Get ready bois, I caught up with
Drama Queen and I’m ready to fucking sperg. Now, my analysis will more or less scoot over the whole “foreigner” thing as we all get the point on that, and I think there’s some stuff I haven’t really seen brought up that I personally find interesting.
Aliens as foreigners
This is the base level idea, and pretty obvious. The aliens represent immigrants, but more importantly soft economic conquest and entitlement. The aliens saved humans, therefore humans must cowtow to the aliens. The aliens brought wealth and technology (to the elite class of humans), therefore any and all misdeeds done to the humans are covered up or ignored.
Obviously this is about westerners, mostly Americans, coming to Japan feeling like saviors but in reality degrading the country by demanding that they have the best jobs, that they have the best lives, that they can do anything they want, and kvetching like crazy if ever defied.
What’s interesting to me is that out mains are not the only people who hate the aliens by a mile. We meet many characters who have beef with the aliens, to the point that a common conspiracy theory is that the aliens themselves set up the asteroid situation in order to peacefully conquer the Earth. Why this is interesting comes back to the privilege that the aliens have, I think the true reason anything they do is covered up is the same reason as in our world. If the humans are allowed to know that many other humans hate the aliens and want them gone then the humans can group up to fight for that goal. This is already happening in the story, and I think that this will become a larger point in the story.
I also think we could view the aliens as an allegory for the rich exploiting the working class and keeping them poor, but really as it’s a Japanese story that’s more in line with the whole foreigner idea as is.
Aliens as men
From literally the first cover the phallic imagery of the aliens is blatantly obvious. Their trunks are literally dicks, and while this is a funny gag I believe it speaks to a deeper theme I rarely see discussed. I think that we can read the relationship aliens have with humans, more particularly with Nomamoto, as the relationship men have with women in some senses.
The aliens are larger, have more power and privilege, are themselves phallic symbols, and while some are good the humans don’t know which aliens are good or bad until it’s too late. They are men, humans are women. The aliens have done great things for humans, but have also degraded them down to second class citizens who must tread lightly around the aliens just in case. Nomamoto represents how women may view men.
She hates them, she absolutely fucking hates them. I believe we will learn that she is a hybrid but either way I think it’s very likely she has a tragic backstory regarding the aliens. And with other imagery I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was rape in at least a symbolic sense. I will explain that, but for now let’s just say Nomamoto represents a woman who was harmed by men but is still attracted to them.
She hates them and yet she is obsessed with them. She wants power over them, she wants to consume them and that is a major metaphor for sex. She wants to consume them so much that that desire overpowers her desire to kill all of the aliens, the way a woman who was abused by men may both want to be rid of them forever yet desire them for various reasons. Consumption has frequently been used as an allegory for sex as the action of eating is that of taking something, or in this case someone, and becoming one with it. Her eating the aliens obsessively, in particular many of the scenes focusing on her eating the heads or trunk, is her gaining pleasure from the erotic destruction of a creature she despises. Now, the rape.
Look at this image here:
The alien ships are straight-up sperm impregnating the Earth. And everyone who talks about the ships hates them and is disgusted by them in the sky, a constant reminder of their conquest. A reminder of their violation at the hands of the aliens. We also were just introduced to a character who was abducted by aliens as a child, assaulted and scarred, and is now obsessed with trying to fuck women. If that’s not also an allegory for hypersexuality as a coping mechanism for SA I don’t know what is. Does that remind you of what Nomamoto is doing?
I am so fascinated with this manga, I really want to see where it goes from here because the pieces are all laid out for something insane. I also can’t find shit about the author aside from some short mangas, so without the context of the author I have no real idea how things will turn out here.
