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Well, been a while since *that* happened...
03-29-2014, 02:12 PM
For the first time in a very long time, an anime has triggered a WTF reaction from me in the first few minutes... and not in a good way.
The anime in question is Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls... and it starts out with a statement that many countries have tried to conquer Japan for its 'beauty'... and then shows American B-29's inbound for Japan... only to have them sliced and diced by a bunch of cute girls while the narrator proclaims them to be guardians.
I have to know... does this show go into any detail at all for the reason for the war? I already get the idea that it's AU, but I'd still like to know the nuts and bolts before I invest more time in this anime. Really, I know Americans can be total douchebags sometimes, but I've got my patriotic pride, and it feels like it's been pricked here.
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Nope, that show had the Tokugawa is still in control in Japan. The Meiji Restoration did not come about. And just about every Japanese history primer shows WWII was not their fault. Lot's of fan service. It's a harem anime. With all the legendary samurai in Japan gender swapped.
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Jeeze. At least acknowledge that pushing the Americans to get involved was a bad idea. Even Yamamoto knew better. He made a well-known and prophetic statement: If ordered to fight, "I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years." There's even ongoing debate over whether USA would have gotten involved at all if the Japanese had restricted themselves to British and Dutch targets...
So yeah. I'll ignore this anime for now since it panders to flawed history.
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I'm on battery at a con atm, so I'l be short.
National Jingoism is not an American exclusive right. It's really no worse than any one of thousands of such shows produced worldwide.
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Legendary samurai gender-swapped? Wait... does that mean it has a femme Kenshin Himura?  (I kid, I kid -- and yes, I know Ken wasn't samurai, which was part of his trouble later. But now I'm thinking of an entirely gender-swapped "Rurouni Kenshin" anime, and it's looking kind of awesome in my head....)
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Quote:Dartz wrote:
National Jingoism is not an American exclusive right. It's really no worse than any one of thousands of such shows produced worldwide.
Yes, but if this were a nationalist American show, its creators would be crucified.
The hypocrisy of it stings as badly as the misplaced blame.
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Not really.
Not when you look at things like NCIS where the American nationlism is right in your face, and where treating 'the enemy' like dirt, or finding ways to deny rights to suspects on flimsy justification, while generally spreading the unsubtle message that the good guys using NSA-style surveillance is OK so long as it's done to the nebulous 'bad guys' of the week.
Generally, you don't always see it, because you're right in the middle of it. But it's a lot more noticeable if you're looking in from the outside.
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Quote:Bluemage wrote:
Quote:Dartz wrote:
National Jingoism is not an American exclusive right. It's really no worse than any one of thousands of such shows produced worldwide.
Yes, but if this were a nationalist American show, its creators would be crucified.
The hypocrisy of it stings as badly as the misplaced blame.
Eh, one of the burdens of being first among equals at least. Everyone likes to become top dog. Only the US to my knowledge wants to be liked. None of the other powers in history cared about that. delanda est and all that. OTOH, you don't see people of other nations clamoring to go into those nations bitching about us. Heck, those same nations were rubbing their hands with glee during the American Civil War about the possible demise of the U.S. It irks other nations that we have this assumption that we have the greatest form of government on the planet.
Nations come and nations go. My hope is that one thousand years from now (providing there is still an advanced civilization around), the history books will point to the United States of America as one of the great nations that this planet created.
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Quote:Dartz wrote:
Not really.
Not when you look at things like NCIS where the American nationlism is right in your face, and where treating 'the enemy' like dirt, or finding ways to deny rights to suspects on flimsy justification, while generally spreading the unsubtle message that the good guys using NSA-style surveillance is OK so long as it's done to the nebulous 'bad guys' of the week.
Generally, you don't always see it, because you're right in the middle of it. But it's a lot more noticeable if you're looking in from the outside.
I was going to go with "24," but "NCIS" has its own flaws. (Not the least of which is that it's bloody boring.)
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Yeah, we would never decide to conquer a land for its beauty and resources. Except, you know, all of continental the U.S. from the First Nations, Texas and Alta California from the Mexicans, Hawaii from the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Philippines from Spain. And there was that whole incident with the Black Ships that forcibly opened Tokyo to trade, and more or less caused the Meiji Restoration. My nationalism only goes so far.
Using the U.S. as the aggressor in the Second World War is still really bad though, even in an alternate universe. Japan is a country where their PMs still honor their war criminal soldiers, and they can't seem to apologize for taking Korean sex slaves. The AU just perpetuates the culture of ignorance. Americans, for all their flaws, are much better at recognizing the colossal fuck-ups in their past.
ordnance11 Wrote:Nations come and nations go. My hope is that one thousand years from now
(providing there is still an advanced civilization around), the history
books will point to the United States of America as one of the great
nations that this planet created. Don't worry, the Rangers will remember us.
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Quote:vorticity wrote:
Americans, for all their flaws, are much better at recognizing the colossal fuck-ups in their past.
When I learned US History, my teacher's opinion was that the country had committed three great sins in its existence; slavery, basically everything we ever did to the natives for a century and a half or so post-independence, and Japanese internment. I think that that sounds about right... and it's telling that the aftereffects of resolving the last of those (the civil rights struggles of the 1960s) happened a generation before mine. Yes, there are places where the social repercussions haven't fully shaken themselves out (not this part of the country, I might add), but the legal issue was pretty much settled back then.
As far as wars of expansion go, how bad they're considered seems to depend on how far back they were. We haven't done that for a good bit over a hundred years (Spanish-American War in 1898 was the last, if my memory serves), so I'd say our reputation is fairly clean on that aspect of things. There may just be people alive who remember it, but for all intents and purposes, our last war of expansion is outside living memory. Everything after that was about defending people we like, or toppling rulers we didn't like- not necessarily shining examples of truth and justice, yes, but morally gray at worst.
Not saying any nation is perfect, just that Japan's about 40-45 years behind us on the whole 'quitting imperialistic expansion' thing, and should be more conscious and- dare I say it?- contrite over it. Like Germany is. Oh, and Russia needs to go back into rehab, since they seem to have relapsed.
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Quote:vorticity wrote:
Using the U.S. as the aggressor in the Second World War is still really bad though, even in an alternate universe. Japan is a country where their PMs still honor their war criminal soldiers, and they can't seem to apologize for taking Korean sex slaves. The AU just perpetuates the culture of ignorance. Americans, for all their flaws, are much better at recognizing the colossal fuck-ups in their past.
Not going to argue most of your point here.
From the Japanese perspective, however, we were the "aggressor". They were responding to a trade embargo we'd put on them, because of their actions in China. From their perspective at the time, they weren't directly threatening American interests, so it was none of our business, and we were effectively the ones backstabbing them, cutting them off from critical resources at a time when they were vitally needed.
A lot of people don't remember this. They also tend to forget that we were openly supporting Britain against Nazi Germany well before the declaration of war there, doing everything short of actively sending troops.
The thing about history is that everyone acts from what seems to them to be rational motives at the time. Not even the most despised of sovereigns was the kind of moustache-twirlingly-evil we like to portray in media.
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I'm pretty sure that the US Government had clear-cut reasons for the fuel embargo other than a warm and fuzzy sort of 'Stop being mean to China!' sentiment. I'm honestly not sure, but the outcome of the Boxer Rebellion might have had something to do with it.
And yes, we were indeed doing everything we could to help Britain. After the War of 1812 we'd finally won their respect and soon became good allies. And at the time, it was pretty clear that the situation with Nazi Germany wasn't going to be quelled with sweet nothings whispered in Chancellor Hitler's ear. IMHO, the only thing we did there that may be considered morally wrong was waiting for so long to get directly involved.
What I hate the most about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is that it gave war hawks that disregard Sun Tzu credence to the idea that proactive warfare is better because you can preempt attacks like those. While they may feel we stabbed them in the back, I feel they destroyed our leadership's cultural outlook on war altogether. Don't believe me? Just look at all the other subsequent wars and conflicts that took place afterwards.
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The United States is a country populated by mostly decent people. Even in isolation in a bar, the members of the government are decent people, not the raving lunatics on TV. (With great food). It's just collectively, they seem to be utter fucking batshit.
It might have the least-worst form of government imagineable, but it has one of the worst implementations of it. It's like a pre-Alpha test of a future software application that somehow found its way into production use with the intention to fix it up later with patches (Amendments)- and nobody ever bothered. It was built with great and right ideas, but immediately undermined when it came to the execution.
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Not objecting to the thread, but I'm thinking of moving it into Politics...
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Quote:Dartz wrote:
The United States is a country populated by mostly decent people. Even in isolation in a bar, the members of the government are decent people, not the raving lunatics on TV. (With great food). It's just collectively, they seem to be utter fucking batshit.
It might have the least-worst form of government imagineable, but it has one of the worst implementations of it. It's like a pre-Alpha test of a future software application that somehow found its way into production use with the intention to fix it up later with patches (Amendments)- and nobody ever bothered. It was built with great and right ideas, but immediately undermined when it came to the execution.
...and a lot of people have built their lives around exploiting the glitches it it, too!
This might be the most accurate description I've seen of it yet.
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Dartz Wrote:It might have the least-worst form of government imagineable, but it has
one of the worst implementations of it. It's like a pre-Alpha test of a
future software application that somehow found its way into production
use with the intention to fix it up later with patches (Amendments)- and
nobody ever bothered. It was built with great and right ideas, but
immediately undermined when it came to the execution. Sadly, you just described my job. Software, not government.
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Quote:blackaeronaut wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the US Government had clear-cut reasons for the fuel embargo other than a warm and fuzzy sort of 'Stop being mean to China!' sentiment. I'm honestly not sure, but the outcome of the Boxer Rebellion might have had something to do with it.
Two things of the top of my head for this:
1) The China Lobby - American missionaries had been active in China since the 1890's over there in a big way. Influential Chinese had gone to stateside schools. Like the Soong family. one of who was married to Chiang Kai Shek.
2) The Rape of Nanking. Need I say more?
Quote:And yes, we were indeed doing everything we could to help Britain.
After the War of 1812 we'd finally won their respect and soon became
good allies. And at the time, it was pretty clear that the situation
with Nazi Germany wasn't going to be quelled with sweet nothings
whispered in Chancellor Hitler's ear. IMHO, the only thing we did there
that may be considered morally wrong was waiting for so long to get directly involved.
Actually, war with Great Britain was very possible during the Civil War. What changed the equation was a couple of things. 1) The U.S. and Canada decided to demilitarize the border. see the Rush-Bagot treaty. 2) The performance of the U.S fleet during the Spanish-American War. Great Britain's naval doctrine in the years proceeding WWI was to have naval strength equal to her 2 strongest adversaries. Jackie Fisher decided that a fight with the US fleet was not going be an easy task, so the decision was made not have American as an enemy. After that, we and the cousins got along fairly well.
Quote:What I hate the most about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is that
it gave war hawks that disregard Sun Tzu credence to the idea that
proactive warfare is better because you can preempt attacks like those.
While they may feel we stabbed them in the back, I feel they destroyed
our leadership's cultural outlook on war altogether. Don't believe me?
Just look at all the other subsequent wars and conflicts that took
place afterwards.
Preemptive war... a time honored tactic.
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Quote:blackaeronaut wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the US Government had clear-cut reasons for the fuel embargo other than a warm and fuzzy sort of 'Stop being mean to China!' sentiment. I'm honestly not sure, but the outcome of the Boxer Rebellion might have had something to do with it.
By our standards, yes, absolutely. I never meant to imply that we didn't.
By their perspective, however, we were interfering in their colonial empire-building, after bitchslapping several countries into staying out of what they saw as our colonial empire-building.
I am in no way saying they were correct.
But that is the view that has colored their historical perspective on the war from 1941 to the present.
Everyone wants to think of themselves as the good guys. Look at the way American history glosses over our treatment of the Native American tribes, for instance. It's been 200 years and we're only starting to accept that things weren't all pilgrim-thanksgivings.
Take Ancient Rome and Greece. Everyone talks about Athens as inventing Democracy. *snort* Adult. Male. Citizens. Only. That's about 10% of the population. Democracy my foot! Athens was a plutocracy that endorsed slavery and had about as much social mobility as a lead banana, and the less said about women's rights the better. The only thing 'democratic' about it was that the plutocrats cut deals among themselves on what to do instead of picking one to be King.
Rome? Sure, they civilized most of southwestern Europe. By murdering, enslaving, and generally brutalizing anyone who wouldn't get with the program. Sure, they were the greatest civilization of their era... a lot of people still admire them today. I for one wouldn't want to live there. Or 1930's Japan. Or 1930's America, for that matter, although I'd be more comfortable there than either of the others.
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