Ah yes, famously conservative media like One Piece, Ghost in the Shell, Gundam, Princess Mononoke, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Cowboy Bebop

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Monster is comically anticommunist, at least. Like, I think there might be one episode where they "both sides" things a little, and obviously it's also anti-Nazi, but the main plot hinges on completely absurd anticommunist brainworms about Soviets torturing children to, uh, make another Hitler or something? It's really hard to keep track of what anything means because the mangaka has the worst Mystery Box proclivity that I've seen in literally any medium.

    Meanwhile I think Chainsaw man is at least mildly progressive, way to OOP's left, considering the allegory about nukes that implicates the Japanese and US governments in absolutely heinous crimes. idk, I guess you're right that Denji being porn-brained means channers would like it, but is that really why it's on here?

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      5 months ago

      I don’t think the Soviets were involved, at least not up to the episodes I’ve seen. Rather, it’s Neo Nazis being prevalent in east Germany and other Warsaw pact countries doing experiments on children. It would’ve been a great plot point had the author been a little more woke and made the story part of a larger CIA/GLADIO type operation.

      Fuck man. It could’ve been so great. Historically, there have been psychological and authority figures in the serial killer and systemic child abuse world that overlap with intelligence operations (not talking about satanic panic either). Not to mention the Brabant massacres were literally the CIA and NATO cultivating neo nazi serial killers. This was the once chance GLADIO could’ve been portrayed in an anime, and it will likely never happen again.

      • commiecapybara [he/him, e/em/eir]
        ·
        4 months ago

        I'd highly suggest reading Banana Fish (manga); without spoiling too much, the main antagonist is the head of the Corsican mafia, and the author doesn't shy away from explicitly namedropping the CIA and its anticommunist operations in South America and Vietnam (among others), or the systemic abuse of children from marginalized backgrounds by the US government. The anime is good too, but it's set in the 2010s rather than the 1980s so some of the changes don't make sense (e.g. replacing the Vietnam War with the Iraq War).