Dear netizens, I have a small request, really nothing major—
I beg you, can you please stop sending me this deformed, nonsensical M-shaped buzzcut uncanny valley bean-eyed big-eared flat-nosed wide-mouthed hunchbacked eyebrow-less畸形 chimpanzee dwarf freak? If I see this beast again, I'll really gouge my own eyes out.
Words can be arranged and combined like this
Moreover, what is this guy saying—"Why can't humans be killed and eaten?"
This is no ordinary xenomorph. I must immediately contact the Imperial Inquisition and have the High Inquisitor bring two ships of Space Marines to deliver a heavy crackdown...
This monkey is named Charlie, the male protagonist of the new anime adaptation of "The Darwin Incident" released this January. This creature, with 50% human blood and 50% chimpanzee genes, has undoubtedly become the biggest celebrity in the pan-ACG community in 2026. In the story, he was born after Dr. Grossman used his own genetic material to impregnate a female chimpanzee capable of solving quadratic equations and composing poetry.
Wait, let me ask, what about reproductive isolation? Humans and chimpanzees cannot breed mules like donkeys and horses. And even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the biologist's advanced technology could break reproductive isolation...
Hold up, bro, are you really that compatible?
A few months after the doctor finished his work, his research institute was attacked by extreme animal rights terrorists (I think they deserved it). He disappeared, leaving only the female chimpanzee experiencing difficult labor and Charlie in her womb inside the institute. This animal rights organization, surprisingly decent, actually found an animal hospital to help deliver the chimpanzee. Later, an animal rights-oriented politician found adoptive parents for this creature, raising Charlie according to human methods from childhood and sending five-year-old Charlie to school to see if this half-chimpanzee could be "socialized."
As everyone knows, a mule inherits the horse's size and strength along with the donkey's endurance and resilience. Charlie, half chimpanzee and half human, is similar. At age five, he first elbowed a group of brats who pushed him into a pool during play, then beat seven fully armed police officers who came to suppress him nearly to death before being subdued. He was essentially a demon-child athlete from childhood, with combat prowess comparable to Pickle from "Baki."
Thus, after going through a series of DNA-ingrained procedures like negotiating bail and reaching an out-of-court settlement, Charlie wasn't humanely euthanized. Instead, relevant authorities sentenced him to ten years of house arrest, causing him to miss the prime window for socialization. Ten years later, having failed early socialization massively and possessing ethics vastly different from humans, Charlie emerged into the world again like a demon child, and the story of "The Darwin Incident" begins.
The shocking quote that ignited the entire pan-ACG community, "Why can't humans be killed and eaten?", was born against this backdrop.
To be honest, without knowing the context, or if you've only watched clips and commentary from anime-focused content creators, this line could easily be misinterpreted as some anti-human statement uttered by a non-human villain, akin to "Do you remember how many slices of bread you've eaten?"
In reality, this statement doesn't stand alone; it's Charlie's so-called "sarcastic" rebuttal to someone else's viewpoint. Remember that extremist organization that rescued Charlie from the lab earlier? Almost simultaneously with Charlie's demonic emergence, they officially resurfaced and started causing trouble, shouting slogans about animal rights and vegetarianism, carrying out bombings and terrorist attacks everywhere, even killing innocent children.
Hey! Isn't it coincidental? Due to his "adoptive parents' habits," Charlie happens to be a vegetarian. The logo of that extremist organization mentioned earlier happens to be a chimpanzee. And right now, Zhuangzhuang, whose family runs a restaurant (affected by the vegetarian movement), discovers this vegetarian chimpanzee and comes to pick a fight—starting with the logical fallacy of "vegetarians like you killed children" and the extreme slippery slope argument of "if this continues, no one will be able to eat meat anymore..."
Deliberate? Is this even a debate?
It's easy to see that the author intended to create a plot involving dramatic conflict arising from the collision of vegetarianism, conservatism, human ethics, and natural ethics.
In fact, setting aside the bizarre "human x beast" gimmick and the somewhat politically correct promotion of vegetarianism, the theme of "The Darwin Incident" is indeed well-suited for creating clashes between different values—the inherent alienation of non-humans in human society, whether other intelligent animals with human-like thinking abilities can be called humans, and whether human ethical values apply to them... Just thinking about it reveals numerous contradictions worth exploring. Works like "Planet of the Apes" and "Parasyte" do exactly this—it can be said that "humans vs. non-humans" is inherently a theme prone to deepening philosophical depth.
The problem is, the way "The Darwin Incident" constructs dramatic conflict is exceedingly low-level. The scene described earlier simply portrays one side of the conflict as idiots, allowing the "normal people" on the protagonist's side to refute them with common sense, while the onlookers exclaim in admiration, thereby highlighting the superiority of the protagonist's side... This is a cliché tactic commonly used in inferior intellectual battle web novels when protagonists show off and slap faces.
Here arises another problem—the protagonist, Charlie, is decidedly not a normal person.
As a half-chimpanzee who failed socialization once, Charlie indeed lacks any sense of identity with "humans" and doesn't consider the status of "humans" in this society to hold any sanctity. Meanwhile, the author prepared the preceding discussions on vegetarianism and terrorism merely as vinegar to complement the main dish of "conflict between human and chimpanzee ethics." Thus, Charlie's remarks used to refute those idiotic statements naturally carry an eerie uncanny valley feel.
"You say I'm a vegetarian like those terrorists, but I've lived this way since I can remember, so there's no reason for me to change. Therefore, you don't need to worry about me. Eat whatever you want—chicken, beef, pork, fish, or even human flesh."
"Why can't humans be killed and eaten?"
"Why can only humans receive special preferential treatment?"
Basically, anyone with normal intelligence can spot the huge loopholes in Charlie's answer. Although the questioner was also stupid, Charlie didn't directly refute the challenger's fallacies. Instead, he offered convoluted and awkward counter-questions from the perspective that "human life is not more precious than other lives." However, these counter-questions were extremely superficial and easy to answer.
Humans cannot kill and eat each other because this is a civilized society created by humans, and mutual slaughter among humans is detrimental to the survival of civilization and the species.
In civilizations created by humans, including animal protection and environmental conservation, the ultimate goal is human survival, which naturally receives special preferential treatment.
It took me about five seconds to come up with those two sentences above. While they're certainly not the most optimal response, they suffice to show just how unworthy of rebuttal Charlie's outrageous question is.
Of course, some might argue, why can't humans be eaten?
Yet, in this scene, everyone surrounding the protagonist was stunned speechless by this shocking theory, as if their vital points had been struck. They stammered, unable to utter a word, and when they finally managed to squeeze something out, it was weak nonsense like "Humans are special! We're different from animals!"
At this point, the entire scene's impression completely collapses. After all this discussion, nothing stands firm except that the two guys picking fights and the onlookers are all idiots, and the protagonist Charlie is an uncanny valley figure.
Incidentally, perhaps realizing that the "intellectual battles" and "clash of ideologies" he wrote didn't read well, the original manga shifted towards a Hollywood blockbuster style from the middle onwards. The main storyline began revolving around action sequences featuring "athlete hybrid chimpanzee vs. extreme animal rights extremists." Incidentally, the boss of that villainous organization is also a hybrid chimpanzee, even stronger than the athlete protagonist, strong enough to fight through the US Army into the White House, lower the Stars and Stripes, and raise the Monkey Flag.
Yes, his father impregnated two females back then—one carried by a chimpanzee, and the other by his female assistant via surrogate pregnancy...
In the latest episodes of the story, the heroine who has always been by Charlie's side commits to him. After an intense battle, a second-generation hybrid chimpanzee with 25% chimpanzee blood and 75% human blood is born—who says mules can't breed?
How should I put it? The shock gradually faded, replaced by a sense of relief bordering on angry laughter.
If such a scene occurred in an obscure web novel or a third-rate failing manga, people might just complain, "Damn, Japanese people are so perverted," and move on. But "The Darwin Incident" is precisely not that.
This work defeated "Look Back" and "Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite" to win the 15th Japan Manga Taisho Award in 2022, nearly beat "Medalist" at the 2024 Kodansha Manga Award, and received a high-quality anime adaptation produced by BELLNOX FILMS this January.
The attention brought by major awards, combined with the breakout public opinion following its anime adaptation, turned this hybrid chimpanzee into a "big celebrity." Perhaps due to the fierce conflict between the values instilled since childhood—"Struggling against heaven is joyful; struggling against earth is joyful; struggling against humans is joyful"—and the indescribable entities in the work, or maybe fed up with the various absurd arguments from Western liberals over the years, "The Darwin Incident," highly acclaimed in Japan, suffered a sudden collapse in reputation on the Chinese internet, with a Douban score as low as 3.4.
Suddenly, countless fan creations emerged like mushrooms after rain, such as "Emperor Slaying Monkey Xenomorph," "Children Don't Be Afraid, Big Brother Eagle-Eater is Here," and "Fire Strike Coordinates Sent to Super Earth."
Meanwhile, various internet memes like Alien Milk Dragon and "You're Crying Urgently, Alien" have been replaced by the hybrid chimpanzee Charlie in the "internet shit-posting chain," becoming the king of meme images in major online chat groups. Seriously, in the past two weeks, at least ten different friends have sent me weird pictures of the hybrid chimpanzee via private messages. Even meme emperors like Zili Teacher, Zili Teacher, and Zili Teacher have been spamming monkey images in work groups... Thanks to him, I held my nose and watched this divine drama, leading to this topic choice. Truly, thank you.
Among this series of chain reactions, the most unpredictable and hardest to hold back laughter appeared in a game seemingly unrelated, "Stellaris," which has been on sale for ten years. Because the hybrid chimpanzee became too rampant, the extreme militaristic and xenophobic regime, the "Human Federation," became popular.
The "Human Federation" comes from the strategy game "Stellaris," developed by Paradox Interactive in 2016. This game presets two different paths for human civilization: the United Nations of Earth, advocating equality and cooperation with alien civilizations, and the Human Federation, characterized by extreme militarism and xenophobia, practicing human supremacism. The AI of the former often engages in activities difficult for typical humans to accept or understand, such as interspecies hybridization, unrestricted immigration, and changes in leadership due to its pro-xenophile policies. The latter, however, firmly aims to dominate the galaxy and establish human supremacy, with the two factions long being like water and fire...
Does this remind you of anything?
The United Nations of Earth, engaging in interspecies hybridization and abandoning human leadership and even appearance, isn't it just like the hybrid chimpanzee in "The Darwin Incident"?
In contrast, the Human Federation, adhering to human supremacism, unswervingly places human survival above all else, even launching heavy crackdowns against alien xenomorphs, treating them as slaves, livestock, or food...
So, there is only one answer.
Starting around January 21st, when "The Darwin Incident" went viral on the Chinese internet, "Stellaris," with no discounts, no new content releases, and no major update announcements, suddenly saw a surge in sales in the Chinese region, skyrocketing from rank 150 to 36. Peak concurrent players also increased from 13,000 to around 20,000... It felt somewhat like when everyone rushed to beat Adam Smasher in the game to vent anger after the release of "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners."
Paradox Interactive, on the other side of the Eurasian continent, probably never expected that a perverted biology professor from a manga by a Japanese author would, with one explosive remark, bring an unexpected surge of traffic to a ten-year-old game a few years later. And this traffic came from Chinese players, separated from Japan by the sea...
By the way, dear wise "Stellaris" players, I've had a question憋着 (holding back) wanting to ask: Eating humans definitely counts as carnivorous, but eating Plantoids and Fungoids in "Stellaris," does that count as carnivorous or vegetarian?