Interesting point is that it mentions "we" towards the end, and its main desire isn't to be just well-off, but have a happy family as well. The desire for good food, a good family, and a good home seems like a pretty selfless desire when I think about it, all it wants its the basic things that it was denied (poor food, no familiar interaction, and poor living conditions), even down to the ability to cherish what it has if its freed. It seems to indicate that the factory has a coldness to it, it sees these as lesser beings and sees nothing wrong with showing the kids these acts, something most meat-factories shy away from. This is almost lovecraftian in the idea of a stronger creature, sufficiently advanced in technology or mental capability, to seem almost divine or godlike, controlling the affairs of other creatures in ways that seem cruel and alien. In this way, since we are those creatures, they aren't that impressive. The supposed great creature is nothing more than a factory worker who sees minuscule creatures, beneath his notice, and the rest of this society moves on.
Perhaps the aliens out there view us the same way, we are too primitive and selfish, much like some of us view yukkuris, to sympathize with. However, they do not have the hatred of what we are, just a cold indifference which is demonstrated here. The idea that aliens react the same way to us when reading human-abuse stories on their version of the internet, while others argue with them for being cruel to the simple flesh-based lifeforms, is amusing to me.
The kid is simply shown this without any real explanation, it seems, and the workers themselves remove themselves from the reality of what is occurring, and the kid simply follows suit.
"It seems to indicate that the factory has a coldness to it"
Captain Obvious strikes again.
This kind of story has been repeated throughout history. War of the Worlds, Serving Man, The Matrix, Mass Effect, etc. Advanced life forms toying with and harvesting lesser ones is nothing new.
But when you say that aliens dislike selfishness, you are looking at things from a human perspective, projecting your own world view on the aliens. Aliens could have evolved in a completely different way, in a world where selfishness was rewarded and allowed them to prosper.
If a human shows selfishness, by stealing from people, he or she is taking away from those who contribute to society, essentially crippling and stifling the progress of the group. But aliens might not even live in groups. Maybe they function best when alone, each alien being its own society, like the Reapers, so selfishness had no ill effects on the advancement of the alien species and thus there was no stigma attached to it, no punishment or reprimands.
A bachelor usually exerts only 30% of his working potential, because he has no one to support by himself. He has plenty of time to relax because he doesn't need to work as much. A married man, however, usually exerts close to 100% of his working potential because he needs money for a larger house, car, more food, and more of everything in general. Civilization grows on the hard-working backs of these men, so it is really men who have been oppressed and manipulated throughout history, not women. But aliens might reproduce asexually, so they have no need to share resources with a nonexistent family. Once again selfishness is rewarded.
So if aliens evolved in this way it's possible to deduce that aliens slowly wiped each other out until only the most advanced alien was left, which has a long lifespan and could reproduce by itself. Thus, its selfishness was rewarded.
In any case, aliens wouldn't view us as one large entity. Aliens advanced enough to find and study us are sufficiently intelligent enough to be able to differentiate between us. They would see that some of us are very smart and not selfish at all, that is, if they valued those qualities. Perhaps they value aggressiveness more than intelligence, and selfishness over selflessness. So, ironically, they could see the criminals and sport fighters as the highest members of our species, not the leading politicians and scientists.
This, is going a bit too far, though thankfully it's civil.
I wouldn't go that far about lovecraft stuff, or aliens, etc. The Factory had been famous for this kind of activity, in fact, as SUN said, so obvious that mentioning it is unnecessary and out of place.
The kid if anything, is clearly powerless and indiferent, and if anything, "adapted" his work in his notebook for the sake of the class, after all, if he made some grim stuff and all, the only thing he would get is being sent to a psycologist and make people worry about being neurotic or something, and he may actually be quite well headed, just, as much, capable of being indiferent against what he can't change, IF, he wanted to.
In my honest opinion, while i do agree that no matter what some say, humans in the yukkuri world have to take an active stance towards them, i wouldn't allow facilities like the factory to be used in general terms, they seem more fitting as prison and punishment places for the worse yukkuris, and let's face it, they truly deserve that.
Yet for truly productive activity? it fails, the ending pretty much hints that, they focus more on the abuse than in the quality of the product, i would prefer a more selective approach, and less Factory like places, Yukkuris clearly have food potential, but they clearly aren't using them that well, and i don't think every yukkuri ever should be treated like this.
Makes me wonder how the food-production branch of The Factory stays in business. I mean, all yukkuri are edible without need of cooking, so wouldn't they have to build up a reliable reputation for high-quality processed yukkuri-based food products in order to simply stay afloat?
Maybe it's just because of the simple assurance that, thanks to cleanliness standards at the Factory, the yukkuri you get out of the wrapper won't have dust and pebbles all over like wild yukkuri do.
Yeah that's pretty much the case, processing yukkuris assure you that there won't be any pebbles, dirt, green stuff you seriously don't want to know what it is and you clearly don't want inside your mouth, etc.
Usually eating wild yukkuris would be a process of checking how much is edible (at least if you care about not eating dirt and pebbles) and cutting out the parts that had such, or try washing them enough for it to get out and for them to not melt. You waste a lot of potential nutritional parts though such method.
So the best course, regardless of their already "Manjuu" state, is to process them.
The trouble, as I see it, is that truly good-tasting yukkuri would take time to cultivate. You'd have to abuse them thoroughly, of course, using whatever methods seem effective (lulzy).
The trick is, though, that you can't let them lose all hope, or else it ends up so sweet that it's disgusting. In this story's Factory, they only torture enough to keep their supplies up (raper-assisted), and to keep the material from escaping (burnt feet) or causing an annoying ruckus on the production line (mouth-burning). There's no sense of hope remaining to those yukkuri; they know that once they end up on the conveyor belt, with no way to call for help and no way to escape, that they're fucked. End result: mind-break occurs, and far too soon, resulting in bland flavor.
I'd hope they have a "Factory Select" premium brand, where abyuse experts extract the maximum flavor possible from the yukkuri and then kill it before it has a chance to break down. If they don't, they're not going to do too well, I think.
Well it's that or, treat them nicely until the time of death, where you start abusing them and mistreat them enough and when fear is clearly notorious you go for the quick kill.
I usually understand that the true aspect of "Good flavour of yukkuris" only come from an intantaneous or at least not "life term" abuse and fear, either have them have a fake sense of good life and then take it away let them squirm and bit and THEN kill them, if you make torture them for long terms, no ammount enough of hope will make up for the bland flavor or spoiled flavor.
Learn to actually understand what you're reading. He said:
"...we are too primitive and selfish, [...], to sympathize with."
This implies that aliens have the same moral codes and values that we do and thus dislike selfishness.
"This is not entirely true. Historically it has generally been a balance of men oppressing women and women countering by manipulating men. "
"Oppression" and "manipulation" are idealogically-fueled words. Those that have a certain political agenda and/or bias use them. In truth, this is just the way nature turned us out.
Women were kept at home to keep the living quarters clean and take care of the children; they were kept from sexing others because men wanted their children to be... well, theirs. Men worked because they were stronger and smarter- it's proven that men do indeed have larger brains. Also, men were more expendable since babies came from women so if they died the number of humans in the next generation would be lessened whereas all men could die except a few and there would still be enough children to make up the next generation.
However, there have been a small percentage of women with male brains and men with female brains. These two groups were probably the most "oppressed."
>>I'd hope they have a "Factory Select" premium brand
Definitely gonna pick back up those livestock stories I started ages ago. Could do with a few recipe ideas, though. That's where I bogged down last time... and yeah, I think these ones are pretty low quality produce. Although yukkuris are are pretty much ready to eat, there's also been a lot of foods/recipes created using them, and also for specific body parts (i.e. post #10960). Yukkuri ready meals would be quite popular, I imagine. There's most likely going to be several grades of livestock as well, ranging from the low quality stuff here right up to organic. All yukkuris are food, so the issue of whether a yukkuri is well behaved or not should take less priority to ensuring quality products and processing.
Toasted Manjus are pretty good. They have deep fried ones too, it has a golden crispy crust and a sweet filling (filling varies. Green tea + red bean are my favorite)
Um... no. Industrial farms are quite, QUITE different to this. For one thing, stress makes things much worse, to the point of limiting it being quite pragmatic.
And hell, even those fake PETA videos don't have conditions quite as bad as in this factory here.
The irony is that Stress in yukkuris something you would aim for the sake of making them sweeter, of course this place pretty much misses the point that too much suffering is as bad as quick killing them without realizing because the taste is spoiled.
You need to grow them fat and when they are deluded in a easy life you tell them "no you'll die" make them suffer a bit and quick kill them, that's how you actually get good quality filling from them.
Real animals are not yukkuris. Stress and despair make them tastier. So it would, in fact, be beneficial to stress them out if you want to process them for public consumption.
And actually, a lot of the time the yukkuris have an insanely high tolerance to torture and stress. Just not in this case. What's seen here is actually pretty much average on the livestock scale, but the yukkuris are less tolerant to it in this story.
@JIE: Actually, I suspect that the taste would be better if the stress was built up periodically over the course of the yukkuri's life, rather than allowing them an "easy life", then taking it from them at the last minute and killing them before they break. Slow torture, yet not taking them beyond their tolerances. It'd be like marinating and slow-cooking a fine cut of meat; more work, but the end result is far superior to any other.
what i meant about the easy life and taking it away, is an idea someone mentioned about, giving them a taste of good stuff, and when the times come, start the process of torture before death, first by taking away anything easy and good form their lives and make it clear they won't get it back, proceed with some torture and abuse, and after some time kill them and process them.
It is usually agreed that a yukkuri that had a taste of easiness and then get's deprived of it, have a better effect in their sweetening.
You know what? This makes me tear up a little. They only want to take it easy and have a good yu-life, but they were deprived of it from the start. I'd like to have a Marisa, Aya, Yuka, Yukari, or Youmu as a pet.
Every yukkuri wants to take it easy, even the shitheads, the question is, how they would work to achieve it.
Sometimes they just stomp over other's easiness without caring and sometimes they actually work for others to be at ease as well, sadly the majority of them tends for the first option, "to take it easy for the sake of taking it easy no matter the cost and no mattering the non yukkuri"
This may not be the case, but, i wouldn't use "They only wanted to take it easy and have a good yu-life" and some sort of justification to not be mean, since, even the worse yukkuris want that.
The worse yukkuri should receive this treatment. These yukkuri, however, never got the chance to show traits of being a shithead. For me, that makes this series hard to look at. I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I just want to say my thoughts.
The thing is Mezzo, well, you should watch what you say, usually, it's beter to stick with what we like instead of making long ass speeches about what we don't like.
Commenting about what we don't like on stuff that clearly we won't like are the first step for then bashing what we don't like and breaking the basic rules of "no Anti comments on both spectrums of the yukkuri fandom".
Besides, truth be told, we don't know much about this yukkuris in particular, if we use the factory's logic the proportion of good and bad ones here may be the same than in the wild, since, while the factory accepts good ones, they encourage the delivery of bad ones with a proper reward for those who do so. This yukkuris, while begging and all, are in the neutral region, because we don't truly know what their real alignment is, for all we know, they could be shitheads and home invaders captured or could be innocent in factory breed ones doomed to a futile existence, but we really don't know.
What this Marisa says, is many times said by the trash yukkuris, in fact, if you demmand them to think what they did wrong, trash may not even recall their past transgressions and instead getting mental images like this Marisa has, all for the sake of "avoid uneasiness by realizing their wrongs", like that Marisa that maimed the Meiling badly and when asked about it, she only recalled good times and used that as an excuse to claim she was innocent when she clearly wasn't.
This yukkuris, are pretty much without alignment, treatment wise we may do hypothetical comments about if they were good this is too cruel or if this was bad this is fitting, but, they are just hypothetical, we really don't know this yukkuris worth, so it's better to made clear our hypothetical approach in scenarios like this, on which yukkuris aren't given a notorious allignment.
Of course i have my complains about this factory for other reasons, mainly the quality of the porcess and product, which leads to the potential good yukkuris wasting their lives for nothing, instead of, at least, good products for us.
That doesn't make the useless complaints against them any more worthwhile. If you dislike it so much, get a proxy and post on 2chan where you might have an effect on something as opposed to annoying the abusers here. If you can't be bothered... still no point pointing out how you think it's wrong, anons are douches for not being nice to 'nice' yukkuris or doesn't meet personal standards of approval. If it's hard to look at, don't look at it.
Hypocrite How? you see me going making long ass speeches about each time a damn good and developed yukkuri gets tortured in a abuse story? the closest thing i had as a complain was back ago when i started that i made a comment in that comic of the Gold Badged Reimu being trolled by her owner through a scheme and ended up getting a serious long serious of physical and psycological torture after being fooled in thinking her owner actually cared for them, and what i said was pretty short "happiness is when you do this to a shithead, this isn't happiness" short aond simple. I try to keep my complains as short as possible in those matters, or look for the "funny side" the "joke" of the whole thing.
It's get annoying when get long ass speeches about how this is bad, how undeserving they are, etc. etc. etc. And i wasn't talking about you but in general, if you took it personal, my apologize but my point was a general one, not a user focused one.
I do make long speeches, but usually, they are about what i don't like about some user's attitude or about the general situation of the yukkuris and how sometimes we are juggling between caring, not caring or just wanting them to suffer.