#sorry the wiki link is in JP the English wiki is a stub

[kuri-no-tani]

JVC Post #3

These last two media assignments were definitely interesting. I'll start with Momotaro: Umi no Shinpei. It was very clearly war propaganda, and doesn't really try to hide it or anything. The way the characters sing about their nation, glorify the labor and industrialization involved with supporting the war effort, and the way the movie depicts other races makes it very clear that the goal of this film was to use animation as a vehicle for nationalist propaganda. I particularly hated the several minute long stretch of them having the jungle animals of the "Eastern Allied Forces" sing あいうえおのうた.

Even putting the obvious and horrible imperial propaganda aside, the movie as an art piece is also not very good. You can chalk some of it up to degradation of course, but the sounds of screaming and airplanes was really difficult to sit through. The whole movie, despite being made for kids, completely lacks soul or love. I can feel that the guy who made this film was forced to make it.

That being said, I can also absolutely see the Disney and Eisenstein influence in the work as described by Otsuka in the provided essay An Unholy Alliance of Eisenstein and Disney: The Fascist Origins of Otaku Culture. I was unaware of this history of Eisenstein's film theory in Japan in particular before reading this essay, and I find the connection pretty interesting.

However, I'm really not sure I can follow Otsuka's points to their respective conclusions for most of them. At the end of the essay, he tosses out interpretations of manga and anime history that cite tradition and post-modernism, stating that

...It is neither Japanese traditions nor postmodernism that we must see in Japanese manga and animation, but rather the genesis of an aesthetics formed under fascism. Animators and animation theorists linked Disney and Eisenstein within a fascist system, arriving at a unified aesthetic.

I'm not going to say that I don't see the historical relevance of Disney and Eisenstein in relation to Japanese animation, particularly in the case of Tezuka Osamu, but to say this is the only way to describe the development of anime and manga aesthetics is quite the reach. I appreciate his detailed connections to Disney and Eisenstein in the essay, but I think he jumps the gun at the end.

For counter examples, look at the early works of artists like Jun'ichi Nakahara and Katsuji Matsumoto (Shoujo no Tomo in particular), which helped define shoujo manga. There's just too much out there to boil it down to one perspective, even though it's absolutely true that World War II had a big impact on Japanese art. Maybe I'm missing his point or something, but I guess I'll find out it class.