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chaosonwheelsSo, I binge-watched the anime Angels of Death last week, and it's pretty safe to say I've become thoroughly obsessed with it.
If you've never heard of it, Angels of Death, or Satsuriku no Tenshi, is the anime adaption of the indie horror game of the same name, released in 2016. I never heard of it until I saw the release trailer for the anime last summer, but apparently it was SUPER popular in Japan. The story follows Rachel Gardner, a stoic teenage girl who has a strange, intense desire to die. She finds herself trapped in a strange building where she meets a serial killer named Zack, who, as you can probably guess, tries to kill her as soon as they meet. Upon realizing she *wants* to die, and therefore wouldn't give him the thrill he craves, he instead makes a deal with her: She helps him escape the building and all the deranged murderers who control the other floors, and he'll grant her wish and kill her once they're outside.
The anime trailer hooked me immediately. I haven't totally divulged here yet about my favorite tropes and things in media, besides maybe what you've caught on to if you've been paying attention to my writing updates, but I LOVE edgy shit. I missed the train that left in 2007 that was supposed to transport me out of my emo phase. You give me anything that deals with monsters, villains, death, angsty violent characters, or anything otherwise dealing with what's usually undesirable in society, and you've got my attention. It was a bonus that Zack had the same VA as Bakugo from My Hero Academia (who is my favorite—again, edgy angry boy). You're gonna give me a full-blown apeshit Bakugo????? With a kickass scythe??? Sold. It took me awhile to get started, as most things do, but once I finished it, it was exactly what I wanted and more. I can't say that for many shows anymore. It's the only new anime I've actively searched fanfiction for in YEARS. I'm that desperate to stay in the world.
More under the cut
It's such a weird sensation. You never really realize there's a hole inside you until you find something that fills it. I didn't notice how much I've been craving dark content. REAL dark content, with substance, and character development, drama, and, well, A Point. Basically, things other than gore and jumpscares. For the last few years, I've been sustaining myself on old favorites to get me through that craving. 95% of the new shit that comes out, no matter how good it looks, always ends up feeling so hollow (or, for the few things that don't, wind up cancelled). It's something I like to call Hollywood Edge. It's the fate of all subcultures. Capitalism gets a hold of a few key features of a movement, and make it about that. Emo is just angsty kids with dark eyeliner and black clothes. Goths are just black lipstick and dead people. Punks are lazy degenerates in spikes who just don't wanna get a job. The media reflects that to further the agenda. Suicide Squad? The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina? All attempts at capitalizing that sweet, 2007 brand Edge, that ultimately fall flat, and a little bit like when our parents would patronize our interests. This is that "emotional" stuff you like right?????
This kinda brings me to what I really wanna talk about in this post, and what Angels of Death made me realize about myself: I miss being an emo kid. Obviously, I don't miss the very specific brand of Teenage Mental Illness I was experiencing at the time, or the other environmental factors that were making me miserable, but I miss the thrill of having a community that represented the shitty things I was feeling. When emo culture was popular, the world seemed bursting with creativity. TV shows were FULL of monsters, vampires, werewolves. Narratives that are all about being different and ostracized from society, and how to continue existing despite that. Fandom was ALIVE and FULL. Morally dubious shit and weighing the consequences of that were common discussions. The music scene was bursting. Aesthetics and fashion were experimental and fun. In other words, there was passion. People were excited about art. They weren't afraid to put their whole hearts and attention into things. Nowadays, it's hard to get anybody to care about even serious things, like our dying planet, for longer than two weeks. Despite Angels of Death's popularity in Japan, I don't hear shit about it on social medias here. And as someone who was in her Edgy Prime in 2007, Angels of Death feels like something that should have been released back then. Zack would have been listed on every Emo Weeb's profile (Gaia, Xanga, Myspace, what have you) as their "Psycho Boyfriend XD rawr". So many MCR AMVs would be made with him as the focus. It would've been way too powerful. Yet, in 2019, even with the recent emo resurgence, it's not pulling much of a loud crowd in the U.S. When I did a quick search for it on Twitter, quite a few posters even write it off as "weird". Why is that?
I personally think it comes down to the disappearance of the “Other” in Western media. For the latter part of the decade, it's been routine as fuck. Anything remotely out of the box has been cut out for cookie-cutter, easy to digest, familiar dramas and Romcoms. Or, like I mentioned before, Hollywood Edge. Sequels, remakes, and copycats run wild because they're safe, easy money-makers, and keep the audience placated by giving them the fulfillment they crave through things they've already experienced (aka Nostalgia's a Bitch). While, at one point, we lived for emotions, moral dilemmas, and stories that explored the “weird”, it's been cut from our diet so completely that society doesn't have a taste for it anymore. In fact, pretty much everything that I would consider part of current emo culture (or Post-Emo, if you will) that's had an impact on people and created “crazes” or inspired passion, such as Undertale, Five Nights at Freddy's, Tik Tok, etc, have been at (one point or another), banished to cringe culture. I see this as pretty convenient, and absolutely part of the grand timeline of capitalist society. We're all too tired from a long day of work to come home and sit down to a show where we have to unpack our emotions, or play a game that discusses morality in-depth, or tells the chilling story of a corrupt corporation that covered up the deaths of numerous children. And for the people who do somehow have the energy to be excited about things? How dare you feel emotions while the rest of us are excited. You're officially cringy. Be miserable with the rest of us. It's the same reason we choose fast food over cooking. Bitters are better for our digestion, but when everything around you has gone sour, you just want something sweet.
Spoilers for AoD ahead, and also trigger warning for graphic depictions of violence and death:
It's revealed toward the end of Angels of Death that the reason why Rachel Gardner wants to die is because she spent her life in an abusive household where her parents completely ignored her. Her father was a violent drunk and her mom resented her for being born and tethering her to the relationship. The unfulfilled urge to be wanted and loved twists inside Rachel until, whenever her love is rejected, she kills whatever rejected her and sews them up to make them “perfect”. She does this to her parents, after she witnesses her father kill her mother one night, who then attempts to kill her as well. She shoots him, and then sews her mother and father's bodies together so they can finally be the perfect family, living with their corpses until the cops finally come to the home. She can no longer deal with the weight of her actions or her past, and just wants death to put her out of her misery. Zack, the serial killer, comes from a similar abusive background. One of the men his neglectful mother was sleeping with set him on fire for fun. His mom didn't want to deal with a disfigured child, so she wrapped him up in bandages and dropped him off at an orphanage. The people running the orphanage were just as shit, and they used him to bury the bodies of the children who would die in their care. The orphanage keepers were his first kills, and from then on he killed people with joyous smiles, because nobody having that much fun could be a good person. That's a lot of heavy shit to deal with in a show! It's uncomfortable to wrestle with the idea that trauma can be so bad that death can seem like the only way to peace. It's uncomfortable to see that monsters, more often than not, are created by a system and they aren't just Like That. It's uncomfortable to consume themes where characters must escape from a system who only views their trauma and experiences as tools, because it hits way too close to home. While that representation would have been embraced in another time, right now it's the last thing we wanna deal with.
But Angels of Death, first and foremost, is about Rachel and Zack's relationship, and the camaraderie we can find when we're with people as Unwell and fucked up as we are. I think it's important to remember that that is what emo culture is about. It's not all black mascara tears, angst, and being Random, like Hollywood Edge wants you to believe. Instead, it was the radical call to let the world know we were hurting. Spray it on the walls, write it on your notebooks, in songs, on the mirror with your eyeliner, anywhere: just as long as you share it, so other hurt people can find you, and we can be the families we didn't get to have.
It's okay to give a voice to the dark things we deal with in life. You don't have to keep drowning it in sugar. Fuck being uncomfortable. Pain deserves to be validated.
If you've never heard of it, Angels of Death, or Satsuriku no Tenshi, is the anime adaption of the indie horror game of the same name, released in 2016. I never heard of it until I saw the release trailer for the anime last summer, but apparently it was SUPER popular in Japan. The story follows Rachel Gardner, a stoic teenage girl who has a strange, intense desire to die. She finds herself trapped in a strange building where she meets a serial killer named Zack, who, as you can probably guess, tries to kill her as soon as they meet. Upon realizing she *wants* to die, and therefore wouldn't give him the thrill he craves, he instead makes a deal with her: She helps him escape the building and all the deranged murderers who control the other floors, and he'll grant her wish and kill her once they're outside.
The anime trailer hooked me immediately. I haven't totally divulged here yet about my favorite tropes and things in media, besides maybe what you've caught on to if you've been paying attention to my writing updates, but I LOVE edgy shit. I missed the train that left in 2007 that was supposed to transport me out of my emo phase. You give me anything that deals with monsters, villains, death, angsty violent characters, or anything otherwise dealing with what's usually undesirable in society, and you've got my attention. It was a bonus that Zack had the same VA as Bakugo from My Hero Academia (who is my favorite—again, edgy angry boy). You're gonna give me a full-blown apeshit Bakugo????? With a kickass scythe??? Sold. It took me awhile to get started, as most things do, but once I finished it, it was exactly what I wanted and more. I can't say that for many shows anymore. It's the only new anime I've actively searched fanfiction for in YEARS. I'm that desperate to stay in the world.
More under the cut
It's such a weird sensation. You never really realize there's a hole inside you until you find something that fills it. I didn't notice how much I've been craving dark content. REAL dark content, with substance, and character development, drama, and, well, A Point. Basically, things other than gore and jumpscares. For the last few years, I've been sustaining myself on old favorites to get me through that craving. 95% of the new shit that comes out, no matter how good it looks, always ends up feeling so hollow (or, for the few things that don't, wind up cancelled). It's something I like to call Hollywood Edge. It's the fate of all subcultures. Capitalism gets a hold of a few key features of a movement, and make it about that. Emo is just angsty kids with dark eyeliner and black clothes. Goths are just black lipstick and dead people. Punks are lazy degenerates in spikes who just don't wanna get a job. The media reflects that to further the agenda. Suicide Squad? The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina? All attempts at capitalizing that sweet, 2007 brand Edge, that ultimately fall flat, and a little bit like when our parents would patronize our interests. This is that "emotional" stuff you like right?????
This kinda brings me to what I really wanna talk about in this post, and what Angels of Death made me realize about myself: I miss being an emo kid. Obviously, I don't miss the very specific brand of Teenage Mental Illness I was experiencing at the time, or the other environmental factors that were making me miserable, but I miss the thrill of having a community that represented the shitty things I was feeling. When emo culture was popular, the world seemed bursting with creativity. TV shows were FULL of monsters, vampires, werewolves. Narratives that are all about being different and ostracized from society, and how to continue existing despite that. Fandom was ALIVE and FULL. Morally dubious shit and weighing the consequences of that were common discussions. The music scene was bursting. Aesthetics and fashion were experimental and fun. In other words, there was passion. People were excited about art. They weren't afraid to put their whole hearts and attention into things. Nowadays, it's hard to get anybody to care about even serious things, like our dying planet, for longer than two weeks. Despite Angels of Death's popularity in Japan, I don't hear shit about it on social medias here. And as someone who was in her Edgy Prime in 2007, Angels of Death feels like something that should have been released back then. Zack would have been listed on every Emo Weeb's profile (Gaia, Xanga, Myspace, what have you) as their "Psycho Boyfriend XD rawr". So many MCR AMVs would be made with him as the focus. It would've been way too powerful. Yet, in 2019, even with the recent emo resurgence, it's not pulling much of a loud crowd in the U.S. When I did a quick search for it on Twitter, quite a few posters even write it off as "weird". Why is that?
I personally think it comes down to the disappearance of the “Other” in Western media. For the latter part of the decade, it's been routine as fuck. Anything remotely out of the box has been cut out for cookie-cutter, easy to digest, familiar dramas and Romcoms. Or, like I mentioned before, Hollywood Edge. Sequels, remakes, and copycats run wild because they're safe, easy money-makers, and keep the audience placated by giving them the fulfillment they crave through things they've already experienced (aka Nostalgia's a Bitch). While, at one point, we lived for emotions, moral dilemmas, and stories that explored the “weird”, it's been cut from our diet so completely that society doesn't have a taste for it anymore. In fact, pretty much everything that I would consider part of current emo culture (or Post-Emo, if you will) that's had an impact on people and created “crazes” or inspired passion, such as Undertale, Five Nights at Freddy's, Tik Tok, etc, have been at (one point or another), banished to cringe culture. I see this as pretty convenient, and absolutely part of the grand timeline of capitalist society. We're all too tired from a long day of work to come home and sit down to a show where we have to unpack our emotions, or play a game that discusses morality in-depth, or tells the chilling story of a corrupt corporation that covered up the deaths of numerous children. And for the people who do somehow have the energy to be excited about things? How dare you feel emotions while the rest of us are excited. You're officially cringy. Be miserable with the rest of us. It's the same reason we choose fast food over cooking. Bitters are better for our digestion, but when everything around you has gone sour, you just want something sweet.
Spoilers for AoD ahead, and also trigger warning for graphic depictions of violence and death:
It's revealed toward the end of Angels of Death that the reason why Rachel Gardner wants to die is because she spent her life in an abusive household where her parents completely ignored her. Her father was a violent drunk and her mom resented her for being born and tethering her to the relationship. The unfulfilled urge to be wanted and loved twists inside Rachel until, whenever her love is rejected, she kills whatever rejected her and sews them up to make them “perfect”. She does this to her parents, after she witnesses her father kill her mother one night, who then attempts to kill her as well. She shoots him, and then sews her mother and father's bodies together so they can finally be the perfect family, living with their corpses until the cops finally come to the home. She can no longer deal with the weight of her actions or her past, and just wants death to put her out of her misery. Zack, the serial killer, comes from a similar abusive background. One of the men his neglectful mother was sleeping with set him on fire for fun. His mom didn't want to deal with a disfigured child, so she wrapped him up in bandages and dropped him off at an orphanage. The people running the orphanage were just as shit, and they used him to bury the bodies of the children who would die in their care. The orphanage keepers were his first kills, and from then on he killed people with joyous smiles, because nobody having that much fun could be a good person. That's a lot of heavy shit to deal with in a show! It's uncomfortable to wrestle with the idea that trauma can be so bad that death can seem like the only way to peace. It's uncomfortable to see that monsters, more often than not, are created by a system and they aren't just Like That. It's uncomfortable to consume themes where characters must escape from a system who only views their trauma and experiences as tools, because it hits way too close to home. While that representation would have been embraced in another time, right now it's the last thing we wanna deal with.
But Angels of Death, first and foremost, is about Rachel and Zack's relationship, and the camaraderie we can find when we're with people as Unwell and fucked up as we are. I think it's important to remember that that is what emo culture is about. It's not all black mascara tears, angst, and being Random, like Hollywood Edge wants you to believe. Instead, it was the radical call to let the world know we were hurting. Spray it on the walls, write it on your notebooks, in songs, on the mirror with your eyeliner, anywhere: just as long as you share it, so other hurt people can find you, and we can be the families we didn't get to have.
It's okay to give a voice to the dark things we deal with in life. You don't have to keep drowning it in sugar. Fuck being uncomfortable. Pain deserves to be validated.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-22 05:03 pm (UTC)Anyway, this sounds like something I'd really enjoy. Where did you watch it?
no subject
Date: 2019-06-22 09:14 pm (UTC)It's on Hulu, Funimation, and Crunchyroll! There're also a couple episodes of the dub on Youtube, if they aren't deleted yet. If you watch it, let me know what you think!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-23 01:34 am (UTC)I just finished episode five and omg I love this show! <3 This show is amazing!
As for the ship, I didn't know Rachel was a teenager until I started watching the show. While I understand why that makes people uncomfortable, nobody is forcing them to read it. Anyway, when I realized it was an anti-ship post I was like, I'm out. Bye. :)
Btw, have you ever watched Deadman Wonderland? If not, you should definitely check it out. Now that I think about it, the MC in DW is like 12. Why are there so many kids in these dark ass animes? Lol.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-03 11:12 pm (UTC)I will check that out next! I definitely think it's so the younger audience relates, but then also I sometimes worry it might be for sexualization purposes =/ Literally the story, in my opinion, has a bit of an icky edge because she's so young and everyone is like thirsting to kill her, and that concept is portrayed with a sexual tone???? I think the story improves a lot with her older, so that's my headcanon lol
no subject
Date: 2019-07-04 12:06 am (UTC)hey don't worry about it. We all get busy. :) I like a lot of dark/horror stuff, so I'm always worried I'll rec something and then people will be like, wtf is wrong with you? If you have any other recs, please let me know.
As for Rachel, I totally get why she's aged up. If I was ever going to write for that pairing, I'd do the same thing. I just meant I ignore anti-ship posts in general.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-04 07:10 am (UTC)Also same. Kids are in cages, I don't have time for Goody-Proctor and her problematic ship.
& Fandom permutations thereof...
Date: 2019-06-23 11:38 am (UTC)Idk where I'm even trying to go with this, except that the essay Fiction, Reality, Fandom, and Adulthood (child sexual abuse and incest at link) remains the best expression of these ideas I have ever read.
Re: & Fandom permutations thereof...
Date: 2019-07-04 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-02 01:07 pm (UTC)Secondly, this harmonises really well with what I've been thinking about recently, like, what even IS counterculture anymore? it all gets swallowed into capitalism so quickly and becomes just a hollow shell of what it used to be. I'm definitely guilty of sometimes falling for the "cringification" of something, which is just so unnecessary.
I've been enjoying the emo resurgence lately, away from the "Hollywood Edge," as you call it, as there's some really good stuff being created now again and it makes me so happy (but like, in an emo way :P).
Really good post :D
no subject
Date: 2019-07-04 04:34 am (UTC)That's a really interesting question about counterculture. Maybe that's why there hasn't been one since the emo days.