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.
Thanks. The historical context is helpful. I’m actually less concerned with the official designation of “leftist” and more interested in readings of media that you provided here. At the very least, I think it’s certainly “left wing” as you describe it.
Also, I’m glad you brought up newtypes. I was going to bring that up in my original post, but I forgot. It seems like that’s real fascist aesthetic, especially seeing as how it’s formulated by Zeon to justify racial superiority. It’s interesting, though, that a newtype’s superpower is empathy, which is decidedly not fascist. Regardless of the political messaging, I think the stories would be better without newtypes anyway.
Hey, no worries, it was fun to write all that. I just asked about your definitions to get a baseline and so I don’t waste my time arguing with an ultra who wouldn’t be satisfied by any answer I’d provide (this is from experience haha).
I think the stories would be better without newtypes anyway.
In some ways, I think this is kinda the original sin of Gundam. Tomino certainly meant it in one way, as a sort-of sci-fi extrapolation of the kind of person needed to bring about the Revolution, but the way he did it left open the door to an interpretation that presupposes a technological/evolutionary solution to all war and conflict, where humanity can only move on/establish peace/do the Revolution once humans have created the technology/evolved enough to do so, and subsequent authors kinda took that theme and abandoned the socialism from it so you end up with a kinda muddled techno liberalism, in something like Gundam Seed. I sorta get why Tomino did it the way he did, as a sci-fi allegory for the political awakening of the youth into a new way of thinking (especially in light of the failure of the New Left), but I think in sorta glomming onto that sci-fi framework of espers and human evolution he abandoned the idea that socialism was something that had to be worked on towards by ordinary people.
You know, with that description, I’m reminded of the idea of the New Soviet Man.
From wikipedia:
a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific development.[3] For example, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1924 in Literature and Revolution about the “Communist man”, “man of the future”:[4]
Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.
Of course, Tomino’s take is kind of in reverse. He has this idea that the awakened people will lead us to revolution rather than revolution leading to awakened people.
Right, exactly! And this is a rather common theme of sci-fi of the preceding era, so of course it’ll get this particular spin from survivors of a scattered leftist movement. And then as you follow Tomino’s work you kinda get to see in realtime his disillusionment with both this particular conception (as the youth failed to take up the mantle of social change and instead turned their struggles inwards e.g. Evangelion) and socialism in general, until you get to Turn A Gundam which is a work about the question of whether or not humanity can ever move past the need for violence.
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.
Thanks. The historical context is helpful. I’m actually less concerned with the official designation of “leftist” and more interested in readings of media that you provided here. At the very least, I think it’s certainly “left wing” as you describe it.
Also, I’m glad you brought up newtypes. I was going to bring that up in my original post, but I forgot. It seems like that’s real fascist aesthetic, especially seeing as how it’s formulated by Zeon to justify racial superiority. It’s interesting, though, that a newtype’s superpower is empathy, which is decidedly not fascist. Regardless of the political messaging, I think the stories would be better without newtypes anyway.
Hey, no worries, it was fun to write all that. I just asked about your definitions to get a baseline and so I don’t waste my time arguing with an ultra who wouldn’t be satisfied by any answer I’d provide (this is from experience haha).
In some ways, I think this is kinda the original sin of Gundam. Tomino certainly meant it in one way, as a sort-of sci-fi extrapolation of the kind of person needed to bring about the Revolution, but the way he did it left open the door to an interpretation that presupposes a technological/evolutionary solution to all war and conflict, where humanity can only move on/establish peace/do the Revolution once humans have created the technology/evolved enough to do so, and subsequent authors kinda took that theme and abandoned the socialism from it so you end up with a kinda muddled techno liberalism, in something like Gundam Seed. I sorta get why Tomino did it the way he did, as a sci-fi allegory for the political awakening of the youth into a new way of thinking (especially in light of the failure of the New Left), but I think in sorta glomming onto that sci-fi framework of espers and human evolution he abandoned the idea that socialism was something that had to be worked on towards by ordinary people.
You know, with that description, I’m reminded of the idea of the New Soviet Man.
From wikipedia:
Of course, Tomino’s take is kind of in reverse. He has this idea that the awakened people will lead us to revolution rather than revolution leading to awakened people.
Right, exactly! And this is a rather common theme of sci-fi of the preceding era, so of course it’ll get this particular spin from survivors of a scattered leftist movement. And then as you follow Tomino’s work you kinda get to see in realtime his disillusionment with both this particular conception (as the youth failed to take up the mantle of social change and instead turned their struggles inwards e.g. Evangelion) and socialism in general, until you get to Turn A Gundam which is a work about the question of whether or not humanity can ever move past the need for violence.