GBS: Perhaps we’ve talked about the use of allegorical characters enough. Just as common is the use of places and settings to stand in for other things. That storybook fairytale setting may not be so unreal as you might think it is. That long time ago and far far away may well be reflecting the immediate concerns of the here and now.
BT: We can never really see the future (and aren’t much better with the past). Science fiction much more often ends up saying more about the present than anything five, ten, or a hundred years from now.
GBS: Yeah, people are not very good at predicting the future. While it’s not anime, it’s funny to think that Blade Runner is set in 2017…which is only three years away now. I highly doubt I’ll be getting to and from work in a spinner (the hovercars they had). Though Japan is working on the android thing.
BT: I get the impression from Japan, more so than from many other cultures, that there’s a strong yearning for the promises of the future—at least through technological progress. Though laced with the fears and insecurities of the past. And it comes out in the sci-fi and fantasy that they produce.
GBS: It’s interesting how we generally get two very different kinds of vision of the future in anime: on the one hand there are spotless, clean and “perfect” societies, with technology functioning as a support and aid to humans; and then there are dystopian nightmares, where technology has progressed, but the result has been disastrous for people, either because the technology gets out of hand or the wrong people get control of the technology and make life hellish for the remainder of humanity.
BT: But I think even the visions of so-called perfect future societies almost always feature a hidden underbelly of social decay and cost. They also are warnings about rapid technological and social change, but often more subtle and complex. The more “perfect”, in fact, the more damning it might be, the more a warning it is.
GBS: It is interesting how the Japanese are commonly perceived as being technology embracers, yet we often see anime that express a fear of technological advance and the unintended changes it can bring about.
BT: So, rapid or profound technological (and/or social) change is an all-encompassing allegory for, what?
GBS: Fear of change.
BT: Maybe a fear of repeating past mistakes, too?
GBS: Certainly. Probably a little of both. So, what is your favorite cautionary tale?
BT: Not sure I have one, but I suppose I’m fond of that large category of manga/anime sci-fi that expresses, front and center, the fears about the innate human cost of technological change. The Ghost in the Shell franchise deals in this currency, of course, but so does material like Serial Experiments Lain or Texhnolyze (writer Chiaki Konaka, as with Shirow, loves these ideas). Not quite sci-fi, but even Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke has this as one of its major allegorical themes.
GBS: I’m not really a fan of the genre, but the idea that our “shiny, technological” future is not going to all be rainbows and kittens crops up in unexpected places. Take, for example, Starship Operators. Sure, the ships are kind of cool, but it’s a future where people are still the same old aggressive and power-hungry monsters that we are now. Our attention is slightly distracted by the whole cast of young and attractive crew members and the space politics, but the undercurrent of “no matter how far we technologically advance, human nature will continue to make that future horrible in the current ways” is there.
BT: A future of all rainbows and kittens sounds terrifying anyway.
GBS: It would be. Think of the run on kitty litter. Of course, thinking of rainbows and traveling to imagined worlds, it’s not only time but place that can be changed in order to provide an allegorical setting.
BT: What is the constant and regular setting of fantasy trying to say, if anything? Besides being used to fulfill escapist dreams.
GBS: It really all depends. Sometimes the fantasy setting doesn’t really have much hidden subtext to it. I’m sure there are those who have an allegorical reading for it, but I wouldn’t really consider Record of Lodoss War to have some hidden meaning, especially when it’s known that the show was inspired directly by a fantasy roleplaying game the creators played in real life, which they directly translated to the screen.
On other occasions, it’s clearly being used as a subtle critique of current conditions, without the messiness of having to refer to real people (and thereby cause offense). Take the recent Outbreak Company. Sure, it was full of otaku-pandering of the worst kind, but it also offered a broad-based commentary of the current state of otaku fandom in Japan and had some rather critical things to say about it.
BT: The (often enjoyable) pandering in Outbreak Company was self-aware enough that the themes it was trying to use had more of an impact than they might have otherwise.
GBS: It’s a rare example of a show that was able to both use the standard tropes effectively while also subtly undercutting them. One wonders why so many fantasies are set in a pseudo-medieval time, though.
BT: I do wonder.
GBS: Perhaps because the past is just as “unreal” as fantasy settings are for many people. These are places which seem familiar but are also foreign (foreign countries might as well be “fantasy” realms too).
BT: And maybe using foreign settings is another way to talk about your own home. Maybe even easier than using your own past for a setting.
GBS: There is a very long history of that in literature, so it comes as no surprise that anime would make use of that method.
BT: But, lately, anime has been looking more to Japan’s past, but curiously by twisting or flipping details around. I really don’t know what that’s trying to say, about anything, except that Oda Nobunaga is cuter as a girl, I guess.
GBS: Actually, alternate histories are some of the easiest allegories to decode. They’re often written by the “losers” in the present, wanting to erase their defeat.
The constant gender-flipped Warring States (sengoku jidai) and Three Kingdoms (from Chinese history) rehashes, however…sorry, no clue. Oda Nobunaga may well be cuter as a girl, but I have no idea what this says about Japanese anime/manga/light novel consumers, other than that they prefer their fantastic takes on history be female.
BT: Be they historical figures or warships, apparently.
GBS: But…Takao.
BT: And look at that, a painting of the WWII Japanese cruiser, Takao.
GBS: But why is it painted wearing a white dress and a ponytail? Oh, nevermind.
BT: I do love art. But I guess that completes our tour of the galleries. And, for the time being, the subject of allegory. I think my empty glass is an allegory for the lack of alcohol in it, in fact.
Thanks to Greg, as usual. Any idea what we’ll go on and on about next?
GBS: Nothing borrowed or blue, but perhaps something old and something new.
BT: And look for that brand new argument next month.
Thanks for reading.
