Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2009-11-20]
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PingSoni
 Subscriber Posts: 195 Location: Lansing MI |
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Pen names are sometimes used by creators established in one genre to do something different without knowledge of their previous work coloring what people expect of their new work.
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Prede
 Posts: 388 |
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I wouldn't call that a race war. The war was not at all based on race. While I agree America did some terrible things in the war, like firebombing Tokyo or dropping two atomic bombs, it was not a genocide. The Japanase did some terrible things during the war too, like useing chemical and biological weapons against the Chinese, attacking innocent Chinese civilians (including women and children), and raping women, etc etc. While nothing they did was as terrible as the things the Germans did, they are not innocent of commiting terrible atrocities. I don't think anyone is innocent when it comes to that war. The Russians slaughtered a bunch of innocent Poles (among other things), the UK and the US firebombed Dresden, and of course all of what Germany did. War brings out the worst in people, and pushes countries to make some terrible decisions. The connection between Japan and Germany is quite obvious. As Chesis has already pointed out " Japan and Germany were allied during the war, so Japan had easier access and more exposure to German culture for a significant period of time. And so some of it remains embedded in the Japanese consciousness to this day. " And Japan has studied many of the European countries for a very long time, starting way before the war. Countries they learned heavily about included Germany and England. The knowledge of these countries would not be forgetten just because the war was now over. It's become part of their culture, and it's understandable some of it will come out in their works of art, entertainment etc etc. To get back on topic, the answerfans had some good points. Personally I find anime is vastly superior to western animation. While there may be a handfull of western stuff I like, there's a million different anime series I love to death, even more I really enjoyed, and only a handfull I think are complete and utter crap or don't want to check out at all. The ratio of good shows to bad shows in Japan is much better then in the west. And like I;ve said before, the main culprit is the "animation age ghetto", so props to the one guy who kept noteing that. He's spot on when it came to dealing with that idea. Last edited by Prede on Fri Nov 20, 2009 7:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Whoa. You need to hang out on the History Channel a bit more often We were doing NOTHING when Japan attacked us. A couple documentaries I saw indicates Pearl Harbor was attacked to keep us out of the picture under the belief if they could wipe out out Navy, it would take us so long to replace the ships, Japan would have had all the time they needed to take over most of the Pacific. And it wasn't just the Jews. It was the mentally ill (excluding their leader), the gypsies, & whoever else they decided to get rid of. Nor was it the Germans--it was the Nazis.
You need to find yourself some non-Japanese Asians to talk to. I work with a lot of Filipinos who have a lot of ill things to say of Japan still. Korea, China--a lot of Asian countries are still trying to get Japan to own up to their atrocities, but Japan has been pretty good at pretending it didn't happen. Just as our own military leaders are hardly indicative of the average American, the average person on the street in WWII Germany & Japan were not necessarily the brutal thugs their leaders were. (Not saying our military is. I'm saying military leaders maybe have a different take on how fast they should attack other countries in the name of defending this one vs the average citizen who really just wants to make it thru the work day, go home, relax so s/he can make it to the day off & have fun.) In the cases of the Nazis and Japan, thbey were not defending their land, they were invading others. Japan was performing experiments on prisoners & citizens of other nations, using them as forced labor, forcing their women into prostitution. The usual assessment one sees is that if we had invaded Japan, the death toll would have been far more than those taken out by those 2 bombs you're whining about because the Japanese leaders were running a pretty good campaign getting their masses worked up about the war effort. If America invaded, we would be fighting not only the soldiers, but the citizens.
The Beatles cut their teeth in Hamburg. The Scorpions. Name a Japanese band that has impoacted the world on the level of the Scorpions, forget the Beatles because I know you won't find one to compare to the impact of the Beatles worldwide. German cinema. Come on--anime & manga are great, but have you SEEN the average Japanese movie? Many remind me of American made-for-tv fare for their apparent budget Not to mention Nazis have made some great villains in our movies. Could we have Indiana Jones without them? Also, do not forget fashion sense. The Japanese appreciate aesthetics possibly at a greater level than the average American. We're a more functional lot. Pretty is pretty, but I don't think flower arrangement or tea ceremony (or similar) is as high a priority to the average American soldier as it was to samurai. Officers had to know their way around a formal dinner, yes, but functional still wins out on most of our uniforms. Do we not see great interest paid to how our manga boys are attired (at least in shojo & yaoi)? Nazi uniforms looked good. You can't get around that. I have seen variations of the uniform minus the swatikas used in more than a few manga & anime. But I still notice when actual Nazis are used as baddies in an anime or manga, it seems to allow the Japanese to be less evil because it is the Nazis being the real monsters. Even in FMA--Bradley, representing the country & the military is the big bad like Hitler. Even though he is just a pawn of the ultimate bad, he really isn't that far removed from the Nazis. And like Germany, not all of the military is bad. You have the decent folk just doing their jobs, protecting their homeland helping bring about something they really have no idea is happening. Not unlike the American citizens who have been unaware of the full extent of the things that went on under Bush's watch-waterboarding & the like. Don't forget a lot of Americans have German in our blood somewhere back there. It may go way back, but I seem to recall there were those who wanted to name German as our language over English because they so hated England. But don't forget Germany also supplies that blue-eyed/blond hair the Japanese seem to like to use to represent foreigners. But they also use a lot of French & English. It maybe stands out more because so much manga & anime is filled with Japanese characters while we have to have all the races represented in everything. And India & China are regularly used to represent oursiders probably as much or more than Germany.
Hughes was halfway? I thought he was more like a quarter in. Read the manga-the author usually includes a little comic at the end for each character that dies in that volume. Everyone made such a big fuss about a certain someone in Guren Lagann & it's a favorite VA of mine, but he's gone on the first Bandai dvd. Hoshin Engi ran over 20 volumes, didn't it? Isn't that in the standard range for shonen? |
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Maryohki
 Posts: 526 |
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This may be true, but I still find it ridiculous. Especially with the whole WWI thing. Germany did nothing wrong in WWI. Their allies were attacked, so they did their duty of defending them. That should NOT be something that causes lingering resentment. But a lot of people are stupid and just like to hate. @whoever made the comment about Japan making anime and manga but what has Germany done; you are an idiot. Go away. Okay, maybe not , but. Seriously? Germany has done plenty since then to make themselves a very respectable and amiable country. ALL Japan has "done for us" since then was make anime and manga. They haven't properly apologized, and many of them are still racist as ever. ...please keep in mind I am a massive Germanophile, though, everyone, and feel free to call me on it if you hear it talking instead of logic. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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OnanRulz
 Posts: 132 Location: The MPLS |
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I would argue that spoiler[including the alternate-universe Hughes in the movie] breaks that rule. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Actually, we had oil embargoes on them because of what they were doing in China, which the Japanese perceived as us getting involved in their conflict. Did that mean we deserved what was (through bureaucratic mess) a total surprise attack? Well, no. For starters, Japan's invasion of China did merit an embargo. The behavior of the Japanese military, while of a different nature than the methodological Holocaust, was appalling - not just in their treatment of POWs and civilians, but of their own men. And yes, we were never thorough enough in our prosecution of Japanese war criminals as we were in Germany, leading to the groups who to this day deny Japan's war crimes and all the Yasakuni Shrine controversies. But all around, World War 2 was not "The Good War." It was one of the first to see a total disregard for the idea of sparing civilians on all sides. The firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden and nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed millions of people, many women and children, and we would consider them atrocities if they'd been perpetuated against us. Neither side came out of that conflict looking particularly pretty. I don't mean to apologize for the Germans or the Japanese who committed such horrors, but I merely want to keep the victors from feeling particularly self-righteous about it. "Our atrocities were less horrible than yours" isn't much of a moral high ground.
As someone who felt really let down by the movie, with that being part of the reason, I say it doesn't count. :-p Besides, while I liked the first animated series, I'm a manga fan through and through. |
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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While that statement would be too simplistic (and obviously the initial motivation was not race), our viewpoint on the Japanese and the Germans, being European and white, was entirely different in WW II based on race. Germans were treated very differently in the media, for instance. Hitler was the "enemy" in Germany, the people being misled by him. The Japanese were "monkeys" primarily, literally subhuman savages incapable of independent thinking. Even McArthur characterized them as 12 year olds in his final speech, thereby forfeiting his opportunity for a statue in Tokyo Harbor. If you have the inclination, get a copy of War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower. His Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II is also a fascinating and competent work.
Read the book. There were definite intentions and plans at high levels in the U.S. of literally wiping Japan clean of inhabitants. This is just the facts. It in no way minimizes the destruction and atrocities visited by the Japanese on their "allies" in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as well as their enemies. The U.S. did commit atrocities as well, but no where near on the same scale, and not as a matter of policy. Truman truly believed that using the atomic bombs would end the war much sooner and avoid losing hundreds of thousands of American military lives in a ground assault on Japan. In today's relatively small scale, limited-destruction wars (the concept of avoiding civilian involvement), we tend to forget how many thousands of lives were lost per battle or campaign in WW II. Nowadays, we know that Japan was ready to collapse regardless, but that information wasn't fully available to the U.S. The atomic bombs were, at the time, the best of the bad choices statistically speaking. In any case, far more civilian Japanese lives were lost, and property destroyed, in fire bombing of cities than in the atomic attacks. We can characterize these methods as "atrocities" now, but in the context of that time and its technology, virtually everyone agreed these were valid, if not the only, ways to win the war even though some protested them at the time. As to the Japanese references to Germany, keep in mind that German philosophers were at the height of popularity in the early 20th century, and the Japanese were big fans as were academics in most countries. Especially, German (primarily) atheistic philosophy rang more true with the Japanese, who had less dogmatic religious underpinnings to their society. Similarly with literature and cinema. After WW II, Japan was far more interested in European philosophers and authors in general, than American, based on the statistics of book translations and sales during the U.S. occupation. Their joining the Axis powers was a deal with the devil for strategic purposes. The Japanese were not fans of Hitler or the Nazis, because the Japanese military leadership literally intended to "rule the world". Had the Axis won the war, Japan and Germany would have begun their own "cold war", which likely have been quite "warm". EDIT: Not to ignore Vashfanatic's points... just cross-posting phenomena. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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I figured as much.  You said what I wanted to with probably greater thoroughness.
And if we're going back to portrayals of Germany, just thought of another obvious example: the Galactic Empire from Legend of the Galactic Heroes uses German as its language and had a eugenics program in its past. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Too true. I never knew that Matsumoto Reiji/Leiji wrote shoujo manga under his real name of Matsumoto Akira until I saw it in an interview. I had always known him for contributions to Yamato and writing Space Pirate Captian Harlock and Galaxy Express 999. The pen name, I think, has worked out pretty well for him.
I presume you mean Nobuhiro Watsuki, author of Rurouni Kenshin? spoiler[Now I think I'll have nightmares of a Meiji Period drama written by Watase Yuu! :cries:] I think it's an entirely plausible justification; a lot of people don't realize the influence and sway that editors may have, especially if it is a really popular title. To go back to Brian's example of Dragonball (where everyone dies thrice), it was editorial influence that kept Toriyama going on past the fight with Freeza where Goku was supposed to buy the farm. As far as death and its portrayal in stereotypical shonen anime; I guess it's all up to the author(s). I don't think anyone will criticize something like Fist of the North Star for a lack of character deaths, even if the hero count is comparatively low. I can point to shows which wouldn't fit the typical shonen mold (Mobile Suit V Gundam, Aura Battler Dunbine) which has no problem offing major character from either side. Also, dormcat is 100% correct (would have said it myself had I not been beaten to it) that Japanese and German cultural relations go back to the late Prussian (pre-Imperial Unification) and early Imperial Germany but Brian does raise a point that Japanese memory does not seem to much recognize a Germany after 1945. One could wax and wane about the political divisions that dominated German politics for at least 40 years after The War, a fate that Japan itself narrowly (arguably narrowly) escaped, as a reason for perhaps ignoring the change in post-war Germany. |
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Baltimoron
 Posts: 43 Location: Charm City |
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I'm going to go ahead and quote this because it is correct and has been roundly ignored. The connection between Germany and Japan goes back further than WWII. Germany was instrumental in helping Japan modernize its educational system, economy, and military and was a regional player in East Asia for the first few decades of the 1900s. Japan and Germany collaborated in putting down the Boxer Rebellion in China and Germany competed with the Soviet Union for influence in China after the gall of the Qing dynasty. This involvement brought them into constant contact with the Japanese who were meddling in Chinese affairs even before the establishment of the Manchukuo puppet state. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Gonna just mention Monster again, because I will pimp out Urasawa's work any time I can. The whole story relies on the East/West division and the fall of the Iron Curtain. (And thanks for the catch on misspelling Watsuki's name... I too will have nightmares as a result!) |
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INS Division 6
Subscriber Posts: 91 Location: Philadelphia Area, PA |
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Did anybody else notice the guy dressed like a German soldier in the all male boarding house for the auto club in the Oh!/Ah! My Goddess tv shows?
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Stretch24
Posts: 107 Location: Ohio |
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"All the effort and passion which Japan put into the war ended in Hiroshima and defeat. Then the Americans came, bringing their nuclear deterent, their Cold War, their Hollywood chewing gum war... I share your revulsion about 'just wars'; if there ever was such a thing it was the war against the nazis--our allies, Goto, our allies." --Arakawa, from Patlabor 2
The message seems to be that although Japan lost the war, at least it's enemies hadn't won a 'just war'. Only the war against Germany might have been just. |
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Prede
Posts: 388 |
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Don't forget Master Keaton. Many of the episodes deal with Germany, specifcally the division of the country into east and west, and the effects the fall of the wall had on both sides. And it's quite a show. I highy recommend it, although I feel it got off to a weak start. But some of the later episodes are really amazing. And vashfanatic it wasn't just an oil embargo, it was also an embargo on iron and steel . It was designed to break down the Japanese military machine. To stop Japan from conquering China, more for political reasons then out of any care for the Chinese. America, France and UK had aimed to keep exploiting China, and that wouldn't really be possible if Japan conquered the entire country. They also feared Japan become even stronger over the next few years, and aimed to stop them when it would be easier/still possible. And to be fair to the Japanese they felt they needed to become some huge world power. They looked at England as a role model, to become somewhat of an empire like they hand, since Japan too was based on remote islands, not the mainland. But just like England they felt they needed colonies to support themselves, and China was the perfect place. They had ample resources and raw materials. And Japan looked down on China, they felt the Chinese had almost let themselves be exploited by the west. As for many years know the Chinese were just being used by Europe and the US for their own needs. Although that country was never colonized it was turned into many speers of influences that would benefit the European country or the US and not fair well for China. Japan also felt that for it's own (longterm) survial it needed to become an empire, to be strong enough to fight againts any other imperial power. They did not want to end up like the rest of the world had, due to European Imperialism. They had escaped the worst of it for now, but they wondered how much longer it would last. So to them invading China was the right thing to do. China was seen as nothing more then a state being used by the west anyway, so it didn't matter. And the stretegic advantage of having China act as a buffer between Russia and Japan was too good to pass over. And as I said they needed resources from somewhere if they were to have an empire. Not that invading China was a good thing. Just the Japanese felt it was in their best interest at the time. And of course as you already said, they did some terrible things to the Chinese like rape their women, and kill innocent civilains, not to mention the use of chemical and biological wepaons agains the Chinese troops. Oh and I agree with your point, neither side escaped doing horrible things in that war (as I already said  ) . The Soviets had slaughtered a bunch of innocent Poles, the US and UK firebombed Dredson, The US firebombed Tokyo, two atomic bombs were used on mostly civilian targets, and of course all the terrible thing the Nazis did. War brings out the worst possible things. But this was not the first time "total war" had been engaged. We can trace the roots to that all the way back to Shermen's March to the Sea during the American Civil War. The strategic advantage(s) of harming, attacking or at the very least disregarding the well being of innocent people, was too good to pass over. Also both sides viewed the best way to end the war quickly would be to demoralize the other side (by attacking their civilians if need be! )But it was never more used, and never as terrible as what happened during WWII.
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