Shibuya 6th Undead Defense Unit - Vol. 1 Ch. 1 - A World That's Come to the End

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I'm getting a bit miffed with the obsession with manga and anime making all of their monsters into rapists. I hear goblin, and I immediately think about the goblin slayer kind, and not the whimsical little mischief makers they are historically based off of in terms of mythology all across the globe. I have no clue where this trend started from, but it seriously needs to be put to an end soon. If you can't make your villains evil without making them rapists, you're just a shitty author capitalizing off of shock. But then again, I don't live in a country where molestation rates were so high they had to segregate trains by gender, so maybe my sensibilities are too normal for this.

This was otherwise an okay first chapter, with an interesting world and a zombie focus I haven't seen a lot of recently. The concept of the masks was a bit interesting at first, but I have absolutely no idea how they'll make it work within the parameters they've established. Maybe it involves some sort of hivemind, but having that apply exclusively to faces and not making it something like "if a spiker sees you and you don't get out of sight or kill it fast enough, you'll have a horde at your back in seconds" feels way too specific. To me, it feels like the author really wanted to make masks a main element of the story, but didn't quite know how to explain it in a way that makes sense, so they just gave their zombies a really particular power set. It would be one thing if it was scents they could track, or sounds they could pick up, or even if it was on sight and every zombie could tap into the same hivemind to focus their hunts on confirmed survivors, but faces? Really? How will having your face seen let a zombie track you down, to the point where even going underground doesn't let you stay safe? Are they the CCP? Do they have access to the world's camera feeds through some sort of cloud-based hivemind and add you to a watchlist that will ping every nearby zombie if your face is located again somewhere else? I'm all for creativity and putting a unique spin on things, but the biggest appeal of the zombie genre to me is having a realistic world like ours suddenly threatened by an infectious agent of chaos that renders modern life and society impossible to maintain, so I can only suspend my disbelief so far when a condition so niche is introduced, especially when the average spiker was able to be one-tapped with a headshot from some malnourished teen with a metal pipe and yet somehow managed to take over the world.
 
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I'm getting a bit miffed with the obsession with manga and anime making all of their monsters into rapists. I hear goblin, and I immediately think about the goblin slayer kind, and not the whimsical little mischief makers they are historically based off of in terms of mythology all across the globe. I have no clue where this trend started from, but it seriously needs to be put to an end soon. If you can't make your villains evil without making them rapists, you're just a shitty author capitalizing off of shock. But then again, I don't live in a country where molestation rates were so high they had to segregate trains by gender, so maybe my sensibilities are too normal for this.

This was otherwise an okay first chapter, with an interesting world and a zombie focus I haven't seen a lot of recently. The concept of the masks was a bit interesting at first, but I have absolutely no idea how they'll make it work within the parameters they've established. Maybe it involves some sort of hivemind, but having that apply exclusively to faces and not making it something like "if a spiker sees you and you don't get out of sight or kill it fast enough, you'll have a horde at your back in seconds" feels way too specific. To me, it feels like the author really wanted to make masks a main element of the story, but didn't quite know how to explain it in a way that makes sense, so they just gave their zombies a really particular power set. It would be one thing if it was scents they could track, or sounds they could pick up, or even if it was on sight and every zombie could tap into the same hivemind to focus their hunts on confirmed survivors, but faces? Really? How will having your face seen let a zombie track you down, to the point where even going underground doesn't let you stay safe? Are they the CCP? Do they have access to the world's camera feeds through some sort of cloud-based hivemind and add you to a watchlist that will ping every nearby zombie if your face is located again somewhere else? I'm all for creativity and putting a unique spin on things, but the biggest appeal of the zombie genre to me is having a realistic world like ours suddenly threatened by an infectious agent of chaos that renders modern life and society impossible to maintain, so I can only suspend my disbelief so far when a condition so niche is introduced, especially when the average spiker was able to be one-tapped with a headshot from some malnourished teen with a metal pipe and yet somehow managed to take over the world.
...Wow. You sound rather upset.
 
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...Wow. You sound rather upset.
I'm just so god damn fed up with this stupid trope. Of all things, why does it always have to be sexual violence? "Because it's shocking" well not fucking anymore. Everyone and their mother is trying to keep up with this stupid trend of making their titles extra edgy for all the people who can't appreciate a story if it doesn't make them feel better about their own shitty circumstances, but gore or brutal violence would be too difficult, so they just make some ugly fucking monster start molesting some random female character for no reason except to capitalize off of edginess that they're utterly incapable of providing in a respectable manner.

And from a worldbuilding perspective, it's the hardest form of violence to rationalize some creature doing, especially stupid ones that apparently have far too little object permanence to recognize someone if only half of their face is showing. Sure, animals can rape, but except for humans and dolphins, very few are willing to cross species lines for an act that is, for 99% of all animal populations, purely for the purpose of reproduction. And, for all the worldbuilders out there that still don't know this, animals can't just reproduce with whatever the fuck they want to. That's not how biology or genetics work at all. But now everybody loves creating random creatures that can be outsmarted by a piece of cheese on a fucking bloody bear trap surrounded by corpses and going "oh by the way, they love raping humans, haha, isn't that so funny and edgy? Anyway, my main character is DarkFang the Bloodsorcerer, and his whole family was murdered by-" like shut the hell up and go study, you have a pre-algebra exam in three days and your mommy is gonna take your xbox away if you flunk another test you shower-hating chuuni.

This wasn't directed at you specifically, I'm just at my fucking limit with the current state of manga, especially the fantasy kind.
 
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This wasn't directed at you specifically, I'm just at my fucking limit with the current state of manga, especially the fantasy kind.
Well, I will admit that your rant isn't without merit. Truth be told, I've seen manga try to imitate Goblin Slayer in some arcs (as in, actual goblins are seen in it), and it's a little grating to say the least. I haven't restarted reading the manga version of it, mainly due to how it skewed my view of goblins a bit. Thankfully, Overlord and the Slime isekai has more or less fixed my view on them.
 

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