Comrades, we need better anime literacy on this board. I've made this thread to help direct people to good leftist anime. Listen to me or not, but I have watched a lot of anime so these are my serious recommendations. If you watch these shows you will also be broadening your tastes and escaping from seasonal consumerism. I will specifically recommend leftist/revolutionary anime.
>Belladonna of Sadness
This 1971 film has a lot of sexual content, but it is one of the most beautifully drawn anime of all time and is a great audio-visual experience, with varied styles of art over the film. It includes incredibly experimental and interesting shots. Plot wise it tackles the sexual, religious and feudal heirarchy with great visual storytelling. It flips the idea of sexual corruption as bad, and turns satanist hedonism into a revolutionary force which only positively affects the villagers.
>Gundam
Tomino's Gundam is a masterpiece because of how good the characters are. They are astoundingly well developed and feel real due to characterisation present in almost all episodes. Tomino's style of storytelling is obtuse, and the subext is not narrated out like in most anime, which many people really enjoy which is why the show has such a strong fan base. The themes of the original show are extremely well expressed in the last third, and a number of scenes towards the end are absolutely fantastic. As for the leftist analasys, Gundam is anti-fascist, with a possible Trotskyist degenerated worker's state analasys on the antagonist faction, who were originally a revolutionary anti-earth eco-fascist group until they were taken over by a ruling familly. However, their ideology is not wrong as the Earth Federation opresses the space-underclass as well as destroying the planet. There is a lot to unpack here and the evil principality is well humanised despite being clearly in the wrong, except for Char who did nothing wrong. Tomino is known to have some sexist takes, but this isn't really present until the 90s and before that his anime all have strong women.
>Gurren Lagann
It is the ultimate revolutionary anime. The entire show goes about combating conservatism and reactionism in a highly bombastic way, without making them seem evil. Instead, conservatism is just wrong and impossible to maintain. The show is epic, with very strong pathos and emotion in some very memorable scenes. It also wierdly has a bit on establishing a revolutionary government and revisionism.
>Dallos
Its literally about a socialist revolution and anti-imperialism, something which few western media depict even in a sci-fi setting. I have shilled it enough in other threads but this is a must watch for any socialist anime fan and its only 4 episodes so you have no excuse.
>Fang of the Sun Dougram
Its a long anime about a guerilla war against colonialists and their puppet government. The art and animation is awful but some of the characters are legendarily good and the plot is among the best in the medium. I only finished it recently and haven't had a good think about it but I completely recommend his one to people who enjoyed LoGH and Maoists.
>Shin Sekai Yori
This one is interesting. My reading is that the show is about how reformism won't work and how people from the ruling class who oppose the system are transformed into the very upholders of that system, including the parts of it which killed their friends and enslave other humans. It unironically seems third worldist, with only the opressed race being able to rise up in revolution. I would definitely like to discuss this one with others.
>Kill la Kill
Anarchist naturist anime.
Please recommend other anime which are leftist (or not) to add recommendations for other people. I will respond and start discussion.
532 posts and 172 image replies omitted.https://www.zeonic-republic.net/?page_id=10526>words like ‘innovation’, ‘revolution’, ‘reform’ are as misleading as communism—they tend to push us towards a totalizing way of thinking, synonymous with socialism, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism.-Yoshiyuki Tomino
whoopsie doodle
>>12388>Gurren LagannTypical neocon resistance against the "outside threat." Later on was co-opted by the monarchist Simon and later by the fascist Rosseau.
>Kill la KillDamn it, wanted to mention it myself, CLOTHES ARE A FORM OF OPPRESSION BY AN INDUSTRIALIST SOCIETY!
>>22913 (me)
I mean, it's all just "Believe in yourself" and "Do the impossible." I guess there is some revolutionary idea of not being content with what you have but it just resulted in Kamina and Simon just abandoning society altogether by escaping to the surface, an anarchist thing to do but it hardly has any class component to it, it's your typical "lifestyle" nomadic anarchism that was later dissolved by imperialism because other humans decided to recolonize Earth thanks to Kamina's example. The anime's plot can be compared to the American frontier ironically.
>>22914 (me)
I think Kamina is the closest to an anarcho-individualist who rised against the slave labor he and Simon were forced to endure. The thing is, other people are not Kamina, once Kamina disappeared he became a mere symbol of hope and determination rather than individual freedom and anti-slavery.
>>22915 (me)
Basically, Kamina's yearning for individual freedom as a rebellion against class society and domestication was twisted into a collective, bourgeois "freedom" of
humanity class society.
>>22916 (me)
Compare this to Kill la Kill. Kamina ran away from the ruling class only for this very ruling class to neuter his ideas and use him and the name of his team as a symbol of nationalism (typical for the Japanese). On the contrary, Ryoko went into an open war with the ruling class, aiming to cut Satsuki's throat from the start. One is a war between humans and non-human invaders (that were trying to save them from a greater threat anyway). The other is a war between classes.
>>22911love black lagoon, but its not really leftist
they do work for the cia sometimes, and I dont think you actually see them arming any communists or rebels. The themes are more personal and philosophical than political.
loved the episode with the japanese red army member though (even if its the episode where they work for the cia).
>>22942>they do work for the cia sometimesSo does Big Boss but Kojima and Metal Gear are generally considered left leaning. I would agree that it can't really be called communist, but it still seems to have a lot of sympathy for left wing revolutionary organizations, plus the personal themes vis a vis alienating capitalist life. A surprising number of protagonists (and sympathetic antagonists) have links to the USSR, Burkina Faso, FARC, etc.
>I dont think you actually see them arming any communists or rebelsTrue but they mention that they smuggled guns to the NPA in one of the first episodes.
Maybe not explicitly leftist but certainly has an anti-corporate, anti-establishment theme.
Kouya ni Kemono Doukokusu (In Wilder, the Beast Doth Lament) by Baku Yumemakura (writer) and Sei Itoh (mangaka), is a genuine hidden gem that deserves more exposure. The story follows a young biology researcher who turns into an amnesiac superhuman beast-man warrior. On a quest to figure out what happened to him he finds comrades that join him in a story of thrilling action and that travels from Japan to Papua New Guinea to Mexico as characters uncover a complex web of conspiracies involving major corporations and world governments, while also exploring some really out-there ideas on culture, history, religion and biology, and how all of those interact and shape each other. The plot is like a better written Killing Bites crossed with Undead Unluck: The premise is basically that there’s a retrovirus (D-Virus) different companies pursue or create that can manipulate people’s DNA structure, letting them to essentially become animal hybrid soldiers, the protagonist being a more advanced version of that.
It has massive 90s artstyle that is really clean and detailed and reminds me of Black Lagoon and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The character designs are distinct and interesting. It has excellent Japanese and Mesoamerican imagery, with well-placed paneling and spreads.
The series is apparently based on a Japanese Novel that was never exported and the manga itself ran from 2004 til 2014 in Magazine-Z. 9/10 would read again.
>>22913>>22914>>22930>>22916As I said, Gurren and Kill la Kill's lead writer Kazuki Nakashima gets overseas political info from some pretty "explicitly lib, not leftist" figures:
>>16401 Watanabe literally took a selfie with Hilary & got involved in lame "Bernie Sanders is a misogynist" culture warring as late as 2020 (now I don't like Bernie but come on, it's clear who was doing this stuff and for what ideological purposes). Her review of J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, which Nakashima plugged back in the day, was pretty telling.
https://youshofanclub.com/2016/10/31/hillbilly-elegy/I haven't read the book, but based on her quotes (and the writer being a republican venture capitalist) it sounds like it's, uh, far from a leftist view of class politics - really overt "bootstraps" stuff. She explicitly agrees with the writer's claim that "hillbillies" need to stop blaming "politicians like Obama & Bush, or various corporations" for their failings & she even follows it up with "this applies to not just hillbillies, but everyone". J. D. Vance being a "former hillbilly", you notice how similar his rhetoric is to how more right-leaning black people (or just black people who gained success and/or power) will talk about poor black communities. Of course, as an immigrant in the US, Watanabe liked that Vance was critical of poor white people in America blaming minorities for their failings - but it clearly goes beyond that & pretty explicitly veers into "conservative bootstraps ideology, but not (explicitly) racist". Especially with the positively-portrayed "don't blame Obama, Bush & corporations" line.
Now I'm not saying Nakashima cultishly 100% unquestionably agrees with everything this person says and is a hardcore neolib, but he seems to be pretty close friends with her, consistently & uncritically plugging her books, reviews, articles etc for years. If he was some hardcore leftist he wouldn't have done that ("Japanese politeness & friendliness with peers", I get it, but you can also just not get involved with explicitly political stuff if you truly disagree with it.
It's not the 60s & 70s anymore when manga & anime were full of genuine leftists, and when opposing US imperialism during the Vietnam war was a core driving tenet of Japanese progressives. The more I look into this stuff through the lens of industry people with academic connections, the more I realize there's a lot of explicitly neoliberal US ideology being imported among the Japanese intelligentsia (Nakashima has longstanding "high culture" ties through his career as a playwright).
I love Gurren Lagann but if you go deeper into its themes a lot of its ideology lends itself pretty well to political centrism (I can elaborate in a further post if you want since this one is already tl;dr). It doesn't hurt the show since it's very vague and doesn't make its real-world allusions too explicit but essentially, I'm not too surprised.
>>25269Oh definitely. Ishibumi was pretty open about what he was referencing; Dragon Ball, Guyver, S-Cry Ed etc.
>>25464Perfect timing comr8
Unique IPs: 26