I can’t know precisely what that doctor means by politicking, but I took it to mean Tenma does what the director tells him to do, which is indeed what we see. He did it so naturally he didn’t seem to even notice. It took the mother beating on his chest and screaming at him for him to notice exactly what was being asked of him and why. Tenma was a toady, one whose inexperience and naivety led him to assume that those whom he’d taken as guides were themselves guided by firm moral and ethical principles. The moment he exercised his own conscience against the will of the Director, he was out. That tells you exactly what he wasn’t doing before.knives wrote:If I’m reading you correctly it seems like you missed something important about this scene. That doctor is assuming that Tenma got his success through politicking, but in reality he did not. The doctor is asserting the toadyism of the system onto Tenma.Mr Sausage wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 11:01 pmNo, it doesn't address them, at least not in the first two episodes. He could be German and nothing would need to change. Everything is assigned to other motivations: Tenma is lauded for politicking well and told that's the real way to success in the hospital, not merit, and by a character who is later revealed to be on the outs for similar reasons.knives wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 9:55 pmI can’t remember, but does the anime make it clear that the doctor is Japanese? I think that might address some of the problems at hand. Certainly I always felt that these aspects of the story made sense as a distinctly Japanese person having difficulties working within a foreign culture with a lot of the later persecution being in part from xenophobia.
The episodes seemed rather bluntly about how people end up abdicating their own moral and ethical responsibilities in order to reinforce group norms.