I don’t know of any other anime especially in the last twenty years to actually make mention of capitalism, capitalists, or anything to do with socialism, not just the concepts but the words themselves

It’s amazing how entire concepts that define human existence can just be obliterated wholesale from an entire medium of creative expression and entertainment

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Yeah there are a lot of shows that deal with vague anti-capitalist themes. Kaiji is a good one. Uchoten Kazoku deals with class struggle too. Bunch of other good ones mentioned in this thread.

    I'm pretty sure Monster mentions socialism and capitalism explicitly a few times, but socialism is presented negatively. Parts of it take place in former East Germany and some characters were Stasi. I'm also pretty sure Legend of the Galatic heroes mentions capitalism directly by name at least once and negatively. Also there's a workers' rebellion at one point.

    Porco Rosso is very explicitly anti-fascist and also my favorite Ghibli movie

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Kaiji is a good one

      This is what actually prompted the thread, I'm 20 episodes into Kaiji and while it's an amazing anti-capitalist piece, never is the dominate economic system ever mentioned, not even once, even when the main villain poetically outlines the reality of class struggle to the main character, it's all filtered thru metaphor, symbolism and "sayings"

      Made me start to wonder if there's some censorious law in Japan that prevents media from being overtly political, even one about debt and surviving in the middle of Japan's lost decade