[New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted
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@bryan I don't quite get it either, but the parties I was talking about were actual officials, not people online. Possibly representatives of the people above the anime production committee.
It's all just hearsay, but it sorta makes sense considering the situation.
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Not only was that stuff hearsay, it was unsourced, and the person who posted it (specifically the stuff about interaction with the production committee) later retracted it as being made up.
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Just to be clear, that the invasion of Nanjing in Dec 1937 involved the indiscriminate pillage, rape, and death of civilians in the six digits is an established fact. Multiple non-Chinese or Japanese documented the events. There are even filmreels of it. No less than the German Consulate to Nanjing at the time, a member of the Nazi Party, wrote about it in horrified terms. The only ones who try to deny it are members of neo-conservative factions in Japan. It's horrifying that such a large segment of Japan still tries to deny something like this. It's the equivalent of Americans denying Wounded Knee. I must agree with those who state that this isn't "some SJW thing". Yes, horrible things happen in history but we need to recognize those horrors and atone for them before we all can move on. The US has done this...at times better than others...with our native peoples. Japan has never really acknowledged their demons.
Insofar as New Life is concerned, I found the story quite enjoyable and am saddened to see it fall. That said, I found the WWII kill count in the LN disturbing enough that I stopped at that passage and had to leave the story for a day to ponder my feeling about it before coming back to read the rest of what is available in JNC. And that was the "sanitized" version. To think the WN mentioned Nanjing outright. That's essentially suggesting that some of this man's kill count was women and children. I have a hard time wanting to keep reading with that image in my head despite how much I am enjoying getting to know Frau, Rona, Shion and especially the awesome depiction of God that I have loved so much.
If MINE was truly contrite and in such contrition wrote material in the story where God acknowledges in clear terms that she goofed big time in selecting an unrepentant murderer and unprosecuted war criminal but in essence the old man is dead with his memories and the new kid is essentially a new person with a rather soiled soul, I could accept that. Not sure if such an outcome is going to be possible, though, in part because I don't get the sense that MINE is in any way truly repentant of anything except getting caught.
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Sad thing is it's not really the Japanese's FAULT that they don't know, many of them.
From what I've heard, for a long time (and maybe even now) they literally DO NOT TEACH about Nanking and other events like Unit 731. (Also one of the worst points in /US/ history as we didn't try the bastards for that.)
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It's not only that they don't teach it, it's that people are scared to even access the records on it. People getting death threats if they try to access it to write any sort of pieces on the real Nanking Massacre (I think historically, some people were actually physically put in danger). The book I was reading suggested some of the primary sources have been tampered with too.
I still find it kind of interesting that Mine wrote this story starting a character like that insofar as it seems the author is not a denier of the event in total. And removing the event from the story would seem to me to be almost as bad as him choosing that background in the first place. I see no scenario where the writer and this book can come out looking better. Maybe if it were more dramatic, they could do something with the main character's memories of the Massacre coming back to him, characters in the story chastising him, and him repenting to the lost souls or something? IDK. There's no easy out.
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@terrence or you know, just make him a fictional character who was part of the mafia as well as a soldier and was really good at his job? Why does it need to be based on real history? The fact his good with a katana is kind of hard to explain if he was simply killing civilians.
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@bryan said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
Why does it need to be based on real history?
It doesn't, but the author already effectively based it in real references to history. I'd like to ask him "Why did you choose those numbers? Why allude to this particular event?"
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I suspect that the author wanted his character to have a part of history where having thousands killed by a sword would actually be a small number in total compared to the total number killed.
And if this was a story of him trying to atone for his past life with him bring haunted by his memories, it would be a very different book - but very interesting to read as well.
Instead, what we have is not just a potential war criminal (we have no idea if he only killed soldiers or not, and if he participated in the atrocities or not), but an outright killer (1000+ kills outside of war) who has his memory wiped and exiled - a completely blank slate.
So my view on reading this story: was he a killer by nature (he seeks to kill) or nurture (he has been provoked to kill)? Read on to find out.
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and as a thought of why it is bad to jump to conclusions without knowing what happened, let's use this conjecture: he is actually an honourable swordsman.
He is conscripted to war, and is sent into China. He during this war kills 1000 enemy soldiers and they win the battle. He is tired and goes to rest.
When he wakes, he finds all of his comrades raping and pillaging, and to save the innocent people, he turns on his nation and kills Japanese troops. As a wanted traitor, he is taken in by the Chinese who he protects throughout the rest of the war and for the rest of his life, people try to take his life, which is how he got to such a high kill count outside of war without ever being placed on trial - self defence.
Now, you can easily place in the kill numbers, but from that PoV, you would be rooting for this guy and call him a hero, even though he has killed so many people.
Now, considering the author himself and his tweets, yeah, things do not look favourably upon him. So, people look at history and assume the worst.
But at the end of the day, we just don't know.
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@guspaz said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
Not only was that stuff hearsay, it was unsourced, and the person who posted it (specifically the stuff about interaction with the production committee) later retracted it as being made up.
Ahahaha. You're right. Sorry. I guess I got too carried away there. I was just repeating some of the things I've read.
Let's just wait for further official info from Sam.
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The problem isn't the mentioning of the Nanking incident, it was his racist tweets several years ago. He talked about both Korea and China using extremely derogatory terms.
Those tweets were probably researched because of him mentioning the Nanking incident.
If the problem was him referencing the Nanking incident alone then that creates a problem for people who want Japan to admit to what their ancestors (and probably some people still alive today) did to China during the era when Japan was trying to be a world military power (this is speculation based on my perspective of what Japan was like before they lost the war).
"We want you to admit to what you did to Nanking so we can destroy each individual that admits to it". How is that encouraging them to come clean?
Personally I have a problem with saddling descendants with the blame for what their ancestors did especially when those descendants have shown that their behavior has drastically changed from what their ancestors were like. Japan isn't trying to be a world military might anymore (again my perspective) and hasn't invaded any other countries for a very long time. They are just trying to maintain what they currently believe are their lands. There are still disputes (like with some islands with China).
From my perspective, the issue wasn't about Nanking being mentioned, it was his racist tweets from around five years ago. He has posted an apology, and hopefully learned his lesson. Until he shows that he hasn't changed I don't want to judge him anymore. Innocent until proven guilty. If I was guilty of saying racist things, and I admitted it and did my best to change I would want people to give me a second chance.
Social Media has made it easier for people to verbally crucify individuals for mistakes they made a long time ago. Especially because so many people post things that are horrible because of the anonymity factor introduced by the internet. Lots of people say things they never would say on the internet because they don't think about consequences as much there. This point does not justify posting racist things, it is merely made to point out that people are more likely to do this in this medium. Racism is becoming less and less accepted because I believe society as a whole is waking up to how bad such things are.
I don't have a twitter account, I never had one and never want one. That environment is getting more and more caustic as people are starting to feel more and more free to flame, attack and destroy people there. Because of how prolific social media has become businesses can't ignore it, but everyone on those sites need to be careful because they don't realize how they could pay consequences for what they do there later.
In short... follow the golden rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
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I wish to state clearly that I agree with much of what you said. I especially endorse your closing statement. :-)
That said, I must disagree with your statement that Nanjing isn't the issue here. I think it is. So many Japanese, including apparently the author of New Life, are unrepentant of their nation's atrocities in the period between the early 1930's and 1945. To me, this presents a problem because such a dismissal of history means you have learned nothing from it.
Now once again, I am not stating that Japan needs to permit itself to be bullied today through it's guilt for past transgressions. The past is the past. We can't change it. All we can and should do is learn from it, acknowledge our past errors, and determine to do better in the future.
Speaking as an American of primarily European descent, my people committed numerous atrocities against the native peoples of this continent, especially during the 1800's. I mentioned Wounded Knee because it's perhaps the closest event in style if not in scale to Nanjing. We owe our native peoples an apology and the respect of not whitewashing the fact that we committed heinous acts as a nation. We owe them adherence to the spirit and letter of the treaties we signed with them. We do NOT, however, owe the descendants the concession of packing up and going back to Europe.
To carry that forward to the Japanese and Nanjing, they owe their former conquered territories the respect of acknowledging that Japan committed horrible crimes against those nations in the early 20th century. They owe those nations an accurate portrayal of history in Japanese schools. They do NOT, however, owe their former adversaries anything in the current geopolitical sphere other than dutifully following the terms of the surrender and following treaties.
Now back to New Life. I have no problem with enjoying art created by closed minded people. I adore Wagner, for example. That said, I want to enjoy the art with the history of that work and that artist in mind. Wagner was an anti-Semite and Vivaldi was a pedophile. Do I enjoy the music of the Ring Cycle or the Four Seasons any less because of this knowledge - not at all. But I can place it in context because of this knowledge. In Japan's case they are attempting to deny and hide their history which results in confused modern Japanese who cannot place their past in proper context. This, in my opinion, is a tragedy and I personally cannot support such blatant disregard for history.
But that's just me.
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Has any word been given on the fate of NL+?
I am a Man Destined to be King!
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@leondarkfury no, please wait till the end of the week.
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@dryurimom Great post. For me I stopped being able to read once I realized the main character was likely a reborn murderer from the Raping of Nanking. It just made it so sick to me that God chose him because he “died happily at an old age with no regrets”. That’s just sick to me and I lost the pleasure in the story.
It’d be like a German fantasy where it turned out the main hero character was meant to be a reincarnation of an SS officer who personally pressed the button in the gas chamber and the author of the piece had also written anti-Semitic tweets. As a person of largely German heritage such an idea seems really gross to me, and the closest equivalency I can imagine.
Furthermore MINE’s apology about not knowing “full details” rings false to me. What full details wasn’t he aware of? That Chinese people aren’t subhuman and Koreans aren’t rapists? The very fact he rewrote the details of Nanking for the proper LN release without radically revising the characters origin hints that he knew it would be controversial but didn’t personally have a problem with it. File the serial numbers off, but the heart of the issue isn’t really changed.
Ok, sorry didn’t mean to rant. Just been thinking about it a bit the past few days and piggybacked off your post to say my piece.
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The people committing wartime atrocities like the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking are subhuman. It doesn't matter their race, gender, or views. I apply that subhuman label to many groups. Note I am not calling the Japanese overall as being subhuman but only those that commit such atrocities.
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@leondarkfury said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
Amazon
Sam mentioned that he convinced Amazon to pull the preorders without any reprocursion.
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@the-green-death read fozze's post above. If the mc is the person with that kill count he is actually a hero who killed those that pillaged or raped people.
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@bryan Given that historically no one killed the people raping and pillaging that is a very unlikely and wishful guess to what the character actually did.
Historically one group got slaughtered and one did the slaughtering. The one that did the slaughtering would get the kill numbers.
Furthermore the authors racist tweets hint that he might have a problem with a hero who killed Japanese people for the sake of Chinese people.
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The concept above where "he's actually a good guy" are a good idea if the writer, after his story background being criticised, wants to own this story idea he set up. I don't treat that random idea that isn't actually on paper and we're just throwing out there, as a valid excuse to see the writer and story in a better light right at this moment. Until he does something meaningful with the plot, he's just an author who alluded to his hero killing many at the site of a war crime that just so happens to be in the country he called "bug" country on Twitter. =[
All that said, I would have been really interested, if this whole controversy hadn't broke, to hear the author's reasoning for giving his character that background. Don't think we'll get that chance (anime journalism isn't exactly hard hitting, right?).
