Impact of the WW2 on japanese artists and anime

[iceman57]

Disclaimer :
The following lines are not willing to harm or damage anyone in relation with military troops, nor discuss about historical reasons of a war to happen.
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This is hard to deny that WW2 and especially American troops post war presence in japan indirectly generated a part of the modern anime codes. Following two interesting aspects.

The A-bomb case :

This is an interesting aspect that is recurrent in japanese animation : "power". By power I mean the inner force of the hero or the situation that created the hero's universe.
Japan is the unique country in the history of warfare to have suffer the damages of such level of power. Most of anime from the mid 80s used this aspect :
- i.e. Goku spreads a fireball on a mountain and there is an explosion of megatons with a classic mushroom form, remembering the nuclear blast. Even the title score from Dragon Ball Z last season "We gotta power" underlines this aspect.
- i.e. Fist of the north star, Kenshiro lives on a post atomic war earth

What is interesting is that the two listed series were made by post-war children (FOTNS born 1961 / Dragon Ball born 1955).
So they were not spectators of the WW2 events but raised on a damaged land and recreated some aspects of the bombing damages and even nuclear war in their mangas.

The Yamato case :

The "Yamato" major ship from the japanese fleet made a last one way mission and finished sinked by the US fleet in the Pacific ocean.
3 decades later, Leiji Matsumoto revived the "Space Battleship Yamato" (renamed Starblazers in the US), meaning it had a second chance.
Japanese samourai code and martial art codes includes honor. This is interesting to see that he preserved the "suicide mission" in the anime guideline.
Matsumoto generic codes shows war (cockpit) or the occupation of a country by another one (My youth in Arcadia, Harlock 2nd season).

So this author (born 1938) lived his childhood during the war, so the war is a recurrent work, maybe as a therapy.
This is interesting to see how japanese authors that lived the war implemented it in their works, even Tezuka did in "Gen from Hiroshima".


Comments welcome.