https://thecartdriver.wordpress.com/2020/02/14/psycho-pass-carole-and-tuesday-and-more-why-anime-features-anti-immigration-elections/I see a lot of people like in the article’s author, especially leftists, talk about it, and honestly? I’m not seeing it, at all. Maybe because I haven’t been active in the anime fandom for a decade by now (last discourse I got caught up in was the dumb flame war over “elitists” vs “casuals” on MAL), or maybe because I only consoome old (read: 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s) media because I don’t like much of contemporary media, but can’t say with certainty, but I just don’t see it.
Sure, perhaps the proportion of Japanese creators being chuds increased in recent years, but I don’t see that being particularly well-reflected in the current output of the Japanese animation and comic industries. The political messaging of 20th century and early 2000s anime and manga seems to be same as 2020s anime and manga insofar that both are all over the place in equal amounts.
Among “chuddy” anime, I can only think of GATE (literal JSDF propaganda), HighSchool Of The Dead (zombie shounen ecchi horror with big tiddie girls made by a far-right mangaka who hates leftists, supports the JSDF, a gun nut, and hates Koreans), and Frieren (what with the genocided human-like predatory demons being portrayed in deterministic ways in spite of showing signs of actual sapience the story never addresses), but that’s about it.
As for manga, the best I can think of as of late is Drama Queen with many seeing the aliens as allegory for immigrants in Japan, although many can’t decide if they’re supposed to be stand-ins for American/Euro expats, tourists, East Asian renters, SEA and SA migrant workers, Kurdish refugees, or a pastiche of all of them. But that’s like an exception compared to the shit-ton of manga that pushes feminist, anti-racist and other socially progressive themes.
I think it has already been discussed before, but Japan being NPC-topia combined with how being a busherite is deemed as the most acceptable way to express oneself in Japanese politics as opposed to, say, being a Maoist might have a lot to do with why a lot of mangakas seem to be chuds, which is easy as the majority of Japanese people in general are disconnected in politics. In fact, the biggest political rallies in recent times are those for pensioner rights, and Japan can be tentatively argued to be a “dictatorship” by the same standards we use to describe Singapore, what with both countries being governed by the same right to centre right party for almost their entire existence, and most liberals regard Singapore as more of a benevolent dictatorship despite having elections, so there’s that.
With that said, I don’t really see any noticeable increase in chud-coded manga and anime, at least not among normie spaces. And of the ones that exist, they’re more of an exception than the norm. In fact, “Psycho-Pass 3” and “20th Century Boys” are the only instances in modern anime and manga in the mainstream market that I remember where the subject of immigration to Japan in modern times has ever been broached without resorting to fantastical allegories like in “Cop Craft”, and all of them treated it neutrally. So I think this concern among leftists is overblown.
But feel free to disagree with me. I don’t think I’m bringing anything new to the table, I just want to be proven wrong.