/anime/ - Anime

<Rintaro also asked Masao Adachi —who also came from Nihon University— to work on the script, but he replied: “Moomin is too reactionary, I won’t work on it”. Adachi later joined the Japanese Red Army.
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>>17034
yeah apparently this was directed by him https://archive.org/details/sekigunpflpsekaisensosengentheredarmypflpdeclarationofworldwar

The direct quotes from Rintaro are great but I'm wary of this quote from the person who put them together in this article: "In the movie, probably to portray a nostalgic world, the revolutionary leader of the armed uprising had a portrait of Che Guevara, showing the essence of the anti-establishment movement."

This doesn't really acknowledge the socialist revolutionaries in the film were portrayed as pawns of the fascist leadership, tricked into seeing the robots as enemies/tools of "the man", & literally massacring sentient beings & fellow workers. Otomo's still leftist but "nostalgic" isn't the best way to describe that group's portrayal.

>>17038
Akasegawa drew the poster for it https://leftypol.org/anime/res/5156.html

>>17062
They were tricked but I wouldn't call them pawns.

>>17070
I mean they were definitely humanized and their actions were understandable, but not justifiable. the leader's "this is how we humans are, all we can do is embrace it and march forward" (or something to that effect) speech runs contrary to the hippie ideals Tezuka stood for but he understood why people were that way still. if you look at Phoenix volume 2 Tezuka acknowledged the human traits that make bad shit happen and was deeply frustrated at how inherent they appear. I think Rintaro & Otomo understood him well. given stuff like the Lod Airport massacre it's imo clear what was being said about regular people dehumanizing one another in the name of "revolution" while the true oppressors just go "lol, lmao". it's part of why I hate it when dedicated anime fans tend to nitpick the Metropolis movie so hard in both Japan & America (though regular filmgoers tend to like it more). the revolutionaries clearly did something horrible but didn't come off as mustache-twirling villains or cartoony idiots; it's great writing. I often feel exactly the way their leader did and justify my own shit behavior that way. it's great cuz it makes you second guess yourself instead of going "UGH" from a safe distance.

There's been a lot of whitewashing of prominent anime and manga authors' involvement on left-wing movements.

>>17094
imo the "fuck US influence" people should look positively towards the time when the new left had an impact on anime cuz 1. it wasn't modern trendy "leftism" and, more importantly, 2. that was when creators, while appreciating stuff like disney & fleischer artistically, were politically critical of america instead of tending to lean US-friendly liberal like far too many do now. there was a legit feeling of "they want us to be their imperialism puppets, fuck that"

Tezuka for example fought against the insane restrictions US companies wanted to put on Kimba & Astro Boy's pre-chapter mini-comics are full of "lol these people thought my cartoons were too violent when the Vietnam war was still seen as a good thing, fuck off". now the attitude to localizers seems to be more just "oh well, whatever sells"

(pics are from Fujiko F Fujio and Akatsuka Fujio tho)