Untitled

So, I just finished my consumption of our Name, Hetalia: Axis Powers, and Sensōron, and I have to say, that besides Our Name, I found these to be subpar at best in terms of content. However, In relation to their discussions of nationalism, or rather how they exemplify such ideologies, I found them to be perfect. Oh, also, I just have to say, Our Name has got to have some of the best animation of any anime that I have watched, really wish that such high quality was the norm.

Starting with the most extreme of these pieces of media, I found Sensōron to be horrid. As a far right, neo-nationalist talk piece, this manga was nothing more than a smoldering hunk of nonsense. Through the entirety of the manga, the author is trying to bolster nationalist sentiments through a wide variety of ways, but the most prevalent of them is the same tactic used by far-right groups all over the world, calling everything that does not appeal to your agenda fake. And in Sensōron, the main target for this was Japan’s imperial past, particularly some of its many war crimes, that it has still not apologized properly for. The reason why such things are covered up by such groups is because it makes Japan look bad, and when the goal is to bolster nationalism, you get rid of what makes your country look bad. What’s most notable is that the main tactic used by the author is to demonize anyone and anything that opposes his goals or ambitions, by mocking them outright.

I also liked how Our Name commented on nationalism, because it took a very different approach. It instead tried to appeal to a shared sense of community to bolster national pride. Because of the idea that you will feel more nationalist sentiments if you can actually know and feel connected to your fellow countrymen. And in Japan, this idealized community is the rural village, and thus, this anime calls upon this trope and connects the viewer to it. And this as a whole, makes the viewer feel a connection to the village and thus want to be part of it, the desire to be part of a society with shared values and ideals is the nationalism fostered by this anime. This also contrasts with the nationalist views seen in Hetalia: Axis Powers, because in this anime, the nationalism it fosters is more akin to Sensōron, as it relies on a falsified history to make a narrative where Japan is shown in the best light.

I just finished my viewings of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and I really enjoyed how each of these shows (or cutscenes in Xenoblade) were able to comment on environmentalism and the impact that humans have on the environment. While both take place in a time far in the future where the damage caused by humans to the environment is already so grand and happened so far in the past, these anime are able to comment on our potential futures. As in, they show their audience the grim fate that may await us one day if we continue on our path of ecological destruction.

 Many people view the environment as a tool or resource to be used by humans, and the value of a given ecosystem or environment comes from the value that we as humans can extract from it. Be it logging or drilling for oil, these places are valuable to people because they can extract what is useful to people from them in vast quantities. And over many years of such ideologies, we have arrived at our current time. Where thousands of acres of forest are cut down every day, we lose dozens of species each and every week, and climate change is only ramping up in its impact. The treatment of the environment as something outside of human consideration is so devastating for it that we have arrived at our current situation. And because the ideals of instrumentalism are so ingrained into so many people, trying to open their eyes to the damage they are causing is like trying to teach an old dog a new trick. And I like how Nausicaä was able to comment on this idea, how there are so many who live in opposition to nature. By our stubborn refusal to acknowledge the intrinsic value of our environment, we have led our planet on a march to its destruction. The likes of which, when we do meet our coming fate, will, without a doubt, spell the end of humanity’s reign on our planet.

What’s more, these anime’s brought to attention the fact that many, even when they see that their actions are detrimental to the environment, will still continue to do whatever is in their interests, regardless of the damage. We are so stubborn in our ways and so unwilling to change, especially if it costs any sum of money, that even when the solutions to the environmental problems we face are right in our face, we take no action. Allow me to give a super prevalent example of just this, and that is, how we deal with invasive species. Invasive species are the worst, and a lot of the time, especially when they directly do damage, the best solution is to simply get rid of them. And for things like lionfish and pythons, the mass culling of them is widely supported. As it should be! These species have done so much harm that the only solution is for them to die. However, there is another species that causes so much more harm than either of these, and yet, people are very adamant against it, even though they are so bad for the environment’s health. That is, stray cats, which have caused so much harm all over the world. In fact, cats have been solely responsible for hundreds of species going extinct. They are such a problem, and the harm that they have done has one effective solution, the culling of excess. But, no, people think that this is wrong, and it is that fact that has stopped any meaningful effort to end the harm that these creatures have caused.

I just finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion, and boy was that a full ride! At first, I thought that this was just going to be your typical mecha anime, you know, where the main character gets his big awesome robot and saves the world. But I was very pleased to see that while this theme was pretty much followed, our main character differed a lot from the norm for this narrative, that being, the main character being this super macho and confident type of guy that’s super passionate about his goals. Instead, Shinji is the oppositive of this, he doesn’t want the role that he was pushed into it, and this is reflective in a lot of his actions, and I liked how this story took this twist of the typical mecha narrative.

The fact that Shinji was kind of pushed into his role is undisputed fact, and not only did he not really want it, but he also wasn’t really suited for it. And we can see that through how he is just pretty bad at fighting, and he is slow to adapt to his role in the combative position. Shinji doesn’t really fit into the narrative of who you would consider fitting his position. To have such great power and responsibility wielding such a weapon, it would be expected that its wielder would be some brave and macho person who was willing and able to use said weapon whenever is required of them. But this is not who Shinji is, he isn’t really willing to enact violence whenever, and he doesn’t really fit the model macho persona. And, thus, we get the situation Shinji is put into. He needs to and is coerced by those around him, constantly at that, to conform to this standard that is expected of him by virtue of his position. He is made to act in a way very different to his nature, and this causes much strife for him. It’s exhausting to have to always act in a certain way to meet the expectations of those around you. And I think that a lot of Shinji’s actions, particularly where he blames those around him for his problems, are because of how often they pressure him into fitting the narrative they want to see in him. A very good example is how people around his always tell him things like “you’re a man aren’t you?”, this is manipulative and is meant to get him to act the way society expects of him.

I just finished watching Sailor Moon, Aggretsuko, and Wandering Son and I really enjoyed how each explores the construct of gender and the creation of identity. It was nice to see how each of these Anime’s were able to show the cultural and societal influence that surrounds gender identity. Especially how in many places in the world gender is typically only seen in binaries, and breaking these binaries is often met very apprehensively.

Before watching Sailor Moon, I had some experience with the Magical Girl genre through my prior experience watching the anime, Madoka Magica. Which, like Sailor Moon, used the narrative of superpowered young girls fighting some evil as a tool for empowerment, albeit the narrative in Madoka Magica is very different than that of Sailor Moon’s. Both anime are very successful in the empowerment of women through the girl power trope. By this, I mean, Sailor Moon shows its characters acting a very feminine way, their weapons are based on objects associated with feminine gender performance and the clothes they transform into are also very effeminate in nature. This enhances the concept that what is feminine is inherently powerful and makes one strong, and I think that creating this narrative is extremely important especially for a younger audience.

Aggretsuko comments a lot on the frustration that often results from the expectation that a sexed body should correlate to a certain sex and gender and must thus act in a certain architype created by society. When the individual preforms gender in such a way that it does not follow this architype, it often causes those around them, interacting with them, to become upset. Sex and gender performance are so strongly correlated that some become upset when an individual does not follow this rigid narrative. For this reason, many, like our main character in Aggretsuko are unable or afraid to express parts of themselves that don’t fit into the gendered architect assigned to them by society. To have to hide your love of death metal because it is considered to be a masculine trait is such a tragedy. One should never have to feel like they can’t express a part of themselves because of their gender and thus what is expected of them by society.

Of these anime, I really liked Wandering Son the most, specifically because of how it deals with societal treatment of the individual when they don’t conform to the gender expectations of society because of their sexed body. One thing in particular is that so many hold this idea that sex, gender, and sexuality are very strongly correlated, when in fact, this cannot be further from the truth. For example, there is a common expectation that gay men naturally act and talk in an effeminate way, it’s almost expected that if a man is gay, he is effeminate and the same is true vice versa. Our correlation and desire to connect ones sexual orientation to the way they act deeply reflects how many view sexuality as one gender being attracted to another different gender. And when one is attracted to the same gender as them, they act as the opposite gender than their own. This is, in my experience, why many think gay men act feminine, as a means to become for female so that they can express their sexual desire for the masculine. It is my opinion that we as a society should make an active effort to stop such notions, as they are often harmful assumptions.

The Fandom that I have the most intimate of experiences with is that surrounding the world of Reptile and Aquarium Keeping. Theres was a lot that went into me first discovering my love of this community and how I grew into being a part of it. To start, I got my first fish tank when I was about ten years old, and from there my passion only grew. From one small twenty-gallon tank to seven of them, my enjoyment of the hobby grew tremendously in my first few years in it. All I wanted to do was research different fish, which ones I could keep with which other ones, where they were from, what habitat they liked the most, how I could get them to exhibit natural behaviors, the list was never ending. My thirst for more grew by the day. It was about this time that I started to consolidate my passion both physically and metaphorically. I went from seven smaller freshwater tanks to a single one hundred- and twenty-five-gallon freshwater and another one-hundred-gallon saltwater tank.

It was at about this point where I decided to keep fish in as close to their natural habitat that I could, as such, I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours researching and buying everything I could to make exactly that possible. I wanted everything from the aquatic plants to the fish living in the tank to be like what you could find in a natural system, with my reference being streams from the southern end of the Amazon basin. My passion for the saltwater world and reptile keeping grew from this obsession I had over my first large aquarium. To keep with it chronologically, let’s first look at my saltwater journey. As I say other people in the aquarium world keeping both water types (salt and fresh) I too naturally wanted both. I was particularly fond of the elaborate reefs and coral systems that many were able to create. The art of creating what appeared and acted naturally from the unnatural fascinated me.

I loved to see how people could make these reef tanks look so beautiful, and I wanted to do what they could do. And so, after many hours of moving rocks around and spending far too much on coral, I was able to set up my own reef tank. What I loved most about the saltwater keeping community is the vast droves of knowledge that its members like to post online. This I found to be particularly helpful when it came to understanding water quality, and how to control it best. And as I spent more and more time on these forms I started to understand the lingo that those in the community like to use, that being very pretentious often academic jargon to describe even the most ordinary of ideas or topics. This, as I now know is how people in the community like to deter others from joining it, its made to seem intimidating intentionally. From what I have gathered from my time in places like fish stores or conventions, a lot of the reason that people often use academic jargon (for example, only referring to different species by their scientific names) in this hobby is because of how legitimizing it feels, you spend all this money on a single fish or coral, of course you want someone who knows its value to commend you. This barrier was easy enough to overcome, but it is ever present within the community, and can be hard to overcome at first.

As I grew in the hobby and attended more and more of these spaces where people of my hobby gathered, I was slowly introduced to the world of reptile keeping, which fascinated me to no end. I eventually decided to attend a reptile only convention for the first time shortly after this, and it was here that I got my very first reptile, a ball python I named Pricilla. She’s adorable, and I love her to no end, you can see the day I first got her below. Anyways, what makes me getting Pricilia so significant is because it’s the whole bit of these conventions. People spend months or even years breeding their reptiles for these shows, they spend hours trying for different morphs and color patterns. To the extent that some breeders spend thousands of dollars getting their animals genetically tested to see if they carry certain morph genes. It gets insane, and because so many people spend so many hours trying to produce and procure the coolest and most beautiful animals that they can, it’s no wonder they would want to show off a little to people who understand the effort that they put into it. At these expos, dozens of breeders and enthusiasts gather and at these expos you can often find some of the most novel animals and learn about the best and newest care techniques.

(ignore how bad this picture makes me look, I was young)

Because of the large amount of knowledge and time that is required to be a part of these hobbies there is a natural disconnect between those in the hobby and those outside of it. As such, a lot of the enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge that you accumulate while being in this fandom are not really understood by those outside of it. This leads many, myself included, to get very excited to talk with other fans about the goings within the fandom. It’s a very enjoyable experience to talk with another who shares your passion. The positive environment that this passion creates makes reptile and anime conventions to be very fun and creative spaces. For example, a recent aquarium show, Aquashella in Orlando, was a massive gathering of all types of Aquarium fans. People from all over the US gathered to show off their skills and share their knowledge. I really like going to these shows because of all the people I get to talk to while being there. Like, for example, I talked to this guy who has been selling goldfish for the last fifteen years for over an hour, and it was great being able to just nerd out with him. You can meet people who share your passions and understand why you have them.

I just finished watching Genshiken for the first time and I think overall it was a great anime! It highlighted a lot of the aspects of many of the fandoms and other communities I am a part of in such a way that it made me really think critically about the way that fandoms and the communities they form. This anime captured all the parts of fandoms that I can love and see for myself, from the obsessed nerdy archetype to quite fan who keeps their passions hidden.

Genshiken did a really good job at showing the many parts of fan cultures, what I think it did particularly well is showing how many people tend to hide their fan nature because of society and its views on the subject. Particularly when it comes to being a Fan of anime, In my experience people tend not to be as open of belonging to such fandoms as compared to sports fandoms for example. And this comes from the fact that being a fan of sports is much more socially acceptable than being an anime fan. This most likely stems from strangely common idea that all anime are weird or perverse in some way, which is no doubt a byproduct of sensationalism cherry picking some fringe examples of anime and using that as a base for all anime as a whole.

In Genshiken, we see the characters really start to open up inside of their club, it’s a space where they can be themselves and geek out with people who can understand their fan status and enjoy the exchange of that shadow cultural capital. The fact that such spaces are rare and hard to find in person, such a space would be wonderful to find ones community and others who share a common interest. This is a big problem for many anime fans because the ability to meet others in person who share their passion are often hard to find in places outside of anime conventions or the like. What’s more, I really like how the anime showed how many people, even super obsessed fans, can distance themselves from the fiction they enjoy. They realize the difference between reality and fiction and are proactive at creating this separation.

I deeply enjoyed watching Naruto, Wolf Children, and A Silent Voice and seeing how each of these anime commented on the universality of the human experience through the lens of identity, isolation, and connection. While they went about it in different ways, each of these shows explored our desire for societal connection and the struggle that many are faced with in their search for these relationships.

Naruto, being a shonen anime, very strongly depicts the struggle faced by the individual and the perseverance required of them in this search for community. Naruto is made to face constant challenges and dangers in order to one day be accepted into his village, which he was ostracized from at a very young age. Instead of rejecting the society that pushed him away, he did everything in this power to become part of it. He sought the warmth and embrace of societal recognition that he was willing to, on many occasions, risk his very life to get it. This goes to show the value that many people see in being a recognized member of society. It also goes to show the lengths that many must go through to get this recognition. This narrative shows the sacrifices that one must make, the things they must change about themselves to be accepted into society, that may never fully accept them into it. We can see this in the fact that it is not until many years after Naruto began his journey that he is finally accepted into a full member of society.

Wolf Children takes a very different approach to this same discussion, in that, in this anime it explores the idea of finding one’s community within a larger society, rather than changing oneself to fit into larger society. This anime is all about finding your own identity and it heavily explores having a dual identity and the struggle that many face when trying to come to terms with this. Here, the children are made to choose between their wolf self and their human self. They are not given a middle ground choice but instead made to choose one or the other. They are made to fit into one fixed narrative and are not really given a ground in which they can have both identities simultaneously. It is in this rural village that the children are given the opportunity to explore their personal identities and who they want to be. This goes to show the importance of finding your own community and exploring yourself within it, one doesn’t need to fit into one fixed societal narrative but instead they should be free to explore themselves and who they are.

The finial Anime, A Silent Voice, explores the idea of redemption and the impact that discrimination can have on the individual and the way that society can move forward. This anime was a hard one because of the intense emotional nature of its progression, in particular, the ending of the anime hit me hard. This anime made you think about the desire to make right ones past wrongs and the way to atone, and the solution proposed is that change cannot just be at the individual level, it must happen on the communal level. We must treat all others with dignity and respect; it is our duty to make all feel welcome into society and acknowledge their place within it.

I just finished rewatching Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) for the second time and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to rewatch this amazing anime! Rewatching the anime already knowing what was going to happen allowed me to catch many of the fine details that I missed on my first watch through, and it especially allowed me to be much more critical of the story on this run through. From the New World starts off as a completely normal story in a seeming normal village, but as the anime progresses it is slowly revealed the many layers hidden beneath that ordinary façade.

A major theme in this anime is the rearing of children, from their education to their placement into society as well socialized fully functioning adults. In Shin Sekai Yori, there is a lot of emphasis on this very thing, all for one simple reason, the people of this society can use telekinetic powers, which allows them to virtually do anything they can visualize. Thus, the people of the village put so much attention into carefully raising children with PK abilities so that no children that may one day pose a threat to society is able to enter it. The damage that could be done by a single person is so great because of these PK abilities that an extreme amount of time and energy is required to ensure that those that are likely to do this harm are eliminated.

Because regulating the behavior of the children is impossible given the circumstances of this society, the only solution is prevention. To this end we see that the students are constantly tested, they are always in stressful situations to weed out any who may crack. One good example of this is in the second episode of the anime during the ball capture game when Mamoru uses his ability to cheat during the game. All he did was interfere with the other team’s pusher, which while cheating in the game is not, in the grand scheme of things, a big deal. However, it is shown that from this action he is deemed unworthy of entering society and killed. Going to show that in this world where a single person’s actions can do such great harm, no risks can be taken, and none are.

Another part of this anime that I really enjoyed was how the Monster Rats were treated, these of course are what remains of the humans who did not have PK powers when the current world order was established. The DNA of those who did not have PK abilities were combined with rats to make the Queerats, a group made to be subservient. The existence and treatment of the monster rats as well as any child who does not have PK abilities goes to show the othering of those who are not deemed valuable to the village and its society. In this world, PK ability reigns supreme, so those that do not have it are not worth anything, they are expendable. And I think a large reason that this mindset takes hold in this society is because of the death feedback and how it only operates on those with PK abilities. So, it makes sense that those could kill another human without dying from the action would be feared by those who would die if they were to do the same. Thus, we get the system we see in the anime.