So I just started this series. Partway through ep 3 and I'm getting the urge to rant. Bear with me.
Everything about it is so high quality, but I just can't help but be rubbed the wrong way by this attitude it has with the past, which you see EVERYWHERE.
For context, I'm not religious at all.
But this mindset that's so common is one of unearned smug superiority. Standing on the shoulders of giants, absorbing so much fact through osmosis, and having this better-than-they, smarter-than-they idea about the people of the past, with no consideration for historical or cultural realities......
It's hard to put into words exactly, but the premise of this anime is that the main character is in 15th century Europe and wants to prove heliocentrism in spite of persecution.
So from the very start we, with our modern osmosis-knowledge, start with the certainty that the protagonist and right and the accepted opinion of his world is wrong.
I for one couldn't prove heliocentrism in that era. Neither could >99% of the population. Of course with modern technology, modern scientific consensus, etc we know it to be true, and now even poor idiots wouldn't doubt it. Not because they know WHY they shouldn't doubt it, but just because it's the common view of the day.
I just feel like it's so presumptuous to write a story where, not only is the whole world wrong, but we as outside observers KNOW it's wrong and are meant to feel smug about that knowledge. "Oh those STEWPID 1400s churchmen and their campaign against the obvious truth!"
Besides which, it's just historically inaccurate. I get the feeling that it's maybe supposed to be Not!Europe, and either way it's not a biography or anything, but in the early 15th century nobody was burned for promoting heliocentrism. Copernicus lived a long life promoting it. It didn't catch on, since it went against established thought, but it wasn't generally considered heresy.
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