Gore & Death. Real Life vs Anime, I’m affected by the previous, totally.
All in just a span of a few days this week, I had many “unfortunate lectures” where the professors screened bloody videos and flashed bloodied pictures. Because of that, I realize that I have a weakness which is what I’m about to confess next. I admit that I feel faint on seeing blood and mutilated body parts that I almost fainted at one point. My head spun, it was hard to breath and I had to leave the lectures mid-way.
I reflected and I wondered why I’m so affected by gory and death scenes in real life as compared to anime.
I remember watching “Club to death angel Dokuro-chan” and it has one of the most melodramatic scenes that I have ever caught when it comes to blood spills. The female protagonist, who is an angel, will always club the male protagonist to death due to the varying circumstances, thus, resulting in much gore spillage and internal organs flying around. It plays heavily on dark humor where it aims to make one laugh at the point of the protagonist’s “well deserved” death. Though the bloody scenes were disturbing and they play on a weird sense of twisted humor, I did not feel faint.
Perhaps the scenes in Dokuro-chan is too fake because c’mon who can spill that much blood from just the head like the above scene? Also, the style that it’s depicted, where there’s loli-ness and chibi-ness, helped to soften the impact. Now then, what about “Hellsing Ultimate”? Surely, the OVA has some hardcore gore and the style is not “kiddy”. Definitely, the gory scenes were disturbing as characters are butchering one another mindlessly and you’ll get a truckload of bloody death bodies at the end of an episode. But yet again, I did not feel faint.
Perhaps they are not realistic enough I though. C’mon where in the world would you find a platoons of zombie and soldiers clashing and massacring each other? Hence, I brain stormed and came up with a series that might reflect gore more realistically. Now what about “Kara no Kyoukai – the garden of sinners”? Yeah, victims do suicide jumps from buildings and the aftermath is not pleasant indeed. Thanks to the good visual, bloody scenes were portrayed with some realistically. They are disturbing but again, I can stomach the scenes.
So what exactly happened during lectures that resulted in such a big reaction in me? There are 2 lessons that gave me a headache, one of them being forensic science. For this module, you cannot avoid pictures of limbs, blood, and dead bodies. It started off “light” at the start of the course, with some random pictures of dead corpses placed into lecture slides but the pictures “intensified” as the weeks passed. The most recent horrifying lecture was last week’s pathology related lecture.
So the lecture slides for last week was filled with not only hard core pictures of body parts, tissues and organs, there were many horribly distorted dead bodies because some chose to end their lives in ugliness1. I then reached a part where it did not deal with the dead, as it involved pictures of live victims instead. Pictures of the aftermath of rape and abused victims flood the screens one after the other and then I started to feel giddy.
I left during the 2nd hour of my 3 hours lecture.
I first thought that it might be due to my medication that has caused the giddiness but the same thing happened again in my geography lecture. What has geography got to do with what I’m discussing now? Sadly, that very lecture has a video2 on human relations with animals; where animals are human’s food. The life journey of farm animals (specifically cows, pigs and chickens) from their very birth to their moments in the slaughterhouse were shown. Cows were hung in the air by machines, their throats were slit by man manually with a long knife and they were left to bleed to death all the while they were still conscious. The scenes were many times worse than Dokuro-chan’s dramatic blood-spilled scenes.
Hence, I try to reflect to come up with explanations as to why gore and deaths in anime is more mild as compared to real life. Some anime series, like Claymore, run on the moral justification where deaths and bloodshed are justified because it runs on a good vs evil concept where some sacrifices must be made. Others, like Hellsing, can be explained through the handful of insanity characters where they are just insane enough to come up with cranky plans like world domination and where their joy is found through chaos and bloodshed. Ultimately, I can argue that anime is unreal.
But then I thought again is that the true reason? I thus derive with this conclusion, that is, anime is unable to reflect how sad and true reality is. Humans are moral creatures, we are not mad, and yet we are butchering animals. What is the moral justification for that? Don’t animals have the right to survive too? The very though of what is happening in slaughter houses scares me. And yet, I will continue to eat the flown in livestock products because nothing has changed, please call me a moral creature.
I think you’re asking 2 different questions – anime is certainly less realistic and there are less visual cues with a drawing than a photograph. Even in some of the most realistic, vivid paintings, it still can’t capture the exactness that a picture can.
Humans being moral creatures with regards to how they procure food – I’m not quite sure how those things are being associated. There’s nothing immoral about being an omnivore, although slaughterhouses can be inhumane and downright illegal. If the latter is the case, that would be immoral but the act of butchering an animal isn’t, IMHO. I think that modern society is far removed from some of the gorier details of how humans used to live to the point where the death of a cow is shocking.
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May i ask what your actually studying ? O.0
Well this is my personal view on things but im quite similar to you.
I can watch gory shows be it Anime/or acted series/movies without the slightest feel of disturbance.When it comes to real stuff like a report or documentary i start to feel unwell.
My explanation for this is that I KNOW that the first is not real and may be part of the directors artdirection/plot driving force whatever and noone was really harmed in the making.Its totally fictional and therefore harmless.
If youd show me the same scenes and tell me that those are real id be shocked.
I enjoy gory shows but only because i know that they are fictional,for entertainment purposes and noone was harmed.
Thats the Thing for me
Theres one thing i cant stand though may it be fictional or real:
Abuse/Violence against Animals.If something like that occurs i go crazy.
Elfenlied didnt disturb me at all except the scene with the lil pup :/
An interesting sidenote:
Since im a physical therapist im able to watch some Operations from time to time and i dont have a problem even tough it looks like those people are butchered.My stomach felt a bit funny the first time but nowadays i dont have a problem at all.
PPS: <3 Dokuro-chan I still dont understand why they censored the “2nd season” tough.They crippled the shows mainelement that way
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The act of butchering an animal? ^^; If you butcher an animal for reasons outside of food (and occasionally for science), then yes, it is wrong.
With a painting vs a photo, a painting has that feeling of ’surrealism’ to it. Paintings were never meant to capture an exact moment in time, rather, they capture the feeling of the time that is being portrayed. With a photo, the feeling that one gets is of actually being there, looking at the event as it unfolds.
For me, what pushes my buttons in dealing with blood and gore in anime/movies/etc is the ‘intent’ behind it. Like you, I can watch Hellsing and the like all day long but I’ll refuse to go to a horror movie of any kind. Am I afraid? Yes, I’m afraid of my reactions to it. I simply hate the idea of someone, or something, killing people with little to no reason whatsoever. Even if it is done for the sake of revenge, once it involves people outside of what occured, I cross the line. I can watch a bloody action movie with little adverse effects though. I guess it’s because I know that any death in there has a good chance of being answered back tit for tat.
I’m the same, but I guess I’m more extreme as I can’t really handle a lot gore and blood even in anime. I know it’s fake and I know it’s just a ‘projection’, but it reminds me of things I saw on the news or other channels depicting real graphic images…
If you look at my anime list, you’ll see I don’t have many gory anime, probably just Elfen Lied and Dokuro-chan…even with those my stomach was heavy through the anime…>_>
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Because you are able to differentiate between reality and and what is not. We will always be one step removed from gory scenes in anime, as on a subconsciousness level you recognize that it isn’t real. Pictures of actual scenes of death has an effect, however, on that part of you which you have no control over. Its normal to feel uneasy, or even feel sick like you did, in the face of true graphic images, so don’t worry about it.
Stifler´s last blog post..Maximise time spend on public transportation…
I’ll admit that I feel a bit strange inside when I know that whatever I’m watching is ‘real’, but with anime no matter how realistic they try to make it, it will never actually be real. When I watch TV dramas, etc, depending on how extreme the gore is I sometimes feel like I want to hide under the covers, but other times I really enjoy watching it so long as I’m not eating anything at the time.
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Some part of yourself know that it’s not real. However, when you see something that strikes closer to home, a possibility that actually has a real chance of occurring or is actually happening, then it becomes a bigger threat.
Honestly, gore in any indirect form doesn’t faze me. Maybe it’s because I know I’m reading/watching/hearing about it in the comforts of my room/classroom/etc. There’s a part of me that realizes that the chances of me going through that is slim to none. My reaction would be different if otherwise.
This kind of correlates to games as well. I doubt any avid CoD4 gamer would handle real war operations in the same manner as they do behind the console.
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Purfect for halloween. :D
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Why don’t you just do what I do: keep my head down for the whole lecture until someone tells me it’s safe to look up. Can cause a bad cramp in the neck though. I think it’s very normal.. I see one pic and I can be super-imaginative for the next few weeks. So don’t worry. It’s normal.
Thank you for the comment! The test wasn’t as hard as I thought. It’s just grammar that bugs me, I love all english ^-^
Hmm….don’t forget that there’s Higurashi No Naku Koro ni too. It’s horror with kawaii lolis. It’s kinda creepy, you know how like little kids get possessed.
Well….as someone had already said, anime is basically an asian-oriented type of cartoon, so it’s kind of hard to depict it as reality. Only reality can truly compare to reality.
It bothers me too how the cheeseburger I get at McDonald’s got there in the first place. Yet I keep eating meat. Is it really wrong in a way? I mean, if we stop and acknowledge all the animals and not eat them, aren’t they just going to overpopulate?
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@Caitlin
You’re right! I didn’t know what’s happening to farm animals till I watched the video. Also, I didn’t realize that RL corpses and body parts can be that disturbing. It’s good that I’m more aware of such issues now but I will try to keep a positive outlook to things. As we know, seeing so much depressing stuff can make one feel depressed too.
@blowfish
There’s a season 2 of Dokuro-chan? I’ll give it a miss for now, too much gore recently.
I’m a history major but because the university wants to provide a holistic education, I’m taking 6 different modules for this semester (3 of which are history courses, 1 forensic science, 1 human geography and 1 social work). I think the social work module is there perhaps to make me feel better somehow after seeing all the horrible stuff.
@Arakan7
Yeah you’ve grasped what I’m experiencing and epen it down accurately. It’s true that I simply don’t like the idea the way the photos are portrayed, hence, resulting in some negative reactions like dizziness or faint.
@53RG10
I tried reading Elfied Lied but dropped it at chapter 70 because the characters are doing perverted things. I was stunned by the very 1st chapter where humans were mutilated by “invisible hands” but I kept reading to see what the plot is. The gore did not increase because mass mutilation is the most one can get, instead, it became more “parts focused” where body parts and intestines start flying out and that totally creep me out. Another manga to avoid would be Deadman Wonderland where everyone in class just died horribly in the very first chapter.
@Stifler
I’ll try….it’s still so psychologically disturbing after the lectures have ended. And the lectures are weekly, justly like some vicious cycle.
@blissmo
The Queen of gore and blog of suicide bunnies have spoken! Oh to make things worse, if the RL movie is a horror cum gory one, it’ll give you nightmares for days or even weeks because the effects will subconsciously linger in the head.
@FFVIIKnight
Ya, I doubt that games with gore would be able to portray what’s happening in real life realistically. I’m a fan of Warcraft III but I don’t feel anything (except from desperation when I’m losing) when my troops are clashing with the opposing force. My troops fight, they die, leave a pile of blood when they die but the patch will disappear soon after. I watched a Hollywood movie, “The Killing Fields”, and its on the Khmer Rouge’s killings in Cambodia. It’s bad, so bad that Warcraft III will never be able to reflect the miseries that the Cambodians had faced.
@wr
I don’t exactly stare at the photos as I’m terrified by the ugliness of what humans can do instead for Forensic Science. As for Geo, the animals bleeding to death is so horrible that no amount of head lowering is gonna save me. The butchers were like laughing and taunting the animals before they kill them, which is so disturbing that omg how can people do that! @_@
@Kairu Ishimaru
Now I know what you are gonna be doing for Halloween this Fall!
*Parody of the movie, I know what you did last Summer*
@FFVIIKnight
The characters in warcraft III are dying so easily that I eliminated the whole tropp
@Rainie
Let’s hope for the best for your test results ya!
Ah cheeseburgers, I’m staying away from beef and steaks for now. Must have been the lectures where the images of cows crying and dying somehow got to me.
@Hynavian: Ah yes, behind this homicidal mask of mine lays an innocent child. I watched a few horror Taiwanese horrors and Chinese ones and American ones, and they’re pretty good compared to the Japanese ones. Urgh, don’t even get me started on how fake the Japanese make their horror movies …
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While I hardly have the bloodlust that blissmo possesses
, I’ve seen enough gore and death to the point of being desensitized towards it, which was mostly due to when my uncle used to watch snuff films and the like around me as a child. Though it did give me nightmares early on, I became immune towards them during my early teens, so I’m unfazed by it all now.
I try to be conscientious of where my meat comes from. Killing an animal for food is never “pretty” but it’s necessary. If you’re worried about slaughterhouses and the mistreatment of animals, I’d suggest looking locally to see what’s around you. There are options. ^_^
Looking at crime scene photos made biology/anatomy so much easier. I was one of the few people who didn’t have a problem with cutting open stuff to learn. One of my friends, on the other hand, fainted. If you’re going into a profession where there will be gore, it’s best to get it out of the way early, IMHO, or learn quickly that you need a new job!
Ahhh well I got a B which wasn’t bad compared to all the other grades people got D= That test turned out to be hard as I thought!
Yeahhh…but you know then I think of it as controlling the population like I said before..you wouldn’t want cows controlling the world right?
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