Lessons from Past Anime #1: Patriotism (1930s)

In this series of videos, I will talk about various important lessons that one can learn from anime, based on how they evolved. It’s not going to be something mentioned in a show; it’s rather something completely meta that has to do with the industry and the medium in general. I believe these lessons are very important for newbies, since history repeats itself when we don’t learn from it.

The first historical lesson has to do with patriotism and how it was handled in anime of the 1930s. Animation in Japan was three decades old at the time and was stuck to being nothing more than short stories, almost always fairy tales or comedies. When the medium finally managed to evolve into something more than that, it ended up being military propaganda. It wasn’t limited to anime but animation in general, as everybody was using cartoons for promoting the military of his country.

There is nothing wrong with having militarism in cartoons or anime. There is no issue in having stories full of armies and soldiers and battles. History is almost entirely made up of warfare, so including it in animation is just another way of showing a vital part of human societies. There is also nothing wrong with having patriotic tendencies. Making animation that presents the country it was made in to seem like a wonderful place to live in is just presenting things in a positive way. It’s obviously promoting an agenda, but then again what doesn’t?

Every story promotes some sort of agenda. Even classic fairy tales do despite being considered innocent and pure by most. The protagonists are always nobles or peasants who try to marry nobles. Step mothers are always evil. That sort of thing.

The issue becomes apparent when you promote one agenda by discrediting another agenda. And that’s the thing with all these military propaganda anime and cartoons. They are not just promoting patriotism by showing the prowess of their military. They show the prowess by ridiculing another military. From another country. An existing country. For America it was Germany, for Japan it was America.

Take the old G.I.Joe cartoon for example. It was obviously promoting the American military and it was obviously patriotic but the heroes were not fighting the military of other nations. They were fighting a fictional criminal organization that didn’t have a fixed position on the world, or a steady support from specific countries.

Another example is Area 88. It is about the military, fighting specifically in the Middle East, but they are not taking sides. Whom they are fighting doesn’t matter as much as how it affects them psychologically. By extension, the best war dramas and patriotic movies are not those which are ridiculing Germany or any other nation. It’s those which show the psychological pressure during wartime and perhaps its aftereffects. They are promoting something, but they don’t do it in the expense of something else.

The reason this is supposed to be a lesson despite being so obvious is because Japan is repeating this mistake in recent years with its horrible military propaganda anime (Mahouka, Gate). And what did you know, they are all based on light novels. It’s almost as if that medium exists for promoting sick fetishes of sociopaths and social rejects. And yet here it is, adapted into anime and loved by thousands of people who don’t give a shit about the terrible message they promote.

But then again who cares about Japan ridiculing other countries when you get to see some generic self-insert banging his sister or having his own harem of generic fantasy tropes? It’s not degrading or something like that, and you don’t have to learn a single thing.