I watched the most recent episode of 16 bit Sensation, a mostly-original adaptation of Wakaki Tamiki’s Manga of the same name.
It is a good show, but like is common in his work, there’s surprising amounts of themes and views portrayed that hint at a leftist worldview. When I went to investigate by reading his blog, I was not able to discover much even from his political posts. Making sense of Japanese politics is hard, especially when filtered through a bad machine translation.
I would like to know if there are any, particularly modern, mangaka or anime directors you know of that explicitly identify with the political left or are anticapitalist in spite of the nature of bourgeois media.
Hayao Miyazaki is of course the big example, explicitly identifying as a Marxist until the second half of the 1980s. He abandoned those positions afterwards, but his utopian environmentalist pacifism remained.
Mamoru Oshii was a member of the 1960s/1970s new left and his works heavily lean on those experiences. An episode of Patlabor’s second OVA is a parody of the whole era in fact. The live action version of this Mecha show is filled with random hammer and sickles, Mao Zedongs etc. for seemingly no reason. Vlad Love features a joke mocking the social democrats’ “you can’t do that” attitude.
Riyoko Ikeda of Rose of Versailles’ fame was a member of the Japanese Communist Party youth in the 1970s. Iirc she would later deradicalize and even have a high profile affair with a right wing politician in the mid 80s.
Osamu Tezuka was reportedly a member of the Communist Party. He died in 1989.
Are there more modern examples?
Tomino’s politics are… odd.
His works do not really reflect it and are generally good, but the really big elephant in the room is the very antisemitic early draft of Zeta Gundam. Having a fragile mental health didn’t help in making sense of his beliefs.
tomino’s weird, yeah. even just when it comes to his attitudes towards women, if you compare 0079, zeta, zz victory, and turn a, they’re all completely different in their levels of misogyny. zeta is constantly fridging women, 0079 has a mild undercurrent of stay in the kitchen, victory kills a lot of women but is actually less bad than zeta on that front and is also all about how women must nurture and mother in some weird ways, zz is kind of a “women are crazy, amiright?” type show but is otherwise chill, and turn a gundam is a perfect show
but most importantly i think he was a member of the new left and thus fulfills the criteria of leftist anime director
In addition to the fridging, Zeta has Reccoa woog herself into joining a fascist paramilitary and gassing a city.
I did not like Zeta Gundam.
yeah me neither. my least favorite full length gundam i’ve seen, and i don’t expect that to change unless i watch like age or seed or something. maybe wing is too stupid for me to enjoy. i could maybe reevaluate wfm even more and end up fully hating it instead of just really being bummed out by the ending?
(for the curious: turn a>ibo>0079>zz>victory>g-witch>zeta. turn a is so good, please watch it if you haven’t)
I’ve only seen 0079, zeta, and g-witch. I was really liking g-witch until the latter half of season 2 when it went suddenly very bad both in terms of personal character motivations and in terms of its politics.
That’s how you know it’s by the Code Geass guy.
I have to remind myself of this every time I wish G-Witch got a 50 episode run. They 100% would have missed the landing no matter what.
he wrote some really good episodes of turn a, but sadly that both his first anime writing job and also where he peaked
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what exactly did you like about g-witch? character drama and relationship stuff? fights that aren’t always super high stakes? queer woman of color as the main character*? try turn a gundam
*interpretation of loran cehack’s gender identity may vary
also sorry if this is annoying, i just got to the end in turn a and it’s eating my brain a little
Ok, ok, I’ll try turn a next.
I think what I liked most about g-witch is how Suletta’s status as a superpowered cinnamon roll interacts with the rest of the pretty grim setting. She has the combination of strength and temperament to draw Miorine, Elan, and Guel out of their bullshit.
In my hypothetical headcanon good ending version of g-witch, Prospera simply continues to be a good mother to both her daughters and instead of leaving Suletta floating in space explains her history and goal of destroying the Benerit Group to her, then Miorine brings her to Earth where she meets the so-called terrorists and realizes that by moving forward and helping them she can gain two: Prospera’s justified revenge and an end to Spacian oppression of Earthians.
And then Suletta and Miorine kiss very lesbianly on screen, damn it.
yeah… it could have been very good!!! and i was really rooting for it!!! and instead bandai comes out and says they aren’t actually married despite that being stated on screen!!!
I just started Turn A and I think I’m already seeing what you mean about Loran’s gender identity. Also, I’m loving the weird anachronistic Earth tech base, especially the airplanes. A flying wing zeppelin and a canard biplane, that’s good shit.
yeah, it’s a really cool aesthetic, and the show puts a lot of thought into what they do with it
loran’s gender is a big thing throughout the show tbh, episode 7 was where i really started to think about it
So far the one part of the aesthetic I’m not really digging is the mobile suits themselves. The white doll’s moustache is goofy looking tbh.
Maybe it’s just that you primed me to be looking for it but Loran is very gender right from the start.
G Gundam is fun (especially the first half) and I highly recommend After War Gundam X if you’re a UC enjoyer. It’s a neat spin on the stuff that’s built up in Tomino’s work.
i got into gundam with g-witch and am watching in production order outside when a friend asks if i wanna watch a show that’s not in order, so g gundam is next, then wing then x! then i might be done with mainline series tbh, i’m watching 00 along with a podcast rn and so i’ll only have seed and age left
Reconguista in G
god dammit i always forget it because it isn’t 50 eps
Great to see you become Turn A brained lol.
Victory has some crappy gender essentialism stuff in it (lots of “women are here to be mothers”), but it doesn’t feel as hateful to the characters as the second half of Zeta Gundam. I like Zeta a lot, but the second half really does just hit a pattern of: ♀️ establish female character -> ❤️ set up romance or similar relationship -> 💀 ded.
yeah, victory has more egregious stuff in it imo, but because of the way it goes about it i can’t actually get as mad about it as i do zeta. zeta feels kind of malicious at times, and the rosamia/sarah stuff is such a bad way to spend the last 10 episode it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth