex machina to make it all an afterthought.

I also think that the whole queerats vs PK humans was illustrating the same kind of basically impossible to resolve problem : coexisting peacefully when one side can eradicate the other.
In My Little Pony-land, you just have to love everyone with rainbows and sunshine and everything is nice and nobody has a problem. But in reality, huge imbalance of power ALWAYS ends up in oppressors and oppressed.

I never faulted Squealer for wishing to eradicate "humans", just like I can't fault "humans" to keep a strong boot on the "queerats". What I find this show illustrate wonderfully is the gruesome realistic tragedy of survival : it's not "good" vs "evil", it's "you" vs "them".

Originally Posted by lightbringer

I honestly was cheering for the antagonists most of the time. The kind of society that the humans have built here, relying on subjugation of "lesser races" and mind control, and using Cantus to commit murder almost dismissively, can burn to ashes for all I care. I'd have been happy to see Squealer wipe them all out. I'm not sure whether it's a problem of "lost in adaptation" or not, but IMHO Yusuke Kishi did not go quite far enough to show how disgusting, deplorable, and degenerate the human society has become.

Actually, I think one of the best point of this show is that it doesn't go the easy way, and it includes demonizing the PK's users society.

As with everything in the story, and as I said above, it's not a problem of "evil", it's a problem of "survival". I appreciated the subtlety of not going to simply paint the guys in charge as bad bad guys that should be overthrown, but instead as well-intentioned people who have to manage a situation which is simply impossible to get right.

Again : every single person is a potential nuclear explosion. We're used to have some dumb shônen hero just throw away all thinking and punch someone and magically making all problems disappear, but it's rather obvious it doesn't really work like that when you have an actual dilemma.
If every single person in your entire population can eradicate the entire society if she goes nut, then in short order either your society will have stringent and expedient checks, or it will have disappeared in a big flame.

So yes, their society is filled with pretty horrible things, but only out of necessity. We can be disgusted by it, but can we really blame them for simply surviving ?