Forum - View topicNEWS: Article on Anime Dealing with War
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Cyan Bloodbane
 Posts: 117 |
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*sigh*
Still no love for us Military otaku, it seems. I'd love to see an anime of WWII...but for some reason, it's always a story of how horrible the firebombings were, the Hiroshima bombing, the regular people getting bombed....ect. I want a movie about war....not the regular people on the street affected by it. I love those types of anime(like "Grave")so don't me wrong but It's about damn time some Japanese animators stepped up to bat and made an actual anime about the war itself. (Infantry charges, Japanese POW camps, tank battles, sky battles, ect.) My Kudos goes out to the writer/creator of "Zipang" for having some gall. |
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Otaprince
Posts: 18 |
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I'm not sure that anime is the best medium to tell the WWII stories you want to see. No animators today lived through the war, and wouldn't a war movie best be suited by realism (and hence, live action)? Anime seems better suited to the fantastic.
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The Ramblin' Wreck
 Posts: 924 Location: Teaching Robot Women How To Love |
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I agree. /goes to get tickets for "The Great Raid" |
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Vekou
 Posts: 329 |
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I would also really enjoy a gritty, realistic war anime. But WWII, while definitely the most incredible and awe-inspiring conflict in our history, may not be the best setting for an anime/ manga. (See: the controversy over Kuni ga Moeru). If it really was historically accurate, it would paint the Japanese in an extremely negative light. After all, they committed the most atrocious of the atrocities in the war.
[tangent] Don't buy into any of this hand-wringing about the atomic bomb that's been in the news lately. It is all too easy to criticize America's decision when you have recieved your WWII history through school textbooks and Hollywood blockbusters, rather than experiencing it first-hand. Japan was not the victim, and America was not overly aggressive or brutal or terrible. They started it, and we ended it. Any modern views you see about the war on the Pacific front nowadays - coming out of America or Japan - is going to point plenty of fingers at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and to a lesser extent our internment of Japanese citizens), while not daring to mention the Rape of Nanking, the invasion of [insert east-Asian country here], the enslavery and forced prostitution of foreign women and girls and the way Japanese soldiers treated POWs. Well, I suppose the term POWs didn't really apply, because they didn't keep many prisoners. They would usually torture them, mutilate them and then leave them to die. They wouldn't even show mercy to the medics. It was obscene. [/tangent] So, uh, I don't think we're going to see anything like that anytime soon. But can you blame them for not wanting to? Sure, no animators or mangaka today were alive back then, but they're still going to feel an incredible guilt over the actions of their ancestors. Japanese people simply do not feel comfortable talking about the Imperial/WWII era. Maybe an anime about the war on the western front would be better. Japan is a great country and a lovely society, and their people have a great deal of pride in their rich and unique history. However, they would like to pretend that nothing really happened between 1895 and 1945. I really don't expect them to come to terms with it yet, and that's okay. American history doesn't have a low point that can even compare to theirs, so it is impossible for us to know how that feels. |
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The Ramblin' Wreck
Posts: 924 Location: Teaching Robot Women How To Love |
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What about the Ruso-Japanese War of 1905?
It kind of was Japan's big coming-out to the Western colonial powers. Kicking Russia's butt seven ways to Sunday made the world stand and take notice. Incidently, it also helped formulate the conditions that led to WWI by forcing Russia to abandon it's Eastern goals and turn and focus on the Slavic Balkans..... /history lesson |
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smutchi
Posts: 189 |
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So where does your knowledge about WWII come from if not from books? I doubt that you experienced it first-hand... |
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Stueypark
Posts: 116 |
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Here's something that was in the news in 1946, so it's obviously not recent... these are excerpts from the Atlanta Constitution, a well known newspaper. "Japan developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb three days prior to the end of the war." "She destroyed unfinished atomic bombs, secret papers and her atomic bomb plans only hours before the advance units of the Russian Army moved into Konan, Korea, site of the project." "The Konan area is under rigid Russian control. They permit no American to visit the area. Once, even after the war, an American B-29 Superfortress en route to Konan was shot down by four Russian Yak fighters from nearby Hammung Airfield." "The moment the sun peeped over the sea there was a burst of light at the anchorage blinding the observers who wore welders' glasses. The ball of fire was estimated to be 1,000 yards in diameter. A multicolored cloud of vapors boiled toward the heavens then mushroomed in the stratosphere." Something to think about..... |
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Lix
 Posts: 31 Location: All the wrong places... |
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You must be joking. As if the enslavement of an entire race wasn't enough to be worthy of a "low point," at about the same time period from the 18th to 19th centuries, newly conceived Americans were merrily romping about their new continent slaughtering countless Native Americans, driving them from their land and homes, and most likely performing the same unspeakable acts on their kindred(detailed accounts were probably not widely maintained at this point in history, especially since most westward pioneers were brutally unkempt). Oh, and then there was that little Civil War... Ours was just further back, and thus we have somewhat forgotten it. I'd say we probably would know exactly how it feels, if we'd even care to remember. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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We in the UK have just had our commoration of VJ day. There was a POW survivor of the Japanese who was forced at gun point to build the infamous "Burmese Railway". He was badly injuried in a construction accident and was allowed to be taken back to the POW camp by his guards. This was just before the Surrender. He said "I was lying in my bunk in what was suppose to be the medical infirmary. I was bleeding very badly from a chest wound and was in and out of conciousness. I don't know what day it was but I remember waking up to the sound of boots and a strange thumping noise. I opened my eyes and saw a few Japanese solders working their way up the corridor bayonetting the wounded in their racks. I said to myself "this is it, I'm dead" I closed my eyes and waited for the blow, but I must have passed out again because I woke up again to complete silence. I opened my eyes to find myself still alive but everyone else was dead in their beds. I can only guess that because I was unconcious and bleeding from my chest, the soldier who came up to me to stick me assumed that I already had it and moved on to the next poor bloke next to me. It turned out that they heard of the surrender and were taking revenge on us before they escaped." Now wouldn't you like to see that in a Japanese anime? Me neither. 
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Speaking of war crimes, let's not overlook (or deny) the Holocaust...
But anyway, as columnist Richard Reed recently wrote, the USA forgets that it's the only country to have ever dropped an atomic bomb on an urban center, but the rest of the world remembers. We ended a war and began the nuclear age. The destruction of all life on earth is a real possibility because of it. It's not a clear cut good vs. evil thing; it's a swampy, morally trecherous situation, and I'm not condemning or justifying anyone absolutely; let's just bear in mind that it's not unambiguous. No one's hands were clean. |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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But I agree that anime is unlikely to take on the war in a direct fashion. Still, plenty of anime is obliquely about the war; Yamato is one way to keep the legend of Japanese might going, while all that apocalyptic anime wouldn't have happened without the bomb, I guess. Is there any knid of apocalyptic tradition in Shintoism or Buddhism? There is in Christianity, which seems to be the root of our own apocalyptic art, although aided and abetted by the Nuclear Age we created.
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Stueypark
Posts: 116 |
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I think I would disagree with Mr. Reed that the USA forgets it is the only one to have used a nuclear weapon, I would guess the majority of Americans would recognize the name "Hiroshima" pretty easily.
We also didn't begin the Nuclear age, being that Germany was the first nation to begin the development of them. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3793 Location: Montreal |
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I just looooove the irony of this post. "Oh, the atomic bombings were not that bad, they had it coming." That is exactly like the Japanese nationalists who minimize and justify the evils done by their country by whatever excuse is convenient. One atrocity does not justify another. I guess bigotry is the only true universal value shared among all people of Earth. Depressing. |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Oh, we know we did it; we forget that ONLY we have done it. We're lucky the Japanese have forgiven us to the extent that they have; would we ever forgive someone for wiping out any of our cities? I wouldn't. |
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creames
Posts: 12 Location: South-West England |
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[quote="Cyan Bloodbane] I want a movie about war....not the regular people on the street affected by it. I love those types of anime(like "Grave")so don't me wrong but It's about damn time some Japanese animators stepped up to bat and made an actual anime about the war itself. (Infantry charges, Japanese POW camps, tank battles, sky battles, ect.)
My Kudos goes out to the writer/creator of "Zipang" for having some gall.[/quote] Try 'The Cockpit', three OAVs about WWII featuring stories about/with pilots and the air force. They're really good. Also, I don't know how much this helps, but I'm looking for an Anime I don't know the title of that featured soldiers fighting in a village. It's still seen through the eyes of a child, but it sounds at least half-way there. |
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