Anime Explosion!

by Drazen, Patrick

  Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998) is a film written by Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell), directed by Hiroyuki Okiura (who has worked on Akira, Memories, and Ghost in the Shell, among many others), and based on that science fiction staple: the alternate history. In this case, in a reimagining of the post–World War II era, Japan borrows from the worst of Nazi society, including hi-tech soldiers who patrol the streets, looking for Red Riding Hoods. This is the fanciful name given to terrorist bombers (usually young girls) who try to resist Japanese Fascism. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade starts when one soldier, Kazuki Fuse, sees Nanami, a Red Riding Hood, set off a bomb, killing herself in the process. Drawn against his will to her funeral, trying to understand what drove such a child, he meets Kei, the bomber’s older sister. Their inevitable affair pushes Fuse to start questioning the military that he has blindly served.2

  The Big One

  The atomic bomb appears in several different disguises in Japanese pop culture, including the historical bombs of 1945. When Aki-e no Komichi (The Path to Autumn), a shojo manga by Hideko Tachikake, was published in book form in 1985 after being serialized in Ribon magazine, the last four pages of the book carried an autobiographical piece, “Watashi no Kyofusho” (“My Morbid Fear”). The artist talks about her obsessive speculations about death—speculations that trace back to her connection to World War II. Her mother, she notes, was born in 1932, lived through the war, lost her father who was fighting in the South Pacific, and still panics if a movie on TV sounds an air-raid siren. In the end Tachikake adds her voice to the cry of “No more war!” uttered by none other than pop singer Boy George, whose band Culture Club had an anti-war song on the charts at the time. The ending can seem silly, and the impression is reinforced by the fact that Tachikake draws herself in “super-deformed” mode. Only the realization that she means every word of this story saves it from triviality.

  Barefoot Gen is about Hiroshima and its aftermath, so of course the bomb figures prominently. Manga artist Keiji Nakazawa appears as Gen Nakaoka in this semi-autobiographical story, animated in 1983. The visual style is simple, and very cartoonish—until the moment of the explosion. Then the audience sees—in slow motion—the various ways the bomb killed the people of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Few of these hellish images were based on the manga, but one powerful image appeared both in print and on the screen: the image of a horse galloping down the street in panic, its mane on fire.

  The bomb appears by allusion in the 1998 anime of Hiroshi Takashige’s manga Spriggan. America’s Central Intelligence Agency controls a so-called Machiner’s Platoon made up of cyborg soldiers. Two of these soldiers are nicknamed after the bombs America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Fat Man and Little Boy.

  Gall Force: Chikyusho 1 (Gall Force: Earth Chapter One) is set in a distant post-atomic-war future. The superpowers have blighted the planet, but have hidden a total of thirty bombs “just in case.” These bombs are discovered and almost used against an invasion of aliens—but that plan is abandoned at the last minute, partly because nobody wants to unleash the horror again.

  In another story, set a thousand years after nuclear annihilation, somebody is indeed ready to unleash it again. Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind shows an Earth with a disrupted ecosystem, ravaged by giant insects and toxic jungles. It also gives us an elaborate metaphor for the seven-day atomic war that brought this all about: seven gigantic faceless beings called God-Soldiers. They were believed to have perished in their own fire, but the big-as-a-house heart of one God-Soldier has survived, still beating. Queen Kushana of Torumekia is bent on regenerating the last God-Soldier as a weapon against the giant insects. However, she uses it before it has finished regenerating and, after one powerful attack, the nascent God-Soldier falls apart.

  Science fiction such as Nausicaä is politically safer (for the most part) than history, and futuristic warfare is a science-fiction staple in anime, reflecting the influence of Western movies such as Star Wars. One recurring theme in these future-war movies is that the ultimate weapon may in fact be too much for us to handle. Memories and Nausicaä sounded that theme; this is also the dilemma of M.D. Geist (1986), about an enhanced bio-mech warrior who functions as an awesome one-man army. His existence, however, begs the question of what to do with him in peacetime.

  Reiji Matsumoto created three manga reflections on the war that were animated in 1994 as a feature titled The Cockpit. The first story, “Slipstream,” poses an interesting question: what if the Germans had developed the atomic bomb, as they were known to be trying to do? Matsumoto’s protagonist, a Luftwaffe pilot named Erhardt von Rheindars, is assigned to guard the German bomb. His decision to deliberately fail the mission is understandable, given that von Rheindars has been a single-combat knight now threatened with retirement because of a weapon of mass destruction.

  Wanna Buy a Gun?

  Since World War II, Japan has been more inclined toward trade wars than the shooting variety. But the worlds of military and money cometogether in the arms dealer, who has become a handy villain in modern anime. The head of Ajo Heavy Industries in Key the Metal Idol does much more than promote idol singer Miho Utsuse; he uses her stage shows to help develop battle robots that can be controlled by the mind of a single person. He doesn’t even do it for the sake of the nation; he just wants to market the technology to the highest bidder.

  Looking back to medieval Japan, Lady Eboshi in Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece Princess Mononoke is a different kind of war profiteer. On the one hand, she demonstrates humanism rare for her time in establishing Tataraba (“Irontown” in Neil Gaiman’s English adaptation). Lady Eboshi created employment for lepers, prostitutes, and the dregs of Japanese society by putting them to work in her colossal iron smelting works. On the other hand, they do not make pots and pans, forks and knives. Rather, they make guns and bullets, which are eagerly purchased by warlords jockeying for political power. It’s bad enough that Eboshi is a war profiteer; she is destroying Japan’s ecosystem in the process. Miyazaki intends the viewer to note that the two forms of pollution are related, as in Nausicaä.

  The ultimate weapon meets the war profiteer to disastrous results in Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994).3 In a plot with more than a nod toward Ridley Scott’s Alien and its sequels, an indestructible and unstoppable monster, called Zeiram, is causing interplanetary havoc. However, he’s not the villain of the piece. That place is reserved for Vice President Putubai of the Tadon Tibaday Corporation. He tried to harness Zeiram for use as a weapon but (of course) couldn’t, leading to the deaths of dozens of people and the need for an elaborate cover-up.

  Katsuhiro Otomo’s Roujin Z (1991) has a more humorous take on economic militarism. The government ministry in charge of health care for old folks introduces a semi-sentient hospital bed. This automated marvel provides for all the patient’s needs, from feeding and cleaning to entertainment and physical therapy. However, the bed also exists to test prototype circuitry that will be used in warfare. Unfortunately for the government minister who thought up this scheme, he didn’t count on some college students and old-age pensioners hacking their way into the bed’s main brain. . . .4

  At the far humorous end of this continuum is the current president of Mishima Heavy Industries, Akiko Natsume. When her father was still running the corporation, she fell in love with and married Kyusaku Natsume, one of the company scientists. However, when Natsume realizes that the NK-1124 android he is working on is supposed to be used in warfare, he steals it and the couple’s son, Ryunosuke. He modifies the android to be a companion to the boy, but since this is a comedy, the biological component of this biomech android can’t be human. This wasn’t the place for the existential angst of Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop or Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell. This android is driven instead by the brain of a stray cat, one that Ryunosuke befriended and that was killed during a strafing run by Akiko’s Office Ladies. What results is Nuku Nuku, title character of a series of OAVs released betw
een 1992 and 1994, whom Antonia Levi has called “an ultimate weapon which can be easily distracted by a ball of string.”5

  Give Peace a Chance

  Finding humor in war itself (or rather in the inability of war to accomplish what can best be done by peaceful means) is the territory of the animated television series and OAVs known as The Irresponsible Captain Tylor (1992). Based on a series of novels by Taira Yoshioka, this story tells of a youthful spaceship commander in charge of a ship with a misfit crew and even a misfit name: the Soyokaze (Gentle Breeze). It’s the only ship of the line whose bridge includes that staple of Japanese bars: a tanuki statue. In other words, Tylor is more fraternity party animal than samurai warrior. His response to military threats is swift and unconditional surrender. Yet, somehow, everything always works out for the best.

  A very different kind of science-fiction critique of war is the TV series Shin Kido Senki Gundam W (New Mobile Report Gundam Wing, 1995). This forty-nine-part story is only one recent manifestation of the Gundam franchise, which has been animated one way or another for two decades. In this manifestation, there is war tension between the Earth, which has combined all nations into a world government, and the outlying space colonies. These tensions are in fact being aggravated by a faction of the Earth military (a secret society calling itself Organization of Zodiac,6 or OZ) and the greedy industrialists of the Romefeller Foundation. Military repression by OZ begets military response (in the rebel group White Fang, and in a breakaway faction of OZ that swears allegiance to one of its generals), but there are two main forces countering the war-hungry on both sides. One is a quintet of teenage boys, each piloting a giant humanoid robot known as a Gundam (having been built of indestructible Gundanium alloy). These warrior robots wreak whatever havoc they can on the military, although the pilots’ lives and psyches are often threatened in the process. The second countervailing force is the absolute belief in pacifism embraced by Relena Peacecraft. Her father, the Foreign Minister of Earth, is assassinated early in the series, and she sets out in her own way to bring a nonviolent end to the war. As TV series go, this is an oddity, with the action switching between giant robots blasting each other apart and talking heads debating the practicality of pacifism. But this conflicted series about the future may be the best commentary on Japan’s conflicted past and present regarding warfare.

  Some anime have been set in a postwar milieu, which emphasizes that the aftermath of war has its own set of problems. Giving peace a chance isn’t always easy.

  Fullmetal Alchemist takes place after a war between the government of Amestris and the residents of Ishbal. What the audience sees is the aftermath: the disrupted, generally destroyed lives of the Ishbalans, reduced to refugee status.

  As the title suggests, this anime, and the manga that inspired it, focuses on one unlikely alchemist: a teenager named Edward Elric. With his younger brother Alphonse, he enjoys a happy and carefree childhood, despite their alchemist father being away most of the time. This includes the sudden illness and death of their mother, and with no way to communicate with their father, the brothers try to perform the only forbidden act in alchemy: raise their mother from the dead. Not only do they fail to do this, but also the price of their failure is two of Edward’s limbs and Al’s entire body.

  Ed then becomes a State Alchemist, employed by the State Military of Amestris, which annihilated most of the Ishbalan race over the past decade. Becoming a State Alchemist enables Ed to use the extensive resources available to State Alchemists, but it also turns him into what many call a “dog of the military.” His friendly relationship with his commanding officer, Colonel Roy Mustang, allows the brothers freedom to search for the Philosopher’s Stone as part of Edward’s research, as each State Alchemist is expected to independently research new things that may be of use to the State Military. The brothers search for the Philosopher’s Stone as a means to restore their bodies. Throughout their journey, they meet many antagonists, including Scar, one of the surviving Ishbalans who seeks vengeance on the State Alchemists for the destruction of his race, and the Homunculi, a group of human-like creatures who carry pieces of the Philosopher’s Stone inside themselves and from it derive the ability to survive almost any harm.

  An anime series titled Pumpkin Scissors started out as a manga by Ryotaro Iwanaga. The story begins with a war between two nations, the Royal Empire and the Republic of Frost, ending by a cease-fire literally in the first minute of the anime. The rest of the series focuses on a group of military recruits, heading out not to kill the enemy on the battlefield but to perform relief missions. The mission is complicated by the starvation and disease that afflict the Empire’s people, and the postwar criminals who chose to survive through “money, power, and lies.” Section III of the Empire’s army is commanded by Second Lieutenant Alice Malvin, who compares the postwar crime and corruption to the thick skin of a pumpkin; combating the corruption and restoring justice to society requires them to act like a very tough pair of scissors, hence the title. This is probably the closest anime comes to portraying—even in European disguise with elements of science fiction thrown in—the realities of Japan’s Self-Defense Force.

  2nd GIG, the second season of the television series Stand Alone Complex, based on Mamoru Oshii and Masamune Shirow’s groundbreaking film Ghost in the Shell, takes place in the aftermath of World War IV. The audience doesn’t get the entire panorama of the war or its aftermath, but the series shows Tokyo as ruined in part by atomic weapons (and consequently with “hot spots” still too radioactive to build on) and compounds built to house foreign refugees who escaped to Japan.

  S.A.C. 2nd GIG reveals a significant amount of backstory that was only vaguely talked about during the first season, including information about the last two world wars. Between the turn of the century and 2032, there was nuclear World War III, and the non-nuclear World War IV, also known as the Second Vietnam War. The increase in independent states and sovereign regions grew from the chaos of the last thirty years. The planet remains divided and several locations exist on the planet where sovereignty is in question, where no one is really sure who owns or governs what.

  The Battleship Yamato

  Reiji Matsumoto is known for his impressive themes, plots, characters . . . and vehicles. Hardly any other creator of anime or manga has brought so many fanciful modes of transportation so vividly to life. Think of the interplanetary cruiser disguised as a steam locomotive in Galaxy Express 999, or Queen Emeraldas and the spaceship built out of an old pirate schooner.

  Most American fans were first made aware of these marvels when Derek Wildstar walked on what was once the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the first episode of Star Blazers (1974). Known in Japan as Uchu SenkanYamato (Space Battleship Yamato), the series featured a spaceship built onto the hull of an old battleship. To Americans, this might just be a fancy design concept. Japanese viewers know, however, that this isn’t just a random battleship; it’s the Yamato.

  As international tension rose in the late 1930s, a naval arms race ensued, and the Imperial Japanese Navy was aware the United States would be a formidable enemy, much richer in manpower and material than Japan. Their response was to protect themselves with the ultimate battleship. The Yamato and her sister ship, the Musashi, were the largest and most powerful battleships ever built. Completed in December 1941, as Japan plunged into war with the U.S., the Yamato (the ancient name for Japan) was built in the Mitsubishi Shipyards in Nagasaki. At 863 feet long (almost three football fields), it was bigger than most aircraft carriers of the day, and required a crew of 2,500 men. Its main weapons were nine cannon, mounted on three triple-gun turrets each capable of firing shells eighteen inches in diameter—a design that remains in the space-cruiser version, which shoots laser beams instead of artillery shells. (For comparison’s sake, the next largest Japanese battleship, the Nagato, was 725 feet long, carried a crew of 1,368, and had eight cannon firing 16-inch shells.)

  The sheer size of the Yamato was also its great we
akness: all that power came at the expense of speed. It couldn’t go any faster than 27 knots. Because the Yamato could not keep up with fleet carriers, the Imperial Navy was reluctant to use her as a carrier escort.

  In April 1945 Yamato was sent on what turned out to be a suicide mission, a last-ditch effort to stave off the Allied invasion of Okinawa. Attacked by nearly four hundred planes, it was hit with between eleven and fifteen torpedoes and seven bombs. One of the torpedoes happened to hit the ammunition hold: The resulting explosion split the hull of the Yamato in two, and the ship sank with the loss of nearly its entire crew. This event marked the end of the Imperial Japanese Navy, but not (if Star Blazers is to be believed) the end of the Yamato.

  For the second season, when director Kenji Kamiyama discussed the theme with Mamoru Oshii, they decided that they could not avoid the issue of war: “We simply couldn’t ignore the way society had evolved since the events of 9-11: That was the approach we decided to take, and I tried to illustrate a 21st century (near-future) war. But to tell you the truth, I couldn’t avoid feeding back into modern reality.”7

  Peace as Kids’ Stuff

  Even the most juvenile modern animation can contain an anti-war message. Such is the case with the 1985 film Minky Momo: La Ronde in My Dreams (released in the West as Magical Princess Gigi and the Fountain of Youth). The titular magical girl watches her earthly foster parents take off for a tropical vacation, then investigates when their plane vanishes. The jet has been hijacked by Peter Pan(!), who controls a Fountain of Youth, and (true to his belief that one should never grow up) has been reverting grownups back to childhood. Even in this story, we see the forces of the world military trying to take over the fountain. In the end, Peter packs everything up and leaves the planet, restoring the former grownups and saying that the Earth isn’t ready for what the Fountain of Youth has to offer.