Pete links to an old post of mine from the USS Clueless days in which I wrote about how offensive I found the portrayal of 1925 Japan in Steel Angel Kurumi and the Sakura wars movie.

It didn't help that both of those anime were utter shit. But it was the nostalgic way that 1925 Japan, and in particular the Imperial Japanese Army, were presented that bothered me the most.

I don't generally talk about that when reviewing series placed in that era, in part because I don't want to repeat myself. But I note that there are some series placed in that nostalgia which are a bit more classy about it.

Strike Witches is somewhat later, 1944-1945. There's a scene in the first series where Sakamoto and Wilcke are talking (on a transport plane) and talk about how, if the Neuroi hadn't shown up in 1939, the great powers of the world probably would have been fighting each other at that point. It's a nod to how WWII (as we refer to it) didn't happen. And one of them refers to "The World War", which is one of the names given to the First World War before the Second one happened.

Another way that Strike Witches redeems itself is that it clearly isn't the same world we live in. National borders are different, and nations have different names, and North America is shaped a lot differently. So the authors don't have to directly acknowledge (or apologize for) our own history.

Besides which, little about Strike Witches is very realistic anyway. It's fantasy, not science fiction.

I suppose you could make that same argument about Steel Angel Kurumi and the Sakura Wars franchise. Back when I wrote the post to which Pete linked, I wasn't yet familiar enough with anime to really understand just how much of that they do. Things like Oh! Edo Rocket in which someone tries to build a black-powder rocket capable of reaching the moon. (Not possible. I don't care to go into details, but it can't be done.)

So I'm more forgiving about that kind of stuff now. If the show is otherwise fun and interesting, and if it stays true to its own assumptions -- even if those assumptions are idiotic -- I'll give it a chance.

But Japan's collective blindness about the horrors its soldiers committed in WWII still bothers me a bit.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:26 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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