Hyperlich
One Piece : I gotta post some spoilers to talk about it:::: large plot spoilers The main characters dad is literally based off Che Guevara and is always portrayed as the side of good. His ship is named Granma, same as Che’s. He’s the leader of a force named the revolutionary army. His second in command is named Invankov: queen of the kamabakka kingdom which is an island of gender fluid people who can physically change genders any time they want thanks to Invankovs hormone powers. They go around liberating islands from the world government and freeing slaves.
The main character and his crew embodies freedom and I’d say communist ideals but they never really explicitly say so.
There is an arc where they must dispose of a king who was hoarding doctors for himself. It feels like a metaphor for socializing healthcare.
In most of the arcs after the introductory ones, they team up with natives to force out occupiers who are displacing them, or straight up enslaving them.
One of the first long form arcs they fight what’s basically a world government funded NGO who is trying to coup a king in the Middle East by controlling the resources (water).
They fight the CIA of their world.
There are consistent themes of freeing slaves throughout.
The world government is controlled by disconnected incestuous billionaires that all gave themselves the title of “saint”
There is a villain who is liberal coded, who creates a Disneyfied kingdom using fear.
Another is libertarian coded who occupied a land that he turned into a weapons manufacturing island.
There is an alt right coded villain who also turns the occupied kingdom into a weapons manufacturing island. ::: It’s a big commitment due to length.
I love the absurd art style (aside from every woman looking like the same character and some portrayals I found insensitive or offensive) but a ton of people have a hard time getting past how goofy it looks. Characters can look ridiculous and proportions mean nothing. Humans heights seem to vary between 1ft - 30ft tall.
The absurdist and cartoony nature of it can be off-putting to a lot of people but personally I love it and wish more things were like it.
There are a lot of problematic elements throughout that you’d need to look past and just enjoy the overarching message.
Finally, a good use case for bitcoin
I gotta recommend One Piece, my all time favorite. It’s about goofy ‘pirates’ who sail from island to island liberating them from fascists or stopping attempted coups, or fighting the CIA. The biggest problem in the one piece world is that everything was built to support a ruling class of disgusting inbred billionaires who do things like take slaves. There is a literal revolutionary army named “the revolutionaries” lead by a guy based on Che (he looks like che, his boat was named after che’s boat) who’s main goal is to destroy that billionaire ruling class.
The beginning of the show (like first 4 arcs) are more about introducing characters, but every arc after is about the above. The tone is like if Tom & Jerry had a plot. Despite how it might appear it’s not like a typical power scaling battle shonen, the fights are not the main point, though later on they do end up emphasizing fights a lot (in the anime, the manga is better at keeping fights secondary).
The show isn’t without issue though. It portrays trans, gender fluid, and queer people in a very mean way. They’re all still part of the ‘good guys’ but a lot will be drawn as like hairy men wearing dresses. There are better portrayals like one inspired by tim curry or one inspired by Jim carry (with the best voice actor ever if you watch it subbed). This issue gets a lot better later on though. This story has been going for 25 years, in the last 5 years or so it’s gotten much much better.
Another issue is it’s portrayal of women. Almost every prominent woman looks the same. They have the same-ish face and exact same body. They’re frequently scantily clad. No matter how important they are to the story, no matter how well fleshed out their characters are or how heartbreaking their story is, the author will still find a way to make them dress in underwear or something. I realize a lot of this was because of his editors. It doesn’t become a problem till later on when he gets editor after editor pushing him to draw them as scantily clad as possible. The author has warned other authors that the publisher is full of perverts. The anime makes things more gratuitous than the manga.
I do recommend reading it over watching it due to pacing and artwork though. They are remaking the anime right now even though the anime is still ongoing. The remake is supposed to address the pacing and art.
Loving it so far, it’s a little buggy on my below spec PC but still playable just with weird graphical glitches sometimes (people moving without any animations, cutscenes where my character is doing A-pose the entire time).
Playing as a wizard, flaming sphere is as hilarious as it is useful. I convinced someone to eat their friends. I watched them do it then killed them afterwards when they were good and weak. I then robbed them all. I did it all while naked since AC 10 clothes do not add to AC. Also murdered Gale and Rogue-guy because I didn’t like their vibe.
10/10 experience so far, still on act 1.
As a Chinese-American, sadly I can confirm that in my experience, most Chinese-Americans are pretty brainwashed by Western propaganda and hate/are ashamed of China or being Chinese at some level. Personally, I love and support China and the government but I’m afraid to openly admit that. Once I just simply said “I got friends in China” and a (History) teacher whipped his head around and screamed “WHAT!?!” And gave me the most evil glare. I’ve had a college professor literally tell the class that Chinese people have no concept of love.
I don’t know how internalized the propaganda actually is for Chinese Americans, or if they’re just simply afraid of vocalizing support of an “enemy” country while knowing that every person surrounding you has an insane irrational hatred of China and all chinese people and literally want blood.
I work around teenagers. I once listened to a highschool redditor coaching his league of legends team and tell them that if they are losing to a Chinese team then to start yelling “tianammen square!” over the chat because the ceeceepee will disconnect the Chinese team. He claimed he did this all the time and it worked each time. The amount of confidence he said this with was unnerving.
These reddit libs really believe this is some sort of incantation that banishes reality and Chinese people.
Pirate pimsleurs. It will not teach you to write or read but it’s pretty descent at teaching you to speak and listen. I speak a dialect of Mandarin but cannot understand a lick of Mandarin. Pimsleurs got me listening and speaking Mandarin at around a children’s level in a couple months. I think writing and reading come easier once you can listen to it and speak it, at least it does for me. Make sure you’re in an area where you can actually speak out loud.
If you like dramas I’d say ‘better days’ is good, it was pretty popular in China on release. I had to pirate it and download subs from some website but it’s doable.
2d animation: Link Click - I cannot recommend this enough. Its touching, it’s emotional, it has intrigue. It doesn’t fall into typical annoying anime tropes. There is a 2nd season but I haven’t watched it yet. This is a series but I feel like it’s episodic enough that you could kind of view them as short interconnected movies. They have complete story arcs in the episodes.
To be hero- I think this was made for Japan(?) I believe it’s a Chinese production but everyone speaks Japanese in it. It’s goofy and entertaining and touching. This is a series too buts it’s very short and the runtime of all the episodes combined is basically the same as a movie.
Legend of Hei is cute and has high paced action.
Big fish and Bagonia is beautiful like watching a painting. Some people love it but personally it put me to sleep. I still recommend it if you read the synopsis and it sounds like your cup of tea.
If you like 3d animated movies I’d suggest White Snake, I liked it far more than its sequel Green Snake. Green Snake is on Netflix but white snake I had to pirate. The movie does have strangely fast pacing but I love the story. Its action packed and has touching moments while looking beautiful.
I can loosely recommend that one nezha movie on Netflix that looks like some final fantasy thing, it was ok. I’m not really into super hero type stuff so portraying nezha that way felt kind of weird.
Jiang Jia I think was made by the same studio that made a different ne zha movie or maybe white snake? Not sure, but it’s competent. The thing is, they made it feel like an origin story for some future super hero team up thing similar to that ne zha recommendation above.
Sci-fi like others mentioned Three body problem is good but I think the books are much better paced. The show just drags on and on.
They’re priming their audiences. They’ve been suggesting that a Chinese economic collapse would directly cause an American depression.
That’s what they’ve decided to go with to deflect blame once the panic of another American depression hits. The bourgeoise knows the general audience is racist enough to accept those evil Chinese commies are causing their problems no matter how many backflips the logic has to do for it to connect. They’re scared to accept blame, they’re scared it won’t work out like 2008 where they all got off scott free so they need to sow the seeds of their alibis before it happens.
I expect them to publish a bunch of totally fabricated stories about China collapsing and pulling America down with them once America sinks into a depression. Better to scapegoat an entire country and allow citizens to take out their rage on the Chinese ethnic minority living in America than to take an ounce of blame. Hmmm sounds familiar.