I watched the most recent episode of 16 bit Sensation, a mostly-original adaptation of Wakaki Tamiki's Manga of the same name.
It is a good show, but like is common in his work, there's surprising amounts of themes and views portrayed that hint at a leftist worldview. When I went to investigate by reading his blog, I was not able to discover much even from his political posts. Making sense of Japanese politics is hard, especially when filtered through a bad machine translation.
I would like to know if there are any, particularly modern, mangaka or anime directors you know of that explicitly identify with the political left or are anticapitalist in spite of the nature of bourgeois media.
Hayao Miyazaki is of course the big example, explicitly identifying as a Marxist until the second half of the 1980s. He abandoned those positions afterwards, but his utopian environmentalist pacifism remained.
Mamoru Oshii was a member of the 1960s/1970s new left and his works heavily lean on those experiences. An episode of Patlabor's second OVA is a parody of the whole era in fact. The live action version of this Mecha show is filled with random hammer and sickles, Mao Zedongs etc. for seemingly no reason. Vlad Love features a joke mocking the social democrats' "you can't do that" attitude.
Riyoko Ikeda of Rose of Versailles' fame was a member of the Japanese Communist Party youth in the 1970s. Iirc she would later deradicalize and even have a high profile affair with a right wing politician in the mid 80s.
Osamu Tezuka was reportedly a member of the Communist Party. He died in 1989.
Are there more modern examples?
Not outwardly communist or even leftist, but ONE's manga/webcomics (One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100) both have as essentially the core message "true strength is the ability to make friends"
Which is still pretty incredible compared to 99% of manga
I don't know some parts of Mob Psycho 100 were going into the "Pull yourself up by your boot-straps"-direction too much I would say.
Tell me you never watched mob psycho without telling me.
Do you mean about the NEET guy? I feel like actual social problems (poverty, homelessness, etc.) don't really come up at all - it definitely has a moral of "only you can begin the process of helping yourself", and the 'good ending' for various villains is just getting 'normal' jobs in what is still a capitalist society, but the actual path to becoming a better person is always reaching out and connecting with the people around you.
Like, Mob's incredible power, which is a standard gimmick in any one of the thousands of regular kinda-fascist-ubermensch power fantasy type manga, doesn't help him at all as a person, only his relationships and developing friendships do. I guess the biggest problem is that it's an inspiring story for becoming a better person, but set in a world that isn't coming apart at the seams the way ours is.
Yea its kind of absurd to think the "growing up as a person" theme is problematic.
everyone should watch mob psycho, its such a gem.