You Have No Enemies. | A Vinland Saga Analysis

foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] a statement that seems rather impossible when you first hear it of course we have enemies just look throughout history history is full with Nations making enemies with other nations and solving this conflict only through means of war and violence or even if you look smaller we individually have enemies and whether it's a school bully an ex that hurts you or even an annoying co-worker that just won't shut up making enemies is inherent to Human Nature but what if I told you this wasn't the case what if I told you that you in fact don't have enemies famous French poet says all wars are civil wars because men are brothers and I don't think these words are portrayed any better than the Makoto yokimaros Finland Saga you have no enemies these were the words spoken by the late and great Thors AKA The Troll of johns but in order to understand the sentence of this magnitude you must first understand the world in which villain Saga exists in and we do this by looking at the character thorkel why believe perfectly embodies the Viking world Thor killed the tall served as our main antagonistic Force throughout most of the series and I think he perfectly represents what a viking ought to be Thor's was a John's Viking along with Thor's back in the day and he was this big brute Larger than Life type of figure where every time he stepped on a battlefield his presence had to be recognized and Thor kills greatness as a viking doesn't just end that his physical attributes Thor Kell is quite literally the strongest Viking alive and this is shown by every time we see him in battle he's always doing some outstanding feat like hauling massive Boulders and logs killing multiple people at the same time dual building axes and single-handedly keeping an English Defense Force that was quite frankly losing the war still staying in the game but just his presence alone and he loves it all he loves War he loves violence he loves fighting he loves conflict and a lot of times in the shows he will purposely put himself into situations where there's more violence in that outcome this entire Viking World idolizes the essence of being at War idolizes the atmosphere of conflict idolizing having enemies and defeating them honorably in a battle and idolizing defending your honor to one day earn a spot in Valhalla and Thor kill is everything about this Viking world and bought into one large bigger than life giant but if you are a Thor killed at all what do you have left what do you have left when you seemingly accomplished everything you could have in this Viking world what is there to do now lortel can provide us with an answer towards the end of the season in his second rendezvous with thorfin when he's explaining how his father Thor's came to lead the John's Vikings Thor kill adds that with his disappearance it made him realize that what happens to a viking when he's alive or even long after he's dead doesn't really matter and the true thing that matters to a warrior is where his soul is and he adds that his one regret in life is that he never followed Thor's to go find villain because Thor's soul is somewhere he'll never be able to reach in that place where he won't be able to reach is where he believes Thor's became a true warrior and this brings us to our next stop further examining this Viking world and exposing it for what it truly is peeling back the thin layers of honor and fighting for Valhalla we really see that this Viking World truly is just a gruesome one all these Vikings are meant to do is cause senseless violence murder ravaged Villages assault women and all for the name of being a good warrior this is where our three main characters come in our three characters thorfin oskalad and Prince knut all experience this Viking World from an outside point of view dorfin spent most of his youth growing up underneath the love and care of his father and mother in Iceland Prince knut spent his time growing up in a big pretty castle away from the horrors of war and ask God well was just a poor Welsh boy without a father looking to take care of his mom by any means necessary and it is because her three main characters are outside of this Viking World we're able to sit back and look from a neutral standpoint what is truly going on it is through Thor seeing his father get murdered right in front of him in such a honorless and tasteless way is when him along with the viewer realizes that the Viking world can be cruel and is full of people without honor and honestly people use this veil of honor and respect to just kill and just kill mercilessly Thor's never stood a chance against ocelot's Army because at the end of the day they came there for one thing and one thing only to take Thor's head and they would do anything they could in order to meet that end there's this unspoken rule amongst Vikings and villain Saga is that what happens on the battlefield stays on the battlefield is when the battle is all said and done it doesn't matter if I killed your father it doesn't matter if I killed your brother it doesn't matter if I pillaged your town it's all just wanna under the bridge at this point but thorfin being outside of this Viking World it allows him along with us to challenge this notion challenge this notion of water underneath the bridge challenges notion of all is said and forgotten once the war is over because at the end of the day a father just got taken from his child and that is not fair but only thorfin along with the viewer are able to recognize this because we are not a part of this Viking World which means we do not succumb to the ideals and morals that fulfill this villain Saga Universe we're able to step back and look back from a neutral point of view and see the true horrors of what just happened to thorus we take a look at ask a lot we realize that his mother was a slave and his father being a Danish Viking and we realized that his existence itself is a direct example a direct outcome of this Viking world and with Oscar lad living in a world where Vikings abused the power that they have and they take over poor countries and pillage and assault and impregnate women without a second thought him being from Wales a prime source of slaves for Vikings he become becomes direct collateral of this Viking chaos and this horrible feeling reaches its climax when ocelad almost sees his mother get killed by the hands of his own father who can't even recognize her and it is then that oscalad realizes that artorius is never coming or Taurus is never coming back to save a world where Vikings fulfilled their lustful desires for sex and woman through means of having slaves and impregnating multiple women no one is coming to save ocelad and nobody ever will and finally we have Prince knut a young prince who grew up for the most part a pacifist his whole life and with him being of Royal Blood he was fortunate enough to not know the horrors and the true gruesiness of this Viking world and that is until he is sent off to War by his father and is accompanied by Oscar's mercenary group this all comes into fruition for canoe and episode 14 of villain Saga which is quite frankly one of the hardest episodes to watch in the entire Series this episode follows a family just to run-of-the-mill loving dad loving mom and just enthusiastic kids and with the snowstorm coming up and a harsh winter on the way Oscar lot's mercenary group invades this Village and pillages them and robs them for all of their food and after taking all of their food Escalade rounds up everybody in the village and begins to execute them all 60 of them and seeing this from knut's point of view you realize that these Vikings are truly evil and only care about themselves and murder is something that just is a byproduct of what happens when you're in war I'm with that you have our three main characters experiencing this Viking World from an outside point of view and when essentially forced into this environment it creates a deep change within all of them Knute makes the decision to turn away from God the orphan is fueled by hate and revenge and ocelot is fueled by the need to protect whales by any means necessary and being forced to change like this it turns you into something else it turns you into a Slave thank you in this scene with the orphan meets the slave on the ship and then she then goes on to point out that her endorphin are one in the same is truly a powerful moment in the show and quite honestly it speaks to the grander narratives this story is trying to tell thorpin pities the existence of this slave as he doesn't quite understand how somebody can be bound to another human without feeling this overwhelming sense of the need free from the shackles that hold you down and the true irony of the scene is that thorfin doesn't realize that he himself is a slave too along with everybody in this villain Saga Universe thorphin along with oskalad are slaves to their own hate as they both had traumatic things happen to them in the past and the hate from that event caused them to throw their entire life away changing the entire course of their existence Prince canoe becomes a slave to God as he feels rejected by him now he is driving to establish a world that is way more holy and way more peaceful than God could ever have imagined and even King Swain is a slave to his crown as he wanted to do all these moral and just things but when the power is in his hands it corrupted his soul and he is now being Guided by the will of the crown and this metaphor can be extended to everybody in the villain Saga universe as everybody is fueled by unless a slave to Greed money women sex and power and the worst part about all of this is that these things people are a slave to become such a crucial part of their identity they fail to imagine what life would be like without them what is thorfin without his hate for ask a lot and what is ask a lot without his hate for Danes and what his Prince can do without his hate for God and even the slave on the ship says it herself is that even she word or Break Free of her shackles and across the ocean she wouldn't even know where to go but this slave seems to be the only person to recognize that she is actually a slave to something so ironically this slave on the ship becomes the freest person in the world foreign [Applause] but what does this all mean now that you realize how cruel and evil this Viking world is and how being a part of it changes you fundamentally essentially making you a slave you start to remove yourself from these character situations and begin to assess what's truly going on here because what are enemies are they not just people you fight who live in another region a region that is under the control of a king a king not only answers to its own lust for power and power that will soon be overtaken by greater powers in the future and thus continuing the cycle you realize that this violence you see in this Viking world isn't indicative of the moral failing of these individual Vikings but it speaks to how it is a result of a grander narrative of power struggles a power struggle that will never end and most importantly a power struggle that serves no purpose these Vikings are only fighting to serve the interests of an imperialist world a world that would be perfectly fine without senseless violence and murder you then realize that these Vikings are just a cog in the machine of something much bigger than themselves and once you remove these Vikings from this machine and take a closer look into their hearts you'll find that at the end of the day you have no enemies be all men want is peace [Music] thank you for watching

Channel: Designingcrib

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Keywords: vinland saga, thorfinn, thorfin analysis, askeladd, askeladd villain, vinland saga review, vinland saga essay, vinland saga season 2, video essays, anime reviews, you have no enemies, thors, thors vinland saga, sages rain

Id: aGtb9yBl0Og

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2023