Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Politics as Usual
|
Goto page 1, 2 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Nobody14
Posts: 43 |
|
|||||
|
It’s funny seeing some people say Japanese creators never cared about this sorta stuff until recently, particularly with a series like Gundam. Hathaway is from the early 90s and has some very blunt discussions on the Federation’s racist and self serving “forced immigration” policies… and then we hit the oft forgotten Gaia Gear. To describe what Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino was cooking in 1987, I’ll just sum up how the first book starts out in a sentence.
A Char clone named Affranchi was created 100 years later to become the white savior, and then the creators panic when they realize he’s not only not racist but married to a black woman. …Jesus Christ it’s so blunt it’s kinda funny. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
sjk9000
Posts: 43 |
|
|||||
|
I think Drama Queen is an interesting manga. Maybe not a GOOD manga, but interesting. I honestly think the intended message from the author is anti-racism at heart, even though it seems to affirm a lot of typical racist propaganda to get there. At the very least, I would hope that anyone attempting to criticize it would genuinely read the whole thing rather than skim it.
|
||||||
|
||||||
kgw
 Posts: 1536 Location: Spain, EU |
|
|||||
|
What I dislike is how the 'democratic' governments in LOTG and Gundam are always corrupt and incompetent. They are either unable to get things done, or they actively work against their own interests and those of their citizens. Meanwhile, in the Empire (under Reinhard) the subjects are happy because their Beloved Leader™ thinks of them.
In Gundam, the events of Z could have led to a better Federation led by the AEUG. But no — we can't have a functioning government — so, after Char, we're back to the 'corrupt, evil Federation' because it's an easy trope to use. Perhaps it's because of Japanese politics, where — at least from an outsider's perspective — you could be forgiven for thinking that 'elections' are just a sham, given that the same people have held power for ages and policies are debated in secret LDP meetings rather than in the Diet. EDIT: also, about Drama Queen, aside from their own problems (the major one is "the author having racist characters acting in a racist way and then trying to backpedal"). I see the panels changed in that scene. In the begining the girl apologized instead of "my partner" and Nomamoto complained how people say "my partner" instead of "my boyfriend/girlfriend". |
||||||
|
||||||
tintor2
 Posts: 2691 |
|
|||||
|
I recall that already Attack on Titan season 1 had references to real life politicians but I never paid attention to it. I now wonder how controversial Fullmetal Alchemist could get if it was rebooted again and kept King Bradley killing more and more characters. Then again Conqueror of Shamballa based on 2003 also had that commentary with Edward claiming no matter where a certain character goes there will always be war.
As a kid, I read Naruto without paying attention to the Uchiha slaughter but as an adult it hit me how serious was the author about the politics of a village and a clan as Sasuke decides to end World War 4 after understanding the values of his brother and the ninja who created the village he died to protect. |
||||||
|
||||||
justsomeaccount
 Posts: 533 |
|
|||||
|
I get the sense that most of the discussion is going to be about Drama Queen in this thread.
It's one of those series whose real final thesis is still developing as the series unfoldso so we are still kinda waiting in some aspects, and even talking about the current theme feels like spoilers so I'll put it there, but basically spoiler[is a cycle of hatred story where the author wanted to explore anger, self-righteousness and believing yourself a tragic heroine (that's the Drama Queen definition) with morally bankrupt characters, which honestly it's not too different from many gritty movies... but the backdrop is goofy-looking aliens who are considered untouchable and can do whatever they want without consequences (to the point of letting minors drive or cover up mass shootings) and fulfill many stereotypes of the obnoxious entlited jerkish foreigner (and not only american tourist stuff, they link them too with eating dogs as a reason for compatibility not to be possible, something often used to disparage korean or chinese people) and who are slowly replacing the population and amassing terrain and wealth over the japanese. So the two main characters decide to kill them no matter who they are, usually preceded by them acting kinda jerkish. There are also conspiracy theories about them, but they are implied to be just that, made up conspiracies. The female MC is mostly just a cartoonish psychopath who kills them for easy food and cares about nothing but herself (in fact, the one of the first chapter felt more motivated, afterwards she's just a simpleton nihilistic serial murderer who don't even care about whether they're aliens or humans), so the character weight goes to the male MC whose family died in an "accident?" by an alien who escaped without consequences and whos the most self-righteous about. But after some twists and turns, he started sympathizing with that one alien who provoked the accident on purpose because the MC's sister drove the alien's brother to suicide just out of spite for the systemic positive discrimination (by faking to be molested by him, so you know, that to the problematic bag too) and despises the MC's tragic heroine act and wants to make him miserable. All of this awakens the MC's conscience to the aliens, but he's still targeted by that alien who will kill his buddies to make him suffer, and while being now repulsed by those alien killings he's still not stopping them, though where he goes from there we don't know from when I'm posting this. So if you isolated the story in a bottle and believe it has no bearings in the real world (which is pretty much impossible bc the story wants you to compare it to the contemporary world, but let's try) you could say it falls into the nihilistic viewpoint of racism is bad and everybody is awful because that's human nature; and it certainly wants you to sympathize too with that alien and his brother and why they came to that point. But stories are not born in isolation, and this one borrowed pretty much every bad foreigner stereotype as true without making them outright evil and say all that (replacement theory, positive discrimination, COVID [oh yeah, in the recent chapters the aliens brought a disease that only humans suffer and may be a slight fever or kill you, so now people don't come out of if they do is with an astronaut helmet and people outside is mostly aliens, including advertising. Yep], etc.) is a fact of life and therefore natural that racists act like that even though is bad and hurts good foreigners too. When that's just racist myths of how this works, Japan is insanely hard to foreigners, can barely rent a house in 80% of places or work, they are the most at risk of poverty, police stops them frequently and even detains without evidence, the demographic percentage is extremely low, etc. And in these last years where they've become the scapegoat of society for reasons totally unrelated to them but economic crisis and bad government management and corruption, and has made this government the most racist in 60 years at least (and more stuff I could say but don't want to digress too much); well, this series certainly captures that mentality's worldview, but it doesn't even feel like it's parodying it, but as the de facto norm of how things work, and uses this extreme story to talk about, well it's incredibly gross.] Honestly as a series is entertaining as hell since the main thesis develops along the series and structure and drawing-wise I can't say it's badly done for its aims, but it's only in that bile fascination way; anybody who finds it too disgusting to even read since your reading it is still slight support, I 100% get it. In a way it's Jujutsu Kaisen Module's best friend since it makes this series' comment on inmigration, while with issues, way more benign and well-intended in comparison xD (that one feels like Gege trying to say Japan to chill out and have empathy, and it's flawed in some details but in comparison its heart is in the right place). I agree that if you want to talk about it (honestly excited if you do) you need to read it whole. But not because you are going to be like "oh it's actually ok", you are still going to despise it and good, just with the exact nuance xD. |
||||||
|
||||||
Joe Mello
 Posts: 2558 Location: Online Terminal |
|
|||||
If Japanese wikipedia is to be believed (and my Japanese reading ability is to be trusted), one of Umezawa's previous works was called "Utopias" which was subsequently redone as "Utopias: Political Correctness Edition." That doesn't necessary prove or disprove anything about their political stance, but I reckon that even if Umezawa ends up being a culture war tourist, he's at least overstayed his visa. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Rogueywon
Posts: 306 |
|
|||||
While Universal Century Gundam, and the Tomino material in particular, leans left in its politics, I'm not so sure about some of the spin-offs. SEED Destiny has very "old-school" conservative themes. The villain's plan is to implement a global system that assigns everybody to a role according to their attributes - essentially a very direct implementation of the Marxist slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". The mobile suit lineup for the big, final battle is Freedom and Justice vs Destiny and Legend. And then a decade later, its director, Mitsuo Fukuda, made Cross Ange, in which the "socialism of plenty" society we see at the start is shown to be morally corrupting (and based on exploitation that's pushed out of sight Potemkin-style), compared to the hyper-capitalist "everything has a price" society of Arzenal. Indeed, from a 2022 interview:
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
tintor2
Posts: 2691 |
|
|||||
That really makes Kira and Lacus' arc in Destiny more subtle and genius at the same time. The two were always pacifists but the constant manipulations Durandal used on his people forced to come out of retirement and help Cagalii fight to protect Orb and then take down Durandal himself before the Destiny plan (which is basically a dystopia) is implented in the space colonies. |
||||||
|
||||||
fuuma_monou
 Posts: 2031 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
|
|||||
|
A column about political anime that doesn't even mention Patlabor 2?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Dr. Wily
Posts: 864 |
|
|||||
I mean I know what you're getting at but I think this is fairly obvious. At the end of the day, art (at least, art like anime or manga) is designed to get as many views/readers/buyers as possible, and making overt political statements automatically alienates and loses any viewers/readers from the other side of the political spectrum. I know the natural response is "but they already are, they're being so obvious!", but well... media literacy is at an all-time low (and not just in America) so people might miss even blatant political themes*. And I think creators are well aware of that, so you're never gonna hear a creator (or especially a studio which is a business and not just one person) own up to their politics until years down the road when the work isn't really generating as much profit, and/or when they've got nothing to lose by doing so. I mean, sure sometimes you will, but those are the exceptions, most creators know where their bread is buttered and don't want to cut their revenue streams in half. *Hell, in some more popular genres they might willfully miss them even if they kinda get it. The "wow cool robot" Gundam meme exists for a reason. As long as the fights are cool enough, I feel like a lot of shonen series like Chainsaw Man could get as political as they want to and not worry that much. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1624 |
|
|||||
I think that's largely just a consequence of media produced under democratic regimes. You can't really paint the idea of democracy as an inherently good thing when your audience is routinely confronted with a reality that is otherwise. With regard to Gundam, I think it's valuable to frame the Federation as being just as "evil" as Zeon (and just as willing to resort to genocide and the killing of civilians) because, ultimately, how a government is organized has very little to do with how a country persecutes a war. And with the fundamental theme of Gundam being, very infamously (per the meme) "war is bad," it was no accident that the Federation was depicted the way it was. With regard to LOGH, the whole FPA/Empire juxtaposition is more like a philosophical thought-exercise than anything else. Reinhard's empire is very specifically meant to be an idealized, utopian version of the best possible autocracy, while the FPA becomes the dystopian worst possible democracy in order to better explore its themes -- which Yang often all-but presents, out-loud, directly the the audience. Themes that wouldn't really be possible if the FPA were presented as better, or Reinhard's faction as worse. Stripping those themes from LOGH would be pretty ruinous to the whole work, I think.
Gundam in general is pretty slapdash with its themes. The only real constant across the franchise is the aforementioned "war is bad" thing, but the individual works vary greatly in how they present that theme. And I wouldn't really character the broadly anti-war messaging of Gundam as either right or left-leaning. As for Seed Destiny's titular Destiny plan... any discussion of that has to make allowances for just how badly constructed Destiny's narrative was. Durandel does a terrible job articulating just what, exactly, the Destiny plan is, and Kira and Lacus barely even attempt to articulate why they think it's bad. So we, the audience, are left to infer a great deal. Like I interpreted the plan more as Durandel trying to remove the threat the "natural" nations posed to Coordinators by dismantling them and enslaving the population. Whatever the end-goal was for his new society, I imagine it would most-likely look like a ruling class of genetically-engineered coordinators at the top. I never really got the vibe he was going for some Marxist revolution, given (imagine me performing some expansive gesture with my hands here) everything else.
Far be it for me to ever shy away from talking about Patlabor, but come on. If we want to list all of the political anime that didn't get covered here, we'd be at it until the heat-death of the universe. |
||||||
|
||||||
Doubleclouder
 Posts: 162 |
|
|||||
I feel the most likely answer to why creators don't say their work is based on real life politics is more simple: because the work in question is simply not based on something in real life.. It's strange that Trigger can come right out and say Promare is not about American immigration issues and rather than accept them at face value there has to be some underlying conspiracy. Then when the column's own admission in the next paragraph the people who did work on the show themselves are not fans of immigration in their own country (like a lot of Japan, sorry to tell people this!). Rather than accept that perhaps it must not be a message about American immigration it's turned into an insult and asking them if they watched their own work. I also remember back when people swore up and down that the fanservice in Kill la Kill was "ironic" and if you sexualized the girls you missed the point of the show. Despite the teams comments time and time again they love drawing sexy school girls and it was a driving force behind the show. Anime and manga can clearly be political when they want to. The Darwin Incident does feel like the author just watched the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of 2020 and had a lot of thoughts about it by making them the villains in their series, and Drama Queen is obvious enough, so when a creator says "No, the people who use ice to fight the fire monsters is not based on an American organization whose acronym just so happens to be ICE it's a coincidence" it seems logical to take that at face value since they'd have no probably saying if it was. Especially as mentioned the people working on the show are open about their own feelings about immigration. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
fuuma_monou
Posts: 2031 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
|
|||||
Fair point. It's just that P2 is probably the most openly political anime movie ever. |
||||||
|
||||||
Mizlude
 Posts: 78 |
|
|||||
|
I've really been enjoying reading Drama Queen myself. I'm not surprised to see left-wing anime fans upset by it given it's subject matter but given it's a topic that's very topical in Japan right now and has been for awhile (and everywhere in the world if we're being honest) it's been fun to read a Japanese perspective on it and I find myself sympathizing with the main characters. But I do find it funny the one thing they censored in the English release as far as I know is the 'partner' thing. The other stuff is fine but that's where they draw the line? Strange
The Darwin Incident has been fun so far and I did read a bit of manga spoilers so I know what's coming and I do wonder how people are going to react to some later stuff down the line assuming the anime continues far enough along. If you can get past the creator's hyperfixation on hating vegans and just consider them extreme animal rights activists and eco-terrorists it makes more sense. I don't know if all animal rights and eco people are vegans or not but it is a funny trait to focus on. Perhaps the mangaka just met a really annoying vegan once and never let it go. But aside from that quirk at it's heart it's a series about people who think they're good people and standing up for what's right doing bad things and justifying it by sayin they're the good guys and the people they're doing it to are bad so it's ok. Again, very topical and fun to read. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
kgw
Posts: 1536 Location: Spain, EU |
|
|||||
I totally disagree. Some of most known scifi stories are about futuristic functioning democracies (i.e. Star Trek) or rebels who fight for sort of a democratic republic against authoritarian empires (i.e. Star Wars). And vice versa, fiction written under authoritarian regimes, if allowed, they do praise the idea of "collectivism", "unity under the loving fist of our leader", etc. Heck, even in Doctor Who, they usually don't mess with politics, but sometimes they talk about the British Monarchy. (more with the Torchwood spin-off). |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group