Board Thread:Manga/@comment-39295103-20190704080517/@comment-999825-20190708195806

I haven't formed an opinion yet. Some of the above certainly seem to think they have it figured out, but I have some problems with the reasoning. Here's why I say that:

At this point, we know almost nothing about the true history of either Eldia or Marley. Think about it. Everything we know about the Eldian Empire (i.e., that they were murderous, slaughtered thousands, enslaved other races, etc.) was told to us through the viewpoint of the Marleyans, whom we know made up historical figures to fit this narrative and then brainwashed their citizens into believing its truth. To say that the Eldians killed more than Marley ever did is to just accept this version of history as fact without really assigning any doubt to it.

I also think that sort of mentality is extremely dangerous. It is very clear that the author is trying to draw allusions between Nazi Germany (Marley) and the Jewish peoples (Eldia) in this manga, and the Nazis made up all sorts of lies to justify their shoving the Jews into ghettos and later extermination camps. For anyone to believe Marley's account of history and say that they "had their reasons" for putting the Eldians in camps is like saying the Nazis "had their reasons" for doing the same thing to the Jewish people; and I think we all know that would be utter nonsense.

Of course, the Eldians have their own version of their history, seen from Dr. Yeager's memories; but we also saw from those memories that he didn't understand the languages on the historical artifacts he discovered and was just speculating about Eldia's greatness/benevolence out of patriotism to the former Eldian Empire.

In short: Nobody knows. I do agree that "evil" and "good" are bad words to frame this debate. "Right" and "wrong" might slightly be better, but even then, I can't totally say I know the answer to that until we get the true version of the world's history. All I can say without any certainty is that the Marleyan government is genocidal and, in that sense, it is evil. There's no excuse for ghettos, concentration camps, and the wholesale slaughter of people for being of a different ethnicity.