Frieren is on the list but I’m waiting for it to finish airing. Best things I watched this year not from 2023 were Redline and Little Witch Academia (the tv series).
Why is this in frustrating? Laying my cards out: I didn’t like how it ended but still thought overall it was good (I binged it in line with the first cour without breaks). But it was a good story I thought?
If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend watching at least the first episode of Oshi No Ko completely blind, because any reasons I give for liking it will be spoilers.
If you have watched it:
I’ll admit that the insanity of the first episode is definitely carrying it, as the rest of the series isn’t up to the same quality, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. It has a cynical take on the japanese entertainment industry, and while ideally it would be even more critical, I’ll take what I can get compared to eg Zombieland Saga. While Aqua’s actual main plot isn’t particularly interesting on its own, the side activities of gaslighting basically everyone to move towards his goals and being forced into being an actor was a fun watch.
It’s been a while, but G-Witch is in frustrating because the setting is far too politically vague to really grasp what the ramifications of most of the actions in the second half will be, and like you say the ending is a deeply unsatisfying return to the status quo.
I think it’s a problem with anime as a medium/industry in general. My friend group has adopted the term “anime politics” as a shorthand and it really does fit in a lot of scenarios (it also applies to eg marvel movies but we don’t watch as many of those). Similar vagueness plagues relatively “political” shows such as Code Geass and Psycho Pass, off the top of my head, and even Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which is probably the best I’ve seen in this area, leaves something to be desired. I think it must be something to do with the typical structure of anime (a single character or small group likely won’t elicit widespread change).
I hear this take a lot, but I just don’t see it. Maybe you, as a critical otaku, can fill me in.
The politics of UC seem like general lib anti-war stuff. It ranges from “war is bad” to “power, in general, is bad”. You see the federation putting down a reactionary nationalist movement. The federation isn’t portrayed as pure, but it is portrayed as the correct position in the war. Amuro, fighting on behalf of the federation, is unequivocally the good guy. However, the show has such a weak ideological stance that Char is far and away the most popular character. It seems weird to me that an explicitly leftist show would lead to the glorification of a character like Char. And while the message might be anti-war, I don’t think there’s any confusion around that fact that the show totally glorifies war.
Zeta Gundam takes the “war is hell” thing further and puts the federation in the antagonist role and also brings back everyone’s beloved Char as a protagonist. While zeta definitely takes a firmer political stance than the OG, I still don’t see anything that could be described as “leftist” in the text. It seems like general libertarian “absolute power corrupts absolutely” sentiment.
Maybe all of this, in the context of 70’s Japan, could be considered progressive for the time. But leftist? I’m not convinced.
Most charitably, I might say that the federation’s turn to explicit imperialism could be a critique of it’s structure which requires the accumulation of resources and submission of colonies. However, in the context of the show, it could also be explained as having bad people in charge.
There’s sure to be a lot of ways to do it, but to meet the criteria of explicit, for me, I think there would have to be a few things.
An explicit critique of a system of oppression that is focused on its mechanics rather than the people in charge of it.
A collective effort to replace it with something better (not installing a “better person” to rule and calling it a day).
To me, explicit means that it could not fairly be interpreted through the lens of liberal ideology.
For instance, Iron Blooded Orphans does a good job of achieving number one. I don’t know if it makes it to point two because I didn’t finish it.
Edit: for example, I think that Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is an explicitly leftist piece of media that is directed at young people, and it never says the word capitalism
Ok, for the most part your definitions aren’t unreasonable, but
To me, explicit means that it could not fairly be interpreted through the lens of liberal ideology.
is gonna be an impossibly high bar to climb, because capital is nothing if not famous for subsuming critiques of it into itself. And we’re also going to run into a particular snag with regards to Mobile Suit Gundam because of, um, the history of Left-wing movements in Japan.
The reason you’ll see people say that Gundam (and shows from around that same era like Nausicaa and Space Battleship Yamoto) have left wing politics embedded in them is because their creators were involved in Left-wing student movements when they were young, and those politics leak through into their work. Here’s an excellent primer I found on Zenkyoto (the Japanese New Left) and it’s influence on Japanese pop culture, I strongly recommend you give it a read before continuing because I’m not sure my takes here will make sense without that historical context.
With regards to MS Gundam itself, I think it’s important to keep in mind that it was a piece of media written by survivors of WW2 explicitly designed as an anti-fascist work first and foremost, and… then also to sell plastic toys to children. So you’ll get really thoughtful episodes about how fascism gets ordinary people on board with it by building a false class consciousness based on imagined hierarchy’s, or how cycles of violence perpetuate those fascist lines of thinking, or how in the end only the working class on both sides is actually hurt by the war, in storytelling and messaging that isn’t liberal both-sides equivocating but just a straight up condemnation of fascism as a concept, using analysis that’s more Marxist than anything. But also, Pew Pew Laser fights with Giant Robots.
Granted, the show doesn’t explicitly advocate for communism, but the idea of Newtypes, a new generation of youth capable of empathy so great they can read minds and communicate directly to each other as equals, being the only people capable of ending the war and bringing about a better world betrays at least some of the the creator’s socialist leanings at the time, at least in my opinion.
(Also, just as an amusing sidenote, Char’s popularity probably has less to do with him being the charismatic anti-hero and more to do with how much thirsty cis-women really wanted him to bang Amuro in gay fanfic that’s almost entirely disconnected from any official narrative.)
With Zeta: the main character is a student who runs off and joins a paramilitary organisation in order to conduct a guerilla war against a fascistic occupying imperial power, and Char comes back as the second coming of Che Guevara. Zeta is absolutely a commentary on Japan’s role post-WW2 in America’s Empire, and shouldn’t need much elaboration, since it practically starts off as a romanticized leftist student’s escapist fantasy (and who could blame them, as a student in the 70’s who wouldn’t want to run off and join a guerilla war with Che). The Federation Operation Paperclips it’s own Zaku’s and is basically running it’s own Project MKULTRA, for crying out loud.
But here’s the snag.
See, the Japanese New Left was crushed by the same forces of neoliberal capital that crushed left-wing movements across the world- it was crushed by Reaganism and Thatcherism and the LDP. The reason the student activists turned to art and film, started writing their own Sci-fi tv shows and movies, was to channel their frustration at failing to build a better world in their own time, and spread their ideas to a new generation in the hopes that they would pick up where they left off.
In Zeta, the left doesn’t win because the left didn’t win in real life. All that was achieved was to kick the can down the road, at great personal cost. “We stopped the Imperialist Fascist Military Industrial Complex, temporarily. Yaaaaaaay.”
So, how do we evaluate works like these? Can a piece of media be truly “leftist” if it portrays the defeat of the left, since that just furthers Capitalist Realism? However, at the same time, if it’s reflecting a historical reality in it’s fictional setting, can we safely dismiss it if we’re historical materialists? Again, I don’t necessarily think that your definitions are unreasonable, but I think we should allow for the historical context and some levels of nuance to speak for themselves here.
Oh fuck really? I thought that it was mostly Bandai influence on it. (I guess that should be a tell ) G-Witch was my first gundam, I figured that it would at least usually turn out okay
Great Tier:
Good Tier:
Okay Tier:
Frustrating Tier:
Trash Tier:
Frieren is on the list but I’m waiting for it to finish airing. Best things I watched this year not from 2023 were Redline and Little Witch Academia (the tv series).
Okay I want to know why this is in the great.
Why is this in frustrating? Laying my cards out: I didn’t like how it ended but still thought overall it was good (I binged it in line with the first cour without breaks). But it was a good story I thought?
If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend watching at least the first episode of Oshi No Ko completely blind, because any reasons I give for liking it will be spoilers.
If you have watched it:
I’ll admit that the insanity of the first episode is definitely carrying it, as the rest of the series isn’t up to the same quality, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. It has a cynical take on the japanese entertainment industry, and while ideally it would be even more critical, I’ll take what I can get compared to eg Zombieland Saga. While Aqua’s actual main plot isn’t particularly interesting on its own, the side activities of gaslighting basically everyone to move towards his goals and being forced into being an actor was a fun watch.
It’s been a while, but G-Witch is in frustrating because the setting is far too politically vague to really grasp what the ramifications of most of the actions in the second half will be, and like you say the ending is a deeply unsatisfying return to the status quo.
I feel like this is just Gundam in general. It always hints at interesting politics but always just ends in a vague and aesthetic way
I think it’s a problem with anime as a medium/industry in general. My friend group has adopted the term “anime politics” as a shorthand and it really does fit in a lot of scenarios (it also applies to eg marvel movies but we don’t watch as many of those). Similar vagueness plagues relatively “political” shows such as Code Geass and Psycho Pass, off the top of my head, and even Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which is probably the best I’ve seen in this area, leaves something to be desired. I think it must be something to do with the typical structure of anime (a single character or small group likely won’t elicit widespread change).
Great term
Modern Gundam has that problem, OG U.C. Tomino Gundam has really clear leftist politics
I hear this take a lot, but I just don’t see it. Maybe you, as a critical otaku, can fill me in.
The politics of UC seem like general lib anti-war stuff. It ranges from “war is bad” to “power, in general, is bad”. You see the federation putting down a reactionary nationalist movement. The federation isn’t portrayed as pure, but it is portrayed as the correct position in the war. Amuro, fighting on behalf of the federation, is unequivocally the good guy. However, the show has such a weak ideological stance that Char is far and away the most popular character. It seems weird to me that an explicitly leftist show would lead to the glorification of a character like Char. And while the message might be anti-war, I don’t think there’s any confusion around that fact that the show totally glorifies war.
Zeta Gundam takes the “war is hell” thing further and puts the federation in the antagonist role and also brings back everyone’s beloved Char as a protagonist. While zeta definitely takes a firmer political stance than the OG, I still don’t see anything that could be described as “leftist” in the text. It seems like general libertarian “absolute power corrupts absolutely” sentiment.
Maybe all of this, in the context of 70’s Japan, could be considered progressive for the time. But leftist? I’m not convinced.
Most charitably, I might say that the federation’s turn to explicit imperialism could be a critique of it’s structure which requires the accumulation of resources and submission of colonies. However, in the context of the show, it could also be explained as having bad people in charge.
Before I spend too much time on this, what exactly do you consider explicit leftist messaging in media?
There’s sure to be a lot of ways to do it, but to meet the criteria of explicit, for me, I think there would have to be a few things.
An explicit critique of a system of oppression that is focused on its mechanics rather than the people in charge of it.
A collective effort to replace it with something better (not installing a “better person” to rule and calling it a day).
To me, explicit means that it could not fairly be interpreted through the lens of liberal ideology.
For instance, Iron Blooded Orphans does a good job of achieving number one. I don’t know if it makes it to point two because I didn’t finish it.
Edit: for example, I think that Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is an explicitly leftist piece of media that is directed at young people, and it never says the word capitalism
Ok, for the most part your definitions aren’t unreasonable, but
is gonna be an impossibly high bar to climb, because capital is nothing if not famous for subsuming critiques of it into itself. And we’re also going to run into a particular snag with regards to Mobile Suit Gundam because of, um, the history of Left-wing movements in Japan.
The reason you’ll see people say that Gundam (and shows from around that same era like Nausicaa and Space Battleship Yamoto) have left wing politics embedded in them is because their creators were involved in Left-wing student movements when they were young, and those politics leak through into their work. Here’s an excellent primer I found on Zenkyoto (the Japanese New Left) and it’s influence on Japanese pop culture, I strongly recommend you give it a read before continuing because I’m not sure my takes here will make sense without that historical context.
With regards to MS Gundam itself, I think it’s important to keep in mind that it was a piece of media written by survivors of WW2 explicitly designed as an anti-fascist work first and foremost, and… then also to sell plastic toys to children. So you’ll get really thoughtful episodes about how fascism gets ordinary people on board with it by building a false class consciousness based on imagined hierarchy’s, or how cycles of violence perpetuate those fascist lines of thinking, or how in the end only the working class on both sides is actually hurt by the war, in storytelling and messaging that isn’t liberal both-sides equivocating but just a straight up condemnation of fascism as a concept, using analysis that’s more Marxist than anything. But also, Pew Pew Laser fights with Giant Robots.
Granted, the show doesn’t explicitly advocate for communism, but the idea of Newtypes, a new generation of youth capable of empathy so great they can read minds and communicate directly to each other as equals, being the only people capable of ending the war and bringing about a better world betrays at least some of the the creator’s socialist leanings at the time, at least in my opinion.
(Also, just as an amusing sidenote, Char’s popularity probably has less to do with him being the charismatic anti-hero and more to do with how much thirsty cis-women really wanted him to bang Amuro in gay fanfic that’s almost entirely disconnected from any official narrative.)
With Zeta: the main character is a student who runs off and joins a paramilitary organisation in order to conduct a guerilla war against a fascistic occupying imperial power, and Char comes back as the second coming of Che Guevara. Zeta is absolutely a commentary on Japan’s role post-WW2 in America’s Empire, and shouldn’t need much elaboration, since it practically starts off as a romanticized leftist student’s escapist fantasy (and who could blame them, as a student in the 70’s who wouldn’t want to run off and join a guerilla war with Che). The Federation Operation Paperclips it’s own Zaku’s and is basically running it’s own Project MKULTRA, for crying out loud.
But here’s the snag.
See, the Japanese New Left was crushed by the same forces of neoliberal capital that crushed left-wing movements across the world- it was crushed by Reaganism and Thatcherism and the LDP. The reason the student activists turned to art and film, started writing their own Sci-fi tv shows and movies, was to channel their frustration at failing to build a better world in their own time, and spread their ideas to a new generation in the hopes that they would pick up where they left off.
In Zeta, the left doesn’t win because the left didn’t win in real life. All that was achieved was to kick the can down the road, at great personal cost. “We stopped the Imperialist Fascist Military Industrial Complex, temporarily. Yaaaaaaay.”
So, how do we evaluate works like these? Can a piece of media be truly “leftist” if it portrays the defeat of the left, since that just furthers Capitalist Realism? However, at the same time, if it’s reflecting a historical reality in it’s fictional setting, can we safely dismiss it if we’re historical materialists? Again, I don’t necessarily think that your definitions are unreasonable, but I think we should allow for the historical context and some levels of nuance to speak for themselves here.
Oh fuck really? I thought that it was mostly Bandai influence on it. (I guess that should be a tell
) G-Witch was my first gundam, I figured that it would at least usually turn out okay