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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Anime & Donghua
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I think I've half-jokingly said something like this in an earlier Frieren thread, but I'll say it again, and 100% seriously this time:
Some people on here seem to actively want any manga or anime ever made to have fascist undertones, just so they can justify their belief that all Japanese people are born fascist. Like it's genetic or some shit. And the fact that this is very clearly a form of racism in itself completely escapes them.
This whole thing is extremely USA coded, let me just remind you that there is an entire world outside your borders.
Or my family lived under Japanese occupation and we had people die in the Bataan Death March, so I'm cautious whenever Japanese media has racist undertones. There hasn't been an honest effort on Japan's part to even acknowledge what they did while their government is trying to recreate the same genocidal projects. It's very similar to how Black or Native American people have problems with settler-colonialist themes featured in westerns and post-apocalyptic media. Capitalist media is going to have capitalist brainworms unless it is explicitly anticapitalist. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy something. It's pointing out the problems as they exist.
But sure. I'm the real racist for pointing out racism in your cartoon slop. Fuck off with this crakkker shit.
Instead of engaging with the discussion about how a fantasy race that is ontologically evil is problematic (something that exists outside of the fantasy genre within Japan) you instead made up the idea that people on hexbear want to use animanga as a way to essentailize Japanese people as fascists? Even though the entire discission is about how essentialization is harmful?
"Reading animanga more deeply than I'm personally comfortable with is actually the real racism"
Yes, and tragically you have failed to reckon with that here.
I hope after reading @Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 's response you've had a chance to reflect upon that. The only constructive critique I have to add is that "do not assume everyone on Hexbear is a white USAn" was an oft-requested suggestion from the PoC bloc on this site (inasmuch as we are a bloc) during the recent Code of Conduct struggle sessions.
Buddy if you think this is about me hating Japan, how do you reconcile that with me complaining about racial alignments in Dungeons and Dragons a week ago. I like Dungeons and Dragons but I freely admit that some aspects of it unfortunately radiate Hitler particles.
In any case "You think Japanese people are born fascist" is a gross strawman of the hopefully uncontroversial statement that Japan is a US puppet regime, and being a satellite of the Fourth Reich is liable to influence its culture in not-so-good directions
There were already a lot of not-so-good cultural currents in Japan long before the US got anywhere near it too, which it also isn't immune from criticism for even if sometimes people use it as an excuse to be racist. I think that, ironically, the idea that anyone who might take issue with racism in Japanese media is a racist Amerikkkan (as the user you're replying to implied) is actually very USA coded one. There are around 2 billion people who have very recent (living) social and cultural memory of being victims of Japanese genocides and atrocities, which the Japanese state (and vast majority of Japanese society) not only doesn't even pretend to apologize for but generally doesn't even acknowledge the existence of (except to constantly praises those directly responsible and attempt to rearm to be able to do it again). Almost none of these 2 billion people are American citizens.