Irrelevant shit but I'm curious

How do you feel about the political content in the Metal Gear series? It seems quite critical of Capitalism at times. While not really saying much about Communism
I liked the inclusion of the Sandinistas
I just played 10 Metal Gear games in Chronological order. I'm wondering what Kojimas Actual beliefs are. I've seen he has a banner here so..

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_Front
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

It has interesting things to say about ideology especially digital culture and it's control but his failure to indict capitalism really detracts from its overall critique imo

Yes I suppose it's more anti-fascist than anti-capitalist. Seems to go with the territory of being a video game. Which is a shame because Kojima seems to be obsessed with proving that games can "be more" than games and unique things

Your video games are bad and you should feel bad

You couldn't just be mature and move on to a thread you are actually interested in? You didn't even sage

he just want attention, user

yes, you are right

nope. fuck you.
cause fuck you
get back to us when your vidya isnt shit

It's all over the map tbh, but the recurring themes seem critical of a wide range of topics but don't offer any solutions. It seems to target oligarchy/authority, the military industrial complex, militarism, ideological conditioning, etc. But the best it has to offer a solution is "leave the world be", which doesn't make any fucking sense and is so vague it's no wonder Boss and Zero interperated it so radically differently. It could either mean take over the world with computers or fuck off to a random oil rig and be a mercenary.

To be honest, I never cared about this series and this thread for a video game series probably killed a thread dedicated to discussion on actual leftist issues. But I must admit:
I'm kinda curious now.

sounds pretty capitalist to me. also those colors.

let the world be, faggot.

This why I began to dislike Kojima after he began blatantly shoving Big Boss in every ones face. Everyone knows solid snake is best snake. Solid was literally made to end imperialism and WMDs. Say what you will but it's all crap after MGS 4.

Solid was made to promote US imperialism. He just decided not to do it anymore, but he ended up falling into the Patriots' schemes anyway.


I guess the hope with leaving the world the way it is was that people had to come to a better way of living on their own, without super-warriors like Snake doing everything for them. Things never seem to turn out that way, though. If you accept Rising as canon, they definitely didn't, because the war economy continues even after the Patriots are gone.

Please tell me that you didn't do this for your first playthrough.

Well don't be an idiot and write off things you know nothing about, any Maybe you'll find more art you are interested in
Also, I've noticed that the bottom half of the catalog on this particular board usually gets no new posts and just sits there forever. So that's not really a point.

The entire point is that Big Boss was always a villain from the start, for fucks sakeā€¦
He always was but people got all shocked that he abandons his Loyal men (and in a meta way, the player too) in MGS5 because they don't pay attention and they never played the old 2D games.
Since his games are from his point of view, he doesn't present himself or his friends that way, you have to read between the lines y'kno. That's the whole point of the twist in 5, so that we can see him from a bit of an outside perspective by comparing his behavior to Venom Snake, who wants to disarm all nukes and rehabilitates child soldiers instead of using them.
Big Boss was never not a Fascist, and Master Miller was never not an Ancap.

Please tell me you don't think it actually matters in any way, fanboy

>Inb4 but muh twists that Kojima always blatantly foreshadows that you'd have to be ADHD to miss
I've had these debates before so yeah, not in the mood

To be honest, I don't think there's every been genuine "left-wing" thought in Japanese video games. They all seem to range from far-right to status quo centrist, then skip of the left and jump straight to eco-primitivism and anti-human nihilism.

is communism that lame?

I find it pretty ironic that games with themes about defying genetic determinism and the exploitation of the war economy are some of pills pol's favorites

You can't expect consistency from them. To them, politics is a game too

You should probably watch Gundam sometime. And I mean the original Tomino stuff, not the Alternative Universe shows from recent years. Gundam and most of its copycat shows and games and are various degrees of left, but yeah, Tomino does seem pretty nihilist about it at times

Gundamfag here.

I fail to see how tomino's gundam is lefty. If anything, it's a very de-fanged anti-war series that actually makes war seem cool (much like Metal Gear).

The Earth Federation's government are a bunch of porkies who wrecked the planet's environment so bad they shipped the proles into space. Zeon's led by a bunch of nationalists who subvert a philosophy aimed at human liberation and progress and turn it into an ideological program to legitimize the Zabi monarchy. Imperialist war kills a shitload of people.

There's no revolutionary third party going for Lenin's solution to the imperialist war problem, but a lot of implicit left-wing criticism of the present world order. (Mostly by way of making both options look fucking terrible)

People keep asking me to analyse metal gear solid (and Deus Ex) but my god, do they even realise how long and meandering and confused that series would be?

You already did 4 parts on Dead Rising, of all things.

See, you're exactly the kind of person who needs to watch those videos :^)

I think you should save those as big projects when you reach a milestone or something but a good mgs video could seriously expand your channel if it got enough play

I don't think thats strictly accurate every game after MGS: Portable OPs names capitalism as a major problem and points out its abuses. Its not exactly a hard-line Marxist analysis and criticism of capitalism but sometimes it comes damn close. Even MGS 3: Snake Eater, which is perhaps the most anti-Soviet metal gear, shows American imperialism to be just as evil and conniving as the "bad" Soviets.


The whole point being that the Boss's radical centrism and anti-politics/ideology is a potent ideology itself that undermines itself through its very existence. The ideologically-charged Cold War is replaced with a "post"-ideological Cold War between Zero and Big Boss, and even when the two have left the scene (Zero via brain parasite/cancer, BB after his defeat by Solid Snake) their memes and successors continue to battle it out. Their "personal" disputes have entered the realm of politics and their anti-politics has become political in itself. As one poster said the more Zero and Snake try to escape ideology the more deeper into the trashcan they go.


Rising has such a TWist bend to it that the Roo or LLCO prolly could've wrote it.


That's an interesting point. I think you're certainly right about Miller but I think the inclusion of the Sandinistas was not accidental. Even though they are left-wing they are important because they provide a template for fulfilling the Boss's Will which Snake is trying to fulfill. The Sandinistas are an anti-imperialist left-wing nationalist movement that purports to be both a Christian and a dem soc organization:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_Front

The Boss envisioned a world "without capitalism or communism" and the Sandinistas ideological eclecticism provided a mold for which this borderless and supposedly post-ideological world could be built. I think that its probable that the Sandinistas ideology inspired Zero's Patriots system which was intended to work like patriotism in that the individual surrenders to a greater force willfully and voluntarily without being aware of how their being manipulated by greater forces. The Boss's vision of a progressive borderless future for mankind and Zero's totalitarian one-world gov interpretation makes perfect sense when you use the Sandinistas as a reference.

I think what Kojima tried to show with Peacewalker is how the world and Naked Snake's path could've been different and helpful for the world. Snake was always a bastard but that was a point where he could've changed and he didn't. His later turn
hinted in Peacewalker with Snake's rejection of the Boss's message of Peace. Snake's path was definitely sealed with the death of Paz and Chico which symbolized the death of a world where Naked Snake could coexist with the forces struggling with peace and progress in the world.


I personally hope you don't because I'd like to do an in-depth Marxist analysis of it myself. You do an excellent job with your channel btw

The AEUG is like a more organized Antifa
Including the part where they eventually end up inadvertently defending the porky

Do it, but make sure you remember that literally no one's philosophy in the series is portrayed as good. Especially Big Boss

Patlabor 2 is more what you're looking for if you want left-leaning mongolian etch-a-sketch drawings about automatons

Big Boss openly admitted to starting wars to drum up business and "rescuing" child soldiers only to raise them as soldiers; right before his boss battle in MG2. He used a coup to take his own slice of post-soviet territory and declare himself President, for life of course. He controlled a mercenary/pmc network globe wide, almost as large as Liquid Ocelots
The irony is that Big Boss ended up being the Violence half of the world's further enslavement, with Zero being the Intel/Manipulation side of the metaphor. Big Boss is Watching You and all that

Yup, I wonder if they have some resentment towards the USSR and Maoist China.

Is not MG but, I wish LOGH had a commie planet that crushed Reinhard.

MGS II is one of the few I haven't finished. Thanks, that'll def give me an incentive to finish it

Also in Portable Ops (if you consider that canon) it's heavily insinuated that Big Boss was a Child soldier himself that was exploited by the US gov. That's a big theme and issue in Rising and TPP.

Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake from 1990, NOT Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty from 2001
Goddamit

Metal Gear 2 is creepy about it. The child soldiers say that the "One Eyed Man" is like their daddy, hates other grown-ups, and told them to warn him if the see "the Man in Green with the Bandana" sneaking around

Ya that's what I meant I've already plays MGS 2: SoL. I already finished the original MGS (1987).

Still not quite sure what the background story to the rebellion in Outer Heaven was and who the rebels really were. I assume that the mercs are former diamond dogs. Except for the fact that there was a worldwide scare over South African nuke testing in 1979 I don't see how Operation Intrude N312 relates to wider South African/world politics alluded to in MGS V:TPP. I'm not exactly sure what the end goal it all was except for launching the metal gear.