Welcome to episode 3 of My Master Has No Tail! The yuri usher will show you to your seats.

I'm late to the party too but I finished Birdie Wing this past week. I don't actually have much to say, but thanks so much to the people who recommended it over the last few months! The Eve/Aoi pair has such fun dynamics. I'm not quite delusional enough to hope for any ending where they get together (they're totally sisters, aren't they?), but I really hope s2 is as strong as the first. Was a real joy to experience.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 11:42AM

You think you've seen it all when it comes to problematic anime, and they still find new ways to surprise you. The third episode of this season's alchemist anime was gross. They bring not!Ryza a patient with a severed arm and she really has the gall to say "I can save her life... if you're loaded". Not only that, but when they protest the vulgarity of her actions, she literally stops what she's doing and instead of treating the patient (WHO IS MISSING AN ARM) goes into a freaking lecture justifying putting a monetary value on life.

How does an author arrive at such a fundamentally vile worldview, to the point of feeling they have something insightful to contribute to society by soapboxing about it in their story? Even the US, which is notorious for pushing hundreds of thousands of citizens into medical bankruptcy every year, still provides emergency treatment no questions asked. That's the absolute minimum, the lowest of lows to be able to say you live in a society, yet here we are with an author confidently asserting that people deserve to die if they don't have money. Watching this left an absolutely sickening taste in my mouth. This is Mushoku Tensei-tier "anime was a mistake" material. Although I guess it's really "WNs were a mistake".

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 7:40AM

You think you've seen it all when it comes to problematic anime, and they still find new ways to surprise you. The third episode of this season's alchemist anime was gross. They bring not!Ryza a patient with a severed arm and she really has the gall to say "I can save her life... if you're loaded". Not only that, but when they protest the vulgarity of her actions, she literally stops what she's doing and instead of treating the patient (WHO IS MISSING AN ARM) goes into a freaking lecture justifying putting a monetary value on life.

How does an author arrive at such a fundamentally vile worldview, to the point of feeling they have something insightful to contribute to society by soapboxing about it in their story? Even the US, which is notorious for pushing hundreds of thousands of citizens into medical bankruptcy every year, still provides emergency treatment no questions asked. That's the absolute minimum, the lowest of lows to be able to say you live in a society, yet here we are with an author confidently asserting that people deserve to die if they don't have money. Watching this left an absolutely sickening taste in my mouth. This is Mushoku Tensei-tier "anime was a mistake" material. Although I guess it's really "WNs were a mistake".

That is literally not the case, though? She offers the choice between only lifesaving emergency treatment or also restoring her arm, etc. With the latter being the much more expensive option. Yes, it's a bit harsh and didn't quite sit well with me either, but it's also not something she can afford to do for free. As we learn later, she very much needed the ingredients from the grizzlies to avoid bankruptcy herself after the treatment. And while it does certainly remind one of the insanity of the American health system, being aware of the options and making the choice first certainly beats being presented the bankrupting bill after the fact.

One should also not forget that we are not dealing with a modern society that has health insurance and easily accessible hospitals. People would normally die of such injuries in this world. She's incredibly lucky that the village even got a new alchemist now, otherwise she would have had not much of a chance to survive.

So yeah, all things considered, while this did leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, it's far more realistic for the given setting than your usual OP healers performing miracles left and right with no cost to themselves.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 9:33AM

but it's also not something she can afford to do for free.

Not that she should do it for free, but nonetheless she should just do it, period, and worry about recouping her losses after the fact. That said, when it comes to literally saving a life, it honestly is something she could afford to do for free. Her day-to-day business involves selling potions, not healing, so it's not like she's providing all of her services for free by saving somebody in an emergency.

Speaking of free things, she got gifted an 8 room mansion for free. Depicted as a "fixer-upper", of course, that took all of 5 minutes to fix with magic.

And the whole story they presented about it being a financial reality of this world really falls flat when alchemists are established to be the elite of the elite, practically royalty in all but name. They made sure to hammer home how above everyone else she is; she's the only person in the village with an indoor bath, something which is the norm only among nobility even in the capital. She's no starving artist.

Also, I might be misremembering, but in Ep1 didn't they literally say alchemists were subsidised by the kingdom?

As we learn later, she very much needed the ingredients from the grizzlies to avoid bankruptcy herself after the treatment.

[X] Doubt

She lost at most one day's labour, plus some grass growing around her shop. She hasn't bought anything and has no debts, so the prospect of bankruptcy doesn't even make sense.

being aware of the options and making the choice first certainly beats being presented the bankrupting bill after the fact.

Well, if you set aside the fact that she never mentioned a price and then sprung that it was several years of lowly peasant adventurer income after the fact...

One should also not forget that we are not dealing with a modern society that has health insurance and easily accessible hospitals.

Indeed, we're dealing with a fantasy world where magical 16 year olds solve everything from amputated arms to giant flaming bear invasions.

So yeah, all things considered, while this did leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, it's far more realistic for the given setting than your usual OP healers performing miracles left and right with no cost to themselves.

Well, she is literally an OP healer who did it at no real cost to herself beyond a handful of ingredients (that she got for free!!!!), not to mention being an OP fighter who put the actual adventurers to shame.

This entire story is a masturbatory isekai self-insert fantasy in all but name. Which is fine if you just want to telling a relaxing slice-of-life story for escapism, but considerably less fine if you want to moralise at length about how actually, money is more important than lives,
and going so far as to have the characters call the adventurers awful people for daring to say she should value human life. I don't want to hear anything about realism when the entire premise of the anime is an escape from realism into the easy life of the 1%er who is better at everything than everyone.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 1:48PM

As we learn later, she very much needed the ingredients from the grizzlies to avoid bankruptcy herself after the treatment.

[X] Doubt

She lost at most one day's labour, plus some grass growing around her shop. She hasn't bought anything and has no debts, so the prospect of bankruptcy doesn't even make sense.

The price of the treatment is literally listed at the end of the episode as bringing her 20 million into the red.

The price of the treatment is literally listed at the end of the episode as bringing her 20 million into the red.

This doesn't make a lick of sense. Whatever the number of the balance sheet says, she lost ingredients she got for free and spent a day's labour on the task. She didn't have 20mil to lose in the first place. It seems like 20 million is the number she's charging the adventurers, and that's being put on credit - but depicting that as a "loss" is not how business accounting is done, at all. And her services being 20mil for her literal first day of working really drives home how insanely well-off alchemists are, when we already know that 5mil took her multiple years of part-time work to save up before.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 2:01PM

I haven't watched the alchemist anime, but it makes sense to me that an individual person working alone couldn't afford to provide lifesaving treatment for free, especially when it's her first day on the job. Even private hospitals that receive zero government funding can offset the cost of free emergency services through the profit they make elsewhere. I think this sounds like an interesting moral dilemma in theory. Maybe the anime executes it badly and makes some weird libertarian point with it but the idea itself is fine imo.

but it makes sense to me that an individual person working alone couldn't afford to provide lifesaving treatment for free

She is literally under zero financial distress whatsoever. She got a mansion for free!!!! The herbs she used for making potions were free, growing all around her mansion!! The villagers gave her expensive free stuff as welcoming gifts!! She gets everything handed to her for free, she's already set for life considering the property she owns, and in the end all she lost were some herbs. Which, even if they're worth money, literally grow on trees. Don't watch it, because it's egregious, but if you watched it I think you'd see what I mean.

You're trying really hard to undervalue her work, to say that she only lost some herbs is like saying that she took a bunch of grass (according to you, all herbs are the same too, not one more rare than the other, all in equal quantities) and that grass will turn into 500 potions easy peachy, Huh? we don't have more of those Work For All situation herbs? no worries, we'll just grab more tomorrow because as we all know, plants are ready to be harvested the next day just like a video game and only herbs are needed for the potion.

In short, don't try to pretend she doesn't have to struggle just because you don't know all the details of her work, specially if you're trying so hard to make her look bad and you saw what she had to do to make high quality potion in her exam.

But I agree that instead of arguing about price with the 2 idiots in the party, she could've prioritize first aid or cleanse the potion before talking about the price and the arm because it was a race against time too... That's what imo was handled poorly.

Real pharmacists have three main expenses: the price of renting or buying the building they work in, the price of ordering medication, and the price of hiring employees. In her case, two of these are free, and the third... she hired an assistant frivolously on a complete whim, which was wholly unnecessary for a low-traffic apothecary out in the boonies, and is by no means a necessary expense. All told, though, it's virtually impossible for her business to actually run in the red on account of having no necessary expenses. At worst, she would just need to wait for herbs to regrow to make more money.

I'm not saying educated labour doesn't have value. Obviously people who are able to pay her should pay her. But her labour is not worth more than human life. I was really not expecting this much pushback against the idea the idea that lives matter more than money!

Especially when she's both rich and wouldn't be anywhere in life without the countless free things she'd been given herself. According to her own ideals, she should have been left for dead when her parents were killed, instead of being provided with free shelter and food, a free education, a free mansion, and free tools. Maybe that would have been for the best.

I'm finding it genuinely disturbing that I'm apparently the only one who sees any problem with putting a price on life. I thought society was, like, generally in agreement that healthcare was something everyone should have access to. That we need to do more for those in poverty, not less. Yet here we are with a girl who won't even meet the low standards of our very flawed real world, who wants to go even lower than that, and everyone's on board with a girl who would let patients die on her doorstep being portrayed positively as she lectures the idiot adventurers on the virtues of a purely transactional society.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 5:50PM

Come on, she even said that she would save her anyway in case they didn't have the money... but the way you're skipping details about not just the anime settings but the way we live our own real life sounds more and more like virtue signaling, even free healthcare comes with a system like government backup (we have that here and it's a joke, you would cry if you were to get sick here or die in the free care...But we're not a first world country, corruption and mafia is what you'll actually get with "free stuff"), she doesn't have that, she's on her own, if the town's people want to help her, that's luck and thanks to her own action.

But I guess we've said enough, I'll keep watching it, you clearly won't and that's okay

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 6:48PM

On top of that the "free mansion" she got was also clearly framed as her kinda getting scammed.

I wish somebody would scam me with an 8 bedroom mansion in need of 5 minutes of cleaning. Gosh, I'm just so gullible. Please scam me, I'm begging you.

Are you saying that orphans that get raised in orphanages are "rich", because all their basic necessities were taken care off and they were allowed to go to school? Are you seriously advocate to remove welfare systems because it makes people "rich and get free stuff"?

You are really misrepresenting my stance completely and putting all kinds of words in my mouth. She's rich because she has a fully paid 8br house, a full alchemist toolset for free, got a free Bag of Holding and sword and everything else, and she's literally in the 1%. Alchemists are nobility in this world, both in terms of wealth and social hierarchy. Even if her liquid assets are small right now because she bought the books, she still has a massive net worth.

I'm not saying it's bad that she received free things. I'm saying it's bad that she received free welfare and refuses to give it to anybody else. That she would literally let somebody die rather than return the favour, when her entire life is a result of people giving her free things. She talks on and on about how much her work is worth. Think of all the labour she took from other people without giving them any money. From the orphanage, from her tutor, from her school. She's a complete hypocrite. If everyone followed the ideals she talks so much about, she would have starved to death when her parents died. And the world would have been a better place for it without such a selfish person.

she won't have money to keep her shop open

She doesn't need money to keep her shop open! She owns it! She has no expenses to pay whatsoever, other than food. Somehow I don't think she'll starve, even if she saves someone's life without charging them 20 million. Maybe she could settle for charging them enough to buy food for a while, if they can't afford to pay 20 million. Or maybe if she showed an ounce of generosity, villagers would show her generosity for saving their life and not let her starve. Because if you don't make everything about money, don't make every single interaction with another human a transaction, people will help you back. That's how villages worked for thousands of years, before city-based capitalism removed the human element from society.

Also, I want to reiterate that I'm not saying she should work for free 100% of the time. If the patient has money, they should pay. But if they don't have money, she should still save them.

It's unfair and not how world should work, but that's the sad reality of one we're living in.

The reality of the world we're living in is that doctors will save you in an emergency regardless of whether not you can pay. At least in most countries. I'm sorry if you don't live in a country where that's true, that is really unfortunate and I'd hope for a better future for your country. But for most even our sad reality is 100 leagues ahead of this greedy kid who has been handed everything in life on a silver platter and still demands more.

This in fact seems to be something that happens all the time in our world. Especially USA

And I thought the world was in agreement that USA healthcare situation is insane, not something to be defended as a good thing. Apparently I was wrong.

And it's incredibly funny coming from someone who unironically enjoyed Birdie Wing.

What does Birdie Wing have to do with anything? Birdie Wing doesn't have the author writing monologues about how people are worth less than money, while portraying anyone who disagrees as a bad person. How is your takeaway from anything I wrote that "people aren't allowed to write about wealth inequality in stories"? My problem is portraying inequality as a good thing, while saying it's the way society should be. Birdie Wing does the exact opposite. It is a story about the people in poverty fighting for a better life. Unlike this, which is a story about a rich person arguing to get more, more, more, more and anyone who disagrees in the story is labelled as a bad person.

Come on, she even said that she would save her anyway in case they didn't have the money

She very much did not say that. She said she was glad that they would pay, because she also wanted to save her life. Implying that she wouldn't have if they didn't agree to pay. And when pressed further on it she said she "might" have saved her anyway, before immediately going into a 45 second monologue justifying letting her die.

I wrote a bit about healthcare models, but then realised that would be incredibly boring for normal people to read. To add a more relevant real world example to protectmomo's position, it is not at all unheard of for private medical practices to provide free or heavily discounted services to those who cannot pay full price. If one can afford to do so, I'm not really sure what argument there would possibly be against that. I'm also not sure how relevant any of that is to the textual analysis that was brought up at the start of this ever-burgeoning conversation, but what can you do.

protectmomo posted:

I'm not saying educated labour doesn't have value. Obviously people who are able to pay her should pay her. But her labour is not worth more than human life. I was really not expecting this much pushback against the idea the idea that lives matter more than money!

Your mannerisms seem to have quite a way of exciting people...

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 9:07PM

It's anyone who is currently paying taxes, or more specifically, pays for our public health care (which is usually taken care off for you if you're working or are assigned to some welfare system or w/e).

Not actually true, it is not taken care of for you if you are working. In fact, if you are working, that is literally the only instance where you do pay for it yourself. Every month a certain amount (not even necessarily a small amount either) is deducted from your paycheque in order to cover the mandatory government health insurance, this is usually done directly through your employer.

Also, in some countries (France, I believe), the amount you pay is proportional to your income, so the bigger the income, the bigger the fee you have to pay.

And it doesn't matter how much money you paid before that. You could be paying for 30 years in a row, without a fault, but if you happen to not have work this month and don't gain public health in any other way, sucks to be you, you'll be paying for everything.

I mean, "any other way" usually means simply registering as being currently unemployed. There are certain protected categories and these can vary between countries, but generally the elderly, the underaged, college students (primary and high school students are automatically covered under the "underaged" category), disabled people, people with very low income, and unemployed have their mandatory insurance covered fully by the state and do not pay for it at all.

Where taxes come into this is that you have certain products and services whose taxation goes largely, mostly, or even fully into funding the national health insurance (like tax on gambling in France, or tax on tobacco products and similar), and of course, whenever additional funds are required the state covers the bill, and the state is funded by taxes.

I am talking primarily about Europe here, and I believe so were you, so just clarifying these couple of points.

My point is you reacted to that "money is more important than life" line in anime as if it was something completely foreign to you and something you could not even comprehend anyone could think and labeled anime the most vile thing to ever exist for saying that, when our current world is full of that wherever you look. I'm not saying it's good or that it shouldn't be changed, but the fact of the matter is, it's the world we're currently living in, so I found your reaction to that part of anime very... confusing. Maybe I'm just too used to how our world is fucked up, so when watching that part it didn't really bother me, because it was no much different than what we got, but your apparent lack of that real life experience was definitely weird.

Either way. I really don't have too much strong feelings about this show. I have many more issues with capitalism and our current society, but as much as I hate it, I can't simply ignore its existence, so I was simply baffled you acted as if something like that never happens irl, when it is all around us. We seem to disagree on details and I don't really care enough to rewatch episode to make a more in depth argument (especially since i kinda only watched parts of it the first time). I have no desire to continue this conversation, nor I really wanted to argue that your overall worldview was wrong or put you under impression I had some personal issue with you. Your posts simply came off as too innocent and way too overemotional, but if I was wrong about it, then I'm apologizing.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm saying. Obviously I understand the real world sucks. My problem is the author is justifying the state of the real world. The people like you and me, who criticise the flaws of healthcare in the real world? In this anime, they're portrayed as bad people. They were constantly told to shut up, and the anime itself outright called them awful, and we've even got a commenter here calling them idiots, showing the message the anime wanted to convey was received loud and clear. The author wrote 3 minutes of monologue justifying and defending the state of the real world instead of criticising it. That is what I find to be absolutely vile. I have never before in my life seen an anime attempt to defend not providing emergency healthcare to someone in need.

And that's also the difference with Birdie Wing. At no point is Aoi in BW portrayed as a fundamentally good person, and her wealthy family is portrayed in a very negative light.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 9:52PM

Don't watch it, because it's egregious, but if you watched it I think you'd see what I mean.

Honestly I kind of want to watch it now just so I can have an informed opinion on this argument lol.

The sense I get is that, since people in this thread disagree even on the basics of what alchemists do (Does the MC have regular expenses? Does she need expensive ingredients for certain procedures? etc), the anime just does a very poor job of actually depicting basic details of its premise and instead mostly just runs on vibes. Given that, it makes sense that people inclined to be charitable to the anime assume things to make it make sense, while people without such an inclination will just see it as bad.

On another note, I've started watching Journey of Elaina. It's pretty good! Elaina (much like the MC of the alchemist anime apparently) is pretty selfish but she's not portrayed as being always in the right so I enjoy her.

the anime just does a very poor job of actually depicting basic details of its premise and instead mostly just runs on vibes

Well, this much is definitely the case. She's hired an assistant but the rudimentary "balance sheets" at the end of each episode make no mention of paying her, so it seems the employee at least is working for free. Then stuff like the insane "20 million in the red" this episode - that's 20 years of part-time work, from the limited information we were given. When all she did was use the herbs growing around the house to make potions. And those potions were listed as a separate item, -100k. Not that she paid any money for them. But anyways, it really seems she's valuing one single day of her labour alone at 20mil.

I'm not willing to be charitable with any ambiguity because, in my eyes, it is utterly inexcusable if a series is going to attempt to tell people that putting a price on a life is moral. If that's the theme of your story, you'd better make it abundantly clear that she's literally going to starve to death if she doesn't wring every last zeni out of her patient. As it is, it certainly does not pass a vibe check.

last edited at Oct 20, 2022 11:53PM

And those potions were listed as a separate item, -100k.

Actually, no, those were the potions she made later for the grizzly hunt. (And after checking this I need to correct myself - it wasn't the 20M that left her in need to get the ingredients from the grizzlies, she pointed the need for make up for the loss out when discussion merely these potions. Presumably because the 20M treatment will eventually be paid for.)

And let's also address this:

When all she did was use the herbs growing around the house to make potions.

There's a reason she goes through the grizzlies for ingredients. The herbs around her house are certainly a nice part of her new house's beneficial location, but by no means the only ingredients she needs. It's made very clear that the gatherers are main source of ingredients for any alchemist. Similarly to how they need to pay her for her work, she needs to be able to pay them for theirs.

last edited at Oct 21, 2022 8:06AM

Actually, no, those were the potions she made later for the grizzly hunt. (And after checking this I need to correct myself - it wasn't the 20M that left her in need to get the ingredients from the grizzlies, she pointed the need for make up for the loss out when discussion merely these potions. Presumably because the 20M treatment will eventually be paid for.)

Ah, right, fair enough. Doesn't really change my point much though.

The herbs around her house are certainly a nice part of her new house's beneficial location, but by no means the only ingredients she needs.

I'm not saying they are, but what I am saying is that she didn't lose very much treating Iris. If just the ingredients around her house alone are worth 20mil, something is seriously wrong with this worldbuilding.

I'm late to the party too but I finished Birdie Wing this past week. I don't actually have much to say, but thanks so much to the people who recommended it over the last few months! The Eve/Aoi pair has such fun dynamics. I'm not quite delusional enough to hope for any ending where they get together (they're totally sisters, aren't they?), but I really hope s2 is as strong as the first. Was a real joy to experience.

Ooh, that's interesting because I mentioned in the Birdie Wing thread on the Dynasty Discord a while back that I'd seen several people mention this theory, but I hadn't seen the slightest hint of it myself. I'm not the most observant person though, so I'm hoping to sit down and rewatch the first cour before the second season airs. It seems to be a theory that people either don't believe in at all, or think it has a high chance of happening.
If it turns out to be true, it would make for an awkward situation since Aoi and Eve are pretty explicitly (IMO) attracted to each other. Not that characters being related has ever stopped us yuri shippers...

In any case, glad you got to experience this great show.

On Birdie Wing I think they're likely to be related, but not actually full-blooded sisters. Eve looks more like Aoi's mom than her dad, and I'd think said mom would remember having another kid. And, narratively, Eve and Aoi seem way too into each other for the story to suddenly decide that a romantic relationship is off-limits. Probably cousins, which is fine in most parts of the world

I think if Eve is revealed to be Aoi's mother's daughter, which is very possible, it'll be paired with the reveal that Aoi is herself genetically unrelated to her mother. Partly for the ship, partly because it would make her mother's eugenicist ideology extremely ironic.

Yuru Camp S3 announced

I hope its going to be fucking intense.