False beliefs and racism
Attack on Titans latest tv episode titled “Children of the forest“, viewers are shown the impact of racism and how love can overcome racism and hatred.
Racism has always been an issue in society. In this episode we see racism presented and we also see a character overcome the racism within him. Niccolo is a flawed character from the moment he was introduced. He is clearly very racist by referring to those who are different to him as demons and devils. He is a captured soldier, an enemy, and a talented chef. He refers to the main characters as devils because he was taught as a child that the people who live on the island are not human and are a major threat to society, which is obviously not true. Nicolo is an enemy soldier so he ends up getting captured by the islanders.
Since Nicolo was a talented chef who shows signs of working together with the islanders, he is given the role of cooking food for them. He calls the islanders evil mentioning the sins their ancestors did in the past and says how upset he is to waste his skills as a chef cooking for them. Another example of racism is when Jean an islander goes up to Nicolo and asks to try the luxurious imported wine but he refuses saying it’s too good to be wasted on islanders. Jean responds that the wine does not care about race but sadly still gets rejected. A female scout named Sasha who is also an islander goes up to Niclolo and compliments his cooking skills. This is surprising considering the hatred between these two groups of people. Nicolo who has never really opened up at this point finally realizes that these people are not in fact demons but are indeed human. The compliments and reactions to Sasha trying his food is what finally made him realize how wrong he was this whole time about this race of people. He falls in love with Sasha and his goal now is to not fight in a war but to bring people together with his food.
The romance between these characters shows viewers how impactful love can be in an environment filled with oppression, hatred, and violence. It serves as hope that peace and love is possible if everyone just simply talked with each other. Another message within this story is how ridiculous it is to blindly hate on a group of people not even knowing who they really are or hearing their side of the story. I think that this message will relate to the viewers because we see lots of division and hatred today made against whole groups of people based on damaging false stereotypes just like the message shown in this episode.
