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Seeing a lot of tweets from people who say they enjoy Sonny Boy but don't really get what it's about. I agree the show can be confusing, however I think it's really good, and it's really good because of what it's doing. So I wanted to do a thread to help people understand 🧵Permalink On twitter.com
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There are basically two key thematic things that Sonny Boy is doing. It does more than just these two things, but if you understand the two imo you can begin to appreciate the show for what it's doingOn twitter.com
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The first is an examination of rules and social systems. Sonny Boy argues that rules are fundamentally unnatural. They are made up by people and imposed on others.Permalink On twitter.com
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When the kids are isekai'd to the first This World, they immediately start imposing rules on each other. They hold student council elections. They recreate the hierarchy of a Japanese high school even when the idea of "Japanese high school" has immediately lost all meaningPermalink On twitter.com
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In the next This World, most of the kids are stuck working to pay of debt and make food. Mizuho has the power to create infinite resources so no one has to work or live in poverty again. But she refuses, because, in her words, "that's how capitalism works"Permalink On twitter.com
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Then Mrs. Aki shows up. With very obvious malicious intentions. But people listen to her because "students have to listen to their teachers", even after it's revealed that she can't be a teacher because teachers don't get isekai'd.Permalink On twitter.com
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There's a whole world of slave labor because "people need to work to survive". There are multiple characters obsessed with recreating death. Asakaze notes this world has no military or police, so "someone has to do it". That someone, he reasons, is him.Permalink On twitter.com
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Basically, Sonny Boy is filled with characters OBSESSED with blindly recreating the social ills of our world, even when these things cannot exist in the new world. The state. Capitalism. Abuse. Death. Obedience.Permalink On twitter.com
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There's a sense of "that's how the world we came from worked so that's how it has to work everywhere and forever". And when presented with a world where that isn't true they force it to be true. It's capitalist realism, basically.Permalink On twitter.com
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And we basically follow the few characters who aren't like that.Permalink On twitter.com
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Nozomi and Rajdhani are first. The former is a free spirit that flat refuses to do what people say. The last thing Rajdhani wants is for the new world to resemble the old one, because he loves studying the differences and marveling at them. Mizuho and Nagara follow after themPermalink On twitter.com
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And the idea is, if these rules are arbitrary and man-made in Sonny Boy, they were equally arbitrary and mab-made in the real world. These rules can be changed, confronted, and challenged.Permalink On twitter.com
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The other key idea is personal development. Since the kids are there for eternity and can't die, they have two real options. They can either allow their flaws to grow and fester as they stagnate, or they can change for the better.Permalink On twitter.com
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Sonny Boy has a ton of characters. Most of the time we're just introduced to that person's flaw. The person is usually challenged by the world that they're in. We get to see if they'll grow out of this flaw or not with the choices that they make.Permalink On twitter.com
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I won't be the one to write the Sonny Boy "take" as it were. But I don't think it deserves to be remembered as "that weird show that didn't make much sense". It's too good for thatPermalink On twitter.com