Are there any leftist themes in Anime?

Get your own opinions faggot

Miyazaki? Maybe? I guess that's more green socialism than anything.

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discarded

Kill la Kill is leftist.

Do you ever think there might be a flaw in this sort of knee-jerk tribalism

oh wow one guy
its ironic because spirited away and Studio Ghibli is like the japanese disney

And why do all the evil greedy characters have big noses in animu? Is it just a japanese folklore thing about greedy people having big noses or are they trying to tell us something? It doesn't even have to be jews or whatever. japanese fascists hate white people too.

fascists think they're revolutionaries too you know

Miyazaki (arguably peaked with Mononoke)
One of the Gundams, dunno which
pic related

Life fibers are more akin to capital than the jews or the monarchy. The main villain is a CEO. The heroine is "mixed" and is stronger for it. Gender roles are routinely trounced and so are fascists favored values (love of domination, death, etc.) It's not fascist at all.

Dude Gundam is pretty explicitly leftist from the get-go.
I think SEED lays the message on the thickest though

TTGL

why does everyone say this one in particular?
you don't have entry level taste do you Holla Forums?

First Squad is THE communist anime.

Evil characters having grossly exaggerated features isn't unique to Japan or anime. Potentially it's more common in Japan due to tengu or something though. I'll be honest I know fuckall about Japanese folklore.

Gurren Lagann's plot is so simple that I don't think it can be called political in any sense. It's just hot blooded mecha shit. The ideal society they construct doesn't look any different from modern Japan.

White people stereotypically have big noses in anime, so I guess they just really hate whitey

They're literally leading a series of revolutions against the ruling classes.

All anime is leftist

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There's nothing overtly leftist about it. Plenty of anime features a group of friends overthrowing a despotic regime. Fucking Red Dawn is the same thing.

That's why First Squad is the only leftist anime. If a series isn't explicitly communist then it cannot be leftist.

planetes. some continuities of ghost in the shell. speed grapher.

the entire plot of gurren lagann is a story of historical progress where the protagonist evolves from living in a primitive society into fully automated luxury communism at the end.

That's just how Miyazaki draws old women, its the same with the protagonist of Howl's Moving Castle

What is with this notion that overthrow and utopia are leftist? Both of those tropes can be easily used in more liberal or even fascist media, I would say more commonly even.
I'm a big proponent of the idea that leftism is actually really intuitive and normies stumble upon it fairly often, without any theory. But the connection to anything identifiably leftist, and not just some vague notion of "progress", in children's anime like Gurren Lagann seems pretty weak. Anti-capitalism is fairly common in anime but again the solution proposed, if there is anything proposed, isn't necessarily leftist.
Miyazaki is probably as close as it gets. Which shouldn't come as a surprise since he did at one point consider himself a communist. He explicitly critiques the unsustainability and alienating effect of capitalism while often positing an alternative that is communialistic, environmental, pro-social, etc. Gurren Lagann doesn't come near that level of critique and from what I remember of the ending it wasn't anything coherent. Just "happily ever after".
Simon works as a fucking miner. I don't think the society we see at the end of the series, and we only see fragments of it, is fundamentally different from a neoliberal utopia.
I liked the show, I just wouldn't consider it "leftist" in any meaningful sense. Not anymore than I would consider Gunbuster or any of the mecha anime it pays homage to.

Liberal utopia is an everlasting status quo, but with scientific advancement. Fascist utopia is a return to the organic "natural order".

Whatever the actual organization of the human civilization in TTGL is, it's clear that it is neither of those things. In fact, both of those concepts are directly what Team Gurren are rebelling against.

I have to disagree that the society at the end of the show is 'clearly' not a liberal utopia. There's no detail! You can draw any conclusion you want from it. There's nothing radical about what its proposing.
As to what team gurren or whatever is opposed to it's very simple, oppressive animal people and later aliens. It's really that simple. If there's any theme the various antagonists of the show represent it would be stagnation. Again, I don't think this is explicitly leftist. If anything you could say that spiral power is most similar to capitalism's psychotic desire for infinite growth. The anti-spiral points out this contradiction at the end of the series and it's handwaved.
I wouldn't put any stock in such a reading though because it's way too deep of a reading for a really simple show. Ideology is present in all art, of course, but I think what's going on here is vague themes of self-empowerment and villains used for dramatic foil are being misconstrued as philosophical presentations. They aren't, it's just giant fighting robots. The show wants you to have fun and be pumped-up and it succeeds but we're entering clawshrimpy territory by taking simplistic shonen fiction this seriously.

by the end of the anime he's retired
the anime ends with the main characters going out into space to establish contact with other alien civilizations because they've already solved all the problems on earth, including scarcity. Its basically star trek.

Sometimes, relatively subtle parts of the narrative can say a lot.

In the vast majority of narratives, for instance, the heroes are the great defenders of the status quo, and it's the villains who initiate change (albeit change for the worse). In TTGL, the heroes initiate change and the villains are the great defenders of the status quo. You might argue that this is true of any narrative that focuses on some kind of revolution, but this is usually not the case. The powers that be the heroes are rebelling against are typically portrayed as some kind of New World Order, illegitimate usurpers of a good status quo ante. So, the villains are still the force of change, they've simply been able to enact their change to some degree, and the heroes try restore the old order and reverse that change.

In TTGL, there is little knowledge or love for whatever order existed before the Spiral King and the beastmen. They make something of a point that they're forging their own path and embracing the new.

That's a bit too far off the beaten path to be completely unintentional. It would have been easy if to just make it where the Antispiral wanted the magic crystals to do the evil stuff and Team Gurren needed to stop him.

Kaiba. It takes place in a world where capitalism has gone so far even peoples bodies and memories are comodified and the working class suffer greatly while the rich prosper.

I'll agree to that, it is quite common in fantasy and science fiction for revolutionaries to be naive/bitter/evil and for the protectors of the status-quo to be sympathetic, flawed but the best we have. I don't know if I'd call this leftist necessarily? But it's at least closer than the idea that the order as is must be.

Code Geass is pretty lefty. No class consciousness. Most it advocates for economically is egalitarianism.

That said

Didn't finish the series yet so I might be wrong.

Akame ga kill is basically team commie stereotypes (intersectional™) trying to overthrow a bourgeois empire where the rich are literal monsters who torture the poor versus team fascist stereotypes who defend it.
As i recall it even has some very basic stuff about commodities or something.

One of my all time favorites. He literally removes social class near the end.

Slice of life is a pretty leftist concept.

You mean the place where scripts have to be cleared by the literal fucking CIA?

"Shangri la" is about a group of dissidents living outside the giant arcology being built by the government to house Japan's population, since the world is going down the drain due to environmental destruction. The economy is based around carbon footprint (which acts essentially as a currency of sort) and the anime goes surprisingly in depth with its economical worldbuilding.

"Shinsekai Yori" reveolves around a group of kids growing up in a world where violence has been genetically eradicated, humanity is reduced to a few thousands and the role of proles is taken up by a race of rat looking humanoids on which the humans have pretty much absolute power.
Guess who gets to rebel.

They're both pretty leftist in themes and pretty good anime on their own even without accounting for their political leanings.

"Planetes" takes place in a future where humanity has colonized the Moon and near Earth orbit. It follows a team of employees of a a private company running a permanent space station, who are tasked with removing space debris. Though all space companies are mandated by the government to have such teams, they under-fund and under-staff these outfits because tragedy of the commons.
In the course of their adventures they have to deal with being stuck in dead dead end jobs, corporate collusion and corruption, space terrorism, labourers who are stuck on the moon after having their travel documents seized by an employer, people who consider suicide or crime because of their desperate economic straits, and the exploitation of smaller earth-bound countries by space-faring nations.

Oh my fucking god i remember watching this in a sync tube or something with a Holla Forumstard there and on that episode with the scientist dude from the third world country the Holla Forums fag just started chimping the FUCK OUT to an insane level.

The Danganronpa class trials are dialectics in action.

Rose of the Versailles is pretty lefty.

explain

Its about court life in the Versailles palace during the last years of the Ancien Regime. Its follows Marie Antoinettes life and the life of a fictional character called Oscar who is a guard

…who is a guard at the Palace. It follows the happenings in France before and during the first years of the Revolution. Thy system is blamed for the situation in France at the time, not power hungry revolutionaries who rile up the commoners or decedent nobles. In fact, the nobles are made out as victims of the system, stuck in loveless marriages and alienating courts. The Main character, Oscar, also joins the revolution at the end and dies during the storming of the Bastille
It also depicts Robespierre as a pretty cool guy, which is rare.

all right, bookmarked

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KLK goes out of it's way to state fascism sucks at resisting capital

No they don't. They see themselves as protecting their "people" from some threat which has infiltrated and weakened their society. They aren't revolutionary and privately they never claim to be.

Slice of life anime about someone who moves into a socialist society and over the course of the show gets to know this new world and the people that live there. Insert cute girls living in communes and living the good life.

Entryist issekai

take 90 seconds of this and make it the OP: youtube.com/watch?v=QAGSdAxZlw0

15 episodes will follow 9 different guerilla combat groups seperated by time and place. despite this seperation, a continuous narrative emerges as the circumstances each new group the show follows are remarkably similar to the conditions the previous group were left in: Hundred mile retreats over mountainous rural terrain is transformed into a just as tenuous few hundred meters of checkpoints in urban fightings. The guerillas in the show are hunted and outgunned, have limited success and suffer greatly for their resistance. the show is filled with a pervasive sense of dread. there are still some moments of celebration and joyity. calm moments where characters can relax and joke, but never for too long. many characters commit suicide, some are captured and summarily executed. some are tortured in prison. Some episodes end with the total destruction of the combat group.
each episode will feature a group of guerillas conducting operations: ambushes, raids, bombings, kidnappings, sabotage, and dealing with the state response; hiding, evacuating, delaying, and so forth. each character searches for bravery and struggles with the price of conscience.
the last episodes will revert back to the earlier groups depicted, to offer a melancholy resolution to the series.

order of guerillas will be Kurdish PKK -> Algerian FLN -> Greek Partisans WWII -> Colombian ELN -> Laotian Pathet Lao -> Tajik Mujahideen in Afghanistan -> ISI in Iraq -> ISIS in Syria -> Filipino NPA -> PKK -> Greek Partisans at liberation.

1920's Soviet films but anime

legend of the galactic heroes but with anarchism instead of heavy autoritarianism

Noone's an island. Even music Production is social, nigga.

LoGH ends with a benevolent dictator defeating a corrupt federation, the h*ck you talkin bout

stop kidding yourself, the whole show is about how democracy fails because one man in an autocracy literally has all the power, and therefore can operate faster than the other guys, it's also pretty reactionary when you think about it, fuck the whole show is just basically post wwii japanese criticism of liberalism, and it all plays out from a sort of imperialistic perspective, so the show itself doesn't have much in the way of leftist things, the most is the aristocracy criticism, which is bullshit when you think about it, after all reinhard replaces all the "bad" aristocracy with his own "enlightened" aristocracy, with the promise of "these guys are totally not like the previous ruling class, i promise guys"

also Princess Mononoke deals explicitly with the development of capitalism from a feudal society and the comparatively liberating effects (to feudalism) it haves on society while also dealing with the ravenous greed and environmental destruction it causes in pursuit of further wealth and power.

The point of LoGH is that the people matter more than the system. Both the empire and the republic were rotten before Reinhardt (and were good before - at the beginning). This is made very clear near the end when the kaiser leaves open a way for someone to fight the aristocracy when it inevitably rots again.
Yes, because they were there on merit, whereas the previous guys were there because they were descendants of someone who was competent generations ago.

You have to go back
>>>Holla Forums

The plot and characters of the Russian Revolution up to the 30's, but set entirely within one high school.

itt: manchildren who look for meaning in their cartoons

quite possibly the most pathetic and sad thing i've ever seen

LoGH is just centrist trash filled with political illiteracy

watch black lagoon.

I fucking love Kaiji.

Kaiji is definitely sympathetic to leftist themes.

Have a meme.

Yes. Though most of them are primarily anti-fascist liberalism like FMA or Rurouni Kenshin. There are even cringey rad-"left" libshit anime, like Earth Maiden Arjuna drink heavily if you choose to watch it.

LoGH is certainly centrist, but to call it politically illiterate is a great disservice. It is primarily focused on the ship of state, charting its course through war against others and the exercise of force against its own subjects, so the economic and class questions posed by socialism and capitalism are largely orthogonal to LoGH's themes.

That said, while the Prussian themes of the Empire are widely noted, the Alliance has ML themes that are also pretty blatant.

Egoism is leftist generally. I remember some ancap telling me at one time that One Piece is ancap, but I doubt Luffy would ever give a single fuck about the NAP.

I just finished season 2 of Attack on Titan, and I need to vent just a bit.

If anything, One Piece is just generally anti-authotarian. I wouldn't be surprised if Oda was a communist party voter. I mean, One Piece constantly preaches about how much racism, slavery, war and oppression suck.

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Wouldn't surprise me either. Most of the villains of the series are plutocrats, porkies, and corrupt government agencies.

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Getter Robo is what it rips off. Gunbuster actually has themes.

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And for every evil porky/WG affiliate you get a based monarch who is just a nice, honest guy with a burning passion to help his people.

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oda is probably a minarchist, or he is just trying to make nice stories and you are all faggots projecting onto them

You just described all of right wing twitter pal

I'd love to know more about this light novel. Apparently, the girl on the cover is a Marxist and talks about theory.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA