You're laughing. These baboons don't even know they're at war with Pakistan and you're laughing.
Premise
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a spin-off in Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear videogame franchise, released on February 19th 2013. Instead of the story following the drama of spies disrupting the development of soldiers with superpowers and new weapons of mass destruction, PlatinumGames's installment is a hack-and-slash action RPG about going through military bases of cyborgs and sci-fi robots. Set 4 years after Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Raiden works as a ninja cyborg for a private military contractor Maverick. A fictional African politician Raiden was escorting gets murdered by assassins from Desperado Enforcement. Swearing revenge, Raiden tracks down Desperado members across the globe one by one, which leads him to discover a plot to overthrow the American government and destabilize the world through war economy.
An Incorrect Summary of Metal Gear Rising is a parody recap of the game by Max0r. The first part was released on December 10th 2021 and the second part was released on January 17th 2022. The "summary" goes along the gameplay footage while re-dubbing the dialogues with absurdist humor and pop-culture references, frequently editing in memes and edgy jokes. Max0r mixes in personal commentary about the over-the-top nature of game and critiques of level design with subtle takes about real world issues.
Culture War and War Culture
The following contains spoilers.
And that's just the beginning. E-Girls, Gacha, memes. All just petty distractions so real men can get down to business. And as you know American imperialism is absolutely justified. (...) Fuck all these limpdick YouTubers and chicken-shit Redditors! Fuck this 24/7 Internet spew of Discord and VTuber bullshit! I'm going to build a new future, Jack, one where we wont have to hide our stealing from anyone. To build a world truly free from the consequences of our actions. Just like the Founding Fathers intended.
— Senator Armstrong in the parody
In the original game, the Desperado are trying to create a political system where the military serves not the government but the highest bidder. However, their sponsor, Senator Armstrong, is only using them to kickstart a new War on Terror to get elected, to consequently end the culture of private contractors and install Social Darwinism as America's law, where anyone who proves "strong" can decide how the country should be operated. A critical point of the Operation Tecumseh is using social media to blame everything on the wrong enemy and gain public support in the same way as it's mentioned was done after 9/11. After disposing of Desperado, Raiden clashes with Armstrong to defend his own principles.
Max0r's summary re-contextualizes everyone to turn popular jokes about them into their core personalities. As such, Desperado members become "extremely online YouTube Personas (4)":
- Jetstream Sam goes from a troubled mercenary who follows Armstrong because of his strength, to a Markiplier-like figure who keeps engaging Raiden with debates about the nature of "based" and "cringe" and tries to upset him with gamer technology.
- IF Prototype LQ-84i Blade Wolf is a hyperintellegent robot dog who eventually develops own beliefs instead of following his masters, but here becomes Brian Griffin from Family Guy, who was turned by National Security Agency into a sarcastic sex-offender tracker.
- Mistral is turned from a Algerian-French war orphan who lusts for battle, into a Russian-Chinese mass-produced E-Girl Twitch streamer with a parasocial fanbase.
- Monsoon goes from a philosophical misanthrope to a walking Nintendo Virtual Boy obsessed with Among Us memes.
- Sundowner, instead of being a veteran who turns children into robots to enjoy the chaos of war, is now Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and, according to the video, also an open pedophile who works with Jeffrey Epstein to trap kids inside virtual gacha games.
- Armstrong is changed from playing the political game to end the United States he views as corrupt, to becoming Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who had Obama killed to absorb his "black" powers and is promoting anime culture so the population wouldn't care about greedy politicians like him.
Despite being a fast-paced, nonsensical, and sometimes vulgar, meme-fest similar to SsethTzeentach, Max0r uses recurring gags to create a new narrative resembling how SnapCube's Real-Time Fandub works, while somehow still staying true to the underlying themes of the Metal Gear series. The internet-cultivated humor masks a surprisingly astute political critique. Many of the jokes are directed at the costs of healthcare in U.S., inefficiency of political institutions, and the influence of mega-corporations on public consciousness.
Raiden goes through a personal journey to discover the meaning of Based and learns that it's fine to be Cringe. However, he's just an example of many artificially-engineered subculture frictions. If one is to think about his new arc abstractly, it has strong parallels with the state of online discourse today. Debates are not about making strong arguments, but about drowning your opponents with memes and obscure references, treating their confusion as a victory. Like his canon counterpart, Monsoon talks how artificial memes are used to control the culture, memetic archetypes in the game and derogatory jokes in the video. Raiden keeps getting ragebaited into debates he has no stakes in, and overcomes his enemies by refusing to engage with them on their level.
At the video's climax, Senator Armstrong reveals that the real purpose of Desperado is to nurture the weeb culture in America. When everyone is busy stanning streamers and Vtubers, are addicted to games that are designed around predatory microtransactions, and argue with each other for no particular purpose, they become completely unaware or apathetic about own country's foreign policies. Max0r's Armstrong simply spews whatever would upset a modern viewer, but even in his altered characterization he reveals himself to be a social genius potentially even better than his game counterpart. By heavily promoting Japanese media to young people, he funnels legitimate sales of anime merchandise into development of superweapons, and carefully times drama with influencers to drown political news that could hold his actions to scrutiny. The last part of his plan is especially terrifying; with the population being bothered more about culture wars and escapism, he'd be able to be a corrupt and racist politician right in the open since nobody would feel bothered to oppose him.
Breads and Circuses
In Ancient Roman poetry, there is a concept of panem et circenses, that with an abundance of food and entertainment, the populace would be disincentivized about being concerned about the stability of the republic. This means a would-be tyrant can simply bribe the population to have them look the other way. In modern times with the infinite stream of new content, social media algorithms are explicitly designed to maximize engagement with short-form content. At the same time, mobile games and moe-appealing influencers are carefully selected to consume attention. The global market in the past decade became a cultural warzone where Asian countries have been fighting for the spot through soft power and brands. Real politics are slow, tedious, and require specialized education, so many would unlikely to be interested. Because of all the entertainment available, an average citizen is more likely to fight on the forums over which marketable waifu is the best rather than pay attention how political shifts affect their own economic standing.
While the video was made in 2021, a concerning trend is showing in 2026 where the Trump's Administration is using AI-generated anime parodies to criticize other nations and promote militarism, in an attempt to appeal to young audience and uses discourse to distract from domestic policy problems. In turn, other nations like Iran are responding the same. Instead of embassies making quips at each other like they used to, now the people on the top actively try to integrate fantasy and xenophobia into the culture. At the same time, China and Japan also commonly use AI memes to promote nationalism, portraying xenophobia as something heroic or even cute. Hiding the military-industrial complex behind anime girls may sound absurd, but a cursory research would reveal that in many countries it's a real strategy.
Media trivialities draw the public's focus away from geopolitical and ecological problems, and modern companies are well aware of it. We'll likely see the political climate shaped by the population being divided, passive, and complicit. However, on the bright side, the digital culture is also a double-edged sword. The same satiric ecosystem often doesn't appreciate liars, and would weaponize the power of clout and word of mouth to bring attention to any alarming movements. Being engaged with fiction can reach problematic levels, many people are self-aware enough that their country being at war would be bad for their personal well-being. While politicians are difficult to cancel, they have to navigate a thinly-placed mine field, as any sign of hypocrisy could cause their voterbase to sink.
In Conclusion
While likely not intentional, by fueling the parody with personal grievances Max0r turns a game that already was a political satire into a subtle warning about the trajectory of modern politics. The best part is that Desperado's actions aren't too far off from what they were trying to achieve in canon. Despite the video being filled with irony and memorable punchlines, many jokes land much harder because they're not entirely jokes.
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