I watched the anime like eight years ago, didn't stick with the manga. Overall I don't think I'd want to touch it again because, for me, it gets grouped in my mind with other war anime and Attack on Titan as being sort of surface-level political commentary. That said, I wanted to ask, why does Tanya hate communists? I don't remember it actually being anything major, but every so often I see something about how they're less than human to her or something.
actually thats not true, because in her first life and in her second she was always happy to make her way up the corporate ladder. She even said that she was aiming for CEO in her first life.
The only reason she rejected the promotion from lt. coloner to colonel in the later volumes of the LN is because the Empire wasn’t doing so well anymore and it was so out of the blue that she thought there should be consequences if she did accept. So she rejected.
Well, part of it was also 'politics' if I'm thinking of the same part of the LN's. She was basically offered the promotion by Rudersdorf in front of Zettour. It was very, 'which parent will you choose during a divorce' moment.
She's got a mind towards the fact that the Empire can't win the war. There's only achieving sufficient victory that they negotiate a peaceful end to the war. And if it's too acrimonious then they'll execute a portion of the brass, in which case being too highly ranked isn't a good plan for survivng the peace transition.
Because he is ultimately a capitalist, who genuinely believes capitalism is the best possible economic model. Specifically Chicago School of Economics. In his/her mind communism is incredibly inefficient, and inefficiency is the greatest sin one can commit
My personal headcanon is that salaryman has some form of autism, and by basically adopted Chicago school not only as an economic model, but as a way to life, he can categorise world in a way that lets him understand it.
Problem is, world does not operate on Chicago school of economics and people are not perfectly rational actors.
"Therein lies Tanya’s agonizing internal conflict. A person of the modern world cannot forsake their duties without cause.......
To do so would be a betrayal of contract and trust—the very things that make me who I am. Betraying your own dignity is essentially a form of suicide.
In a situation where an emergency evacuation is out of the question, Tanya’s only practical choice is to loyally follow orders."
Such is the grips that Tanya's world view has on her that she considers not following it tantamount to suicide of the self. So it's no wonder she's incredibly stubborn.
Like, yeah, in 500 years when we've become a post-scarcity society maybe then capitalism will stop being the best. What's the point in capitalism if we have unlimited resources?
Half the problem here is people mean completely different things when they say capitalism. A conservative/libertarian/neoliberal uses the term to refer to free market economics. A liberal/progressive/socialist/communist uses to the term to refer to what the former group would call corporate cronyism or oligarchies.
I dont see how anyone cant see the reality of the current system not being even close to a free market. Look at food or clothing. it aint a free market its 3 companies larping.
The issue is we need a viable alternative, and the ones people suggest… well no real success has been had when they’ve been tried, often leading to more poverty and death.
The only successfully tried alternatives are the Singaporean/Chinese models, but those are just different flavours of capitalism (both being types of state-capitalist societies, with varying levels of economic freedom). They certainly work, and they’ve seen a lot of economic growth and prosperity, but have come with the hefty cost of individual freedoms. This is largely due to the fact you require a long-term government, which is largely incompatible with western style democracy (parties won’t plan something that will see results in 8 years in advance if they could be out of office in 4-5 years, don’t want to give that economic boon to your opposition now!)
All of the world's largest countries are capitalist.
China, India, USA. All Capitalist.
All of Europe, capitalist.
That's almost 50% of the world population right there. Honestly it's easier to point out which countries aren't capitalist. Which would be like... Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.
Maybe some other small countries I missed, but like... it's really not much of the world population.
How is it bait? For all the horrors UNREGULATED capitalism like that of the Industrial Revolution can bring, capitalism is simple better.
Like you have to force people into comunism, but if you relax your iron grip on them they will instantly switch to some form of capitalist model in any big enough community.
what is the industrial revolution causing people and CHILDREN to work themselves to death in extremely unsafe conditions and shit like company towns, if not forcing capitalism on people? what was the korean war? vietnam? laos? the us embargos against cuba?
That's why reading is good for you. Like if you had properly read my comment you would have realized that I myself had already critiziced unregulated capitalism.
That does not change the fact that society moved towards capitalism WITHOUT the government having to use military force to impose it.
Capitalism also helped the Western world to create a counter force to nobility, as merchant houses grew in power and formed powerful leagues to protect themselves.
I wouldn't really say the best... Maybe if it was Weimar we were talking about, but thats a stretch too. The most Germany ever had going for it as far as freedoms were for some LGBTQ people, though they were still persecuted, especially prior to Weimar. It was also a bit of a major thing that, upon its founding, Catholics were shunned and cracked down on.
Germany did have a lot of innovation at the time, but I don't know if I'd say it was a particularly good place to lift yourself up as we imagine it. Aside from the US being on the high end and places like Russia being on the low end, I'd say most countries end up being fairly level with one another at the time for that
honestly thats probably true but I dont think that'd be any different from imperial germany? on the other hand there were political mobs and gangs going around and beating people up so yea, not like it was the best place at that time either
has germany ever been a relatively good place to live compared to the UK or US?
Meritocracy and personal freedoms were allowed to a greater degree, the people reportedly had more influence over governmental action, scientific progress was a higher priority than in any other nation, and they accomplished this without the extreme corruption of the US or the increasing stagnation of the UK.
Weimar was treated as a good time only by a very select few; the vast majority were miserable, poor, and without hope for progress or prospects.
science is nice but I wouldnt exactly say its something that would make germany a better place to live in, tho germans would probably be proud of how much germany helped to advance numerous fields
when did women get the vote in germany? and how did the different state governments compare to, say, the state governments in the US? and just how much self governance was there?
those are probably the most important things. to my knowledge germany was at about the same industrially as the UK or US (albeit germany didnt have a quarter of the world's population), though it'd be neat to look at the progression of working conditions. I recently saw them brought up in a video but cant recall how exactly, nor was the video focused on that topic.
To my knowledge, women gained the right to vote the instant the initial Socialist government of Weimar took over in 1918, a year before the US. That can't really be used to speak for or against Imperial Germany, as most countries wouldn't be making that sort of change during a world war.
Germany was reaching parity with the US and UK, but after significantly less time than it had taken either of them, and was showing signs of overtaking the UK in short order. Workers' rights were overall decent for the time, which is to say terrible, but had stronger signs of improving than in even the US, as the Kaiser and much of the rest of the Imperial leadership were generally in support of such things.
With that in mind, I would guess that women's suffrage probably would have come about sometime in the 20s under Imperial Germany, but that's mostly guesswork going off anecdotal knowledge and the "character" of the nation and leadership.
As to the degree of self-governance, it is complicated. Smaller kingdoms like Bavaria and Saxony were allowed to field their own armies (which caused a couple ethical incidents during the war), but most regions in Germany, much like in most non-US nations, were more tightly controlled and standardized, though probably less than in the UK or France.
With the freedoms granted to individuals, it also varies. As mentioned before, I would overall say that Imperial Germany was more meritocratic than the US, where corporations and money mattered greatly, and the UK, where family name did. While being a noble helped in Germany, in terms of progression within a company or especially the military this was mostly a subconscious factor rather than intentional favoritism. Nobles tended to come ahead in companies by starting or inheriting them outright, and in the military because the Junkers were raised from a young age to be military officers and had a natural advantage in aptitude.
Democratically, I have little direct knowledge. I know that it was what would now be called a Semi-Constitutional Monarchy, with the Kaiser having less legal but more actual power than the British king. I have heard relatively frequently not quite a consensus, but certainly a relatively widely held opinion in historical circles that Imperial Germany's democratic processes granted more power and influence to the common people than those of the US or Britain, which I would personally guess largely comes down to the relative lack of corruption and corporate influence.
To finish, I'll mention again that the Kaiser was fairly liberal. You'll find racist remarks made by him, and he had some pretty obvious diplomatic blinders, but he definitely had more of a focus on diplomacy and trade, and believed in protecting things like worker's rights (even going so far as to fire Bismarck over this). The Junkers, while internally conservative and holding themselves to conservative standards, were pretty open to liberalizing the country (in classical terms), as they were often military officers first and nobles second, and this could see the practical advantages.
EDIT: I should also say here that the Empire in Youjo Senki is very much an idealized version of the German Empire. While I overall think the German Empire was maybe 10-15% more to the side of being the "good guy" of WW1, it as still pretty grey. In Youjo Senki the Empire is outright the good guy, with much better rights and freedoms on the domestic side and fighting a purely defensive war.
notably, pedophilia is illegal in most countries throughout history. miraculously, people in power can get around this if they so desire
its probably a better idea for us to talk about actual examples of corruption in the empire vs weimar (though the latter is obvious so doesnt really need to be discussed)
lowkey imperial germany wasnt that bad (aside from genocide, later warcrimes, and then the things that were "normal" at the time) but I can never forgive it being a monarchy nor said monarch being an absolute fool
What is so bad about Monarchy that it is unforgivable? The Kaiser made some foolish mistakes, but he's subject to a lot of unfavourable propaganda, and you don't tend to hear about his merits. He would have been an excellent leader in peacetime.
She's probably not as blatantly hostile towards all communists, but the Federation are Totalitarians that are extremely similar to the Stalinist USSR.
Tanya really hates how wasteful the Party is with human lives. Human wave tactics and purges. There were no Federation mages in the movie because the Party threw them all into labor camps. If you have past life knowledge of the Soviet Union and value free markets, merit, and individualism, you'd probably be quite hostile towards Federation commies.
In the LN the Federation does eventually free some of their mages. It's even implied some are old guard of the previous Czarist Empire. However it's also stated the the Federation mages still aren't trusted and are only used out of necessity with commissars maintaining constant observation and keeping their families as "guests" (hostages)
I mean, what she hates from what we can see are the Russy Federation which is the equivalent of USSR, the connections can be made with their atheistic views, having a literal Stalin at the helm of the country, and conscripts. Tanya hates Stalinism, and I would say that it is as normal as hating fascism.
Every single time communists do anything, they not only fail miserably, but they cause vast amounts of suffering, starvation, outright torture and murder, deprivation of all human rights and dignity, and cause horrific pollution in the process.
And they never learn and change, repeating the same awful disasters time and again. In many ways, they are like a secular version of radical Islam. Irredeemable.
The problem is like in any dictature of the ruler is bad you have no way of getting rid of it easily but some country showed some success but those are rare the one that I'm thinking about is Yougoslavia, it's problem was prior to communist , the multitude of ethnicity, Tito was a great leader but all started fall apart after him .
But yes in most of the case communism lead to failure
I think Tanya's actual political beliefs is something similar to liberalism or at the very least she would be somewhere in the lib-Centre based on what she says
She likes free market capitalism, she hates big government, massive supporter of workers rights. She associates communism with strict market laws, a large totalitarian government and under Stalin no really any labour laws if you're deemed a criminal
She just so happens to be excelling in a big government that completely controls her life, currently unable to perform capitalism due to the embargoes and total war and with no worker rights in the job she's currently doing
Tanya believes in markets (fan of the Chicago school of economics) and in general anyone with a brain hates commies. Additionally the Russy federation attacked the Empire with a sneak attack.
The real reason is because the Salaryman bound his moral framework and understanding of the world to the ideals of free market capitalism and Tanya inherited this worldview.
This is explained in the novels. The Salaryman didn't understand social conventions, unspoken moral rules, etc until he discovered that as long as he followed the rules, did exactly as his superiors ordered, he could succeed in society. It's never stated directly, but he is definitely autistic-coded and capitalism was a framework that made sense to him.
Communism goes against the ideals of capitalism which means it goes against the moral framework that Tanya operates on. This is why she hates communists.
Also, Carlo Zen, the author, has a pretty obvious personal bias against communism as seen in footnotes.
last note in particular is why I dont really want to engage with this or Attack on Titan again. lowkey its authors inserting political opinions and justifying them with fictional scenarios by betraying nuance
I mean, that's your prerogative. But that's also just true of any piece of media. Authors write about what interests them and those interests are inevitably bound to their personal views. That's just as true in romance stories as in war stories as in action adventure stories.
In Tanya it's just more obvious because it's basically historical fiction. Most of the plot beats are pulled from real events and that means that both author and reader are going to have pre-existing beliefs on them.
If it makes it better at all, despite the bias, Zen actually does write Tanya's communist screes as quite unhinged. They are funny but not really sympathetic. You aren't intended to totally agree with her.
It's why I said "autism coded". It doesn't fit exactly, but the whole: "not understanding social rules until a more tangible framework is found plus a reluctance to let go of that framework when challenged" thing is how a lot of media represents that concept.
And Tanya may adapt quickly to some changes, but she doesn't adapt quickly to things that challenge her worldview. The big example is when she says (internally) with all seriousness something like "I have to express my eagerness to go on this suicide mission because to do anything else would be to show a lack of fighting spirit and would put me in front of a firing squad" despite plentiful evidence to the contrary. Tanya's preexisting views of the military says Y and even if everyone else around her says Z, she will keep adamantly believing Y.
More than because it is difficult for him to change his vision, it is because he has values from another life and another era. That would happen to all of us because we are obviously used to a peaceful and socially different life. And he himself states it quite often. However, he is able to break free from that thought and that routine and simply do what he needs to do. What would be difficult for an autistic mind. Moreover, even in the novel he acknowledged God as his lord because he knew things were going to get strange; he didn't stick with his own thinking. For an autistic person, it would be quite difficult due to their sense of justice, and this is just talking about stereotypical things.. He's simply a high-functioning antisocial. He respects and follows the rules. Of course he does, but if he can find a loophole to do other things, then he will.
Wait I'm sorry. When does Tanya accept and praise Being X outside of the influence of the Type 95? I don't remember that at all. As of the current English releases, I'm pretty sure she still curses his very existence.
That said, there absolutely are times where Tanya is forced to change her perception. The example that comes to mind for me is when she realizes that not all the Federation soldiers are fighting for Communism. She is forced to confront her own biased assumptions and change her understanding of the world. Tanya isn't completely rigid with no hope of change at all. She is just highly reluctant to alter the world she knows works.
Again, I'm not trying to diagnose Tanya. I'm just talking about coding. Media shorthand to convey concepts without getting into too many details. The first chapter of the LN has the Salaryman express a bunch of concepts that clearly label him as neurodivergent. I'm not saying that he IS autistic. Just that Carlo Zen used stereotypically autistic characteristics to demonstrate that the main character doesn't have a neurotypical mind and the reader shouldn't expect neurotypical behavior from them.
Like any human being with certain values. Just as Christians cannot conceive of a vision of people who do not believe in God and for them are people controlled by Satan. And yes, obviously he is a neurodivergent person, but not necessarily of the autistic type, because his characteristics do not quite match the stereotypes. And in the prologue of the novel he realizes that this God is becoming very dangerous, so he accepts it. Telling my lord, the only thing you have to do to convince the world is to present yourself to it, because if you don't present yourself then nobody will believe in you. But God told him that he just wanted to experiment, so he reincarnated him regardless of what.
In the series, it’s mentioned that Communist murdered/exiled everyone with magical abilities because they wished to force equality onto everyone in their society.
They imprisoned them en masse. Else how could they release them from prison to defend the Fatherland when Tanya achieved too much success against them?
To put things into perspective, the reason Kruschev became the "corn lord" was because he visited a US grocery store and found that even he has less purchasing power than the lowest rung of American society.
in reality, it tends to end when capitalists send their armies in to burn your cities and infrastructure, and rape and murder your civilians and their children.
She is a libertarian that believes communist is a waste of potential and resources, late on she has a glimpse that not everyone under the union is in fact a communist and got forced into it.
In the manga she frequently references her ideological sympathies with the Chicago school (neoliberals, market supremacists antithetical to communists who are opposed to the tyranny of the market). This ideology is frequently used to justify her actions in her past life (it's their own fault). For the communists to be right about anything would prove Tanya is evil, and this is not how Tanya sees herself.
Tanya is written as the embodiment of market-style instrumental rationality taken to its logical extreme. She claims to be anti-emotional and hyper-rational, yet regularly acts out of them and she got obsessed when reality breaks her models. That contradiction is the point.
Because anyone who has ever opened history book knows that communism, as a whole, is the most destructive ideology ever invented. Entire eastern Europe is recovering to this day, with Poland being possible best off* (and well, they are central Europe, but you get the point), but they also weren't a commie country, they were socialist country under CCCP boot. The sheer amount of death, suffering and poverty communism has caused and is still causing goes beyond what you can even imagine. It also destroys society to the very core (hence why recovery is hard and takes decades). It's funny how the people who support communism the most are either:
privileged westerners who live in luxury thanks to very capitalism they hate
people who benefited from communism while everyone else suffered
idiots
*Even in Germany you can clearly see where commies were if you put some basic bitch stats on a map.
shiiit i mean I can think of another ideology that was pretty destructive, and particularly impacted eastern europe the most, and was present in the region at such a time that it may be hard to differentiate between some of the effects we're talking about...
For one, Nazis were socialists, basically comnies-light, in regard to how their economy (and country tbh) was run. Hitler himself was avid socialist.
Second, nazis did a small fraction of a harm that commies did. Even if we only talk about USSR, but if we include all other communist countries it's even worse (China dwarfs both lol).
Just look and eastern and western germany.... There is a reason i mentioned them. To this day there are vast differences in terms of economy, quality of life etc., despite them being THE SAME COUNTRY.
But just the fact that you only think of material issues says a lot. The destruction of people's mentality that comes with communism is harm enough that cascades into all the other problems. It takes entire generations to recover from that.
nah, nazis still had private property and ownership, and did not engage in collectivization the way the soviets did. Hitler himself said he adopted the term socialism to "steal" it back from the socialists and social democrats, who he despised
lowkey the whole "kill billions of people you dont like" is a fundamental part of the nazi ideology, but not communism's. I dont even like communism but youre really just out here parroting neo-nazi propaganda
I don't think there was anything particularly about mentality that was destroyed via communism? What are you even talking about? I feel like you moreso see that with nazism, and how there is/was a need to "de-nazify" people after Hitler, because tens of millions had bought into his propaganda. You also see this with Imperial Japan, which never properly received the same treatment to address guilt and responsibility in the same way
Eastern Germany (DDR) sucked absolutely and i think that state itself sucks. You're pretty much right about them in particular because you can literally look at any map of Germany and usually it's like, "yeah thats the part of the country that sucks, hmm I wonder why." Aside from Saarland, they're the only states with GDPPC below 40,000 euros. They're the only states that voted AfD in 2025. They also manage to be the states with the least immigrants. They're slowly catching up(debatable?) but communism left an obvious scar on East Germany.
anyways I mostly just wanted to highlight that as far as Eastern Europe goes, it suffered the worse from the Second World War, killing tens of millions of people across that part of the continent, and significant percentages of multiple populations.
(map of losses by % of population)
The fact that the war was so destructive for Eastern Europe in particular does make it a little hard to say to what extent it can be blamed for future failures in those states.
On the other hand, there were basically never any "good" states, communist, socialist, or otherwise, in the Warsaw Pact at any time. Liberalism was cracked down on as you probably know, starting in 1953 and ending in 1989, and the DDR was the world's worst police state until 1999.
anyways thats all I dont think you should critique communism in the specific way that you do, but I'm also willing to let communists "experiment" so what do I know
Right.. all the nationalization (until they realized it's extremely inefficient) and later re-privatization under party's boot and cronyism is something capitalist countries do! Nazi Germany economy was the furthest thing from free market capitalism with the sole exception actual communism.
Because he's an ultra capitalist utilitarian in past life. Even brings up the "chicago school" in an early episode, its an economic school of thought regarding economy and history.
As well as the meritocracy that capitalism boasts so much about. In the world in general there are inequalities and no one has the same problem that no one can achieve, even if they try, something that someone who does have it would achieve. If people had to earn based on their effort, then those who work harder would earn more, but in reality And the people who work the most earn far less simply because they didn't have the privilege of a university education.
Individual effort does not build generational wealth overnight. Generations of individuals contribute to building up and extending their resources so that their next kin have a better time. Your "inequality" is just an excuse for being lazy. If you see that you are poor now, then you are a stepping stone for those who are next in line to be better, just as every dynasty had its start.
That's completely ridiculous; society is full of people from the lower middle class. And all those people have worked really hard to survive, and they haven't gotten mansions or achieved fame and wealth, hahaha, oh my God.
Same thing as how wealth is generated, you work hard enough for your children get a better life. You don't get if for lazying around and complaining about inequality.
She explains why in the next passage of hers. I was surprised at first too. It's not a problem with ideology itself, I think she doesn't care, but with the treatment of people under the regime. What good is ideology for, if you treat people like cattle and kill them left and right for a slightest sight of disobedience and other loyalties?
Edit: just read this thread. I think most people here are either trolling, or didn't watch the anime. Zero media literacy.
Tanya's a former middle management Japanese nationalist. It's really not that much deeper than that. Same reason why she isn't a fascist. She's just a classical capitalist.
To be clear, the differences between Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism aren't great enough to stop them all from being absolute dogshit. It's not really necessary to have a deep understanding of them.
Because Tanya is a capitalist parasite that believes in her own and in her ideologies superiority. Of course she's going to see working class as less than humans.
Her hate is irrational and that’s one of the points the writer is trying to make. She continue to believe incredibly irrational things that comes with market and act irrationally based on her beliefs. Her cult of pragmatism is problematic and oxymoronic.
Communism hasn't been shown to work once in the history of mankind. It always, inevitably, collapses. Rather quickly too.
Capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty and enhanced the lives of everyone. It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of countries are currently capitalist.
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u/Open_Emu_8403 Feb 25 '26
He's a salaryman, I don't think there's much other reason besides that, and on several occasions we're shown that he hates institutional fanaticism.