12 Days of the Teekyu Revolution – Day 11 with Sempai

Today, Teekyu tackles anime’s obsession with youth culture.

In the first episode of season two, the Teekyus go to a preschool run by an ex-Navy SEAL. We get the obligatory juxtaposition where the hardcore military dude is awesome with kids, and he proclaims it’s because 1) He’s always smiling and 2) He sees things on the same level as the children.

Basically, this dude can think like a child. That makes a lot of sense, since the average child is a vicious, horrible, violent ball of hate and disease. The child is a terrible little thing, filled with primal urges that have yet to be “civilized” by years of exposure to adults and their laws of decorum and order. A four-year old child is at that strange age where they’ve developed communication skills that allow for decent interaction with older humans, but they’re still filled with those primal instincts innate to the human being. They’re killing machines who can form coherent, complete sentences.

So yeah, in a lot of ways, the celebration of youth and the “understanding” of that mindset is also the celebration of death. Youth culture is death culture. So when one of the Teekyu girls finally gets down on her knees to see from the eyes of a child, she finds herself becoming a mercenary killing for the joy of death and money.

Looking through the eyes of a child and enjoying the world from that youthful perspective is no different from looking through a sniper scope and shooting some poor sap from a mile away.

So, when anime celebrates the young by spewing forth endless streams of kid-based programming, they’re really celebrating murder and destruction.

Teekyu celebrates this awful truth.