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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Eagle

Zac, you quote Echo_City, but the latter half of your post is clearly in response to statements made by Melanchthon. It made it a bit difficult to tell what you were talking about at first.

Also, was that dig at people who work in the military really necessary?

First, over the next eight years, I will order that all U.S. bases abroad be shut down. Second, unless the lives of American citizens and the territory of the United States itself is under threat, it will be the policy of my administration to forego any future U.S. military action.

Way back when I was getting into anime I heard about a manga called First President of Japan. Does that have any connection to this? I always assumed the two were actually the same story until I read this article.

I think when a lot of people complain about overt political sermons in fiction (and dear god, do American writers like to include those) what they're really complaining about is political views they disagree with.

Penguin_Factory wrote:

Way back when I was getting into anime I heard about a manga called First President of Japan. Does that have any connection to this? I always assumed the two were actually the same story until I read this article.

No, they're different. First President of Japan is awful -- it's about as unrealistic and jingoistic as Legend of Koizumi, but without the humor.

Quote:

I think when a lot of people complain about overt political sermons in fiction (and dear god, do American writers like to include those) what they're really complaining about is political views they disagree with.

I agree with you here. Although I try to be aware of this and to look past the opinions of manga or comics or books whose authors I disagree with. But it depends how good the story is, and also, IMHO, how realistic they are and how realistically they present the opposition. For instance, I don't dislike the "Left Behind" books because they're pro-Fundamentalist-Christian, I dislike them because all the non-Christians are total straw men who have no good arguments in their favor and act like total idiots. Whereas on the other hand, I've read other Fundamentalist books, like the Christ Clone Trilogy and some of C.S. Lewis' books, that at least expend the effort to seriously argue in favor of their opinions.

I think it's great that Kawaguchi/Yamaoka stands for something in Eagle, but it fails at realism; nevermind getting the Democratic nomination, Obama did it, but Yamaoka's "end US foreign intervention and military funding" goal is so epically difficult (IMHO) that he'd have basically zero chance of winning IRL (not to mention the strong possibility that he'd campaign in favor of doing something, and then not actually do it... not like *that* ever happens with Presidents of course). I'd *love* it if Eagle was a manga that really convinced me that this was possible, but it simply doesn't expend enough effort to make me, the reader, believe that it could happen. This is partially my cynicism speaking, of course. But I don't have any problem with Kawaguchi expressing his political views; I just don't think he's believable in how Americans would actually react to a candidate with Yamaoka's platform.

It's foreshadowed at the very beginning of the manga, when Takashi tries to throw his mother's ashes into the sea off Okinawa, but they are blown back into his face by the jetblast of an American fighter plane.

"Two hundred years since George Washington, and in all that time there's been exactly one president who wasn't a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And look what happened to him."

First President of Japan is awful -- it's about as unrealistic and jingoistic as Legend of Koizumi, but without the humor.

No, they're different. First President of Japan is awful -- it's about as unrealistic and jingoistic as Legend of Koizumi, but without the humor.

Needs more Metal Wolf Chaos.

Kaiji Kawaguchi…but Eagle (the "making of…" subtitle was added for the American edition) is his only work that's been translated, except for a rare Kodansha Bilingual edition of Zipang.