>significant and large story portions of Berserk are taken straight from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Nietzsche's Dionysian ideal >the intro song to Dragon's Dogma, which has references to Berserk also, is called Eternal Return and basically sounds like Aubrey is singing about the death of God
Why is Japan's entertainment so bizarre? And not for the normal reasons here. I just didn't expect to ever see certain high level concepts find their way into lower level entertainment. Or am I just overlooking the western media that actually features Nietzsche's philosophy instead of just dropping his "he who fights monsters" quote at some point in it?
Making this thread on Veeky Forums since it is about a philosopher and I'm particularly looking for certain stories in media, books as top priority of course. I figured Veeky Forums would be the best place to ask this. What fiction is strongly inspired by Nietzsche / Zarathustra beyond a superficial connection?
In Japan, people still appreciate culture. That's why anime is so much better than everything else.
Brody Hughes
Japan's entertainment isn't bizarre- there's plenty of boring lowest-common-denominator shit over in grolious nippon just like there's 'bizarre' philosophical shit over here.
Though I read Berserk and Zarathustra and I'm not really remembering any 'significant and large story portions of Berserk are taken straight from' tbqh
Hunter Ortiz
You have to look for the connection. It's subtle. Start with The Night Song, which Nietzsche referred to as a Dionysian dithyramb in Ecce Homo. It's talking about Griffith (Dionysus) where the "dark ones, and night-like" would be Guts. It even mentions an eclipse, and the "many suns" that "circle in barren space" would arguably be the God Hand. Almost every line in that passage can be found somewhere in Berserk, and you can find traces in other passages if you look for it - an obvious other being On the Friend.
Cooper Robinson
There is no higher meaning to what you obsered. It's surface level meaningless bullshit. It's a shoutout and nothing more. It's why NGE has christian symbolism. It's why Ghost in the shell references salinger to no consequence. It's psuedo intellectual fuckery added because autistic jap writers think it's cool. Stop wasting your time with cartoons for sixteen year olds.
Xavier Murphy
>It's a shoutout and nothing more. That's the case in most stories, Japanese or not. Not in Berserk. No one is listening to that "shout out" and it defines basically the entire story.
Jordan Stewart
I dunno m8, sounds like a specious connection via metaphor that lets nerdy academics connect everything to everything
t. nerdy academic
Camden Peterson
The 'depth' people refer to when talking about NGE has nothing to do with the superficial aesthetics of christian symbolism
damnable pleb
Lincoln King
Most of it is forced. E7 basically lampooned the abuse and misuse of literature and traditions by doing it themselves. As in, a plot point is people using the Golden Bough as their source on the potential apocalypse and a justification for weird ideologies that disconnect them from their planet.
Now that's bizarre.
Owen Wilson
I don't think it's hard to believe there is an actual connection. Nietzsche is a cultural giant that's influenced a lot of artists as well as psychologists. And we know that Miura was aware of him since at least the 80s (Conan the Barbarian)
Dark Souls also leans pretty heavily on Nietzsche. The entire game's narrative can be read as a battle against nihilism. The first flame is basically the myth of the gods. The flame periodically fades, and some hero must go reignite it to stave off the cataclysms that will come of it. But over time the myth grows dimmer and weaker no matter how many champions throw themselves on its flame.
Shit, the Abyss Watchers boss is literally drawn out of one of his most famous quotes. It's a fight where you go against a group of guys responsible for keeping Kaathe's army of edgy nihilist assholes under control but in fighting them, staring into the abyss, some are corrupted.
The entire idea of 'going hollow' also references this absence of meaning. In the games, most NPCs either die or go mad after having their quests completed.
David Reyes
This reminds me of that theory about how when Kanye said "I keep it 300 like the Romans" it was a reference to 300 in Roman numerals being CCC, which is short for cool, calm and collected.
Jason Morgan
This guy gets it. It's ok to like anime but don't convince yourself it's some kind of intellectual media.
Logan Young
>lower level culture
You unironically bought into the meme.
Wow you're so awake and pilled patrician user!
Brandon Peterson
>but don't convince yourself it's some kind of intellectual media. No one said that before you, really. Just because we're claiming that there is inspiration from philosophy in fiction doesn't mean we think said fiction is "intellectual" or even that there's a higher meaning to it, it's just there for entertaining discussion.
Jonathan Cooper
...
Joseph Brown
>Nietzsche's Dionysian ideal >He thinks Nietzsche advocates for the Dionysian
Ethan Cooper
From Ecce Homo:
>The psychological problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is how he, who in an unprecedented manner says no and acts no in regard to all that which has been affirmed hitherto, how he can remain nevertheless an affirming spirit? How can he who bears the heaviest destiny on his shoulders and whose very life task is a destiny yet be the lightest and the most transcending of spirits—for Zarathustra is a dancer? How can he who has the harshest and most fearful grasp of reality and who has thought the most "abysmal thought” nevertheless avoid taking these things as objections to existence or even as objections to the eternal recurrence of existence? How is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for being himself the eternal affirmation of all things, "the tremendous and unbounded saying of Yea and Amen”. "Into every abyss I still bear the blessing of my affirmation to Life”. But this once more is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
>What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks unto his soul? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Listen to the manner in which Zarathustra speaks to his soul Before Sunrise. Before my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness had found no tongue. Even the profoundest melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a dithyramb. As an example of this I take "The Night Song”—the immortal lament of one who, thanks to his superabundance of light and power, thanks to his nature as a sun, is condemned never to love.
>Such things have never before been written, never before been felt and never suffered: only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun’s solitude in light would be Ariadne. Who knows except me who Ariadne is! To all such riddles no one has ever found an answer; I doubt even whether anyone even saw a riddle here. On one occasion Zarathustra clearly sets out his life-task—and it is also mine.
He also signs his name as Dionysus in his madness letters. He didn't just advocate the Dionysian, he was its expression.
Carter Nelson
>uses smug meme arrows >doesn't realize that Nietzsche has two conceptions of the Dionysian
Landon Bennett
Ah, forgive me. I thought he was talking of the Dionysian that he talks of in BoT.
Henry Robinson
No, he just watched the movie 300 and confused spartans with romans
