Politics in Anime

[richardthebald]

I've been holding off for a while with this topic, and likely won't be able to sit on the panel itself, but:

Politics in Anime

The "humanities block" has covered a wide range of academic topics over the years including history, philosophy, religion, mythology, gender, anthropology, and so on. But I don't believe there has been a panel focused on the representations of politics through the lens of Japanese visual media.

This is probably because the potential for such a panel to become a dumpster fire is seen as high, but it does help to remember that there is a difference between participating through the anonymity of a tweet and being present in a room full of other people that lends people to being more cognizant of their actions.

The topic itself is something that is rich and worth exploring, and this would be just at the textual level of a given franchise or series, without delving into the meta textual elements which tend to be the things that, "don't want to talk about politics in my escapist fantasy", but that in itself is also interesting.

So, anyone interested?

[crownowa]

I like the idea, but I'm not informed enough to sit on the panel - I ignore most politics after studying it in university.

[richardthebald]

Fair enough.

[richardthebald]

And I'm not sure how necessary a deep knowledge of contemporary Japanese politics would be, but certainly would be beneficial. Even then, how much does concurrently running media directly reflect the contemporary political landscape?