Bullshit DGA Essay

Bullshit DGA Essay (yes that's the title)
Written by joe


In the world of mangas and animus, there have been great and inspiring works, that rise up to the forefront, and shock the world with its vast and deep symbolic meanings. Sadly, Dark Gate Academy is not one of them. Oh, don’t get alarmed, Booker, it’s not because Dark Gate Academy isn’t a good work with tons of symbolism and meaning, it’s because it’s not a manga or an animu, it’s a quest. I bet I got you good, though.

Now onto the actual essay. Wait, shoot, I have to have a thesis, huh? Well, here it is. Dark Gate Academy is a quest deeply full of symbolism that oftentimes the readers do not even catch or pick up on, and attempts to portray one of its central themes, that morality is not simply black or white, through the use of certain characters as motifs, the symbolism of the Darkworld, and the raging war between the Safaia and Rubi regions raging in the background, and that war’s effects on certain students of the academy. How’s that? Actually, I think the character symbolism will probably get me to three pages already (Yamato), so I’ll save the other topics for some other time, if I ever need to pull out some bullshit, like this essay is probably going to be. Trust me, I’ve looked into both the symbolism of the Darkworld and the war between Safaia and Rubi, though.

In the quest itself, there have been several characters that have been presented as villains, and either turn out to be decent and kind, and willing to help out the protagonist, coughcoughaliceandthat’sprettymuchitcough, and others that turned out to have a rather tragic backstory, and still others who are meant to be good guys but do shady things. I know what the majority of you are thinking, ‘oh no joe’s about to start rambling on about yamato and how he’s the best person and how he was the center of goodness and how he didn’t deserve anything bad to happen to him (even though I don’t fucking think this in any way shape or form) time to skip down to the next paragraph’, but as I actually have self-restraint, wow, shocking, and want to present this in a chronological fashion, I will be beginning with Alice, first. I’ve written about her before, but as you all may have not seen it before, I suppose it bears repeating. When we first encountered Alice, in Season 1, Episode 6, she was presented as a sentient darkworlder, a monster who would not hesitate to kill us and all of our classmates, and a truly dangerous villain. As the threads went on, we began to learn more about her- her name, her previous life as a student from the academy, and she began to become less of an evil, and more of someone to sympathize with, until she became seen as a lost soul, and someone who could be saved from the darkness. It was then that she could truly be seen as a ‘daughteru’, a common totally legitimate Japanese term meaning daughter, or someone who’s smile we must protect. There was no question that Alice had done some bad things, such as endanger the lives of us and our friends, potentially killing them if we hadn’t been the protagonist, and stabbing the shit out of us, and a myriad of other things. However, Alice turned out to be one of the most endearing and lovable characters, and a true paragon of goodness. In this way, Alice helps to show how good and evil are not really good and evil, but more of darker shades of gray and lighter ones, and how these colors can change vastly, and a whole ton of other color bullshit. She also helped foreshadow the varying shades of morality in the Darkworld itself, but we’ll get to that later. As in, another essay later.

Now, it’s time to discuss one of my favorite characters. No, not fucking Yamato, we’ll get to him later, but Raiden. Yeah. Kinda obvious, now, isn’t it, to talk about the edgiest character while discussing gray lines of morality. Raiden is meant to be a good guy. He’s on the side of the protagonist, he had a tragic waifu who died, he hates demons, and he helps out on occasion. He’s a student fighting the Darkworld, like anyone else. So, why is he a morally ambiguous character? Well, for a good guy, he’s not much of a good guy at all, at least at first, but still later on, too. We were introduced to Raiden, face to face with all of his glorious edge, in Season 1, Episode 11, and I gotta say, man there’s a whole ton of amusing shit you can find in the older threads. Capping one now. Back to the essay. Raiden started his introduction off with an almost-bang, almost fucking killing us because we were a ‘monster’ and because we obviously killed Maya. Clear villain action. Except, uh, he’s supposed to be a good guy. Things do get better, but some things are still shady as fuck. We see the guy get tortured to all hell by Class 3, he helps us out in a thread, and after we rescue him from Class 3 in the civil war and Yamato is put down, he’s back with the good guys, for good. He still doesn’t really do only good shit, though. Raiden is trigger-happy, is far too quick to execute, and holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe. Even after liberal applications of Akemi to brighten up his life, he tries to kill a drugged out man in a cell even though he knows it’s a horrible idea and that the drugged out man was no harm to anyone at the moment, and he causes things to go to even more to shit. Raiden walks a fine line, almost going far too far in his pursuit for revenge. And so, he’s a perfect example of how morality is not clear-cut, but, in fact, really hard to determine amongst all of the shit that goes on.

And now, finally, we’re at what’s probably going to be one of my favorite parts of the essay. Go ahead and skip the next couple of paragraphs and get to the conclusion, you probably don’t want to read this, unless you actually like Yamato. Now, time to talk about the Yam-man himself. Where do we even begin? Yamato was introduced as the stand-offish head of Class 3, and seemingly open to negotiation, and our image of him steadily deteriorated from there. He was referred to as The Carpenter numerous times (and yes I actually looked up the poem, read it, and analyzed it just for this essay, we’ll be discussing The Walrus and The Carpenter later, I better get some dank Class President role out of this), then was revealed to be super convincing for some reason, then it turned out he was part darkworlder as well, and then he wanted to mate with Alice, and then he stole SAKI’S FIRST FUCKING KISS AWAY FROM US, and then Shinji fucked him up, and then everyone was in agreement that he was the literal worst piece of shit that we would ever encounter in this quest, and that we should spit on his corpse. Yes, even you, Zephyr, I read the old threads, I know. And, well, that was that, for a while. I hated him, everyone hated him. He was seen as the blackest in morality you could get. Good thing shitposting had my back. Back in the day, I shitposted quite a bit, and one of my favorite topics was Yamato, and how he was great, and all of that. I looked into his backstory in more depth than ever before to shitpost even better, and I started to become convinced of my own shitposty arguments without even knowing it. Yamato had been the leader of Class 3. His class had started out with the same numbers as all the other classes, around 22-24, but when we encountered them, there were only eight. It was then that I realized that Yamato had had to watch as every single one of those classmates die while he was the leader, and watch every single mistake he made result in more death, and watch as his class deteriorated into nothing. He had to live with the guilt of every single death on his shoulders, and the burden stacked higher with every passing day. He was a teenager, in high school, and for about two years, he had to watch as all of his friends died around him, and as even his teacher died protecting them, while he was supposed to be the leader, and lead them to safety, and he must have cursed himself, hated himself for every single death that happened, even if they weren’t his fault. It was no wonder that he took all of the blame on himself. It was no wonder that he wanted to be a better leader. Then, the whispers came. Every night, in the Darkworld, they would speak to him, telling him that he could be a better leader if he accepted their help, that no more of his classmates would have to die on his watch, that he would become the protector that he had always aspired to be. It was no wonder, that, in the end, he listened to the whispers, and accepted. It just turned out that the whispers were coming from the shitty Walrus to his Carpenter.

Yeah it’s time for The Walrus and The Carpenter. Shitty English analysis skills from way back in high school, don’t fail me now! The Walrus and The Carpenter is a real neat little story, and rereading it and truly analyzing it while knowing all that I know now has been actually very insightful. One anon in the civil war thread actually almost hit the whole symbolism of The Walrus and The Carpenter story on the head- if that kind anon had known all that we know now, then he would’ve nailed it. Good work, whoever it was. I’ve capped it. Now, to reiterate most of what that anon said and provide an actual explanation for all of the Lewis Carroll bullshit Booker seemed to keep talking about for no reason. The Walrus and The Carpenter is basically a short little poem-story thing about a walrus and a carpenter that are walking along this beach that they think would be neat to clean up, if they could, and walk along with a bunch of oysters that they manage to befriend, before eating them all. Now, this sounds like some incomprehensible, nonsensical bullshit, but damn, every single part of the poem relates to Yamato perfectly. Yes, even that sun on the sea in the middle of the night bullshit in the first stanza. The sun in the middle of the night obviously either refers to the Darkworld itself, which comes out at night, or the “hope” that Yamato found in the whispers at the darkest point of his timeline, also in the Darkworld at night. Now, to break down the whole bullshitty poem. Alice consistently refers to Yamato as The Carpenter, and the insightful anon managed to piece some shit together and deduce that the students and everyone that Yamato managed to convince were the oysters. The only missing piece to the puzzle was The Walrus. Well, knowing what we know now, and using a bit of thinking skills, The Walrus was obviously The Charmer. Let’s break down The Walrus and The Carpenter from the beginning.

The Walrus and The Carpenter opens up with the sun in the middle of the night bullshit, which I’ve already explained. Then, it segues into The Walrus and The Carpenter walking close together, and lamenting at the piles of sand on the beach. “‘If this were only cleared away,’ They said, ‘it would be grand!’” The piles of sand on the beach represent the sorry state of Class 3, and how everyone keeps dying. Yamato really wants that to stop happening, and The Charmer ‘agrees’. Then The Walrus says something about whether a whole ton of maids cleaning it for a long time could sweep it all clear, and The Carpenter says ‘probably not’ and cries a bit. This shows how The Charmer is trying to provide a ‘solution’ to Yamato’s problem, and Yamato doesn’t really think it’ll work, and really is sad about it all, evidenced by the tear. Then, The Walrus tries to get some oysters to walk with the two of them. The oysters, like I’ve said before, represent the people persuaded by Yamato, and that whole thing is pretty apt. Note that The Carpenter (Yamato) doesn’t ask them to follow, it was The Charmer. The big and eldest oyster doesn’t, and he probably represents Ryoji, the only guy to not be persuaded, but all the other oysters do. The following of oysters starts out small at first, then grows a whole bunch, until it’s basically a giant mob of oysters. This shows how Yamato’s net of persuasion grew. After they walk a mile, they all rest on a rock, and The Walrus says it’s time to talk about a bunch of bullshit- ‘Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings.’ However, the oysters are tired, and want to rest, and The Carpenter says that it’s no problem. This here shows that Yamato still does care about them (the students), while The Charmer really doesn’t. Then The Walrus gets out some bread, and says it’s time to feed on the oysters. While this little sequence goes on, The Carpenter doesn’t talk much, just saying shit like ‘could you spread out the butter a little more?’ and shit. He says almost nothing at all, while The Walrus does all of the talking about how it’s such a shame, while he’s clearly not feeling guilty, and gets The Carpenter to eat more. This shows how The Charmer really took over Yamato in the end, and is the main person eating the oysters. Then, the last stanza really is interesting- The Carpenter asks the oysters whether they’re ready to return home or not, but they’re all gone. This stanza right here shows that Yamato didn’t know what he was truly doing, and that he believed that they were all fine, when in actuality, they were not. In short, all of this symbolic bullshit comes together to show that Yamato was not as bad a guy as we first thought, and, again, that morality is really fucking muddled and blame is kind of hard to place.

Well, now it’s time for the conclusion, and if you’ve skipped past all of the Yamato shit, nice to see you again. Sort of. The three characters that I’ve showcased (there are several others that I could’ve talked about, like Yami and his dad, and Tsuki, and Aoki and Risa, and so on) all help to show how Dark Gate Academy pushes forth the theme that morality is really tricky business. The characters here in this story help symbolize us, in the real world, and how, in the real world, it can be really hard to determine right or wrong, and whether someone is a good person, or a bad person. I hope you’ve all enjoyed these 3 and a half pages of bullshit (I’m actually pretty sure few of you will read it at all), I request a Class President role immediately for wasting about 4 hours of my life on this bullshit, and I’ll see you all back in Discord.